Just sitting down to watch Q&A. Let’s see if they can extract some sense out the Housing Minister Smith after Gower didn’t have the skills on The Nation yesterday. So far he is dodging the real question of the lack of available data from his regime.
Smith was woeful showing up how hopeless their front bench is without Key, who will be back on deck tomorrow, all sun tanned having jetted back in from his Hawaiian holiday.
Expect Key to be sucking air in and sounding like a bath tub drain pipe after pulling the plug. The issues are mounting economically and Key is getting hamstrung and tied down with his odd hair fondling fetish.
No one has made the comment that with less than 3 months before the earth works season commences, many earth moving companies are already filling their books for work this year, It will not be long before the capabilities of this sector will be maxed out. Rates for this work will rise rapidly not only affecting land development but also to a large degree roading. That is if you will be able to find anyone wanting to commit to the work, we will soon hear land owners lamenting about being unable to develop or how expensive the process is and not just limiting their comments towards council costs.
Rates for excavation and site works have already risen and will lift again soon As you say a large number of contractors are booked already, similar story for builders charge rates are now hitting $70+gst per hour. Makes me laugh when politicians talk about affordable housing in Auckland when the labour rates are rising so quickly…
Do they ever check their stories? A brief look and the first thing that stands out is an error on their front page. It isn’t Oprah’s first time in NZ as she stayed at Huka Lodge a few years back.
“It’s not to Television New Zealand’s credit that they employ him.”
Nicky Hager damns Mike “Contra” Hosking Mediawatch, Radio NZ National, Sunday 19 July 2015
One year after the release of his latest exposé of the National Party’s assault on democracy, Nicky Hager was interviewed by Colin Peacock. Hager said that there is a huge gap between journalists and the organisations that employ them. In spite of having to work for organisations like the New Zealand Herald, Mediaworks and TVNZ, most people in the media are serious and well informed journalists—with the exception of one or two, who didn’t let the fact they had not read the book stop them from launching crazed attacks on him.
Colin Peacock pressed him to name one of those lazy, ill-informed National Party loyalists. Hager hesitated, and then said: “Well, Mike Hosking. It’s not to Television New Zealand’s credit that they hire him…”
I thought he said: the bounce isn’t as high as Labour would have hoped.
Well of course it isn’t – yet. The story only broke a week ago and it takes much longer than a week for these issues to sink in among the majority of voters – plus the poll must have started before the story broke.
Or you could look at it differently. Business confidence dropping effects of the low milk solids price is starting to effect every town and city in New Zealand. Gone is the rhetoric of our economy being solid as a rock, hence the Rock Star title, down to more realistic economic view of snap crackle and finally bang…pop deflated. So Pop Star is more fitting these days.
Yep and that dynamic is building slowly and likely caused the RM lift. I was just thinking of how a sudden bounce now might be characterised by some commentators.
It’ll be interesting, but Colmar Brunton’s built in 5% lean to the right should make it look OK for the Nats. Expect the lead story to be a beat up about how the housing crisis exposure hasn’t helped Labour. As if that was why it was done.
Maybe by the odd media shill, however with our economy on the skids and heading to a crisis the punters will see a wider range of issues not just Housing.
I’m only going to note that it’s really interesting how the first defence of the story was “Labour has to appeal to more voters” and now that there’s not going to be a bump out of it the new defence is “oh we didn’t do it to get more votes anyway.” (Or Anne’s alternative, “voters are too stupid to have figured out whether they support this or not yet”.)
The non resident foreigners buying property issue won’t be showing to any great degree in this poll. And even in the next polls, as there are numerous issues that those surveyed may have an axe to grind with this incumbent regime. It can be as simple as the more the population hear our economy is on the rocks, the more likely they are going to blame Key and his cronies for their unacceptable inaction. That is my opinion for what it’s worth.
It’s a very fair opinion. I just tire of the paradoxical arguments, i.e. “this will appeal to voters, but that appeal will mysteriously not be reflected in poll results”.
The idea that dogwhistling on people’s surnames wasn’t actually a great move is apparently unspeakable.
Just because something will appeal to voters, doesn’t mean it should result in a clear signal in the polls, particularly immediately after the event. Also if the polling started on the Saturday, a lot of people simply would not have heard about it until Monday anyway.
Labour lost the last election because they didn’t look like they could form a credible government. Their attack on foreign speculators in the last week doesn’t speak directly towards that particular criticism either.
Also notable is that National haven’t really responded to Labour’s attacks on them; that will likely be occurring in this week. National’s response is partly what will drive polling intentions – do they agree with the problem and are they doing something concrete about it, or are they just going to keep on claiming that there is no problem? Or, most likely, are they just going to deflect onto the ‘racism’ angle and refuse to talk about the issue?
Thanks for that Stephanie, yes I was very disappointed at the dog whistle tactic, the sloppiness was amateurish. There was a lack of being honest and frank. Where was the confession “Labour doesn’t have the funds to resource for paying an agency to provide the details…unlike National who have large donators like property magnates like Mr Barfoot who contributed $20,000 at last year’s election”.
You didn’t see that approach from me, Stephanie. In fact, I’m struggling to recall anybody who made an argument that it was done because “Labour has to appeal to more voters”. I’m pretty sure that most people accept that it was an issue that needed raising, but there was considerable difference on how it should have been done.
Stephanie… you seem to like reading things into people’s comment that are not there. It’s a well known fact that most people are not into politics in the same way we are, and therefore take longer to respond to political issues when they arise. Nothing to do with “stupidity” as you well know. I will respond in kind by saying I think that was a witting attempt to drive a wedge where no wedges should exist.
Wallace Chapman talking to author about NZ wines and regions! WTF – that’s Metros area or the Sunday inserts. Why waste valuable interviewing time on such lifestyle matters. It isn’t even part of a business overview which informed people should know about.
Jane Kelsey is being interviewed on her new book The Fire Economy. Good.
Perhaps we are being presented with a ‘balanced’ set of interview, the acceptable lifestyle ones, with a token piece of searching, thoughtful stuff to show that it’s all not souffles with madeira wine flavouring. Now wouldn’t that be an attractive dessert. If you like the idea, it’s yours.
There’s nothing wrong with talking about wine. The problem is the utter triviality of most of the rest of his programme. A few minutes ago, he said: “What’s your favorite tree? THAT is the theme of the day.”
Chapman also has people texting in about what their favorite David Bowie song is. A few weeks ago, he begged people to text in about their favorite Beatles song. Every week, he asks people to say what their favorite city, or favorite snack or favorite movie is.
Unlike some people in the media—Mike “Contra” Hosking, Leighton Smith, Larry “Lackwit” Williams, Sean Plunket—Wallace Chapman is neither lazy nor ill-informed. This trivialization of the Sunday morning programme is not his idea, it’s something that some genius in Radio New Zealand management has forced on him.
“This trivialization of the Sunday morning programme is not his idea, it’s something that some genius in Radio New Zealand management has forced on him.”
So, its not just us then? Switched the squawk box off 1/2 an hour ago.
I thought Natrad was trying to build its audience???
Yes I have noticed the attempt at drawing people to use their ‘apps’ to contact Wallace at Radionz about matters which is something that the commercial is likely to do. That may be necessary as so many young to middle-aged people view life through the tiny space of a reversed telescope their smartphone screen gives. There is a need to bring young people into the Radionz circle. But it dilutes the effective time for big media stuff. It seems to me like bringing special needs pupils into the ordinary everyday classroom, the teacher time and attention available to other children is lessened.
But Radionz cannot be allowed to become only for the older age group, it will need to bring in the younger group. I hope that we don’t lose the majority of intelligent, informed discussion about the world’s news, in favour of the soft option of discussing the interests of the middle class and nice pieces from most favoured nations that imitate the pretty words of a travelogue.
Your final sentence is also my worry. This trivialization of the Sunday morning programme is not his idea, it’s something that some genius in Radio New Zealand management has forced on him.
Hey, the tree discussion was actually focused on the effects of climate change (trees dying in Melbourne because of long-term droughts), and explored the connection people feel to trees that form part of their sense of self and community. I thought it was an imaginative approach to a subject that people often find dry or abstract and hard to connect to. The sample emails he read out were great – heart-warming, moving, funny, poetic… Not everything has to be hard-hitting. Sometimes a more quirky or unexpected approach can really touch a nerve and get people thinking.
Another thought re Wallace and wine buff interview. The sort of people that would enjoy listening to the talk about NZs fine wine are those who realise that the early favourites of Cold Duck or Blue Nun were rather sweet, perhaps even sugar-added, They now have more sophisticated palates, prefer something drier, appreciate the nuances in flavour.
But they have equally developed a preference for their news to reflect the sweet life. The bitter aftertaste of thorough coverage of real-world news requires a higher sort of sophistication from them before it can be embraced.
Patty Culhane of Al Jazeera on Obama’s legacy
Al Jazeera News, Saturday 18 July 2015
The U.S.-friendly official mouthpiece of the Qatari dictatorship took several minutes out of its “news” for a specially prepared item by Patty Culhane in Washington, pondering the legacy of Barack Obama as he approaches the final year of his presidency. Over several photographs of Obama looking serious, dignified and “presidential”, Culhane assured viewers that “much, perhaps most, of what happens internationally is beyond his control”. To illustrate how helpless the U.S. President is, she cited Yemen and ISIS in Iraq and Syria—none of which, apparently, has any connection to the United States.
The item finished with a long shot of a serious-looking President Obama gazing through the window, framed dramatically by the grand Oval Office windows.
I’m not sure now, but I think there was reflective violin music playing for the whole item, to emphasise the lonely vigil of this embattled human rights warrior.
Not sure if ‘don’t understand’ is the same as ‘doesn’t actually exist’, weka! Generally, I prefer laughing at people who make money by exploiting the gullible, something I appear to have in common with Mitchell and Webb.
I can pretty much guarantee that homeopathy (and acupuncture and chiropractic and…) will outlast energy intensive complexity reliant high funding requiring ‘modern medicine’.
… and I can pretty much guarantee that treatments such as homeopathy will be continue to be completely ineffective for any serious illnesses such as cancer, diabetes etc ….
well, I can pretty much guarantee to you that a traditional Japanese or African or Greek diet is better for cancer and diabetes than anything modern medicine can come up with 😉
We know how it’s supposed to work, Weka, because the woo-woo-witch-doctor gave evidence at the British Parliamentary Inquiry that:
“Dr Fisher stated that the process of ‘shaking is important’ but was unable to say how much shaking was required. He said ‘that has not been fully investigated’ but did tell us that ‘You have to shake it vigorously […] if you just stir it gently, it does not work’.
In other words, the woo-woo-witch-doctor hasn’t got a clue, but he believes it very very hard.
Mainstream science, on the other hand, does have a clue: Homeopathy relies 100% on the Placebo effect.
The “placebo effect” can actually be broken down into many individual factors.
In fact, what is measured by the “placebo effect” in drug trials is simply the the amount of healing that took place for the control group that weren’t given the drug. This naturally therefore lumps “the body’s natural healing ability” in under the umbrella “placebo effect”. Which is interesting.
One factor that is known to have a big benefit, and this is probably why modern medicine is not as effective as it ‘should’ be, and these alternative medicines seem to show more effect than they ‘should’, is simply the level of attention given to the patient from the practitioner. Studies have been done where pain killers were given to patients, but the amount of attention given to the patient varied dramatically. Some patients were simply proscribed the intervention after a short discussion, while others had long conversations with frequent follow-ups and discussions of the progress. It was found that patients that had more involvement from their practitioners had a statistically significant improvement in symptoms compared to those who were simply proscribed the intervention and then left to their own devices.
In other words, if modern medicine could be practised in a way that showed more concern for patients, overall we’d get better outcomes. A tricky question is whether the improved outcomes are worth the increased investment.
Anyway, that ‘hands-on’ attention is a clear difference between alternative ‘medicine’ and modern medicine, and likely explains a lot of the positive results.
Placebo is more than the body’s normal healing processes. That’s why drug trials also include a control group. Placebo will often show better results than the control. What’s the mechanism behind that? I agree that pracitioner/client relationship is part of it, but it’s more than that. Natural health practitioners are much better at engaging the placebo response than conventional.
“Placebo is more than the body’s normal healing processes.”
I never said it wasn’t. In fact I said it is made up of many parts, one of which is the body’s natural healing process. Re-reading I can see that this isn’t as clear as it should be, but reading the whole comment I don’t think you can construe that I said placebo is only natural healing.
Succussing is how the remedy is prepared. That’s not what I am talking about. I’m talking about how homeopathic practice works. I’m happy to add you to the list of people who express opinions about this when they are still largely ignorant of the theory they are critiquing.
What you are demonstrating is faith and superstition. The faith is in omnipotence of the metatrials, despite them being quite easily critiqued (i.e. I would guess you have no idea about the shortcomings). The superstition is ridiculing something you don’t get understand.
“Mainstream science, on the other hand, does have a clue: Homeopathy relies 100% on the Placebo effect.”
I suggest you go and extend your reading OAB. Placebo is a very useful thing in healing and health management. Even mainstream science is catching on to that one. The rest of us have know about it forever.
I did a Google scholar search for “bedside manner” as a consequence of Lanth’s comment. The medical profession is way ahead of you, and was at the time of Hippocrates.
As for further reading on Placebos, I recommend you read the link too.
Yep, and the Persians were there before Hippocrates. But ffs, the Chinese have been doing this shit for thousands of years longer than we have. Btw, physicians in Hippocrates’ time did things and believed things that you would consider woowoo, so I’m not sure why you are invoking his name.
If you are suggesting that placebo from bedside manner is the only thing happening with alternative pracitioners, then you have a very limited idea of what placebo is or how it works. It also backs up my suspicion that you have no idea what homeopathic practice is. These are very basic illogics, it’s hard to believe I’m in a conversation with otherwise thoughtful people. But ideology trumps every time.
Although effective in temporarily relieving back pain, that’s where it begins and ends.
If you can accept the science behind climate change proven by reputable scientists and researchers, why the fuck would you accept these frauds perpetuated by charlatans which have been disproven through the similar research methodologies and rigour. It’s preying on the daft and the gullible. About as genuine as Scientology.
Otago and Southland residents have been using chiropractic care since post WWI. For many different reasons. And they continue to do so in their thousands and thousands. These are smart practical people who don’t put up with BS which doesn’t work. University lecturers, PhD candidates, medical doctors, nurses and physiotherapists, some of them 🙂
My understanding of acupuncture is that it’s placebo – more drastic seeming interventions tend to have more positive outcomes – and (as linked above) more 1-on-1 contact time from the administrator of the procedure compared to some other forms of treatment.
@OAB: I can’t actually read the article, only the abstract. But they appear to be comparing a single control individual, since the other 39 in the group didn’t complete the programme?
If that’s the case, the results aren’t statistically significant.
As I’ve said before, I’ve had very good results from Chiropractic treatment for sciatica. This is not unusual: cf the medical literature cited by Realblue above.
The argument that science has proved something doesn’t exist is flawed, and most people who are anti-homeopathy are not willing to be honest about this.
the ongoing multi-centuries long fucking arrogance of you scientism types who in your ignorance and pridefulness believe you possess all the valid knowledge of mankind; in fact the very same attitude as when the brightest medical doctors of the day were prescribing bleeding, arsenic and opium. Or thalidomide, vioxx and Dalkon Shields.
But it’s not science making the absurd claim. It’s really up to the rip off artists to justify themselves. Though they’re highly incentivised to do no such thing.
Perhaps for the sake of clarity you should explain what yu mean by homeopathy.
Some people use the term to cover using such products as Arnica and other herbal/natural medications, while others use it in its narrowest definition relating to dilution and shaking to a level wherein no molecules are left within the product apart from the diluent.
In this narrow definition homeopathy has been repeatedly proven to be no more effective than placebo as such its use in preference to an active proven effective treatment in anything but simple maladies cannot be recommended by any healthcare professional, I’m not sure why you find that disturbing.
Homoeopathy, where somehow the water ‘remembers’ the ‘cure’ that was put in it through mystical vibrations or whatever is utter bullshit. How come the water remembers the ‘cure’, but not all the other millions of years where it had literal shit or toxic metals in it?
Herbal remedies may have some limited healing powers in some uses.
@ RedLogix:
“Good-oh. I’ll take your placebo effect thank you very much. Cheap, reliable and often effective. And no list of risks and side-effects.”
Actually it works both ways: the “nocebo effect” is where drugs and actual treatments are less effective than they should be, because that brain of ours has some funny ideas about how its body should behave sometimes.
This is to follow on from Colonial Rawshark’s response to Realblue –
Acupuncture is taught at Otago University and at AUT in Auckland as a post grad course and as Bachelor and Master programmes at private colleges in Auckland and Wellington. Wiki is well known for its bias against complementary and alternative medicine. Fortunately NZQA do not rely on Wiki.
“If you can accept the science behind climate change proven by reputable scientists and researchers, why the fuck would you accept these frauds perpetuated by charlatans which have been disproven through the similar research methodologies and rigour. It’s preying on the daft and the gullible.”
If you can’t tell the difference between evidence of something and trying to prove the absence of something then you really shouldn’t be trying to use science as part of your argument.
You also shouldn’t go anywhere near healthcare other than your own given you appear to have no clue about informed consent or patient centred practice.
btw, it’s those attitudes that keep the gulf between the scienceheads and the woo wooers. They’re both entrenched in belief systems that they can’t see out of, but the sad thing is that the woo wooers will never come back to science while it is so damn patronising and mean.
Perhaps the reason woo-wooers find scientists patronising and mean [citation needed] is that woo-wooers expect to be taken seriously when they have a profound information deficit.
Or are you ok with unqualified civil engineers too?
Ancient civilisations built pyramids, aquaducts, irrigation systems and highways without your ‘qualified civil engineers’. And some of that shit lasted for centuries – better than anything built today is going to last.
Yes, they had no master builders or architects and had not learned from experience. They just let anyone design and build things like the tomb of the Emperor or The Parthenon.
The narrow bands have been packaged up and locked into mind traps which they mistake for knowledge
Some of the wee monkeys understand limitations ,while other wee monkeys prefer to masturbate in public believing they are the apex of universal evolution
Human beings are monkeys with prehistoric tools believing they are unlocking the secrets of the universe.
Stroke on wee monkeys
[I’ve pointed out previously that your chosen handle is homophobic. Please don’t use it again. TRP]
I think CV’s point might be better interpreted like this; that the ancients were capable of building remarkable structures based purely on their observational and artisan skills.
Yes the people entrusted with supervising these projects would have been carefully chosen as the most talented and trusted people to do it – but few of them would have been burdened much by many years of mathematics, structural analysis, finite object analysis and so on. In other words they achieved all those things prior to any of the scientific revolution, and with none of the tools civil engineers take for granted today.
@Lanth
Well yes but what portion of structures that WE build do you think will stand in 1000 years time?
As I stated elsewhere today, I’m as much a creature and beneficiary of the experimental scientific method as anyone here. I was trained in it and have earned a living at it all my life.
But as a method it has it’s limits, and I’ve always been aware that all other non-Western cultures use a more observational approach arrive at quite another set of rules and guides for understanding the world they live in. And with quite remarkable degrees of coherence across multiple cultures. It’s a pretty gross arrogance, a racist conceit even, to simply erase that vast, complex and correlated body of knowledge as mere superstition and ignorance.
And I’m old enough to have my own modest little collection of experiences that no explanation within the scientific model. Most of these experiences arrived uninvited, unexpected and left their own very specific memories.
One example: when I was younger I used to have very vivid OOBE dreams. When I was six years old one night I ‘visited’ a house, down the driveway, around the back and into the kitchen. Next day at school I actually made a drawing of it.
At the age of ten my family moved into that house. My mum recognised the room and found the old drawing. One problem; there was a big set of cupboards in my picture which was not definitely not there. Still she was pretty impressed.
About four years later my dad and I lifted the flooring to move a wall – and there on the boards was the clear outline of the missing cupboards.
Western Science has zero explanation for this kind of thing, yet in conversation with people over the years I know that it’s also pretty common. Yes I know anecdote ‘proves’ nothing. I’m not trying to.
Yet tell this tale to most non-Westerners, indigenous peoples especially – and the response is a ‘so what boringly ho-hum and commonplace’. They’d typically find it no more remarkable than a detailed description of my last bowel movement.
At no point am I suggesting that this invalidates or diminishes the scientific method. It remains the reliable pivot around which I understand my world. But neither is there any proof to show that it is the ONLY way to understand reality, or indeed that it’s method can ever encompass an understanding of ALL reality.
Because I think this is all that people like CV, weka and myself ask for; is that science has the humility to acknowledge the boundaries of it’s domain, and remain open to the possibility that future generations will uncover new ideas and new knowledge that none of us can properly imagine just now.
To my mind that makes them explicable by Physics. Science hasn’t yet demonstrated the mechanism: it’s still the best tool for researching the phenomenon.
And that’s the point I was making. I totally agree that physics (or some yet to be understood extension of it) will be the best explanation.
Indeed that IS the power of the scientific method. Once it can create a reliable model of a phenomenon, it can then be expanded into a reproducible technology.
But just dismissing these out-of-domain experiences as woo-woo simply slows the process down – and crucially is a betrayal of the fundamental spirit of science. And ordinary people are pretty good at detecting that sort of thing.
I characterised Fisher’s pathetic testimony to the Parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee as “woo-woo-witch-doctor”. I stand by that description.
For anyone who thinks evidence-free drivel is a good idea I have one word: Neoliberalism.
So what? Woo-woo-witch-doctors don’t give a fuck about evidence, absent or not: they just want to inflict their afflictions upon everyone else while demanding “respect” and most importantly, public money.
The Roger Douglases and Max Bradfords of this world: in any sane universe they only deserve oxygen because I let my foot off their throat.
I’ll just throw this into the mix as it’s semi-relevant.
People with near death experiences in hospitals often claim they have visions of hovering up and over their body, looking down on themselves while doctors crowd around trying to heal them etc.
So a study was done (it was mentioned on QI, unfortunately I haven’t been able to google it) where they placed various objects on top of cabinets and shelves high up in the room, that could only be seen by someone who had a genuine out-of-body experience.
Over the years that the study ran, none of the hundred or so people who reported OOBE where they were hovering over their beds were able to recall the objects so-placed.
How quickly and easily RL’s comments are thrown away.
Fact is – a single incident of the type RL relates and you must admit that everything we know about the scientifically known universe – is not that much.
A prospect terrifying to some – but liberating to others.
Sorry OAB – but for such a determined defender of science you’ve been quick to abandon it here. If there is no evidence for something there are at least four logical possibilities:
1. You haven’t found it yet, or more likely, you haven’t really looked
2. You’re looking for the wrong kind of evidence, in the wrong places
3. You have found it, but you’ve failed to recognise it’s significance
4. It really does not exist
You don’t have to have a go at me. I actually do logic on a daily basis for a living. And getting my head around ALL the possible states is the key to getting a complete and robust solution.
Of course you are quite right; charlatans of all types will indulge lazy and wishful thinkers by parting them from their money at every opportunity. But you have to accept – alternative medicines, while especially prone to it, do not have that affliction on their own.
RL – when did I abandon it again? I’m not having a go at you – it’s quite clear that there is plenty of independent evidence that mirrors your own experience, and mine for that matter.
Neuroscience has mapped the territory a bit better, and will explore further if the rate of growth of literature on the subject is any indication. The only people I can see with grounds to be “frightened” of this are the woo-woo brigade, who are financially dependent on ignorance.
Meanwhile, CR’s strawman doesn’t stand scrutiny: ask any scientist and they’ll tell you that the more they learn the more they realise they don’t know.
Fact is – a single incident of the type RL relates and you must admit that everything we know about the scientifically known universe – is not that much.
Oh bollocks CR – there are dozens of possible explanations for RL’s experience before mysterious powers need to be introduced.
Did RL see their house in the future, or did RL’s parents like the house because it looked like RL’s picture? If a house has been around long enough, most walls would have had cupboards against them at one stage or another.
There is a huge amount to learn, yes. Maybe even remote viewing or something similar is possible. Hell, maybe even this is what RL’s experience was, rather than clouded memories of long ago or any other explanation. All I’m really saying is that confirmation bias is a wonderful thing, and eyewitness testimony is frequently unreliable.
Déjà vu, (Listeni/ˌdeɪʒɑː ˈvuː/; French pronunciation: [de.ʒa.vy]) from French, literally “already seen”, is the phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced, has already been experienced in the past, whether it has actually happened or not.
I figure that there’s an everyday description of it that’s known and understood by everybody because it’s, as you say, common.
Clinical experiments with patients who suffer from epilepsy…
found that synchronized neural firing between the rhinal cortices and the hippocampus or amygdala were increased in stimulations that induced déjà vu. This suggests that some sort of coincident occurrence in medial temporal lobe structures may “trigger” activation of the recollection system.
.
Epilepsy research has also yielded interesting results regarding OOBEs.
Speaker Bronwyn Bishop blows $5 grand of taxpayer dosh on a helicopter trip from Melbourne to Geelong and back so that she can attend a Liberal Party fundraiser, doesn’t see the inherent problem.
The gummint has noticed that there are organised fights within our prisons, disapproves, and has put the entities in charge ‘on notice’.
I know just how the gummint feels. As with so many in our country, I have listened to the farce of bouts needing Queensberry Rules that the gummint turn Parliament’s Question Time into. I and a great number of others, I hope, put them ‘on notice’ to be meted out at the next election.
And they can’t resist involving David Cunliffe on spurious grounds. (Note to political
media advisor – Tell pollie to always say ‘I can’t remember.it was many years ago. I will have to check on that.’)
Stuff has repeated :Former Labour leader David Cunliffe was also put on the back foot after it was proved he had signed a letter in 2003 supporting Liu, having initially denied doing so.
VetSouth to offer free services to struggling dairy farmers (for a month, but it could be extended), who would otherwise shoot cows rather than call the vet.
It’s really encouraging to see this kind of thing – the banks need to adopt a similar attitude to managing the dairy bust. If managed correctly land values and production can drop to a realistic level without exacting a severe toll on farmers and their families.
”We thought that wasn’t good enough and we could do better … by supporting the farmers who supported us. We wanted to tip the balance in favour of the cows.”
Farmers typically wanted to do their best for their stock and it was hoped the offer would ”remove some of the pain” and ease both the situation for both farmers and cows, he said.
”The reasoning behind this is simple – it’s not a cow’s fault if she gets sick in a low-payout season.”
Of course, slower growth in the population means slower growth in the size of the economy. But what of it? What do we lose?
The economic rationale for economic growth is that it raises our material standard of living. But this happens only if GDP grows faster than the population grows. So it doesn’t follow that slower GDP growth caused by slower population growth leaves us worse off materially.
That would be true only if slower population growth caused slower growth in GDP per person. I suspect many people unconsciously assume it does, but where’s the evidence?
I doubt there is any. The most significant recent study, conducted by the Productivity Commission in 2006, concluded that even skilled migration would do little to increase income per person. And what little growth the commission could find was appropriated by the new arrivals.
An interesting article that raises interesting questions.
Assuming that higher GDP = better standard of living is stupid, anyway.
It’s quite easy for GDP to increase, even increase at a rate faster than population growth, but general standard of living doesn’t go up.
It’d even be quite easy for the GDP to go down while living standards increase. The two obvious causes are unequal distribution of the wealth, and then more efficient/effective technologies being introduced that improve living standards.
Throughout this era I’ve watched truckloads of provincial rural reporters do nothing more than suck, and grease, and fawn over the entire industry. With very few exceptions, nary a searching question has passed their lips.
What questions should they have asked? Here’s a random selection of thousands that could and should have been asked.
Why are we content to produce masses of low-commodity, low-value milk powder to the lactose-intolerant Chinese?
Why aren’t we actively pursuing value-added products to trade with the rest of the world?
Why do we think that high input farming – having to use imported feed like PKE – isn’t ‘factory farming’?
How sustainable is this industry given the level of intensification, outside inputs, environmental damage and debt required to conduct “normal” business?
Has the short-term boom been worth the long-term bust of our dying waterways?
Have farmers been doing enough to protect the environment while making that quick buck?
You see, right about here lies one of the problems. An indignant, arrogant press release would suddenly appear from “BigAg” saying that farmers have spent “$1b to date” on cleaning up their effects on the environment. Yet, not one journalist has ever asked ask them to quantify that figure. Not one.
Makes you wonder what else is going straight over their heads, doesn’t it?
Our economy and our environment is pretty much fucked and a large part of the blame lies squarely with farming but a lot of that could have been prevented if we’d had a Fourth Estate asking the correct questions and a government willing to reign in the depredations of the farmers.
Tory peers like Lord
Cormack argued in favour of moving away from tax funding, saying:
“All forms of funding must be
looked at. We have to have a plurality of funding if we are to have a
sustainable NHS. Whether the extra funding comes from compulsory
insurances or certain charges matters not, but it has to come.”
Matters not!? As a true Tory, he says that
the funding should not come from taxing the rich (which he does not even
countenance), but instead from taxing the sick.
More disappointing were the contributions from
Labour peers like (the notoriously pro-privatisation) Lord Warner:
“Our tax-funded, largely free at the point of
clinical need NHS is rapidly approaching an existential moment. The voices of
dissent and outrage will no doubt be deafening but a wise Government
should begin now the process of helping the public engage in a
discourse about future funding of the NHS.”
Stuff’s Political Editor Luke Malpass - A Fellow at New Zealand IniativeLast week I half-joked that Stuff / The Post’s Luke Malpass1 always sounded like he was auditioning for a job at the New Zealand Initiative.Mountain Tui is a reader-supported publication. For a limited time, subscriptions are 20% off. Thanks ...
At a funeral on Friday, there were A4-sized photos covering every wall of the Dil’s reception lounge. There must have been 200 of them, telling the story in the usual way of the video reel but also, by enlargement, making it more possible to linger and step in.Our friend Nicky ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is methane the ...
The Government’s idea is that the private sector and Community Housing Providers will fund, build and operate new affordable housing to address our housing crisis. Meanwhile, the Government does not know where almost half of the 1,700 children who left emergency housing actually went. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong ...
Oh, home, let me come homeHome is wherever I'm with youOh, home, let me come homeHome is wherever I'm with youSongwriters: Alexander Ebert / Jade Allyson CastrinosMorena,I’m on a tight time frame this morning. In about an hour and a half, I’ll need to pack up and hit the road ...
This is a post about the Mountain Tui substack, and small tweaks - further to the poll and request post the other day. Please don’t read if you aren’t interested in my personal matters. Thank you all.After oohing-and-aahing about how to structure the Substack model since November, including obtaining ...
This transcript of a recent conversation between the Prime Minister and his chief economic adviser has not been verified.We’ve announced we are the ‘Yes Government’. Do you like it?Yes, Prime Minister.Dreamed up by the PR team. It’s about being committed to growth. Not that the PR team know anything about ...
The other day, Australian Senator Nick McKim issued a warning in the Australian Parliement about the US’s descent into fascim.And of course it’s true, but I lament - that was true as soon as Trump won.What we see is now simply the reification of the intention, planning, and forces behind ...
Among the many other problems associated with Musk/DOGE sending a fleet of teenage and twenty-something cultists to remove, copy and appropriate federal records like social security, medicaid and other supposedly protected data is the fact that the youngsters doing the data-removal, copying and security protocol and filter code over-writing have ...
Jokerman dance to the nightingale tuneBird fly high by the light of the moonOh, oh, oh, JokermanSong by Bob Dylan.Morena folks, I hope this fine morning of the 7th of February finds you well. We're still close to Paihia, just a short drive out of town. Below is the view ...
It’s been an eventful week as always, so here’s a few things that we have found interesting. We also hope everyone had a happy and relaxing Waitangi Day! This week in Greater Auckland We’re still running on summer time, but provided two chewy posts: On Tuesday, a guest ...
Queuing on Queen St: the Government is set to announce another apparently splashy growth policy on Sunday of offering residence visas to wealthy migrants. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Friday, February 7:PM Christopher ...
The fact that Waitangi ended up being such a low-key affair may mark it out as one of the most significant Waitangi Days in recent years. A group of women draped in “Toitu Te Tiriti” banners who turned their backs on the politicians’ powhiri was about as rough as it ...
Hi,This week’s Flightless Bird episode was about “fake seizure guy” — a Melbourne man who fakes seizures in order to get members of the public to sit on him.The audio documentary (which I have included in this newsletter in case you don’t listen to Flightless Bird) built on reporting first ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk The 119th Congress comes with a price tag. The oil and gas industry gave about $24 million in campaign contributions to the members of the U.S. House and Senate expected to be sworn in January 3, 2025, according to a ...
Early morning, the shadows still long, but you can already feel the warmth building. Our motel was across the road from the historic homestead where Henry Williams' family lived. The evening before, we wandered around the gardens, reading the plaques and enjoying the close proximity to the history of the ...
Thanks folks for your feedback, votes and comments this week. I’ll be making the changes soon. Appreciate all your emails, comments and subscriptions too. I know your time is valuable - muchas gracias.A lot is happening both here and around the world - so I want to provide a snippets ...
Data released today by Statistics NZ shows that unemployment rose to 5.1%, with 33,000 more people out of work than last year said NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi Economist Craig Renney. “The latest data shows that employment fell in Aotearoa at its fastest rate since the GFC. Unemployment rose in 8 ...
The December labour market statistics have been released, showing yet another increase in unemployment. There are now 156,000 unemployed - 34,000 more than when National took office. And having thrown all these people out of work, National is doubling down on cruelty. Because being vicious will somehow magically create the ...
Boarded up homes in Kilbirnie, where work on a planned development was halted. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, February 5 are;Housing Minister Chris Bishop yesterday announcedKāinga Ora would be stripped of ...
This week Kiwirail and Auckland Transport were celebrating the completion of the summer rail works that had the network shut or for over a month and the start of electric trains to Pukekohe. First up, here’s parts of the press release about the shutdown works. Passengers boarding trains in Auckland ...
Through its austerity measures, the coalition government has engineered a rise in unemployment in order to reduce inflation while – simultaneously – cracking down harder and harder on the people thrown out of work by its own policies. To that end, Social Development Minister Louise Upston this week added two ...
This year, we've seen a radical, white supremacist government ignoring its Tiriti obligations, refusing to consult with Māori, and even trying to legislatively abrogate te Tiriti o Waitangi. When it was criticised by the Waitangi Tribunal, the government sabotaged that body, replacing its legal and historical experts with corporate shills, ...
Poor old democracy, it really is in a sorry state. It would be easy to put all the blame on the vandals and tyrants presently trashing the White House, but this has been years in the making. It begins with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the spirit of Gordon ...
The new school lunches came in this week, and they were absolutely scrumptious.I had some, and even though Connor said his tasted like “stodge” and gave him a sore tummy, I myself loved it!Look at the photos - I knew Mr Seymour wouldn’t lie when he told us last year:"It ...
The tighter sanctions are modelled on ones used in Britain, which did push people off ‘the dole’, but didn’t increase the number of workers, and which evidence has repeatedly shown don’t work. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, ...
Catching you up on the morning’s global news and a quick look at the parallels -GLOBALTariffs are backSharemarkets in the US, UK and Europe have “plunged” in response to Trump’s tariffs. And while Mexico has won a one month reprieve, Canada and China will see their respective 25% and 10% ...
This post by Nicolas Reid was originally published on Linked in. It is republished here with permission. Gondolas are often in the news, with manufacturers of ropeway systems proposing them as a modern option for mass transit systems in New Zealand. However, like every next big thing in transport, it’s hard ...
This is a re-post from The Climate BrinkBoth 2023 and 2024 were exceptionally warm years, at just below and above 1.5C relative to preindustrial in the WMO composite of surface temperature records, respectively. While we are still working to assess the full set of drivers of this warmth, it is clear that ...
Hi,I woke up feeling nervous this morning, realising that this weekend Flightless Bird is going to do it’s first ever live show. We’re heading to a sold out (!) show in Seattle to test the format out in front of an audience. If it works, we’ll do more. I want ...
From the United-For-Now States of America comes the thrilling news that a New Zealander may be at the very heart of the current coup. Punching above our weight on the world stage once more! Wait, you may be asking, what New Zealander? I speak of Peter Thiel, made street legal ...
Even Stevens: Over the 33 years between 1990 and 2023 (and allowing for the aberrant 2020 result) the average level of support enjoyed by the Left and Right blocs, at roughly 44.5 percent each, turns out to be, as near as dammit, identical.WORLDWIDE, THE PARTIES of the Left are presented ...
Back in 2023, a "prominent political figure" went on trial for historic sex offences. But we weren't allowed to know who they were or what political party they were "prominent" in, because it might affect the way we voted. At the time, I said that this was untenable; it was ...
I'm going, I'm goingWhere the water tastes like wineI'm going where the water tastes like wineWe can jump in the waterStay drunk all the timeI'm gonna leave this city, got to get awayI'm gonna leave this city, got to get awayAll this fussing and fighting, man, you know I sure ...
Waitangi Day is a time to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and stand together for a just and fair Aotearoa. Across the motu, communities are gathering to reflect, kōrero, and take action for a future built on equity and tino rangatiratanga. From dawn ceremonies to whānau-friendly events, there are ...
Subscribe to Mountain Tūī ! Where you too can learn about exciting things from a flying bird! Tweet.Yes - I absolutely suck at marketing. It’s a fact.But first -My question to all readers is:How should I set up the Substack model?It’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask since November ...
Here’s the key news, commentary, reports and debate around Aotearoa’s political economy on politics and in the week to Feb 3:PM Christopher Luxon began 2025’s first day of Parliament last Tuesday by carrying on where left off in 2024, letting National’s junior coalition partner set the political agenda and dragging ...
The PSA have released a survey of 4000 public service workers showing that budget cuts are taking a toll on the wellbeing of public servants and risking the delivery of essential services to New Zealanders. Economists predict that figures released this week will show continued increases in unemployment, potentially reaching ...
The Prime Minister’s speech 10 days or so ago kicked off a flurry of commentary. No one much anywhere near the mainstream (ie excluding Greens supporters) questioned the rhetoric. New Zealand has done woefully poorly on productivity for a long time and we really need better outcomes, and the sorts ...
President Trump on the day he announced tariffs against Mexico, Canada and China, unleashing a shock to supply chains globally that is expected to slow economic growth and increase inflation for most large economies. Photo: Getty ImagesLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate ...
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on UnsplashHere’s what we’re watching in the week to February 9 and beyond in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty:Monday, February 3Politics: New Zealand Government cabinet meeting usually held early afternoon with post-cabinet news conference possible at 4 pm, although they have not been ...
Trump being Trump, it won’t come as a shock to find that he regards a strong US currency (bolstered by high tariffs on everything made by foreigners) as a sign of America’s virility, and its ability to kick sand in the face of the world. Reality is a tad more ...
A listing of 24 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 26, 2025 thru Sat, February 1, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if ...
What seems to be the common theme in the US, NZ, Argentina and places like Italy under their respective rightwing governments is what I think of as “the politics of cruelty.” Hate-mongering, callous indifference in social policy-making, corporate toadying, political bullying, intimidation and punching down on the most vulnerable with ...
If you are confused, check with the sunCarry a compass to help you alongYour feet are going to be on the groundYour head is there to move you aroundSo, stand in the place where you liveSongwriters: Bill Berry / Michael Mills / Michael Stipe / Peter Buck.Hot in the CityYesterday, ...
Shane Jones announced today he would be contracting out his thinking to a smarter younger person.Reclining on his chaise longue with a mouth full of oysters and Kina he told reporters:Clearly I have become a has-been, a palimpsest, an epigone, a bloviating fossil. I find myself saying such things as: ...
Warning: This post contains references to sexual assaultOn Saturday, I spent far too long editing a video on Tim Jago, the ACT Party President and criminal, who has given up his fight for name suppression after 2 years. He voluntarily gave up just in time for what will be a ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is global warming ...
Our low-investment, low-wage, migration-led and housing-market-driven political economy has delivered poorer productivity growth than the rest of the OECD, and our performance since Covid has been particularly poor. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate and poverty this ...
..Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.As far as major government announcements go, a Three Ministers Event is Big. It can signify a major policy development or something has gone Very Well, or an absolute Clusterf**k. When Three Ministers assemble ...
One of those blasts from the past. Peter Dunne – originally neoliberal Labour, then leader of various parties that sought to work with both big parties (generally National) – has taken to calling ...
Completed reads for January: I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson The Black Spider, by Jeremias Gotthelf The Spider and the Fly (poem), by Mary Howitt A Noiseless Patient Spider (poem), by Walt Whitman August Heat, by W.F. Harvey Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White The Shrinking Man, by Richard Matheson ...
Do its Property Right Provisions Make Sense?Last week I pointed out that it is uninformed to argue that the New Zealand’s apparently poor economic performance can be traced only to poor regulations. Even were there evidence they had some impact, there are other factors. Of course, we should seek to ...
Richard Wagstaff It was incredibly jarring to hear the hubris from the Prime Minister during his recent state of the nation address. I had just spent close to a week working though the stories and thoughts shared with us by nearly 2000 working people as part of our annual Mood ...
Odd fact about the Broadcasting Standards Authority: for the last few years, they’ve only been upholding about 5% of complaints. Why? I think there’s a range of reasons. Generally responsible broadcasters. Dumb complaints. Complaints brought under the wrong standard. Greater adherence to broadcasters’ rights to freedom of expression in the ...
And I said, "Mama, mama, mama, why am I so alone"'Cause I can't go outside, I'm scared I might not make it homeWell I'm alive, I'm alive, but I'm sinking inIf there's anyone at home at your place, darlingWhy don't you invite me in?Don't try to feed me'Cause I've been ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ star is on the rise, having just added the Energy, Local Government and Revenue portfolios to his responsibilities - but there is nothing ambitious about the Government’s new climate targets. Photo: SuppliedLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate ...
It may have been a short week but there’s been no shortage of things that caught our attention. Here is some of the most interesting. This week in Greater Auckland On Tuesday Matt took a look at public transport ridership in 2024 On Thursday Connor asked some questions ...
The East Is Red: Journalists and commentators are referring to the sudden and disruptive arrival of DeepSeek as a second “Sputnik moment”. (Sputnik being the name given by the godless communists of the Soviet Union to the world’s first artificial satellite which, to the consternation and dismay of the Americans, ...
Hi,Back on inauguration day we launched a ridiculous RFK Jr. “brain worms” tee on the Webworm store, and I told you I’d be throwing my profits over to Mutual Aid LA and Rainbow Youth New Zealand. Just to show I am not full of shit, here are the receipts. I ...
The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts & talking about the week’s news with regular and special guests, including: on the week in geopolitics, including the latest from Donald Trump over Gaza and Ukraine.Health expert and author David Galler ...
In an uncompromising paper Treasury has basically told the Government that its plan for a third medical school at Waikato University is a waste of money. Furthermore, the country cannot afford it. That advice was released this week by the Treasury under the Official Information Act. And it comes as ...
Back in November, He Pou a Rangi provided the government with formal advice on the domestic contribution to our next Paris target. Not what the target should be, but what we could realistically achieve, by domestic action alone, without resorting to offshore mitigation. Their answer was startling: depending on exactly ...
Photo by Mauricio Fanfa on UnsplashKia oraCome and join us for our weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm today.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news with myself , plus regular guest David Patman and ...
I don't like to spend all my time complaining about our government, so let me complain about the media first.Senior journalistic Herald person Thomas Coughlan reported that Treasury replied yeah nah, wrong bro to Luxon's claim that our benighted little country has been in recession for three years.His excitement rose ...
Back in 2022, when the government was consulting internally about proactive release of cabinet papers, the SIS opposed it. The basis of their opposition was the "mosaic effect" - people being able to piece together individual pieces of innocuous public information in a way which supposedly harms "national security" (effectively: ...
With The Stroke Of A Pen:Populism, especially right-wing populism, invests all the power of an electoral/parliamentary majority in a single political leader because it no longer trusts the bona fides of the sprawling political class among whom power is traditionally dispersed. Populism eschews traditional politics, because, among populists, traditional politics ...
I’ve spent the last week writing a fairly substantial review of a recent book (“Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race”) by a couple of Australian academic economists on Australia’s pandemic policies and experiences. For all its limitations, there isn’t anything similar in New Zealand. ...
Mr Mojo Rising: Economic growth is possible, Christopher Luxon reassures us, but only under a government that is willing to get out of the way and let those with drive and ambition get on with it.ABOUT TWELVE KILOMETRES from the farm on the North Otago coast where I grew up stands ...
Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. The intention was to establish a colony with the cession of sovereignty to the Crown, ...
Te Whatu Ora Chief Executive Margie Apa leaving her job four months early is another symptom of this government’s failure to deliver healthcare for New Zealanders. ...
The Green Party is calling for the Prime Minister to show leadership and be unequivocal about Aotearoa New Zealand’s opposition to a proposal by the US President to remove Palestinians from Gaza. ...
The latest unemployment figures reveal that job losses are hitting Māori and Pacific people especially hard, with Māori unemployment reaching a staggering 9.7% for the December 2024 quarter and Pasifika unemployment reaching 10.5%. ...
Waitangi 2025: Waitangi Day must be community and not politically driven - Shane Jones Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. ...
Despite being confronted every day with people in genuine need being stopped from accessing emergency housing – National still won’t commit to building more public houses. ...
The Green Party says the Government is giving up on growing the country’s public housing stock, despite overwhelming evidence that we need more affordable houses to solve the housing crisis. ...
Before any thoughts of the New Year and what lies ahead could even be contemplated, New Zealand reeled with the tragedy of Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming losing her life. For over 38 years she had faithfully served as a front-line Police officer. Working alongside her was Senior Sergeant Adam Ramsay ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson will return to politics at Waitangi on Monday the 3rd of February where she will hold a stand up with fellow co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick. ...
Te Pāti Māori is appalled by the government's blatant mishandling of the school lunch programme. David Seymour’s ‘cost-saving’ measures have left tamariki across Aotearoa with unidentifiable meals, causing distress and outrage among parents and communities alike. “What’s the difference between providing inedible food, and providing no food at all?” Said ...
The Government is doubling down on outdated and volatile fossil fuels, showing how shortsighted and destructive their policies are for working New Zealanders. ...
Green Party MP Steve Abel this morning joined Coromandel locals in Waihi to condemn new mining plans announced by Shane Jones in the pit of the town’s Australian-owned Gold mine. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to strengthen its just-announced 2030-2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement and address its woeful lack of commitment to climate security. ...
Today marks a historic moment for Taranaki iwi with the passing of the Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill in Parliament. "Today, we stand together as descendants of Taranaki, and our tūpuna, Taranaki Maunga, is now formally acknowledged by the law as a living tūpuna. ...
Labour is relieved to see Children’s Minister Karen Chhour has woken up to reality and reversed her government’s terrible decisions to cut funding from frontline service providers – temporarily. ...
It is the first week of David Seymour’s school lunch programme and already social media reports are circulating of revolting meals, late deliveries, and mislabelled packaging. ...
The Green Party says that with no-cause evictions returning from today, the move to allow landlords to end tenancies without reason plunges renters, and particularly families who rent, into insecurity and stress. ...
The Government’s move to increase speed limits substantially on dozens of stretches of rural and often undivided highways will result in more serious harm. ...
In her first announcement as Economic Growth Minister, Nicola Willis chose to loosen restrictions for digital nomads from other countries, rather than focus on everyday Kiwis. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to stand firm and work with allies to progress climate action as Donald Trump signals his intent to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords once again. ...
The Government’s commitment to get New Zealand’s roads back on track is delivering strong results, with around 98 per cent of potholes on state highways repaired within 24 hours of identification every month since targets were introduced, Transport Minister Chris Bishop says. “Increasing productivity to help rebuild our economy is ...
The former Cadbury factory will be the site of the Inpatient Building for the new Dunedin Hospital and Health Minister Simeon Brown says actions have been taken to get the cost overruns under control. “Today I am giving the people of Dunedin certainty that we will build the new Dunedin ...
From today, Plunket in Whāngarei will be offering childhood immunisations – the first of up to 27 sites nationwide, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. The investment of $1 million into the pilot, announced in October 2024, was made possible due to the Government’s record $16.68 billion investment in health. It ...
New Zealand’s strong commitment to the rights of disabled people has continued with the response to an important United Nations report, Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston has announced. Of the 63 concluding observations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), 47 will be progressed ...
Resources Minister Shane Jones has launched New Zealand’s national Minerals Strategy and Critical Minerals List, documents that lay a strategic and enduring path for the mineral sector, with the aim of doubling exports to $3 billion by 2035. Mr Jones released the documents, which present the Coalition Government’s transformative vision ...
Firstly I want to thank OceanaGold for hosting our event today. Your operation at Waihi is impressive. I want to acknowledge local MP Scott Simpson, local government dignitaries, community stakeholders and all of you who have gathered here today. It’s a privilege to welcome you to the launch of the ...
Racing Minister, Winston Peters has announced the Government is preparing public consultation on GST policy proposals which would make the New Zealand racing industry more competitive. “The racing industry makes an important economic contribution. New Zealand thoroughbreds are in demand overseas as racehorses and for breeding. The domestic thoroughbred industry ...
Business confidence remains very high and shows the economy is on track to improve, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis says. “The latest ANZ Business Outlook survey, released yesterday, shows business confidence and expected own activity are ‘still both very high’.” The survey reports business confidence fell eight points to +54 ...
Enabling works have begun this week on an expanded radiology unit at Hawke’s Bay Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital which will double CT scanning capacity in Hawke’s Bay to ensure more locals can benefit from access to timely, quality healthcare, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. This investment of $29.3m in the ...
The Government has today announced New Zealand’s second international climate target under the Paris Agreement, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand will reduce emissions by 51 to 55 per cent compared to 2005 levels, by 2035. “We have worked hard to set a target that is both ambitious ...
Nine years of negotiations between the Crown and iwi of Taranaki have concluded following Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill passing its third reading in Parliament today, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “This Bill addresses the historical grievances endured by the eight iwi ...
As schools start back for 2025, there will be a relentless focus on teaching the basics brilliantly so all Kiwi kids grow up with the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to grow the New Zealand of the future, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “A world-leading education system is a key ...
Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson have welcomed Kāinga Ora’s decision to re-open its tender for carpets to allow wool carpet suppliers to bid. “In 2024 Kāinga Ora issued requests for tender (RFTs) seeking bids from suppliers to carpet their properties,” Mr Bishop says. “As part ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today visited Otahuhu College where the new school lunch programme has served up healthy lunches to students in the first days of the school year. “As schools open in 2025, the programme will deliver nutritious meals to around 242,000 students, every school day. On ...
Minister for Children Karen Chhour has intervened in Oranga Tamariki’s review of social service provider contracts to ensure Barnardos can continue to deliver its 0800 What’s Up hotline. “When I found out about the potential impact to this service, I asked Oranga Tamariki for an explanation. Based on the information ...
A bill to make revenue collection on imported and exported goods fairer and more effective had its first reading in Parliament, Customs Minister Casey Costello said today. “The Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill modernises the way in which Customs can recover the costs of services that are needed ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Department of Internal Affairs [the Department] has achieved significant progress in completing applications for New Zealand citizenship. “December 2024 saw the Department complete 5,661 citizenship applications, the most for any month in 2024. This is a 54 per cent increase compared ...
Reversals to Labour’s blanket speed limit reductions begin tonight and will be in place by 1 July, says Minister of Transport Chris Bishop. “The previous government was obsessed with slowing New Zealanders down by imposing illogical and untargeted speed limit reductions on state highways and local roads. “National campaigned on ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has announced Budget 2025 – the Growth Budget - will be delivered on Thursday 22 May. “This year’s Budget will drive forward the Government’s plan to grow our economy to improve the incomes of New Zealanders now and in the years ahead. “Budget 2025 will build ...
For the Government, 2025 will bring a relentless focus on unleashing the growth we need to lift incomes, strengthen local businesses and create opportunity. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today laid out the Government’s growth agenda in his Statement to Parliament. “Just over a year ago this Government was elected by ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour welcomes students back to school with a call to raise attendance from last year. “The Government encourages all students to attend school every day because there is a clear connection between being present at school and setting yourself up for a bright future,” says Mr ...
The Government is relaxing visitor visa requirements to allow tourists to work remotely while visiting New Zealand, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford and Tourism Minister Louise Upston say. “The change is part of the Government’s plan to unlock New Zealand’s potential by shifting the country onto ...
The opening of Kāinga Ora’s development of 134 homes in Epuni, Lower Hutt will provide much-needed social housing for Hutt families, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I’ve been a strong advocate for social housing on Kāinga Ora’s Epuni site ever since the old earthquake-prone housing was demolished in 2015. I ...
Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay will travel to Australia today for meetings with Australian Trade Minister, Senator Don Farrell, and the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum (ANZLF). Mr McClay recently hosted Minister Farrell in Rotorua for the annual Closer Economic Relations (CER) Trade Ministers’ meeting, where ANZLF presented on ...
A new monthly podiatry clinic has been launched today in Wairoa and will bring a much-needed service closer to home for the Wairoa community, Health Minister Simeon Brown says.“Health New Zealand has been successful in securing a podiatrist until the end of June this year to meet the needs of ...
The Judicial Conduct Commissioner has recommended a Judicial Conduct Panel be established to inquire into and report on the alleged conduct of acting District Court Judge Ema Aitken in an incident last November, Attorney-General Judith Collins said today. “I referred the matter of Judge Aitken’s alleged conduct during an incident ...
Students who need extra help with maths are set to benefit from a targeted acceleration programme that will give them more confidence in the classroom, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Last year, significant numbers of students did not meet the foundational literacy and numeracy level required to gain NCEA. To ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced three new diplomatic appointments. “Our diplomats play an important role in ensuring New Zealand’s interests are maintained and enhanced across the world,” Mr Peters says. “It is a pleasure to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ...
Ki te kahore he whakakitenga, ka ngaro te Iwi – without a vision, the people will perish. The Government has achieved its target to reduce the number of households in emergency housing motels by 75 per cent five years early, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. The number of households ...
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Just sitting down to watch Q&A. Let’s see if they can extract some sense out the Housing Minister Smith after Gower didn’t have the skills on The Nation yesterday. So far he is dodging the real question of the lack of available data from his regime.
Don’t hold your breath.
Smith was woeful showing up how hopeless their front bench is without Key, who will be back on deck tomorrow, all sun tanned having jetted back in from his Hawaiian holiday.
Expect Key to be sucking air in and sounding like a bath tub drain pipe after pulling the plug. The issues are mounting economically and Key is getting hamstrung and tied down with his odd hair fondling fetish.
ask him what has happened to the “demand” side of the “supply and demand” equation so beloved of right wing nutbars everywhere…
Smith will look you in the eye while standing on the lawn and tell you that grass is not green …….. why do you think he has one wonky eye?
What’s Q&A?. Oh I remember that party political broadcast on behalf of the National Party used as a current affairs programme.
This turned up in my twitter feed:
No one has made the comment that with less than 3 months before the earth works season commences, many earth moving companies are already filling their books for work this year, It will not be long before the capabilities of this sector will be maxed out. Rates for this work will rise rapidly not only affecting land development but also to a large degree roading. That is if you will be able to find anyone wanting to commit to the work, we will soon hear land owners lamenting about being unable to develop or how expensive the process is and not just limiting their comments towards council costs.
Rates for excavation and site works have already risen and will lift again soon As you say a large number of contractors are booked already, similar story for builders charge rates are now hitting $70+gst per hour. Makes me laugh when politicians talk about affordable housing in Auckland when the labour rates are rising so quickly…
Do they ever check their stories? A brief look and the first thing that stands out is an error on their front page. It isn’t Oprah’s first time in NZ as she stayed at Huka Lodge a few years back.
Useless MSM
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11483399
The big question there is: Why is it even news?
“It’s not to Television New Zealand’s credit that they employ him.”
Nicky Hager damns Mike “Contra” Hosking
Mediawatch, Radio NZ National, Sunday 19 July 2015
One year after the release of his latest exposé of the National Party’s assault on democracy, Nicky Hager was interviewed by Colin Peacock. Hager said that there is a huge gap between journalists and the organisations that employ them. In spite of having to work for organisations like the New Zealand Herald, Mediaworks and TVNZ, most people in the media are serious and well informed journalists—with the exception of one or two, who didn’t let the fact they had not read the book stop them from launching crazed attacks on him.
Colin Peacock pressed him to name one of those lazy, ill-informed National Party loyalists. Hager hesitated, and then said: “Well, Mike Hosking. It’s not to Television New Zealand’s credit that they hire him…”
If you can bear it, there’s more Hosking here….
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-15032015/#comment-985614
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-05022015/#comment-963999
Man on Q and A says Colmar Brunton poll tonight hasn’t given Labour a boost.
I thought he said: the bounce isn’t as high as Labour would have hoped.
Well of course it isn’t – yet. The story only broke a week ago and it takes much longer than a week for these issues to sink in among the majority of voters – plus the poll must have started before the story broke.
A sharp bounce would be undesirable anyway, as it would feed the Labour’s Orewa narrative.
Exactly.
Or you could look at it differently. Business confidence dropping effects of the low milk solids price is starting to effect every town and city in New Zealand. Gone is the rhetoric of our economy being solid as a rock, hence the Rock Star title, down to more realistic economic view of snap crackle and finally bang…pop deflated. So Pop Star is more fitting these days.
Yep and that dynamic is building slowly and likely caused the RM lift. I was just thinking of how a sudden bounce now might be characterised by some commentators.
The Colmar Brunton poll period was 11-15 July, i.e. started the day the story broke.
It’ll be interesting, but Colmar Brunton’s built in 5% lean to the right should make it look OK for the Nats. Expect the lead story to be a beat up about how the housing crisis exposure hasn’t helped Labour. As if that was why it was done.
Maybe by the odd media shill, however with our economy on the skids and heading to a crisis the punters will see a wider range of issues not just Housing.
Yep. I don’t see much to boost the nats in our future. Mind you, All Black captain John Key has won two tests already this year, so there’s that.
I’m only going to note that it’s really interesting how the first defence of the story was “Labour has to appeal to more voters” and now that there’s not going to be a bump out of it the new defence is “oh we didn’t do it to get more votes anyway.” (Or Anne’s alternative, “voters are too stupid to have figured out whether they support this or not yet”.)
The non resident foreigners buying property issue won’t be showing to any great degree in this poll. And even in the next polls, as there are numerous issues that those surveyed may have an axe to grind with this incumbent regime. It can be as simple as the more the population hear our economy is on the rocks, the more likely they are going to blame Key and his cronies for their unacceptable inaction. That is my opinion for what it’s worth.
It’s a very fair opinion. I just tire of the paradoxical arguments, i.e. “this will appeal to voters, but that appeal will mysteriously not be reflected in poll results”.
The idea that dogwhistling on people’s surnames wasn’t actually a great move is apparently unspeakable.
Just because something will appeal to voters, doesn’t mean it should result in a clear signal in the polls, particularly immediately after the event. Also if the polling started on the Saturday, a lot of people simply would not have heard about it until Monday anyway.
Labour lost the last election because they didn’t look like they could form a credible government. Their attack on foreign speculators in the last week doesn’t speak directly towards that particular criticism either.
Also notable is that National haven’t really responded to Labour’s attacks on them; that will likely be occurring in this week. National’s response is partly what will drive polling intentions – do they agree with the problem and are they doing something concrete about it, or are they just going to keep on claiming that there is no problem? Or, most likely, are they just going to deflect onto the ‘racism’ angle and refuse to talk about the issue?
Thanks for that Stephanie, yes I was very disappointed at the dog whistle tactic, the sloppiness was amateurish. There was a lack of being honest and frank. Where was the confession “Labour doesn’t have the funds to resource for paying an agency to provide the details…unlike National who have large donators like property magnates like Mr Barfoot who contributed $20,000 at last year’s election”.
You didn’t see that approach from me, Stephanie. In fact, I’m struggling to recall anybody who made an argument that it was done because “Labour has to appeal to more voters”. I’m pretty sure that most people accept that it was an issue that needed raising, but there was considerable difference on how it should have been done.
Stephanie… you seem to like reading things into people’s comment that are not there. It’s a well known fact that most people are not into politics in the same way we are, and therefore take longer to respond to political issues when they arise. Nothing to do with “stupidity” as you well know. I will respond in kind by saying I think that was a witting attempt to drive a wedge where no wedges should exist.
Wallace Chapman talking to author about NZ wines and regions! WTF – that’s Metros area or the Sunday inserts. Why waste valuable interviewing time on such lifestyle matters. It isn’t even part of a business overview which informed people should know about.
Wallace is pretty damn good most of the time though. Asks hard questions while not seeming to.
Wallace is pretty damn good most of the time though. Asks hard questions while not seeming to.
Sadly, that’s not true. He has provided an unquestioning, even groveling platform for some utterly despicable ideologues.
There was his pathetic interview with the right wing author Lee Child….
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-31082014/#comment-876904
Even worse was this interview with Israeli apologist Jonathon Spyer. No sign of even one “hard question” from anyone “pretty damn good” on this occasion….
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-14122014/#comment-939764
Jane Kelsey is being interviewed on her new book The Fire Economy. Good.
Perhaps we are being presented with a ‘balanced’ set of interview, the acceptable lifestyle ones, with a token piece of searching, thoughtful stuff to show that it’s all not souffles with madeira wine flavouring. Now wouldn’t that be an attractive dessert. If you like the idea, it’s yours.
According to wikipedia Lee Child was “involved with shows including Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker…”
These are some of the best shows that have ever been on British TV.
He also “told the Daily Mail that he writes while high on marijuana, and that he has smoked cannabis five nights a week for 44 years..’
On the negative side he is a Villa fan…..
I haven’t read his books. Is there solid evidence of his rightist leanings?
There’s nothing wrong with talking about wine. The problem is the utter triviality of most of the rest of his programme. A few minutes ago, he said: “What’s your favorite tree? THAT is the theme of the day.”
Chapman also has people texting in about what their favorite David Bowie song is. A few weeks ago, he begged people to text in about their favorite Beatles song. Every week, he asks people to say what their favorite city, or favorite snack or favorite movie is.
Unlike some people in the media—Mike “Contra” Hosking, Leighton Smith, Larry “Lackwit” Williams, Sean Plunket—Wallace Chapman is neither lazy nor ill-informed. This trivialization of the Sunday morning programme is not his idea, it’s something that some genius in Radio New Zealand management has forced on him.
“This trivialization of the Sunday morning programme is not his idea, it’s something that some genius in Radio New Zealand management has forced on him.”
So, its not just us then? Switched the squawk box off 1/2 an hour ago.
I thought Natrad was trying to build its audience???
I hope they’re following this….
Yes I have noticed the attempt at drawing people to use their ‘apps’ to contact Wallace at Radionz about matters which is something that the commercial is likely to do. That may be necessary as so many young to middle-aged people view life through the tiny space of a reversed telescope their smartphone screen gives. There is a need to bring young people into the Radionz circle. But it dilutes the effective time for big media stuff. It seems to me like bringing special needs pupils into the ordinary everyday classroom, the teacher time and attention available to other children is lessened.
But Radionz cannot be allowed to become only for the older age group, it will need to bring in the younger group. I hope that we don’t lose the majority of intelligent, informed discussion about the world’s news, in favour of the soft option of discussing the interests of the middle class and nice pieces from most favoured nations that imitate the pretty words of a travelogue.
Your final sentence is also my worry. This trivialization of the Sunday morning programme is not his idea, it’s something that some genius in Radio New Zealand management has forced on him.
Hey, the tree discussion was actually focused on the effects of climate change (trees dying in Melbourne because of long-term droughts), and explored the connection people feel to trees that form part of their sense of self and community. I thought it was an imaginative approach to a subject that people often find dry or abstract and hard to connect to. The sample emails he read out were great – heart-warming, moving, funny, poetic… Not everything has to be hard-hitting. Sometimes a more quirky or unexpected approach can really touch a nerve and get people thinking.
Now Wallace is talking about food in Italy and an Italian visitor and an item on I think the film festival. So weekend lifestyle. Sh.t.
Another thought re Wallace and wine buff interview. The sort of people that would enjoy listening to the talk about NZs fine wine are those who realise that the early favourites of Cold Duck or Blue Nun were rather sweet, perhaps even sugar-added, They now have more sophisticated palates, prefer something drier, appreciate the nuances in flavour.
But they have equally developed a preference for their news to reflect the sweet life. The bitter aftertaste of thorough coverage of real-world news requires a higher sort of sophistication from them before it can be embraced.
Patty Culhane of Al Jazeera on Obama’s legacy
Al Jazeera News, Saturday 18 July 2015
The U.S.-friendly official mouthpiece of the Qatari dictatorship took several minutes out of its “news” for a specially prepared item by Patty Culhane in Washington, pondering the legacy of Barack Obama as he approaches the final year of his presidency. Over several photographs of Obama looking serious, dignified and “presidential”, Culhane assured viewers that “much, perhaps most, of what happens internationally is beyond his control”. To illustrate how helpless the U.S. President is, she cited Yemen and ISIS in Iraq and Syria—none of which, apparently, has any connection to the United States.
The item finished with a long shot of a serious-looking President Obama gazing through the window, framed dramatically by the grand Oval Office windows.
I’m not sure now, but I think there was reflective violin music playing for the whole item, to emphasise the lonely vigil of this embattled human rights warrior.
More on Obama….
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-29062015/#comment-1036160
http://thestandard.org.nz/amazing-grace/#comment-1035417
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-27062015/#comment-1035414
I prefer my humour watered down:
Gotta love ignorant people laughing at things they don’t understand.
+1
Not sure if ‘don’t understand’ is the same as ‘doesn’t actually exist’, weka! Generally, I prefer laughing at people who make money by exploiting the gullible, something I appear to have in common with Mitchell and Webb.
You better tell the BMJ – this week it hosted a debate on something that doesn’t actually exist!
I can pretty much guarantee that homeopathy (and acupuncture and chiropractic and…) will outlast energy intensive complexity reliant high funding requiring ‘modern medicine’.
… and I can pretty much guarantee that treatments such as homeopathy will be continue to be completely ineffective for any serious illnesses such as cancer, diabetes etc ….
well, I can pretty much guarantee to you that a traditional Japanese or African or Greek diet is better for cancer and diabetes than anything modern medicine can come up with 😉
Bollocks.
Perhaps you’d like to rephrase or withdraw.
Agreed. Because there’s a sucker born every minute.
Whatever. The BMJ is pretty convinced that it’s pants, actually, ER.
You don’t seem to get what ”hosted a debate” means. In Britain there isn’t the degree of professional and intellectual conformity that prevails in NZ.
They still have science there, though. So, yeah, still bollocks.
Fisher of “shaken not stirred” fame – a rich vein for comedy if it weren’t for the harm that Edzard Ernst points out.
Why couldn’t the BMJ find someone credible on the woo-woo side?
“Not sure if ‘don’t understand’ is the same as ‘doesn’t actually exist’, weka!”
I’m reasonably confident that you have no idea how homeopathy is alleged to work, so ‘ignorant’ and ‘don’t understand’ seem appropriate.
“Generally, I prefer laughing at people who make money by exploiting the gullible, something I appear to have in common with Mitchell and Webb.”
Yet you appear very selective in that, which makes me think it’s ideological rather than reality based.
Reality based! Gotta clean my keyboard now!!!
Yep, like I said, ideological which is why it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
We know how it’s supposed to work, Weka, because the woo-woo-witch-doctor gave evidence at the British Parliamentary Inquiry that:
In other words, the woo-woo-witch-doctor hasn’t got a clue, but he believes it very very hard.
Mainstream science, on the other hand, does have a clue: Homeopathy relies 100% on the Placebo effect.
The “placebo effect” can actually be broken down into many individual factors.
In fact, what is measured by the “placebo effect” in drug trials is simply the the amount of healing that took place for the control group that weren’t given the drug. This naturally therefore lumps “the body’s natural healing ability” in under the umbrella “placebo effect”. Which is interesting.
One factor that is known to have a big benefit, and this is probably why modern medicine is not as effective as it ‘should’ be, and these alternative medicines seem to show more effect than they ‘should’, is simply the level of attention given to the patient from the practitioner. Studies have been done where pain killers were given to patients, but the amount of attention given to the patient varied dramatically. Some patients were simply proscribed the intervention after a short discussion, while others had long conversations with frequent follow-ups and discussions of the progress. It was found that patients that had more involvement from their practitioners had a statistically significant improvement in symptoms compared to those who were simply proscribed the intervention and then left to their own devices.
In other words, if modern medicine could be practised in a way that showed more concern for patients, overall we’d get better outcomes. A tricky question is whether the improved outcomes are worth the increased investment.
Anyway, that ‘hands-on’ attention is a clear difference between alternative ‘medicine’ and modern medicine, and likely explains a lot of the positive results.
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/placebo-are-you-there/#more-36036
Placebo is more than the body’s normal healing processes. That’s why drug trials also include a control group. Placebo will often show better results than the control. What’s the mechanism behind that? I agree that pracitioner/client relationship is part of it, but it’s more than that. Natural health practitioners are much better at engaging the placebo response than conventional.
[citation needed]
Although given that for many “natural” “health” “practitioners” the context effect is all they’ve got, they’d better be good at it, eh.
“Placebo is more than the body’s normal healing processes.”
I never said it wasn’t. In fact I said it is made up of many parts, one of which is the body’s natural healing process. Re-reading I can see that this isn’t as clear as it should be, but reading the whole comment I don’t think you can construe that I said placebo is only natural healing.
Thanks for that Lanth: lots to absorb there 🙂
…the placebo object is not necessary for the contextual effect.
Much of the literature regarding bedside manner stresses the need for better practice: it looks like the profession agrees with you 🙂
“We know how it’s supposed to work, Weka”
Succussing is how the remedy is prepared. That’s not what I am talking about. I’m talking about how homeopathic practice works. I’m happy to add you to the list of people who express opinions about this when they are still largely ignorant of the theory they are critiquing.
What you are demonstrating is faith and superstition. The faith is in omnipotence of the metatrials, despite them being quite easily critiqued (i.e. I would guess you have no idea about the shortcomings). The superstition is ridiculing something you don’t get understand.
“Mainstream science, on the other hand, does have a clue: Homeopathy relies 100% on the Placebo effect.”
I suggest you go and extend your reading OAB. Placebo is a very useful thing in healing and health management. Even mainstream science is catching on to that one. The rest of us have know about it forever.
I did a Google scholar search for “bedside manner” as a consequence of Lanth’s comment. The medical profession is way ahead of you, and was at the time of Hippocrates.
As for further reading on Placebos, I recommend you read the link too.
Yep, and the Persians were there before Hippocrates. But ffs, the Chinese have been doing this shit for thousands of years longer than we have. Btw, physicians in Hippocrates’ time did things and believed things that you would consider woowoo, so I’m not sure why you are invoking his name.
If you are suggesting that placebo from bedside manner is the only thing happening with alternative pracitioners, then you have a very limited idea of what placebo is or how it works. It also backs up my suspicion that you have no idea what homeopathic practice is. These are very basic illogics, it’s hard to believe I’m in a conversation with otherwise thoughtful people. But ideology trumps every time.
It’s clear you haven’t absorbed the information in the article Lanth linked above.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
If you believe this is medicine when it’s been proven to be ineffective other than for placebo effect you need your head read (by a doctor).
Or this
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic
Although effective in temporarily relieving back pain, that’s where it begins and ends.
If you can accept the science behind climate change proven by reputable scientists and researchers, why the fuck would you accept these frauds perpetuated by charlatans which have been disproven through the similar research methodologies and rigour. It’s preying on the daft and the gullible. About as genuine as Scientology.
What I find funny about scientology is that even the name of it sounds bogus, like it was deliberately named to take in the naive and vulnerable.
Realblue:
Otago and Southland residents have been using chiropractic care since post WWI. For many different reasons. And they continue to do so in their thousands and thousands. These are smart practical people who don’t put up with BS which doesn’t work. University lecturers, PhD candidates, medical doctors, nurses and physiotherapists, some of them 🙂
Kind of like all those people in India who use integrated health care that includes homeopathy. They must be suckers and idiots.
Or the millions of people in China that use the integrated system there that includes that woo woo acupuncture.
The Lancet has published articles on the efficacy of acupuncture; so much for “woo-woo”.
I’d like to see a Lancet article that explains the mechansim of chi, thanks.
It doesn’t require an article, weka. It doesn’t exist. Much like God and other fairy stories.
“Where the mind goes, the Chi follows”: the name of a physical sensation. Can it be said to exist in a mechanistic sense?
My understanding of acupuncture is that it’s placebo – more drastic seeming interventions tend to have more positive outcomes – and (as linked above) more 1-on-1 contact time from the administrator of the procedure compared to some other forms of treatment.
Better than the placebo control group in this trial.
@OAB: I can’t actually read the article, only the abstract. But they appear to be comparing a single control individual, since the other 39 in the group didn’t complete the programme?
If that’s the case, the results aren’t statistically significant.
Not sure that this will be in the right place as the numbering of answers seems to have vanished. But here is a recently published article about acupuncture. Like it or not, believe in it or not, it is becoming more and more accepted throughout western countries and frequently people are being referred to acupuncturists by their GPs and specialists. http://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/explore-healing-practices/traditional-chinese-medicine/-tcm-evidence-based-and-safe
As I’ve said before, I’ve had very good results from Chiropractic treatment for sciatica. This is not unusual: cf the medical literature cited by Realblue above.
Did bacteria exist before the microscope?
The argument that science has proved something doesn’t exist is flawed, and most people who are anti-homeopathy are not willing to be honest about this.
Of course that particular argument is flawed. The fact remains, however, that the best way to discredit a Homeopath is to let them speak.
the ongoing multi-centuries long fucking arrogance of you scientism types who in your ignorance and pridefulness believe you possess all the valid knowledge of mankind; in fact the very same attitude as when the brightest medical doctors of the day were prescribing bleeding, arsenic and opium. Or thalidomide, vioxx and Dalkon Shields.
Yeah whatever CR, have fun with your strawman.
But it’s not science making the absurd claim. It’s really up to the rip off artists to justify themselves. Though they’re highly incentivised to do no such thing.
Hi Weka
Perhaps for the sake of clarity you should explain what yu mean by homeopathy.
Some people use the term to cover using such products as Arnica and other herbal/natural medications, while others use it in its narrowest definition relating to dilution and shaking to a level wherein no molecules are left within the product apart from the diluent.
In this narrow definition homeopathy has been repeatedly proven to be no more effective than placebo as such its use in preference to an active proven effective treatment in anything but simple maladies cannot be recommended by any healthcare professional, I’m not sure why you find that disturbing.
Good-oh. I’ll take your placebo effect thank you very much. Cheap, reliable and often effective. And no list of risks and side-effects.
And besides, the moment you invoke the term ‘placebo effect’ you’re opening a remarkably interesting can of worms anyhow.
Yes, this.
Homoeopathy, where somehow the water ‘remembers’ the ‘cure’ that was put in it through mystical vibrations or whatever is utter bullshit. How come the water remembers the ‘cure’, but not all the other millions of years where it had literal shit or toxic metals in it?
Herbal remedies may have some limited healing powers in some uses.
@ RedLogix:
“Good-oh. I’ll take your placebo effect thank you very much. Cheap, reliable and often effective. And no list of risks and side-effects.”
Actually it works both ways: the “nocebo effect” is where drugs and actual treatments are less effective than they should be, because that brain of ours has some funny ideas about how its body should behave sometimes.
Because of human intention which can cross time and space FFS; how is it you people are so ignorant??? Are you all dyed in the wool materialists?
RL I don’t think you understand what the term ‘placebo effect’ means.
@CV:
So the human intention of people dumping toxic waste into water (which is then diluted to huge degrees) doesn’t harm people, because…?
How come ‘human intention’ requires mixing stuff up with water? Why can’t we just pray disease away? What is the mechanism by which this works?
Is it strictly limited to “human” intention, I wander?
Otherwise there’s a massive vibe of fish-jizz in my morning cup of tea…
This is to follow on from Colonial Rawshark’s response to Realblue –
Acupuncture is taught at Otago University and at AUT in Auckland as a post grad course and as Bachelor and Master programmes at private colleges in Auckland and Wellington. Wiki is well known for its bias against complementary and alternative medicine. Fortunately NZQA do not rely on Wiki.
And acupuncture (and chinese medicine in general) is going to be taught to the medical specialists of the Russian defence forces – by the PLA.
“If you can accept the science behind climate change proven by reputable scientists and researchers, why the fuck would you accept these frauds perpetuated by charlatans which have been disproven through the similar research methodologies and rigour. It’s preying on the daft and the gullible.”
If you can’t tell the difference between evidence of something and trying to prove the absence of something then you really shouldn’t be trying to use science as part of your argument.
You also shouldn’t go anywhere near healthcare other than your own given you appear to have no clue about informed consent or patient centred practice.
btw, it’s those attitudes that keep the gulf between the scienceheads and the woo wooers. They’re both entrenched in belief systems that they can’t see out of, but the sad thing is that the woo wooers will never come back to science while it is so damn patronising and mean.
Perhaps the reason woo-wooers find scientists patronising and mean [citation needed] is that woo-wooers expect to be taken seriously when they have a profound information deficit.
Or are you ok with unqualified civil engineers too?
What a dick comment.
Ancient civilisations built pyramids, aquaducts, irrigation systems and highways without your ‘qualified civil engineers’. And some of that shit lasted for centuries – better than anything built today is going to last.
Yes, they had no master builders or architects and had not learned from experience. They just let anyone design and build things like the tomb of the Emperor or The Parthenon.
No, wait…
He’s also using survivorship bias to ignore the 99.99% of buildings built by ancient cultures that aren’t still standing today.
The narrow bands have been packaged up and locked into mind traps which they mistake for knowledge
Some of the wee monkeys understand limitations ,while other wee monkeys prefer to masturbate in public believing they are the apex of universal evolution
Human beings are monkeys with prehistoric tools believing they are unlocking the secrets of the universe.
Stroke on wee monkeys
[I’ve pointed out previously that your chosen handle is homophobic. Please don’t use it again. TRP]
@OAB
I think CV’s point might be better interpreted like this; that the ancients were capable of building remarkable structures based purely on their observational and artisan skills.
Yes the people entrusted with supervising these projects would have been carefully chosen as the most talented and trusted people to do it – but few of them would have been burdened much by many years of mathematics, structural analysis, finite object analysis and so on. In other words they achieved all those things prior to any of the scientific revolution, and with none of the tools civil engineers take for granted today.
@Lanth
Well yes but what portion of structures that WE build do you think will stand in 1000 years time?
As I stated elsewhere today, I’m as much a creature and beneficiary of the experimental scientific method as anyone here. I was trained in it and have earned a living at it all my life.
But as a method it has it’s limits, and I’ve always been aware that all other non-Western cultures use a more observational approach arrive at quite another set of rules and guides for understanding the world they live in. And with quite remarkable degrees of coherence across multiple cultures. It’s a pretty gross arrogance, a racist conceit even, to simply erase that vast, complex and correlated body of knowledge as mere superstition and ignorance.
And I’m old enough to have my own modest little collection of experiences that no explanation within the scientific model. Most of these experiences arrived uninvited, unexpected and left their own very specific memories.
One example: when I was younger I used to have very vivid OOBE dreams. When I was six years old one night I ‘visited’ a house, down the driveway, around the back and into the kitchen. Next day at school I actually made a drawing of it.
At the age of ten my family moved into that house. My mum recognised the room and found the old drawing. One problem; there was a big set of cupboards in my picture which was not definitely not there. Still she was pretty impressed.
About four years later my dad and I lifted the flooring to move a wall – and there on the boards was the clear outline of the missing cupboards.
Western Science has zero explanation for this kind of thing, yet in conversation with people over the years I know that it’s also pretty common. Yes I know anecdote ‘proves’ nothing. I’m not trying to.
Yet tell this tale to most non-Westerners, indigenous peoples especially – and the response is a ‘so what boringly ho-hum and commonplace’. They’d typically find it no more remarkable than a detailed description of my last bowel movement.
At no point am I suggesting that this invalidates or diminishes the scientific method. It remains the reliable pivot around which I understand my world. But neither is there any proof to show that it is the ONLY way to understand reality, or indeed that it’s method can ever encompass an understanding of ALL reality.
Because I think this is all that people like CV, weka and myself ask for; is that science has the humility to acknowledge the boundaries of it’s domain, and remain open to the possibility that future generations will uncover new ideas and new knowledge that none of us can properly imagine just now.
Western Science has zero explanations for OOBEs, does it? Shall I Google the studies for you?
sighs … but not the ability to ‘see’ a place you have definitely never been to. Nor explain why that particular house and not the one next door.
And I only chose that example because of it’s pretty commonplace, banal even, nature.
I’ve had a few myself.
To my mind that makes them explicable by Physics. Science hasn’t yet demonstrated the mechanism: it’s still the best tool for researching the phenomenon.
And that’s the point I was making. I totally agree that physics (or some yet to be understood extension of it) will be the best explanation.
Indeed that IS the power of the scientific method. Once it can create a reliable model of a phenomenon, it can then be expanded into a reproducible technology.
But just dismissing these out-of-domain experiences as woo-woo simply slows the process down – and crucially is a betrayal of the fundamental spirit of science. And ordinary people are pretty good at detecting that sort of thing.
I characterised Fisher’s pathetic testimony to the Parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee as “woo-woo-witch-doctor”. I stand by that description.
For anyone who thinks evidence-free drivel is a good idea I have one word: Neoliberalism.
But equally the absence of evidence is not proof of absence.
So what? Woo-woo-witch-doctors don’t give a fuck about evidence, absent or not: they just want to inflict their afflictions upon everyone else while demanding “respect” and most importantly, public money.
The Roger Douglases and Max Bradfords of this world: in any sane universe they only deserve oxygen because I let my foot off their throat.
I’ll just throw this into the mix as it’s semi-relevant.
People with near death experiences in hospitals often claim they have visions of hovering up and over their body, looking down on themselves while doctors crowd around trying to heal them etc.
So a study was done (it was mentioned on QI, unfortunately I haven’t been able to google it) where they placed various objects on top of cabinets and shelves high up in the room, that could only be seen by someone who had a genuine out-of-body experience.
Over the years that the study ran, none of the hundred or so people who reported OOBE where they were hovering over their beds were able to recall the objects so-placed.
How quickly and easily RL’s comments are thrown away.
Fact is – a single incident of the type RL relates and you must admit that everything we know about the scientifically known universe – is not that much.
A prospect terrifying to some – but liberating to others.
The same study was mentioned in Supernature iirc. Perhaps not the most credible citation.
One reason neuroscience takes them seriously is the number of patients who’ve reported verifiable events that happened while they were ‘unconscious’.
In sports contexts there are many many accounts of people watching themselves perform athletic acts in real time.
Sorry OAB – but for such a determined defender of science you’ve been quick to abandon it here. If there is no evidence for something there are at least four logical possibilities:
1. You haven’t found it yet, or more likely, you haven’t really looked
2. You’re looking for the wrong kind of evidence, in the wrong places
3. You have found it, but you’ve failed to recognise it’s significance
4. It really does not exist
You don’t have to have a go at me. I actually do logic on a daily basis for a living. And getting my head around ALL the possible states is the key to getting a complete and robust solution.
Of course you are quite right; charlatans of all types will indulge lazy and wishful thinkers by parting them from their money at every opportunity. But you have to accept – alternative medicines, while especially prone to it, do not have that affliction on their own.
RL – when did I abandon it again? I’m not having a go at you – it’s quite clear that there is plenty of independent evidence that mirrors your own experience, and mine for that matter.
Neuroscience has mapped the territory a bit better, and will explore further if the rate of growth of literature on the subject is any indication. The only people I can see with grounds to be “frightened” of this are the woo-woo brigade, who are financially dependent on ignorance.
Meanwhile, CR’s strawman doesn’t stand scrutiny: ask any scientist and they’ll tell you that the more they learn the more they realise they don’t know.
Oh bollocks CR – there are dozens of possible explanations for RL’s experience before mysterious powers need to be introduced.
Did RL see their house in the future, or did RL’s parents like the house because it looked like RL’s picture? If a house has been around long enough, most walls would have had cupboards against them at one stage or another.
There is a huge amount to learn, yes. Maybe even remote viewing or something similar is possible. Hell, maybe even this is what RL’s experience was, rather than clouded memories of long ago or any other explanation. All I’m really saying is that confirmation bias is a wonderful thing, and eyewitness testimony is frequently unreliable.
@McF
Yes I’ve done my best over the years to consider all of those possibilities. Most of them I can categorically rule out.
Déjà vu
I figure that there’s an everyday description of it that’s known and understood by everybody because it’s, as you say, common.
Clinical experiments with patients who suffer from epilepsy…
.
Epilepsy research has also yielded interesting results regarding OOBEs.
Including OOBE’s which can place furniture and fittings in exact locations from whence they have been gone for years?
R/L may have visualised the house as it was the day they ‘visited’ it. That seems less unlikely.
“if that doesn’t cure him I don’t know what will’…….lol!!
Epic.
Tory Entitlement Update No94: Oz
Speaker Bronwyn Bishop blows $5 grand of taxpayer dosh on a helicopter trip from Melbourne to Geelong and back so that she can attend a Liberal Party fundraiser, doesn’t see the inherent problem.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-18/bishop-calls-travel-investigation-a-beat-up/6630724
Jane Kelsey on RNZ now for an interview about her new book. Should be good.
The gummint has noticed that there are organised fights within our prisons, disapproves, and has put the entities in charge ‘on notice’.
I know just how the gummint feels. As with so many in our country, I have listened to the farce of bouts needing Queensberry Rules that the gummint turn Parliament’s Question Time into. I and a great number of others, I hope, put them ‘on notice’ to be meted out at the next election.
Fourteen tenants, one toilet: Donghua Liu’s ‘slum’ rental
Can anybody really say that they’re surprised by this?
And they can’t resist involving David Cunliffe on spurious grounds. (Note to political
media advisor – Tell pollie to always say ‘I can’t remember.it was many years ago. I will have to check on that.’)
Stuff has repeated :Former Labour leader David Cunliffe was also put on the back foot after it was proved he had signed a letter in 2003 supporting Liu, having initially denied doing so.
http://www.odt.co.nz/regions/otago/349473/vetsouth-offers-free-care-dairy-cows
VetSouth to offer free services to struggling dairy farmers (for a month, but it could be extended), who would otherwise shoot cows rather than call the vet.
It’s really encouraging to see this kind of thing – the banks need to adopt a similar attitude to managing the dairy bust. If managed correctly land values and production can drop to a realistic level without exacting a severe toll on farmers and their families.
”We thought that wasn’t good enough and we could do better … by supporting the farmers who supported us. We wanted to tip the balance in favour of the cows.”
Farmers typically wanted to do their best for their stock and it was hoped the offer would ”remove some of the pain” and ease both the situation for both farmers and cows, he said.
”The reasoning behind this is simple – it’s not a cow’s fault if she gets sick in a low-payout season.”
How population growth can make us worse off
An interesting article that raises interesting questions.
Assuming that higher GDP = better standard of living is stupid, anyway.
It’s quite easy for GDP to increase, even increase at a rate faster than population growth, but general standard of living doesn’t go up.
It’d even be quite easy for the GDP to go down while living standards increase. The two obvious causes are unequal distribution of the wealth, and then more efficient/effective technologies being introduced that improve living standards.
Rachel Stewart: Media should have seen dairy slump coming
Our economy and our environment is pretty much fucked and a large part of the blame lies squarely with farming but a lot of that could have been prevented if we’d had a Fourth Estate asking the correct questions and a government willing to reign in the depredations of the farmers.
Tory pigs are at it again.
Tory peers like Lord
Cormack argued in favour of moving away from tax funding, saying:
“All forms of funding must be
looked at. We have to have a plurality of funding if we are to have a
sustainable NHS. Whether the extra funding comes from compulsory
insurances or certain charges matters not, but it has to come.”
Matters not!? As a true Tory, he says that
the funding should not come from taxing the rich (which he does not even
countenance), but instead from taxing the sick.
More disappointing were the contributions from
Labour peers like (the notoriously pro-privatisation) Lord Warner:
“Our tax-funded, largely free at the point of
clinical need NHS is rapidly approaching an existential moment. The voices of
dissent and outrage will no doubt be deafening but a wise Government
should begin now the process of helping the public engage in a
discourse about future funding of the NHS.”
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/richard-grimes/government-moves-to-consider-nhs-user-charges