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notices and features - Date published:
6:00 am, December 19th, 2010 - 60 comments
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It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
Comment on whatever takes your fancy.
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Step right up to the mike…
Looking forward to the comments and discussion re the latest Wikileaks! The Dalai Lama info is very enlightening! Glad to read the Wong debacle is having an effect on people’s views of specific politicians. Honesty really is the best policy….and it is reassuring to see most New Zealanders believe this.
Glad to read the Wong debacle is having an effect on peoples views of politicians.
Actually, it seems to be having an effect on people’s views of John Key, including National supporters, who think Wong and Key have tried to hide something, and that Key handled the issue badly:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4473965/National-voters-turn-on-Key
Yes, that is the article I was referring to. Great how you can reference it like that! The Wikileaks info re the Dalai Lama also appears to show intentional misleading and dishonesty to Parliament and the New Zealand public.
I wonder if Pike River has helped colour that impression. Key has acting very dishonourably over the fate of the workers/contractors. The mask truly slipped and I hope some Kiwis noticed.
Tigger the public mask slipped when Key did not reveal why Worth resigned.
only for those people who were already peeking behind the mask.
I think an awful lot of them are still looking at him front on, though. But some of them lived on the West Coast, and now know it’s bull. Some of them are also being laid off when the world is slowly recovering, and now know it’s bull. And there’ll be many a slip between now and Election 2011.
The smile and wave character, eventually their luck runs out. Still on a lucky streak for now as the Christmas holiday break prevents hard questions being raised in the house.
Yep its having a bit affect in the latest Collmar Brunton poll, great to see the loony greens won’t be in parliament next year if these polls continue. The Gooffather at 7%,what a waste of space.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4474816/National-leads-Labour-by-22-points-poll
The UK Uncut anti-austerity protests continue, successfully using assymmetrical tactics and social media and targetting corporate retail stores. It attracts protesters of all age groups, from young students to elderly pensioners.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/retail-giants-face-taxing-day-of-uncut-action-2163614.html
Knowledge is power. Social media provide the info. It is one thing to sit at home and feel angst but powerless…quite another to know others feel the same way and also wish to do something about it. It helps to have a tipping point, even better to have several that affect many….what will it take for NZ’rs to openly protest in significant numbers?
Wikileaks cables say that drug companies tried to have Helen Clark removed as Health Minister in 1990, that they tried to have NZ Free Trade agreement stymied and tried to ‘educate the public’ by agitating people with stories about drugs they could not access.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz-government/news/article.cfm?c_id=144&objectid=10695239
In another NZ Herald article, Dr Bryce Edwards writes “These cables paint the embassies in quite a different colour – that they’re here to further the interests of their own countries, to promote big business interests and often play a role of subterfuge or dishonest interventions in our national affairs.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz-government/news/article.cfm?c_id=144&objectid=10695269
Interestingly, Medicines NZ chief executive officer Denise Wood said yesterday “new personalities” in government had reduced tension. I wonder what that actually means.
Some nice tension reducing lunches (healthy eating with salads etc) plus a few glasses of cholesterol-controlling red wine? Followed by the phrase “I’m sure we can work something out that is mutually beneficial.” Smile, show white teeth in well groomed visage.
Wonder if the USA pharmacuticals had any influence when Key over-rode the Pharmac decision over Herceptum?
Helen Clark brought us to “Very Very Good Friends” status back in July 2008 ..[So long ago! But I thought it was a man who said that .. have I got the wrong reference at Stuff?].
“United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s reference to New Zealand as a friend “and ally” of the US following talks with Prime Minister Helen Clark and Foreign Minister Winston Peters.”
But I guess having a right wing Government helps even though some say it equates to the American Democrats which was the ruling party until the last election upset…
I don’t think Dr Bryce Edwards was telling us anything new .. that has been a business of embassies since the year dot.
Sad news for aging hippies, Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet has died.
Seeing as how you started on the link thing…a rendition of one of me favourites…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17cr_WVdWmo&feature=related
Seems this guy hewish has put up a nice wee collection…
Never really thought of Beefheart as a hippy, he and Zappa had far too much hard edge for any hippy drippy dippy shit. Nothing much wishy washy and peaceful around those gents.
Hippy or not having Happiness Stan from The Small Faces Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake as a long time favourite goes some way in explaining what was actually going on at the time…..
Small Faces
Which were in the studios
Hallowed by thy name
Thy music come
Thy songs be sung
On this album as they came from your heads
We give you this day our daily bread
Give us thy album in a round cover as we give thee 37/9d.,
Lead us into the record stores.
And deliver us Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake
For nice is the music
The sleeve and the story
For ever and ever, Immediate
Ahhhh one of my favourite albums.
Bored.
You do know that Zappa espoused some pretty weird fucked up neo-liberal politics? Not a reflection on his music, but, yeah…he wunt no leftie, never mind ‘no hippy’.
Fucking catchpa be ‘clarify’. I guess it’s just well, seeing I’ve come to terms with my paranoia 🙂
From stuff: Forced house sale numbers fall
Well that’s good news.
I hope that they are correct but there must be the point when there are no more over-committed whatever the economy is doing. Another good bit of news is that more Christmas sales are being paid for by debit cards/cash than credit cards if I heard correctly on TV. [Or at least the proportion is increasing].
Let’s all look for good news. It’s raining over much of the country and filling up the reservoirs and irrigation dams. That’s good. Pike River may be able to progress as something there is under control or nearly.
And it also said that the property speculators had been worked through the system and that the forced sales these days were mostly of “Mom and Dad” owners loosing their homes. Also that the number of forced house sales is still 5 times ahead of that before the global financial meltdown. Whose good news is that?
Further am i correct in speculating that the number of building consents across several regions is still at rubbish low levels?
Elmer Fudd: I’m a wed-hot sportsman after wild game. Heh-heh-heh-heh.
(in his endless pursuit of Bugs Bunny)
Looks as though he will have to settle for a shotgun wedding.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4474020/Beach-bliss-for-Rodney-Hide-and-his-bride/
I’m waiting for jbanks to enlighten us all as to whether:
A. this is an example of survival of the fittest breeding or
B: this reinforces his view that the absence of evolutionary pressures means that anyone can and does breed.
I’m sure someone out there has something that can be added about Crome and Dome.
Incidentally, when he gets back from honeymoon he will resume the mantel of Voldemort as he gets his teeth into Special Education.
Someone commented a while ago about an apparent rort where landlords could lease their properties to HNZ for 10-15 years with the guarantee that they’d always have tenants.
It seems private industry does a much better job at this:
“We’d all be much better off using a commercial letting agent to manage our properties. They would charge us 7.5%, they would deal with all damage and repair issues for us at cost, and would automatically act in our interest [not automatically the tenant’s]. After all we are paying!”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/4473837/Landlords-livid-over-Housing-NZ-treatment
I have just started a rubbish telemarketing job, (which won’t last – I am not making enough sales) and at lunch on day 3, I walked into the break room to hear a mananger boasting about what a good deal she and hubby have, having leased their investment property house to Housing NZ…
The things she was saying made my skin crawl!
Deb
Yep invested for the capital gain and went with the soft option of guaranteed rent – now the capital gains are not there they are moaning .
A few friends of mine looked at this who were long term investors and quickly worked out that they could make more income by not singing up. Of course they weren’t directly after the capital gain as they have always invested long-term for the rental income – the capital gain tends to be the icing on the cake.
Been checkin out narcocorrido vids on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM51aPTQs1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K82nN0UBoSQ
lot’s of crazy shit man.
Wasn’t that long ago they were arguing for Taser introduction as the answer to our policing problems. Would stop assaults on the police. Essential they have them on their hip at all times…
December 14, 2007
…Greg O’Connor has made a plea for the adoption of the “less than lethal” device.
“Opponents to police being issued with Tasers are ignoring the realities of modern policing,” Mr O’Connor said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/campaign-against-the-taser/news/article.cfm?o_id=600630&objectid=10482166
December 14 2010
Police Association president Greg O’Connor said the time had come for police officers, especially those in remote areas, to have a firearm on their hip.
“The majority of frontline officers now want to be armed,” O’Connor said.
“We have had nine police officers shot in the last two years on top of all these serious assaults.
The only weapon that is any good against a machete is a firearm.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/4450047/I-thought-I-would-die-attacked-officer/
Machete versus taser or firearm.
Do rural officers not have access to the taser yet?
By the 70’s M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction) had become the product of the Arms Race. One has to ask the question with New Zealand’s mini arms race, if there is just possibly a better way to addressing society’s problems
Giving police MP5’s and AR-15’s is the only answer to our crime problem.
O’Connor is a nasty little corrupt fascist and has been since his undercover days in the Otago drug trade.
When he called for tasers many correctly identified it as a stepping stone to full arming of the police which has long been O’Connor’s pet project.
Of course those voices were shouted down by the usual apologists for authority who described such observations as paranoid and stupid.
High end residential building spend up continues
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10694997
It seems like a few still have money to burn.
The financial “collapse” did what such collapses have always done – put huge amounts of money into the hands of the few.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/dec/19/nhs-salary-increments-job-losses
Now this makes me wonder when the Nats will start to implement stuff like this
it’s a simple do as we say or your MATES will lose thier jobs by the look of it.
That’s terrible.. I just sent it to my son who’s a nurse and who was planning to go to the UK to work next year..
Deb
Already have – during negotiations with NZEI, they suggested teachers forego a pay rise to fund support staff in schools.
The support staff budget has been reduced 2011, and guess who is to blame.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/4473837/Landlords-livid-over-Housing-NZ-treatment
Maybe the landlords should say HNZ you have broken the contract therefore it’s Null and Void now get these people out of MY house.
Then maybe government will have to BUY the houses, not sublet them and just let the tennants destroy them, and rip them off for the rent..
BUT this IS another case of the government not caring and just taking any advantage it can.. And if we don’t support the landlords then we are the ones that pay those of us who rent.
Hexavalent chromium, probable carcinogen, found in water supplies of 35 US cities
A pollutant made famous by activist Erin Brokovich.
After being used to NZ Grade A water it was a distasteful experience to drink water in the States, even when I made a cup of coffee with it by mistake it was horrible, but fortunately the fridge-freezer where I was staying had an ice-maker/ water purifier. Don’t know what was in the water apart from the excessive chlorine taste. Every time I went into the city I had to pass the local sewage works which stank to high heaven…. built and owned by the local brewery one third of its contents came from the town and two thirds from making beer etc. Yes, as ‘black vest’ said “We don’t know how lucky we are.” That is not to say we shouldn’t watch things like a hawk, and regret that much of our water is unsafe to drink until it has been treated..
Indeed. Don’t go drinking out of any streams in Southland will you.
Still better than DB Export
Lastest poll out bad reading for Laboutr
Its simple really.
Goff must go.
That is the reality that the Labour caucus is refusing to face.
Im beginning to wonder if there is such a thing as the Key effect. Perhaps its more the Goff Defect.. 🙁 Even sadder, people have lost faith in the greens since Pike River.. hopefully things change when the truth starts to seep out.Have no answers for Goff except to say, he’s had a go, time to switch to a new look Labour.. fast!
mmmmm…..anyone else starting to smell a big fat rat in these polls? Specially the crucial pre-hols ones….from memory Edwards proved conclusively that online polls were heavily manipulated pro-Right prior the last erection, and Brolmar is consistently pro-Right….it is a science brothers and sisters, so how can N-L-G of 48-35-7 in the Morgan taken at the same time, suddenly and so very conveniently become 55-33-4.5 in the Brolmar?
Anyone can take a poll, and no law against manipulating them…..
Prior to which erection ? 🙂
Apparently it’s phone interviews – which is another issue entirely.
What I find interesting is that the results are always around 100% (rounding errors being what they are).
So either they aren’t reporting undecideds, or they are insisting that respondents name a political party. In which case it could well be that the governing party is closest to mind.
Of course, it really is “all or nothing” for national – they need as close to an outright majority as they can get, otherwise they don’t have many friends to call on. If MP choose to hang with them for a second term they might be in with a shot.
The 3News Poll out last week had almost identical numbers as this colmar poll.
3News Poll is traditionally considered as being pro-Left.
3 News poll pro-left? How is that possible when they’re NZ’s answer to Faux News? Ma dai!
Deb
Howcome The Standard only has one friend on facebook…
We have a facebook page? Guess I’d better have a look at it.
The ‘edit’ function has gone again.
The lies exposed behind ‘that’ DB ad…
I’ve seen it once and wondered but the only thing I was sure of was that they weren’t producing Export Gold in 1958.
BTW, Export Gold is a nats pis of a beer that’s just not worth drinking.
That is a brilliant article! That advert has always annoyed me from the moment I first saw it in Welly in October..
Deb
When are the expert political commentators going to ask the polling companies, like Colmar Brunton, to give the full results to their surveys: As Colmar Brunton says on its we site it gives results only for poll respondents who have decided how they will vote and are likely to vote.
It does NOT give results for the don’t knows and won’t says.
So we are probably seeing results for about 650 respondents expressed as if they were 100%.
So National got 33% of the eliible voting population last election, Labour 25%.
It is very important to know where the OTHER 45% of the eligible voters are going, or what they’re thinking of doing!
For example, how do the don’t knows think they will vote?
The best example I’ve seen of this lately is from HorizonPoll which gives the total results, and also shows National was up about 1% on its 2008 election result, but at 34% of all people 18+. It’s a good result for National, but it’s far from 55%.
http://www.horizonpoll.co.nz/page/77/new-zealand-first-may-decide-who-go…
The maximum margins of error would need to be applied to get the Horizon and Clmar and other polls to match.
With a 3% or so margin of error, the Colmar poll risks seriously under rating the minor parties, specially NZ First and the Greens.
What is the margin of error on the minor parties’ votes within the latest Colmar survey? Must be massive.
Yet tragically, the electoral commission uses these polls to decide party support – the the amount of taxpayer funded campaign support the parties get! What a rort!
Meantime, the political commentators and media who buy the polls don’t seem to want to knpow the whole picture?
Even if the politicians would rather be known for having 55%, not 35%?
Time for some real analysis by the journalists please
.
Actually, I think we can have a guess as to the population of “unknowns” for Colmar Brunton, and therefore the actual count.
We know the sample population is 1000, so if 250 said A then that’s 25%.
We also know that if A is 25% out of a population of a thousand, then that’s 250 people.
United Future polled at 0.3%. A population of a thousand (with rounding error) gives a maximum count of 3 people.
Each polled vote would have to be a whol person, so we then get a mid range of 666 (2 UF voters) and a minimum count of 1 person out of 333 respondents.
Given that 100% is unlikely unless they’re demanding a response (which would probably inflated the votes of the party with the most name recognition, i.e. the govt), that leaves Key with an actual count of either 366 or 183. Horizon report a dk/won’t say rate of 16%, as opposed to CB’s 33%, but then if the Horizon poll is internet only you’ll have the names of the parties in front of you, rather than just answering without prompting.
666 respondents brings Colmar Brunton, with nat on 36% all participants, into the rough vote distribution of the Horizon poll, with labour on 21.9% all participants (low, but within 7% of the CB poll).
And the 2008 election had a participation rate of somethink like 80%, so this poll really needs to mind-read what another 135 respondents would have said. And if the respondents weren’t prompted, they’d also have to factor in recall bias.
But all this “oooo they can govern alone if our poll was the general election” makes the media happy even if almost a year out it’s just staring at entrails.