Could I respectfully draw the moderator’s attention to the verbal violence practised by the commentator Wei on the immigration post yesterday.
I accept that most of ‘his’ inflammatory comments were made after 11pm, and even moderators need some sleep – but his/her posts should raise red flags in the future – and not PRC ones!
[So this off-handed inflammatory shit that you’re spouting (about raising PRC flags) is exactly the kind of stuff that kicks things off. I’ve just read the thread in question, and while Wei overstepped the mark with regards one response in particular, any bans would be for the inflammatory comments by Ropata and Tamati Tautuhi. Happens every time Wei comes here – the casual racist bullshit gets flung at him. He responds. He gets banned. Not happening this time around. There are a few people need to take a look at themselves and their attitudes] – Bill
Well, the small bit I read of the discussion did look a bit like there was adouble standard, and misunderstanding of the power of white privileger: i.e. Wei was critical of the naming and explaining of white privilege with respect to the treatment of white Sth African immigrants, while tending to denigrate Chinese immigrants.
Verbal violence though is not on, IMO, whatever the views.
Actually Wei calling for a massacre of white South African “ crackers” has to be his ticket out of here. If you don’t find his behaviour deeply disturbing there’s something wrong with you.
Why don’t you use a system similar to that used by insurance companies when there are two parties claiming against each other from an incident. It’s called knock-for-knock.
Why not take both parties out of the post for an hour? Let others get on with debating their own ideas and when the others settled down they would have learned something; either how to explain themselves better, or that they were majorly wrong. Just a bit of time out without playing the heavy-handed parent would help to give this present blog an adult-centred approach with democratic room for thinking citizens to have a say.
Calling another commenter a piece of s*** is ok and describing an assault on a commenter is ok… and in response Ropata was very restrained I have to say.
But making a joke referencing another post and bearing no malice whatsoever is moderation worthy. Sorry Bill, you’ve got things wrong here.
I don’t agree on all Bill’s moderation decisions, but I think he’s right to point out the Wei was trying to speak up against implicit racism and that people weren’t ready to re-examine their own comments or the bias they were exhibiting. Yes, he/she got angry and (in the end) abusive, but context is important and in this case I think it possible to understand Wei’s frustration.
You are a moderator you make decisions – I hope you at least ask Wei to done it down
“He is a lying piece of shit
A dumb cunt incapable of a single shred of logical thought
Fuck you are low IQ.
I’m talking about those racist white cracker Boers who can’t stand black rule and come here bringing their racist ways. Fuck you are a twit
A filthy Uncle Tom such as Ropata
Personally I hope the South African government seals off the borders and then carry out its land expropriation without compensation. Let those Boers scurry around like the rats they are with nowhere to go.
Hopefully we will see a massacre of those racist Boers
If that does happen I hope the NZ navy machine guns them in the water before they get their white asses to the North Shore – -how about it eh????”
This seems a “bit rough” to say the least
I know CV got a one year ban and I thought he was baited into that and what CV was banned for seems to me to be very small potatoes compared to Wei’s outbursts.
I understand moderator’s work is generally thankless and under appreciated and I apologise if it seems I am being overly critical
I know CV got a one year ban and I thought he was baited into that and what CV was banned for seems to me to be very small potatoes compared to Wei’s outbursts.
I agree that some of my comments were out of line. However the vicious racist rhetoric of people such as Ropata is far worse than anything I wrote. I appreciate the moderator’s nuanced approach.
That message board on immigration would have done an ‘Alt Right’ website proud, and it is only in recent years since Labour decided to jump on the populist bandwagon, that the vicious racist underbelly of the NZ left has emerged, in a truly unabashed sense.
If that does happen I hope the NZ navy machine guns them in the water before they get their white asses to the North Shore – -how about it eh????”
Of course that comment was to bait other commenters, and not a reflection of how I feel – but it is the secret attitude of many Westerners when it comes to black and brown refugees and migrants, consider Katie Hopkins who enjoys huge popularity in the UK “Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants”.
I placed the same views within a different racial context to get a rise out of the openly racist commentators that infest the webosphere of the New Zealand left. The fact is the Australia and New Zealand left was largely founded on vicious anti-Chinese racism, was suppressed for a long time, but is now rearing its ugly head as the economic ascendancy of China, and other non-white powers around the world give rise to white racial and economic angst.
I’ve worked in China – you don’t have a leg to stand on about racism.
“The fact is the Australia and New Zealand left was largely founded on vicious anti-Chinese racism.” (citation required)
The truth is that you represent a vocal and unproductive minority whose destructive speculation long since eclipsed their positive contribution. NZ infrastructure is stretched and there has been a degree of political capture, whereby people paid and sworn to represent NZers represent foreign interests instead. This is undergoing a minor correction.
Some migrants are unconcerned by the damage they do to their host society until the inequality precipitates violence. That’s not the NZ way. If it’s your way, go away.
“I’ve worked in China – you don’t have a leg to stand on about racism.”
Agree. Chinese tend to put whites on a pedestal. However with increasing economic power of China and the rise of her standing in the world, that is undergoing a slightly more than ‘minor correction’
“you represent a vocal and unproductive minority”
Vocal? Chinese are quite underrepresented I think when it comes to the New Zealand political scene (and I’m not blaming racism for that)
‘Unproductive’? Asian employment rates are virtually identical to European employment rates. Perhaps you have some data that they are employed in ‘unproductive’ industries compared with European New Zealanders?
However I doubt it. The engineering schools throughout the country are dominated now by Indians and Chinese, and most of them find employment in extremely productive fields.
“NZ infrastructure is stretched” True. But does a Chinese migrant stretch it anymore than an English or South African migrant?
“Some migrants are unconcerned by the damage they do to their host society until the inequality precipitates violence.”
Do you have some information that NZ Asians, or Chinese in particular are that much more wealthy on average than other New Zealanders?
“That’s not the NZ way. If it’s your way, go away.”
The NZ (Anglo Saxon) way is to steal the wealth of Asians and Africans. Its been that way for centuries. When the Chinese did not want to trade your people invaded and looted the place. You did it to India, you did it to the Africans, and you did it to the indigenous people of this country. The Anglo Saxon tribe are the greediest and most rapacious bunch of motherfuckers that ever existed on the face of the earth, but the day of political, economic, and even military reckoning is fast approaching!
“Some migrants are unconcerned by the damage they do to their host society until the inequality precipitates violence.”
“Do you have some information that NZ Asians, or Chinese in particular are that much more wealthy on average than other New Zealanders?”
This is a more general critique than simply Asia, and wealth is not the only criterion for sociopathy, though it often allows it greater scope for expression.
A word that has been sanitized in modern usage is entrepreneur, but an entrepreneur is not a technological rainmaker of the Hollywood variety. Literally an entrepreneur is someone who comes in and takes – a colonist or planter in 18th or 19th century terms, which is when the word was coined.
Coming in and taking is a disruptive activity. It causes changes to the host economy. The presence of cashed up Boer farmers for instance, inflates the price of prime dairy country beyond the means of the poorly paid farm workers who a generation before would in the fullness of time have come into possession of the land as the owner’s physical capacity declined. This in term obliges the farm worker to seek some other profession, because the culminating reward of a lifetime of poorly paid strenuous work in all weathers is taken off the table.
“The NZ (Anglo Saxon) way is to steal the wealth of Asians and Africans. Its been that way for centuries. When the Chinese did not want to trade your people invaded and looted the place. You did it to India, you did it to the Africans, and you did it to the indigenous people of this country. The Anglo Saxon tribe are the greediest and most rapacious bunch of motherfuckers that ever existed on the face of the earth, but the day of political, economic, and even military reckoning is fast approaching!”
This is just flame bait. You’re probably just an asshole looking for racist quotes to circulate among some far-right coterie. If this is your starting position you’re going to meet with a great deal of rejection.
“This is a more general critique than simply Asia, and wealth is not the only criterion for sociopathy, though it often allows it greater scope for expression. “
Hang on – your original comment was about inequality precipitating violence – against Chinese. Walking things back now eh?
“The presence of cashed up Boer farmers for instance, inflates the price….”
Attempt to appear fair and balanced after your racist diatribe against Chinese. Well done.
“This is just flame bait. You’re probably just an asshole looking for racist quotes to circulate among some far-right coterie. “
WTF?
This is after you accused me of representing “a vocal and unproductive minority whose destructive speculation long since eclipsed their positive contribution.”
“you’re going to meet with a great deal of rejection”
hahahhahahahahahahah…..I think I already have for some time
According to Stuart, I’m a member of a “a vocal and unproductive minority whose destructive speculation long since eclipsed their positive contribution.”
That goes well beyond a reasoned debate on the consequences of immigration.
Then he mutters darkly about possible violence against Chinese because of the inequality they bring – without of course providing any evidence that Chinese are inordinately wealthy relative to other groups.
You are part of a vocal and unproductive minority.
If you think the influence of Asian property speculation has gone unnoticed in NZ you’d better think again.
The argument is not that immigrant Chinese are inordinately wealthy – though you clearly want to beat that line up for a politics of envy attack. Immigration requires that they have capital assets of some description, and the differences in Asian banking and family finance structures have enabled significant numbers of them to enter the property market here. As in Australia and Canada this has had undesirable inflationary effects on the property market.
It is not the wealth but the negative consequences they brought that triggered the violence against them in Indonesia – albeit with some connivance from politicians there wishing to displace blame.
“without of course providing any evidence”
Your little manifesto on Chinese manifest destiny is a vagrant collection of prejudices for which you produced no support. Why should I?
“Hence we have a plague of horrible driving, mindless stripping of seafood resources, exploitation of employees, and a breakdown of trust…….
A safer land, where children were free to cycle or walk anywhere. Where you could go fishing and usually catch something decent. Where you could swim in clean rivers. Where we didn’t have hordes of campervans crapping on our loveliest tourist spots. Where you could work on minimum wages and buy a house and start a family.”
The implicit but obvious meaning is the wonderful New Zealand lifestyle and social trust of the past was lost, mainly because of the arrival of immigrants, particularly Asian ones. He blames most of New Zealand’s social ills on Asians. His rhetoric is redolent of Nazi propaganda against the Jews —and I’m not in the least bit exaggerating.
Yet when it comes to white South African migrants, he is far more forgiving: “At least they are legal citizens unlike a large swathe of new arrivals who snuck in the back door by student visa scams or pretending to start a business. Or even worse those who arrived with suitcases of cash and are now parasitical landlords or communist spies in the National party caucus.”
Blaming an entire ethnic group for most if not all of a countries problems, but without resorting to explicit racial slurs, is in fact the most vicious, dangerous type of racist rhetoric
“Blaming an entire ethnic group for most if not all of a countries problems, but without resorting to explicit racial slurs, is in fact the most vicious, dangerous type of racist rhetoric.”
“The NZ (Anglo Saxon) way is to steal the wealth of Asians and Africans. Its been that way for centuries.”
I count nearly 30 comments on this matter about moderation and dealing with a stirrer and the responses to this. It is fair to let someone have a rant about their own concerns. But why not leave it as a rant of that person, and just put a full stop against your name showing you have read it and are letting it lie as that. Why try to put everybody right according to what each subsequent commenter happens to think should be the norm?
In the absence of sensible responses to someone being provocative I don’t see why the moderation cannot have a time out operation to stop what seem to develop into flame wars.
You can have The Standard as a place where political problems and ideas are discussed, mulled over, critiqued, improved.
Or a place where people pass on any idea that gets into their heads in an emotional outburst. Sitting on the sidelines and criticising or making fun is easy compared to attempting to understand, reason and see how to improve things. And note: that can’t be done in a case where people of any background want to argue and create dissension. If they are totally right, and consider others who raise objections totally wrong, they should not be on this blog. They should have their own site and create their own harmony with like-minds.
There are many perspectives of thought, but just reactions each day are just safety valves. They don’t add anything lasting likely to hep from and enlighten future policies and political systems.
You make some good comments and I know that this something close to your heart as you have made comments along the same vein here in the past (with some consequences too).
I also know that weka was thinking of doing another post on moderation. [BTW, where is weka?]
I have my own thoughts on all this (and moderation) but I’ll limit it to the following.
Ideas, opinions and everything should and are in fact allowed to be discussed here on TS; it is wonderful forum that gives us or anybody who wishes, for that matter, more than enough opportunity and leeway. I don’t take this for granted and highly appreciate the opportunity and see it almost as a privilege.
I used to think too that replying to comments based on merit & message would safeguard against threads sliding into negative territory. Play the ball, not the man. Don’t should the messenger. Stick to the facts. Rational debate would ensue. Etcetera. I now think that I was (and still am) quite naive.
In a nutshell: c’est le ton qui fait la chanson (ou la musique).
In other words, style & substance, form & function, contents & presentation, for example, go hand-in-hand. One cannot separate the what from the how.
Delivery, context, style are all important in rhetoric, which is the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing. By logical extension, they are equally important in oral or written debate such as here on TS.
Lastly, a purely rational debate is impossible; we are driven by emotions.
What do you think? I think I can quite safely assume that not many others will read let alone engage with these comments of ours 😉
Prosecution against two Greenpeace activists who were charged with jumping into the water in front of an oil exploration ship will go ahead despite the Government announcing a ban on offshore oil exploration last week.
Greenpeace executive director and former politician Russel Norman and volunteer Sara May Howell are set to stand trial in the Napier District Court at the end of this month for their roles in a deep-sea oil protest last year.
The pair allegedly jumped into the water in front of oil exploration ship Amazon Warrior, off the Wairarapa coast, forcing it to stop its seismic work on April 10.
They were both charged with interfering in the operation of the 125m ship and pleaded not guilty at a joint appearance last October.
….It might be objected that the present Labour-led government, by fulsomely fulfilling its promises to its partners – especially the Greens – is demonstrating an entirely new approach to coalition politics. Upon closer inspection, however, it is clear that all Labour has done is convey an impression of environmental activism. As the former Green Party co-leader, Russel Norman – now the NZ Director of Greenpeace – was quick to point out, Labour’s decision to issue no new oil and gas prospecting permits offers no impediment to utilising fully those already granted.
The greening of the Labour Party may be more apparent than real. Which is why, as he listened to Jacinda Ardern talking-up Labour’s environmental credentials last week, James Shaw’s broad smile may have been misplaced. Did he not realise that, looking out from the stage, he was standing to her left?
We should be preparing everyone in the old world/low tech world of fossil fuel power generation for the next wave of newer technologies. What I would like to see is everyone who may lose their jobs in oil/coal/etc being given training in high tech industry like solar/wind/tidal.
Shutting down oil exploration should be an incentive to move people to other industries.
It’s the only way our technology will progress, by taking advantage of the high tech solutions available to us and power generation is one of those industries ripe for change (in fact – we HAVE to do it).
Housing NZ chief executive Andrew McKenzie is probably just a good little bureaucrat of the neoliberal enabling class. He must be furious that his cool, rational enforcement of the rules has seen his hand publicaly smacked by a minister in possession of some common sense and compassion.
The table didn’t stick out into the common area at all. Anyone with a sense of space would have realised that. The common area is beyond the wall – the one sticking out from in-between each flat to give more privacy.
To me it sounds like “the manager of her Body Corporate, Stephen Connelly” was simply trying to assert his authority and power. I’d be looking into the relationship between the two. Either way, he obviously should not be in that sort of position with that sort of power as he doesn’t use it responsibly.
Hager says that though some loopholes in NZ tax law were changed after the Panama Papers, it’s still possible for foreign interests to use NZ as a tax haven.
Sources claim this network leads back to the Azerbaijan government, which has been accused of corruption and money laundering.
The New Zealand companies and trusts were uncovered as part of the Daphne Project, a media investigation involving 46 journalists from 16 countries.
…
The Daphne Project has revealed that many of the companies in the Azerbaijan-Pilatus network linked back to an address in Auckland, New Zealand – 112 Parnell Road.
The address was home to wealth management company Denton Morrell. The company’s director, Matthew James Butterfield, is described in an online profile as a specialist in “ultra-high net worth clients” and in December 2016 it was mentioned in news stories about allegations that British football club manager Jose Mourinho hid millions of pounds from tax authorities in tax havens.
In normal circumstances, without whistleblowers like those helping the Daphne Project, the owners and their money movements are impossible to trace.
It needs to be illegal for the owners and money movements not to be traced. And make it so that if they can’t be traced the ownership reverts back to the nation.
There is no evidence or any suggestion that Denton Morrell or Mr Butterfield were aware of any allegations of money laundering by the Azerbaijan-linked companies, but it appears that the structure created by Denton Morrell may have been used to hide the ultimate beneficial owners of those assets.
It seems obvious to me that the structure was created to do the money laundering.
Shocking – makes you wonder not only how much tax avoidance we are encouraging here, but also how much of our NZ assets are also listed as NZ companies or under bogus trusts but owned by someone else and how under that structure, our government would be completely unaware how much NZ land and assets are offshore owned and managed.
I’m pretty sure that 3% that Key’s government said was foreign owned land and farms was as genuine as his efforts on Pike River recovery.
But, I notice your reference refers to the RSA and poppy day.
After the way they treated J Force and Korean vets and the way we were treated coming back from nam, the sooner the RSA goes broke and disappears the better. This only changed when they realised their WW1 and WW2 vets were dying off and the cash cow was disappearing.
Cardi B is getting into tax policy now. She says she's paying 40% of her income in taxes and wants to know where the money is going…"when you donate to a kid in a foreign country, they give you updates on what they're doing with your donation….I want updates on my tax money." pic.twitter.com/E1hITGNqee— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 23, 2018
[…]
4. The video above wasn't the first time Cardi B has talked about taxes. Late last year, she shared her tax planning strategies with her followers. pic.twitter.com/rtIai4Xl6I— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 23, 2018
4. The video above wasn't the first time Cardi B has talked about taxes. Late last year, she shared her tax planning strategies with her followers. pic.twitter.com/rtIai4Xl6I
I, too, want to be able to know what the taxes are spent on. As far as I’m concerned, in this day and age, we should be able to go online and get an accurate accounting in near real time and going back for several years at least.
Other than giving fuckwits the ability to turn financial accountability into a manual denial-of-service attack by querying every transaction as soon as it’s made.
If the larger-scale problems weren’t already obvious and innumerable (DHB “debts”, teacher shortages, infrastructure decay, and so on), maybe realtime minutae would be useful. but there’s more than enough to address already.
Because we actually need to know to be able to govern ourselves. Which is what democracy is all about – governing ourselves. To be able to say which of the resources that the country has should be used.
Other than giving fuckwits the ability to turn financial accountability into a manual denial-of-service attack by querying every transaction as soon as it’s made.
There would need to be rules of course.
If the larger-scale problems weren’t already obvious
If they were obvious then the last government wouldn’t have been able to lie about them for nine years.
What more for “democracy” do we need to know that we don’t already know?
You can hand-wave all the rules you want, the fact is that every system is open to abuse and the tories could easily shut down any government they don’t like purely by volume of complaints and storms in teacups. Look at what they did with MP expenses, and you want that level of bullshit spread throughout the entire bureaucracy?
The larger scale problems were obvious. The government lied about them. But the real problem is that people didn’t care enough to bother with even that granularity of information – if it suited them, they were happy to go along with whatever key or hosking said. We don’t suffer from a lack of information, our system a lack of consideration.
Thumbs up to Countdown in Marton who are the first supermarket in NZ to introduce quiet hour.
Specifically catering to the autistic it sounds heavenly for the non spectrum stressed out too with minimal light levels, no background music/ads, no staff stocking shelves. Just ease and grace + One Card rewards 😉
Do you know whether it is just a local management initiative or whether it is a trial for wider application throughout NZ Countdowns, similar to their ongoing introduction of pharmacies into their bigger stores?
I have found this latter initiative in my local Countdown excellent. The pharmacy is open (I think) from 7 – 8am through to about 7 – 8pm daily, and their per item prescription charges are only $3 compared to the standard $5. Their prices for over the counter (General Sales) pharmaceuticals and other medications, medicines etc seem to be generally lower than at other pharmacies. These charges and prices are apparently standard across all Countdown pharmacies.
This is no criticism of the smaller pharmacies (independent or part of a group) because understandably their overheads are much higher, whereas presumably the Countdown pharmacies’ overheads (floor space, power etc) are less due to their shared nature. And these smaller pharmacies will always remain essential to smaller towns, local communities where these larger facilities are not practical or feasible from a business point of view.
Parents have been encouraged to believe, in spite of plentiful evidence to the contrary, that their children’s future success is dependent on their commitment to purely career-oriented courses;
Hasn’t changed since I was a child 40+ years ago then.
…and by a National Standards regime that promotes crudely measurable forms of knowledge at the expense of critical thinking.
And that’s actually going back to the way things were when I was a child. I suppose we should expect that sort of BS from conservatives who always think that the past was better.
For academic staff, the exaggerated emphasis placed on so-called “research outputs” as the principal criterion for professional advancement, has meant publication has tended to displace teaching as the core of professional responsibility.
I actually want our universities to be doing research and publishing. Perhaps the problem is that, over the last while, we’ve regarded universities as tertiary education rather than the research institutions that they should be. Learning goes hand in hand with research but not so much teaching.
It’s a difference in perspective. Instead of going to university to learn we have people going to university to do research. At the end of that research they will publish and maybe get a degree. They will join as part of a small team doing specific research under the guidance of a primary, i.e, someone who already has a degree in that field.
We’d get better learning and more innovation. Would involve a lot more people.
All of this has meant that, even as fees kept rising, students have been getting less and less for their money.
Are, the National slogan Do More With Less strikes again and we end up getting a lot less for more.
The new Government’s decision to gradually abolish undergraduate fees, by countering the neo-liberal idea of tertiary education as a “private good”, is a step in the right direction but unless it is accompanied by serious investment and a through re-think of what universities are all about, it will probably only hasten a decline brought about by already inadequate funding.
Nothing I said would change that. It changes the reason for going to university from a place to get a degree to a place to do research.
1. Students should be doing that from primary school.
2. Yes, a university is a place for research. Again though, people should be learning to do research from primary school. Innovation isn’t something people do but something that comes about because of what people know, their experience and if they’ve developed their critical thinking.
3. Back to 2.
4. Back to 2.
5. That’s what research is for.
I’d argue that critical & independent thinking are more fundamental to #5 than research but you and I may have a slightly different understanding of “research”.
What happens inside the walls of universities has to build on a solid educational foundation; this is one growing problem.
Different degrees have different profiles; there is no one size fits all, obviously.
There is a growing recognition and emphasis on ongoing education for university staff including researchers and how to improve their teaching; it is impossible to get promoted in the system without at least some teaching component.
What happens inside the walls of universities has to build on a solid educational foundation; this is one growing problem.
Yes, that I can agree with. That’s why the change over the last few years in education to research based education even at primary school to develop critical thinking and the knowledge on how to do research.
There is a growing recognition and emphasis on ongoing education for university staff including researchers and how to improve their teaching; it is impossible to get promoted in the system without at least some teaching component.
Ongoing education is necessary for everyone.
And I think we’re talking past each other. You seem to be thinking of teaching as a separate activity while I’m thinking that the experienced doctorate would be leading under-graduates through research and helping them learn along the way.
Yes, I agree that we seem to talking past each other. I do think that learning to learn and learning to do research are different processes that require different approaches and methodologies for optimal results. Ergo, they require different teaching styles. I do agree that there is an overlap, a point of connection, and that both aspects, if you like, can be taught by the same person or people. In practice, this is not as common as one would think because teaching and research have drifted apart and are, in fact quite separated – income, overheads, and cross-subsidising are carefully monitored and fodder for ongoing discussions about the right model, etc. Universities are ‘forcing’ this to change by setting Academic Standards that one has to meet in order to get promoted. As so many other decisions in the university system, it is done in a heavy-handed authoritarian manner with a very business-minded (hard-nosed) attitude.
Part of the problem with universities is that it’s almost all about publishing. And peer-reviewed publishing with impact factors, at that.
So the academic responsibility of universities also being “critic and conscience of society” counts for nought unless it’s plugged in a journal that only other academics will read, by and large. Public reports, externally-funded research, or even opinion pieces in local media count for virtually nothing, even if the reports are peer-reviewed and have social worth.
And similarly the teaching side becomes a numbers game. Apparently there’s one vice chancellor of a university who is getting academic credit (in addition to the day job) for “supervising” the research of around a dozen phd candidates. Makes you wonder how closely the tens of thousands of words each candidate puts out a year are actually being read, let alone how much help they get designing and producing the associated journal articles. That VC could always be a fecking machine, but doubtful.
By Law universities are required to fulfil their role as critic & conscience of society. How do you think they (should) achieve this?
Teaching is much broader than supervising the research of PhD students. But I agree that some are taking the piss; there is a limit to how many PhD students one academic can formally (as in: taking the credit) supervise.
Part of the problem with universities is that it’s almost all about publishing. And peer-reviewed publishing with impact factors, at that.
True, at the root it’s money. But that’s above my payscale. I just see most academics shitting themselves about what outputs count how much towards pbrf. Apparently the grail is to get multiyear program fundng so you can take additional research into the margin for error of the program budget, lol.
But yeah the critic and conscience role is more important possibly even than research, but is too qualitative to be recognised by most managerial regimes.. We do actually need people taking time to submit on bills or local projects, even to write think-pieces for the local rag and turn up to public meetings on local issues, providing informed opinion without fear of compromising their jobs. Those were the days.
The reason why academics are shitting themselves about PBRF is because management is painting pictures full of fire & brimstone. PBRF is hugely costly zer0-sum exercise. The only group that really benefits from this entire madness are the big publishing houses that own the scientific journals; it is a billion dollar industry subsidised by taxpayers and students & their parents.
The ‘grail’ is to get any grant, any funding, which requires ‘pilot data’ and a strong ‘track record’ in the field, which effectively means that you have already done a major part of what you say you will be doing if (!) you get the funding. It is a game and to play the game you have to game the system and use what is colloquially called “grantsmanship”. In this lottery system (because of the very low success rates in getting grants) success breeds success; merit of the proposals and good quality research ideas play a lesser role than they should. It is a subtle but insidious variation on the theme of the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
There are not nearly enough public intellectuals. In the US the public university is going extinct. In fact, anything public is slowly disappearing all over the world. We live in an age of hyper-individualism and privatisation for profiteering by a few and these elites feel no charity towards institutions or individuals who would like to play the role of critic & conscience of society.
Love how (sarcasm) it’s the arts that people seem to think is a dead end career choice and not good for NZ. In my view it’s cultural capital that is now starting to have massive value as people push back from this obsession with money and economy. People in those industry have ideas, they do things!
Our richest and most well known teenager is Lorde (music), one of our biggest challenges is architecture and planning (also being cut from the library) especially with the current ‘clown planning’ in Auckland and building disasters from leaky building to Bella vista in Tauranga.
Our fine artists are as important as cultural capital as sport (without the big funding).
Prince William and Dutchess of Cambridge studied art history, but to the Auckland University philistines, arts are clearly not important.
Nobody takes foreign dignitaries to the law firm or the accountants office in NZ. Nope they get the cultural experience because otherwise we might as well sell our country as the cheaper Pita pit if we take away our arts and culture and deem it 3rd class at university level.
Or as Wei says in his/her posts on the immigration issue “Too small a population means you get inbreds with no technology and no culture and no civilization. ”
I’m not sure if he/she is referring to Maori or just all of NZ? But an alternative vision rather than overturning or appropriation of culture, could be maintaining and cherishing it, which clearly is not happening at our largest university.
Also in relation to Wei’s comment on technology with low populations, .. tech is NZ’s fastest growing and third biggest export… and our tech people are valued highly and sought after overseas. (Pity not much government/business support on keeping local tech talent in NZ with high wages and decent jobs and opportunities.)
Or as Wei says in his/her posts on the immigration issue “Too small a population means you get inbreds with no technology and no culture and no civilization. ”
Which, of course, is a load of bollocks. From Why we can’t afford the rich:
In his book The Moral Economy of Labor, James Murphy cites empirical research on the relation between the intellectual capacities of workers and the complexity of the work they do that showed that over a 10-year period the intelligence of workers doing complex jobs developed, while that of workers doing simple and repetitive work deteriorated. Further, as Smith feared, there is evidence that ‘Workers in mindless jobs not only undermine their capacity for the enjoyment of complex activities at work but also their capacity for the enjoyment of complex activities during leisure.’
As Murphy adds, while workers are increasingly protected from harm to their physical capacities, they are not protected from harm to their mental capacities.
Smith didn’t see the jobs people do as a reflection of their intelligence, but rather the reverse:
The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up in maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.
My bold.
Yeah, it’s not the number of people that is the problem but our socio-economic system which disadvantages the many in favour of the few.
Your second point, which I agree with, had virtually nothing to do with the first.
A small population means you are less likely to produce Beethoven’s, Led Zeppelin’s and Steven Hawkings. That’s just a plain statistical fact.
And you do obviously have less opportunity for specialisation, and a smaller market for innovation —although international trade ameliorates that somewhat.
I had a friend who lived in UK in the 1970s and 1980s. It was a glorious time, he could enjoy live concerts of the best rock bands in the world on an almost weekly basis. The size of the population meant a high probability that not only great talents would emerge (not the only factor of course), but the mass and density of the population means there is a market to enjoy that talent and it is economic to perform to live audiences on a frequent basis. New York and Paris and even Hong Kong and have far more going on in the arts and music than Auckland, and likely always will.
Another example is of course minor sports and niche activities. For example, in Europe, rugby is still a relatively minor sport, proportionately speaking. Yet the sport can draw huge crowds and they have very competitive national and international competitions that frequently run. Even though a small percentage of people are interested in the sport, they still have the highest number of registered players in the world, I believe. On a per capita basis, football, in New Zealand is at least as popular as rugby in Europe, but you get more seagulls at a local tournament, and the skill level is abysmal.
A small population means you are less likely to produce Beethoven’s, Led Zeppelin’s and Steven Hawkings. That’s just a plain statistical fact.
More bollocks. Statistically speaking all groups of people have exactly the same chance.
And you do obviously have less opportunity for specialisation, and a smaller market for innovation
You obviously misunderstood the quote: Specialisation hinders innovation and the development of intelligence.
It was a glorious time, he could enjoy live concerts of the best rock bands in the world on an almost weekly basis.
I can do that today in NZ. Could do it in the 1970s/80s as well. We’ve even had a few of them end up the world stage over the years.
but the mass and density of the population means there is a market to enjoy that talent and it is economic to perform to live audiences on a frequent basis.
Any size population that’s capable of supporting itself is quite capable of doing that as well. Large numbers don’t actually make it any better.
New York and Paris and even Hong Kong and have far more going on in the arts and music than Auckland, and likely always will.
In absolute numbers, yeah, but not as a percentage. The percentage will be about the same.
On a per capita basis, football, in New Zealand is at least as popular as rugby in Europe, but you get more seagulls at a local tournament, and the skill level is abysmal.
More bollocks. Statistically speaking all groups of people have exactly the same chance.. Bollocks.
Statistically speaking, and assuming a similar statistical distribution of talent, a larger population obviously has more chance of producing an outrageous talent than a smaller population.
A country with 10 times the population of another, will, assuming similar birthrates and demographic characteristics, produce 10 times the number of geniuses within the same period
“Specialisation hinders innovation and the development of intelligence.”
That’s a ridiculous statement. The fact that I can programme software say, and only know how to do that, and not catch my fish, and grow my vegetables is no hindrance on the development of intelligence. In engineering there are huge ramifying trees of specialisations —working in any one of them provides a lifetime of cognitive challenge.
“while that of workers doing simple and repetitive work deteriorated”
Sorry, these workers are not ‘specialists’. In fact they are the very opposite. Simple repetitive work can be done by anyone. These workers are utilised as generic cogs.
“In absolute numbers, yeah, but not as a percentage. The percentage will be about the same.”
It simply does not work that way. A country of a small population may never have the chance to enjoy, say the Berlin Philharmonic, whereas another country with a larger population may have them tour once every 2 or 3 years. Not exactly sure what the exact thresholds are, but the relationship is certainly not a linear one.
Statistically speaking, and assuming a similar statistical distribution of talent, a larger population obviously has more chance of producing an outrageous talent than a smaller population.
A larger population will produce a larger number of outstanding talent (if such a thing even exists) but they have the same chance.
That’s a ridiculous statement.
That’s what the research shows and what I quoted.
In his book The Moral Economy of Labor, James Murphy cites empirical research on the relation between the intellectual capacities of workers and the complexity of the work they do that showed that over a 10-year period the intelligence of workers doing complex jobs developed, while that of workers doing simple and repetitive work deteriorated.
Complexity develops intelligence. Specialisation is a decrease in complexity.
Sorry, these workers are not ‘specialists’.
They’re doing the same work over and over, ergo, specialised. And it results in a decrease in intelligence.
Considering that that applies to the majority of the population we should probably change it so that we can increase the intelligence and innovation of the country.
The book goes on to say that even doctors and other highly skilled specialists would probably benefit from having a change.
It simply does not work that way. A country of a small population may never have the chance to enjoy, say the Berlin Philharmonic, whereas another country with a larger population may have them tour once every 2 or 3 years.
Who gives a fuck about the Berlin Philharmonic touring?
In Auckland we have the Auckland Philharmonic. Then there’s the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Wellington.
Biggest Success story in town.
With a rich history as New Zealand’s oldest regional orchestra founded over sixty years ago, Orchestra Wellington’s audience numbers have grown rapidly to become one of the most consistently well attended in the country. With progressive programmes, accessible pricing, and a focus on community outreach, Orchestra Wellington is now recognised as one of the most exciting and progressive orchestras in the world.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that we have the music covered.
It’s not a question of absolute numbers but of productivity and percentages. Even small villages thousands of years ago produced good musicians.
The only real danger from homeopathy is if one has an actual illness and is relying on the homeopathy to offer any actual benefit outside of the placebo effect.
If you’ve got a health problem best to see a good qualified medical doctor in the first instance for a diagnosis and then proceed on from there.
Dunno about the lack of real danger. If the homeopathic practitioner decided the rabid dog saliva didn’t need much potentising, and didn’t go through the extended palaver of repeated dilution and succussion, then the treatment might be a wee bit riskier than I’d be comfortable with.
How does one collect rabid-dog saliva?
In any case, the much maligned “placebo” effect is very powerful and useful in conventional modern medicine, as well as in traditional practices.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen info on recommended techniques. I wouldn’t have guessed there was much demand for rabid-dog saliva, since rabies vaccines are produced using cell-culture or nerve tissue. In any case, collecting spider venom or snake venom strikes me as a more difficult problem, for which there’s a variety of solutions, since collecting those kinds of venom is necessary for producing treatments that actually work.
Dunno that the placebo effect itself is much maligned. Insufficiently understood and insufficiently used, for sure, but the non-use of placebo by modern medicine is as much an ethics issue as anything else. But when it comes to maligning, the existence of a powerful placebo effect is used to malign nostrum hucksters whose products are no more effective than placebos (and sometimes actually less effective).
Yes fair point anyone prepared to supply this product may be less than scrupulous in the dilutions – I suspect all of it is just water out of the tap ……
Amusing… But does one not have to point out that H2O is a molecule, and McFlock’s water is composed of them? Or have I misremembered my form 3 Science from 1960? (Purple auras explain everything..)
Phil Quinn: the political commentator we all love to hate (including me) has redeemed himself. Haven’t time yet to read it properly but what I have read thus far… I agree with everything he has said:
Great link Anne, I don’t think Dotcom is that unlikable, it was the MSM hate campaign against him, he’s more like a manic with big ideas (But Dotcom actually achieves them). Other pluses, he lives in NZ, has a family here, rents! a house and has the ability to create jobs, opportunities and industry in this country. My vote is for him not someone on $16.50 p/h or tech moguls that don’t live or invest in NZ to stay and lead a colourful (but legal) and productive life here with his family.
From Anne’s link…
“Consider this. The Global Financial Crisis brought countless millions to their knees. Hundreds of thousands were left homeless due to the dodgy bank loans and the reckless conduct of financial titans. For these crimes, with real and countless victims, the US Department of Justice has barely lifted a finger.
Fewer than five criminals responsible for Wall St’s moral failures have spent any time behind bars — and for a fraction of the time the feds insist for Dotcom and his colleagues. Why? Because the mortgage-strapped and cash-poor can’t afford lobbyists and lawyers to persuade the government to do their bidding.”
Dotcom is a lonely Big Guy who doesn’t drink because of an alcoholic parent.
He always wanted to be big in IT. He is also not a well man, who has been treated poorly. I don’t agree with some of his politics, but he deserves better than he has had so far. He has been used.
Silly old public-bar bore Battersby. Interesting to note that he has a QSM. But then again, much worse, much more vicious people than him have been knighted….
A shout out to Radio New Zealand for, yet again, contacting the Cuban Studies Institute, otherwise known as University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, for their take on the current change of power in Cuba.
I include this quote from an article discussing the trials and tribulations of the institute itself..(my bolds)
“Over the summer, several Cuban exile groups joined the fray, concerned that the institute might shift its focus from being an academic weapon against the Castro regime. They took the line that Suchlicki had not retired but had been unjustly terminated.
Some exiles began to attack Gómez and asked for his resignation as interim director of the institute.
Without mentioning Gómez directly, the organizations that make up the Cuban Resistance said in a statement that UM “cannot appoint an interim director or any incoming directors who may associate with companies that trade with the Castro regime, since this Center, by definition, cannot be under the influence and interference of Havana’s totalitarian regime.” Gómez had been an on-board lecturer on Cuba during a cruise to the island. It was a one-time gig.”
They are entitled to their opinion , and their take on current events in Cuba is interesting, but why would RNZ not explain the Institutes overt position on Cuba, the Castro crowd and Communism in general.
The Herald is obsessed with the mindless mutterings of a homophobic sportsplayer.
As winter approaches, imagine if they devoted the same column inches to the crises facing our country – inequality, homelessness, child poverty….
Maybe they could dedicate a lot more coverage to climate change, so they have an informed readership.
We need a lot more coverage like this from Stuff today.
“The 2016 marine heatwave has triggered the initial phase of that transition [to heat-tolerant reef assemblages] on the northern, most pristine region of the Great Barrier Reef, changing it forever as the intensity of global warming continues to escalate,” the paper said.”
If Bill is out there, looks like your optimism over no war being started in Korea was better placed than my anxiety. Hopefully.
Since this really does feel like the start of a proper diplomatic fandango, I am hoping for very modest improvements. Like, for example, Kim sees that it’s better to form a proper diplomatic corps to engage with countries. And that forming a bit of a decent public service to deal with that is a whole bunch more effective than successively executing any general who disagrees with him.
And secondly, realising that there is more to sustaining a country than giving the military everything they want. It’s not in his military’s interests to see diplomatic success – diplomacy is the solvent to martial law.
Those two would be small but humble starts.
More adventurously, I hope the US agrees formally that the Korean War has stopped and that they make peace over that.
Spare me from God’s wrath if I see Trump being as good as Obama at cracking the hard diplomatic problems.
Intensive Dairy farming is NOT a sustainable practice.
It is destroying our soil.
“Nearly 200 million tonnes of soil are being lost in New Zealand every year – an out-of-sight problem that could pose far-reaching consequences for our environment and economy.
A major Government report out this morning also found nearly half of that loss was coming from pastures, at a time when dairy intensification was packing more cows into paddocks.
The quality and quantity of soil is crucial to the overall health of our land and wider environment, storing water, carbon and nutrients, growing food, breaking down contaminants and hosting an abundance of species.
Half of tested dairy sites had excess soil phosphorus and a further 65 per cent were below the target range for macroporosity.
New Zealand accounted for just 0.2 per cent of the planet’s total land area but contributed 1.7 per cent to global sediment loss.
The amount of land used for dairy has meanwhile surged by more than per 40 cent since the early 2000s, while that used for sheep and beef has dropped by 20 per cent, in step with dairy’s white gold rush.
New Zealand’s dairy country now spanned 2.6m ha
Has anyone here read “The Captured Economy – how the powerful enrich themselves, slow down growth, and increase inequality”, by Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles?
They take Piketty seriously, and are of course super-dark on Trump, but have a really weird view of the role of the state in the economy, and some fairly slippery institutional framework theory around that.
Just checking if anyone’s had a look at this book.
Horrifying. This is 2018 America. Judicial nominee Wendy Vitter had her confirmation hearing this morning. She stated she “personally disagrees with the decision in Brown v. Board of Education.”That’s literally white supremacy. 😳#UnfitToJudgepic.twitter.com/1Ptp6jSin5— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@MuslimIQ) April 11, 2018
Miss 13 cooked dinner last night, did a stellar job.
Miss 10 wanted to say something nice, so thanked ‘god’ for dinner (Nana took her to church last Sunday).
Miss 13 walked off. She was pissed off because god didn’t make dinner, she did! Lmao!!!
It is hopeful that good progress seems to being made with a trade deal with Britain post brexit.
Trade deals that promote ‘values’ instead of ‘donkey billions’ is the way to go, & more traditional forms of developmental western societal organisation to that, would have more mutual recognition and easy alignment with the British people going down the track i’d say, from New Zealand’s position, traditional receptivity & prosperity.
I wonder if a RAF training base down queenstown way would be a viable thing. A training space for the British with their top aircraft and relatively unclutted airspace – would basically have the entire westcoast to zoom up and down on for starters with formations, drills, scenarios and the like, with geography not that far removed from alot of European soil. And the NZ forces providing the on ground maintenance with the British top wings, would be a win for them as well.
What does Britain have that we would want to buy or sell for which there are great big trade barriers to entry?
Munitions?
A monarchy and House of Lords?
A corrupt class system?
A dead public health system?
Lots of empty stone churches?
I’m old enough to remember what English companies and English politics did to us last century.
So I would like to hear what Prime Minister has in mind for our country on this.
The Am Show Good morning social media is a awesome tool to educate te tangata about the truths of the ruling classes and the reality’s of the plite of the common people.There is a dubble edged sword in everything to do with the internet as with anything one must know what the mokopunas are up to . To prevent someone from having a negative affect on the children observation is key here because sometimes they won’t tell you what the are up to observation and Aroha are a must for children .
Soil is one of the life force of Papatuanuku we could easily change to Organic farming it would be better for the enviroment and for us less chemicals =less cancers .
Ka kite ano I have to go to work here a brown man that tells it like it is.
Newshub Our Leader looked good wearing te beautiful Korowai that is a excerlint way to promote our Maori culture to the World ka pai .
Mark Middleton congratulations on getting your visa to stay in NZ permanently many thanks to Chis and co for granting Mark this Eco Maori does not trust the system as far as I can——— I have tryed to use the legal systems 5 times and 5 times they have cheated me out of justice the——- Ana to kai .
Thats a awesome the Dunedin Wild life Hospital ka pai many animals and birds will be saved because of this great institution.
I brought a poppy today the thing is I have a problem with ANZAC day is that in my eyes it promotes war and war is for idiots in Eco Maori View . Ka kite ano
The Crowd Goes Wild Wairanga and Makere it will be awesome if the Warriors end up with heaps of wagons following there band there are other reasons I a kumara never tells how sweet it is .
Wai this new format of cricket could attacked more brown players which is a good thing I recon that some should start a New Zealand Ausse Rules Rugby He tangata will make heaps of money playing that game in Australia.
Ka kite ano
Thanks to a report from the Acting Inspector General of Intelligence and Security following a complaint by Nicky Hager, we have come to find out that the SIS illegally spied on Mr. Hager on behalf of the NZDF after publication of Hager’s 2011 book, Other People’s Wars. The NZDF justified ...
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate. FACT: The HadCRUT3 surface temperature index, produced by the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, shows warming to 1878, cooling to 1911, ...
For the past week, Extinction Rebellion has been peacefully protesting in London to demand action on climate change. The British government's response? Ban their protests:Police have banned Extinction Rebellion protests from continuing anywhere in London, as they moved in almost without warning to clear protesters who remained at the movement’s ...
When they were running for election, Labour promised to overhaul the Employment Relations Act and introduce fair pay agreements to set basic pay and conditions on an industry level, preventing bad employers from undercutting good ones. They followed this up by establishing a working group, which reported back in January ...
A list of indicators of bad science – many of these are found in articles promoted by anti-fluoride activists. Anti-fluoride activists have been pouring money into a scaremongering campaign warning pregnant women not to drink fluoridated water. They claim fluoride will lower the IQ of their future child. Fluoride ...
Nothing Left To Say: Labour's pollster, Stephen Mills, remains swaddled-up in the comforting myths of the 1980s. As if the experience of Roger Douglas’s genuinely radical post-Muldoon policy agenda was literally a once-in-a-lifetime thing – as much as the party could possibly absorb for at least the next 50 years.MEMO ...
The Royal Commission on abuse in care is very significant for the disability community. For many decades last century, thousands of disabled children, and adults who managed to survive, were locked away from families and communities. This was not for anything they had done, but for the perceived threat their ...
With an unfair voting system, uneven electorates and an un-elected upper house, the UK's "democracy" is barely worthy of the name. But now the government wants to make it worse:The government has been accused of suppressing voters’ rights with the potential disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of people after plans ...
Back in the 90's and early 2000's, the building industry was building leaky homes which should never have been granted consent. Now it turns out they've been building dodgy office blocks as well:New imaging technology has revealed hundreds of major buildings nationwide have defective or missing concrete or reinforcing steel. ...
Local body election results were released over the weekend, to joy or despair depending on where you live. In Auckland, Phil Goff trounced John Tamihere, who is muttering darkly about running for Parliament again (but which party would want him?) Wellington is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Weta Workshop, except ...
Two years have now gone by since the Friday afternoon when my university-student son and I headed out of our Barcelona flat to a nearby primary school, designated as a polling station for the vote that was to be held the following Sunday: the referendum on Catalonia’s independence from Spain ...
Overruled: The joint decision of Finance Minister, Grant Robertson (Labour) and his Associate Minister, David Parker (Labour) arguably the two most powerful ministers in Jacinda Ardern’s government, to grant OceanaGold the consents which Land Information Minister, Eugenie Sage (Greens) had earlier denied them, offers bitter proof of how hard fighting ...
More than double the number of people who will vote in this year’s local body elections have tried marijuana or urinated somewhere they shouldn’t have. As local elections look set for the lowest turnout in decades, with many regions falling well short of 40%, the Government is exploring a number ...
A Statement on Abortion Law Reform by the Council of Disobedient Women On the eve of bringing an end to antiquated, anti-women abortion laws Green MP Jan Logie intends to write women out of the Bill. With a stroke of the pen, the woke are aiming for total erasure ...
Musings continue apace about “the experienced businessman!” soon to be taking up a National Party MP position. Or to be more accurate, being parachuted into a seat to shut down their former MP Jamie-Lee Ross, who despite his own shortcomings shed at least some more light on the inner workings ...
The Ugandan government wants to murder gay people:Uganda has announced plans to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. The bill, colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda, was nullified five years ago on a technicality, but the government said on Thursday it plans to resurrect it within weeks. The ...
Freedom Of Speech? The Säuberung (cleansing by fire) was the work of the German Student Union which, on 10 May 1933, under the watchful eye of the Nazi Reichminister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, consigned 25,000 books to the flames in a ritual exorcism of “un-German thought”. According to the logic of the ...
“There can be no such thing as kaupapa Māori political parties or politics in Aotearoa” (Willie Jackson, Labour Party (2017). Māori TV, General/List Election Special) I begin with that claim because at the time, I was confounded at first that it fell out of Willie Jackson’s mouth, and then ...
New Zealand’s media is doing its part in Japan, reassuring those in the path of the storm that they won’t miss any rugby while away from their flooded homes. New Zealand sports reporters stationed in Japan for the Rugby World Cup have had the rare and heartwarming opportunity to inform ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones is the only Cabinet member in favour of putting it all on green. As Finance Minister Grant Robertson finds himself with an enormous $7.5 billion surplus, the Government has begun intense, at times contentious conversations about whether to put the money on red or black at ...
by Susanne Kemp At the start of September close to 100,000 school teachers went on strike in Jordan. They demanded a 50% pay rise. A pay rise actually agreed to by the regime back in 2014. In early October, however, in the face of government repression and threats, the teachers’ ...
Back in 2011, journalist Nicky Hager published Other People's Wars, an expose on NZDF's activities over the previous decade of the "war on terror". NZDF didn't like this, and especially didn't like the fact that it was base don leaks from their own. So, they had the SIS investigate him ...
The Zero Carbon Bill is due back from select committee in two weeks, and will likely pass its final stages in November. So naturally, farmers are planning a hate-march against it. But they're not just demanding lower methane targets so they can keep on destroying the planet; they're also demanding ...
Last year, California burned. This year, to stop it happening again (or rather, to stop themselves from being found liable if it happens again), Pacific Gas and Electric is cutting power to half the state for a week:Schools are closed. Traffic lights down. Tunnels dark. Businesses unopened. Hospitals running on ...
The Best Way: Missing from the on-line voting debate is any reference to the voting system that produces turn-out figures ranging from 77 to 93 percent of registered voters. The voting system used to collect and count the votes cast in our parliamentary elections. The system that involves citizens making ...
Among the great new bunch of political friends we have been making recently is the excellent Australian-based Marxist gender-critical site, Freer Lives. So we asked the comrade who set up that blog to write something for Redline on the blog, himself, his analysis of the rise of gender politics and ...
by Don Franks The Auckland City Mission is struggling with a 40 percent increase in demand for food parcels this year. A total of 23,020 were needed by June. Last month Missioner Chris Farrelly told the Herald the “cupboards are bare” and without an emergency food drive, he can’t see ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women Massey Wellington Student Association had a sit-in today. Imagine a sit-in. On a campus. Against a women’s rights meeting. Did the ’60s really happen or did we fucking dream it? They gathered in the student square, an echo chamber. Sitting on soft pillows ...
For some reasons, my post about the mystery message from inside the Downing Street bunker seemed to catch people's attention. Quite a lot of hits from NZ (unsurprisingly) and the USA (a bit more puzzlingly, but hi there, USAians!!) and 76 views from the Ukraine.I've celebrated my Ukrainian readers in ...
First, almost a score of Labour MPs seem to have sent a letter to the EU basically begging them to accept a deal - any deal - just so Britain can get the Heck on with Brexiting instead of being trapped in limbo:
by Phil Duncan In 2016 the National-led government suspended the Parent Visa Category, through which migrants were able to bring their parents into New Zealand. Since then over 5,700 people have been in immigration limbo, stuck on the visa wait list. Labour is now bringing back the scheme. Well, sort ...
The following was released yesterday (Tues, October 8) by the women’s liberation organisation Speak Up for Women. On 23 September Speak Up For Women announced that we would be holding an event at the Massey University Theaterette in Wellington. The event is called Feminism 2020. The intention of the event ...
The government is currently consulting on plans to improve freshwater quality. So naturally, farmers oppose it:South Taranaki farmers are preparing to fight proposed national freshwater changes that some fear will bankrupt them. The Government's proposed National Environment Standard on Freshwater Management, released in September, rated the Waingongoro River as one ...
Yesterday was the last day for (reliably) posting your vote away in local body elections. Turnouts are mostly much lower than the equivalent time last year (Palmerston North is down 2.3%), and so naturally people are pushing their online-voting snake oil again. Because the online census worked so well, lets ...
This essay, on the political legacy of the eugenics movement, by Kenan Malik was originally published in the Observer on 6 October 2019, under the headline ‘The spirit of eugenics is still with us, as immigrants know to their cost’. Birth control. Intelligence tests. Town planning. Immigration controls. It’s striking how ...
Another year, and the government has announced another enormous government "surplus". And just like last year, its nothing of the sort. When we have people homeless and sick and hungry, when we have schools and hospitals still falling down, when we have underpaid public servants and infrastucture unmaintained or unbuilt, ...
James Forsyth at The Spectator (I know, I know) has tapped one of his contacts inside Number Ten for an insight into the Johnson administration's thinking and strategy.It is fascinating, unsettling and quite, quite mad. Some key points:Negotiations have stalled and the Johnson administration are keen to blame the EU: ...
Fatal Contact: With the arrival of captain James Cook in October 1769, the islands of what would become New Zealand ceased to be the preserve of Polynesian navigators and settlers and became a part of both the world’s map and the world’s history.THE MAORI NATIONALIST assault upon the historical meaning ...
Another round of tactical talks about forming a Government of National Unity have come to nothing with the Liberal Democrats still refusing countenance putting Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street:Opposition talks on Monday made little headway over when to try and vote down Boris Johnson's government and who might succeed him as ...
by Nick Rogers The debate around the meaning of sex and gender made an appearance at this year’s British Labour Party conference in Brighton. Women’s Place UK – an organisation that questions the demand that biological males who self-identify as woman should have access to women’s spaces, to all-women shortlists, ...
Yesterday I went down to Wellington to participate in the Extinction Rebellion protest. Its part of the latest global wave of XR actions, with actions happening all over the world. Some of those protests are massively disruptive: in Canada, XR is blocking major bridges, stopping people from getting to work. ...
The Workshop is a charitable trust for public good. The Workshop undertake research to find ways of communicating that will build support for the solutions that work to solve complex social and environmental problems. See their Report on Talking about Poverty and Welfare Reform below. ...
Being and Being Bought (Spinifex Press, 2013) by Kajsa Ekis Ekman A synopsis and commentary of Chapters 1-2 by Daphna Whitmore Ekman, a Swedish journalist and critic, brings together a Marxist and feminist analysis of prostitution and surrogacy in this groundbreaking book She opens the discussion with a definition of ...
I make no claims to having much legal knowledge, so I defer to those trained in this area.I am very much enjoying this twitter stream from m'learned friend in Edinburgh, deciphering the legal arguments around the Scottish court challenge to Boris Johnson, based on the charmingly obscure principle of Nobile ...
Ivory Folly? The University of Auckland’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart McCutcheon, upheld the right of the radical nationalist group, Action Zealandia to exercise their freedom of speech – not matter how distasteful that speech might be. A wiser community of students and scholars would have nodded their agreement and moved on. ...
If you are not convinced terrorist Organisation ‘Extinction Rebellion’ is very, very dangerous – watch this video at one of their recent meetings. Not only is this obviously mentally ill Woman begging the other terrorists to promote killing and “eating” babies and children, if you watch carefully other members nod ...
The Ombudsman has been surveying people about their knowledge of the OIA and the right to information. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that widespread:The Chief Ombudsman says too many New Zealanders were in the dark over their right to access official information. Peter Boshier said an independent survey released yesterday on ...
In the wake of last Friday's climate strike, Peter McKenzie had an article in The Spinoff about protest strategies. The school strike movement is "polite" and cooperates with those in power because that's its kaupapa - its led by schoolkids who understandably don't want to risk arrest. But there's more ...
So, the latest ruminations on the gnews from Westminster (Again, sorry; I'll stop making that pun right now). This follows on from, and likely repeats bits of, my last post, on the suggestion that a Government of National Unity (GNU) should be set up and then oversee a referendum before ...
New Zealand likes to think of itself as not a racist country (despite being founded on the racist dispossession and subjugation of Maori). But for years, we've had a racist refugee policy, which basicly excludes refugees from Africa and the Middle East unless they already have relatives here. Now, the ...
Several people have asked me whether a particular repeat litigant could be declared a vexatious litigant, in light of their recent decision to appeal an adverse High Court ruling. My nascent tweet thread was getting ridiculously long, so it became this blog post instead.The short answer is: no. The particular ...
Appealing To The Past: Action Zealandia, like so many of the organisations springing up on the far-Right, across what they call the “Anglosphere”, is born out of the profound confusion over what a man is supposed to be in the twenty-first century and, more importantly, what he is supposed to do.THE STATUE OF ...
The attempts of anti-democratic transactivists to (often violently) disrupt women’s rights organising is largely ignored by those sections of the left most prone to misogyny and authoritarianism in New Zealand. In Britain, however, scores of trade union and left activists added their names to a letter in July, defending ...
The Justice Committee has reported back on the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. The Bill would establish an independent, quasi-judicial body to investigate and review potential miscarriages of justice, and refer them back to the Court of appeal if required. It would be a vital backstop to our judiciary, help ...
by The Spark On September 14, a total of 22 drones and cruise missiles struck two oil installations in Saudi Arabia, the Abqaiq processing facility and the Khurais oil field. Abqaiq is the largest oil production facility in the world. For a few days afterwards, Saudi Aramco, the Saudi national ...
How much will NeoLiberal irregulation of the building sector and subsequent leaky homes crisis cost us? $47 billion, according to a new book:The total cost to fix all of New Zealand's leaky homes would be $47 billion, probably. The estimate comes from a new book, Rottenomics written by journalist Peter ...
Below is the start of another excellent article on the Freer Lives blog. Click onto the link at the end of this extract to read the full article. The punch-a-terf, kill-a-terf message pervades social media, always righteously delivered, chin held high. By contrast, the dehumanised “terfs” themselves, that is gender-critical ...
The Reserve Bank is currently planning tighter banking regulation, requiring banks to hold enough local capital to survive a 1-in-200 year financial crisis in order to protect consumers. The big Aussies banks, those foreign leeches who suck $5 billion in profit out of our economy every year, don't like that, ...
Its the usual story: a police officer beats a handcuffed suspect so hard they break one of their own fingers. The IPCA investigates and concludes that the use of force was unlawful. And the police refuse to do anything about it:A man punched repeatedly in the face by a police ...
From time to time we add links to our blogroll. The latest blog we have added is Freer Lives. This is a Marxist gender-critical blog, based in Melbourne, Australia. On it you will find a bunch of excellent articles which use the tools of Marxist analysis to critique the rise ...
Last Friday say the largest protest in a generation, as 170,000 people joined the school strike and marched to demand real action on climate change. The demands of the school strike were simple and clear: declare a climate emergency, set a climate target of net-zero by 2040, impose a total ...
Labour is a rather middle of the road capitalist party and earlier this year we discussed how far from being ‘transformative’, Ardern’s government is. An article published this week in the Guardian, by Bryce Edwards (political scientist and commentator at Victoria University), looks at Ardern’s business as usual performance. Where ...
In the hours since my last interminable wittering about the possibility of a Government of National Unity (GNU) in Britain, there has been a slight maybe development:A Corbyn-led caretaker government could then sit for several months while it enacted and delivered a referendum with the support of smaller parties and ...
Jeremy Clarkson says much like Greta Thunberg, Anne Frank “didn’t like what was going on”, but “she didn’t have a tantrum about it.” Former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has offered praise to historical figure Anne Frank, comparing her favourably to 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, who he attacked in ...
Press release by Speak Up For Women Lesbians from women’s rights group Speak Up For Women are furious at reports that Rainbow Tick are threatening Massey University with the removal of their ‘tick’ if they let the group’s event go ahead. The group has been under attack from trans ...
By Duncan Garner Before you jump down my throat, nobody cares about the environment more than me. I have a garden, and since my wife and I broke up, I’ve let it grow wildly out of control, so please don’t tell me I’m not doing enough for plants. They’re ten ...
Local government elections are upon us again. It is a fair bet that, when they are over, we will have all the usual complaints that, despite their undoubted importance, the turnout was depressingly low. So, why do local elections attract so little attention and involvement from the general public? I ...
We want every New Zealander to be happy, safe, and healthy. To do this, we need to support strong, safe communities, and a robust and efficient health system. ...
Defence Minister Ron Mark has used his powers to overrule a noise complaint ruling against Whenuapai airbase on the grounds of "national security". The Environment Court last month released a ruling in favour of a private developer, declaring the Auckland airbase had to comply with noise restrictions when it performs ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has opened fire against "unreconstructed morons" after NZ First MP Shane Jones was photographed on holiday holding an AR-15 rifle. Mr Peters is defending Mr Jones, telling Magic Talk host Peter Williams that his MP was just having fun "like most people do". "The ...
New Zealand First Deputy Leader and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau was in attendance during the morning blessing of the Rotorua Lakefront development project. Around 60 people gathered on the shores of Lake Rotorua, including city mayor Steve Chadwick and deputy Dave Donaldson. The Lakefront development is a ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones is considering reining in on conversions of farmland to forestry, and also issued a warning to foreign-owned forestry companies that make up nearly 75 per cent of the industry. He said too many foreign companies had not provided enough access for domestic processors to get timber. ...
Speaking to Radio NZ, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the tightening of the parental category visa is a direct result of the Party’s coalition negotiations with the Labour Party. He said the new changes switch the financial onus from the parent moving to New Zealand to the child ...
The Coalition Government is set to cut red tape in the building and construction sector in an effort to allow more houses to be built, including prefabricated houses. The changes will enable the mass factory production of "high quality" buildings, slash the likely number of building inspections for factory produced ...
Since coming into Government, we’ve worked hard to tackle homelessness and make sure everyone has a warm, dry home. And today, on World Homeless Day, we want to report back and update you on our progress so far. ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has hit back at National Party leader Simon Bridges who criticized the Coalition Government’s approach to crime, and said that the latter isn't credible in his attack on the Government over gang recruitment. "We've got as massive drug problem in this country. It is ...
New Zealand Mānuka honey exporters have welcomed an initiative by the Coalition Government to help secure the term “mānuka honey” to be used exclusively by Kiwi exporters, ensuring that our multimillion-dollar industry is protected. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had recently announced that a Provincial Growth Funding of $5.7 ...
Political commentator Mike Hosking has labelled New Zealand First leader Winston Peters as “the voice of reason in a government soft on drugs”, for the Party’s stance on drug testing at music festivals. “If common sense is worth a vote, Winston Peters is quids in,” Mr Hosking said. The Labour ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau has announced Provincial Growth Funding to ensure work opportunities in Turangi and Whanganui, through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi. A fund of $500,000 will go to Rafting NZ in Turangi for a 16-week river guide training course to train ...
Treasury has shown that the Coalition Government has a $7.5 billion surplus, which is $4 billion higher than what was expected in the 2019 Budget unveiled last May. It is also $2 billion higher than the actual surplus unveiled this time last year, and at a size that has not ...
Official Information Act figures released to NZME show there were 350 assaults on officers in the year to the end of June, 79 more than the year before. The increase in attacks have sparked calls for more legal protection for first responders to be enacted. The assaults included officers being ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
We're making progress on tackling the long-term challenges: from homelessness, to strengthening border security, to bringing banking back New Zealand's small towns. ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones has backed the ambitious plan to move Auckland’s port to Northport, at Whangarei harbour, which he says will be the “King Kong of infrastructure”. The plan is part of the recommendations of a six-person independent working group, which has recommended the Ports of Auckland be ...
A six-member independent working group selected the option of moving Auckland’s port to Northport, in Whangarei, ahead of other options. In what could be New Zealand’s most ambitious infrastructure project yet, a major expansion of the Marsden Point port could happen within 15 years. The project, officially called the “Upper ...
The final Electricity Price Review recommended prohibiting prompt payment discounts but allowing “reasonable” late fees. The findings of this review was welcomed by the Coalition Government, but they hope companies will follow through with its recommendations without regulations needed to be passed. Meridian Energy had already stopped prompt payment discounts, ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF)through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi,will invest nearly $600,000 to ensure work opportunities for locals in Turangia and Whanganui, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “I’m pleased to announce the PGF ...
An export-led economy is one of New Zealand First’s key principles, and our commitment to achieving this is shown by the continuing skyrocketing demand for our beef and sheep meat exports. Beef + Lamb New Zealand's New Season Outlook 2019-20 report forecasts beef, lamb and mutton prices to lift from ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today in Gisborne an investment of $17.27m into bringing “world-leading” food-growing technology and the creation of more than 100 new jobs in the East Coast city. The funding comes from the Provincial Growth Fund, and included a $15 million loan to LeaderBrand, a ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development More than 100 people in Tairāwhiti’s Tolaga Bay will benefit from two employment initiatives supported by the Provincial Growth Fund, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones and Employment Minister Willie Jackson announced today. “Tolaga Bay is an incredibly tight-knit community, but one in ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is supporting Gisborne business Leaderbrand to produce salad vegetables year round and create more jobs in the Tairāwhiti region, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Our support for Leaderbrand will help them build large greenhouses ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has praised the promise by New Zealand’s biggest banks not to close any provincial branches while the Coalition Government trials regional banking hubs across the country. The Minister said the announce was the “first sign of hope for regional communities”, many of which have ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First is proud to have delivered an upgrade of the SuperGold Card website and a new smartphone app, which will help unlock the full benefits of the SuperGold Card for 750,000 New Zealand seniors.Party Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters, ...
Delivering a key election campaign promise, New Zealand First is proud to have accomplished a long overdue upgrade of the SuperGold Card today. At an event in Auckland, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters joined Minister for Seniors Hon. Tracey Martin in unveiling the new website and smartphone app which ...
Another busy week, from speaking with world leaders on the world stage about climate change, to equipping our school leavers with everything they need to get ahead in life. ...
New Zealand First MP Shane Jones says Air New Zealand has "an obligation to look after Kiwis", and urged the national carrier not to hike up their prices after Jetstar airline announced their withdrawal from regional flights this week. The Provincial Champion also expressed his disappointment at Jetstar’s decision on ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) will help fund a new dredge for the Port of Greymouth to ensure the regional fishing fleet have a reliable and productive harbour, Parliamentary Undersecretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today “Last year the movements of ...
Ladies and gentlemen, NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff, members of respective unions – thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. This might be preaching to the choir, but the importance of trade unions in New Zealand’s historical arch is difficult to understate. And it is my belief that ...
"Let’s start by acknowledging that it has been a huge year. " Police Association Annual Conference James Cook Grand Chancellor Hotel Wellington Nau mai, haere mai. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, ka nui te mihi, ki a koutou katoa. President of the Police Association, Chris Cahill; Members of the Association and ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters and Minister of Defence Ron Mark have announced the New Zealand Government’s decision to again deploy a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 (P-3) maritime patrol aircraft to support the implementation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions imposing sanctions against North Korea. New ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says New Zealand continues to have serious concerns for peace and stability in north-east Syria. “Recent reports that hundreds of ISIS-affiliated families have fled from a camp are deeply concerning from a humanitarian and security perspective”, Mr Peters says. “While we acknowledge Turkey’s domestic security ...
Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor is warning travelling Kiwis to be vigilant as the high-season for the crop-eating brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) is under way. “We’re on high alert to stop BMSB arriving in NZ. The high season runs until April 30 and we’ve strengthened our measures to stop stink ...
The Government is moving swiftly to change the law to improve the welfare and pastoral care of students living in university halls of residence and other tertiary hostels. Cabinet has agreed to several changes, including creating a new mandatory Code of Practice that sets out the duty of pastoral care ...
The Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage has launched a new comprehensive trapping guide for community trappers to help them protect our native birds, plants and other wildlife, at Zealandia in Wellington today. ‘A practical guide to trapping’, has been developed by the Department of Conservation (DOC), and was launched during ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter welcomes PHARMAC’s move to improve access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs). PHARMAC has today announced it will fund the full cost of Mirena and Jaydess for anyone seeking long term contraception, lifting previous restrictions on access to Mirena. “I welcome women having greater choices ...
The Government has approved the next stage of a major redevelopment of Taranaki Base Hospital, which will deliver new and improved facilities for patients. Health Minister Dr David Clark has announced details of a $300 million dollar project to build a new East Wing at the New Plymouth hospital. It ...
Extra funding will allow Rural Support Trusts to help farming families, says Minister for Rural Communities and Agriculture Damien O’Connor. “I know that rural families are worried about some of the challenges facing them, including the ongoing uncertainty created by the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak. “Those concerns sit alongside ongoing worries ...
Thank you for the opportunity to be here to present certificates to the 16 graduates who have completed a beekeeping course delivered by the Howard League. Let us start by acknowledging Auckland Prison’s Deputy Prison Director Tom Sherlock, and Acting Assistant Regional Commissioner of Corrections Northern Region Scott Walker - ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson leaves this weekend to attend the APEC Finance Ministers meeting in Santiago, Chile. Discussions between APEC Finance Ministers at the meeting will include the effects of the current global economic uncertainty, risks for APEC economies and sustainable development of the region. While at APEC Grant Robertson ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says for Pacific people, language can be a source of strength. It can help ground us and give us confidence. When we speak them, our languages provide us with an immediate and intimate access to our identity and our story - and ...
The Coalition Government has announced an action plan to improve the wellbeing of disabled New Zealanders by addressing inequalities in play, active recreation and sport. The initiative includes training to develop a workforce that understands the needs of children and young people with a range of impairments, advocacy for fit ...
The construction sector is being freed up to allow more homes to be built more quickly as the Government cuts through some of the red tape of the Building Act. “Every New Zealander deserves a warm, dry, safe home and old inefficiencies in the Building Act make building slow and ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has welcomed further details on the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall’s visit to New Zealand next month. Their Royal Highnesses will visit New Zealand from 17-23 November – their third joint visit to New Zealand and first in four years. They arrive in Auckland ...
Minister of State for Trade and Export Growth and Minister of Agriculture, Damien O’Connor, heads to Thailand today to attend the final Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Ministerial meeting, as negotiations enter their final stages. “The RCEP Agreement would anchor New Zealand in a regional agreement that covers 16 countries, ...
Pacific young people living in the Hawke’s Bay, Southland and Otago regions will have access to support services that have proved successful in helping young people find new earning and learning opportunities. “Tupu Aotearoa is about changing Pacific young peoples’ lives. Our young people are talented, they are smart, they ...
Introduction As the Minister for ACC I thank you all for the work that you do supporting New Zealanders in their literally most vulnerable moments. From those who hold people’s lives in their hands, to the people who research technique, technology and trends, your work is highly valued. A special ...
Notes prepared for speeches in Christchurch – Wednesday 9 October 2019 Today’s topic, “trends and opportunities for the New Zealand economy,” is certainly one getting a great deal of commentary at the moment. Looking across the media landscape lately you’ll notice we aren’t the only ones having this discussion. There ...
Minister of Health Dr David Clark and Associate Minister of Health Peeni Henare say this year’s World Mental Health Day theme is a reminder of why the Government’s work on mental health is so important. “This year the World Federation for Mental Health has made suicide prevention the main theme ...
Associate Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Carmel Sepuloni will represent the government at Australia’s Meeting of Cultural Ministers in Adelaide this week. “This year’s meeting is special because New Zealand is expected to become an International Member of the Meeting of Cultural Ministers at this Australian forum,” Carmel Sepuloni said. “The meeting is an opportunity to ...
The Greater Christchurch Claims Resolution Service has resolved 608 insurance and EQC claims in its first year in operation, Minister Megan Woods has announced. The government service, which celebrates its first birthday today, provides a one stop shop to help Cantabrians still battling to get their homes repaired or rebuilt ...
Today’s topic, “trends and opportunities for the New Zealand economy,” is certainly one getting a great deal of commentary at the moment. Looking across the media landscape lately you’ll notice we aren’t the only ones having this discussion. There has been an increasing amount of attention paid to the outlook ...
The Government is acting swiftly to strengthen NZTA’s regulatory role following a review into the Transport Agency, and Ministry of Transport’s performance as its monitor, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. An independent review by Martin Jenkins has found NZTA failed to properly regulate the transport sector under the previous ...
The Netherlands and New Zealand have a long-standing and close relationship based on many shared interests and values. We value the rule of law, our democracies, and multilateralism. And we value our environment – at home and globally. Right now there are major global challenges in all of these areas – ...
The Government is putting right a decade’s worth of underpayment to nurses, doctors and other health workers, says Health Minister Dr David Clark. Initial sampling of District Health Boards payroll records has found that around $550-$650 million is owed to DHB staff to comply with the Holidays Act. It’s expected ...
A strong surplus and low debt show the economy is performing well, and means the Government is in a good position to meet the challenges of global economic uncertainty. “The surplus and low levels of debt show the economy is in good shape. This allows the Government to spend more ...
New applications from mining company OceanaGold to purchase land in Waihi for new tailings ponds associated with its gold mines have been approved. Minister of Finance Grant Robertson and Associate Minister of Finance David Parker considered the applications under the Overseas Investment Act. Earlier this year, applications from OceanaGold to ...
New Zealanders in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa / Poverty Bay will witness Māori, Pākehā and Pacific voyaging traditions come together today as the Tuia 250 Voyage flotilla assembles for the first time, Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti Minister Kelvin Davis says. “Tuia 250 is a national commemoration and an opportunity for honest conversations ...
Minister for Trade and Export Growth David Parker leaves tomorrow for Dubai, London and Berlin for a series of meetings to advance New Zealand’s trade interests. In Dubai he will visit New Zealand’s Pavilion at Expo 2020 where construction is underway. There he will meet Minister of State for International Cooperation, Her ...
Confirmation that PHARMAC will fund two new cancer drugs is further evidence of the good progress the Government is making to improve the treatment of New Zealand’s leading cause of death, Health Minister David Clark says. From 1 December PHARMAC will fund alectinib (Alecensa) for ALK positive advanced non-small cell ...
An additional $2.7 million has been announced for the Government Strategy for Women and Girls in Sport and Active Recreation on the first anniversary of the strategy’s launch. Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson gave the opening address to the first Sport NZ Women + Girls Summit in Wellington today, ...
As part of its work to ensure businesses can get the skilled workers they need, the Coalition Government is re-opening and re-setting the Parent Category visa programme, Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. The move will: support skilled migrants who help fill New Zealand’s skills gaps by providing a pathway for ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark has today announced Major General Evan Williams of the New Zealand Defence Force has been selected as the commander of a significant, longstanding peacekeeping mission in the Middle East. In December, Major General Williams takes over as Force Commander for the Multinational Force and Observers ...
A record number of nurses are now working to deliver health services to New Zealanders as the Government’s increased funding and new initiatives rebuild key workforces start to show results, Health Minister Dr David Clark says. • 1458 more DHB nurses since the Government took office • 106 more midwives ...
Farmer and former Nuffield scholar Mel Poulton has been appointed New Zealand’s Special Agricultural Trade Envoy, Minister for Trade and Export Growth, David Parker, and Minister of Agriculture, Damien O’Connor, announced today. The position supports key Government objectives, including raising the value of New Zealand agricultural goods and services. Mel is ...
New Zealand’s Pacific and Māori voyaging heritage is acknowledged and celebrated today as waka of the Tuia 250 voyage flotilla arrive in Tūranga / Gisborne. “Today we celebrate Tangata Whenua, the first people of Aotearoa, and the triumphs of the voyaging tradition that brought our ancestors here from Polynesia 1000 ...
“Fijian Language Week starts on Sunday and the theme reminds us how important it is that we each have something to anchor ourselves to, something that can help us pause and feel in control in a rapidly changing world,” says Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio. “Family, culture, faith, ...
The Government is establishing an Airspace Integration Trials Programme to support the safe testing and development of advanced unmanned aircraft and accelerate their integration into the aviation system, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods announced today. The Government will work with leading, innovative aviation industry partners to test and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The last PM shock jock Alan Jones slapped down was Jacinda Ardern. His language was particularly offensive, advertisers deserted his program and he apologised to New Zealand’s leader. But at least Ardern didn’t have to ...
By Michael Andrew and Sri Krishnamurthi The true story of one of the Pacific’s great waka builders and sailor has been captured in a stirring and visually gripping documentary. Loimata: The Sweetest Tears follows the final years of Ema Siope, a Samoan born kiwi who endured a tumultuous past ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Cowie, Director, WHO Collaborating Centre for Viral Hepatitis, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity Around one-third of Australians living with hepatitis C have been cured in the last four years. Hepatitis means inflammation of the liver. Hepatitis C is ...
New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. Image AsiaPacificReport.nz/RNZ.Commentators across the political spectrum seem to agree – the Labour-led Government’s popularity is being damaged by its failure to deliver in Jacinda Ardern’s self-proclaimed “Year of Delivery”. Instead, the delivery of bad news to Labour and the Government has come in ...
Internet Service Providers have cautiously greeted the news that the Government is exploring an internet filter for violent extremist and terrorist content. ...
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.Polls Richard Harman (Politik): Ardern now dependent on Peters Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): Ardern still standing, but ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Austin, Professor UNSW Canberra Cyber, UNSW This is part of a new series looking at the national security challenges facing Australia, how our leaders are responding to them and how these measures are impacting society. Read other stories in the series ...
Researchers from Lincoln University are investigating how to use nanotechnology in agriculture to increase productivity and reduce environmental impact. ...
The increased presence of anti-trans and white supremacist stickers around the University of Auckland campus is proof that inaction is enabling hate groups, write Anisha Sankar and Max Whitehurst.Anisha Sankar is a Chennai-born, Te Awakairangi-raised, South Indian Tamil studying at the University of Auckland. Max Whitehurst is a transgender Pākehā ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato Following the Christchurch mosque shootings, the New Zealand government’s first response was to ban the firearms the alleged gunman had used to murder 51 people. Seven months later, the second tranche of this process ...
The nine members for the next three year term of the Independent Māori Statutory Board (IMSB) for Auckland have been appointed by the statutory Selection Body. Their appointments begin on 1 November 2019 and continue to 31 October 2022. Mana Whenua ...
“If we are truly to solve the challenge of poverty within the Te Ao Maori world we must lift our people from the low wage and low skills growth side of the economy. At the same time we must continue to ensure our people, no matter where they are, ...
Alex Casey asks Rose Stewart from Family Planning every single question she can think of about New Zealand’s new free IUDs. Listen up, womb-owners who love free shit and long-term contraceptive options: Pharmac announced that they will be fully funding two new long-lasting, reversible contraceptives in New Zealand from November 1, ...
Patients are increasingly being turned away for treatment and there can be no more excuses from the Government over properly funding district health boards to boost specialist numbers in public hospitals, says Ian Powell, Executive Director of the ...
Today’s Council of Trade Unions’ report, Fair Pay Agreements: A Framework for Fairness , provides a much-needed pathway to fair wages and conditions across several major industries, and the Government must deliver on its promise to introduce FPAs ...
The Speaker has limited the number of questions Simon Bridges can ask in the House as a punishment for the National Party defying Trevor Mallard by not pulling down their attack ads. ...
Sunshine capital? Check. Rich artisan tradition? Check. Incredible sausages? That’s a big check. We’ve put together a list of all you need to know before you explore the truly gorgeous Nelson region this summer. If you’ve got friends or relatives visiting Aotearoa, top of their list should be sorting out their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Jotzo, Director, Centre for Climate and Energy Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University In the four years since the Paris climate agreement was adopted, countries have debated the fine print of how emissions reduction should be tracked and ...
The flight drink company 1Above, partly-owned by the high profile, venture capital fund Movac and businessman Gareth Morgan, is in liquidation owing almost $10 million. ...
In recent weeks Responsible Campers Association Incorporated (RCAi) has become involved in some high level discussions about our right to camp. This began out of discussion about the disabled who which to participate in Sport and Recreation activities. ...
In their quest for a cashless society the Japanese have beaten New Zealand to its own next-gen shopping experience.New Zealanders are missing out to the Japanese on a Kiwi technology that is set to eliminate supermarket queues.The first store to implement the SmartCart cashierless shopping system will be in Osaka, ...
If you don’t like Shortland Street, or you’re unconvinced that Michael Galvin actually is a doctor, does that mean all New Zealand television is rubbish? Some say yes. Tara Ward says an emphatic no. The world is our TV oyster, but lately it seems not everyone in Godzone is feeling the ...
The National Party is accusing the Immigration Minister of a "Sroubek 2.0" after revelations he granted residence to a man with multiple drink-driving convictions. ...
Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu urges the Crown to ensure that the Establishment Board of the newly formed Institute of Skills and Technology meets its Treaty obligations and addresses the statutory role of iwi as Treaty partners in redesigning the education ...
The top-selling food magazine in New Zealand is closing its print operation. Niki Bezzant, Healthy Food Guide‘s former editor, reflects on the challenges the title faced.The news that after 14 years and 176 issues Healthy Food Guide magazine is closing its print operation came as a shock to some. It ...
A unique deal saw Sky buy the rugby rights and sell some of itself to NZ Rugby. Trevor McKewen breaks down what it all means.The news came thick and fast over a remarkable five-day corporate slugfest, starting last Thursday. First, Spark Sport struck, gobbling up New Zealand Cricket’s domestic broadcasting ...
In what’s thought to be the last piece of writing Peter Wells completed before he died, he wonders about his great-grandfather, and the locket he wore all his life. ‘The Story of a Locket’ is published in part here, and features in the extraordinary collection of essays Queer Objects, released this ...
Relationship expert Holly Dixon explains why the entire Married at First Sight franchise is based on bunk science.As the third MAFS NZ season has come to an end, I thought it relevant to answer the question upon which the entire MAFS enterprise is built: Is it possible to predict attraction and ...
SkyCity Casino workers will be on strike and picketing today as Rob Campbell, the Chair of SkyCity Casino talks to other employers about making pay fair at a “Wellbeing at Work” conference today. ...
He was the prototypical high school nerd, hanging on Don Brash’s every word. Then the financial world turned upside down. This is the story of how Kiwibank’s Jarrod Kerr became a most unconventional economist.In 2008, Jarrod Kerr was working at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia when the global financial crisis ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabriela D’Souza, Affiliate, Monash department of business statistics and econometrics, Monash University For most people the second week in October probably doesn’t hold much promise. Longer days for some, perhaps. But for those is us in the economics profession, come the second ...
One of the important parameters of the agreement’s aims was to ensure there was no threat to food production from the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change. ...
A monument to Winston Peters and Think Big projects would both boost the economy, but Argentina learned the hard way they can also impoverish a nation, writes Tony Burton.Everyone who loves New Zealand should visit Argentina. There are more similarities than you might think – large areas of wild natural ...
The Salvation Army foodbank in Waitakere ran out of food last week; an indication of the strain many New Zealand whanau are under as they struggle to afford the cost of living. Wednesday, October 16 is World Food Day, and as demand for services offered ...
Phil Goff was re-elected by a huge margin on Saturday. How will he put that mandate to use this term? Hayden Donnell asks the questions.Phil Goff is once again Auckland’s mayor. Preliminary local election results show him with a lead of nearly 100,000 votes over his nearest challenger, John Tamihere. ...
Catherine Bindon from Ban the Boom has created these colourful and positive posters for you to use to show you don't support the use of fireworks in your neighbourhood over the next few weeks distressing our animals and birds. ...
On Tuesday morning the Operation Burnham inquiry hearing resumed after it was suspended three weeks ago. The hearing is being held at Royal Society of New Zealand, 11 Turnbull St, Thorndon, Wellington on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Ellerton, Lecturer in Critical Thinking; Curriculum Director, UQ Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland It’s not uncommon for science and religion to be framed as two opposing forces. The Catholic church has famously struggled to accommodate scientific research in its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cat Pausé, Senior Lecturer in Human Development, Massey University The British Psychological Society is calling for changes for how we talk about fatness, suggesting we should no longer use the phrase “obese people”, but instead, “people with obesity” or “people living with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Mountain, Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University The federal government’s much-vaunted Snowy Hydro expansion is supposed to smooth out the bumps in electricity supply as Australia transitions to renewables. But not only is the project a bad deal for taxpayers, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By María Yanotti, Lecturer of Economics and Finance Tasmanian School of Business & Economics, University of Tasmania The housing market is moving again. In the past month, national prices have climbed 0.9%. What matters most to buyers (and especially to investors), along with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, University of Melbourne It seems appropriate that a painting titled Feng Shui dominates the new exhibition of Guan Wei’s work ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justin Matthews, Lecturer in Digital Media and Popular Culture Researcher, Auckland University of Technology According to a recent study, the sixth leading cause of death for young men in the United States is the warranted and unwarranted use of police force. With ...
The Council of Trade Unions has today released its report - Fair Pay Agreements: A Framework for Fairness . The report details the six key principles needed for Fair Pay Agreements to deliver real change for working people, and democratic agreements ...
Too many New Zealanders endure poor working conditions in jobs that don’t pay enough and offer few opportunities for career progression, and the union movement is calling for change. ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the latest polls which show a drop in support for Labour are not a concern when it comes to forming a government. ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: A pair of polls put pressure on the Labour Party, a wild night of weather in the North Island, and Shane Jones snapped brandishing a semi-automatic.Parliament resumes today after a fortnight recess, and MPs were given a welcome-back present in ...
Mandy Hager, the newly elected head of the New Zealand Society of Authors, is lobbying the government to improve the lot of writers - to no avail, despite the Prime Minister's championing of the arts. ...
Given the vast impacts that poor diet have had on global health, a deficit in nutrition education in medicine represents a big problem, writes Dr Jennifer Crowley. ...
Any time Olympian Luuka Jones needs advice or encouragement in her pursuit of more canoe slalom success, she doesn’t have to look far. Jones’ coach, Campbell Walsh, is also her partner. ...
Competition for the rights to broadcast sports matches involving NZ’s top teams has produced a bonanza for the sporting bodies, forcing media companies to be a lot more innovative. ...
The Wellington suburb’s successful opposition to a proposed Bottle-O shows how the system is biased towards communities with the organisation, capacity and resources to protest effectively, says Jenesa Jeram.For those unfamiliar with Wellington geography, Khandallah is a Very Nice place to live (Aucklanders: think Remuera). So when it was reported ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Humphery-Jenner, Associate Professor of Finance, UNSW The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission conducted an inquiry into mortgage pricing as recently as last year. Now Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has asked it to do another, broader one, in order to ensure the banks’ ...
Dr Bryce EdwardsThe results of the local government elections appear to show that New Zealanders are generally supportive of a more diverse range of representatives, having voted in greater numbers for candidates from traditionally under-represented groups. The elections have therefore modernised our councils in a small but very significant ...
The Inquiry has today published Minute No 21. This Minute sets out how the Inquiry intends to proceed given that the Attorney-General the Hon David Parker has agreed to extend the Inquiry’s reporting date by three months to 31 March 2020. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grace Skrzypiec, Senior Lecturer, Flinders University Many Australian students don’t know the difference between banter and bullying, with some saying they joke about wishing their friend would “drown” or “die in a car crash”. More than 800 Australian students aged 11-16 took ...
But he did play a crucial role in helping journeyman Andy Foster knock over Justin Lester. Team Gone By Lunchtime size up the local elections, gaze plaintively at the dramas in the NZ First Party, and ask how bad the new poll is for Jacinda Ardern.Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and ...
In the fifth episode of Actually Interesting, The Spinoff’s monthly podcast exploring the effect Artificial Intelligence has on our lives, Russell Brown speaks to Ben Reid, executive director of the AI Forum, about the role of government in embracing and regulating AI.Subscribe to Actually Interesting via iTunes or listen on the player below.To ...
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 Henry Cooke (Stuff): How to lose an election: Over-promise or under-deliver Simon Collins ...
By RNZ Pacific A Solomon Islands province has agreed to lease a large island to a Chinese developer to develop into a special economic zone, weeks after the country opened diplomatic ties with China. But already cracks abound; there has been no official announcement and the provincial premier says the ...
Open Mike 19/04/2018 
Thanks to a report from the Acting Inspector General of Intelligence and Security following a complaint by Nicky Hager, we have come to find out that the SIS illegally spied on Mr. Hager on behalf of the NZDF after publication of Hager’s 2011 book, Other People’s Wars. The NZDF justified ...10 hours ago
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate. FACT: The HadCRUT3 surface temperature index, produced by the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, shows warming to 1878, cooling to 1911, ...12 hours ago
For the past week, Extinction Rebellion has been peacefully protesting in London to demand action on climate change. The British government's response? Ban their protests:Police have banned Extinction Rebellion protests from continuing anywhere in London, as they moved in almost without warning to clear protesters who remained at the movement’s ...13 hours ago
The Royal Commission on abuse in care is very significant for the disability community. For many decades last century, thousands of disabled children, and adults who managed to survive, were locked away from families and communities. This was not for anything they had done, but for the perceived threat their ...18 hours ago
More than double the number of people who will vote in this year’s local body elections have tried marijuana or urinated somewhere they shouldn’t have. As local elections look set for the lowest turnout in decades, with many regions falling well short of 40%, the Government is exploring a number ...4 days ago
“There can be no such thing as kaupapa Māori political parties or politics in Aotearoa” (Willie Jackson, Labour Party (2017). Māori TV, General/List Election Special) I begin with that claim because at the time, I was confounded at first that it fell out of Willie Jackson’s mouth, and then ...5 days ago
https://mailchi.mp/7d9133add053/closing-the-gap-october-2019-newsletter ...6 days ago
For some reasons, my post about the mystery message from inside the Downing Street bunker seemed to catch people's attention. Quite a lot of hits from NZ (unsurprisingly) and the USA (a bit more puzzlingly, but hi there, USAians!!) and 76 views from the Ukraine.I've celebrated my Ukrainian readers in ...6 days ago
Local government elections are upon us again. It is a fair bet that, when they are over, we will have all the usual complaints that, despite their undoubted importance, the turnout was depressingly low. So, why do local elections attract so little attention and involvement from the general public? I ...2 weeks ago
We want every New Zealander to be happy, safe, and healthy. To do this, we need to support strong, safe communities, and a robust and efficient health system. ...13 hours ago
Defence Minister Ron Mark has used his powers to overrule a noise complaint ruling against Whenuapai airbase on the grounds of "national security". The Environment Court last month released a ruling in favour of a private developer, declaring the Auckland airbase had to comply with noise restrictions when it performs ...13 hours ago
Ladies and gentlemen, NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff, members of respective unions – thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. This might be preaching to the choir, but the importance of trade unions in New Zealand’s historical arch is difficult to understate. And it is my belief that ...14 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The last PM shock jock Alan Jones slapped down was Jacinda Ardern. His language was particularly offensive, advertisers deserted his program and he apologised to New Zealand’s leader. But at least Ardern didn’t have to ...5 hours ago
Internet Service Providers have cautiously greeted the news that the Government is exploring an internet filter for violent extremist and terrorist content. ...9 hours ago
The proceeds from the sale of Trump-style "Make Ardern Go Away" hats are being used to promote far right Facebook pages. ...10 hours ago
Support has risen for the general arming of police officers in the wake of March 15, but the police minister is opposed. ...11 hours ago
Researchers from Lincoln University are investigating how to use nanotechnology in agriculture to increase productivity and reduce environmental impact. ...11 hours ago
The increased presence of anti-trans and white supremacist stickers around the University of Auckland campus is proof that inaction is enabling hate groups, write Anisha Sankar and Max Whitehurst.Anisha Sankar is a Chennai-born, Te Awakairangi-raised, South Indian Tamil studying at the University of Auckland. Max Whitehurst is a transgender Pākehā ...11 hours ago
Information spread by the Coalition of Licenced Firearms Owners (COLFO) and picked up by ACT’s David Seymour is incorrect. ...12 hours ago
The Speaker has limited the number of questions Simon Bridges can ask in the House as a punishment for the National Party defying Trevor Mallard by not pulling down their attack ads. ...13 hours ago
The real estate market has sprung back into life, but national sales volumes were flat. ...13 hours ago
The flight drink company 1Above, partly-owned by the high profile, venture capital fund Movac and businessman Gareth Morgan, is in liquidation owing almost $10 million. ...13 hours ago
Mandy Hager, the newly elected head of the New Zealand Society of Authors, is lobbying the government to improve the lot of writers - to no avail, despite the Prime Minister's championing of the arts. ...21 hours ago
An ancient Polynesian form of resource management is helping rejuvenate areas in the Cook Islands. ...22 hours ago
Competition for the rights to broadcast sports matches involving NZ’s top teams has produced a bonanza for the sporting bodies, forcing media companies to be a lot more innovative. ...22 hours ago
Ongoing drama surrounds the Māui and Hector's dolphin threat management plan, with worries key information is not being made public promptly. ...22 hours ago
Is Jacindamania dead and buried? Not quite yet, but the Prime Minister has good cause for concern. ...1 day ago
Could I respectfully draw the moderator’s attention to the verbal violence practised by the commentator Wei on the immigration post yesterday.
I accept that most of ‘his’ inflammatory comments were made after 11pm, and even moderators need some sleep – but his/her posts should raise red flags in the future – and not PRC ones!
[So this off-handed inflammatory shit that you’re spouting (about raising PRC flags) is exactly the kind of stuff that kicks things off. I’ve just read the thread in question, and while Wei overstepped the mark with regards one response in particular, any bans would be for the inflammatory comments by Ropata and Tamati Tautuhi. Happens every time Wei comes here – the casual racist bullshit gets flung at him. He responds. He gets banned. Not happening this time around. There are a few people need to take a look at themselves and their attitudes] – Bill
Funny – I read the thread and found ropata and Janet the most racist commenters.
Well, the small bit I read of the discussion did look a bit like there was adouble standard, and misunderstanding of the power of white privileger: i.e. Wei was critical of the naming and explaining of white privilege with respect to the treatment of white Sth African immigrants, while tending to denigrate Chinese immigrants.
Verbal violence though is not on, IMO, whatever the views.
Not surprised James, you being a major fan of the Chinese owned National party here to sell us overseas.
Nothing to do with political leanings (but hey good on you for bringing racism into it – you must be very proud).
Simply reading the comments and taking them at face value.
Actually Wei calling for a massacre of white South African “ crackers” has to be his ticket out of here. If you don’t find his behaviour deeply disturbing there’s something wrong with you.
It “has to be his ticket out of here” huh?
How about we let the people involved make that decision – Im pretty sure we don’t get to demand anything.
I notice still no condemnation of that blatant violent racism from you James.
Why don’t you use a system similar to that used by insurance companies when there are two parties claiming against each other from an incident. It’s called knock-for-knock.
. The justification for the use of the knock for knock system is that it would be expensive and practically difficult to adopt a “fault based” approach to liability in …
http://www.mondaq.com/x/555144/Insurance/Knock+for+Knock+Liability+Provisions
Why not take both parties out of the post for an hour? Let others get on with debating their own ideas and when the others settled down they would have learned something; either how to explain themselves better, or that they were majorly wrong. Just a bit of time out without playing the heavy-handed parent would help to give this present blog an adult-centred approach with democratic room for thinking citizens to have a say.
Well, I wasn’t commenting on the content of the posts, just the invective hurled by Wei at Ropata. ‘Wei’ over the top, in my opinion!
Bill made his comments above – I’m keeping out of this from here.
Had a look at his/her posts and the baiting and language is damn near identical to the head troll’s over at Farrar’s place.
Calling another commenter a piece of s*** is ok and describing an assault on a commenter is ok… and in response Ropata was very restrained I have to say.
But making a joke referencing another post and bearing no malice whatsoever is moderation worthy. Sorry Bill, you’ve got things wrong here.
I’m going to disagree with you on this one, mauī.
I don’t agree on all Bill’s moderation decisions, but I think he’s right to point out the Wei was trying to speak up against implicit racism and that people weren’t ready to re-examine their own comments or the bias they were exhibiting. Yes, he/she got angry and (in the end) abusive, but context is important and in this case I think it possible to understand Wei’s frustration.
Bill
You are a moderator you make decisions – I hope you at least ask Wei to done it down
“He is a lying piece of shit
A dumb cunt incapable of a single shred of logical thought
Fuck you are low IQ.
I’m talking about those racist white cracker Boers who can’t stand black rule and come here bringing their racist ways. Fuck you are a twit
A filthy Uncle Tom such as Ropata
Personally I hope the South African government seals off the borders and then carry out its land expropriation without compensation. Let those Boers scurry around like the rats they are with nowhere to go.
Hopefully we will see a massacre of those racist Boers
If that does happen I hope the NZ navy machine guns them in the water before they get their white asses to the North Shore – -how about it eh????”
This seems a “bit rough” to say the least
I know CV got a one year ban and I thought he was baited into that and what CV was banned for seems to me to be very small potatoes compared to Wei’s outbursts.
I understand moderator’s work is generally thankless and under appreciated and I apologise if it seems I am being overly critical
Yep.
I agree that some of my comments were out of line. However the vicious racist rhetoric of people such as Ropata is far worse than anything I wrote. I appreciate the moderator’s nuanced approach.
That message board on immigration would have done an ‘Alt Right’ website proud, and it is only in recent years since Labour decided to jump on the populist bandwagon, that the vicious racist underbelly of the NZ left has emerged, in a truly unabashed sense.
If that does happen I hope the NZ navy machine guns them in the water before they get their white asses to the North Shore – -how about it eh????”
Of course that comment was to bait other commenters, and not a reflection of how I feel – but it is the secret attitude of many Westerners when it comes to black and brown refugees and migrants, consider Katie Hopkins who enjoys huge popularity in the UK “Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants”.
I placed the same views within a different racial context to get a rise out of the openly racist commentators that infest the webosphere of the New Zealand left. The fact is the Australia and New Zealand left was largely founded on vicious anti-Chinese racism, was suppressed for a long time, but is now rearing its ugly head as the economic ascendancy of China, and other non-white powers around the world give rise to white racial and economic angst.
You were provocative.
I’ve worked in China – you don’t have a leg to stand on about racism.
“The fact is the Australia and New Zealand left was largely founded on vicious anti-Chinese racism.” (citation required)
The truth is that you represent a vocal and unproductive minority whose destructive speculation long since eclipsed their positive contribution. NZ infrastructure is stretched and there has been a degree of political capture, whereby people paid and sworn to represent NZers represent foreign interests instead. This is undergoing a minor correction.
It’s not “white racial and economic angst” as these assimilation issues are not limited to Caucasian populations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1998_riots_of_Indonesia
Some migrants are unconcerned by the damage they do to their host society until the inequality precipitates violence. That’s not the NZ way. If it’s your way, go away.
“I’ve worked in China – you don’t have a leg to stand on about racism.”
Agree. Chinese tend to put whites on a pedestal. However with increasing economic power of China and the rise of her standing in the world, that is undergoing a slightly more than ‘minor correction’
“you represent a vocal and unproductive minority”
Vocal? Chinese are quite underrepresented I think when it comes to the New Zealand political scene (and I’m not blaming racism for that)
‘Unproductive’? Asian employment rates are virtually identical to European employment rates. Perhaps you have some data that they are employed in ‘unproductive’ industries compared with European New Zealanders?
However I doubt it. The engineering schools throughout the country are dominated now by Indians and Chinese, and most of them find employment in extremely productive fields.
“NZ infrastructure is stretched” True. But does a Chinese migrant stretch it anymore than an English or South African migrant?
“Some migrants are unconcerned by the damage they do to their host society until the inequality precipitates violence.”
Do you have some information that NZ Asians, or Chinese in particular are that much more wealthy on average than other New Zealanders?
“That’s not the NZ way. If it’s your way, go away.”
The NZ (Anglo Saxon) way is to steal the wealth of Asians and Africans. Its been that way for centuries. When the Chinese did not want to trade your people invaded and looted the place. You did it to India, you did it to the Africans, and you did it to the indigenous people of this country. The Anglo Saxon tribe are the greediest and most rapacious bunch of motherfuckers that ever existed on the face of the earth, but the day of political, economic, and even military reckoning is fast approaching!
“Some migrants are unconcerned by the damage they do to their host society until the inequality precipitates violence.”
“Do you have some information that NZ Asians, or Chinese in particular are that much more wealthy on average than other New Zealanders?”
This is a more general critique than simply Asia, and wealth is not the only criterion for sociopathy, though it often allows it greater scope for expression.
A word that has been sanitized in modern usage is entrepreneur, but an entrepreneur is not a technological rainmaker of the Hollywood variety. Literally an entrepreneur is someone who comes in and takes – a colonist or planter in 18th or 19th century terms, which is when the word was coined.
Coming in and taking is a disruptive activity. It causes changes to the host economy. The presence of cashed up Boer farmers for instance, inflates the price of prime dairy country beyond the means of the poorly paid farm workers who a generation before would in the fullness of time have come into possession of the land as the owner’s physical capacity declined. This in term obliges the farm worker to seek some other profession, because the culminating reward of a lifetime of poorly paid strenuous work in all weathers is taken off the table.
“The NZ (Anglo Saxon) way is to steal the wealth of Asians and Africans. Its been that way for centuries. When the Chinese did not want to trade your people invaded and looted the place. You did it to India, you did it to the Africans, and you did it to the indigenous people of this country. The Anglo Saxon tribe are the greediest and most rapacious bunch of motherfuckers that ever existed on the face of the earth, but the day of political, economic, and even military reckoning is fast approaching!”
This is just flame bait. You’re probably just an asshole looking for racist quotes to circulate among some far-right coterie. If this is your starting position you’re going to meet with a great deal of rejection.
“This is a more general critique than simply Asia, and wealth is not the only criterion for sociopathy, though it often allows it greater scope for expression. “
Hang on – your original comment was about inequality precipitating violence – against Chinese. Walking things back now eh?
“The presence of cashed up Boer farmers for instance, inflates the price….”
Attempt to appear fair and balanced after your racist diatribe against Chinese. Well done.
“This is just flame bait. You’re probably just an asshole looking for racist quotes to circulate among some far-right coterie. “
WTF?
This is after you accused me of representing “a vocal and unproductive minority whose destructive speculation long since eclipsed their positive contribution.”
“you’re going to meet with a great deal of rejection”
hahahhahahahahahahah…..I think I already have for some time
You are merely trying to raise racist bogies to deflect from the simple truth that there are negative consequences to immigration.
“Your racist diatribe against Chinese”
It wasn’t a racist diatribe Wei – but yours was.
You seem to have a great desire to be hated – don’t punish yourself, get help. https://www.mentalhealth.org.nz/get-help/in-crisis/helplines/
According to Stuart, I’m a member of a “a vocal and unproductive minority whose destructive speculation long since eclipsed their positive contribution.”
That goes well beyond a reasoned debate on the consequences of immigration.
Then he mutters darkly about possible violence against Chinese because of the inequality they bring – without of course providing any evidence that Chinese are inordinately wealthy relative to other groups.
You are part of a vocal and unproductive minority.
If you think the influence of Asian property speculation has gone unnoticed in NZ you’d better think again.
The argument is not that immigrant Chinese are inordinately wealthy – though you clearly want to beat that line up for a politics of envy attack. Immigration requires that they have capital assets of some description, and the differences in Asian banking and family finance structures have enabled significant numbers of them to enter the property market here. As in Australia and Canada this has had undesirable inflationary effects on the property market.
It is not the wealth but the negative consequences they brought that triggered the violence against them in Indonesia – albeit with some connivance from politicians there wishing to displace blame.
“without of course providing any evidence”
Your little manifesto on Chinese manifest destiny is a vagrant collection of prejudices for which you produced no support. Why should I?
Well argued.
This is what Ropata wrote in separate posts:
“Hence we have a plague of horrible driving, mindless stripping of seafood resources, exploitation of employees, and a breakdown of trust…….
A safer land, where children were free to cycle or walk anywhere. Where you could go fishing and usually catch something decent. Where you could swim in clean rivers. Where we didn’t have hordes of campervans crapping on our loveliest tourist spots. Where you could work on minimum wages and buy a house and start a family.”
The implicit but obvious meaning is the wonderful New Zealand lifestyle and social trust of the past was lost, mainly because of the arrival of immigrants, particularly Asian ones. He blames most of New Zealand’s social ills on Asians. His rhetoric is redolent of Nazi propaganda against the Jews —and I’m not in the least bit exaggerating.
Yet when it comes to white South African migrants, he is far more forgiving:
“At least they are legal citizens unlike a large swathe of new arrivals who snuck in the back door by student visa scams or pretending to start a business. Or even worse those who arrived with suitcases of cash and are now parasitical landlords or communist spies in the National party caucus.”
Blaming an entire ethnic group for most if not all of a countries problems, but without resorting to explicit racial slurs, is in fact the most vicious, dangerous type of racist rhetoric
“Blaming an entire ethnic group for most if not all of a countries problems, but without resorting to explicit racial slurs, is in fact the most vicious, dangerous type of racist rhetoric.”
“The NZ (Anglo Saxon) way is to steal the wealth of Asians and Africans. Its been that way for centuries.”
Hypocrite.
No. Just told the truth. Learn some history
Racist hypocrite.
I count nearly 30 comments on this matter about moderation and dealing with a stirrer and the responses to this. It is fair to let someone have a rant about their own concerns. But why not leave it as a rant of that person, and just put a full stop against your name showing you have read it and are letting it lie as that. Why try to put everybody right according to what each subsequent commenter happens to think should be the norm?
In the absence of sensible responses to someone being provocative I don’t see why the moderation cannot have a time out operation to stop what seem to develop into flame wars.
You can have The Standard as a place where political problems and ideas are discussed, mulled over, critiqued, improved.
Or a place where people pass on any idea that gets into their heads in an emotional outburst. Sitting on the sidelines and criticising or making fun is easy compared to attempting to understand, reason and see how to improve things. And note: that can’t be done in a case where people of any background want to argue and create dissension. If they are totally right, and consider others who raise objections totally wrong, they should not be on this blog. They should have their own site and create their own harmony with like-minds.
There are many perspectives of thought, but just reactions each day are just safety valves. They don’t add anything lasting likely to hep from and enlighten future policies and political systems.
Good evening greywarshark,
You make some good comments and I know that this something close to your heart as you have made comments along the same vein here in the past (with some consequences too).
I also know that weka was thinking of doing another post on moderation. [BTW, where is weka?]
I have my own thoughts on all this (and moderation) but I’ll limit it to the following.
Ideas, opinions and everything should and are in fact allowed to be discussed here on TS; it is wonderful forum that gives us or anybody who wishes, for that matter, more than enough opportunity and leeway. I don’t take this for granted and highly appreciate the opportunity and see it almost as a privilege.
I used to think too that replying to comments based on merit & message would safeguard against threads sliding into negative territory. Play the ball, not the man. Don’t should the messenger. Stick to the facts. Rational debate would ensue. Etcetera. I now think that I was (and still am) quite naive.
In a nutshell: c’est le ton qui fait la chanson (ou la musique).
In other words, style & substance, form & function, contents & presentation, for example, go hand-in-hand. One cannot separate the what from the how.
Delivery, context, style are all important in rhetoric, which is the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing. By logical extension, they are equally important in oral or written debate such as here on TS.
Lastly, a purely rational debate is impossible; we are driven by emotions.
What do you think? I think I can quite safely assume that not many others will read let alone engage with these comments of ours 😉
If Jacinda Ardern is sincere in her commitment to fighting climate change it is incumbent on her that she agree to repeal the Andarko Amendment.
“Greenpeace trial going ahead despite Government’s oil exploration ban”
New Zealand Herald, 17 April, 2018
“No Enemies To Labour’s Left?”
Bowalley Road, 18 April, 2018
Andrew McKenzie should get the whole bill as he caused the problem.
Typical actions of the powerful using “The System” to do their dirty work.
Trotter is spot on here…the drilling ban is more show than substance….but it does send a message.
it should have been backed up with subsidies for solar.
What I’d like to see is the Greens plan to make solar panels here in NZ from NZ resources put into action.
Would be money wasted I think.
You can already by them online for half the cost direct from Asia.
There is no way kiwi made could do enough numbers to match
Understand your thinking though
Which is actually false economics. There’s no way that anywhere in Asia could produce them any cheaper than a well built factory in NZ.
We don’t have to do the numbers – we just have to get the productivity the same or better and we could do that.
BTW, it’s actually delusional to think that if a factory produced more it costs less.
I’m with you on this Draco.
We should be preparing everyone in the old world/low tech world of fossil fuel power generation for the next wave of newer technologies. What I would like to see is everyone who may lose their jobs in oil/coal/etc being given training in high tech industry like solar/wind/tidal.
Shutting down oil exploration should be an incentive to move people to other industries.
QFT
We shouldn’t be afraid of the change but welcome it.
It’s the only way our technology will progress, by taking advantage of the high tech solutions available to us and power generation is one of those industries ripe for change (in fact – we HAVE to do it).
I include nuclear in this also
Wouldn’t you also like to see Green MP’s walking their talk and actually having Solar PV?
??
Why do the managerial technocrats of the neoliberal colonised SOE’s so hate Labour governments?
This is why:
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/19-04-2018/the-side-table-spat-that-got-housing-nz-labelled-petty-and-vindictive-by-phil-twyford/
Housing NZ chief executive Andrew McKenzie is probably just a good little bureaucrat of the neoliberal enabling class. He must be furious that his cool, rational enforcement of the rules has seen his hand publicaly smacked by a minister in possession of some common sense and compassion.
+100
The ability to be all butch and punitive now pervades much of the public service senior management.
The table didn’t stick out into the common area at all. Anyone with a sense of space would have realised that. The common area is beyond the wall – the one sticking out from in-between each flat to give more privacy.
To me it sounds like “the manager of her Body Corporate, Stephen Connelly” was simply trying to assert his authority and power. I’d be looking into the relationship between the two. Either way, he obviously should not be in that sort of position with that sort of power as he doesn’t use it responsibly.
A Nicky Hager article today on the RNZ site, about the Daphne Project, which has uncovered more NZ links in tax haven/avoidance chains of shell companies, with one key one based in Auckland.
Hager says that though some loopholes in NZ tax law were changed after the Panama Papers, it’s still possible for foreign interests to use NZ as a tax haven.
WOW!!
Everyone should have a read through that link.
It needs to be illegal for the owners and money movements not to be traced. And make it so that if they can’t be traced the ownership reverts back to the nation.
It seems obvious to me that the structure was created to do the money laundering.
The laws were written by the plutocrats.
Well, for the plutocrats anyway.
Key and the Nats made us all inside members of a dirty corrupt criminal world ….. when they turned NZ into a full blown tax haven ( for foriegners).
This latest criminal enterprise which has a New Zealand link is but one in a long trail involving thefts murders and corruption ….
The Green party in particular should be shaking this rotten tree … there is a lot more to drop out of it.
We have a Malta link as well ….. and this journalist being killed would be the equivalent of Nicky Hager being blown up here.
Hooten, Slater, Odgers and by association Dirty Politics have taken a step down that path already …..
Great link Carolyn_Nth.
Shocking – makes you wonder not only how much tax avoidance we are encouraging here, but also how much of our NZ assets are also listed as NZ companies or under bogus trusts but owned by someone else and how under that structure, our government would be completely unaware how much NZ land and assets are offshore owned and managed.
I’m pretty sure that 3% that Key’s government said was foreign owned land and farms was as genuine as his efforts on Pike River recovery.
Dang !!!! Thanks for the link Carolyn.
NZDF Doc warns our Vets are not getting treatment they need.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12035004
I have no argument with the NZDF Docs assertions.
But, I notice your reference refers to the RSA and poppy day.
After the way they treated J Force and Korean vets and the way we were treated coming back from nam, the sooner the RSA goes broke and disappears the better. This only changed when they realised their WW1 and WW2 vets were dying off and the cash cow was disappearing.
Rapper CardiB cites Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-says-cardi-b-is-right-about-who-really-made-america-great-again_us_5ad76261e4b0e4d0715c7cd2
Now I’m waiting to see Ladi6 cite Michael Joseph Savage.
Sanders gets points for the uplift.
heh
[…]
I, too, want to be able to know what the taxes are spent on. As far as I’m concerned, in this day and age, we should be able to go online and get an accurate accounting in near real time and going back for several years at least.
Wrong log-in, Penny
So, do you have anything to say other than abuse?
Why?
Other than giving fuckwits the ability to turn financial accountability into a manual denial-of-service attack by querying every transaction as soon as it’s made.
If the larger-scale problems weren’t already obvious and innumerable (DHB “debts”, teacher shortages, infrastructure decay, and so on), maybe realtime minutae would be useful. but there’s more than enough to address already.
Because we actually need to know to be able to govern ourselves. Which is what democracy is all about – governing ourselves. To be able to say which of the resources that the country has should be used.
There would need to be rules of course.
If they were obvious then the last government wouldn’t have been able to lie about them for nine years.
What more for “democracy” do we need to know that we don’t already know?
You can hand-wave all the rules you want, the fact is that every system is open to abuse and the tories could easily shut down any government they don’t like purely by volume of complaints and storms in teacups. Look at what they did with MP expenses, and you want that level of bullshit spread throughout the entire bureaucracy?
The larger scale problems were obvious. The government lied about them. But the real problem is that people didn’t care enough to bother with even that granularity of information – if it suited them, they were happy to go along with whatever key or hosking said. We don’t suffer from a lack of information, our system a lack of consideration.
Keith Ng’s budget visualiser from a few years back.
https://publicaddress.net/keith/static/Budget2013-130516/Budget-Treemap.html
Thumbs up to Countdown in Marton who are the first supermarket in NZ to introduce quiet hour.
Specifically catering to the autistic it sounds heavenly for the non spectrum stressed out too with minimal light levels, no background music/ads, no staff stocking shelves. Just ease and grace + One Card rewards 😉
Feedback is overwhelmingly positive
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12034905
What a great initiative. Is this an hour daily?
Do you know whether it is just a local management initiative or whether it is a trial for wider application throughout NZ Countdowns, similar to their ongoing introduction of pharmacies into their bigger stores?
I have found this latter initiative in my local Countdown excellent. The pharmacy is open (I think) from 7 – 8am through to about 7 – 8pm daily, and their per item prescription charges are only $3 compared to the standard $5. Their prices for over the counter (General Sales) pharmaceuticals and other medications, medicines etc seem to be generally lower than at other pharmacies. These charges and prices are apparently standard across all Countdown pharmacies.
This is no criticism of the smaller pharmacies (independent or part of a group) because understandably their overheads are much higher, whereas presumably the Countdown pharmacies’ overheads (floor space, power etc) are less due to their shared nature. And these smaller pharmacies will always remain essential to smaller towns, local communities where these larger facilities are not practical or feasible from a business point of view.
What’s going on, a worthwhile and liberal opinion on Granny!
Comment: Loss of libraries is a symptom of Auckland University’s decline
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12034770
Quoting article:
Hasn’t changed since I was a child 40+ years ago then.
And that’s actually going back to the way things were when I was a child. I suppose we should expect that sort of BS from conservatives who always think that the past was better.
I actually want our universities to be doing research and publishing. Perhaps the problem is that, over the last while, we’ve regarded universities as tertiary education rather than the research institutions that they should be. Learning goes hand in hand with research but not so much teaching.
It’s a difference in perspective. Instead of going to university to learn we have people going to university to do research. At the end of that research they will publish and maybe get a degree. They will join as part of a small team doing specific research under the guidance of a primary, i.e, someone who already has a degree in that field.
We’d get better learning and more innovation. Would involve a lot more people.
Are, the National slogan Do More With Less strikes again and we end up getting a lot less for more.
See my thoughts above.
I can think of some important functions of universities:
1) A place where students learn to learn and learn to become critical & independent thinkers
2) A place where students learn to do research & innovation
3) A place where research and scholarship are conducted and preserved
4) A repository of knowledge
5) To act as a critic & conscience of society
Have you heard of Professional Teaching Fellows?
Nothing I said would change that. It changes the reason for going to university from a place to get a degree to a place to do research.
1. Students should be doing that from primary school.
2. Yes, a university is a place for research. Again though, people should be learning to do research from primary school. Innovation isn’t something people do but something that comes about because of what people know, their experience and if they’ve developed their critical thinking.
3. Back to 2.
4. Back to 2.
5. That’s what research is for.
No.
If you’re interested, here’s a brief description: https://www.otago.ac.nz/humanresources/training/academic-staff/academic-titles/otago069317.html#TFposition
I’d argue that critical & independent thinking are more fundamental to #5 than research but you and I may have a slightly different understanding of “research”.
What happens inside the walls of universities has to build on a solid educational foundation; this is one growing problem.
This is what a university degree is supposed to stand for and mean: https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/students/forms-policies-and-guidelines/student-policies-and-guidelines/graduate-profile.html
Different degrees have different profiles; there is no one size fits all, obviously.
There is a growing recognition and emphasis on ongoing education for university staff including researchers and how to improve their teaching; it is impossible to get promoted in the system without at least some teaching component.
Yes, that I can agree with. That’s why the change over the last few years in education to research based education even at primary school to develop critical thinking and the knowledge on how to do research.
Ongoing education is necessary for everyone.
And I think we’re talking past each other. You seem to be thinking of teaching as a separate activity while I’m thinking that the experienced doctorate would be leading under-graduates through research and helping them learn along the way.
Yes, I agree that we seem to talking past each other. I do think that learning to learn and learning to do research are different processes that require different approaches and methodologies for optimal results. Ergo, they require different teaching styles. I do agree that there is an overlap, a point of connection, and that both aspects, if you like, can be taught by the same person or people. In practice, this is not as common as one would think because teaching and research have drifted apart and are, in fact quite separated – income, overheads, and cross-subsidising are carefully monitored and fodder for ongoing discussions about the right model, etc. Universities are ‘forcing’ this to change by setting Academic Standards that one has to meet in order to get promoted. As so many other decisions in the university system, it is done in a heavy-handed authoritarian manner with a very business-minded (hard-nosed) attitude.
Part of the problem with universities is that it’s almost all about publishing. And peer-reviewed publishing with impact factors, at that.
So the academic responsibility of universities also being “critic and conscience of society” counts for nought unless it’s plugged in a journal that only other academics will read, by and large. Public reports, externally-funded research, or even opinion pieces in local media count for virtually nothing, even if the reports are peer-reviewed and have social worth.
And similarly the teaching side becomes a numbers game. Apparently there’s one vice chancellor of a university who is getting academic credit (in addition to the day job) for “supervising” the research of around a dozen phd candidates. Makes you wonder how closely the tens of thousands of words each candidate puts out a year are actually being read, let alone how much help they get designing and producing the associated journal articles. That VC could always be a fecking machine, but doubtful.
By Law universities are required to fulfil their role as critic & conscience of society. How do you think they (should) achieve this?
Teaching is much broader than supervising the research of PhD students. But I agree that some are taking the piss; there is a limit to how many PhD students one academic can formally (as in: taking the credit) supervise.
If only! It is all about income and money!
True, at the root it’s money. But that’s above my payscale. I just see most academics shitting themselves about what outputs count how much towards pbrf. Apparently the grail is to get multiyear program fundng so you can take additional research into the margin for error of the program budget, lol.
But yeah the critic and conscience role is more important possibly even than research, but is too qualitative to be recognised by most managerial regimes.. We do actually need people taking time to submit on bills or local projects, even to write think-pieces for the local rag and turn up to public meetings on local issues, providing informed opinion without fear of compromising their jobs. Those were the days.
The reason why academics are shitting themselves about PBRF is because management is painting pictures full of fire & brimstone. PBRF is hugely costly zer0-sum exercise. The only group that really benefits from this entire madness are the big publishing houses that own the scientific journals; it is a billion dollar industry subsidised by taxpayers and students & their parents.
The ‘grail’ is to get any grant, any funding, which requires ‘pilot data’ and a strong ‘track record’ in the field, which effectively means that you have already done a major part of what you say you will be doing if (!) you get the funding. It is a game and to play the game you have to game the system and use what is colloquially called “grantsmanship”. In this lottery system (because of the very low success rates in getting grants) success breeds success; merit of the proposals and good quality research ideas play a lesser role than they should. It is a subtle but insidious variation on the theme of the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
There are not nearly enough public intellectuals. In the US the public university is going extinct. In fact, anything public is slowly disappearing all over the world. We live in an age of hyper-individualism and privatisation for profiteering by a few and these elites feel no charity towards institutions or individuals who would like to play the role of critic & conscience of society.
Love how (sarcasm) it’s the arts that people seem to think is a dead end career choice and not good for NZ. In my view it’s cultural capital that is now starting to have massive value as people push back from this obsession with money and economy. People in those industry have ideas, they do things!
Our richest and most well known teenager is Lorde (music), one of our biggest challenges is architecture and planning (also being cut from the library) especially with the current ‘clown planning’ in Auckland and building disasters from leaky building to Bella vista in Tauranga.
Our fine artists are as important as cultural capital as sport (without the big funding).
Prince William and Dutchess of Cambridge studied art history, but to the Auckland University philistines, arts are clearly not important.
Nobody takes foreign dignitaries to the law firm or the accountants office in NZ. Nope they get the cultural experience because otherwise we might as well sell our country as the cheaper Pita pit if we take away our arts and culture and deem it 3rd class at university level.
Lorde is talented but not even she can turn back time (shes 21)
Sorry you are right, but all the same pretty good going for a 21 yo!
Or as Wei says in his/her posts on the immigration issue “Too small a population means you get inbreds with no technology and no culture and no civilization. ”
I’m not sure if he/she is referring to Maori or just all of NZ? But an alternative vision rather than overturning or appropriation of culture, could be maintaining and cherishing it, which clearly is not happening at our largest university.
Also in relation to Wei’s comment on technology with low populations, .. tech is NZ’s fastest growing and third biggest export… and our tech people are valued highly and sought after overseas. (Pity not much government/business support on keeping local tech talent in NZ with high wages and decent jobs and opportunities.)
https://exportertoday.co.nz/news/nzs-tech-talent-demand
Which, of course, is a load of bollocks. From Why we can’t afford the rich:
My bold.
Yeah, it’s not the number of people that is the problem but our socio-economic system which disadvantages the many in favour of the few.
Your second point, which I agree with, had virtually nothing to do with the first.
A small population means you are less likely to produce Beethoven’s, Led Zeppelin’s and Steven Hawkings. That’s just a plain statistical fact.
And you do obviously have less opportunity for specialisation, and a smaller market for innovation —although international trade ameliorates that somewhat.
I had a friend who lived in UK in the 1970s and 1980s. It was a glorious time, he could enjoy live concerts of the best rock bands in the world on an almost weekly basis. The size of the population meant a high probability that not only great talents would emerge (not the only factor of course), but the mass and density of the population means there is a market to enjoy that talent and it is economic to perform to live audiences on a frequent basis. New York and Paris and even Hong Kong and have far more going on in the arts and music than Auckland, and likely always will.
Another example is of course minor sports and niche activities. For example, in Europe, rugby is still a relatively minor sport, proportionately speaking. Yet the sport can draw huge crowds and they have very competitive national and international competitions that frequently run. Even though a small percentage of people are interested in the sport, they still have the highest number of registered players in the world, I believe. On a per capita basis, football, in New Zealand is at least as popular as rugby in Europe, but you get more seagulls at a local tournament, and the skill level is abysmal.
More bollocks. Statistically speaking all groups of people have exactly the same chance.
You obviously misunderstood the quote: Specialisation hinders innovation and the development of intelligence.
I can do that today in NZ. Could do it in the 1970s/80s as well. We’ve even had a few of them end up the world stage over the years.
Any size population that’s capable of supporting itself is quite capable of doing that as well. Large numbers don’t actually make it any better.
In absolute numbers, yeah, but not as a percentage. The percentage will be about the same.
[Citation Needed]
More bollocks. Statistically speaking all groups of people have exactly the same chance.. Bollocks.
Statistically speaking, and assuming a similar statistical distribution of talent, a larger population obviously has more chance of producing an outrageous talent than a smaller population.
A country with 10 times the population of another, will, assuming similar birthrates and demographic characteristics, produce 10 times the number of geniuses within the same period
“Specialisation hinders innovation and the development of intelligence.”
That’s a ridiculous statement. The fact that I can programme software say, and only know how to do that, and not catch my fish, and grow my vegetables is no hindrance on the development of intelligence. In engineering there are huge ramifying trees of specialisations —working in any one of them provides a lifetime of cognitive challenge.
“while that of workers doing simple and repetitive work deteriorated”
Sorry, these workers are not ‘specialists’. In fact they are the very opposite. Simple repetitive work can be done by anyone. These workers are utilised as generic cogs.
“In absolute numbers, yeah, but not as a percentage. The percentage will be about the same.”
It simply does not work that way. A country of a small population may never have the chance to enjoy, say the Berlin Philharmonic, whereas another country with a larger population may have them tour once every 2 or 3 years. Not exactly sure what the exact thresholds are, but the relationship is certainly not a linear one.
A larger population will produce a larger number of outstanding talent (if such a thing even exists) but they have the same chance.
That’s what the research shows and what I quoted.
Complexity develops intelligence. Specialisation is a decrease in complexity.
They’re doing the same work over and over, ergo, specialised. And it results in a decrease in intelligence.
Considering that that applies to the majority of the population we should probably change it so that we can increase the intelligence and innovation of the country.
The book goes on to say that even doctors and other highly skilled specialists would probably benefit from having a change.
Who gives a fuck about the Berlin Philharmonic touring?
In Auckland we have the Auckland Philharmonic. Then there’s the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Wellington.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that we have the music covered.
It’s not a question of absolute numbers but of productivity and percentages. Even small villages thousands of years ago produced good musicians.
The dangers of homeopathy
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/103226854/child-was-growling-at-preschool–so-naturopath-says-she-gave-him-rabid-dog-saliva
Sounds more like the dangers of dumb ass parents (but yes also homeopathy)
The only real danger from homeopathy is if one has an actual illness and is relying on the homeopathy to offer any actual benefit outside of the placebo effect.
If you’ve got a health problem best to see a good qualified medical doctor in the first instance for a diagnosis and then proceed on from there.
Dunno about the lack of real danger. If the homeopathic practitioner decided the rabid dog saliva didn’t need much potentising, and didn’t go through the extended palaver of repeated dilution and succussion, then the treatment might be a wee bit riskier than I’d be comfortable with.
How does one collect rabid-dog saliva?
In any case, the much maligned “placebo” effect is very powerful and useful in conventional modern medicine, as well as in traditional practices.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen info on recommended techniques. I wouldn’t have guessed there was much demand for rabid-dog saliva, since rabies vaccines are produced using cell-culture or nerve tissue. In any case, collecting spider venom or snake venom strikes me as a more difficult problem, for which there’s a variety of solutions, since collecting those kinds of venom is necessary for producing treatments that actually work.
Dunno that the placebo effect itself is much maligned. Insufficiently understood and insufficiently used, for sure, but the non-use of placebo by modern medicine is as much an ethics issue as anything else. But when it comes to maligning, the existence of a powerful placebo effect is used to malign nostrum hucksters whose products are no more effective than placebos (and sometimes actually less effective).
Possibly, one fibs about it bob.
Yes fair point anyone prepared to supply this product may be less than scrupulous in the dilutions – I suspect all of it is just water out of the tap ……
I’d have thought that tap water would be stronger than any normal homeopathic concoction given the amount of chemicals in our drinking water
I like my water with no chemicals at all. Not a molecule in sight.
Ya can’t see molecules, McFlock, least with the neked I.
Can too. They have purple auras.
I stand corrected and awed.
lol
Amusing… But does one not have to point out that H2O is a molecule, and McFlock’s water is composed of them? Or have I misremembered my form 3 Science from 1960? (Purple auras explain everything..)
Actually, you can and also single atoms: https://petapixel.com/2018/02/12/picture-single-atom-wins-science-photo-contest/
Phil Quinn: the political commentator we all love to hate (including me) has redeemed himself. Haven’t time yet to read it properly but what I have read thus far… I agree with everything he has said:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12034958
Great link Anne, I don’t think Dotcom is that unlikable, it was the MSM hate campaign against him, he’s more like a manic with big ideas (But Dotcom actually achieves them). Other pluses, he lives in NZ, has a family here, rents! a house and has the ability to create jobs, opportunities and industry in this country. My vote is for him not someone on $16.50 p/h or tech moguls that don’t live or invest in NZ to stay and lead a colourful (but legal) and productive life here with his family.
From Anne’s link…
“Consider this. The Global Financial Crisis brought countless millions to their knees. Hundreds of thousands were left homeless due to the dodgy bank loans and the reckless conduct of financial titans. For these crimes, with real and countless victims, the US Department of Justice has barely lifted a finger.
Fewer than five criminals responsible for Wall St’s moral failures have spent any time behind bars — and for a fraction of the time the feds insist for Dotcom and his colleagues. Why? Because the mortgage-strapped and cash-poor can’t afford lobbyists and lawyers to persuade the government to do their bidding.”
Dotcom is a lonely Big Guy who doesn’t drink because of an alcoholic parent.
He always wanted to be big in IT. He is also not a well man, who has been treated poorly. I don’t agree with some of his politics, but he deserves better than he has had so far. He has been used.
Priceless moment at the 2.14 mark in that video.
Prick’s an opportunist who tried to make hay out of a family’s loss. Fuck him.
https://gizmodo.com/kim-dotcom-says-fbi-file-about-seth-rich-is-fake-but-h-1795646891?IR=T
Sewer commenter outs himself.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/103227251/auckland-local-board-member-claims-free-speech-to-defend-racist-sexist-posts
Silly old public-bar bore Battersby. Interesting to note that he has a QSM. But then again, much worse, much more vicious people than him have been knighted….
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/complaint-sir-bob-jones-maori-gratitude-day-column-not-upheld
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/11/sir-william-gallagher-apologises-for-comments-about-m-ori-and-treaty-of-waitangi.html
A shout out to Radio New Zealand for, yet again, contacting the Cuban Studies Institute, otherwise known as University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, for their take on the current change of power in Cuba.
I include this quote from an article discussing the trials and tribulations of the institute itself..(my bolds)
“Over the summer, several Cuban exile groups joined the fray, concerned that the institute might shift its focus from being an academic weapon against the Castro regime. They took the line that Suchlicki had not retired but had been unjustly terminated.
Some exiles began to attack Gómez and asked for his resignation as interim director of the institute.
Without mentioning Gómez directly, the organizations that make up the Cuban Resistance said in a statement that UM “cannot appoint an interim director or any incoming directors who may associate with companies that trade with the Castro regime, since this Center, by definition, cannot be under the influence and interference of Havana’s totalitarian regime.” Gómez had been an on-board lecturer on Cuba during a cruise to the island. It was a one-time gig.”
They are entitled to their opinion , and their take on current events in Cuba is interesting, but why would RNZ not explain the Institutes overt position on Cuba, the Castro crowd and Communism in general.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article191309729.html
The Herald is obsessed with the mindless mutterings of a homophobic sportsplayer.
As winter approaches, imagine if they devoted the same column inches to the crises facing our country – inequality, homelessness, child poverty….
Maybe they could dedicate a lot more coverage to climate change, so they have an informed readership.
We need a lot more coverage like this from Stuff today.
“The 2016 marine heatwave has triggered the initial phase of that transition [to heat-tolerant reef assemblages] on the northern, most pristine region of the Great Barrier Reef, changing it forever as the intensity of global warming continues to escalate,” the paper said.”
The key word there is FOREVER.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/103229290/great-barrier-reef-cooked-by-marine-heatwave-study
we have been warned……an inspired choice of RBNZ Governor
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018641349/reserve-bank-governor-adrian-orr
If Bill is out there, looks like your optimism over no war being started in Korea was better placed than my anxiety. Hopefully.
Since this really does feel like the start of a proper diplomatic fandango, I am hoping for very modest improvements. Like, for example, Kim sees that it’s better to form a proper diplomatic corps to engage with countries. And that forming a bit of a decent public service to deal with that is a whole bunch more effective than successively executing any general who disagrees with him.
And secondly, realising that there is more to sustaining a country than giving the military everything they want. It’s not in his military’s interests to see diplomatic success – diplomacy is the solvent to martial law.
Those two would be small but humble starts.
More adventurously, I hope the US agrees formally that the Korean War has stopped and that they make peace over that.
Spare me from God’s wrath if I see Trump being as good as Obama at cracking the hard diplomatic problems.
On top of Korea (whatever eventuates) I think Trump deserves credit for pulling the plug on Timber Sycamore (Syria).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore
Intensive Dairy farming is NOT a sustainable practice.
It is destroying our soil.
“Nearly 200 million tonnes of soil are being lost in New Zealand every year – an out-of-sight problem that could pose far-reaching consequences for our environment and economy.
A major Government report out this morning also found nearly half of that loss was coming from pastures, at a time when dairy intensification was packing more cows into paddocks.
The quality and quantity of soil is crucial to the overall health of our land and wider environment, storing water, carbon and nutrients, growing food, breaking down contaminants and hosting an abundance of species.
Half of tested dairy sites had excess soil phosphorus and a further 65 per cent were below the target range for macroporosity.
New Zealand accounted for just 0.2 per cent of the planet’s total land area but contributed 1.7 per cent to global sediment loss.
The amount of land used for dairy has meanwhile surged by more than per 40 cent since the early 2000s, while that used for sheep and beef has dropped by 20 per cent, in step with dairy’s white gold rush.
New Zealand’s dairy country now spanned 2.6m ha
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12035548
OMG – Andrew Little and Pike River family members have gone 30m into the mine.
At last.
RNZ National reported it on their 2pm news but not on website yet but this from TVNZ.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/pike-river-mine-victims-family-members-enter-portal-very-first-time-alongside-andrew-little
“Mr Little said he wanted to see inside the mine for himself and felt completely safe going inside. He denied it was a political stunt.”
He should’ve brought along John Key and a cask of Amontillado.
And a big supply of bricks and mortar
and a bunch of kiwibuild apprentices 😀
This is epic.
Has anyone here read “The Captured Economy – how the powerful enrich themselves, slow down growth, and increase inequality”, by Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles?
They take Piketty seriously, and are of course super-dark on Trump, but have a really weird view of the role of the state in the economy, and some fairly slippery institutional framework theory around that.
Just checking if anyone’s had a look at this book.
Turning back the clock.
Just for a laugh…
Miss 13 cooked dinner last night, did a stellar job.
Miss 10 wanted to say something nice, so thanked ‘god’ for dinner (Nana took her to church last Sunday).
Miss 13 walked off. She was pissed off because god didn’t make dinner, she did! Lmao!!!
Cinny – that set me off a treat! I can’t stop laughing!
yay 🙂 that should always happen, these kids are a crack up 🙂
Sadly I just stopped laughing very fast. You may wish to see, need to see, these links:
What is that saying about power and corruption and absolute/absolutely…
It is hopeful that good progress seems to being made with a trade deal with Britain post brexit.
Trade deals that promote ‘values’ instead of ‘donkey billions’ is the way to go, & more traditional forms of developmental western societal organisation to that, would have more mutual recognition and easy alignment with the British people going down the track i’d say, from New Zealand’s position, traditional receptivity & prosperity.
I wonder if a RAF training base down queenstown way would be a viable thing. A training space for the British with their top aircraft and relatively unclutted airspace – would basically have the entire westcoast to zoom up and down on for starters with formations, drills, scenarios and the like, with geography not that far removed from alot of European soil. And the NZ forces providing the on ground maintenance with the British top wings, would be a win for them as well.
Sure, maybe a nice bombing range in the middle of the lake?
Well, uncluttered except when they have the helicopters flying around to keep frost off the vines…
What does Britain have that we would want to buy or sell for which there are great big trade barriers to entry?
Munitions?
A monarchy and House of Lords?
A corrupt class system?
A dead public health system?
Lots of empty stone churches?
I’m old enough to remember what English companies and English politics did to us last century.
So I would like to hear what Prime Minister has in mind for our country on this.
Maybe that just for once we could stop copying Britain’s mistakes several years after even Britain has recognised that they were mistakes?
Which emissions budget would that come out of…ours or the UK’s?
I was thinking industrial law, health and education..
The great and good Sir Robert Jones again comes under attack from some untermensch—this time a “huge great ugly blonde thing.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12024103
Judith Collins? Out celebrating Simoins 10 percent shafting perhaps??
This is my tipuna in Tikapa Marae
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jtzsKaEd3X_7TN5gzoxlAMSicQWPyG4x/view?usp=drives
The Hupu IWI I SAY Ngati-Ruawaipu
“Great Barrier Reef ‘cooked’ by marine heatwave: study”
That’s all right then, we have more than enough oil and gas exploration permits to continue on with.
The Am Show Good morning social media is a awesome tool to educate te tangata about the truths of the ruling classes and the reality’s of the plite of the common people.There is a dubble edged sword in everything to do with the internet as with anything one must know what the mokopunas are up to . To prevent someone from having a negative affect on the children observation is key here because sometimes they won’t tell you what the are up to observation and Aroha are a must for children .
Soil is one of the life force of Papatuanuku we could easily change to Organic farming it would be better for the enviroment and for us less chemicals =less cancers .
Ka kite ano I have to go to work here a brown man that tells it like it is.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/103152684/racism-is-real-raw-and-working-in-aotearoa Kia kaha brown tangata
Newshub Our Leader looked good wearing te beautiful Korowai that is a excerlint way to promote our Maori culture to the World ka pai .
Mark Middleton congratulations on getting your visa to stay in NZ permanently many thanks to Chis and co for granting Mark this Eco Maori does not trust the system as far as I can——— I have tryed to use the legal systems 5 times and 5 times they have cheated me out of justice the——- Ana to kai .
Thats a awesome the Dunedin Wild life Hospital ka pai many animals and birds will be saved because of this great institution.
I brought a poppy today the thing is I have a problem with ANZAC day is that in my eyes it promotes war and war is for idiots in Eco Maori View . Ka kite ano
The Crowd Goes Wild Wairanga and Makere it will be awesome if the Warriors end up with heaps of wagons following there band there are other reasons I a kumara never tells how sweet it is .
Wai this new format of cricket could attacked more brown players which is a good thing I recon that some should start a New Zealand Ausse Rules Rugby He tangata will make heaps of money playing that game in Australia.
Ka kite ano