With the widening gap in the polls between Clinton and Trump growing fast, the Republicans can now think about losing the 30 seats that would lose them Congress as well:
I think Brexit won’t actually happen, the polls are starting to swing back to Remain (since global markets are getting jittery).
Demographic polling shows that there is a distinct difference in preferences between the young and the old, with the young preferring to remain. This increases the chances that the polls being reported are wrong, since they have to have a Likely Voter model to weight the results, if this under-estimates the eventual share of young voters, then Remain will likely end up several points higher than the polls have been showing.
Since recent polling in the UK for the election and the Scottish independence vote have been very poor, I don’t think we should take the polls as-read (and my feeling is that Remain is under-sampled).
It will be interesting to see how this pans out Lanthanide. Polling has shown young people in Britain are firmly for Remain. But how many will actually vote? At my work place in Queenstown we’ve got lots of young Britons on working holidays and while they’re all, at least, tending towards Remain hardly any of them would consider entering a polling booth for any reason.
The ‘Faster Paster’ screams over Mangere Bridge at 239 kph……..a sway of coiffed bleached hair, an outlandishly extended eyelash……..concealing the obscenity of Te Puea Marae to her left.
is this a timid approach by a NZ Herald Stenographer trying to appeal to our current National Party led government that excels in doing nothing ? Oh well…….too little too late.
Oh, if there’s doubt as to what the facts really are, the solution is easy: the benefit of the doubt doesn’t go to the proven liar with a history of leaking personal details.
I have to disagree with you on this; in the court of justice you’re innocent till proven guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, and a jury won’t be allowed to know of the accused’s (criminal) history till after the trial.
Don’t you think these standards are also suitable and appropriate for ‘trials in public’?
We’re not sentencing people to prison. Screw those jerks.
Unless the media people say they got this information from someone else entirely, it’s perfectly fair to work on the assumption that bennett has, yet again, treated her position with incompetence and contempt and used her privileged position to launch patty political smears, or allowd her office to do so.
So, basically, if I wasn’t anti-national I’d ignore the fact that Bennett has history of releasing personal information, I’d ignore the coincidental nature of the information getting out just after she met with the guy, and I’d throw my hands in the air and say “gee willakers, I’m honour-bound to give equal weight to the facts and her denials, I guess we will never know the truth so I will pretend this never happened”?
Yeah, nah. There is a possibility that she or her office didn’t leak it, that it’s all a setup. But I’d need to hear that from a third party to believe it. That’s not unfair, or bullying, or whatever. That’s a liar reaping the credibility that they sow.
Well this, at the start of the article, is pretty damning:
“It’s a cold Government that pays lip service to refugees, vetoes parents having more time with their children and leaks personal details of a man trying to help with Auckland’s homeless crisis. But this one did. And all in the space of a week.”
The “run of surpluses” Double-Dipton has supposedly achieved are now in some doubt since the last report on government finances a couple of weeks ago showed a billion going missing.
It is only a matter of time before a mega killer heatwave strikes Australia, seeing thousands of Australians fleeing across the Tasman in fear of their lives.
A single heatwave is not going to send Australians to New Zealand to live permanently. I doubt if it would even send very many here to ‘ride it out’ – perhaps if it lasted a week or more in some cities.
So Andrew Little acknowledges that he lied about John Shewan. He releases his apology two hours before the test match on a Saturday hoping for minimal coverage.Too bad he was unable to man up and apologise to the Hagamans. Still best not to have to fight two defamation cases at the same time. Problem is that given how likely he is to speak without fully engaging his brain I wonder how many more defamations cases he will cause.
[Your next comment had better be proof of your assertion that Little has acknowledged that he lied or an apology to Little for making a false statement or you’re leaving us for an extended period. TRP]
Lol form for lieing, your kidding right?, I forgot mother Teressa was John Keys mum, and he is the only person on the planet God asks forgiveness from.
BTW, i’m trying to help you and Fisi out here, but it would be nicer if the two of you at least tried to hold a sensible conversation about things occasionally, instead of popping in with your wild exagerations at times.
Or do you work for National and have no interest in listening only dictating how it should be?
… today, in a short statement, Mr Little admitted that he was wrong.
“In April, I made statements concerning advice provided to the Bahamas government by John Shewan, the person appointed to review the disclosure rule concerning foreign trusts in New Zealand. Those statements were based on a report in a Bahamas newspaper,” he said.
“After meeting with Mr Shewan, I accept his explanation that while he advised the Bahamas government on tax matters he did not advise them on how to maintain their tax haven status.”
Relying on the accuracy of an off-ashore newspaper is always a big risk. Little made a mistake and has apologised. That is the mark of a person with integrity – unlike the present incumbent PM and his mob of sycophants like fisiani and BM.
[Fisiani has made a very specific claim. It’s up to him to prove it or apologise or he’s gone. If you’re that keen on not commenting here, you could simply not comment. But any further abuse and your wish will be granted. Which would be a shame, because when you’re not ranting, you often make sense. TRP]
It is you and fisiani doing the twisting Richardrawshark.
You both seem to have trouble with Honest-Andrew’s approach. When he makes an honest mistake, having relied on newspaper reports that turn out to be inaccurate, he simply admits it, meets the person in question and apologizes.
Now if we had a PM who did this he would have more respect across the spectrum. Instead we have a PM who lies often and never admits it.
Wrong BG, I don’t agree with Fisi saying he lied, in fact if you read my statements and posts not once do I say Andrew lied.
I’m not getting drawn into that.
I will defend someones right, no matter how much I detest there political point of view, to have that point of view. As much as I would if it was taken from me.
Do I need a lawyer to read my posts before printing to check that in no way possible can it be used to promote a point of view different to the context it was made in?
I see your point TRP, I had thought you were saying to Fisi that Andrew had no made ANY post at all when he did and to prove the post by linking it. I stepped in as I had also read the post on the Herald and linked it..
I think the truth is you knew there was a post but Andrew had said he was wrong where fisi said he made public apology for lieing.
My total bad.
Sorry guys my appologies, I should not post early till me tablets kick in.
Doesn’t change my opinion on the often used sledgehammer though.
“Labour leader Andrew Little has admitted he was wrong when he said two months ago that John Shewan advised the Bahamas government on how to maintain the islands’ tax haven status.”
Frankly he lied TRP what do you call saying something that is factually incorrect. Is wrong , is not the truth.
Frankly he lied TRP what do you call saying something that is factually incorrect. Is wrong , is not the truth.
these things are also called lies.
Wrong. A lie is when you purposefully misrepresent the facts while knowing the truth. Andrew Little didn’t do that. He represented the data that he had. The data turned out to be wrong.
In fact, if we used your logic, you would actually be lying in this entire thread.
-Mr Little said statements he made in April were based on a report in a Bahamas newspaper.
weak very weak from little and his strategy team, and using a newspaper report “JHC”, wouldn’t have been an opposition paper there would it? Regardless, newspaper reports any reports need facts checking, you and all involved in the media and politics know that DTB.
If he’s not guilty of deliberately lieing, then he shows a lack of professionalism for not checking his attack would hold up under scrutiny and not backfire on him, which seems to be bloody common from all Politicians these days..
Seems the authenticity of reports, is less important, than it’s usefulness to your political message!
I agree. He didn’t lie. But he made a serious allegation based on a purported single report in a Bahamas newspaper. Which he has not cited. So we cannot even check what that newspaper reported or the weight a reasonable person would attach to such a report.
So no he didn’t lie. But neither was it a mistake. It was a defamatory statement based on a willful disregard of the evidence required to support such a statement.
The threats to me are not tolerable unless deserved, people will get excited, this is a political forum, here we have a left blog with guest, some of them we have had here a long time like BM Fisi etc. We all know what they are like.
Last two days the ban threats and moderation has gone overboard. You can take that critisim on or threaten me again. Up to you.
But one more and I am gone. I just don’t enjoy people who want freedom of speech but deny it to others for weak things like their enjoyment when we do something wrong. fairs, fair.
I also posted the link, (wrong, lied), I’ve seen worse exagerations here over what some of the Nats have said being twisted.
Take it on Mods, just calm down a touch or find other ways you can keep a semblance of order without using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
“Goodbye TRP, enjoy the Standard.” Richardrawshark @ 11.41am.
I thought you had already gone. IMO you suggesting a couple of days back that a couple of people here ‘end it’ because they didn’t agree with your point of view, should have had you permanently banned. You are the epitome of why The Standard can be a very toxic place to be in.
Thanks for reinforcing my comment with more abuse GS. Typical weak comeback. Has the comment been deleted? Can’t be bothered looking, but I suspect it’s still there.
FYI, for all its faults, WO moderation is strict and simply telling someone to FO would be met with a temp ban and a warning. Personal attacks and abuse used to be common, but for the last couple of years it has been pretty strict becuase so many people read the blog (it hurts I know) and they lifted their game. You might not like Slater, or the politics on the site, but it’s a whole lot more savory than here, with a number of regular female posters.
I’m amazed how anyone that posts a differing view here is met with abuse, called a RWNJ, or commonly met with the ‘faux concern’ response. It’s not called an echo chamber for nothing.
Slater’s numbers look like they’ve bottomed out completely since Dirty Politics. And he’s relying almost completely on those horrid advertisements, too – the site’s littered with them. No doubt a sign he’s lost a ton of regular advertising support. An apt fate for the kind of place he runs.
No I didn’t, we already discussed and ended that conversation Ben.
Depends on how you infer something as a dig or as literal. trying to say I was asking people to kill themselves literally..having a face to face with you would be difficult if your going to react like that to what comes out as language when people are talking,
Take a hike, jump off a cliff, hang yourself, go fly a kite, give me a break etc etc etc
I noticed here though more than other forums some of the commenters love to hate, yet are the first to condemn it.
You take a dig at someone and they get all holier than thou and accuse you of having bad intentions.
When you post on a public forum, does it not become everyone’s business? Taking offence to your post was not negativity, it was merely expressing my offence. Based on your posting history, I suspect there was more venom in your comment than your lengthy explaining tries to portray. As Mr Little is finding out, perception is everything.
I do enjoy how you come back for a second bite, responding to your own comments. Dwell much?
I just think, Andrew’s trying to copy Keys style of saying the first thing that pops in his head for media attention.
I don’t think he’s guilty of anything aka the Hagamans BM, your grasping just a tad too far there, as I’ve said saying something like a government deal looks dodgy is his job, and it’s vague enough, the claims on Sherwin were mouth before brain BS and your bang on , on that.
We need better opposition and leadership, IMHO.
The person or team leading labours strategy are weak, and in a month when gifts dropped from heaven, we should have seen a no confidence having been thrown in and a testing of their partner parties,.
Yeah Andrew should wait for some polling results before he makes a statement (sarc). Or he can lead & make mistakes & apologise & move on, or have you not ever made an honest mistake? I for one like Little, he’s got guts unlike the current PM.
I agree with you there about Cunliffe, but Little is there right now, & not doing too bad a job & he gets all the right wing trolls fizzing & spewing so can’t be too bad eh.
You either have the ability to think on your feet and hold a debate, with class and dignity, Lange had that in spades, Cunnliffe has it, Andrew doesn’t, that’s how Richie see’s it sadly.
It says a lot about the health of newspapers world-wide. Why bother to produce these crap papers if one cannot trust a word they publish. It has become a world where you have to do your own research before you can open your bloody mouth – what an indictment that is where lying is just like breathing. Our NZ Herald is testament to that, we are on a month’s trial with the paper after we gave it the boot 3 years ago – today’s issue (like every day’s issue) is unmitigated garbage – I just cannot believe that readers digest this muck – at least for a month we have liners for the cat’s litter tray. Good on Andrew Little for doing the correct thing and apologising for his mistaking and expecting news in a Bahamas newspaper to be the truth when it was the usual lazy journalism at fault and lies.
TRP I find your casuistry gobsmacking. You are quibbling about the definition of a
“lie” .
Where is the corresponding beratement of Blip long list of so called lies by John Key…………?
Andrew Little did not tell the truth about John Shewan.
He has acknowleged this.
His acknowledging that he did not tell the truth does not constitute telling a lie???? Are you serious?
Let me quote you the definition of Lie
noun
1.
a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
Synonyms: prevarication, falsification.
Antonyms: truth.
2.
something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture:
His flashy car was a lie that deceived no one.
3.
an inaccurate or false statement; a falsehood.
4.
the charge or accusation of telling a lie:
He flung the lie back at his accusers.
verb (used without object), lied, lying.
5.
to speak falsely or utter untruth knowingly, as with intent to deceive.
Synonyms: prevaricate, fib.
6.
to express what is false; convey a false impression.
verb (used with object), lied, lying.
7.
to bring about or affect by lying (often used reflexively):
to lie oneself out of a difficulty; accustomed to lying his way out of difficulties.
In a world with any respect for the rule of law, or even elementary decency, these two men would be rotting in prison, not striking poses like they’re doing here….
“L’hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu.”
—-François de La Rochefoucauld
While the Washington Post and others say that Hillary’s wins yesterday mean that Bernie has less leverage to demand concessions, I do not believe that will be true unless we allow that to be true. If we give up or give in, this political revolution has really been a cult of personality that will fade even as Bernie sits in the White House chatting with President Obama. We have to intensify our resolve, not wallow in disappointment.
“We are trying to change a system that resists change”, Hone Harawira, Election speech, August, 2014
Last week Ms Turei claimed that KidsCan had said that up to 90 per cent of kids in schools went to school without lunch every day – a statement she later corrected and apologised for.
Today she visited Windley School in Porirua where 50 children were fed with peanut butter and jam sandwiches and criticized Mr Key for not agreeing to go with her.
She tabled a KidsCan document showing that KidsCan fed about 15,000 across 448 schools, an average of 33 pupils in each of the participating schools.
A bill in her name, originally known as Hone Harawira’s “feed the kids” bill was defeated in Parliament this evening, by 59 votes to 61 at its first reading.
Meanwhile another food in schools bill in the name of Labour MP David Shearer was defeated tonight at its first reading as well.
The bill allowed for free food in all primary and intermediate decile one to three schools that wanted.
However During his research on the bill, Mr Shearer came across several schools including Yendarra School in Otara, and Owairaka District School, which took a community approach to food in schools and changed his thinking.
“I have become convinced that free food solves nothing,” he has said.
“I now believe that each school community should be resourced to find and deliver its own long-term food solutions.”
He still wanted the bill sent to a select committee so it could be reworked.
The vote on his bill was 60 in favour and 60 against, meaning it could not progress.
“We’ll feed hungry kids in schools…..” Andrew Little, June, 2016
How Sanders shepherds his supporters after the Democratic Convention is a Bobby Kennedy moment for US liberals. Bernies’ campaign team are leaving it really late to generate a full-throated reform movement.
I hope Bernie and team have both the wisdom and the skill to avoid Black Lives Matter and Occupy aimlessness and dissolution.
I’ve just put up a post about the Mana party that touches on how a movement can be built by testing the waters at local level. That’s what Sanders has suggested his supporters do:
I think I know what you’re saying: cease the moment or opportunity, keep the momentum and build it or grow it. Right?
Although it might be disheartening or frustrating even when certain things don’t eventuate at first and seemingly disappear into oblivion I think this often is because of our short-sighted view and impatience and single-minded focus on one particular outcome or ‘destination’ – associated thinking is “the end justifies the means”.
Very recently, Rosie and weka used the metaphor of waves and indeed there’s a groundswell that may be largely undetectable but the waves of change are clearly visible on the surface.
Change does not always follow a linear direct path, in space or in time; it meanders, it oscillates & vibrates.
Human development is similarly characterised by taking baby steps in the beginning and falling down and getting up again, which is how we ‘learn to walk’. This applies to all levels of development (and evolution).
Another way of saying more or less the same thing is this well-known and beautiful quote from Ovid:
gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed saepe cadendo
a water drop hollows a stone not by force, but by falling often
If Sanders is telling the truth, he wants a revolution, not mithering from rhe Greeks. He set the high expectation, and it’s up to him to follow through.
At the last election the Green Party agreed to drop all bottom lines to get seats in cabinet.
Play the game, drop your principles, and we will make a space for you at the table.
As the Green Party goes into another election cycle and shut their mouths over “Climate Justice” they hope this strategy will get them seats at the table.
Announcing the launch of a big “Centrepiece Environmental Campaign”. I was terribly disappointed when the Green Party Centrepiece Environmental Campaign turned out to be a repackaging of the Green Party’s Clean Rivers Campaign, with which they have fought the last two elections.
What had raised my expectations in James Shaw’s campaign for co-leader, he named climate change as his number one priority, and reiterated this promise on becoming co-leader. This was in contrast to Russell Norman who had been the main leading promoter for keeping climate change in the background.
In their speeches, friends of mine in the seats opposite sometimes quote conservative heroes like Margaret Thatcher.
Well, Margaret Thatcher was one of the first world leaders to warn about the problem of climate change. Thatcher trained as a chemist. She understood you can’t change the chemical composition of the atmosphere without consequences.
In a speech to the United Nations in 1989 she said, “What we are now doing to the world by adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate is new in the experience of the earth. It is mankind and his activities that are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.”
Thatcher was right. In 2013 New Zealand was hit by our worst storm in sixty years. It left 30,000 Wellington homes without power, some for up to a week. It set the city back $4 million in direct clean-up costs. Around the country, it resulted in over $31 million worth of insurance claims.
That summer of the same year we had our worst drought in seventy years. It cost New Zealand $498 million in lost exports. Treasury estimates that this drought cost our economy over $1.5 billion.
The worst drought in seventy years. The worst storm in sixty. The warmest winter on record. Billions of dollars in costs and damages. All in the same six months.
***
Mr Speaker, I am forty-one years old. In just those forty-one years, fully half of all the planet’s wildlife has been extinguished. Thousands of species have become extinct.
This is ecocide. The destruction not just of species, but of the habitats and life-support systems they need to survive.
We know that the cause of this carnage is economic but that the solution is political.
“With the Party’s caucus divided about whether to include climate change in the election campaign or sideline it as the Party did in the 2011 election, Russel was ultimately the one who swung it.
But James, after pushing for it, was ‘delighted it was one of the foci‘.
Should the Party, I ask, have pushed it harder?
James pauses, reflects. There were good reasons on the other side. The Party hadn’t done enough groundwork before the election to really make it an election issue. There’s still not enough public concern about climate change.
But we can change that. – James
Now, it’s time to front foot the issue.
After all, James says, the Greens pushed clean rivers and child poverty to the top of New Zealanders’ agendas. In 2011, when he talked about those issues, people gave him blank looks.
In 2014, after three years of hard work from the Party, people heard what he said – and backed it. It’s time for the Party to take the same leadership on climate, now, in 2015 and 2016, not just in the 2017 election.
I’d have said welcome to MMP Jenny where you get to, every three years, pick from a list of Mainly Munted Parties made up of Mostly Munted People to run your life for the next three years, choose carefully.
Where Labour and the Green Party (“may”) agree to work together to support each other’s Members’ Bills and Supplementary Order Papers.
If the MoU is worth anything, then the Green Party need to start putting up private member bills on climate change and challenge the Labour Party to support them.
Will they do it?
Will the Green Party try and shift the national debate on climate change?
Or will the Green Party “Swimmable Rivers Centrepiece Campaign” smother any debate of climate change?
Note to commenters; we’ve had an issue over the weekend with a small number of regular commenters (and an author or two) having some of their contributions held in moderation until release by a mod.
It’s a bit beyond me, but hopefully it’s not an issue that’s with us too long. No point listing all the commenters affected, but marty mars is one of the ones that seems to have copped it most often.
So, apologies if some or all of your comments don’t immediately appear, but the mods will let them out as soon as they’re spotted.
Me too. It’s been a pain manually releasing them (and there were a couple criticising me I was tempted to leave in limbo. No names, no pack drill, but weka will know who I’m talking about). But I’m off to the pub to watch the Warriors stuff Easts, so I’ll be out of the loop for a couple of hours. Hopefully another mod will take my place.
Homeless person saying don’t give homeless people money.
Community law person saying don’t give homeless people money.
Shopkeeper saying don’t give homeless people money.
Member of the public saying don’t give homeless people money.
They’re probably spending it on drugs.. thoughts?
I was pulled up outside the supermarket in the suburbs the other day by a kid who looked like he was living on the street who came running after me asking for money, I gave him some. It was the first time in suburbia though I’ve been asked.
David Cunnliffe is one of NZ’s best parliamentarians IMHO, he has so much to offer the people of NZ.
I find it highly offensive he’s back benched and his skills and intelligence are left to rot in a corner due to infighting and bickering, I think the Labour party has a duty to the people who voted for DC to include him in a capacity that reflects the talents he has to offer, and stops the ABC BS.
Rise above it Labour, he, like Liam Neeson has a particular set of skills.
. . April 4: Day 10 of living in lock-down… I wake up to a fine Saturday morning which normally would be like an early Christmas. But it’s Day 10 of Level 4 Lock Down. What will my fellow New Zealanders be doing on a day like this – staying ...
Some time during the night we went over the 850,000 views mark. We might have had our millionth view by the end of this year – certainly by early next year. Most of the people involved in Redline spent years and years producing various small left-wing papers and selling them ...
Comfortably, in the very first round, with an impressive 56% of the votes.I wonder, did members of the Shadow Cabinet start tweeting their resignations during Starmer's victory speech, or is that only a trick the right pull?It is odd how all the talk of how the next leader "needs to ...
One of the key voices in this extraordinary time in which we live is that of University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker. Philip Matthews did an an excellent job this weekend of capturing the way he became the man for this moment in a profile for The Press.But one ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressed the nation today about the decline in daylight New Zealand has been experiencing over the previous few months. She said “As many of you will notice, our attempts to stem the dwindling of the daylight over the last few months have been completely ...
Redline received this article from the KOE a Marxist party in Greece Our friends in the KOE describe here the mounting crisis in Greece and tensions on the Turkish border. As desperate people flee from their homelands which have been ruined after decades of imperialist wars and interventions the people ...
As the first week of Level Four lockdown unfolded, mounting questions grew as to just what was (and was not) allowed under its “rules”. Partly these were driven by some apparently contradictory messagesfrom different authority figures and explanations carried in the media. Partly they reflected a somewhat sketchy legal basis ...
. . April 3: Day 9 of living in lock-down… Another late-start to my work day. Everything is temporarily upended as clients are shuffled around so we can minimise our “bubble” by reducing the number of people we help. One of my colleagues has been removed from his clients; his ...
In order to meet our 2050 carbon target and do our bit to avoid making the Earth uninhabitable, New Zealand needs to decarbonise our economy, replacing fossil fuels with electricity in the energy, industrial and transport sectors. The good news is that it will mean cheaper power for all of ...
For those folk who find my other Lock-Down Diary versions too “negative” or otherwise unpalatable… Here’s a photo of a pretty flower, . . Better? Tomorrow’s Sanitised Version: a cute animal video. . . . =fs= ...
. . April 2: Day eight of living in lock-down… Today, my work day starts late. Our rosters and clients have been dramatically changed, lessening (theoretically) the number of people in our work “bubble”. If just one of us catches covid19 the impact could be considerable as Grey Base Hospital ...
As Aotearoa enters week two of lockdown, it’s clear we’re all still working out what our “bubbles” look like and how to stay in them to stop the spread of Covid-19. New to the government’s Covid-19 website is some good guidance for people living in apartment blocks. Recent decades have ...
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Lenin Don’t we all know that feeling now.
Prospect Magazine alerted me to this particularly apt quote. It is a much more evocative quote than Hemingway’s “gradually then suddenly” which is also doing ...
Yesterday was the day the consequences of the lockdown suddenly got very real for many. Firms have been closing and laying people off since the outset of the quarantine but this has mostly been happening out of the public eye. The mass closure of a number of iconic New Zealand ...
Brian Williamson1, Prof Nick Wilson2 (1Economic consultant, UK; 2University of Otago Wellington)In this blog, we outline how a win-win social contract could be forged to address the major dimensions of response to the COVID-19 pandemic when using a mitigation strategy: the particular need to protect older people from high ...
Resuming Normal Service: The Republican Party's nominee for in 1920, Warren Harding, promised the American people: “not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration”. If she wishes to remain our prime minister, then Jacinda Ardern will offer New Zealanders the same.HOW EDUCATED AMERICA snickered when the ...
No Free Society Without A Free And Functioning News Media: If we are to surrender our civil rights to the broader cause of defeating Covid-19, then foreign corporations must, likewise, surrender their right to inflict immense economic and cultural harm on New Zealanders simply because it improves their bottom line.I’M ...
by Daphna Whitmore A third of the world is under lockdown and a clear assessment of this measure to curb the spread of COVID-19 is urgently needed. With any high-stakes decisions it has to be asked what are we dealing with here? Are the measures warranted? Will they achieve their ...
I haven’t done a huge amount in the last few days. I’m reading The Poppy War and I’ve sort of poked at a couple of games – I started SOMA but I’m a wimp and I quit while in the first room after the brain scan. I might try it ...
The swan politicians may be gliding on the water, occasionally snapping at one another. Meanwhile, as the Covid19 crisis illustrates, the officials are desperately paddling below providing the real locomotion. One of the most fatuous recent grandstanding comments (of about a week ago), adding to the public’s anxieties, was ...
Much has been written about the importance of discretion in an emergency situation, and the concerns raised by the potential for it to be exercised arbitrarily. Given the quality of the discussion, there seemed little point in adding to it at any length. In particular, I point to the evidence ...
Today has felt surreal. I was all set to touch base online with my science communication students when a colleague shared the news that Bauer Media would be shutting down its publications immediately. The first link I saw implied it was Woman’s Weekly affected, and even that shocked me. But ...
Bogeymen, Real And Imagined: Is the number of psychopathic and sociopathic individuals in any given society truly as vanishingly small as we like to tell ourselves? Isn’t it more likely that the mass-shooters and serial-killers filling the headlines represent only the tip of a much, much larger iceberg of frightfulness? ...
Outgoing Police Commissioner Mike Bush appeared before the Epidemic Response Committee today, who asked him for the rules police are using to enforce the lockdown. He refused:Police Commissioner Mike Bush has admitted the advice given to Kiwis about what they're able to do during the lockdown hasn't been clear enough. ...
For those folk who find my other Lock-Down Diary versions too “negative” or otherwise unpalatable… Here’s a photo of my cat, . . Better? Tomorrow’s Sanitised Version: a pretty flower. . . . =fs= ...
. . April 1: Day seven of living in lock-down… This morning I had a brief chat with one of my neighbours, “D” (social distance between us, a good three or four metres). I learned he had resigned from his previous job and had been hired by another company – ...
Funnily enough, my thought as I start this post is whether it will be well written enough. Or should that be well enough written? Because so much of what I know about good writing came from my two stints at The Listener, which this morning was shut down due to ...
With normal democratic procedures in abeyance, there were two ways to go. First, it was open for the government to dissolve itself and invite the National Party to join a ministry of national salvation. That would have lessened the democratic deficit of the times by having a team of rivals without ...
Dr Kirsty Ross Children and young people can respond differently in times of distress. This also varies by age and developmental stage, with younger children having more magical and imaginative thinking, and older children having more awareness and knowledge of the issues our communities are facing (which brings up ...
Hungary has been a virtual dictatorship for a decade now, as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has gradually eroded its democracy. But now, its official, with the passage of an indefinite emergency law allowing rule by decree:Hungary’s parliament has passed a new set of coronavirus measures that includes jail terms for ...
While the economy is on pause under lockdown, the government is beginning to plan how to cope with the post-lockdown, post-tourism, post-export education world we will eventually find ourselves in. They're planning a lot of infrastructure spending as economic stimulus, and have asked for proposals which can start the moment ...
It's my distraction, setting up tiny scenes to photograph. I've got stuck on the Babushka dolls for now. Something about their bubble shape. Something about their never changing, smiling features, suggesting persistent equanimity. Can we get through everything that is being thrown at us and keep at least a tiny ...
. . March 31: Day six of living in lock-down… This time I managed to sleep a little longer and the alarm woke me at the pre-set time: 6.55am. Then remembered I was working a later shift and could’ve slept in. Oh well, there are things to do at home. ...
Image credit:Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ...
Yesterday's Horizon poll showing support for a "Yes" vote in this year's cannabis referendum sliding into the majority for the first time in a year looked like good news for reformers – and it probably is. But the result warrants some scrutiny.The poll is the fifth in a series commissioned ...
For almost a week now, every one of us who isn’t an essential worker has been confined to their bubble. We are allowed to go shopping for groceries, to visit the doctor, and to get a bit of exercise if we stay local. The reason we are doing this is ...
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...
In the absence of a vaccine or a cure for a deadly disease, staying home in your bubble is what you do, the concept is not new. To the best of my knowledge last time we did this in NZ was for polio, in the years before a vaccine came ...
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...
This has been a terrible summer for Hector’s dolphins. The first indication was very low numbers of dolphin sightings during late spring and early summer. The Otago University Marine Mammal Research Team has carried out routine dolphin surveys at Banks Peninsula for more than 30 years. In all that time, ...
On March 17, Finance Minister Grant Robertson was quick out of the blocks with an economic rescue package to help businesses through the inevitable recession resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Robertson had pulled together a scheme in short order that so far seems to have saved many jobs. In his ...
The purpose of the lockdown is to save lives, by reducing the spread of covid-19. We won't know if its really working for another week, but given the devastation that will result if it doesn't - 14,000 dead is the optimistic scenario - its definitely worth trying. But pausing the ...
. . March 30: Day five of living in lock-down… Woke up still in darkness. Alarm hadn’t gone off. Turn to radio clock; it’s a few minutes after 6am… I lie there in the dark, waiting to drift off to sleep… but it ain’t happening. Clock ticks over to 6.55 ...
The story of Les Gray, the public sector psychologist who told the truth about his use of cannabis and set off a storm, has a special place in the lore of cannabis reform in New Zealand.When Paul Shannon interviewed Gray for the 'Dope and Hope' issue of Planet magazine in ...
by Phil Duncan For Marxists, a key concern about social trends is their context – not just their causes, but why they happen when they do. Events and phenomena have causes, but they also are time or period-specific. While much of the left have capitulated recently to postmodernism, most notably ...
Since the lockdown began, we've all suddenly been reminded who the actually essential workers in our society are: not the people at the top who pay themselves the big bucks and rort the perks, but the people at the bottom they screw over and squeeze: cleaners, warehouse staff, truck drivers ...
Kia ora! As I've watched nearly all my remaining work vanish over the past couple of days, it has occured to me that one good way to keep me away from arguing with fools on Twitter all the time (in the knowledge that all we're really doing is processing our ...
Aotearoa New Zealand has committed to trying to extirpate the virus that causes COVID-19 from its shores. To do that, as a society we’ve moved to “Level 4”. That means adapting to unprecedented restrictions on our personal freedoms, particularly to our rights to move freely and associate with friends and ...
When the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency last week, she handed the police powers to enforce it. And almost immediately, we started hearing about heavy-handed, arbitrary "enforcement" by police who (at best) cared more about order than law, or (more likely) had no idea what the rules were ...
. . Lock Down: Day 4 – A photo essay with observations . March 29: Usual wake up routine as RNZ snaps on my radio-clock. Jim Mora’s voice slowly enters my conciousness; there’s talk of a second wave of covid19 taking hold in South Korea; the week in Parliament – ...
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... ‘Misinformation kills’: The link between coronavirus conspiracies and climate denialGrist / Rob Kim / Stringer / CSA Images Scientific ...
The kids did surprisingly well today – meltdown count was about 3, and mostly fairly short ones. (And a fourth while I was writing.) Game-wise I had a go at Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. It’s a fairly standard RPG with turn-based combat and what they call a “mature storyline” (it ...
by Don Franks Hi David, Nice hearing from you, I’m glad to hear you’re getting by okay in these grim times. You asked how’s it going for us back here in New Zealand. You would have heard that the whole country is locked down and with breaks for exercise and ...
. . Lock Down: Day 3 – A photo essay with observations . March 28: First day of the first weekend in Lock Down. It feels like it’s been weeks since only Level 3 was declared last Tuesday, only four days ago. Woke up this morning to RNZ; coffee; toast, ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 22, 2020 through Sat, Mar 28, 2020Articles Linked to on FacebookSun, Mar 22, 2020In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of Disasters by Chelsea Harvey, ...
I’m here in lockdown with my flatmate and her two girls (6 and 2) and it. is. a time. They’re usually really active so to start with the only boardgame in the house is the copy of Guess Who that the 6 year old got for her birthday. Flatmate commented ...
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...
. . Lock Down: Day 2 – A photo essay with observations . March 27 – Day 2 of our Strange New World. The Park and Ride near my suburb, usually filled with hundreds of vehicles, had just… four; . . Another drive into Wellington City on a highway nearly ...
Fortune's Children: Under extraordinary pressure, the leader of the Government and the leader of the Opposition will each show us what they are made of. Have they been blessed with intelligence, grace, wit, poise, toughness, empathy and humour – and in what measure? More importantly, to what extent have they ...
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of having to rent a property on the open market in New Zealand, which is one of the most expensive in the entire world, you’ll likely be keenly aware of just how arrogant and entitled landlords and their real estate agents can be.Unfortunately for ...
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights:In this legal blog we outline some ...
by Equipo Jurídico Pueblos and Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (25/03/2020) An escape plan in question On the night of March 21st and the early morning of the 22nd, the forces of the Colombian state stormed into the Modelo prison in Bogotá, murdering 23 prisoners and injuring 83, in response to the ...
When the government banned semi-automatic weapons in response to a terrorist atrocity, gun-nuts were outraged. Mired in toxic American gun culture, they thought owning weapons whose sole purpose was killing people was some sort of "constitutional right", a necessity for "defending themselves" against the government. Now, the Court of Appeal ...
Just before midnight on Wednesday March 25, Aotearoa New Zealand entered a countrywide alert level four lockdown. For at least the next four weeks, everyone who isn’t an essential worker is confined to their bubble. We are doing this to stop the explosive growth in people contracting and dying from ...
. . Lock Down: Day 1 – A photo essay with observations . Day one of the Level 4 nationwide lock-down (or, DefCon 4 as I sometimes cheekily call it) started at 11.59PM on 25 March. For a moment, most of the nation held it’s collective breath. In that brief ...
Broad, Sunlit Uplands: How those words fired my young imagination! Or, perhaps, it is more accurate to say: how those words fused, in my young mind, with the image printed on every packet of Fielder’s Cornflour. Always fascinated by history, especially modern history, I cannot hear Churchill’s wonderfully evocative words, even ...
. . 24 March 2020 9.46AM Number of covid19 cases in Aotearoa New Zealand: 102 . As of 11.59 on Thursday, most of New Zealand will go into “lock down”. People will be expected not to travel to work; not to socialise; and to stay home. I will not be ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections A respected research group, Project Drawdown, finds that deploying solutions consistent with meeting the Paris climate targets would cost tens of trillions of dollars globally. But crucially, those outlays would also yield long-term savings many times larger than the up-front costs. The new 2020 Drawdown ...
It will pass. What happens next? Not immediately, but longer term. There are many opinions, fewer certainties. Will it “change everything!” as many confidently, and contradictorily predict? In this post I look at how foresight can help bound some of the uncertainties so you can more objectively consider the future. ...
We’ve been meaning t write something on Cuba and the coronavirus but have just discovered a very good article on the subject in the US left publication Jacobin. The article looks at how Cuba, a poor country but one where capitalism has been done away with, is leading the way ...
In 2018, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey - two British citizens who had purportedly been stripped of their citizenship by the British government - were captured while fighting for Isis in Syria. The British government then conspired to hand them over to the US, and agreed to provide evidence ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters says getting New Zealanders back home and other travellers out of the country is "a nightmare for our embassies, consuls, and staff around the world".Speaking to NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking, the Foreign Minister said that he gave a clear message to people travelling overseas that they ...
The domestic travel ban has been lifted for stranded foreign tourists trying to get to international airports to fly home, after the Coalition Government announced a plan to help the tens of thousands of foreigners stranded here. Foreign Minister Rt. Hon. Winston Peters spoke with RNZ's Susie Ferguson said foreign ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters believes the country is rediscovering its resilience and self-reliance through its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.He says he is heartened that the mass majority of New Zealanders are following lockdown rules and that the government looking at the future, including paying to keep much ...
New Zealand can emulate the success of the US after the Great Depression by exploiting our own resources to turn the economy around quickly, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says. Mr. Peters told Magic Talk that New Zealand has an opportunity to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic a "superior, ...
All 45 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel are either on their way back to New Zealand, or already in the country, according to Defence Minister Ron Mark."Twenty-eight personnel arrived back in New Zealand last week and are in isolation at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base in ...
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...
We know people are feeling anxious about COVID-19. While the situation is serious, New Zealand has a world-class health system and we’re well-prepared to keep New Zealanders safe. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging New Zealanders overseas to stay where they are amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "We are reaching a point where the best option for most New Zealanders offshore is to shelter in place, by preparing to safely stay where they are.” "This includes following the instructions ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging the tens of thousands of New Zealanders travelling overseas to consider sheltering in place, in light of COVID-19. “Since 18 March, we have been warning New Zealanders offshore that the window for flying ...
Ground-breaking law has passed that will decriminalise abortion and ensure women and pregnant people seeking abortions have compassionate healthcare. ...
The Green Party says that the measures announced by the Government today will help families and businesses to prioritise our collective health and wellbeing in the response to COVID-19. ...
As New Zealanders brace for a global downturn due to Covid-19, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says his Coalition Government’s rescue package "more significant" than any other he's seen around the world. The Coalition is to reveal a multi-billion-dollar stimulus plan on Tuesday afternoon designed to cushion the economic blow ...
The Government will be introducing legislation to make changes to the Companies Act to help companies facing insolvency due to COVID-19 to remain viable and keep New Zealanders in jobs. The temporary changes include: Giving directors of companies facing significant liquidity problems because of COVID-19 a ‘safe harbour’ from insolvency ...
The Government’s plan to cushion the blow of COVID-19 by supporting incomes, jobs and businesses, and position the economy to recover has been backed by another international report. International credit rating agency Moody’s today reaffirmed its highest Aaa credit rating on New Zealand, saying the economy is expected to remain ...
National sports organisations have been given certainty of funding to ensure they can remain viable through the COVID-19 pandemic, Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson announced today. “The global spread of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on sport and recreation in New Zealand, including the cancellation or postponement of ...
Changes have been made to allow butchers to process pork, only for supply to supermarkets or other processors or retailers that are open, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor has announced. “We carefully weighed the risk of allowing butchers to open their shops for retail customers, but the risk of spreading COVID-19 ...
Essential workers who take leave from work to comply with public health guidance are being supported with a leave scheme to ensure they will continue to receive income, say the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Iain Lees-Galloway and Minister for Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni. A number of essential businesses ...
A Government WhatsApp channel has been launched to help make information more easily accessible and shareable in the fight against COVID-19. Govt.NZ, which is free to use on any mobile device, will carry information and news for the public, businesses, healthcare providers, not for profits and local government. It can ...
The Government has announced a plan to enable the safe, orderly exit of tens of thousands of stranded foreign nationals from New Zealand during the current COVID-19 Alert Level 4 restrictions, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters has said. “When we moved into lockdown a week ago, the ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says the Government is delivering on its commitment to support general practice doctors and nurses, and pharmacies on the front-line of our fight against COVID-19. "For us to overcome COVID-19, we need community health services such as general practice and community pharmacy to step up ...
Justice Susan Thomas has been appointed Chief High Court Judge, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. She replaces Justice Geoffrey Venning who has resigned from the position. David Parker paid tribute to Justice Venning, who he said had stewarded the High Court very capably over the last five years. “On behalf ...
Businesses can start applying to their banks for loans under the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme set up to support the New Zealand economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re moving quickly to protect New Zealand businesses, jobs and the economy during this unprecedented global economic shock,” Finance Minister Grant Robertson said. ...
Work is underway looking at measures to speed up consents for development and infrastructure projects during the recovery from COVID 19, to provide jobs and stimulate our economy. Environment Minister David Parker said the COVID-19 pandemic is a serious global crisis that will have a wide ranging and lasting impact ...
Advance payments will be made to transport construction industry contractors to retain the workforce and ensure it is ready to quickly gear up to build projects which will be vital to New Zealand’s COVID-19 economic recovery, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. He said keeping the workforce required to build ...
The Government has tasked a group of industry leaders to seek out infrastructure projects that are ready to start as soon as the construction industry returns to normal to reduce the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford and Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones say. The Infrastructure ...
Work to scale up the health system in preparation for COVID-19 was today outlined by Health Minister David Clark, as he reported back to the new Epidemic Response Committee. “We are well placed to contain the spread of COVID-19. We have taken early and decisive action at our borders, and ...
The Government is refining its COVID-19 essential business guidance to include the distribution of news publications for communities which are hard to reach. The Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media, Kris Faafoi, said the move was in recognition of the importance for New Zealanders who might be harder to ...
The Government is ensuring supermarkets can open on Easter Sunday so we can buy groceries, but stay closed on Good Friday allowing workers to take a break. This provides a balanced approach and ensures we avoid large queues that two days closure may cause. “Supermarkets will be able to open ...
Following the successful conclusion of the Building Partner Capacity (BPC) mission at Taji, New Zealand defence personnel are returning to New Zealand from Iraq, in accordance with the Cabinet decision made in June 2019, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Ron Mark announced today. “New Zealand is very ...
The State of National Emergency to help stop the spread of COVID-19 has been extended for a further seven days, Minister of Civil Defence Peeni Henare said. The initial declaration on March 25 lasted seven days and can be extended as many times as necessary. “Since we went into isolation ...
New Zealand’s ability to go hard and go early in the fight against COVID-19 has been underpinned by strong Government finances and the growing economy heading into this global pandemic, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Treasury today released the Crown financial statements for the eight months to the end ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says 36 new intensive care beds at Christchurch Hospital’s new Hagley building are being fast tracked so they are available for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The Ministry of Health is working with contractor CPB and Canterbury DHB to enable access to the hospital’s ICU, ...
The Government has fast-tracked up to $1 million to help Air New Zealand move urgent freight to and from New Zealand, with the first flight to Shanghai leaving tonight, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Phil Twyford says it’s crucial that trade in vital goods such as medical supplies and ...
New Zealand will temporarily remove tariffs on all medical and hygiene imports needed for the COVID-19 response. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi said today that the New Zealand Customs Service will apply tariff concessions to all diagnostic reagents and testing ...
Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has clarified that the changes to the wage subsidy scheme announced yesterday mean that employers should be passing on the full subsidy to workers, except in the case where the person’s normal income is less than the level of the subsidy. “We still want employers ...
Medical face masks from the national reserve supply are now being distributed to District Health Boards, while at the same time local production is being ramped up. Yesterday more than 640,000 masks were sent to DHBS – that is an immediate two week supply, with more to follow in coming ...
The Government has made modifications to the wage subsidy scheme to ensure people don’t lose their jobs during the national lockdown. These changes will soften the impact of COVID-19 on workers, families and businesses, and position them to exit the lockdown and look to recovery, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. ...
Farmers whose herds were culled in response to the outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis will be able to minimise the tax treatment of their income in some circumstances. Revenue Minister Stuart Nash says Cabinet has agreed to change the law. It means farmers may be eligible to spread their income over ...
A $27 million dollar package, effective immediately, is being provided to social sector services and community groups to ensure they can continue to provide essential support to communities as we stay at home as a nation to stop the spread of COVID-19, Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni announced. “At ...
“The guilty plea today will provide some relief to the many people whose lives were shattered by what happened on March 15,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “These guilty pleas and conviction bring accountability for what happened and also save the families who lost loved ones, those who were injured, ...
The Prime Minister is holding daily press conferences to update New Zealanders on the Government's response to COVID-19. Links to videos and transcripts of these updates below. These transcripts also include All of Government press conferences led by Director Ministry of Health's Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. 25 March: Live update from the Prime ...
Frontline Police numbers have broken through the 10,000 mark for the first time in history as officers step forward to keep the community safe during the COVID19 lockdown. “Two Police graduations in Auckland and Wellington in the past week have been conducted in unprecedented circumstances,” Police Minister Stuart Nash said. ...
Urgent legislation has been passed to support the package of economic and social measures needed to recover from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. “The COVID-19 Response (Taxation and Social Assistance Urgent Measures) Bill will cushion New Zealanders from the worst economic impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak,” said Revenue Minister ...
From tomorrow, Government support for farmers and growers affected by drought will be expanded and extended across the country, with access to Rural Assistance Payments (RAPS) available throughout the North Island, parts of the South Island and the Chatham Islands, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced. “These challenging conditions have ...
Parliament has passed amendments to legislation that give the Secretary of Education stronger powers to act in the fight to limit the spread of COVID-19, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “They are part of a suite of changes passed under the COVID-19 Response (Urgent Management Measures) Legislation Bill,” Chris ...
Canada, Australia, Chile, Brunei and Myanmar have joined forces with New Zealand and Singapore by committing to keep supply chains open and remove any existing trade restrictive measures on essential goods, especially medical supplies, in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker today welcomed ...
Immediate freeze on rent increases Tenancies will not be terminated during the lock-down period, unless the parties agree, or in limited circumstances Tenants who had previously given notice can stay in their if they need to stay in the tenancy during the lock-down period Tenants will still be able to ...
As New Zealand unites to lock-down in the fight against COVID-19, the Finance Minister is urging all businesses and workers to stay connected over the next four weeks. “We understand the extreme pressure many businesses are under right now. I know most business owners think of their workers as family ...
A State of National Emergency has been declared across the country as the Government pulls out all the stops to curtail the spread of COVID-19. “Today we put in place our country’s second ever State of National Emergency as we fight a global pandemic, save New Zealanders’ lives and prevent ...
Mr Speaker I wish to make a Ministerial Statement under Standing Order 347 in relation to the recent declaration of a State of National Emergency. Having considered the advice of the Director Civil Defence Emergency Management, the Minister of Civil Defence declared a State of National Emergency for the whole of ...
People needing to travel on domestic flights, trains and Cook Strait ferries to get home before the country moves into level 4 lock-down tomorrow night will be able to continue using the passenger services until midnight on Friday, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. Domestic passenger services, particularly ferries, have ...
The Government, retail banks and the Reserve Bank are today announcing a major financial support package for home owners and businesses affected by the economic impacts of COVID-19. The package will include a six month principal and interest payment holiday for mortgage holders and SME customers whose incomes have been ...
Ardern says the role of planning for moving out of lockdown is not the Government's alone Businesses should plan how they will operate in an environment where intensive contact tracing would be needed post-lockdown, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today. The Government was working on additional guidance for the move to Level 3 ...
Netflix’s four-part series Unorthodox traces a woman’s escape from a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn. Emily Writes considers the lessons we can all learn from her journey. There was a moment watching Netflix’s miniseries Unorthodox when I felt like I was actually in Berlin, where much of the show is ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening.The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference. These may vary from the full day's numbers released in the Ministry of Health's spreadsheet of ...
By RNZ Pacific The number of people with Covid-19 in the Pacific continues to climb with French Polynesia hitting 40 cases, Guam now over 90 and the US state of Hawai’i suffering its third coronavirus death. In the past day, another person tested positive for Covid-19 in French Polynesia. ...
We needed a reasonable period of time to allow the recent surging wave of highly geared first home buyers to get financially comfortable. We didn’t get it, writes David Hargreaves of interest.co.nz.You know, I was really beginning to think (as well as hope) that we might just get away with it.By ‘it’ ...
Being stuck inside all day might be wearing you and your kids down, but there’s never been a better time to encourage them to pick up their musical instrument and get stuck into writing songs. Mike Chunn from Play It Strange explains how. Mums and dads and households with teenage children. ...
Siouxsie Wiles on the vitriolic correspondence she’s received since the Covid-19 outbreak struck, and the realities of communicating evidence.I recently received an email and text from someone telling me they are planning to email my boss, the University of Auckland vice chancellor. They are going to ask for me to ...
In our new series The Lockdown Letters, five of New Zealand’s best writers chronicle the days of Covid-19 alert level four. Today, Fiona Farrell.There’s a sign sticky-taped to the bakery window. Closed Until Further Notice. Stay Safe NZ and Be Kind. We will get through this!We all know where the words ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level four. The country is shut down, apart from essential services. For updated official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is funded by The Spinoff Members. To support this work, join The ...
Covid-19 is a real threat to older people, but these Central Otago seniors are embracing technology, experiencing no FOMO, and finding new ways to connect and share, finds Jill Herron When the full lockdown began on March 25 it meant the end of going for a swim, spa or to ...
Former editor of the Woman's Weekly, Nicky Pellegrino, bids farewell to the magazine that brought information and fun to generations of New Zealand women. All those stories. Gone. Stories about our politics, our health, our education, our aspirations. Stories about the houses we lived in and the gardens we grew, ...
As small businesses fight for their survival in the Covid-19 lockdown, it seems one of the country’s biggest retail landlords is not keen to share the pain. On the one side, you have Jonathan*. Jonathan runs a small business out of South Auckland’s Sylvia Park - New Zealand’s biggest mall. ...
With no Covid-19 cases and its economy desperate to restart, the Chathams is keen to go fishing again, writes Jim Kayes.It shouldn’t really be a surprise. They are, after all, ahead of New Zealand by 45 minutes.And though they are part of Wellington’s Rongotai electorate, the fiercely ...
On Friday night, the government quietly laid down some lockdown rules via a legal order under the Health Act. Law professor Andrew Geddis explains what it means for all of us (including David Clark). As the first week of level four lockdown unfolded, mounting questions grew as to just what was ...
The health and wellbeing of people working and being held inside our prisons needs to be a priority, writes JustSpeak director Tania Sawicki Mead. Kelvin Davis’s interview on The Hui last weekend made it clear that precautions taken by Corrections to stop the spread of Covid-19 will create an unprecedented restriction ...
Like countless New Zealanders stranded overseas, Wellingtonian Rosie O’Hagan will be braving authorities, airlines, airports and uncertainty to make it back from the other side of the world, writes Jim Kayes.Rosie O’Hagan hadn’t stepped outside for three weeks.When she finally did – around midnight on Friday ...
PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY:By David Robie A rather beautiful Guåhan legend is rather poignant in these stressed pandemic times. It is one about survival and cooperation. In ancient times, goes the story, a giant fish was eating great chunks out of this western Pacific island. The men used muscle ...
Simon Wren-Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford, raises good questions about Britain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some of them seem germane to this country’s response. Wren-Lewis posted his critique on his Mainly Macro blog under the heading Following the Science or a ...
Alex Casey speaks to a dream expert about why so many people are suddenly remembering their vivid and often horrible dreams. As the days begin to blur together and the only thing we get between sleeps is unimaginably horrible news and an embarrassing tootle around the block, it’s no surprise ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening.The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference. These may vary from the full day's numbers released in the Ministry of Health's spreadsheet of ...
Medical centres across the country are condensing services, moving online, and ushering in pandemic plans. Josie Adams assesses what it’s like to access and provide essential medical care under alert level four.On Monday, Sandra Russell woke up before dawn and drove to Milford to get her blood tested. She has ...
In our new series The Lockdown Letters, some of New Zealand’s best writers tell us what they’ve been up to in the days of Covid-19 alert level four. Today, writer and doctor Glenn Colquhoun, with the second of his Letters to Hone Tūwhare and his Travelling Band of Constant Companions. ...
ANALYSIS:By Haiqing Yu of RMIT University and Michael Keane of Curtin University China has gradually emerged out of its shadow of despair as the epicentre where the coronavirus pandemic started. Now, there is face saving required – as well as agenda-setting in the global power play. China played ...
Tech giant Google has released a giant global data set which shows how different countries are locking down, and which NZ regions are most compliant with its lockdown.A giant set of reports released by Google, created using its anonymised cellphone location data reveals the scale of human behaviour change the ...
Comedian Penny Ashton writes on the necessity of the arts, especially during lockdown.On March 22, everyone’s favourite fiscal bloodhounds, the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union, sent out a tweet in response to Creative New Zealand’s announcement that it will dedicate an emergency response package to helping New Zealand’s artists, in the ...
Wellington writer Philippa Swan’s new novel TheNight of All Souls is an homage to Pulitzer-winning and all-round fabulous American writer Edith Wharton. Wharton died in 1937 but, Swan writes, she’s very much of the moment. Nobody does social distancing like Wharton did. While Wharton was still comparatively young, she created the ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level four. The country is shut down, apart from essential services. For updated official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is funded by The Spinoff Members. To support this work, join The ...
Normally heaving year-round, Queenstown has ground to an eerie halt as Covid-19 cases rise and tourism income plummets, reports Paul Taylor. On a hill behind Queenstown's coronavirus Covid-19 community testing centre, the resort's iconic Skyline gondola sits motionless. More than 17 million people are estimated to have ridden the gondola ...
Are we drinking more in the lockdown? Hard to know, writes David Slack, but we’re certainly having to get creative about it. Almost every phone call I’ve answered this week has begun the same way: “You still off the drink, then?” Fair question. What a time to be not drinking. ...
Kiwi clinical psychologist Desiree Dickerson is stuck with her family in Spain and has written a guide in Nature: "Seven tips to manage your mental health and well-being during the Covid-19 outbreak." It’s Day 17 of the Covid-19 lockdown in Spain. In a small village on the Mediterranean coast, about ...
"Will our ills be cured? Will our feet carry us? For how long?": a short story set in Henderson by West Auckland writer Serie Barford.I learned to drive a tractor when I was a kid feeding out hay with my cousins on a dairy farm down the line. I ...
Without active testing in the community our Covid-19 picture isn’t complete, an epidemiologist says. David Williams reports. There are worse places to be self-isolating than Whakatāne, in the Bay of Plenty, says Bridget Robson, who lives on a two-acre block and keeps chickens. “We live in a beautiful part of ...
How do you hold a funeral service with the country in lockdown? Where there’s a will – and a tech-savvy uncle – there’s a way, Erin Kavanagh-Hall discovered.I was floating somewhere in the Cook Strait when I heard my grandfather’s funeral had been cancelled.I should elaborate. It was a Monday, ...
‘Stay in your bubble’ didn’t exist 100 years ago, but our ancestors would want us to know how essential it is to do so, says Jai Breitnauer.It was a warm but slightly grey January day in 2019 when I pulled the car over to the side of SH1, just south ...
David Clark’s misadventure in mountain biking was a stupid, but ultimately forgivable offence. The bigger problem is the continued uncertainty around what is and isn’t appropriate activity in lockdown, as Sam Sachdeva writes. Given the pressure he and his Cabinet colleagues are under, it is little surprise Health Minister David ...
Assessing the economic impact of Covid-19 requires a new approach to a problem economists have not encountered in modern times, writes Dr Kirdan Lees Covid-19 has presented quite a problem for economists. Containment policies that seek to flatten the Covid-19 curve or eliminate the virus, restrict economic activity. All governments ...
Every day at 1pm New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announces precise figures on the number of confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in the country. He is working on the best information available, and during this week the level of community transmission was put at around ...
Most of New Zealand's MPs are in lockdown just like the rest of us, confined to their neighbourhoods and stuck in their bubbles. Checkpoint called a few to ask them what they're doing. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Deery, Lecturer in Early Childhood Education, University of Melbourne “Stupid coronavirus!” I heard my six-year-old mumble while talking in her sleep. Earlier that day her swimming and basketball lessons were cancelled, a birthday party postponed, and she had to race with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University “Zoombombing” in case you haven’t heard, is the unsavoury practice of posting distressing comments, pictures or videos after gatecrashing virtual meetings hosted by the videoconferencing app Zoom. With hundreds of millions ...
Analysis - A leading epidemiologist says health authorities 'really have no idea' of the extent of community spread, Parliament's Epidemic Response Committee gets its teeth into what's going on during the lockdown and the horrendous economic imp ...
The fifth in our new series of charts, graphics and data visualisations by Chris McDowall, covering the Covid-19 epidemic within New Zealand. We’ll publish the latest set each day on The Spinoff.This work is entirely funded by the generosity of The Spinoff MembersInformation about confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 ...
The Finance Minister says struggling companies will be able to put some debt into hibernation, under new legislation unveiled today. Watch the latest government update here. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Lund, Commissioning Editor, The Conversation Editor’s note: The following is current as at April 3, 2020. Things are changing quickly so best to keep an eye on the latest information from WA Health, as well as the federal government.This article ...
During the challenges associated with lockdown, the Māori Party are congratulating Ngāti Ruanui and South Taranaki on the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling What does the COVID-19 pandemic sound like? For this episode, Dallas Rogers – a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney – asked academic colleagues from all over ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sven Gallasch, Lecturer in Law, Swinburne University of Technology “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion,” wrote Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (published in 1776), “but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the ...
Environment Minister David Parker has directed officials to find ways to fast-track consents for infrastructure and development projects. He says his goal is to help create a pipeline of projects so that some can start immediately once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted “so people can get back into work as fast ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin Spain and Switzerland top cases, countries converging. Chart by Keith Rankin.Spain and Switzerland top cases, countries converging. Chart by Keith Rankin.Of the larger European countries, Italy is now in third place for known cases per person in the population. Spain has overtaken Switzerland for ...
Contact tracing is a crucial part of the Covid-19 puzzle and technology might prove essential to scaling up New Zealand's tracing capacity, Marc Daalder reports With the lockdown reducing physical contact between members of the public and testing ramping up, the only missing piece of the Covid-19 puzzle is contact tracing. ...
Insolvency laws will be temporarily changed to allow troubled companies to trade while technically insolvent Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced changes to the Companies Act to allow companies to put their debts into "hibernation". Robertson said companies facing liquidity problems would have "safe harbour" from their normal insolvency duties ...
Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Ruanui and Te Kaahui o Rauru are celebrating the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South Taranaki Bight. The Court of Appeal found that there ...
Bernard Hickey talks to Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr about a massive spike in US jobless claims, and they talk about an inspiring Kiwi app to fight Covid-19 globally. Guest, Pie Funds chief executive Mike Taylor also joins them to talk about the massive market swings and hopes for recovery. Bernard zooms out ...
Political commentators from the left and right sides of the political divide are questioning the powers being exercised by police during the nation-wide “lockdown”. The Asian Invasion 2019 blog draws attention to the warning sounded by former UK Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption when he challenged Covid-19 actions by British ...
Pacific Media Watch The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) has strongly condemned the shoot-to-kill order by President Rodrigo Duterte this week as a ‘dangerous’ opening to target and kill anyone in a public space. “We are raising the alarm in the international community on President ...
The Reserve Bank looks set to start buying council bonds as well as Government bonds to unfreeze financial markets and allow councils to defer rates and jointly invest in infrastructure with the central Government, Dileepa Fonseka reports In what would be another unprecedented move to calm financial markets and help ...
Four PhD students engaged a clinical psychologist to help them navigate an uncertain time in their studies. They share their findings here.As four PhD students from Massey University’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research we, like many others, can’t stop reading and talking about the unfolding events that have gripped our ...
The SpinoffBy Ashleigh Rushton, Lisa McLaren, Marion Tan & Sara Harrison
Covid-19 testing of the wider population is on the cards as World Health Organisation research shows people are most contagious within their first few days of being infected Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says Covid-19 carriers are highly infectious when they show few signs of carrying the virus. People were ...
Z Energy is the latest company to cut its dividend payout and start talking to its banks about strengthening its finances. Chief executive Mike Bennetts said the company, the largest fuel retailer in the country, had been battered by a range of issues over the past 18 months, and was ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kang, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney Young people in Australia are among the fastest-growing group to contract COVID19. According to the Department of Health, there are now more cases in Australia among people aged 20 – 29 years than any ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Pattinson, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland Getting a good night’s sleep can be difficult at the best of times. But it can be even harder when you’re anxious or have something on your mind – a global pandemic, for example. ...
Journalist and Great Barrier Island resident Lindsay Wright reflects on outer gulf pandemic preparedness. Hardy locals can tough it out but Auckland bach owners and boaties should keep their distance. Aotea Great Barrier, the easternmost island in the Hauraki Gulf, are undergoing a Covid-19-inspired population flood. Great Barrier has scenery that makes ...
The Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand is delighted that the government has moved quickly to provide an initial financial support package for pharmacy. The $15 million package was paid this week to pharmacy contract holders. Pharmaceutical Society president ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening.The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference and are "as of 9am" of the day. There were 71 new cases of Covid-19 in ...
A new poem by Wellington poet and bookseller Ash Davida Jane. washed up! it gets tiring pushing the fire alarm every nightbut things keep catching on fireor sometimes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Foster, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney Our earliest vertebrate (animals with backbones) ancestors laid eggs, but over millions of years of evolution, some species began to give birth to live young. There is a traditional dichotomy in vertebrate reproduction: species ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Foster, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney Our earliest vertebrate (animals with backbones) ancestors laid eggs, but over millions of years of evolution, some species began to give birth to live young. There is a traditional dichotomy in vertebrate reproduction: species ...
Welcome to the second edition of our lockdown Top 10s. A reminder that this chart has nothing to do with sales or launches or the publishing cycle; these are just books the Unity team love – and this week it’s westerns, full of big skies and long rides and showdowns.AUCKLANDAll ...
Wellington Mayor Andy Foster’s plan to cover revenue shortfalls through borrowing without cutting low priority spending is immoral, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . “Businesses and households across the country are meeting financial challenges ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin John Brophy, Emeritus Professor of Creative writing, University of Melbourne “Katrina, I had in mind a prayer, but only this came,” Bruce Dawe wrote to his infant daughter, new-born, in intensive care, her life in the balance, declaring as poets must ...
The shock closure of Bauer NZ – and with it all of the country’s current affairs magazines – is a stark reminder of the fragile state of local media, writes Mel Bunce, the author of a book on the subject.It is a dark week for journalism in New Zealand, with ...
Join Leonie Hayden as she works through the first four weeks of Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy.Rāmere/FridayWe made it to the end of week one e te whānau. It wasn’t that hard! In fact it was… Māori made easy.To end our week of pronunciation practice we’re going to revisit everything we ...
Open mike 19/06/2016 
Open mike is your post.
. . April 4: Day 10 of living in lock-down… I wake up to a fine Saturday morning which normally would be like an early Christmas. But it’s Day 10 of Level 4 Lock Down. What will my fellow New Zealanders be doing on a day like this – staying ...4 hours ago
Some time during the night we went over the 850,000 views mark. We might have had our millionth view by the end of this year – certainly by early next year. Most of the people involved in Redline spent years and years producing various small left-wing papers and selling them ...4 hours ago
Comfortably, in the very first round, with an impressive 56% of the votes.I wonder, did members of the Shadow Cabinet start tweeting their resignations during Starmer's victory speech, or is that only a trick the right pull?It is odd how all the talk of how the next leader "needs to ...5 hours ago
One of the key voices in this extraordinary time in which we live is that of University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker. Philip Matthews did an an excellent job this weekend of capturing the way he became the man for this moment in a profile for The Press.But one ...5 hours ago
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressed the nation today about the decline in daylight New Zealand has been experiencing over the previous few months. She said “As many of you will notice, our attempts to stem the dwindling of the daylight over the last few months have been completely ...20 hours ago
As the first week of Level Four lockdown unfolded, mounting questions grew as to just what was (and was not) allowed under its “rules”. Partly these were driven by some apparently contradictory messages from different authority figures and explanations carried in the media. Partly they reflected a somewhat sketchy legal basis ...1 day ago
We must root out the traitors among us! ...2 days ago
In order to meet our 2050 carbon target and do our bit to avoid making the Earth uninhabitable, New Zealand needs to decarbonise our economy, replacing fossil fuels with electricity in the energy, industrial and transport sectors. The good news is that it will mean cheaper power for all of ...2 days ago
As Aotearoa enters week two of lockdown, it’s clear we’re all still working out what our “bubbles” look like and how to stay in them to stop the spread of Covid-19. New to the government’s Covid-19 website is some good guidance for people living in apartment blocks. Recent decades have ...2 days ago
Resuming Normal Service: The Republican Party's nominee for in 1920, Warren Harding, promised the American people: “not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration”. If she wishes to remain our prime minister, then Jacinda Ardern will offer New Zealanders the same.HOW EDUCATED AMERICA snickered when the ...2 days ago
I haven’t done a huge amount in the last few days. I’m reading The Poppy War and I’ve sort of poked at a couple of games – I started SOMA but I’m a wimp and I quit while in the first room after the brain scan. I might try it ...3 days ago
46 Articles Physical science of global warming & effects Global response of evapotranspiration ratio to climate conditions and watershed characteristics in a changing environment Greenhouse effect: the relative contributions of emission height and total absorption Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects Climate change induced a ...4 days ago
Image credit: Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ... 4 days ago
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...4 days ago
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...5 days ago
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...6 days ago
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...1 week ago
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...1 week ago
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights: In this legal blog we outline some ...1 week ago
Foreign Minister Winston Peters says getting New Zealanders back home and other travellers out of the country is "a nightmare for our embassies, consuls, and staff around the world". Speaking to NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking, the Foreign Minister said that he gave a clear message to people travelling overseas that they ...2 days ago
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...1 week ago
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The scale of what we face right now is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Overcoming it is our common purpose. ...2 weeks ago
The Government will be introducing legislation to make changes to the Companies Act to help companies facing insolvency due to COVID-19 to remain viable and keep New Zealanders in jobs. The temporary changes include: Giving directors of companies facing significant liquidity problems because of COVID-19 a ‘safe harbour’ from insolvency ...2 days ago
Ardern says the role of planning for moving out of lockdown is not the Government's alone Businesses should plan how they will operate in an environment where intensive contact tracing would be needed post-lockdown, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today. The Government was working on additional guidance for the move to Level 3 ...49 mins ago
Netflix’s four-part series Unorthodox traces a woman’s escape from a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn. Emily Writes considers the lessons we can all learn from her journey. There was a moment watching Netflix’s miniseries Unorthodox when I felt like I was actually in Berlin, where much of the show is ...1 hour ago
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference. These may vary from the full day's numbers released in the Ministry of Health's spreadsheet of ...2 hours ago
By RNZ Pacific The number of people with Covid-19 in the Pacific continues to climb with French Polynesia hitting 40 cases, Guam now over 90 and the US state of Hawai’i suffering its third coronavirus death. In the past day, another person tested positive for Covid-19 in French Polynesia. ...3 hours ago
Covid-19 is a real threat to older people, but these Central Otago seniors are embracing technology, experiencing no FOMO, and finding new ways to connect and share, finds Jill Herron When the full lockdown began on March 25 it meant the end of going for a swim, spa or to ...10 hours ago
Former editor of the Woman's Weekly, Nicky Pellegrino, bids farewell to the magazine that brought information and fun to generations of New Zealand women. All those stories. Gone. Stories about our politics, our health, our education, our aspirations. Stories about the houses we lived in and the gardens we grew, ...10 hours ago
As small businesses fight for their survival in the Covid-19 lockdown, it seems one of the country’s biggest retail landlords is not keen to share the pain. On the one side, you have Jonathan*. Jonathan runs a small business out of South Auckland’s Sylvia Park - New Zealand’s biggest mall. ...10 hours ago
With no Covid-19 cases and its economy desperate to restart, the Chathams is keen to go fishing again, writes Jim Kayes. It shouldn’t really be a surprise. They are, after all, ahead of New Zealand by 45 minutes. And though they are part of Wellington’s Rongotai electorate, the fiercely ...10 hours ago
Like countless New Zealanders stranded overseas, Wellingtonian Rosie O’Hagan will be braving authorities, airlines, airports and uncertainty to make it back from the other side of the world, writes Jim Kayes. Rosie O’Hagan hadn’t stepped outside for three weeks. When she finally did – around midnight on Friday ...24 hours ago
Simon Wren-Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford, raises good questions about Britain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some of them seem germane to this country’s response. Wren-Lewis posted his critique on his Mainly Macro blog under the heading Following the Science or a ...1 day ago
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference. These may vary from the full day's numbers released in the Ministry of Health's spreadsheet of ...1 day ago
Normally heaving year-round, Queenstown has ground to an eerie halt as Covid-19 cases rise and tourism income plummets, reports Paul Taylor. On a hill behind Queenstown's coronavirus Covid-19 community testing centre, the resort's iconic Skyline gondola sits motionless. More than 17 million people are estimated to have ridden the gondola ...1 day ago
Are we drinking more in the lockdown? Hard to know, writes David Slack, but we’re certainly having to get creative about it. Almost every phone call I’ve answered this week has begun the same way: “You still off the drink, then?” Fair question. What a time to be not drinking. ...1 day ago
Kiwi clinical psychologist Desiree Dickerson is stuck with her family in Spain and has written a guide in Nature: "Seven tips to manage your mental health and well-being during the Covid-19 outbreak." It’s Day 17 of the Covid-19 lockdown in Spain. In a small village on the Mediterranean coast, about ...1 day ago
"Will our ills be cured? Will our feet carry us? For how long?": a short story set in Henderson by West Auckland writer Serie Barford. I learned to drive a tractor when I was a kid feeding out hay with my cousins on a dairy farm down the line. I ...1 day ago
Without active testing in the community our Covid-19 picture isn’t complete, an epidemiologist says. David Williams reports. There are worse places to be self-isolating than Whakatāne, in the Bay of Plenty, says Bridget Robson, who lives on a two-acre block and keeps chickens. “We live in a beautiful part of ...1 day ago
David Clark’s misadventure in mountain biking was a stupid, but ultimately forgivable offence. The bigger problem is the continued uncertainty around what is and isn’t appropriate activity in lockdown, as Sam Sachdeva writes. Given the pressure he and his Cabinet colleagues are under, it is little surprise Health Minister David ...1 day ago
Assessing the economic impact of Covid-19 requires a new approach to a problem economists have not encountered in modern times, writes Dr Kirdan Lees Covid-19 has presented quite a problem for economists. Containment policies that seek to flatten the Covid-19 curve or eliminate the virus, restrict economic activity. All governments ...2 days ago
Most of New Zealand's MPs are in lockdown just like the rest of us, confined to their neighbourhoods and stuck in their bubbles. Checkpoint called a few to ask them what they're doing. ...2 days ago
During the challenges associated with lockdown, the Māori Party are congratulating Ngāti Ruanui and South Taranaki on the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South ...2 days ago
Environment Minister David Parker has directed officials to find ways to fast-track consents for infrastructure and development projects. He says his goal is to help create a pipeline of projects so that some can start immediately once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted “so people can get back into work as fast ...2 days ago
Contact tracing is a crucial part of the Covid-19 puzzle and technology might prove essential to scaling up New Zealand's tracing capacity, Marc Daalder reports With the lockdown reducing physical contact between members of the public and testing ramping up, the only missing piece of the Covid-19 puzzle is contact tracing. ...2 days ago
Insolvency laws will be temporarily changed to allow troubled companies to trade while technically insolvent Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced changes to the Companies Act to allow companies to put their debts into "hibernation". Robertson said companies facing liquidity problems would have "safe harbour" from their normal insolvency duties ...2 days ago
Bernard Hickey talks to Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr about a massive spike in US jobless claims, and they talk about an inspiring Kiwi app to fight Covid-19 globally. Guest, Pie Funds chief executive Mike Taylor also joins them to talk about the massive market swings and hopes for recovery. Bernard zooms out ...2 days ago
The Reserve Bank looks set to start buying council bonds as well as Government bonds to unfreeze financial markets and allow councils to defer rates and jointly invest in infrastructure with the central Government, Dileepa Fonseka reports In what would be another unprecedented move to calm financial markets and help ...2 days ago
Covid-19 testing of the wider population is on the cards as World Health Organisation research shows people are most contagious within their first few days of being infected Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says Covid-19 carriers are highly infectious when they show few signs of carrying the virus. People were ...2 days ago
Z Energy is the latest company to cut its dividend payout and start talking to its banks about strengthening its finances. Chief executive Mike Bennetts said the company, the largest fuel retailer in the country, had been battered by a range of issues over the past 18 months, and was ...2 days ago
Journalist and Great Barrier Island resident Lindsay Wright reflects on outer gulf pandemic preparedness. Hardy locals can tough it out but Auckland bach owners and boaties should keep their distance. Aotea Great Barrier, the easternmost island in the Hauraki Gulf, are undergoing a Covid-19-inspired population flood. Great Barrier has scenery that makes ...2 days ago
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference and are "as of 9am" of the day. There were 71 new cases of Covid-19 in ...2 days ago
Vodafone says its continuing to see significant increases in calls and data on its networks after the first week of level 4 lockdown. ...2 days ago
With the widening gap in the polls between Clinton and Trump growing fast, the Republicans can now think about losing the 30 seats that would lose them Congress as well:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html
If Trump keeps this up, I think we will see more and more mild Republicans head over towards Clinton.
Next test for them both: when the economic shockwaves from Brexit hit the US, which one has the more credible reaction and plan?
Nate Silver’s team have a little counterfactual at what the economic impacts could mean:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-brexit-could-mean-for-the-economy/
I think Brexit won’t actually happen, the polls are starting to swing back to Remain (since global markets are getting jittery).
Demographic polling shows that there is a distinct difference in preferences between the young and the old, with the young preferring to remain. This increases the chances that the polls being reported are wrong, since they have to have a Likely Voter model to weight the results, if this under-estimates the eventual share of young voters, then Remain will likely end up several points higher than the polls have been showing.
Since recent polling in the UK for the election and the Scottish independence vote have been very poor, I don’t think we should take the polls as-read (and my feeling is that Remain is under-sampled).
It will be interesting to see how this pans out Lanthanide. Polling has shown young people in Britain are firmly for Remain. But how many will actually vote? At my work place in Queenstown we’ve got lots of young Britons on working holidays and while they’re all, at least, tending towards Remain hardly any of them would consider entering a polling booth for any reason.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11659127
Aue ! Hannah Tamaki has a new motor.
The ‘Faster Paster’ screams over Mangere Bridge at 239 kph……..a sway of coiffed bleached hair, an outlandishly extended eyelash……..concealing the obscenity of Te Puea Marae to her left.
The Heavenly Master is aghasta of course !
the sadistic bearded skyfairy does not give a flying fuck.
Fixed that for ya.
is this a timid approach by a NZ Herald Stenographer trying to appeal to our current National Party led government that excels in doing nothing ? Oh well…….too little too late.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/81165587/stacey-kirk-a-cold-week-in-politics-as-government-fuels-fires-with-ice
Covering Bennetts arse again. Either Bennett is a callous creep, or a gossip that cannot keep a secret.
she is both.
But was it a secret? I gather it was well known in some circles. Unfortunately Labour making a mountain out of a molehill again.
Yep whereas National are trying to make the housing crisis mountain into a molehill again, unfortunately for a bunch of homeless.
I agree Gangnam and further I read a report that the Marae chief thought he was speaking confidentially…. really hard to know what the true facts are.
It isn’t the first time that Bennett has placed confidential information into the public arena.
Oh, if there’s doubt as to what the facts really are, the solution is easy: the benefit of the doubt doesn’t go to the proven liar with a history of leaking personal details.
I have to disagree with you on this; in the court of justice you’re innocent till proven guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, and a jury won’t be allowed to know of the accused’s (criminal) history till after the trial.
Don’t you think these standards are also suitable and appropriate for ‘trials in public’?
Nope.
We’re not sentencing people to prison. Screw those jerks.
Unless the media people say they got this information from someone else entirely, it’s perfectly fair to work on the assumption that bennett has, yet again, treated her position with incompetence and contempt and used her privileged position to launch patty political smears, or allowd her office to do so.
Trouble is you are letting your political beliefs influence your judgement.
So, basically, if I wasn’t anti-national I’d ignore the fact that Bennett has history of releasing personal information, I’d ignore the coincidental nature of the information getting out just after she met with the guy, and I’d throw my hands in the air and say “gee willakers, I’m honour-bound to give equal weight to the facts and her denials, I guess we will never know the truth so I will pretend this never happened”?
Yeah, nah. There is a possibility that she or her office didn’t leak it, that it’s all a setup. But I’d need to hear that from a third party to believe it. That’s not unfair, or bullying, or whatever. That’s a liar reaping the credibility that they sow.
Well this, at the start of the article, is pretty damning:
“It’s a cold Government that pays lip service to refugees, vetoes parents having more time with their children and leaks personal details of a man trying to help with Auckland’s homeless crisis. But this one did. And all in the space of a week.”
The “run of surpluses” Double-Dipton has supposedly achieved are now in some doubt since the last report on government finances a couple of weeks ago showed a billion going missing.
It is only a matter of time before a mega killer heatwave strikes Australia, seeing thousands of Australians fleeing across the Tasman in fear of their lives.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/120-degrees-western-wildfires-explode-triple-digit-heat-wave-way-n594071
A single heatwave is not going to send Australians to New Zealand to live permanently. I doubt if it would even send very many here to ‘ride it out’ – perhaps if it lasted a week or more in some cities.
And some people may be shocked by the waves of hot air that make it across the Tasman to give NZ a nasty blast… We will not go unscathed.
So Andrew Little acknowledges that he lied about John Shewan. He releases his apology two hours before the test match on a Saturday hoping for minimal coverage.Too bad he was unable to man up and apologise to the Hagamans. Still best not to have to fight two defamation cases at the same time. Problem is that given how likely he is to speak without fully engaging his brain I wonder how many more defamations cases he will cause.
[Your next comment had better be proof of your assertion that Little has acknowledged that he lied or an apology to Little for making a false statement or you’re leaving us for an extended period. TRP]
Little lied his arse off, he’s not sorry in the slightest.
Does show he’s got form for lying and muck racking though, which gives a ton of weight to Hagamans defamation case
Lol form for lieing, your kidding right?, I forgot mother Teressa was John Keys mum, and he is the only person on the planet God asks forgiveness from.
BTW, i’m trying to help you and Fisi out here, but it would be nicer if the two of you at least tried to hold a sensible conversation about things occasionally, instead of popping in with your wild exagerations at times.
Or do you work for National and have no interest in listening only dictating how it should be?
Relying on the accuracy of an off-ashore newspaper is always a big risk. Little made a mistake and has apologised. That is the mark of a person with integrity – unlike the present incumbent PM and his mob of sycophants like fisiani and BM.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11659052
It’s in the paper and actually fisiani is correct Andrew came out and apologized and admitted he was wrong about Sherwin.
I’ll tell you this moderators, your bullying, end of.
I’ve been threated with BANS, by Marty, Lprent, and you edited a post and went on one yesterday.
I’m not on Fisi’s side, but stop fkn threatening everyone with bans dickheads.
Here http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11659052
ban me then
[Fisiani has made a very specific claim. It’s up to him to prove it or apologise or he’s gone. If you’re that keen on not commenting here, you could simply not comment. But any further abuse and your wish will be granted. Which would be a shame, because when you’re not ranting, you often make sense. TRP]
No, Andrew said he made a mistake based on wrong information, not made up a lie, read it again. Ban the shit stirrer.
He twisted it to being a lie agreed, is that worthy of threatening a ban is it?
Nazi much?
It is you and fisiani doing the twisting Richardrawshark.
You both seem to have trouble with Honest-Andrew’s approach. When he makes an honest mistake, having relied on newspaper reports that turn out to be inaccurate, he simply admits it, meets the person in question and apologizes.
Now if we had a PM who did this he would have more respect across the spectrum. Instead we have a PM who lies often and never admits it.
Wrong BG, I don’t agree with Fisi saying he lied, in fact if you read my statements and posts not once do I say Andrew lied.
I’m not getting drawn into that.
I will defend someones right, no matter how much I detest there political point of view, to have that point of view. As much as I would if it was taken from me.
“Wrong BG, I don’t agree with Fisi saying he lied …”
“It’s in the paper and actually fisiani is correct …”
Some mistake, surely?
Do I need a lawyer to read my posts before printing to check that in no way possible can it be used to promote a point of view different to the context it was made in?
JFC
Nope. Just accepting that you forgot what you’d wrote a few minutes earlier would be fine 😉
Goodbye TRP, enjoy the Standard.
I see your point TRP, I had thought you were saying to Fisi that Andrew had no made ANY post at all when he did and to prove the post by linking it. I stepped in as I had also read the post on the Herald and linked it..
I think the truth is you knew there was a post but Andrew had said he was wrong where fisi said he made public apology for lieing.
My total bad.
Sorry guys my appologies, I should not post early till me tablets kick in.
Doesn’t change my opinion on the often used sledgehammer though.
No sweat, mate! You and Andrew Little both seem able to take some responsibility when it’s needed. Not so sure that fisiani is made of the same stuff.
“Labour leader Andrew Little has admitted he was wrong when he said two months ago that John Shewan advised the Bahamas government on how to maintain the islands’ tax haven status.”
Frankly he lied TRP what do you call saying something that is factually incorrect. Is wrong , is not the truth.
these things are also called lies.
http://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/little-admits-bahamas-accusation-was-wrong/ar-AAhgjfj?li=BBqdk7Q&ocid=iehp
Now it’s also on MSN.
reading it, although this pains me significantly and i’m not saying this as any form of get back at you.
It’s just ..arghhhhh owwww he’s kind of.arghhhh right. ughhh
croak, wheeze dies.
Wrong. A lie is when you purposefully misrepresent the facts while knowing the truth. Andrew Little didn’t do that. He represented the data that he had. The data turned out to be wrong.
In fact, if we used your logic, you would actually be lying in this entire thread.
With that apology, you show you are more graceful than most here. Well played Sir.
-DTB, yeah I see your point there. Ta.
-Mr Little said statements he made in April were based on a report in a Bahamas newspaper.
weak very weak from little and his strategy team, and using a newspaper report “JHC”, wouldn’t have been an opposition paper there would it? Regardless, newspaper reports any reports need facts checking, you and all involved in the media and politics know that DTB.
If he’s not guilty of deliberately lieing, then he shows a lack of professionalism for not checking his attack would hold up under scrutiny and not backfire on him, which seems to be bloody common from all Politicians these days..
Seems the authenticity of reports, is less important, than it’s usefulness to your political message!
I agree. He didn’t lie. But he made a serious allegation based on a purported single report in a Bahamas newspaper. Which he has not cited. So we cannot even check what that newspaper reported or the weight a reasonable person would attach to such a report.
So no he didn’t lie. But neither was it a mistake. It was a defamatory statement based on a willful disregard of the evidence required to support such a statement.
The threats to me are not tolerable unless deserved, people will get excited, this is a political forum, here we have a left blog with guest, some of them we have had here a long time like BM Fisi etc. We all know what they are like.
Last two days the ban threats and moderation has gone overboard. You can take that critisim on or threaten me again. Up to you.
But one more and I am gone. I just don’t enjoy people who want freedom of speech but deny it to others for weak things like their enjoyment when we do something wrong. fairs, fair.
I also posted the link, (wrong, lied), I’ve seen worse exagerations here over what some of the Nats have said being twisted.
Take it on Mods, just calm down a touch or find other ways you can keep a semblance of order without using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
“Goodbye TRP, enjoy the Standard.” Richardrawshark @ 11.41am.
I thought you had already gone. IMO you suggesting a couple of days back that a couple of people here ‘end it’ because they didn’t agree with your point of view, should have had you permanently banned. You are the epitome of why The Standard can be a very toxic place to be in.
& some ‘lefties’ condemned what he said Ben, or did you forget that, so fuck off with the faux concern yeah?
Actually where would you go, Kiwiblog or WO? Are you showing ‘concern & outrage’ on those blogs too for their toxic comments? Or just here?
Thanks for reinforcing my comment with more abuse GS. Typical weak comeback. Has the comment been deleted? Can’t be bothered looking, but I suspect it’s still there.
FYI, for all its faults, WO moderation is strict and simply telling someone to FO would be met with a temp ban and a warning. Personal attacks and abuse used to be common, but for the last couple of years it has been pretty strict becuase so many people read the blog (it hurts I know) and they lifted their game. You might not like Slater, or the politics on the site, but it’s a whole lot more savory than here, with a number of regular female posters.
I’m amazed how anyone that posts a differing view here is met with abuse, called a RWNJ, or commonly met with the ‘faux concern’ response. It’s not called an echo chamber for nothing.
Slater’s numbers look like they’ve bottomed out completely since Dirty Politics. And he’s relying almost completely on those horrid advertisements, too – the site’s littered with them. No doubt a sign he’s lost a ton of regular advertising support. An apt fate for the kind of place he runs.
It’s PC gone mad Ben!
No I didn’t, we already discussed and ended that conversation Ben.
Depends on how you infer something as a dig or as literal. trying to say I was asking people to kill themselves literally..having a face to face with you would be difficult if your going to react like that to what comes out as language when people are talking,
Take a hike, jump off a cliff, hang yourself, go fly a kite, give me a break etc etc etc
I noticed here though more than other forums some of the commenters love to hate, yet are the first to condemn it.
You take a dig at someone and they get all holier than thou and accuse you of having bad intentions.
it’s really quite utterly pathetic, Ben.
What business is it of yours Ben? Desperate to spread your negativity?
When you post on a public forum, does it not become everyone’s business? Taking offence to your post was not negativity, it was merely expressing my offence. Based on your posting history, I suspect there was more venom in your comment than your lengthy explaining tries to portray. As Mr Little is finding out, perception is everything.
I do enjoy how you come back for a second bite, responding to your own comments. Dwell much?
remember party line telephones, where anyone could pick up the phone and listen in, not cool very frowned upon
Remember CB’s where you have chats with people but there was a code of conduct.
Remember BBS’s same thing, forums, now blogs, you can butt in, but your the one who may end up looking like a meddler interferer and stirrer.
but up to you Ben I got better things to do atm.
I just think, Andrew’s trying to copy Keys style of saying the first thing that pops in his head for media attention.
I don’t think he’s guilty of anything aka the Hagamans BM, your grasping just a tad too far there, as I’ve said saying something like a government deal looks dodgy is his job, and it’s vague enough, the claims on Sherwin were mouth before brain BS and your bang on , on that.
We need better opposition and leadership, IMHO.
The person or team leading labours strategy are weak, and in a month when gifts dropped from heaven, we should have seen a no confidence having been thrown in and a testing of their partner parties,.
weak, very weak and now embarrassing.
Yeah Andrew should wait for some polling results before he makes a statement (sarc). Or he can lead & make mistakes & apologise & move on, or have you not ever made an honest mistake? I for one like Little, he’s got guts unlike the current PM.
To be honest G my opinion on Andrew’s still undecided, Cunnliffe is ten times the PM that Andrew is.
I agree with you there about Cunliffe, but Little is there right now, & not doing too bad a job & he gets all the right wing trolls fizzing & spewing so can’t be too bad eh.
I enjoy laughing at their desperation of trying to make these disasters look good.
Don’t you?
The excuses and justifications are side splittingly funny in their pathetic-ness, what would we do without them.
Little’s Preferred PM stats are worse than Goff, Shearer, or Cunliffe.
He needs to stop these excuses and damn well perform better.
You either have the ability to think on your feet and hold a debate, with class and dignity, Lange had that in spades, Cunnliffe has it, Andrew doesn’t, that’s how Richie see’s it sadly.
hmm self edit, I do think Andrew is good at debating, it’s better said, I think Cunnliffe’s excellent and perfoms better at it.
Where Andrew looks uncomfortable, Cunnlife looks at ease.
Wasn’t Helen Clark at 3% before serving 3 terms as PM???
Go back and check.
And stop making excuses for Little. He isn’t.
-Ad Can’t ditch him, that would be 4… must cheer.. must be brave, and have faith.
It says a lot about the health of newspapers world-wide. Why bother to produce these crap papers if one cannot trust a word they publish. It has become a world where you have to do your own research before you can open your bloody mouth – what an indictment that is where lying is just like breathing. Our NZ Herald is testament to that, we are on a month’s trial with the paper after we gave it the boot 3 years ago – today’s issue (like every day’s issue) is unmitigated garbage – I just cannot believe that readers digest this muck – at least for a month we have liners for the cat’s litter tray. Good on Andrew Little for doing the correct thing and apologising for his mistaking and expecting news in a Bahamas newspaper to be the truth when it was the usual lazy journalism at fault and lies.
Yeah at least Cunnliffe used the word sorry when apologising for being a man. Didn’t see sorry from Little. Oh well one down and one to go.
Here’s a big word for you Dale, ‘context’, look it up.
TRP I find your casuistry gobsmacking. You are quibbling about the definition of a
“lie” .
Where is the corresponding beratement of Blip long list of so called lies by John Key…………?
/?s=Blip%27s+of+lies&isopen=none&search_posts=true&search_comments=true&search_sortby=date
Andrew Little did not tell the truth about John Shewan.
He has acknowleged this.
His acknowledging that he did not tell the truth does not constitute telling a lie???? Are you serious?
Let me quote you the definition of Lie
noun
1.
a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
Synonyms: prevarication, falsification.
Antonyms: truth.
2.
something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture:
His flashy car was a lie that deceived no one.
3.
an inaccurate or false statement; a falsehood.
4.
the charge or accusation of telling a lie:
He flung the lie back at his accusers.
verb (used without object), lied, lying.
5.
to speak falsely or utter untruth knowingly, as with intent to deceive.
Synonyms: prevaricate, fib.
6.
to express what is false; convey a false impression.
verb (used with object), lied, lying.
7.
to bring about or affect by lying (often used reflexively):
to lie oneself out of a difficulty; accustomed to lying his way out of difficulties.
An inaccurate or false statement constitutes a lie.
Andrew Little admitted that he did not speak the truth. He admits that he conveyed a false impression
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/306724/little-admits-bahamas-accusation-was-wrong
There is the proof that you asked for!!!
OK, you worked hard on your homework and you spared us your presence for the best part of the day. Win/win, I reckon.
Well done fisiani. I’ll bookmark that comment for next time John Key moves his lips! Win/Win alright!
The Nation has said Govt Agencies are dropping off people at Te Puea Marae to be housed.
I hope they are coming with the $5k resettlement allowance!!
https://berniesanders.com/Stream/
Thanks Jenny. First time I have heard Bernie give a full speech.
Vice Watch
In a world with any respect for the rule of law, or even elementary decency, these two men would be rotting in prison, not striking poses like they’re doing here….
“L’hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu.”
—-François de La Rochefoucauld
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/81089975/sanders-declines-to-endorse-clinton-vows-real-change
As Bernie Sanders prepares to fight for reforms inside the Democratic Party Convention, his political slogan has become –
“Justice or Bust.”
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/06/09/bernie-or-bust-no-its-justice-or-bust
How Sanders shepherds his supporters after the Democratic Convention is a Bobby Kennedy moment for US liberals. Bernies’ campaign team are leaving it really late to generate a full-throated reform movement.
I hope Bernie and team have both the wisdom and the skill to avoid Black Lives Matter and Occupy aimlessness and dissolution.
I’ve just put up a post about the Mana party that touches on how a movement can be built by testing the waters at local level. That’s what Sanders has suggested his supporters do:
https://berniesanders.com/press-release/thousands-potential-candidates-respond-sanders-appeal/
I saw those Sanders links.
He’s too equivocal, unstructured, and very late. I hope it works.
I think I know what you’re saying: cease the moment or opportunity, keep the momentum and build it or grow it. Right?
Although it might be disheartening or frustrating even when certain things don’t eventuate at first and seemingly disappear into oblivion I think this often is because of our short-sighted view and impatience and single-minded focus on one particular outcome or ‘destination’ – associated thinking is “the end justifies the means”.
Very recently, Rosie and weka used the metaphor of waves and indeed there’s a groundswell that may be largely undetectable but the waves of change are clearly visible on the surface.
Change does not always follow a linear direct path, in space or in time; it meanders, it oscillates & vibrates.
Human development is similarly characterised by taking baby steps in the beginning and falling down and getting up again, which is how we ‘learn to walk’. This applies to all levels of development (and evolution).
Another way of saying more or less the same thing is this well-known and beautiful quote from Ovid:
If Sanders is telling the truth, he wants a revolution, not mithering from rhe Greeks. He set the high expectation, and it’s up to him to follow through.
Carpe the freaking Diem, Bernie.
O.k. Ad, fine with me; I think Sanders (and his supporters) will continue to go down the path wherever it leads.
BTW, Ovid was from Rome, the quote was in Latin, and so is yours 😉
Justice or bust?
Cabinet seats or bust?
At the last election the Green Party agreed to drop all bottom lines to get seats in cabinet.
Play the game, drop your principles, and we will make a space for you at the table.
As the Green Party goes into another election cycle and shut their mouths over “Climate Justice” they hope this strategy will get them seats at the table.
Announcing the launch of a big “Centrepiece Environmental Campaign”. I was terribly disappointed when the Green Party Centrepiece Environmental Campaign turned out to be a repackaging of the Green Party’s Clean Rivers Campaign, with which they have fought the last two elections.
What had raised my expectations in James Shaw’s campaign for co-leader, he named climate change as his number one priority, and reiterated this promise on becoming co-leader. This was in contrast to Russell Norman who had been the main leading promoter for keeping climate change in the background.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11435086
James Shaw’s Maiden Speech
Talking Climate with James Shaw
And so the backsliding has begun…..
Wecome to MMP Jenny, and give them a break.
You should thank your lucky stars you’ve got the best Green Party in the world right here.
I’d have said welcome to MMP Jenny where you get to, every three years, pick from a list of Mainly Munted Parties made up of Mostly Munted People to run your life for the next three years, choose carefully.
🙂
Obviously, you understand very little of what MMP is intended to achieve;-))
I expect better of them than you do Ad.
Memorandum of Understanding
clause 2. b) “Working Together”
Where Labour and the Green Party (“may”) agree to work together to support each other’s Members’ Bills and Supplementary Order Papers.
If the MoU is worth anything, then the Green Party need to start putting up private member bills on climate change and challenge the Labour Party to support them.
Will they do it?
Will the Green Party try and shift the national debate on climate change?
Or will the Green Party “Swimmable Rivers Centrepiece Campaign” smother any debate of climate change?
why has @NZStuff removed THIS story? about Mike Hosking bullying co-workers?
Note to commenters; we’ve had an issue over the weekend with a small number of regular commenters (and an author or two) having some of their contributions held in moderation until release by a mod.
It’s a bit beyond me, but hopefully it’s not an issue that’s with us too long. No point listing all the commenters affected, but marty mars is one of the ones that seems to have copped it most often.
So, apologies if some or all of your comments don’t immediately appear, but the mods will let them out as soon as they’re spotted.
Thanks – hope it’s fixed soon.
Me too. It’s been a pain manually releasing them (and there were a couple criticising me I was tempted to leave in limbo. No names, no pack drill, but weka will know who I’m talking about). But I’m off to the pub to watch the Warriors stuff Easts, so I’ll be out of the loop for a couple of hours. Hopefully another mod will take my place.
This was just on the news: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/stop-giving-hustlers-money-homeless-man-says-cash-donations-only-cause-problems
Homeless person saying don’t give homeless people money.
Community law person saying don’t give homeless people money.
Shopkeeper saying don’t give homeless people money.
Member of the public saying don’t give homeless people money.
They’re probably spending it on drugs.. thoughts?
I was pulled up outside the supermarket in the suburbs the other day by a kid who looked like he was living on the street who came running after me asking for money, I gave him some. It was the first time in suburbia though I’ve been asked.
Talking about DC Today makes me wish to say this
David Cunnliffe is one of NZ’s best parliamentarians IMHO, he has so much to offer the people of NZ.
I find it highly offensive he’s back benched and his skills and intelligence are left to rot in a corner due to infighting and bickering, I think the Labour party has a duty to the people who voted for DC to include him in a capacity that reflects the talents he has to offer, and stops the ABC BS.
Rise above it Labour, he, like Liam Neeson has a particular set of skills.
Cunliffe is one of the very few Labour MPs to put the National regime under sustained pressure.
Don’t know why lots of comments are going to moderation (especially weka and marty mars). Lprent?