Robert Redford: Stop Public Handouts to Oil, Gas and Coal Companies, Now
Every year, around the world, almost one trillion dollars of subsidies is handed out to help the fossil fuel industry. Who came up with the crazy idea that the fossil fuel industry deserves our hard-earned money, no less in economic times of such harsh human consequence? We fire teachers, police and firemen in drastic budget cuts and yet, the fossil fuel industry can laugh all the way to the bank on our dime? Something doesn’t add up here.
We should not be subsidizing the destruction of our planet. Fossil fuels are literally cooking our planet, polluting our air and draining our wallets. Why should we continue to reward companies to do that?
A material object receiving radiated energy, will re-radiate the same amount of energy.
Radiative black body cooling:
The amount of heat a surface radiates is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature. If temperature doubles, radiated energy increases by a factor of 16 (2 to the 4th power). If the temperature of a planet rises, the planet rapidly emits an increasing amount of heat to space. This large increase in heat loss in response to a relatively smaller increase in temperature—referred to as radiative cooling—is the primary mechanism that prevents runaway heating on Earth.
However the Earth is not a theoretical black body, it has an atmosphere through which the re-radiating heat must pass.
Abundant water vapor in the Earth’s atmosphere absorbs most wavelengths of radiant infrared energy, but it is almost transparent in some. The transparency in these wavelengths is like a window that the atmosphere leaves open for the radiative cooling of the Earth’s surface. The most important of these “water vapor windows” is for thermal infrared with wavelengths centered around 10 micrometers. The maximum transparency occurs at 10 micrometers, but partial transparency occurs for wavelengths between about 8 and about 14 micrometers.
Carbon dioxide is a very strong absorber of thermal infrared energy with wavelengths longer than 12-13 micrometers, which means that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide partially “close” this atmospheric window. In other words, wavelengths of outgoing thermal infrared energy that our atmosphere’s most abundant greenhouse gas—water vapor—would have let escape to space are instead absorbed by carbon dioxide.
The absorption of outgoing thermal infrared by carbon dioxide means that Earth still absorbs incoming solar energy, but an equivalent amount of heat is no longer leaving from the top of the atmosphere. The exact amount of the energy imbalance is very hard to measure, but it appears to be a little over 0.8 watts per square meter.
The best way, (though not the only way), to measure the incoming and out going energy is with satellites above the atmosphere.
Though not the only method used, satellite observations provide the “best estimate” of the Top OF Atmosphere (TOA) radiative imbalance, that confirm the energy imbalance.
Data from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment, (ERBE) and the Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System, (CERES) – The multi $billion satellite systems launched into orbit to specifically study and quantify this phenomenon. Sharpened the figure of 0.8 watts per square meter.
Primarily based on observations from three satellites, NOAA-9 (whose scanner failed in January 1987), NOAA-10 (which collected data up to April 1989) .And the CERES experimental instruments (FM1 and FM2) flown aboard the Terra satellite, launched in December 1999 with data extending to May 2004 (cutoff for this study).
Ongoing satellite research on atmospheric radiative imbalance is through the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) which collates and analyzes satellite radiance measurements, collecting data from the international suite of weather satellites to produce globally merged radiance datasets.
With more than two decades of data, and over a 1,000 papers published, ISCCP highlights include – the first global survey of land surface skin temperatures, and global land surface microwave emissivities based on satellite microwave measurements.
Leading to more exact calculation of surface and top-of-atmosphere radiative flux based on the physical quantities provided by the ISCCP data, including validation of the first results of other different global information sources used in surface radiative flux calculation of the radiative properties of the near-surface atmosphere.
“We should not be subsidizing the destruction of our planet. Fossil fuels are literally cooking our planet, polluting our air and draining our wallets. Why should we continue to reward companies to do that?”
You ask Robert Atack about this.
From my perspective it’s easy. It’s not so much that “people” are consciously choosing to subsidise fossil fuels industry, but that they either do not know or will not give up the present reality for one that has not been articulated so that they feel they aren’t “losing”. (see comment lower down page on winners vs. losers) In a win/lose mindset, there needs to be a “no loss” bridge between one stage and the next if you want people to move forward. In our times, this is usually only reached through crisis removing the option of staying still.
As a matter of education, it is far easier to oppose in principle of asset sales, than locate, read and comprehend thousands of pages and hours of information on free market and neo/classical economics, peak oil or climate change. For much of the population, it would be like asking them to choose between eating some icecream or none, or learning how to complete an advanced calculus exercise. In this instance, you’d have to convince people that calculus was more important to them, personally, than ice cream.
The problem is that as resources are generally finite and the win/lose mindset has been so thoroughly explored, categorised and mapped, propaganda experts are running out of ways to present a deadend idea as limitless. We’ve snookered ourselves. Our whole society is based on an adolescent world view. It started out no worse than anything else, but got snipped, trimmed and reduced to slogans, effectively losing all the important details. Asking someone who has never heard of peakoil to voluntarily give up telephones, cars, LCD tv’s and plastic – cold turkey – isn’t going to work. We trained everyone to think the absurd and now they can’t be reached. No surprise.
Our politicians are only gobbling up the last of the easily reached resources and hoping to die in comfort before the reality sets in. Our “rewards” they hand out are completely fitting our attitude. Don’t believe me? Then log off now, sell you computer and all electronic equipment and your car. Today. No? Then you aren’t all that concerned, are you? In the meantime, they are allowing everyone to avoid wholesale panic and mayhem. Now I’m not saying that there isn’t someone somewhere in NZ who could lead our people forward fairly safely and responsibly, but we haven’t heard from them yet. History would suggest they are a product of a crisis and will likely at present be emersed in a reality we would call one of “losing”. It is not until the reality shifts that their lose becomes a win, for everyone.
For a general example, lets look at someone like… Oskar Schindler. There’s a commonly known name. He was a german businessman that today we would call a complete failure and unrespectably dodgy, untrustworthy and opportunistic. He couldn’t get anything to work during peace time, fell into bankruptcy, the kind of guy our leaders would sneer at and good hard working moms and pops would avoid. If he was alive today, he might be a failed finance company director. Maybe. But once war came along and he saw what was happening to people, something changed and he chose people over profit. After the war, he sank again into “losing”. Clearly what he had was useful, though he was labelled useless, and it was just that the time wasn’t right for his skills. I’m not suggesting we should all model ourselves on Oskar Schindler or continually vote for dodgy pollies. Schindler was who he was and that’s the point. Instead of us being who we are, and when the time comes, coming to maturity, we keep demanding the impossible blameless pure messiah come save us all.
Get realistic about what people are, accept the influence of time on the unknown, and we may find a bridge between here and post peak oil/fossil fuel etc crisis.
Every year, around the world, almost one trillion dollars of subsidies is handed out to help the fossil fuel industry. Who came up with the crazy idea
‘It certainly gave us a lot of great dinners and wine not to mention weekends of golf tournaments in luxury resorts, and paid for my luxury holiday home in the Bahamas, so a very good deal for all of us guys’ a source close to Capitol Hill told this reporter??’ /sarc
As someone who had an accident fairly recently and found the ACC cover for ambulance, hospital,,operations and (some/not enough) physio invaluable, I have a question about the latest suggestions for ACC by both National and Labour:
What does “pay as you go” mean? Is it the same as user pays?
Labour is rethinking its ACC policy, and could scrap the fully funded model to revert to a “pay as you go” approach – and yesterday ACC Minister Judith Collins refused to rule out a similar move.
Hi Carol The last Labour Government decided that ACC should work to fund future costs of current accidents. At any one time in the coffers should be enough money to pay for all future payouts for accidents that were covered. It used to be beforehand that ACC would only aim to collect in enough money each year to cover payments
It’s a very stupid move, not dissimilar to superannuation being made pay as you go and why it’s a problem now. The fully funded model charges the full cost of accidents each year, any moves to change it will just move big premium hikes into the future. About 40% of the work account levy is the residual claims levy which is still paying off a shortfall from over ten years ago.
The only rationale for pay as you go is that the fully funded model needs large reserves and when interest rates fall the returns from investments tend to fall so you get short-term deficits that the beancounters can panic over. (The outstanding claims liability is calculated from the risk-free rate of return)
We’re nearly fully funded now on the big accounts and once we reach it premiums will drop anyway…. without increasing later.
Agreed DH and half of my comment disappeared … Future funding is really important because otherwise ACC levies will continue to be hiked to the state where it is unsustainable. It also allows the state to maintain a share in capital markets and the local stock exchane
Yup. The big blowout of a few years back was half real & half manufactured, Nats wanted ACC fully funded more quickly so they could start selling it off while they were still in power. It’s an absolute jewel for the asset thieves, on paper it has little value because liabilities exceed assets but in reality it has $16billion or so in cold hard cash that can be looted.
The present issues can be solved simply by redefining ACCs priorities and that has nothing to do with it being fully funded. It would increase ACCs outgoings considerably however, and I suspect that Labour would use most of the funding part of the levies to make ACC more generous. Future generations would end up paying for it.
No sweat. A lot of the problems at present seem due to them wanting ACC to be fully funded too quickly without raising levies further. Any ACC surplus gets invested and the income from the investments is what pays for future claims on accidents that have already occurred. They seem to be cost-cutting to the bone so they can chuck more cash into the investment account (and get future liabilities down).
They’ve just gone a bit too far with the cost cutting IMO, they can relax it a bit and add another year or two to the fully-funded target which really isn’t far off now anyway. We’re so close now it would be criminal to give it all away, all those extra levies we paid would be for nothing.
It could also free up billions of dollars for the Government to invest elsewhere, but it is more likely the existing reserves would remain with ACC.
That rings alarm bells with me. The money was raised through investing targeted levies. It seems very dodgy to me to apply those levies anywhere other than the provision of ACC services.
you know how NACTs think, $5 in their pocket today is $4.50 you won’t get your undeserving hands on tomorrow, the missing 50c being the obligatory fee for taking your money from you.
Doesn’t it just. ACCs investment income in 2011 was $1.7billion which admittedly was much higher than usual but still shows how much it contributes towards ACCs costs even before it’s fully funded. (total claims & operating costs paid out for the year were $3billion) These bozos want to take that investment cash & spend it elsewhere leaving ACC with a massive cash shortfall to pick up from levies. It’s headbanger stuff, we’re nearly there and now they want to bloody meddle with it again!
This also rings alarm bells with me for the reasons discussed, but also I seem to recall that ACC has been mentioned as a likely big NZ investor in the partial assets share sales, as a justification /”reassurance” for the sales. Presumably, the move to a pay as you go scheme, and/or the grabbing of the current ACC financial assets would prevent or severely curtail this happening.
On the pay as you go issue, the Greens have an interesting question in the House today (sorry lost the number when copying it, but think it is about number 8 or 9) that seems to suggest that they are also proposing pay as you go funding:
KEVIN HAGUE to the Minister for ACC: Will she return ACC to the pay-as-you-go funding model, outlined in the Green Party’s ACC Rehabilitation Plan and emailed to her this morning, and are there any points in the plan she will not consider implementing?
On a related matter, Little is continuing to question the Minister of ACC’s possible involvement in ACC’s decision to go to the police with the next question after Hague’s:
ANDREW LITTLE to the Minister for ACC: On how many occasions, and for what periods of time on each occasion, did she meet with or have discussions with the ACC Chairman or Chief Executive, including about the matter of the mass privacy breach involving Bronwyn Pullar, between 13 March and 19 March when that matter was referred to the Police by way of formal complaint? .
Righties seem to want to make everything a competition. They, must surely want to be amongst the winners. But don’t they realise there are dire consequences in setting up crucial parts of people’s lives to be a competition?
With any competition there are winners and losers – it’s built into the enterprise. With a rugby match the worst that happens that the losing team and their supporters drown there sorrows for a night or so.
With crucial life activities, like education, work and income, the losers are doomed to a life of struggle, lost dreams, and possibly, crime, ill-health and ultimately a shorter life. Are righties so callous that they would doom some children to such a dismal life, through no fault of their own?
Prime Minister John Key has signalled his support for a form of league tables for primary and intermediate schools.
Unions argued that rankings of school performances was inevitable once the controversial national standards policy was introduced in 2010.
Last week it emerged the Education Ministry was working on a report based on data received from schools last month. All schools were required to send in information about the performance of pupils against national standards in literacy and numeracy. It is due to be finished in September.
Mr Key yesterday defended the move as the information could now be discovered under the Official Information Act and media could put together their own rankings. “Some sort of coherent league table makes sense,” he said.
“I’ve always had a view that somehow this information is going to be in the public domain. The question is what form is it going to take and what’s it going to look like. What I don’t want to see is schools actually damaged by the information being presented in the wrong way.”
I think you are right about winning/losing/competition. In fact, competition is an art and has nothing to do with winning or losing any more than a musical composition wins or loses or a dance wins or loses. It has only recently been reduced to a craft by the passion of economics.
Carol, I wonder why Mr Key is raising League Tables just now especially since the Minister of Education has nothing to say about it?
Of course since Private Schools get a large chunk of State Funding so they will also publish their National Standards Records as well. And it would show that since they started with high socio-economic advantages they would have to prove value added just the same. Oops! Private Schools are exempt.
Hot topic this week has been raising the age of superannuation to 67, something beloved of the Labour party and illustrates very well the vacuity of whateever advice they are getting or giving. Dont the policy wonks working for Labour or their caucus actually understand there is a real world pout there?
A few questions for Labour on Superannuation:
Labour want an extra 2 years work from us, so where are the extra 2 years of jobs coming from? Hint we have huge youth under / unemployment…..and are in a recession with a declining number of real jobs.
Are the older workers just going to take work from the young?
Are we going to pay the dole to the young rather than the pension to the oldies? Zero balance perhaps?
The people who think that ‘human resources’,
like natural resources, are to be exploited to the point of destruction and beyond. Seem to be doing most of the Lazy Party thinking.
The Lazy party seems prepared to give employers whatever they want. And in the process tears up the ‘Social Contract’ between labour and employers for a fully funded ACC system. On our side we agreed not to strike, or sue their asses if we are hurt at work.
As ACC becomes more punitive than rehabilitative and the income grows to $1.3 billion, over out goings. Instead of paying out this money to those who it was collected for, the Lazy Party is happy to see employer levies slashed by 25%.
You must wonder what Andrew Little the ex-leader of the EPMU is doing, is he asleep? Have they put something in his cocoa?
ACC Premiums may drop in Labour Party rethink | Stuff.co.nz
Jenny, I cant remember until you mentioned it when somebody last mentioned the original reason we needed ACC. Good comment.
On the subject of Andrew Little etc, these buggers are asleep at the wheel. I have seen Peter Harris (an economist I think) rolled out by Labour at meetings in Wellington. This gent means very well (like Labour) and if the economic paradigm of the last 100 years was to continue he would be worth listening to. It will however not continue as it has for 100 years, ergo he and the rest of Labour will have to change their world views. They wont, so we are going to hit the iceberg with them asleep at the wheel.
Employers may regret getting lower premiums that delivers lesser benefits for those injured in accidents. Workers hurt in the workplace faced with a miserly pay-outs, in self defence, may revert to a “you hurt us, we hurt you” response.
Lump of labour fallacy = economists speak for a form of metaphysics whereby labour can be elastic as sin….
In my real world as an employer (yes I pay people for real measurable work) what this “lump” theory means is that my employees will take longer to do the same task (we have stretched it for the sake of the theory by 2 years). So to demonstrate:
45 years (average working life) output =100% efficiency
47 years (45 plus 2 extra) output = 96% efficiency
In short the ridiculous theory in practical terms asks employers like myself to pick up the costs of a 4% shortfall in labour efficiency to enable the employee to work an extra 2 years. Being good benevolent types with no bottom line to manage (so that everybody stays employed and so we can pay taxes so that economists can play) we will of course do this…not.
My reality (as an employer) is if I need 10 people to do a job, I hire 10 people, not 11 people to allow the Labour Party’s stupid theory to operate.
Exactly, In a labour intensive role as you age you productivity decreases. You can counterbalance this with skills learned/experience. However tbh you need to be pretty lucky to be fit enough to keep going in a physical industry past 60. I also over the years have known a fair few guys that really struggle with their bodies past 50. As they have been in the same work year in year out their chances to retrain or move into less physical work are low.
All raising the age does is further disadvantage the very constituents labour claims to support, According to the MSD Maori live on average 7.9 years less than non maori and life expectancy can be as much as 8.8 years lower for a male if you are from a socio economically deprived area.
To me labour should be gunning for means testing and or stopping super to those working full time. I currently know of someone who is earning 70k per year at 67 and has been receiving super, he has paid tax all his life and he feels he deserves it but surly it should be case of no super until you have retired.
As a side issue I constantly hear that the current generation will be the first to have shorter life expectancy than their parents. Won’t this alleviate the issues past the bubble.
The amount of work needed to support a society is reasonably fixed in the short term. In the long term it goes down as productivity increases. What this means is that the Lump of Labour Fallacy is a result of the belief in the Perpetual Growth Myth. The myth that there will always be more work available. If that was true we would never have unemployment.
IMO, the only reason we ever get close to full employment is because we’re over producing.
Isn’t it wonderful how the Prime Minister has become such an expert now on education. He seems to have all the answers to teaching and how the curriculum should be delivered. And he has even discovered a whole lot of apparent problems within the system which would seem to be failing all of our children.
And to think that is without going through any formal teacher training institute. Is there no limit to what this man can achieve?
Watch out operating theatres and hospital wards, you’re next.
Aspiring GPs – you can learn your job at a discussion group at the next National Party conference …
What Key is doing is finding a plan from other countries like USA, declaring it as policy, then trying to find a justification for imposing it on NZ kids. It is without research or rationale.
NZ has been famous for its system of developing innovation from grass roots ideas, researched fully, tested and engaged willingly by teachers. National Standards and now League Tables have demolished trust and confidence. To what end?
The finance industry have been creaming their pants, for a return to the halcyon days, before the tax rebates were removed from superannuation savings. When they got to play with our money for free, and the negative returns and high charges were ignored, because of tax payer subsidies.
Egged on by the neo-liberals who prefer the elderly, the unemployed and the sick to starve in the streets, as an incentive to scare working people into accepting starvation wages, while they continue to get 17% increases in wealth, the finance industry is dreaming of getting more of their sticky hands on our wealth, with private super funds.
Since the 70’s they have been constant in the meme that we cannot afford super. A meme that has been driven entirely by the self interest of those, who are too wealthy to need super and too mean to pay taxes, and a greedy finance industry.
Unfortunately, it is true, that if you repeat bullshit often enough, even those who should know better come to believe it.
We cannot afford super is code for, “we should leave our elderly to beg on the streets”. So that wealthy people can pay less tax and the finance industry can again lose our savings for us.
In fact the idea that State super is unaffordable is crap from the same people that cry TINA and reckon that all social insurance is unaffordable.
If they win with super, they will just start on other social wages.
In reality it is much more affordable than the finance company bailouts, which would be necessary with private super.
. http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2012/06/what-superannuation-crisis.html
“So, in 2050, we’re projected to be paying only 1% of GDP more in superannuation than we were paying in 1990. Quelle horreur! This is not a difference to be terrified of, and it is easily manageable with a modest increase in taxation, either now or in the future (though that perhaps is exactly what those pushing for change are frightened of: higher taxes)”.
Intergenerational theft is another piece of oft repeated stupidity.
Super has always been paid for by current production. However you finingle it financially, whether through current taxation or savings, it still comes from the production of the current generation.
If we want to keep super affordable we should tax the current generation to invest in a sustainable future. Invest in energy, housing, education and other infrastructure so that we can keep all our people. Not in financial ponzi schemes which will fall over in the next GFC.
http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz/
“”Because our kids can’t afford to buy houses, we bought houses for them to live in using the equity from our house, and now all our money is tied up in mortgages. At the same time, we’re supporting our parents in their old age.
That’s how life is and always has been, for most of us. Our parents worked to give us a decent start in life, and we worked hard so our kids could have a fair go. We’re looking after our parents in their old age. We hope we’ll be looked after in our old age.
What about this is “intergenerational theft”?””
But. We can avoid the whole concept of retirement, intergenerational fairness and all the other sticking points by accepting that everyone in our society is entitled to a liveable share in the society they and their ancestors have built up.
Whether you call it a Universal income, Guaranteed minimum income (GMI) or a personal shareholder payment it is the same thing.
Replace all welfare, social insurance and pensions with a GMI.
We also get to solve many other problems such as child poverty, the unfairness of a present welfare system, and making our society more sustainable, at the same time.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/235840-A-Town-Without-Poverty-Canada-s-Guaranteed-Income-Experiment
“”Initially, the Mincome program was conceived as a labour market experiment. The government wanted to know what would happen if everybody in town received a guaranteed income, and specifically, they wanted to know whether people would still work.
It turns out they did.
Only two segments of Dauphin’s labour force worked less as a result of Mincome – new mothers and teenagers. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies. And teenagers worked less because they weren’t under as much pressure to support their families.
The end result was that they spent more time at school and more teenagers graduated. Those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did””.
http://thestandard.org.nz/key-on-the-nation/comment-page-1/#comment-483385 The best way to deal with any problem is to eliminate it at root. The best way to deal with ‘retirement’ as a problem is to eliminate the entire concept. No I’m not being extreme.
The simple answer is a Universal Income””
http://kjt-kt.blogspot.co.nz/2011/06/on-retirement-pensions-and-age-of.html
“”In fact super has been so effective in removing poverty amongst the elderly it should be extended to everyone in the form of a guaranteed minimum income. There is no excuse for having people with inadequate food and housing in a country which is capable of supplying an excess of both internally””.
Thank God for that KJT, your analysis and links coincide with mine. The power of memes (TINA, we cant afford super etc) almost always points to some bugger wanting to lay their grubby mitts on the cash. You would think Labour might know better having had Roger in their midst…nothing has changed.
Dear old Boris who went to university with Cameron, and who was in the Bullingdon Club wrote that!!!!!! There is hope yet for him (or perhaps he is being hopelessly romantic).
The only thing I really disagreed with there was the end bit about returning competitiveness. What I think is more likely is that Greek will drop from the Euro, ban international trade to a fairly great degree and start rebuilding it’s own capability, it’s own ability to look after it’s own people.
Pretty much the same as what we should be doing actually.
Kid on her lap, two more in the back and driving with twice the alcohol limit. Certainly something needs to be done but I think taking the kids would be going too far.
I love how some of the commentators assume that the woman is Maori almost as much as I love Farrar’s bachelor status being confirmed by his revolting looks and personality.
Some workers have a hard time these days with autocratic employers who order them around in various harrassing ways. The Sky City casino has a rule that staff can’t have personal objects at their work, including books. So one long time staff member a Ms Parata I think, a long term employee is being given a hard time over the fact that she had a bible with her when she was in the toilets. Someone saw this and reported her. What a lovely working environment, with an unreasonable employer and snitching work ‘mates’.
. So one long time staff member a Ms Parata I think, a long term employee is being given a hard time over the fact that she had a bible with her when she was in the toilets.
It’s a bit more than being ‘given a hard time!’ If she had been carrying ‘Our Bodies Ourselves’ would you dismiss the trouble she faces so lightly? Not a chance…
She is in danger of losing her job… and the Unite union is backing her. http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/7127749/Casino-worker-sorry-over-Bible
If you look at the size of the Bibel, you’ll see that she was hardly ‘proselytising’, which is probably what you had assumed.
It’s a workers’ rights issue – and I am very un-amused about how you treat it, as a piece of trivia because the idea of the Bible upsets your prejudices!
I expect had Mrs Parata been carrying Our Bodies, Ourselves she would have been treated no differently (“The Sky City casino has a rule that staff can’t have personal objects at their work, including books”), though I think SkyCity is overreacting in enforcing that rule by threatening her employment.
Nonetheless your knee-jerk martyr complex whenever you feel Christianity is being marginalised is good entertainment value, Vicky. Thankfully not all Christians feel so self-righteous about their faith. (Oh no! It’s Diocletian and the lions all over again!) Carry on.
Nonetheless your knee-jerk martyr complex whenever you feel Christianity is being marginalised is good entertainment value, Vicky. Thankfully not all Christians feel so self-righteous about their faith. (Oh no! It’s Diocletian and the lions all over again!) Carry on.
Oh aren’t we a bitter little man? There, there… I won’t let the evil Christians get you, it’s going to be all right…
SkyCity might not treat her any differently, but Prism might have! Standardistas normally do give a feck about workers’ rights, but not it seems, in this case.
Yes, because the line “What a lovely working environment, with an unreasonable employer and snitching work ‘mates’.” demonstrates that Prism saw no problem with skycity’s abuse of employees’ rights whatsoever. /sarc
I haven’t a problem with Christians, Vicky. At ease, Christian soldier! Secular humanism is very tolerant. If you believe Jesus wants you for a sunbeam, that’s fine by me. Christianity has survived 2000 years – I don’t think you need to make it all about you 🙂
Prism’s sarcasm was obvious to all but the obtuse.
Things are happening to Fairfax papers in Australia which are going on line. How will we fare if the newspapers go on line completely? How will we check stories, facts, and have to pay and how much?
I like to get copies of some things I think of great significance. Will I be able to copy without paying? Will there be on the spot payment requiring cards etc or will there be a monthly charge with so many hits allowed plus copying?
The USA I thought I heard on radio this morning is almost paperlesss. And where is the enjoyment of the weekend paper if you are forced to sit down in front of a screen. What about the crosswords? The weekend papers have been so weighty that they seem prime targets to save the world’s forests and the fuel for transporting them, but people like them.
just commented on league tables at schools on the other thread but the thing is lower decile schools are usually those with Maori and Islander students or other lower socio economic groups.
It suits the government to encourage this low level racism so that the wannabees and white trash have something to gripe about.
Its almost as if poverty has become institutionalised in NZ to provide a whipping boy for every election.
I dont want to beleive that but it is becoming clearer and clearer.
Thanks, joe90 – had a quick look and definitely good, simple tutorials at my (low) level of understanding and comprehension! Have saved to get into in more detail later.
Oops, this should have been a relpy to 11.1 but wouldn’t let me delete.
Heh, my Mum was in her late sixties when she took up with a PC and when she died a couple of years ago she was a member of the local UBUNTU geek group..
I wondered about John Key’s insistence to keep the super age at 65 and thought I’d do some research into the Cullen fund.
Guess what! It was initiated in 2001 and started investing in 2003. So who was advising Cullen and who was investing?
Turns out there were appointed Guardians and one of them was a Kiwi returning home fresh from an oversees banking career. Were did he work?
New Zealand investment bank, Fay Richwhite.
Bank of Edmond the Rothschild Merrill Lynch which he left in the late 90s to go work for WestLB a banking group as the managing director of the investment banking division.
This means he was in London at the same time as John Key who ran the Bonds and Derivatives department (Financial investments) and he must have either worked for him or have known him!
His specialty?
He an investor with more than a decade of investment banking experience within global financial institutions.
I bet ya the Cullen fund is so full of crap John Key doesn’t want any attention on that fund and he wants to be out of dodge before it collapses into the pile of shit it really is and that is why he wants to leave it to the next government. That way they can blame Cullen and the next labour government for the fact that there is no money for pensions.
Stay tuned for more
A well made point, I am going to be naughty here and add something without providing a link, as part of the ‘discussion’ over the affordability of the Pension the Financial Services Association?, those who represent the providers of Superannuation Fund Management ‘trotted’ out a wish list,
Among this the wish for contributions to the individuals Super Funds to be progressively raised with the obvious, but unspoken, intention as seen by the Financial Services Association that at some point in the future the individual would fully fund their own retirement,
More to the point of what you have commented above is that these same people also called for, and this was not widely reported, a Government guarantee covering all the Superannuation funds managed by these people,
I made the comment on here a week or so ago that from the crude math i am capable of the recent ructions of the financial and international share-markets the contributors to these Managed Superannuation Funds will all want to be at the front of the ‘bulge’ as far as the baby-boomer retirement cohort is concerned because all of such schemes are looking from here more and more like a grand Ponzi scheme,
An Association of those who are tasked with managing such schemes, should i have used the word scam, calling for a Government guarantee over the scheme this early in the piece would tend to suggest that my crude math may be relatively close to their actual knowledge of the efficacy or other of such managed Superannuation Funds…
So this Ira Bing was in London at the same time as John Key. So were nearly 8 million other people. Back then Merill Lynch had worldwide about 15,100 financial advisers (Wiki) and the London office, being centre for all ML’s European operations is huge. Sure they may have known each other. But so what? Those are dangerously big leaps to make just to tarnish the reputation of a man who hasn’t been involved with the very successful Cullen Fund since 2005.
I don’t know why you’ve mentioned the Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild in bold, it’s one of the world’s best run private banks in the world and there’s no connection to KeyI can see (unless you’ve got some bee in your bonnet about Bing, Key and the Rothschilds being Jewish or something – I sincerely hope not). Same for FayRichwhite, as Key never worked for them. Why mention them at all – it’s safe to assume that all investment bankers are wankers, but that’s a complete different conspiracy all together.
The Cullen Fund began investing in 2003, and had approximately 19.2 billion dollars in assets at 31 May 2011. Anything wrong with it is National’s fault when they stopped putting money into it in 2009. And the only people who believe it’s a Ponzi scheme are idiots like FailOil – who, on a more amusing note, turns out to have been having an extramarital affair with former Michael Laws P-smoking prostitute mistress Jacqueline Sperling – so he doesn’t exactly have the best judgment in the world (nor does she).
So no, Merill Lynch did not set up the Cullen Fund.
John Key ran the Bonds and derivatives department for Merrill Lynch from 1995 until March 2001. He decided who to hire and who to fire. His department developed the instruments now collapsing the entire global financial world. He knew they were dangerous. In fact he says so in this video. Still we now have $112 billion in off the book derivatives. That is 6 times the amount in the Cullen fund.
The Rothschild bank is indeed a privately run bank and those chosen to work at it are carefully vetted for future purposes.
Fay Richwhite is an insider and also someone who vets his people to do his bidding. That is how he got rich.
John Key according to his unauthorised biography was a specialist in selling crap to Sovereign Wealth funds (such as the Cullen fund) and pension funds.
Ira Bing being a Kiwi, Merrill Lynch wealth manager and a pension fund investment specialist and brought back from London to take place on the board for the Cullen fund is tying the cat to the bacon as they say in Holland.
Added to that I just found a press release from NZ National from 2000 in which they declare Cullen nuts for wanting to invest billions in dangerous future liabilities (i.e. Derivatives) even though their soon to be dear leader made $ 50 million with those same dangerous crappy investments.
I don’t tarnish anybodies reputation, banksters are very good at doing that all by themselves. I merely point out that it seems the old boys network is at it again and I would dearly like to ask Ira and John Key some questions. By the time Merrill Lynch collapsed they had an exposure of $ 75 trillion in Derivatives.
They must have sold them to someone. What better to have a Merrill lynch boy on the board of the same kind of pension funds they loved to sell their crap too or do you think banks don’t organise themselves that way.
So yes, I think that it is very feasible that Merrill Lynch was involved in stacking the Cullen fund with crap and as to the value of the fund we only have the word of our government for that now do we?
And that is run by the same scumbag who made $ 50 million of this crap so he’s not going to fess up is he?
“Extensive debate and questioning of Dr Michael Cullen has revealed that his proposed Super Fund will soak up unknown billions to fund an unknown share of future super liabilities through unknown investments as part of a ‘diversified’ portfolio.” FUTURE SUPER LIABILITIES MEAN FUTURE SUPERANNUATION LIABILITIES i.e SUPERANNUATION PAYMENTS, not derivatives!!!
So what you’re saying is that John Key acted in the near exact same manner as Bridgecorp boss Rod Petricevich, amongst many others. And in the same manner as a builder of thousands of homes that now leak to buggery.
That the financial things John Key created and made his millions from are the very same things wreaking havoc around the globe right now today.
What does he have to say in answer to that? Has he ever explained himself?
Moaning about capitalism isn’t going to do anyone any good, and there’s nothing wrong with Neo-Keynesian capitalism if public institutions and public welfare are protected. None of the alternatives seem to appeal.
…and there’s nothing wrong with Neo-Keynesian capitalism if public institutions and public welfare are protected.
I take it you failed to note the collapsing of Keynesian capitalism in the 1960s through the 1980s. The collapse that brought about the re-introduction of classical economics (neo-classical/neo-liberal) which, of course, resulted in the GFC.
Capitalism doesn’t work, never has done and never will do and if that’s not pointed out then we will never get a change which brings about the saying Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We keep repeating it because we keep failing to learn
Bullshit. Let’s look at Marx, shall we. Even in his own lifetime his own follower Ferdinand Laselle was telling him classical Marxism was bullshit because they actually had to lie to the workers to get them to support itin the first place. Anything that obviously assumes the eventuality of single party governance is anti-democratic, anti-human dignity and bullshit. Karl Popper pointed out that the untestable assumption that Marxism was inevitable made it just as much a religious cult as free market monetarism – and Laselle again pointed out it if Marxism it was the natural destination, capitalism wouldn’t have developed to the point it has. Capital is so much more than simply economic value. I’m sorry human beings aren’t the selfless angels you seem to want them to be, but that’s just how it is. Good luck with that.
I don’t recall ever promoting Marxism or a one party state. Being an anarchist I support democracy with an open book administration.
Humans are a result of their environment: Make the environment selfish and greedy and you get selfish and greedy people. Change it to one of fairness and community spirit and you’ll get selfless people for the most part. The psychopaths will still be psychopathic though and they’re the ones that promote capitalism and are usually the ones that end up making the rules for capitalism.
Fair enough, but I think self interest is deeper than that, It’s how we survived as a species after all. the problem with Anarchism is that it’s nice in theory, but if you get invaded and your community can’t agree and coordinate on a response, you’re pretty much screwed. Ayn Rand’s Objectivism is basically Anarchism without the assumed empathy or sense of community.
Ira Bing, Key, Rothchilds , are all Jewish, and they are all bankers….and its the banking system which is at the core of the problems being faced by the majority of the world.
Almost any and every problem we face is a result of the banking system as it has become, and you can easily put a case for how it was designed to be.
Key has played in an integral part on its design, and he is fully aware of why/what/how/who. His mates like Robert Rubin (also jewish), among others sit at the very top of the banking ponzi, so people trying to defend Key as having “been out of the game, or done nothing wrong” is simply egos of stupid, uninformed people blinding them….he is as crooked as they come!
So stop being a drama queen pop and trying to accuse TravellerEv of some sort of race based slant in her comments.
Voice, I am not aware of Ev being rasc*st, and I certainly do not equate being a “birther” to be so either. I would like to think your thought process are a littler further advanced than that, perhaps not.
Agreed that it should be linked to Zionism, as opposed to any official religion, or race based state, which in case you dont know is what Israel is
Does anyone who questions Barrys birth status become a rasc*st in your eyes?
Look forward to hearing your explanation on why you feel Ev is rasc*st though, and what you believe rasc*sm to be…
I just made you aware of it, muzza. Sad to see you adopt a bit of it yourself (‘Barry’). Birthers are racist. Their whole birth certificate fantasy is based around their hatred of African-Americans, but if you’re cool with it, well, shame on you.
Just to remind you, Ev is a birther, a 911 truth denier and a climate change denialist. It’s not much of a stretch to suspect her obsession with Jewish financiers is anti-Semitic, given her reactionary views on those other matters.
“Birthers are racist. Their whole birth certificate fantasy is based around their hatred of African-Americans, but if you’re cool with it, well, shame on you.”
–Are they, you know that for sure on all counts, you can speak for ANYONE who questions that particular issue, has hatred towards African Americans – Why am I not surprised you would think in such a narow band! Do not try to push illiterate views on the world in my direction, because questioning issues which demand questioning, does not automatically equal rascist!
“Just to remind you, Ev is a birther, a 911 truth denier and a climate change denialist. It’s not much of a stretch to suspect her obsession with Jewish financiers is anti-Semitic, given her reactionary views on those other matters.”
–So these all equal racism then to you do they, bit of s stretch, bro you need to take a real good look at yourself, and how views such as yours make the world a much worse place to be!
Because you do not agree with her, or that she spends time researching and trying to understand what are some very complex issues, which regarldless of what small minds might think, should be on the table in order to have a broad debate. Taking any point of view off the table by calling it rascist, or any other label, is to encourage and endorse the suffering, and real rasicm being rammed onto humanity by those who Ev researches, and comments on.
You cant/wont/dont make the link, or disagree with her, that is your right, but to draw a long bow and assume rascim of Ev, is weak minded!
I’ve explained my position pretty clearly, muzza. Birthers are the KKK with keyboards. It’s not my problem if you don’t get it. It’s a shame, though, because you’re usually pretty on to it.
Wow, Birther, Climate denier and 911 truth denier?
And KKK with keys! Talk about calling everything a nail if all you have is a hammer.
For those of you new to this blog here are a few pointers as to who I really am.
I live on a small plot of land where I try to live as sustainable as I can in order to stay within my carbon footprint. I am building a food forest according to permaculture principles but I don’t believe paying carbon tax to Al Gore and his oil family is going to solve the very serious environmental issues we face.
Added to that I would like to see what happens if the hundreds of global weather modification programs would stop before I conclude that Al Gore’s money making scam is the solution.
I believe that every citizens has to obey the laws of the land and there are very real problems with the legitimacy of Barack Obama. I think that the colour of the skin of a person has nothing to with acting within the law. If there were doubts about a white candidate I would want the same thoroughness.
I believe that Obama like his predecessor George Bush is a war criminal and that he has intensified the illegal wars of aggression. That is not racist, those are the facts.
The events of 9/11 are deeply troubling. Never before or after have steel framed buildings collapsed due to carbon fires.
All of them collapsed at free fall speed see here the collapse of WTC 7 which was announced 20 minutes before it happened by the BBC and which collapsed in 6.5 seconds.
All three of Newton’s laws of motion and the law of Gravitation were broken multiple times on that day and it is therefore that I support a new and independent investigation into the events of that day.
With regards of to accusation of anti-Semitism the following.
I’m an equal opportunity anti Abrahamic religionist. I think all three religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam are destructive, male dominated control mechanisms and would love to see the end of all of them.
Do I think there is a Jewish fiendish complot to control the planet?
Give me a break! Here again I’m an equal opportunity kind of person. There is plenty of evil in all walks of live and the fact that all three banksters I mentioned were Jewish was news to me as I did not know Ira Bing was Jewish.
I pointed simply at all the banks Mr Bing has worked for and never entertained the “Jewish” angle, that was done by TRP.
And while the idea that only one particular group could be evil enough to conspire against all of us normal and nice people might be attractive to some I would like to point out that while many bankers might be of Jewish descent there are many more who aren’t.
So calm down TRP and put your slinging macho dick back in your pants and while you take a walk to get your overheated thoughts in order you might want to contemplate why it is I so get under your skin. What is it that makes you feel so defensive and angry. Eh?
Thanks for the explanation, Ev. I agree with you about the 3 religions, though I’d extend it to all religions. None have much going for them, though Buddhism seems the least harmful.
Whether you like it or not, the Birthers are racist. That’s what it’s about. Hatred and bigotry. It was not me who mentioned Ira Bing’s religion. I did not contribute to that part of the conversation and had not previously heard of the gentleman. Muzza it was, I believe, who made the link between Judaism and Bankers in this thread.
You remain a climate change denier, a birther and a truther. All 3 positions are right wing. One is fundamentally racist, the others are just mad. It’s not a great leap to think that your opposition to bankers could be anti-semitic, but I’m happy to accept your assurance that you are not. I’ve been accused of that myself, due to my opposition to Zionism, which some people see as anti-Israeli/anti-Jewish, when it is really anti-racist.
Anyhoo, cheers, and thanks for being so positive about my dick. I’m glad it gives you as much pleasure as it’s given me!
who read this morning this mornings rag with Rod Fyfe going on about how the share price isn’t right to sell Air New Zealand.
Can somebody tell me how many times Air New Zealand has been sold and how many times the government has had to buy it back to stop it being run into the gorund by so called enreepreenoors.
larffffs.
Why would they? The number of comments adds to your clicks in the race to the top.
A good controversial comment with a nice discussion and a bit of trolling for good measure is a bonus.
LOL
RadioNZ National news also ran the story in its bulletin at 2.00, attributing the borrowing of a further 1.3 billion dollars by this National Government to the Member from Dipton Bill English’s wish to help save the world economy,
From f**cking up big-time over His Government’s promise to have the Government revenue in surplus by 2014/2015, to not being able to see the 1 billion dollar hole in the Governments revenue from taxation, or, perhaps knowing full well the extent of the damage National’s ‘tax changes’ would do to the economy and the Government’s accounts English has FAILED abysmally in both basic numerology and as Minister of Finance,
Personally i don’t know whether upon hearing the news that the Dullard from Dipton wants to help save the World’s economy if we all should be (a) Terrified, (b) emotionally tearful, or (c), fall about the place busting our guts with gales of mad laughter….
It gets worse, RadioNZ National news at 3.00 had our Prime Minister, Slippery, re-iterating His little wish to provide the buyers of the assets Slippery and Co are stealing and selling a ‘loyalty scheme’ for those who buy shares in the stolen assets and hang onto them for a couple of years,
What else can any of us say but ”what the f**k”, those who will buy the stolen goods, the 10-15% who earn and have the most in our society will have National then turn around and give back to them 15% of the sale price,
The rest of the cash from the asset sales i assume will be squandered on Roads of No Significance by the Slippery one and the Dullard from Dipton,
I think that after the education fiasco of last week and in the face of Nationals own internal polling that they are looking at announcing such things in an effort to gain a bit of a dead cat bounce in support from a public that is fast losing the ability to see Key and English as anything other than a couple of Slippery Shysters hell-bent on ransacking the place for anything of value while they still have the chance,
Perhaps Nationals internal polling is actually way worse than even the support i now credit them with, 43%, that’s from the top of the margin of error tho, so if the bottom end of the margin is anywhere near the bone its going to be one hell of a long bye bye until 2014…
But I think the most important note to note about this is that you know your bank is in trouble when it comes to the poorest family on the block for a bailout for its bailouts. Kinda signals that end-times are nigh dontcha think?
However, Budget documents reveal they’ve spent $3.5 million over the last 2 years developing the Business Case for the deal, more than the PPP is destined to save. No wonder the Government tried to keep these details undercover.
In it’s effort to save $2m the government spent $3.5m…
What a relief, Mr Varenholt informs us we don’t have to be concerned about climate change after all.
But Mr Varenholt provides no links, nor references, or citations, or facts, to back up his opinion.
Gee thanks for that Jenny. A load off my mind. If Mr Varenholt says so then it must be right.
To think we’ve been gnashing our teeth and wailing for nothing.
3 News can reveal another board member, Murray Hilder, has quit. That brings the total to three board members, plus the chair, chief executive and a minister.
But the Government has been keeping Mr Hilder’s departure quiet.
“I’m happy to make it public but it’s not something I’ve considered,” ACC Minister Judith Collins says.
She says Mr Murray did not tell her why he was leaving.
But a source close to Mr Hilder has told 3 News his skills were “the best in the business”, and he simply didn’t like the politics from Ms Collins.
“Murray has had a complete gutsful,” the anonymous source says. “It is blatantly obvious why he has buggered off -he does not want to be around this political behaviour.”
Yep, when the politics causes the function of a public service to deteriorate the best people leave that service. National don’t understand that and, of course, they also have their own cronies to put in place.
Anyhoo, cheers, and thanks for being so positive about my dick. I’m glad it gives you as much pleasure as it’s given me!
Says volumes, that! I can’t fail to see that many men (a frighteningly large number, perhaps most) do their thinking with their little heads.) Thanks for confirming you’re one of them! 😀
Oh, and you’re another American? Or just in love with American idiom… (anyhoo)…
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David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vanita Yadav, Senior Research Fellow, Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University Brett Boardman/Belvoir The complex and grappling issue of violence against women takes centre stage in the soul-stirring solo dance drama Nayika: A Dancing Girl. During a dinner conversation ...
Disruption to patient care from a nationwide junior doctors strike is bordering on unsafe, a senior doctor claims, despite what health officials say. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Diepstraten, Senior Research Officer, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer Division, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute Ground Picture/Shutterstock The anti-cancer drug abemaciclib (also known as Vernezio) has this month been added to the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) to treat certain ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic McAfee, Postdoctoral researcher, marine ecology, University of Adelaide Robbie Porter, OzFish Unlimited Around Australia, hundreds of people are coming together to help a once-prized, but decimated and largely forgotten marine ecosystem. They’re busy restoring Australia’s native oyster and mussel reefs. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Webb, Lecturer, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology Austin Human/Unsplash How does Earth stop meteors from hitting Earth and hurting people? –Asher, 6 years 11 months, New South Wales Alright, let’s embark on a meteor ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rory Mulcahy, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of the Sunshine Coast Professional sports organisations regularly promote and develop initiatives to support diversity, equity and inclusion. While sport has the power to change attitudes by sparking conversations about political issues and social ...
Comment: The weekly Monday post-Cabinet press conference is a useful forum for observing Christopher Luxon and how he is developing into the job of Prime Minister. He attempts to convey the impression of a man of action, speaking fast, delivering memorised National Party strategies in a connect-the-slogans kind of way, ...
Double votes, missing ballot boxes, tired tech and stressed staff: how tick-tallying went astray at last year’s election. Cast your mind back to November 2023, that bleary-eyed post-election period duringwhichwewaited, andwaited, for a coalition deal to be hammered out. A distraction from the hotel-hopping of our ...
International audiences are starting to discover what New Zealand already knew about After the Party.When After the Party aired in New Zealand last year, the response was fast and furious. In his preview for Rec Room, Duncan Greive said it was a “gritty, wrenching and highly confronting” series. By ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shahram Akbarzadeh, Convenor of the Middle East Studies Forum (MESF), and Acting Director the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University Iran’s leadership has been a direct beneficiary of the months-long war in Gaza. With every missile that Israel fires ...
Claire Mabey reviews the haunting and sexy debut novel from Sinéad Gleeson, who is about to touch down in Aotearoa for a string of live events.When Irish writer Sinéad Gleeson was in Aotearoa in 2018 with her spectacular collection of essays, Constellations, she told me she was working on ...
PNG Post-Courier Bougainville Affairs Minister Manasseh Makiba has described the Post-Courier’s front page story yesterday regarding a meeting between Bougainville and national government leaders as “sensationalised” and without substance. The Autonomous Bougainville Government (AGB) had warned it might use “other avenues to gain its independence” should the PNG government “continue ...
Where some saw the worst press conference given by the government to date, Anna Rawhiti-Connell recognised girl maths game.Nicola Willis, recently exasperated by comparisons to Ruth Richardson, said she was “a bit sick of being compared with every female finance minister that’s ever been out there.”Some think that’s ...
The March results are reported against forecasts based on the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update 2023 (HYEFU 2023), published on 20 December 2023 and the results for the same period for the previous year. ...
Jamie Arbuckle, the district councillor who became an MP but decided to keep getting paid for both roles, will instead donate one salary to charity. ...
Adding gender to the Human Rights Act would simply make the implicit explicit. So why is it so controversial? Paul Thistoll explain. At present, Aotearoa’s 1993 Human Rights Act (HRA) includes sex, marital status, religious belief, ethical belief (meaning a lack of religious belief), colour, race, ethnicity or national origin, ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, an 18-year-old who’s studying and working in hospo shares their approach to spending and saving. Want to be part of The Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here.Gender: Transmasc Age: 18 Ethnicity: Pākehā/Māori Role: Student, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Kelsey, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Getty Images Resources Minister Shane Jones has reportedly asked officials for advice on whether oil and gas companies could be offered “bonds” as compensation if drilling rights offered by ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Gleeson, Associate Professor of Law, Macquarie University Shutterstock The Albanese government is weighing up the costs of delivering an election promise to protect religious people from discrimination in Commonwealth law. Such protections were relatively uncontroversial when included in state anti-discrimination ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yen Ying Lim, Associate Professor, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University Pexels/Andrea Piacquadio Dementia is often described as “the long goodbye”. Although the person is still alive, dementia slowly and irreversibly chips away at their memories and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judy Bush, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne Adam Calaitzis/Shutterstock I met with a friend for a walk beside Merri Creek, in inner Melbourne. She had lived in the area for a few years, and as we walked ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Throsby, Distinguished Professor of Economics, Macquarie University Arts companies and individual artists in Australia are supported by government arts agencies, philanthropists, industry bodies, private donors and patrons. However, it is frequently overlooked that a major source of support for the arts ...
Harm Reduction Coalition Aotearoa, a new incorporated society dedicated to ending harmful drug policies, officially launched today, seeks a new fit-for-purpose drug law for Aotearoa New Zealand, rooted in science, experience and evidence. ...
The Corrections Minister admits he "muddied the water" after he and the Prime Minister repeatedly provided incorrect information about a $1.9 billion prison spend-up. ...
It took a post-post-cabinet statement to confirm that 810 new beds will be built at Waikeria, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Lili Tokaduadua was only 15 when she left her family in Fiji to pursue her netball dream in New Zealand. She’d been playing the sport for 10 years and was offered a netball scholarship at Auckland’s Howick College. Now, in her first year out of high school, the 19-year-old defender ...
The beloved local grocers lost a legal challenge to stop a new cycleway outside their store. Joel MacManus reports. In the annals of New Zealand legal history, there are a few brave people who have dared to stand up to the powers that be, no matter how bleak the odds ...
How what we produce and what we eat connects us to the world beyond our shores, visualised. Walking around a supermarket or vege shop, it might be obvious that everything on the shelves came from somewhere. But you might ...
Professor Jemma Geoghegan, of the University of Otago, Otakou Whakaihu Waka, co-leads a Te Niwha project aimed at understanding how and where avian influenza could affect Aotearoa New Zealand, as the highly infectious H5N1 virus spreads globally. The virus has now spread to all continents except Oceania and was recently ...
Thirty years on from Rwanda’s genocide, is guilt over the atrocities is blinding the world to the true nature of its current leadership? The post The repressive underside of Rwanda’s regime appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Opinion: Last week, important recommendations for our criminal justice system were made by the international community. Every five years, each member of the United Nations has its human rights practices reviewed. This rolling event – the Universal Periodic Review – is the culmination of a government reporting on its human ...
Highly pathogenic avian influenza – H5N1, or bird flu – has been flying around the world since the late 1990s. New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands are so far free of it, but now it’s been discovered in mainland Antarctica and scientists say it’s only a matter of time ...
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The following interview with auto electrician and former caver Stu Berendt, 68, of Charleston on the West Coast, came about because he was part of the caving team that found the rare and amazing fossil remains of the giant Haast eagle, the subject of one of the year’s best books, ...
A $1.8b funding boost for Pharmac still won’t enable it to buy more drugs, raising questions about the Government’s approach to the agency The post Can Pharmac do more with the same pot of money? appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eric Stokan, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County If you live in one of the most economically deprived neighborhoods in your city, you might think the government is directing a smaller share of public funds to your community. ...
Wansolwara The news media’s crucial role in climate change and environment journalism was the focus of The University of the South Pacific’s Journalism Programme 2024 World Press Freedom Day celebrations. The European Union Ambassador to the Pacific, Barbara Plinkert, and Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Henry Puna were the chief ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Adams, Professor of Corporate Law & Academic Director of UNE Sydney campus, University of New England Last August, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) launched legal proceedings against Qantas. The consumer watchdog accused the airline of selling thousands of tickets ...
This episode of A View From Afar was recorded LIVE on May 6, 2024 (NZST) which is Sunday evening, May 5, 2024 at 8:30pm (USEST). In an analytical essay titled ‘A moment of friction’ political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan wrote how we are living within a decisive moment ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Taylor, Assistant Professor, Bond University Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures At the crux of the critical response to Luca Guadagnino’s new movie Challengers is one word: “sexy”. The film charts a love triangle between three up-and-coming tennis players: Tashi (Zendaya), ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Stewart, Professor of Public Policy, ADFA Canberra, UNSW Sydney For years, First Nations people have been telling governments they want to be listened to. In particular, they want more ownership of the programs and services that are supposed to help them. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Why do trees have bark? Julien, age 6, Melbourne. This is a great question, Julien. We are so familiar with bark on trees, that most of us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Nasser, Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy, University of Technology Sydney PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is an important ligament in the knee. It runs from the thigh bone (femur) to the shin bone (tibia) and helps stabilise ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne I covered the May 2 United Kingdom local government elections for The Poll Bludger. The Blackpool South parliamentary byelection was also held, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deanna Grant-Smith, Professor of Management, University of the Sunshine Coast The federal government has announced a “Commonwealth Prac Payment” to support selected groups of students doing mandatory work placements. Those who are studying to be a teacher, nurse, midwife or social ...
We round up everything coming to streaming services this week, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, ThreeNow, Neon and TVNZ+. If you love a dark comedy: Bodkin (Netflix, May 9)An English podcaster, an Irish podcaster and American podcaster walk into a pub and…make a TV show? ...
By Eleisha Foon, RNZ Pacific senior journalist A Pacific regionalism academic has called out New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS and says the security deal “raises serious questions for the Pacific region”. Auckland University of Technology academic Dr Marco de Jong ...
How worried should we be about the cloud? This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. I currently have a few thousand unread emails languishing in my inbox, mostly old marketing newsletters and piles of unread science journal press releases. I have a similar number ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nuurrianti Jalli, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies College of Arts and Sciences Department of Languages, Literature, and Communication Studies, Northern State University Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Southeast Asian governments not only have to deal with the virus but also with the false ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Murakami Wood, Professor of Critical Surveillance and Securities Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa The skyline of Riyadh, the capital and largest city of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia.(Shutterstock) There is a long history of planned city building by both governments ...
Robert Redford: Stop Public Handouts to Oil, Gas and Coal Companies, Now
Every year, around the world, almost one trillion dollars of subsidies is handed out to help the fossil fuel industry. Who came up with the crazy idea that the fossil fuel industry deserves our hard-earned money, no less in economic times of such harsh human consequence? We fire teachers, police and firemen in drastic budget cuts and yet, the fossil fuel industry can laugh all the way to the bank on our dime? Something doesn’t add up here.
We should not be subsidizing the destruction of our planet. Fossil fuels are literally cooking our planet, polluting our air and draining our wallets. Why should we continue to reward companies to do that?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-redford/fossil-fuel-subsidies_b_1605146.html
Satelites
The Earth
Black body radiative equivalence:
A material object receiving radiated energy, will re-radiate the same amount of energy.
Radiative black body cooling:
The amount of heat a surface radiates is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature. If temperature doubles, radiated energy increases by a factor of 16 (2 to the 4th power). If the temperature of a planet rises, the planet rapidly emits an increasing amount of heat to space. This large increase in heat loss in response to a relatively smaller increase in temperature—referred to as radiative cooling—is the primary mechanism that prevents runaway heating on Earth.
However the Earth is not a theoretical black body, it has an atmosphere through which the re-radiating heat must pass.
Abundant water vapor in the Earth’s atmosphere absorbs most wavelengths of radiant infrared energy, but it is almost transparent in some. The transparency in these wavelengths is like a window that the atmosphere leaves open for the radiative cooling of the Earth’s surface. The most important of these “water vapor windows” is for thermal infrared with wavelengths centered around 10 micrometers. The maximum transparency occurs at 10 micrometers, but partial transparency occurs for wavelengths between about 8 and about 14 micrometers.
Carbon dioxide is a very strong absorber of thermal infrared energy with wavelengths longer than 12-13 micrometers, which means that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide partially “close” this atmospheric window. In other words, wavelengths of outgoing thermal infrared energy that our atmosphere’s most abundant greenhouse gas—water vapor—would have let escape to space are instead absorbed by carbon dioxide.
The absorption of outgoing thermal infrared by carbon dioxide means that Earth still absorbs incoming solar energy, but an equivalent amount of heat is no longer leaving from the top of the atmosphere. The exact amount of the energy imbalance is very hard to measure, but it appears to be a little over 0.8 watts per square meter.
The best way, (though not the only way), to measure the incoming and out going energy is with satellites above the atmosphere.
Though not the only method used, satellite observations provide the “best estimate” of the Top OF Atmosphere (TOA) radiative imbalance, that confirm the energy imbalance.
Data from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment, (ERBE) and the Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System, (CERES) – The multi $billion satellite systems launched into orbit to specifically study and quantify this phenomenon. Sharpened the figure of 0.8 watts per square meter.
Primarily based on observations from three satellites, NOAA-9 (whose scanner failed in January 1987), NOAA-10 (which collected data up to April 1989) .And the CERES experimental instruments (FM1 and FM2) flown aboard the Terra satellite, launched in December 1999 with data extending to May 2004 (cutoff for this study).
Ongoing satellite research on atmospheric radiative imbalance is through the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) which collates and analyzes satellite radiance measurements, collecting data from the international suite of weather satellites to produce globally merged radiance datasets.
With more than two decades of data, and over a 1,000 papers published, ISCCP highlights include – the first global survey of land surface skin temperatures, and global land surface microwave emissivities based on satellite microwave measurements.
Leading to more exact calculation of surface and top-of-atmosphere radiative flux based on the physical quantities provided by the ISCCP data, including validation of the first results of other different global information sources used in surface radiative flux calculation of the radiative properties of the near-surface atmosphere.
Be afraid, be very afraid
“We should not be subsidizing the destruction of our planet. Fossil fuels are literally cooking our planet, polluting our air and draining our wallets. Why should we continue to reward companies to do that?”
You ask Robert Atack about this.
From my perspective it’s easy. It’s not so much that “people” are consciously choosing to subsidise fossil fuels industry, but that they either do not know or will not give up the present reality for one that has not been articulated so that they feel they aren’t “losing”. (see comment lower down page on winners vs. losers) In a win/lose mindset, there needs to be a “no loss” bridge between one stage and the next if you want people to move forward. In our times, this is usually only reached through crisis removing the option of staying still.
As a matter of education, it is far easier to oppose in principle of asset sales, than locate, read and comprehend thousands of pages and hours of information on free market and neo/classical economics, peak oil or climate change. For much of the population, it would be like asking them to choose between eating some icecream or none, or learning how to complete an advanced calculus exercise. In this instance, you’d have to convince people that calculus was more important to them, personally, than ice cream.
The problem is that as resources are generally finite and the win/lose mindset has been so thoroughly explored, categorised and mapped, propaganda experts are running out of ways to present a deadend idea as limitless. We’ve snookered ourselves. Our whole society is based on an adolescent world view. It started out no worse than anything else, but got snipped, trimmed and reduced to slogans, effectively losing all the important details. Asking someone who has never heard of peakoil to voluntarily give up telephones, cars, LCD tv’s and plastic – cold turkey – isn’t going to work. We trained everyone to think the absurd and now they can’t be reached. No surprise.
Our politicians are only gobbling up the last of the easily reached resources and hoping to die in comfort before the reality sets in. Our “rewards” they hand out are completely fitting our attitude. Don’t believe me? Then log off now, sell you computer and all electronic equipment and your car. Today. No? Then you aren’t all that concerned, are you? In the meantime, they are allowing everyone to avoid wholesale panic and mayhem. Now I’m not saying that there isn’t someone somewhere in NZ who could lead our people forward fairly safely and responsibly, but we haven’t heard from them yet. History would suggest they are a product of a crisis and will likely at present be emersed in a reality we would call one of “losing”. It is not until the reality shifts that their lose becomes a win, for everyone.
For a general example, lets look at someone like… Oskar Schindler. There’s a commonly known name. He was a german businessman that today we would call a complete failure and unrespectably dodgy, untrustworthy and opportunistic. He couldn’t get anything to work during peace time, fell into bankruptcy, the kind of guy our leaders would sneer at and good hard working moms and pops would avoid. If he was alive today, he might be a failed finance company director. Maybe. But once war came along and he saw what was happening to people, something changed and he chose people over profit. After the war, he sank again into “losing”. Clearly what he had was useful, though he was labelled useless, and it was just that the time wasn’t right for his skills. I’m not suggesting we should all model ourselves on Oskar Schindler or continually vote for dodgy pollies. Schindler was who he was and that’s the point. Instead of us being who we are, and when the time comes, coming to maturity, we keep demanding the impossible blameless pure messiah come save us all.
Get realistic about what people are, accept the influence of time on the unknown, and we may find a bridge between here and post peak oil/fossil fuel etc crisis.
‘It certainly gave us a lot of great dinners and wine not to mention weekends of golf tournaments in luxury resorts, and paid for my luxury holiday home in the Bahamas, so a very good deal for all of us guys’ a source close to Capitol Hill told this reporter??’ /sarc
As someone who had an accident fairly recently and found the ACC cover for ambulance, hospital,,operations and (some/not enough) physio invaluable, I have a question about the latest suggestions for ACC by both National and Labour:
What does “pay as you go” mean? Is it the same as user pays?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/7125792/Premiums-may-drop-in-ACC-rethink
Hi Carol The last Labour Government decided that ACC should work to fund future costs of current accidents. At any one time in the coffers should be enough money to pay for all future payouts for accidents that were covered. It used to be beforehand that ACC would only aim to collect in enough money each year to cover payments
It’s a very stupid move, not dissimilar to superannuation being made pay as you go and why it’s a problem now. The fully funded model charges the full cost of accidents each year, any moves to change it will just move big premium hikes into the future. About 40% of the work account levy is the residual claims levy which is still paying off a shortfall from over ten years ago.
The only rationale for pay as you go is that the fully funded model needs large reserves and when interest rates fall the returns from investments tend to fall so you get short-term deficits that the beancounters can panic over. (The outstanding claims liability is calculated from the risk-free rate of return)
We’re nearly fully funded now on the big accounts and once we reach it premiums will drop anyway…. without increasing later.
Agreed DH and half of my comment disappeared … Future funding is really important because otherwise ACC levies will continue to be hiked to the state where it is unsustainable. It also allows the state to maintain a share in capital markets and the local stock exchane
Yup. The big blowout of a few years back was half real & half manufactured, Nats wanted ACC fully funded more quickly so they could start selling it off while they were still in power. It’s an absolute jewel for the asset thieves, on paper it has little value because liabilities exceed assets but in reality it has $16billion or so in cold hard cash that can be looted.
The present issues can be solved simply by redefining ACCs priorities and that has nothing to do with it being fully funded. It would increase ACCs outgoings considerably however, and I suspect that Labour would use most of the funding part of the levies to make ACC more generous. Future generations would end up paying for it.
Thanks, Micky, and the DH, Pete and Freedom for the added insights on this.
No sweat. A lot of the problems at present seem due to them wanting ACC to be fully funded too quickly without raising levies further. Any ACC surplus gets invested and the income from the investments is what pays for future claims on accidents that have already occurred. They seem to be cost-cutting to the bone so they can chuck more cash into the investment account (and get future liabilities down).
They’ve just gone a bit too far with the cost cutting IMO, they can relax it a bit and add another year or two to the fully-funded target which really isn’t far off now anyway. We’re so close now it would be criminal to give it all away, all those extra levies we paid would be for nothing.
That rings alarm bells with me. The money was raised through investing targeted levies. It seems very dodgy to me to apply those levies anywhere other than the provision of ACC services.
you know how NACTs think, $5 in their pocket today is $4.50 you won’t get your undeserving hands on tomorrow, the missing 50c being the obligatory fee for taking your money from you.
Doesn’t it just. ACCs investment income in 2011 was $1.7billion which admittedly was much higher than usual but still shows how much it contributes towards ACCs costs even before it’s fully funded. (total claims & operating costs paid out for the year were $3billion) These bozos want to take that investment cash & spend it elsewhere leaving ACC with a massive cash shortfall to pick up from levies. It’s headbanger stuff, we’re nearly there and now they want to bloody meddle with it again!
This also rings alarm bells with me for the reasons discussed, but also I seem to recall that ACC has been mentioned as a likely big NZ investor in the partial assets share sales, as a justification /”reassurance” for the sales. Presumably, the move to a pay as you go scheme, and/or the grabbing of the current ACC financial assets would prevent or severely curtail this happening.
On the pay as you go issue, the Greens have an interesting question in the House today (sorry lost the number when copying it, but think it is about number 8 or 9) that seems to suggest that they are also proposing pay as you go funding:
KEVIN HAGUE to the Minister for ACC: Will she return ACC to the pay-as-you-go funding model, outlined in the Green Party’s ACC Rehabilitation Plan and emailed to her this morning, and are there any points in the plan she will not consider implementing?
On a related matter, Little is continuing to question the Minister of ACC’s possible involvement in ACC’s decision to go to the police with the next question after Hague’s:
ANDREW LITTLE to the Minister for ACC: On how many occasions, and for what periods of time on each occasion, did she meet with or have discussions with the ACC Chairman or Chief Executive, including about the matter of the mass privacy breach involving Bronwyn Pullar, between 13 March and 19 March when that matter was referred to the Police by way of formal complaint? .
Righties seem to want to make everything a competition. They, must surely want to be amongst the winners. But don’t they realise there are dire consequences in setting up crucial parts of people’s lives to be a competition?
With any competition there are winners and losers – it’s built into the enterprise. With a rugby match the worst that happens that the losing team and their supporters drown there sorrows for a night or so.
With crucial life activities, like education, work and income, the losers are doomed to a life of struggle, lost dreams, and possibly, crime, ill-health and ultimately a shorter life. Are righties so callous that they would doom some children to such a dismal life, through no fault of their own?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/7125781/PM-backs-school-league-tables
I think you are right about winning/losing/competition. In fact, competition is an art and has nothing to do with winning or losing any more than a musical composition wins or loses or a dance wins or loses. It has only recently been reduced to a craft by the passion of economics.
Carol, I wonder why Mr Key is raising League Tables just now especially since the Minister of Education has nothing to say about it?
Of course since Private Schools get a large chunk of State Funding so they will also publish their National Standards Records as well. And it would show that since they started with high socio-economic advantages they would have to prove value added just the same. Oops! Private Schools are exempt.
Hot topic this week has been raising the age of superannuation to 67, something beloved of the Labour party and illustrates very well the vacuity of whateever advice they are getting or giving. Dont the policy wonks working for Labour or their caucus actually understand there is a real world pout there?
A few questions for Labour on Superannuation:
Labour want an extra 2 years work from us, so where are the extra 2 years of jobs coming from? Hint we have huge youth under / unemployment…..and are in a recession with a declining number of real jobs.
Are the older workers just going to take work from the young?
Are we going to pay the dole to the young rather than the pension to the oldies? Zero balance perhaps?
Is anybody at Party Central actually thinking?
The people who think that ‘human resources’,
like natural resources, are to be exploited to the point of destruction and beyond. Seem to be doing most of the Lazy Party thinking.
And the hatred of humanity is everywhere in their policies…
Its not just the poor they despise, no, its everyone!
The Lazy party seems prepared to give employers whatever they want. And in the process tears up the ‘Social Contract’ between labour and employers for a fully funded ACC system. On our side we agreed not to strike, or sue their asses if we are hurt at work.
As ACC becomes more punitive than rehabilitative and the income grows to $1.3 billion, over out goings. Instead of paying out this money to those who it was collected for, the Lazy Party is happy to see employer levies slashed by 25%.
You must wonder what Andrew Little the ex-leader of the EPMU is doing, is he asleep? Have they put something in his cocoa?
ACC Premiums may drop in Labour Party rethink | Stuff.co.nz
Jenny, I cant remember until you mentioned it when somebody last mentioned the original reason we needed ACC. Good comment.
On the subject of Andrew Little etc, these buggers are asleep at the wheel. I have seen Peter Harris (an economist I think) rolled out by Labour at meetings in Wellington. This gent means very well (like Labour) and if the economic paradigm of the last 100 years was to continue he would be worth listening to. It will however not continue as it has for 100 years, ergo he and the rest of Labour will have to change their world views. They wont, so we are going to hit the iceberg with them asleep at the wheel.
Employers may regret getting lower premiums that delivers lesser benefits for those injured in accidents. Workers hurt in the workplace faced with a miserly pay-outs, in self defence, may revert to a “you hurt us, we hurt you” response.
“Are the older workers just going to take work from the young?”
No, that’s the lump of labour fallacy.
Lump of labour fallacy = economists speak for a form of metaphysics whereby labour can be elastic as sin….
In my real world as an employer (yes I pay people for real measurable work) what this “lump” theory means is that my employees will take longer to do the same task (we have stretched it for the sake of the theory by 2 years). So to demonstrate:
45 years (average working life) output =100% efficiency
47 years (45 plus 2 extra) output = 96% efficiency
In short the ridiculous theory in practical terms asks employers like myself to pick up the costs of a 4% shortfall in labour efficiency to enable the employee to work an extra 2 years. Being good benevolent types with no bottom line to manage (so that everybody stays employed and so we can pay taxes so that economists can play) we will of course do this…not.
My reality (as an employer) is if I need 10 people to do a job, I hire 10 people, not 11 people to allow the Labour Party’s stupid theory to operate.
Exactly, In a labour intensive role as you age you productivity decreases. You can counterbalance this with skills learned/experience. However tbh you need to be pretty lucky to be fit enough to keep going in a physical industry past 60. I also over the years have known a fair few guys that really struggle with their bodies past 50. As they have been in the same work year in year out their chances to retrain or move into less physical work are low.
All raising the age does is further disadvantage the very constituents labour claims to support, According to the MSD Maori live on average 7.9 years less than non maori and life expectancy can be as much as 8.8 years lower for a male if you are from a socio economically deprived area.
To me labour should be gunning for means testing and or stopping super to those working full time. I currently know of someone who is earning 70k per year at 67 and has been receiving super, he has paid tax all his life and he feels he deserves it but surly it should be case of no super until you have retired.
As a side issue I constantly hear that the current generation will be the first to have shorter life expectancy than their parents. Won’t this alleviate the issues past the bubble.
The amount of work needed to support a society is reasonably fixed in the short term. In the long term it goes down as productivity increases. What this means is that the Lump of Labour Fallacy is a result of the belief in the Perpetual Growth Myth. The myth that there will always be more work available. If that was true we would never have unemployment.
IMO, the only reason we ever get close to full employment is because we’re over producing.
Isn’t it wonderful how the Prime Minister has become such an expert now on education. He seems to have all the answers to teaching and how the curriculum should be delivered. And he has even discovered a whole lot of apparent problems within the system which would seem to be failing all of our children.
And to think that is without going through any formal teacher training institute. Is there no limit to what this man can achieve?
Watch out operating theatres and hospital wards, you’re next.
Aspiring GPs – you can learn your job at a discussion group at the next National Party conference …
… brings to mind Yosser Hughes from the “Boys from the Blackstuff” and his wonderful line, “Gi’us a job, I can do that …”
What Key is doing is finding a plan from other countries like USA, declaring it as policy, then trying to find a justification for imposing it on NZ kids. It is without research or rationale.
NZ has been famous for its system of developing innovation from grass roots ideas, researched fully, tested and engaged willingly by teachers. National Standards and now League Tables have demolished trust and confidence. To what end?
lol
On Retirement Income.
Sunday, 17 June 2012
9:19 a.m.
The finance industry have been creaming their pants, for a return to the halcyon days, before the tax rebates were removed from superannuation savings. When they got to play with our money for free, and the negative returns and high charges were ignored, because of tax payer subsidies.
Egged on by the neo-liberals who prefer the elderly, the unemployed and the sick to starve in the streets, as an incentive to scare working people into accepting starvation wages, while they continue to get 17% increases in wealth, the finance industry is dreaming of getting more of their sticky hands on our wealth, with private super funds.
Since the 70’s they have been constant in the meme that we cannot afford super. A meme that has been driven entirely by the self interest of those, who are too wealthy to need super and too mean to pay taxes, and a greedy finance industry.
Unfortunately, it is true, that if you repeat bullshit often enough, even those who should know better come to believe it.
We cannot afford super is code for, “we should leave our elderly to beg on the streets”. So that wealthy people can pay less tax and the finance industry can again lose our savings for us.
In fact the idea that State super is unaffordable is crap from the same people that cry TINA and reckon that all social insurance is unaffordable.
If they win with super, they will just start on other social wages.
In reality it is much more affordable than the finance company bailouts, which would be necessary with private super.
.
http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2012/06/what-superannuation-crisis.html
“So, in 2050, we’re projected to be paying only 1% of GDP more in superannuation than we were paying in 1990. Quelle horreur! This is not a difference to be terrified of, and it is easily manageable with a modest increase in taxation, either now or in the future (though that perhaps is exactly what those pushing for change are frightened of: higher taxes)”.
Intergenerational theft is another piece of oft repeated stupidity.
http://kjt-kt.blogspot.co.nz/2011/06/on-retirement-pensions-and-age-of.html
“Do we really want to return to the days when most elderly people were totally impoverished when their working lives ended”.
Super has always been paid for by current production. However you finingle it financially, whether through current taxation or savings, it still comes from the production of the current generation.
If we want to keep super affordable we should tax the current generation to invest in a sustainable future. Invest in energy, housing, education and other infrastructure so that we can keep all our people. Not in financial ponzi schemes which will fall over in the next GFC.
http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz/
“”Because our kids can’t afford to buy houses, we bought houses for them to live in using the equity from our house, and now all our money is tied up in mortgages. At the same time, we’re supporting our parents in their old age.
That’s how life is and always has been, for most of us. Our parents worked to give us a decent start in life, and we worked hard so our kids could have a fair go. We’re looking after our parents in their old age. We hope we’ll be looked after in our old age.
What about this is “intergenerational theft”?””
But. We can avoid the whole concept of retirement, intergenerational fairness and all the other sticking points by accepting that everyone in our society is entitled to a liveable share in the society they and their ancestors have built up.
Whether you call it a Universal income, Guaranteed minimum income (GMI) or a personal shareholder payment it is the same thing.
Replace all welfare, social insurance and pensions with a GMI.
We also get to solve many other problems such as child poverty, the unfairness of a present welfare system, and making our society more sustainable, at the same time.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/235840-A-Town-Without-Poverty-Canada-s-Guaranteed-Income-Experiment
“”Initially, the Mincome program was conceived as a labour market experiment. The government wanted to know what would happen if everybody in town received a guaranteed income, and specifically, they wanted to know whether people would still work.
It turns out they did.
Only two segments of Dauphin’s labour force worked less as a result of Mincome – new mothers and teenagers. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies. And teenagers worked less because they weren’t under as much pressure to support their families.
The end result was that they spent more time at school and more teenagers graduated. Those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did””.
http://thestandard.org.nz/key-on-the-nation/comment-page-1/#comment-483385 The best way to deal with any problem is to eliminate it at root. The best way to deal with ‘retirement’ as a problem is to eliminate the entire concept. No I’m not being extreme.
The simple answer is a Universal Income””
http://kjt-kt.blogspot.co.nz/2011/06/on-retirement-pensions-and-age-of.html
“”In fact super has been so effective in removing poverty amongst the elderly it should be extended to everyone in the form of a guaranteed minimum income. There is no excuse for having people with inadequate food and housing in a country which is capable of supplying an excess of both internally””.
Thank God for that KJT, your analysis and links coincide with mine. The power of memes (TINA, we cant afford super etc) almost always points to some bugger wanting to lay their grubby mitts on the cash. You would think Labour might know better having had Roger in their midst…nothing has changed.
This morning the Dompost carried this article by Boris Johnson. Hard to disagree with Johnson.
Dear old Boris who went to university with Cameron, and who was in the Bullingdon Club wrote that!!!!!! There is hope yet for him (or perhaps he is being hopelessly romantic).
Wow, good old Boris. Sort of crosses political divides – eh?
The only thing I really disagreed with there was the end bit about returning competitiveness. What I think is more likely is that Greek will drop from the Euro, ban international trade to a fairly great degree and start rebuilding it’s own capability, it’s own ability to look after it’s own people.
Pretty much the same as what we should be doing actually.
What gives a forty-something, childless, confirmed bachelor the idea he’s a suitable arbiter of who should have their kids taken off them? http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/06/a_job_for_cyf.html
Maybe if he had children rather than being a man-child himself he’d understand just how ignorant such calls are.
And if he had children and made the same comment/observation (as many people who have had children in NZ would), what is your response then?
That he was just another ignorant Kiwi. What’s your point?
Kid on her lap, two more in the back and driving with twice the alcohol limit. Certainly something needs to be done but I think taking the kids would be going too far.
I love how some of the commentators assume that the woman is Maori almost as much as I love Farrar’s bachelor status being confirmed by his revolting looks and personality.
Some workers have a hard time these days with autocratic employers who order them around in various harrassing ways. The Sky City casino has a rule that staff can’t have personal objects at their work, including books. So one long time staff member a Ms Parata I think, a long term employee is being given a hard time over the fact that she had a bible with her when she was in the toilets. Someone saw this and reported her. What a lovely working environment, with an unreasonable employer and snitching work ‘mates’.
. So one long time staff member a Ms Parata I think, a long term employee is being given a hard time over the fact that she had a bible with her when she was in the toilets.
It’s a bit more than being ‘given a hard time!’ If she had been carrying ‘Our Bodies Ourselves’ would you dismiss the trouble she faces so lightly? Not a chance…
She is in danger of losing her job… and the Unite union is backing her.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/7127749/Casino-worker-sorry-over-Bible
If you look at the size of the Bibel, you’ll see that she was hardly ‘proselytising’, which is probably what you had assumed.
It’s a workers’ rights issue – and I am very un-amused about how you treat it, as a piece of trivia because the idea of the Bible upsets your prejudices!
How do you read into that post that anything is being dismissed lightly?
I expect had Mrs Parata been carrying Our Bodies, Ourselves she would have been treated no differently (“The Sky City casino has a rule that staff can’t have personal objects at their work, including books”), though I think SkyCity is overreacting in enforcing that rule by threatening her employment.
Nonetheless your knee-jerk martyr complex whenever you feel Christianity is being marginalised is good entertainment value, Vicky. Thankfully not all Christians feel so self-righteous about their faith. (Oh no! It’s Diocletian and the lions all over again!) Carry on.
Oh aren’t we a bitter little man? There, there… I won’t let the evil Christians get you, it’s going to be all right…
SkyCity might not treat her any differently, but Prism might have! Standardistas normally do give a feck about workers’ rights, but not it seems, in this case.
Yes, because the line “What a lovely working environment, with an unreasonable employer and snitching work ‘mates’.” demonstrates that Prism saw no problem with skycity’s abuse of employees’ rights whatsoever. /sarc
I haven’t a problem with Christians, Vicky. At ease, Christian soldier! Secular humanism is very tolerant. If you believe Jesus wants you for a sunbeam, that’s fine by me. Christianity has survived 2000 years – I don’t think you need to make it all about you 🙂
Prism’s sarcasm was obvious to all but the obtuse.
Things are happening to Fairfax papers in Australia which are going on line. How will we fare if the newspapers go on line completely? How will we check stories, facts, and have to pay and how much?
I like to get copies of some things I think of great significance. Will I be able to copy without paying? Will there be on the spot payment requiring cards etc or will there be a monthly charge with so many hits allowed plus copying?
The USA I thought I heard on radio this morning is almost paperlesss. And where is the enjoyment of the weekend paper if you are forced to sit down in front of a screen. What about the crosswords? The weekend papers have been so weighty that they seem prime targets to save the world’s forests and the fuel for transporting them, but people like them.
We actually need a government funded new service as it’s obvious that we can no longer leave it to the private sector to get the unbiased news to us.
On a lighter note on a drab wet Tuesday, love this photo of Key on TV3 News website this morning – the real Key?
http://www.3news.co.nz/Greens-dont-know-about-economics—Key/tabid/1607/articleID/258223/Default.aspx
(Tried to copy just the photo but beyond my abilities!)
Could make a good one for a Caption Contest some time.
Here deuto.
A couple of links to help with html, tags etc. (Without the gobbledy-geek…)
http://www.ironspider.ca/index.htm
http://www.ironspider.ca/format_text/hyperlinks.htm
just commented on league tables at schools on the other thread but the thing is lower decile schools are usually those with Maori and Islander students or other lower socio economic groups.
It suits the government to encourage this low level racism so that the wannabees and white trash have something to gripe about.
Its almost as if poverty has become institutionalised in NZ to provide a whipping boy for every election.
I dont want to beleive that but it is becoming clearer and clearer.
Thanks, joe90 – had a quick look and definitely good, simple tutorials at my (low) level of understanding and comprehension! Have saved to get into in more detail later.
Oops, this should have been a relpy to 11.1 but wouldn’t let me delete.
Heh, my Mum was in her late sixties when she took up with a PC and when she died a couple of years ago she was a member of the local UBUNTU geek group..
I wondered about John Key’s insistence to keep the super age at 65 and thought I’d do some research into the Cullen fund.
Guess what! It was initiated in 2001 and started investing in 2003. So who was advising Cullen and who was investing?
Turns out there were appointed Guardians and one of them was a Kiwi returning home fresh from an oversees banking career. Were did he work?
New Zealand investment bank, Fay Richwhite.
Bank of Edmond the Rothschild
Merrill Lynch which he left in the late 90s to go work for WestLB a banking group as the managing director of the investment banking division.
This means he was in London at the same time as John Key who ran the Bonds and Derivatives department (Financial investments) and he must have either worked for him or have known him!
His specialty?
He an investor with more than a decade of investment banking experience within global financial institutions.
His name? Ira Bing
I bet ya the Cullen fund is so full of crap John Key doesn’t want any attention on that fund and he wants to be out of dodge before it collapses into the pile of shit it really is and that is why he wants to leave it to the next government. That way they can blame Cullen and the next labour government for the fact that there is no money for pensions.
Stay tuned for more
A well made point, I am going to be naughty here and add something without providing a link, as part of the ‘discussion’ over the affordability of the Pension the Financial Services Association?, those who represent the providers of Superannuation Fund Management ‘trotted’ out a wish list,
Among this the wish for contributions to the individuals Super Funds to be progressively raised with the obvious, but unspoken, intention as seen by the Financial Services Association that at some point in the future the individual would fully fund their own retirement,
More to the point of what you have commented above is that these same people also called for, and this was not widely reported, a Government guarantee covering all the Superannuation funds managed by these people,
I made the comment on here a week or so ago that from the crude math i am capable of the recent ructions of the financial and international share-markets the contributors to these Managed Superannuation Funds will all want to be at the front of the ‘bulge’ as far as the baby-boomer retirement cohort is concerned because all of such schemes are looking from here more and more like a grand Ponzi scheme,
An Association of those who are tasked with managing such schemes, should i have used the word scam, calling for a Government guarantee over the scheme this early in the piece would tend to suggest that my crude math may be relatively close to their actual knowledge of the efficacy or other of such managed Superannuation Funds…
No link, what a shame!
Found it: It was the Financial Services Council and they want crown guarantees which means us the tax payers of course http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10813602
Yeah tah for that,my bad for not taking the time to dig out a suitable link…
So this Ira Bing was in London at the same time as John Key. So were nearly 8 million other people. Back then Merill Lynch had worldwide about 15,100 financial advisers (Wiki) and the London office, being centre for all ML’s European operations is huge. Sure they may have known each other. But so what? Those are dangerously big leaps to make just to tarnish the reputation of a man who hasn’t been involved with the very successful Cullen Fund since 2005.
I don’t know why you’ve mentioned the Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild in bold, it’s one of the world’s best run private banks in the world and there’s no connection to KeyI can see (unless you’ve got some bee in your bonnet about Bing, Key and the Rothschilds being Jewish or something – I sincerely hope not). Same for FayRichwhite, as Key never worked for them. Why mention them at all – it’s safe to assume that all investment bankers are wankers, but that’s a complete different conspiracy all together.
The Cullen Fund began investing in 2003, and had approximately 19.2 billion dollars in assets at 31 May 2011. Anything wrong with it is National’s fault when they stopped putting money into it in 2009. And the only people who believe it’s a Ponzi scheme are idiots like FailOil – who, on a more amusing note, turns out to have been having an extramarital affair with former Michael Laws P-smoking prostitute mistress Jacqueline Sperling – so he doesn’t exactly have the best judgment in the world (nor does she).
So no, Merill Lynch did not set up the Cullen Fund.
John Key ran the Bonds and derivatives department for Merrill Lynch from 1995 until March 2001. He decided who to hire and who to fire. His department developed the instruments now collapsing the entire global financial world. He knew they were dangerous. In fact he says so in this video. Still we now have $112 billion in off the book derivatives. That is 6 times the amount in the Cullen fund.
The Rothschild bank is indeed a privately run bank and those chosen to work at it are carefully vetted for future purposes.
Fay Richwhite is an insider and also someone who vets his people to do his bidding. That is how he got rich.
John Key according to his unauthorised biography was a specialist in selling crap to Sovereign Wealth funds (such as the Cullen fund) and pension funds.
Ira Bing being a Kiwi, Merrill Lynch wealth manager and a pension fund investment specialist and brought back from London to take place on the board for the Cullen fund is tying the cat to the bacon as they say in Holland.
Added to that I just found a press release from NZ National from 2000 in which they declare Cullen nuts for wanting to invest billions in dangerous future liabilities (i.e. Derivatives) even though their soon to be dear leader made $ 50 million with those same dangerous crappy investments.
I don’t tarnish anybodies reputation, banksters are very good at doing that all by themselves. I merely point out that it seems the old boys network is at it again and I would dearly like to ask Ira and John Key some questions. By the time Merrill Lynch collapsed they had an exposure of $ 75 trillion in Derivatives.
They must have sold them to someone. What better to have a Merrill lynch boy on the board of the same kind of pension funds they loved to sell their crap too or do you think banks don’t organise themselves that way.
So yes, I think that it is very feasible that Merrill Lynch was involved in stacking the Cullen fund with crap and as to the value of the fund we only have the word of our government for that now do we?
And that is run by the same scumbag who made $ 50 million of this crap so he’s not going to fess up is he?
“Extensive debate and questioning of Dr Michael Cullen has revealed that his proposed Super Fund will soak up unknown billions to fund an unknown share of future super liabilities through unknown investments as part of a ‘diversified’ portfolio.” FUTURE SUPER LIABILITIES MEAN FUTURE SUPERANNUATION LIABILITIES i.e SUPERANNUATION PAYMENTS, not derivatives!!!
So what you’re saying is that John Key acted in the near exact same manner as Bridgecorp boss Rod Petricevich, amongst many others. And in the same manner as a builder of thousands of homes that now leak to buggery.
That the financial things John Key created and made his millions from are the very same things wreaking havoc around the globe right now today.
What does he have to say in answer to that? Has he ever explained himself?
Whaleoil may be an idiot but capitalism itself is a Ponzi Scheme and the Cullen Fund is modelled on the same supposition.
Moaning about capitalism isn’t going to do anyone any good, and there’s nothing wrong with Neo-Keynesian capitalism if public institutions and public welfare are protected. None of the alternatives seem to appeal.
I take it you failed to note the collapsing of Keynesian capitalism in the 1960s through the 1980s. The collapse that brought about the re-introduction of classical economics (neo-classical/neo-liberal) which, of course, resulted in the GFC.
Capitalism doesn’t work, never has done and never will do and if that’s not pointed out then we will never get a change which brings about the saying Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We keep repeating it because we keep failing to learn
Bullshit. Let’s look at Marx, shall we. Even in his own lifetime his own follower Ferdinand Laselle was telling him classical Marxism was bullshit because they actually had to lie to the workers to get them to support itin the first place. Anything that obviously assumes the eventuality of single party governance is anti-democratic, anti-human dignity and bullshit. Karl Popper pointed out that the untestable assumption that Marxism was inevitable made it just as much a religious cult as free market monetarism – and Laselle again pointed out it if Marxism it was the natural destination, capitalism wouldn’t have developed to the point it has. Capital is so much more than simply economic value. I’m sorry human beings aren’t the selfless angels you seem to want them to be, but that’s just how it is. Good luck with that.
I don’t recall ever promoting Marxism or a one party state. Being an anarchist I support democracy with an open book administration.
Humans are a result of their environment: Make the environment selfish and greedy and you get selfish and greedy people. Change it to one of fairness and community spirit and you’ll get selfless people for the most part. The psychopaths will still be psychopathic though and they’re the ones that promote capitalism and are usually the ones that end up making the rules for capitalism.
Fair enough, but I think self interest is deeper than that, It’s how we survived as a species after all. the problem with Anarchism is that it’s nice in theory, but if you get invaded and your community can’t agree and coordinate on a response, you’re pretty much screwed. Ayn Rand’s Objectivism is basically Anarchism without the assumed empathy or sense of community.
Ira Bing, Key, Rothchilds , are all Jewish, and they are all bankers….and its the banking system which is at the core of the problems being faced by the majority of the world.
Almost any and every problem we face is a result of the banking system as it has become, and you can easily put a case for how it was designed to be.
Key has played in an integral part on its design, and he is fully aware of why/what/how/who. His mates like Robert Rubin (also jewish), among others sit at the very top of the banking ponzi, so people trying to defend Key as having “been out of the game, or done nothing wrong” is simply egos of stupid, uninformed people blinding them….he is as crooked as they come!
So stop being a drama queen pop and trying to accuse TravellerEv of some sort of race based slant in her comments.
Ev is a racist, Muzza. She’s a birther, remember? Your comment equating bankers with Judaism hardly adds to her defence.
Voice, I am not aware of Ev being rasc*st, and I certainly do not equate being a “birther” to be so either. I would like to think your thought process are a littler further advanced than that, perhaps not.
Agreed that it should be linked to Zionism, as opposed to any official religion, or race based state, which in case you dont know is what Israel is
Does anyone who questions Barrys birth status become a rasc*st in your eyes?
Look forward to hearing your explanation on why you feel Ev is rasc*st though, and what you believe rasc*sm to be…
I just made you aware of it, muzza. Sad to see you adopt a bit of it yourself (‘Barry’). Birthers are racist. Their whole birth certificate fantasy is based around their hatred of African-Americans, but if you’re cool with it, well, shame on you.
Just to remind you, Ev is a birther, a 911 truth denier and a climate change denialist. It’s not much of a stretch to suspect her obsession with Jewish financiers is anti-Semitic, given her reactionary views on those other matters.
“Birthers are racist. Their whole birth certificate fantasy is based around their hatred of African-Americans, but if you’re cool with it, well, shame on you.”
–Are they, you know that for sure on all counts, you can speak for ANYONE who questions that particular issue, has hatred towards African Americans – Why am I not surprised you would think in such a narow band! Do not try to push illiterate views on the world in my direction, because questioning issues which demand questioning, does not automatically equal rascist!
“Just to remind you, Ev is a birther, a 911 truth denier and a climate change denialist. It’s not much of a stretch to suspect her obsession with Jewish financiers is anti-Semitic, given her reactionary views on those other matters.”
–So these all equal racism then to you do they, bit of s stretch, bro you need to take a real good look at yourself, and how views such as yours make the world a much worse place to be!
Because you do not agree with her, or that she spends time researching and trying to understand what are some very complex issues, which regarldless of what small minds might think, should be on the table in order to have a broad debate. Taking any point of view off the table by calling it rascist, or any other label, is to encourage and endorse the suffering, and real rasicm being rammed onto humanity by those who Ev researches, and comments on.
You cant/wont/dont make the link, or disagree with her, that is your right, but to draw a long bow and assume rascim of Ev, is weak minded!
I’ve explained my position pretty clearly, muzza. Birthers are the KKK with keyboards. It’s not my problem if you don’t get it. It’s a shame, though, because you’re usually pretty on to it.
Anyhoo, here’s a song to cheer you up.
Wow, Birther, Climate denier and 911 truth denier?
And KKK with keys! Talk about calling everything a nail if all you have is a hammer.
For those of you new to this blog here are a few pointers as to who I really am.
I live on a small plot of land where I try to live as sustainable as I can in order to stay within my carbon footprint. I am building a food forest according to permaculture principles but I don’t believe paying carbon tax to Al Gore and his oil family is going to solve the very serious environmental issues we face.
Added to that I would like to see what happens if the hundreds of global weather modification programs would stop before I conclude that Al Gore’s money making scam is the solution.
I believe that every citizens has to obey the laws of the land and there are very real problems with the legitimacy of Barack Obama. I think that the colour of the skin of a person has nothing to with acting within the law. If there were doubts about a white candidate I would want the same thoroughness.
I believe that Obama like his predecessor George Bush is a war criminal and that he has intensified the illegal wars of aggression. That is not racist, those are the facts.
The events of 9/11 are deeply troubling. Never before or after have steel framed buildings collapsed due to carbon fires.
All of them collapsed at free fall speed see here the collapse of WTC 7 which was announced 20 minutes before it happened by the BBC and which collapsed in 6.5 seconds.
All three of Newton’s laws of motion and the law of Gravitation were broken multiple times on that day and it is therefore that I support a new and independent investigation into the events of that day.
With regards of to accusation of anti-Semitism the following.
I’m an equal opportunity anti Abrahamic religionist. I think all three religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam are destructive, male dominated control mechanisms and would love to see the end of all of them.
Do I think there is a Jewish fiendish complot to control the planet?
Give me a break! Here again I’m an equal opportunity kind of person. There is plenty of evil in all walks of live and the fact that all three banksters I mentioned were Jewish was news to me as I did not know Ira Bing was Jewish.
I pointed simply at all the banks Mr Bing has worked for and never entertained the “Jewish” angle, that was done by TRP.
And while the idea that only one particular group could be evil enough to conspire against all of us normal and nice people might be attractive to some I would like to point out that while many bankers might be of Jewish descent there are many more who aren’t.
So calm down TRP and put your slinging macho dick back in your pants and while you take a walk to get your overheated thoughts in order you might want to contemplate why it is I so get under your skin. What is it that makes you feel so defensive and angry. Eh?
Thanks for the explanation, Ev. I agree with you about the 3 religions, though I’d extend it to all religions. None have much going for them, though Buddhism seems the least harmful.
Whether you like it or not, the Birthers are racist. That’s what it’s about. Hatred and bigotry. It was not me who mentioned Ira Bing’s religion. I did not contribute to that part of the conversation and had not previously heard of the gentleman. Muzza it was, I believe, who made the link between Judaism and Bankers in this thread.
You remain a climate change denier, a birther and a truther. All 3 positions are right wing. One is fundamentally racist, the others are just mad. It’s not a great leap to think that your opposition to bankers could be anti-semitic, but I’m happy to accept your assurance that you are not. I’ve been accused of that myself, due to my opposition to Zionism, which some people see as anti-Israeli/anti-Jewish, when it is really anti-racist.
Anyhoo, cheers, and thanks for being so positive about my dick. I’m glad it gives you as much pleasure as it’s given me!
who read this morning this mornings rag with Rod Fyfe going on about how the share price isn’t right to sell Air New Zealand.
Can somebody tell me how many times Air New Zealand has been sold and how many times the government has had to buy it back to stop it being run into the gorund by so called enreepreenoors.
larffffs.
.
If you don’t mind, I have a general question for The Standard’s “hive mind” to consider:
Why would they? The number of comments adds to your clicks in the race to the top.
A good controversial comment with a nice discussion and a bit of trolling for good measure is a bonus.
LOL
Purgatory for using the word trolling?
[lprent: troll. Was being over-used with meaningless discussions about who was or was not. ]
Hello Purgatory? Why?
.
Fair nuff . . . just asking.
John Key extends another US$1B credit line to the IMF
Yes, seriously.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10814024
RadioNZ National news also ran the story in its bulletin at 2.00, attributing the borrowing of a further 1.3 billion dollars by this National Government to the Member from Dipton Bill English’s wish to help save the world economy,
From f**cking up big-time over His Government’s promise to have the Government revenue in surplus by 2014/2015, to not being able to see the 1 billion dollar hole in the Governments revenue from taxation, or, perhaps knowing full well the extent of the damage National’s ‘tax changes’ would do to the economy and the Government’s accounts English has FAILED abysmally in both basic numerology and as Minister of Finance,
Personally i don’t know whether upon hearing the news that the Dullard from Dipton wants to help save the World’s economy if we all should be (a) Terrified, (b) emotionally tearful, or (c), fall about the place busting our guts with gales of mad laughter….
English won’t borrow to invest in the Cullen Fund, but will borrow to invest in Greece and Spain.
The irony.
It gets worse, RadioNZ National news at 3.00 had our Prime Minister, Slippery, re-iterating His little wish to provide the buyers of the assets Slippery and Co are stealing and selling a ‘loyalty scheme’ for those who buy shares in the stolen assets and hang onto them for a couple of years,
What else can any of us say but ”what the f**k”, those who will buy the stolen goods, the 10-15% who earn and have the most in our society will have National then turn around and give back to them 15% of the sale price,
The rest of the cash from the asset sales i assume will be squandered on Roads of No Significance by the Slippery one and the Dullard from Dipton,
I think that after the education fiasco of last week and in the face of Nationals own internal polling that they are looking at announcing such things in an effort to gain a bit of a dead cat bounce in support from a public that is fast losing the ability to see Key and English as anything other than a couple of Slippery Shysters hell-bent on ransacking the place for anything of value while they still have the chance,
Perhaps Nationals internal polling is actually way worse than even the support i now credit them with, 43%, that’s from the top of the margin of error tho, so if the bottom end of the margin is anywhere near the bone its going to be one hell of a long bye bye until 2014…
and yet today in the House a half hour earlier, they were [unable] to provide any detail on how this loyalty Scheme would work or what it would cost ?
Yep CV, complete and utter total cow shit.
But I think the most important note to note about this is that you know your bank is in trouble when it comes to the poorest family on the block for a bailout for its bailouts. Kinda signals that end-times are nigh dontcha think?
I do.
blog.labour.org.nz/2012/06/19/blind-belief-in-privatisation-fails-taxpayers-again/
In it’s effort to save $2m the government spent $3.5m…
These NACTs are such good economic managers…NOT!
FYI
Let the screaming begin! A prize to the first man to say this guy’s in the pay of Big Oil/Big Tobacco/The Vatican… 😀 😀 😀
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9338939/Global-warming-second-thoughts-of-an-environmentalist.html
Nope. Just wrong:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/fritz-vahrenholt-duped-on-climate-change.html
Big Oil, as it happens.
What a relief, Mr Varenholt informs us we don’t have to be concerned about climate change after all.
But Mr Varenholt provides no links, nor references, or citations, or facts, to back up his opinion.
What a shame, such good news too
Gee thanks for that Jenny. A load off my mind. If Mr Varenholt says so then it must be right.
To think we’ve been gnashing our teeth and wailing for nothing.
Btw, who the hell is Mr. Varenholt? 🙂
Desmogblog un-picks Mr Vahrenholt.
Another gone from the ACC board:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Sixth-ACC-casualty-as-board-member-leaves/tabid/1607/articleID/258308/Default.aspx
Yep, when the politics causes the function of a public service to deteriorate the best people leave that service. National don’t understand that and, of course, they also have their own cronies to put in place.
Says volumes, that! I can’t fail to see that many men (a frighteningly large number, perhaps most) do their thinking with their little heads.) Thanks for confirming you’re one of them! 😀
Oh, and you’re another American? Or just in love with American idiom… (anyhoo)…