Is Scott Morrison a creationist? A google search doesnt seem to give up that info. Do we really want someone who belives that a fictional character (let's face it, God is a fictional character) waved a magic wand to create this world 6000 years ago in charge of a country?
In addition, it is kinda depressing to see the highly paid workers in the coal, oil, gas and construction sectors throw their lower paid brothers and sisters in the service, retail and hospitality sectors under a bus by voting away their penalty rates for good, and probably voting for futher wage cuts as well. Sad really.
How about quit trying to manipulate liberal / national policy by constructing from the bottom up, internally incoherent gibberish designed to demonstrate how woke you are, and address your own / our own shitty woke policies and fix that up.
I recall a discussion with a fellow MP (in National) who told me he was a creationist. I had very open conversations with colleagues. I asked him how that affected his policy decisions. He said; " In Wellington, I have a Wellingtonian approach to policy. In my personal life I have my beliefs."
In my experience, this approach is quite common among those who have strong religious views and who are also in politics in a major party. They don't only exist in National. Traditionally some are in Labour. There are none in the Greens and probably none were in ACT.
The areas where their religious views does affect their political views is conscience issues. If you know a person is a religious conservative, you also know their views on euthanasia, abortion, gay marriage, drinking age, cannabis, shop trading hours, casinos.
But outside those things you don't. They can be big social spenders or small social spenders, they can be free market or they can be market interventionists.
as we can currently see this approach worked well in the United States were creationism is thought more in schools then actuall science and where god put babies in the bellies of little girls – thus no abortion.
Bill English comes to mind, so godly, so very very godly especially when it comes to the decision that women make about their bodies and reproductive rigths, but then issue defrauding (we would call it theft for any person not Bill English) the goverment to the tune of 40 odd grand for houses that he may or may not live in cause 'he did not know' – even so he never did anything else in his whole working life then life of the government tit.
but i guess so as long as they are National its all good. right?
" If you know a person is a religious conservative, you also know their views on euthanasia, abortion, gay marriage, drinking age, cannabis, shop trading hours, casinos."
Aren't politicians in Government bound to be open-minded and free of prejudice, in the way local body politicians are, Wayne? The training local body politicians regularly undergo, Making Good Decisions, requires a suspension of bias when it comes to making decisions on behalf of the ratepayers. To say that the views of politicians who are religious conservatives is fixed and can be listed, as you have done, is…disturbing.
The things I noted are all regarded as conscience issues. It should not surprise anyone that religious conservatives would vote on these things in a very specific way. I never saw any religious conservative, no matter what their party, who didn't vote in an entirely predictable way on these issues.
In the major parties, once these items were settled by a vote, there was never any further agitation by religious conservatives to change the outcome. They just accepted it. Neither did they ever promote their views outside a specific conscience vote, that is they didn't drive Members Bills on these issues. They would never get consent from their colleagues to do so, and it was never pushed, even sotto voce.
However, in a party where these things were more central, there would be continuing agitation. But such a party would be 5% or less of there parliament and couldn't force a major party to change it views on these issues. What a minor party could do is promote Members bills on these issues. Then others would vote according to conscience.
Have you followed the US over the last three decades or so?
Do you believe that 'it' could not happen here, or are you so cynical that the only thing that matters is hte Party and the country and those that are against the honestly held religious believes of politicians be damned?
And do you really believe that that stale milk toast covered in Margarine has any any chance to keep anything together when religious zealots are a lot more attractive to a certain type of voter then the default National they vote now for lack of choices?
Because at the moment, religious minded people may vote for National as the default party – cause, godly Bill English, godly Alfred Ngaro, goldy Milktoast, – and yes all of these men use their religion and their religious conviction to appeal to their voters more then actual policy that would help the poor, feed the hungry, house the homeless and welcome the stranger to their house.
Do you really thing that the current lot that is running the National party has any chance against some cynical god botherers? Because i don't think so, and i don't think so because i can look at other countries and see what is happening in real time rather then your make believe fantasy world in which the National Party is a force for good rather then just an assembly of men and women happy to be bought at the right price by anyone who would keep them on the government tit – and eventually to a board of a company that they then can help bankrupt.
It’s more interesting that the fringies are falling out of favour with the major parties. So any true radical will see this as an opportunity to unite.
Well "what pays better?" Well it's Braitbart and the Israel lobby that pays better but they've fallen out of favour with the National Party image. To much sin.
New Zealand is much less interested in conservative religious/moral issues than the United States. I would say vastly less so. So no real risk of what you are suggesting.
This is reflected in the major parties. For instance we have had two conservative catholic prime ministers in the last 30 years. Neither of them used their positions to promote those views. The only way their views on such matters were manifested was through their conscience votes.
As I have already said, conscience issues are essentially sectioned off from broader public policy.
An explicitly religious party would be able to get more conscience votes because they most frequently come from Members Bills, and such a party would promote such Bills. However, they would most likely fail in the wider parliament.
Such a party could not force National MP's to vote for these Bills. There is a strong group of socially liberal National MP's (and "middle of the road" MP's) who would not permit that.
However I imagine a religiously based party would be very keen on partnership schools, and faith based welfare programmes. A significant number of conservative Pacific Island communities would want to establish schools with a strong faith based approach, but still teaching the required curriculum. Similar to Catholic integrated schools.
The partnership school approach would make that affordable. Since many Pacific Island communities do not have substantial wealth, they typically cannot afford the high capital costs of establishing a school in the way the traditional churches have done. Partnership school would provide the option.
Such a party could very well make National into a minor party. 🙂 as one could argue that Labour is a 'minor party albeit the largest one among the minor parties. Also see the republican party in the US. it took them a few years, but they – the tea party / evangelic right managed to take over the party. I beg you to point to one sane republican politician who currently would protect a womens right to choose, not threaten her with a criminal offense for having an abortion (irrespective the reason), who did not at some stage favor to electrocute or otherwise train the gays into behaving like a heterosexual, believes that allowing gays to marry is akin bestiality and such. Cause they all said that, enabled it, supported it.
And your current margarine covered milk toast will do exactly that if it means to keep his paycheck, as sitting in parliament is literally the easiest job in the country. You have to achieve nothing and still get paid and perks for life.
The reason many pacific islander don't have wealth is racism (yo National), low wages (yo National), and religion (tithing, no abortion, women submit joyfully to your husband/father, large families a blessing from god etc)
Partnership? The last time National went into partnership with an ethnic party – Maori Party they killed them. I don't think you have the slightest idea what you talk about, but then, you already received your easy wages and now live of your life long government issued tax payer funded perks, so you would be literally the last person to suffer if my scenario would come true rather then your pie in the sky fantasy scenario.
And as the 9 years under national have shown, your party will fuck up given half a chance – so as long as they get to bank, and bank they did.
It is clear from numerous MMP elections, there is around about 4 to 5% conservative christian vote. It comes from across the political spectrum. In fact, arguably more from Labour than National because when the conservative christian vote is high, Labour is low.
Conservative christian vote is no danger to National. Very few National voters are conservative christian, and certainly not to the extent that it is the main determinant of how a person votes. For instance neither of the conservative catholic PM's would have been remotely interested in a conservative christian party. It would be way too narrow for them.
The Maori Party almost survived the last election. It would have had two MP's, but for Tamiti Coffey who beat Te Uroroa Flavell by about 1500 votes. Labour was determined to kill the Maori Party. They succeeded.
that does not include 'environmentally fair, respectful, inovative, and socially minded farmer' .
you know like the dude that has 8 children living of 'working for family' tax payer funded subsidy while holding a sign that says "She's a pretty communist'. What 'godwin type' word would love for that guy? or the guys that killed their cattle with a preventable diseases by flaunting the laws and transporting them willy nilly all over the greenery for profits shits n giggles and now need government tax payer funded hand out to make up for the thousands of dead cows so they then in a few years time can repeat the exact same shit?
I'm sure the party religious conservatives never "agitated" on things like wiping historical crimes for homosexuality. You know it only took until 2018 for that to finally happen.
"this approach is quite common among those who have strong religious views"
Yes but that doesn’t justify holding this view. They are complete nutters to believe this Wayne. It is bollocks. Do you want a nutter running the country?
well are you talking about Saudi Arabia? Quatar? Pakistan? Afghanistan? Iran? Iraq? Algeria? Malaysia? UAE? Marocco? Indonesia? Epypt? Turkey? or any of the others that are too numerous to mention?
They all do have a few things in common.
Very little freedom unless you are the default best human being – a man.
Very little reproductive choices unless you are the default best human being – a man
Very little government representation unless you are the default best human being – a man
Very little education for all (i would exclude the Asian muslim countries as they generally have a good grip on education for all) unless of course you are a male
Very little career option for all, unless you are a male. Then of course you must work cause someone has to feed the little dears women will bear if they have no access to reproductive choice but has to put out on demand in order to earn her dinner. (Women of course also work, but often times only within the family and often times they don't get to keep their pay – very much like it was in our western society until having bank accounts in ones own name became the norm in the late seventies of the last century – 1970 not 1870)
Marriage at a very early age – unless your family is of a certain income aka not poor, or you are a male, then you deserve a pre-teen or several to keep your house and birth you lots of manly children.
Healthcare in certain countries for women does not exist – if she dies in childbirth its gods will.
So you could posit that they indeed manage, and i would posit that the US would also manage under a theocracy, but i would also posit that it would be mainly the women, children, homosexuals, trans, anyone not identifying as a heterosexual, atheist, non Christian that would not manage.
But i understand, details, pesky pesky details. Lucky us right, cause it could never ever happen here.
I would also like to point out that these are stereo types that while all true – not always apply to all countries and certainly don't apply to all people that live in these countries but are bound by the rules.
I for one am very much aware of my privilege and luck – yes luck – to have been born a white girl into a white country at a time or relative enlightenment. If i would have been born into Afghanistan/Bangladesh/Anatolia/Saudi Arabia/Eqypt/Mali/Somalia/Indonesia by now i would have a good chance of being dead. I could have died in the wedding night due to internal injuries/bleeding after fulfilling my martial duties, or died in childbirth, or died of starvation as a widow, or died in a bombing by russia (afghanistan) and then the us, or died being stoned by the taliban/saudi arabia/islamic state for 'crimes against god and such' for trying to survive with my children as a widow by prostituting myself, or for refusing to marry some bloke old enough to by my grandfather.
So yeah, they manage, like we manage, but a lot of that managing comes at the cost of keeping women out of public life, and of denying sexual right and freedom men and women alike, and to chop of hands and legs and whippings in public space. But in saying that Europe survived and they burned women alive at the stake. So its all in good fun, so as long as we manage?
I think it'd take just a smidgeon more than lowering his taxes half a point. If you could throw in a gig or two in the media as a talking head to make sure he remains relevant – that'd be good
Perhaps Australia is a just joke country that's too far gone to worry about? Maybe all we can do is try to avoid unworthy feelings of schadenfreude as they burn up over the next 40 years, while trying to make ourselves more resilient.
Though there's a depressing takeaway about the continuing ability of private money-power (Rupert Murdoch & Clive Palmer) to sway elections. You can't have a proper democracy until private money-power is curbed. Which might lead some people to conclude that democratic means of curbing it are unavailable, and other methods must be employed. And that is a particularly worrisome conclusion.
There's not much point in worrying about Australia. Climate change means the entire country will likely spontaneously combust in the very near future. I keep telling my sisters they should probably move before it's too late.
And while everyine would like to see nurses and teachers pay rates really reflect their input few employees today have the same level of long term job security that goes with those positions.
Both sectors had very little to say and curbed their demands for nine years or so years but now expect magic wand to be whipped out to meet their demands despite the knowledge that housing and the health and welfare of a good number of their pupils is very important to their ability to learn.
NZ deserves to be governed with the "long game" in mind. Funnily I doubt that very many will be willing to sacrifice the balance that is returning to NZers lives and will risk the return of another National Party govt any time soon. They show the same self-interest that led to the "catch-up" being required across many issues and no concern for NZ nothing has changed there, something, if it is not fully realised now, that a lot of NZers will reflect on with their choices next election.
Yes "some" solely obsessed with being elected, that has ever been the case but the intentions after that matter the most. I see merit in righting the ship and keeping the passengers on board before deciding how the deck chairs arranged to get the best outcome for all.
i think sadly, that the left needs to be as radical as the right. Or let me put it this way, if we are not radical, demanding radical solutions everyone is drowning as the whole in the ships bottom is never gonna get fixed. Currently we are all standing in a line bucketing the water out while some of our precious dears are in the captains lodging arguing of whom should get in the one life boat that is on the ship.
We are living in extreme times – environmentally its gonna get worse not better – and we have no plan but a bunch of over paid suits pretending that they can go back to a past that did not exist.
In the meantime we scold kids for taking of fridays.
I'm not scolding kids for taking off Fridays that's for sure, I'm hoping that that will coax some of their "elders" to think hard about how they can be more open to what needs to be done. Currently it is a hard-sell with some people despite it being for a better future, why that is bedevils me and commonsense. In some ways that is possibly how it needs to be to change direction permanently instead of duck-shoving everything back to "government" and expecting overnight miracles. If that is the way it is temporarily it is better than nine more years of willingly damaging lives via divide and rule.
i am not talking about you, but the ones in our media that are so concerned with children taking off school to go on a strike.
also i would like to point to the orange shitshow in the united states that is currently pissing all over the country because the democrats did neither show spine nor guts
You may need to be more specific. On the AM show he definitely ruled out mandating Ngaro's christian revival attempt. Said they would stand a Nat candidate in Botany next year and expect to win there. Since the Nats got 60% there last time, he's right – unless Ngaro stands there for the christians. That could create a three-way split.
Anyway, if your culture war thesis was correct, Bridges would be supporting the artificial construction of a support partner for the Nats, huh?
It would maximise the prospects of JLR, although if Labour fronts with a good candidate a four-way split seems feasible (with rough parity) but tribalism will always give the Nats the edge on the basis of 60% last time.
Bridges spent the whole interview speaking out of sides of his mouth but it is crystal clear that National is planning a dishonest scare campaign based on culture war issues, from saying they support evidence based drug reform whilst pandering to the Family Fist crowd to saying they support conscience votes on issue like abortion whilst offering mealy mouthed equivocation on the establishment of a religious extremist party to help them game MMP.
Seems a reasonable apprehension, but it would be equally reasonable to frame it as simply appealing appealing to the biases of their voter base, wouldn't it?
Anyway, there's an obvious danger for them if they do decide to try the culture war strategy: alienating centrists. So I see it as self-defeating, short-sighted.
Across the Tasman, the Liberals won by refusing to have a detailed manifesto, engaging is dishonest representations of selected opponents policies and running a culture wars by proxy campaign in Queensland and in the Murdoch press.
The lesson National will take from that is that they can wage a proxy culture war by a bunch of extremists – hence this Christian party – and that they should double down on the dishonest culutre war attacks via their media proxies such as Mike Hosking and via the likes of Paula "Gummi Bears" Bennett.
It is an open question if this approach will succeed, especially given how ill-equipped our ideological bankrupt and intellectually cowardly Labour would be to deal with such an assault.
+ 1 yep and they will utilize their sub-groups to hate on people, to create strife, issues – oh we need strong gnat govt to fix these 'issues' blah blah blah
I think the lazer of Jacinda will vapourise them – but the battery life isn't infinity and others are going to have to step up. They are beginning to – the bishop got dealt to, paula benefit is being dealt to, and so on – be good to save winnie for the mega hit counterattack or defense imo
if National wants to win they will run on decriminalizing or tolerating weed as in Holland or based on the system of the US. – i know a few non – voters that will vote for that and they are old, middle aged and young, who literally have no reason to vote for either party other then civic mindedness.
And its nobodies fault but that of the coalition. Every now and then one has to take a risk, and on this issue they actually could.
the rest is business as usual for National. No ideas but pondering to the lowest common denominator and bigotry.
Did you watch the rise of the Tea Party in the US?
Do you understand that the Tea Party has become the Republican Party?
And do you understand that the only Party really in danger of the rise of the christo fascist are those on the right? As they – in order to keep their constituancy need to move ever more right in order to stay electable to the God freaks on the right?
And yes, God Freaks, not godly, not christian, cause anyone who – as in the states, can not allow gun control cause 'fredom and personal choice' but has no issues condeming little girls to give birth to their own aunties/uncles/brothers/sistes/cuzzies is not a christian or a person of faith, but rather a cynical being who literally would offer little girls as a sacrament to advance their very own agenda.
And I have personally met Alfred Ngaro, a man who will not introduce himself when he comes to the shop of a women, who will not say anything other then 'Can i speak to your husband'. WTF? Mr. , I don't have a husband. It was a funny scene, where it no so fucking sad.
You better watch out that you don't end up being the Sorcerers apprentice " the ghost that i have called, i can not rid myself of anymore'.
Well, Sabine, all I can say is that if you think I'm apologising for the Nats then it appears to be evidence of a tendency to read motives into text. Such tendencies, when the motives aren't actually there, can make people delusional!
"The most recent poll on the issue by the Kaiser Family Foundation, conducted in late April, found that two-thirds of the public wants Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, to remain in place. Slightly more than half of Republicans disagree."
i don't say you are a National applogist, and if that is what you got from my comment that says more about you then me.
all i am saying is that we should look at the US and see what happened there and thus stop making fun about it, stop pretending it can't happen here and maybe just be a bit more cautious, cause it can happen here and i fear it will.
Our current lot of do very little politicians do not address climate change with the urgency needed, do not address job security, food security, housing security and energy security with the urgency needed.
And thus they leave a space to be filled by hate peddlers and tithing grifters like tamaki and his ilk. And Alfred Ngaro falls under ilk, as do the brethren, the gloriavale cultists, jehova witnesses and the likes. And i will also tell you that they vote, and their women vote, and they will vote for the hate peddlers and tithing grifters so as long as they pretend to be forced birth, anti gay / other orientation, anti freedom of movement for women (ohio, missoury both have lawed it that a women who leaves the state for an abortion is still a criminal should she dare to come back and so is the driver of the car btw), do with your children as you please – i .e. beat the life out of them (blanket training read up on it), don't vaccinate, don't take to the hospital, don't educate cause property of men.
The point is that they have promised these things, and now thanks to the orange shitshow they are getting what they want. (after all as they said a few years ago, we only need a president who can hold the pen to sign the laws we put in front of him, he is not needed to advance laws or make them). And if you believe that our lot is not equally cynical and monstrous in their intention then i have a two lane bridge flanked by a kauri on either side or ten in Northland to sell to you.
the wall in the US is not to keep the South Americans out, it is to keep the US Americans in.
Sabine And I have personally met Alfred Ngaro, a man who will not introduce himself when he comes to the shop of a woman, who will not say anything other then 'Can i speak to your husband'. WTF?
I know that was the sort of thing that men said and did in the 1960s before the new wave of womens lib/feminism. That was what they organised and protested to change. To hear it has still lingered on and is trying to rise up again from the crypt is very concerning.
Watch this trend of people wanting to take the podium and pronounce on how women should be; jealous men (of their paramount rights) and priggish women (wanting to be seen as perfect examples of womanhood and behaviour, both moral and super-smart, eg Ruth Richardson, Denise L'Estrange-Corbet, Jenny Shipley & other status seekers). Watch for the patriarchal cults, the ones that want women kept in their (lower) place; they are toxic. And often there are economic features and a desire to rob females of their opportunity to develop as their own person, behind the moral pose.
https://www.peggyorenstein.com/potowski-; Peggy Orenstein Cinderella Ate My Daughter! She explored the commercialisation by Disney of an interest that little girls had for dressing as princesses in home-made outfits.
My feeling is that females are the subject of much commercialising and image-making and are vulnerable to peer pressure. They front nearly every magazine in the supermarkets near the checkouts, featuring body shape, looks, scandals, sexual lives, marital tiffs.
Women are squeezed into shape by popular culture and commercialisation – chick flicks where they can watch romantic movies and ditzy stories about the combination of worries they take on as they try to find themselves in a complex of possible images. Cosmetics to cover their faces and bodies to enhance and preserve is a billion dollar industry.
Now it has gone full circle in Alabama and other States of misrule, and the disrespect and downgrading of females has descended to extreme and punitive levels, showing a hate that has been mainly masked with occasional eruptions. Now it has been exposed in all its ugly conceptions, and we need to watch for its diseased head here; no vaccinations are available, but an alert populace knowing the signs of rash behaviour may check and contain it. But it will always remain in pockets of cults here and there which have precepts that aren't well understood. There was a doco in recent NZ Film Festival called Angie about Bert Potter's creative urges that led to his Commune. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZlQDHpcMG4 This story Angie shows the difficulty of growing up in a place with no respect for your person, your body and soul.
How can a woman be respected as a person in the USA States that have brought in such strict abortion laws. In other countries if a woman reports her rape, then she becomes a criminal. I thought that western nations had advanced in the respect and rights of all, but it has apparently been a facade. Respect and rights have never reached the skin-deep stage in Alabama, with their violent, hate-filled, race-crimes past and the volume of hate has increased and overflowed to find further victims.
Don't let any of this unChristian posing come to rest in NZ. This is not Christianity and Ngaro and his ilk should be charged with hate speech talking about abortions as being like a holocaust.
Would National develop into a clone of the USA Republican Party if there was advantage for them in it?? Have they already and I have been too naive to see it?
bill english, stale margarine toast, that 'fornication for procreation only dude', the conservative party, the alfred ngaro party
we really in this country and elsewhere need to stop crying about spilled beans and start seeing what is now. We can't go back to the past. Chances are many of us not white standard issue males would not want to go back, and yet, it seems that many in order to receive a few crumbs are very happy to sacrifice women, children, brown people, non conformist people on the altar of 'privileges lost'.
If you mean that Ngaro is brown, and is interested in privileges lost I think that may be a side track. I think he may be a Pacific Islander and has decided to move into what is called conservative Christianity, with a touch of 'prosperity church' and a strength of purpose and mind that is partly built on blame for male violence on women. There is also a trend to small neighbourhood Christian type groups looking for community and companionship and if you can get what is regarded as a Church going, there may be tax advantages.
Motivation of that sort is probably higher than perhaps what you have referred to. Conservative Christians are always bubbling away and see their ideas as being recipes for straightening out the debased society that we live in. A lot of what we have now is modelled on television presentations and sport, which is becoming more aggressive and more lucrative, and self-directed rather than community-connecting. There is less cohesive community mores and goodwill round sport than previously. Maori though seem to do better, they have kapa haka and try to maintain their cohesiveness.
Edit:
But Tamaki, Ngaro are entrepreneurs who can build on isolation and frustration and lack of purpose and belonging in the midst of suburbs in towns and cities; a built-up society without real community. I think this puts their position and that they are politically adept and worldly, and see their tipping point in today's universal and National's particular, dilemmas.
No i say Ngaro is a cynical man who knows that men lost privileges.
Not only white ones ,but men in general, and there is quite a bit of anger out there in some men that would like to get back their union jobs (but without the evil unions) that would like women to be less independent (no birth control / abortion for you missy, you have sex you deserve that pregnancy – all 20 of them even), that would like to spank/beat their kids without government interference and the missus too if she has an issue joyfully submitting to the husband, and that would like to go back to the top of the picking order. And this has very little to do with race but all to do with gender…..and aren't we lucky, the bible agrees with them.
One can be a sexist even when brown.
And yes, there is money – a lot of money in churches, as they are tax exempt, people are expected to tithe, often time all free time is spend in these churches as they pick up were government fails due to lack of funds. Because the same guys that scream government is bad and should be small and lower the taxes are the same guys that will stand at the pulpit and demand their due in the name of god. Tamaki comes to mind. Ngaro in my book wants a piece of the action, and national will enable him at their own peril.
But at the end of the day, as the United States has shown us over the last few weeks, it is not only a problem for the Party that will get taken over, and that is what i now predict for Natonal Politicians to do – our christianise the evangelic / reborn/ christian in order to get elected in the future as seen in the States – but also for the opposition. Cause they have no response to what is happening on the right. They have no response to the misery of people and other then a few band aids in order to 'not rock the boat', get 're-elected' to maybe offer a few more band aids in the next cycle they have nothing on their plate.
I predict the next election to be a shit show of epic proportions. And I predict National to go so far right that if they don't watch out the fall of the plate and to stay on the plate they will do much damage to the most vulnerable of our society, women, children, people of color, elderly, sick and so forth. Cause 'charity' rather then government. I am sure Tamaki can't believe that he will now receive tax payer funded government largess due to the inaction of the same governments of all the previous years irrespective of stripe. Cause we can't for example decrim weed to keep men out of prison. We can't spend money of preventable health care. We can't spend money on decent schools for all. We can't spend moeny on decent housing for all. We can't spend money on equal opportunties. We can do any of that, but we can pay tamaki to go to prison and tell men to 'men up' and please don't beat your wife to the point where she or the kid needs a burial.
(i point to russia into decriminalisng domestic violence 🙂
Russian women suffering domestic violence are being deterred from going to the police since its partial decriminalisation last year, campaigners have claimed after a dramatic fall in reported incidents.
The state statistics, released in July, reveal that the number of cases of domestic violence reported to the police in 2017 almost halved since physical abuse became punishable by a fine rather than time in prison.
Controversial amendments to Russian law decriminalised some forms of domestic violence in February 2017. The changes mean violence against a spouse or children that results in bruising or bleeding but not broken bones is punishable by 15 days in prison or a fine of 30,000 roubles (£380) if they do not happen more than once a year. Previously, these offences carried a maximum jail sentence of two years.
Can't make that shit up. And yes, all of that has to do with loss of privilege, gender privilege, followed by income privilege, followed by racial privilege and all of that anger will be born by women and children.
care to point to anything i said that is 'delusional'
delusional
/dɪˈluːʒ(ə)n(ə)l/
adjective
characterized by or holding idiosyncratic beliefs or impressions that are contradicted by reality or rational argument, typically as a symptom of mental disorder.
"hospitalization for schizophrenia and delusional paranoia"
based on or having faulty judgement; mistaken.
"their delusional belief in the project's merits never wavers"
I don't know you, but, bless your cotton socks dear, and get a dictionary.
That's just it they won't "say" on anything they can get away with, whereas it seems the govt must reply to the "nth degree" at all times, any slight variation becomes a headline.
He says that now because it's the only thing he can say. Anything else would be political suicide given the ratings he's on.
At least there is recorded evidence of what he said – just got to hope that when he flips that the media has a long enough memory to come back and revisit this recording.
We'll see about that won't we franko. Me, I wouldn't be surprised to find the gnatty candidate helping Alfy Aggro's mob tear down his own posters in praxis.
Sensible centrists and compassionate conservatives seem quite happy to cuddle an authoritarian/fascist when times are tough and their cash-flow is threatened.
they have done that for a while now. They now just admit to it, a bit like in the US where they now happily admit to send women to the death row for having an abortion. Cause 'murder'.
Partisan lines have been widening for a while now. I'm fairly sure the level of animosity between left and right wasn't so toxic or shrill even a decade ago. Social media has exacerbated this. It's easy to be an awful human being when nobody knows who you are or where you live.
"Green MP Chloe Swarbrick explained to her followers that this under the current law this was an administrative decision, while Energy Minister Megan Woods was quick to note that among the offer’s benefits was that it didn’t include offshore oil and gas."
Seems like a damage-control exercise, eh? Yes, we need to get off fossil fuels. No, we don't need to do it fast. Classic centrism, to keep NZF on board.
“Bizarrely, fracking didn’t get a mention in the Ministry for the Environment Environment Aotearoa 2019 report, which clearly identifies climate change as one of its major themes. And yet in Russia, China, the USA and Australia fracking has become one of the most important areas of discussion on environment and energy.”
“The fracking boom in the USA – a country whose conventional oil supplies peaked in 1970 (kept on life support when extraction began in Alaska in the 1980s) – pushed US oil production back to those record levels of 10 million barrels a day in November 2017, likely surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia sometime last year to become the world’s largest producer again.”
As Bill Clinton famously once said “It’s the economy, stupid.” Electoral success means giving voters what they want, and they want more business as usual.
From reporter interview on Radionz this morning – Antony Green says about coal mining inAaustralia having a big effect on voting against Labour. They want BAU and jobs. Labour and Greens have to find a way for them to be employed or go whistle.
Find some work for the working man to do, or face trouble. It isn't rocket science, apparently we can work out the delicate scientific processes that enable rockets, but the well-known human problems are not as intensely interesting, and well-funded, as those of humans which actually will lead to greater disasters than rockets may cause.
maybe the government could people to pick up rubbish, or would that be to demeaning and not manly enough?
there are jobs, as here in NZ, it is just that there is also a certain population that does not want these jobs.
Or is it only coalworkers that have a right to a job that literally needs to be eradicated if we want to survive? Is that again the song of the poor white male working class with economic anxiety?
"For nearly two decades, one of the most overlooked and little known arrests made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was that of the so-called “High Fivers,” or the “Dancing Israelis.” However, new information released by the FBI on May 7 has brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the “Dancing Israelis,” at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Shortly after 8:46 a.m. on the day of the attacks, just minutes after the first plane struck the World Trade Center, five men — later revealed to be Israeli nationals — had positioned themselves in the parking lot of the Doric Apartment Complex in Union City, New Jersey, where they were seen taking pictures and filming the attacks while also celebrating the destruction of the towers and “high fiving” each other. At least one eyewitness interviewed by the FBI had seen the Israelis’ van in the parking lot as early as 8:00 a.m. that day, more than 40 minutes prior to the attack. The story received coverage in U.S. mainstream media at the time but has since been largely forgotten."
Further on in the story: "Yet, the picture released includes a visible date of September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks,"
And: Of the explosive residue, the declassified FBI report states:
A search of the van and individuals was conducted at the time of the vehicle stop. The vehicle was also searched by a trained bomb-sniffing dog which yielded a positive result for the presence of explosive traces. Swabs of the vehicle’s interior were taken, and those samples were sent to the FBI laboratory for further analysis. Final results are still pending.”
And:
According to a FOX News report from December 2001, 60 Israelis were apprehended or detained after September 11, with most deported, and a total of 140 Israelis were arrested and detained in all of 2001 by federal authorities."
and;" The company’s owner — Dominik Otto Suter, an Israeli citizen — had fled to Israel on September 14, 2001, two days after he had been questioned by the FBI. The FBI told ABC News that “Urban Moving may have been providing cover for an Israeli intelligence operation.” Surprisingly, since at least 2016, Suter has been living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works for a contractor for major tech companies like Google and Microsoft. According to the public records database Intelius, in 2006 and 2007 Suter also worked for a telecommunications company — Granite Telecommunications — that works for the U.S. military and several other U.S. government agencies."
There's always been the suspicion that that most efficient spy agency ,Mossad was tracking the hijackers, was aware of their goals, but kept quiet because of the ultimate potential to win sympathy for the Israeli cause
Well, thats the most charitable explanation of Mossad's role
Here's Netenyahu on the very day
"Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied, “It’s very good.” Then he edited himself: “Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.” He predicted that the attack would “strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.”
Yeah, a bunch of folks here around a year ago were doing the usual conspiracy theory debunking, so I reminded them of the dancing Israelis. Mossad is known for that kind of thing. It's actually a traditional imperialist strategy: steer a conspiracy from above, without the conspirators knowing that they are merely puppets. Game of thrones has it in various plot-lines due to it being even more traditional than imperialism!
If Iraq wants all foreign troops gone, why is the New Zealand government still uncertain as to whether we will continue to have toops there? My feeling is that Iraq remains an occupied country and sovereignty has never really been returned to it.
"George R. R. Martin, who seemed to specialize in having characters evolve in response to the broader institutional settings, incentives and norms that surround them." Subtlety of an author isn't easily recycled on television, eh?
"Benioff and Weiss steer the narrative lane away from the sociological and shifted to the psychological. That’s the main, and often only, way Hollywood and most television writers tell stories. This is an important shift to dissect because whether we tell our stories primarily from a sociological or psychological point of view has great consequences for how we deal with our world and the problems we encounter."
Seems profound, but is it really? Motives are the key to behaviour, and in politics they are as likely to derive from social context as from personal values & priorities. So both/and logic applies.
"Hollywood mostly knows how to tell psychological, individualized stories. They do not have the right tools for sociological stories, nor do they even seem to understand the job." Precisely. Worse than that, they rarely even get the basics right!
I watched the first episode of GoT (was it really 8 years ago?), thought the casting of spoilt American brats so pathetic a misrepresentation of Martin's characters that I couldn't bring myself to watch another, despite the excellent stagecraft.
"The appeal of a show that routinely kills major characters signals a different kind of storytelling, where a single charismatic and/or powerful individual, along with his or her internal dynamics, doesn’t carry the whole narrative and explanatory burden."
That is indeed a key point! From a semiotic perspective, it signals that the political context is where the action is. Even heroes are merely the cresting waves of the ocean, and the currents in that ocean have their equivalent in the group motivations that drive inter-group competition.
GRR Martin hasn't been involved in GoT the series since season 5 when the series went totally off book. Martin has also stated many times that he's not into allegory story telling, so Star Wars used a lot of WW2 themes in it and G.R.R Martin is against using real world examples because he wants his story telling to be relevant in 200 years time when people can use there own experiences to tell the story.
Dan and Dave who are the directors went straight for CG in season 7 and 8 at the expense of story writing. GoT was supposed to be 10 seasons but for some reason that I don't know it was decided that there would be only 8 seasons and the final 2 seasons would be shortened from 10 episodes to 6. This shortening of screen time has squished the plot so decisions you would expect to be teased over a season happen in one episode. And spoilers, so it took King Robb Stark 1 or 2 seasons to make it to the Northern Boarders of the Kings Lands of Westeros and in the final season the Northern Armies just pop in Kings Landing in one episode.
So in the final 2 seasons we didn't get to see all the plot twists and suttle decision making that went into the battles of the final seasons and because we don't get to see that intricate detail characters are looking extra dictatorial and extra genocidal as all the decisions just look rushed and not really connected to any parts of the show instead relying on CG to compensate the audience.
But there is a consolation to a shortened 2 season series. They've already begun filming of the spin off series of Game of Thrones.
I watched the first episode of GoT (was it really 8 years ago?), thought the casting of spoilt American brats so pathetic a misrepresentation of Martin's characters that I couldn't bring myself to watch another, despite the excellent stagecraft.
Apart from Peter Dinklage who plays Tyrion Lannister, there are no American actors in Game of Thrones.
No kidding? Hollywood really has gone global? Well, if so, my take is that cellphone addiction has morphed youngsters elsewhere into a similar simulation of prefrontal lobotomy as the yanks…
well if we are really nitpicking it was 9 years ago episode one was released. The finanal season was meant to air March 2018 but it had to be delayed a year because it takes ages to CG Dragons to be able to look that cool.
Yeah I don't think GOT was ever that meaningful.I only ever liked Tyrion .Bran became an awful bore, and you’re right, the earlier stuff had less CGI
In the early seasons there was an awful lot of lustiness and explicit sex.When Daenerys(mother of dragons) got mixed up with those horse type people, there was a big animalistic orgy.While I was watching, there seemed to be a lot of slow motion action, then speeding up.I thought for goodness sake, thats getting a bit porn…too far altogether… then I realised my internet speed wasn't up to it and the computer was buffering .
Yes I found that an interesting read too. Here's my takeaway segment:
In German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s classic play, Life of Galileo,Andrea, a former pupil of Galileo, visits him after he recants his seminal findings under pressure from the Catholic Church. Galileo gives Andrea his notebooks, asking him to spread the knowledge they contain. Andrea celebrates this, saying “unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.” Galileo corrects him: “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”
Well-run societies don’t need heroes, and the way to keep terrible impulses in check isn’t to dethrone antiheros and replace them with good people. Unfortunately, most of our storytelling—in fiction and also in mass media nonfiction—remains stuck in the hero/antihero narrative. It’s a pity Game of Thrones did not manage to conclude its last season in its original vein. In a historic moment that requires a lot of institution building and incentive changing (technological challenges, climate change, inequality and accountability) we need all the sociological imagination we can get, and fantasy dragons or not, it was nice to have a show that encouraged just that while it lasted.
This aligns with something a good friend once said, "we need to emerge from the age of the sanctified individual, to the sanctified society".
Well the trouble with this 'universal white male guilt' hypothesis is that there have indeed been a lot of 'great white men'. Here is one; Fritz Haber:
He had a turbulent, morally challenging life, yet he left one legacy most people are completely unaware of, that almost half the nitrogen/protein in your body is derived from the Haber-Bosch process that enables the production of industrial scale fertilisers.
Without his contribution you most likely would have never lived. Should that be ‘forgotten’?
History is what is and erasing the parts we find politically inconvenient never helps. While it is true that white people have dominated much of the past 400 odd years of human development, that phase is passing. We are now a global society, albeit one that lacks a moral and political framework to moor it.
Developing a universal social history, and a fresh moral narrative to underpin it, entails embracing all of our past both good and evil. It must be a synthesising, collating, unifying process. Starting from a position of divisiveness ensures only that we remain stuck in the old modes of rivalry, resentment and confrontation.
"Haber is also considered the "father of chemical warfare" for his years of pioneering work developing and weaponizing chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I, especially his actions during the Second Battle of Ypres."
not so cool – chemical fertilizers that have (imo) fucked the ecosystems and created an illusion of eternal growth that has led to the global warming catastrophe.
Precisely; as I said Haber was a complex character who faced greater moral challenges in his life than most.
Haber bequeathed to us both the gift of abundant protein and the curse of chemical warfare. One enabled agriculture to feed billions, the other was the first weapon of mass destruction, a pre-cursor to the nuclear bomb. Few people left us such a stark legacy. It’s why his story is interesting and cautionary at the same time.
Still it's worth saying that war is hell; that no-one wins with a clear conscience. It is why I persistently return to the theme of the need for a global institution with the sole authority to direct military force at scale. Only this can ultimately eliminate war as the scourge on humanity it has been for so long.
Well as I said, half the protein molecules in your body derive ultimately from the process he invented. If you think that ugly and detrimental, then so also must be the large fraction of living people who depend on it.
Large scale industrial fertilisers are similar to coal, they've enabled the human race to bootstrap out of mean brutal poverty into our modern world. But we cannot rely on either of these long-term; both come with an environmental cost and we have to move beyond them, on that I think we can agree. In my view only the science and engineering platform we have built can do that on the scale necessary for 9 billion people to thrive.
When they first became available they were overused. The big trend now is toward using them more accurately and combined with methods that protect the soil organics.
Fritz Haber invented a process that with little exaggeration, was a crucial factor in doubling the human population. Perhaps more. In 1900 we struggled to feed about 1.6 billion people, now it's over 7 billion.
Along with mechanisation and improved plant genetics, synthetic fertilisers have freed most of humanity from the terrible threat of starvation every winter and killing famines every decade or so.
That's an extraordinary legacy, one that I think few other humans who have ever lived can match. It seems to me would could be at least a little more grateful.
Nine billion people thriving! [RL @12:14 pm]
The associated consumption doesn't bear thinking about.
Shouldn’t ‘we’ be "cutting one's coat according to one's cloth"? Because we are seriously running out of 'cloth'.
The reduction of atmospheric dinitrogen (N2) to two molecules of ammonia (NH3) by the Haber process requires hydrogen (natural gas/methane are sources), an iron-based catalyst, high pressures (200-300 atmospheres), and high temperatures (400-550 degrees Celcius). Yet nitrogen-fixing bacteria (diazotrophs) manage the same feat at 1 atmosphere pressure and ambient temperatures. One day we might catch up to those 'clever' microbes, but not yet!
More Food – More People
A group of scientists led by Johan Rockstrom explored the questions of planetary boundaries in an article recently published by Nature. The usual climate change issue was of course reported. What might surprise you though is that while we have only just slipped past the edge of the CO2 boundary, the nitrogen cycle disruption was deemed to be about three times over the safe limit. This graphic illustrates the extent to which we may be overstepping the nitrogen boundary.
All true; I've been aware of all this much of my life. Hell I recall cycling through the East Coast backcountry in the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Bola to attend a biodynamics course in Hastings.
Above I drew the comparison with coal which for several centuries has been vital in building an industrial society and a platform from which we can now build solar, wind and next gen nuclear power sources to replace it.
Very irritating not to mention boring when people respond like this. Either you do not understand what I'm saying or you are wilfully derailing. If the latter your time could probably be spent better elsewhere.
If you explained yourself in whole thoughts maybe I'd stand a better chance. Putting up something cryptic and then attacking me for not getting it correct is also boring and derailing.
Social history is the study of society structures in previous times whereas most history taught is about society's leaders as though the rest of us are of no account
OK thanks … that makes excellent sense. Human history across all of it's dimensions is way more complex than we get taught at school. Personally I've a particular attraction to the history of science and engineering and the impact this has on social development, but that is only one view of the whole story.
The story of how ordinary people lived their lives, and the reason why social structures evolved as they did is also fascinating. It was these people who are our forebears for the most part, who they lay at the turbulent intersection of religion, politics, war, feast and famine every day of their lives. We are the offspring of thousands of generations smart enough and tough enough to survive …
Social history is the study of society structures in previous times whereas most history taught is about society’s leaders as though the rest of us are of no account
Well, when I studied History through to honours level at Uni (two decades ago)… it was almost entirely Social & Cultural history.
It began to eclipse Political & Intellectual history (the areas you're thinking of) back in the 60s and early 70s (although social history had been around in one form or another since at least the 20s … particularly Marxist historiography & the French Annales School).
Maybe it's different at secondary school level … but I doubt it.
Waiting for God-oh! Perhaps there is a little bit of God in all of us, and waiting for the great creator to appear is superfluous – showing a cargo-cult mentality. And on that theme, if we all have a bit of God inside us waiting to be called on and shine, if we meet with others who are the same, do we end up with a large, loving group of people who are more than the sum of their parts?
This bit is significant: "the Hero archetype actually represents an advanced form of child (boy) psychology. That is, while it does represent the peak of the adolescent stage of development, the Hero archetype is still immature."
Young men historically became heroes due to indoctrination of the archetype, because it was promoted by the social matrix they grew up in. We could say it was an off-shoot of the warrior archetype. Knights of the round table mythology is a good example in which a culture developed around an ethical basis for heroism.
Heroism in our culture is exemplified in media stories of men saving someone, and usually denying in subsequent interviews that they are heroes. This tacit discounting of their personification of the archetype is also a cultural bias.
All those Super-Heroe movies are great entertainment and wonderful escapism, don’t get me wrong. But they keep us stuck at an immature stage of development.
Many superhero movies essentially place the elite individual as more significant than social structures and cooperation. Iron Man is essentially John Galt with wrist rockets.
Invincible, indestructible, and almightily good looking with a razor-sharp tongue. The delusional self-image of the average young male high on roids feeding more fantasy stuff into his immature brain. The only social structure and cooperation they are interested in is copulation.
Although to be fair to Stan Lee, apparently he was trying to make an intensely unlikable "hero". But the irony has been lost, except in the name. Most teams are teams of exceptional people largely acting independently (and stupidly).
But there are changes in some movies – Wonder Woman had quite a bit of teamwork in it, including with non-super people.
The juvenile bit is that movies tend to say "willing to sacrifice all", but almost never do. Even when they die, it's just a matter of time until they come back. Heck, Batman retires at least once.
One of the worst ones is Transformers IMO. It has got juvenile boys written all over it and seems like a bad marriage between The Fast and the Furious and The Terminator. I have to confess that I have a soft spot for The Matrix.
Transformers are very bad movies. Bay does excellent composition of large, dynamic scenes, not so hot on everything else.
I thought the first couple of terminator movies were better than the matrix movies, to be frank. Matrix is all about teen fool who is the chosen one and can see through the illusion, Terminator movies started as 4D chess.
I might be a bit sour on Matrix now so many fools talk about red and blue pills.
Killed too many security guards for my taste. But I do love me some Dick…
There was an interesting recent streaming series based on his stuff called "Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams". Not as NSFW as it sounds lol. Stand-alone episodes, with some top line actors.
"while it does represent the peak of the adolescent stage of development, the Hero archetype is still immature"
And boys used to die young, before they could grow out of it. With today's life expectancy, older manbabies like many of those in charge have no excuse.
Problem with GOT final season is GRR Martin gave Benniof and Weiss an outline of what was to happen (as final book not complete) and left them to fill in the dialogue, then for what ever reason they decide to jam it all into 6 episodes.
Hence, unhappy viewers.
The Wire was outstanding, from first episode to last.
The disposability of POCs in Game of Thrones is something that we’ve had to get used to. Bye Khal Drogo! Laters, Oberyn! Farewell, Dothraki horde! See you on the other side, Sand Snakes! This is a show with a high kill count, of course, but, when there are already so few black or brown characters, seeing them drop like flies at the hands of white characters, in service to other white characters, makes it all the more frustrating.
Good point. Seems like tacit racism, eh? However, Martin did acknowledge that he modelled the series on 14th century Europe. If my memory is correct. So no surprise that a crusader ethic can be detected…
That's just woke bullshit designed to signal how in touch one is with feelings. There is no racism. Every slave master relationship has its fairytales of triumph and backhanded comments laced with key words designed to get around the censor and communicate complex ideas to simple people with out incurring the wrath of the masters. That's why we only hear of story's about the wealthy because making fun of slaves just ain't funny.
The writers of the show had to make the main characters older and prettier so the show would get a R15 rating instead of the R18 rating the books should have. King Tommen Lanister I mean Beratheon was 9 in the books while he consummated his marriage with Margery, much older. But who gives a flying fuck about Westerosy morals when cancerous normies are attempting to hijack the Game of Thrones logo and reputation so they can build bottom up jargon to demonstrate how fucken awesomely woke they are.
That's a pretty fair call, although not a dealbreaker by any means for me.
The small cove point though, that pissed me off at the time.
What I found disappointing about the penultimate episode was that many of the individual sequences were a pastiche of iconic sequences – Arya does an extended Children of Men finishing with a Jarhead, for example.
I mean, visually it was all awesome, but it wasn't quite as originally awesome as the battle with the night king (that's where I disagree with the article – retconned or deliberately foreshadowed, none of the death came out of nowhere).
And at least we finally saw why dragons were hyped.
Christ. That's like school-yard stuff. "Oh yeah? I'm going to punch you in the face!" "Well, I'm going to kick you in the balls!"
Why are we afflicted with leaders who have an overabundance of testosterone and an obvious lack of grey matter? If America marches to war again, they should use John Bolton and Donald Trump as human shields.
Jenny H at No. 8 in How to Get There 19th May explains her motivations and successes. I don't think I've enough to warrant being in that post of doing and exploring ideas. So I've put mine on open mike.
That was really inspiring Jenny H. I am trying and am concerned just not about CC but also the way that the economic system impoverishes people while it gloats about how good the surface money figures are while those outside the charmed circle wait and whose deficits seem to be a permanent bypass in the body politic. I write here, which I regard as work, and try to keep informed with people from different sectors here and elsewhere, and try to keep the idea of respect and kindness going balanced with practicality.
Aiming for a system that provides balance while not settling down to a 'don't rock the boat at all' approach requires constant adjustment. I also am supportive of various friends, family not far from death, including my oldish self. I am thinking of how I can help young people, and have various ideas that I need to research to do with people support which enhances our lives and adds resilience for the future. A work in progress.
It seems easier for people to latch on to environmental matters but we get annoyed with each other, and pass judgment on and eventually ignore the strugglers – don't give money to beggars say a Council and regard that as dealing with problem people. The animals we can excuse, like destructive kea, but people who have had bad childhoods and upbringing, we can't be bothered looking after them, or really helping parents and children coming along to be both loving and strong and capable. I don't like a possible scenario of a tree covered country full of active animals going about their lives with half-naked people fighting off a powerfully armed bunch of marauding groups; a possibility that must be prevented.
Finding a way to live more simply is hard; we need to accept a less glossy vision for people to aim for, not huge houses on the hill that get redecorated every three years and the change of cars before the warranty expires. More harmony, more respect, more giving a little in many ways, more pleasure in what we have, and trust, these need to be talked about and aimed for.
Knowing how to spot poseurs is helpful, you can't be too trusting as Greenpeace found out after being infiltrated by the French before they fixed a bomb to the Rainbow Warrior – an act of war if done elsewhere. Do we have Sleepers here from the USA as in the TV series from 2013*? Has our government been infiltrated by 5Eyes partners who can request actions of our police and defence forces? We might wonder.
At present I am concerned about the rise of cults that appear to offer stability, security and morality, but in payment want to suck in your soul and mind. We have become aware of EB who were vying to help National. Who issues forth next – Ngaro? Do we need to wipe the no-tax ban on churches, which seems to be a temptation for entities that look more devilish than Christian. We need to look for the worm in the apple, and stop these so-called Christians acting out their swagger over 'dark' people which they found mentioned somewhere in the Bible, and over females with whom there can be no latitude because of the myth of Eve, and who need protecting from themselves. Today they trash USA laws – tomorrow?
The ongoing political quake in Britain has now produced a three-way split: "More voters now say they would back the Brexit Party at a general election than the Conservatives, according to a new poll. Nigel Farage’s five-week-old outfit would finish second in the popular vote, pushing the Tories into third place, the research conducted by Opinium suggests. In total, the Brexit Party would collect 24 per cent of the ballot, with the Conservatives trailing on just 22 per cent, it was found. Labour would win with 27 per cent of the electorate backing them."
"The Conservatives, in that poll, remain fourth – a finding that is expected to heighten despondency in the party and lead to renewed calls for Theresa May to set a definitive timetable for standing down as prime minister. Change UK, meanwhile, a party formed with the express intention of forcing a second Brexit referendum, is struggling with just 3 per cent of voters saying they would back them in either ballot."
Remainers are history then! I suppose most remainers aren't supporting the remainer party, instead clinging to the delusion that Labour will represent them. So the tories may look like the biggest losers, but remainers are really.
The developers behind The Paddington want to build about 150 upmarket terraced houses on Taranaki Street in the central city, with prices starting at $788,000.
The complex is expected to become home to about 300 people, however, the buildings are only two or three storeys high, in an area with a maximum limit of 27 metres…
At the showroom, Thames Pacific developer Stephen Sutorius said there were too many apartment blocks nearby to build another one on the site.
"You can't have high-rise blocks all next to each other. You'll get a city where you have no sun, you have no light throughout the developments or throughout the city," Mr Sutorius said.
Construction was likely to start in November this year, with completion estimated for mid-2021, he said.
Weak. The architect designs, spaces and places so that all share sun and shade. The Council are saying twice the number could be housed there, so that would only be max six storeys high. I am not sure what earthquake possibilities would allow safely. Over a certain height different construction wold be needed perhaps.
Yes Rosemary I forgot about that and the latest worrying news for Wellington. Looking at history it seems we haven't even got as far with facing our problems as Ethelred the Unready.
And Labour Coalition may yet have to carry out a symbolic trip to the beach where they will demonstrate the truths of our reality as did King Canute when he pointed out his limited powers compared to expectations – he couldn't hold back the tide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_tide
And Cnut the Great 995-1035 He had a father called Sweyn Forkbeard. That’s a great name too. He was King of Denmark, England and Norway. They had interesting relationships then in that area. Now we have come to the end of the world and our Australian cousins don’t add to our gene pool. If we wish to advance the nation I think, if the Maori continue putting up with us, we could build a great nation with their staunchness and practicality. So don’t listen to defunct Brash with his criticism of Maori greetings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great
Moved a bit to the side there Rosemary. Back to the point – the insurance matter is something that Robertson and his advisors will need to look at along with the insurance council to see what can be provided by the state.
Or perhaps all the filthy rich who were prepared to work hard and get their hands dirty reorganising the positions of power and privilege after Douglas and neolib and free markets. They can bring Eric Watson's money back and stop him wasting it in foreign lands and Australian ventures that should be here, and tax etc. so we can get some stability for the country.
We don't don't need a Creator. We got John Key and his ugly duckling Simon Bridges to do that for us. Best Creators ever.
We really need Stalin again- that great great man who did so much good too. We need Mr Lenin too. Is he a mate of yours ?
Or do you prefer Hitler. Anorher fine Man of the Right. He got rid of God long before you. While you at it, why not rubbish Confucius. As well as the dutch Apartheid Mongrels of Africa. Also Kill that magnificent Ruler Of Babylon. Such a good man. Kill him !
I imagine that you pagans kill the Women and children first. Like the Americans do. Day after day. You know, – when they Bomb innocent people. I am glad you support those bad men. Keep up the madness Millsy.
I don't think that that man's words should be heard by the tangata of the Papatuanukue Christchurch desaster.
I hope not to many people are losted in the atrocious weather events affecting 4 state in America don that's climate change.
I don't think Trevor should be hung out to dry you have to remember that happened a long time ago things we different in those days it was much easier to servive in those days.
Bulling is a behaviour humans have had for millions of years you see it in the animal herd group culture there is always one in the group that is picked on the same in human societies. I have bullied I try not to but I don't not like seeing it happen to vanuralble tangata I userly call out the bullie. I had that problem in one work place they young fellas try to bullie me I stood them up they ganged up on me and got me sacked because of the 90 day clause there loss.
Muppet puppet after my journey back home.( I have every right to call out muppets puppets who use the word CRACK ARE you marketing the shit.)
Gloriz it's a shame that people like seenothing will use anything to try and float their toilets with out a care on whom they hurt in the process.
Aziz m8 Eco Maori is discrimination against every day of the year.
Moniqe doc is doing a excellent job caring for OUR wild life but I still want a bounty put on opossum and stotes that will give money to the common people and get rid of the vermin I have read about the places in Freordland being the last place Kakapo were found on the main land. The problem with the tourist model doc model is the common people are left in the COLD. Te tangata te tangata te tangata. You mite say that te tangata won’t be able to get into all the hard terrain that’s true but if you wipe out all the vermin in the easy places that will bennafit the wild life and te tangata
The culture needs to change keeping Aotearoa and Papatuanukue free from rubbish and plastic waste is going to be the normal thing as it takes a thousand years to degrade plastic we need to protect Papatuanukue for te Mokopuna Ka kite ano
Kia Kaha students To Eco Maori Your future is so special I Tau toko you 100%
Tens of thousands of students are planning to take to the streets for the second time this year to strike for climate change action.
On Friday, Kiwi students will "rise up to demand climate action from our Government".
From marches and rallies to tree planting and beach clean ups, New Zealand's youth are doing all they can to bring attention to the issue of climate change.
Here's everything you need to know about the upcoming strike
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Tuesday, March 19:Kāinga Ora’s dry rot The Spinoff DailyBill McKibben on ‘Climate Superfunds’ making Big Oil pay for climate damage The Crucial YearsPreston Mui on returning to 1980s-style productivity growth NoahpinionAndy Boenau on NIMBYs needing unusual bedfellows Urbanism SpeakeasyNed Resnikoff's case ...
Negative yesterday, negative today. Negative all year, according to one departing reader telling me I’ve grown strident and predictable. Fair enough. If it’s any help, every time I go to write about a certain topic that begins with C and ends with arrrrs, I do brace myself and ask: Again? Are ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
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The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII has hosted members of the Green Party Caucus at Tuurangawaewae Marae in Ngaaruawahia. The audience follows the King’s Hui-aa-Motu on 20 January, where more than 10,000 people gathered to discuss national ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Rachael Potter, Research Associate and Lecturer in Work and Organisational Psychology, University of South Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Pregnant women and workers with children are often unfairly treated by their bosses and colleagues, despite laws to protect against workplace discrimination ...
Reacting to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s refusal to rule out introducing new taxes at the budget, Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Connor Molloy, said: “Today’s refusal to rule out new taxes suggests the Government is nothing more ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne Aila Images/Shutterstock Aged-care workers will receive a significant pay increase after the Fair Work Commission ruled they ...
So…
Is Scott Morrison a creationist? A google search doesnt seem to give up that info. Do we really want someone who belives that a fictional character (let's face it, God is a fictional character) waved a magic wand to create this world 6000 years ago in charge of a country?
In addition, it is kinda depressing to see the highly paid workers in the coal, oil, gas and construction sectors throw their lower paid brothers and sisters in the service, retail and hospitality sectors under a bus by voting away their penalty rates for good, and probably voting for futher wage cuts as well. Sad really.
How about quit trying to manipulate liberal / national policy by constructing from the bottom up, internally incoherent gibberish designed to demonstrate how woke you are, and address your own / our own shitty woke policies and fix that up.
Cucks say woke sambam.
Eat my ass.
Your ass is grass sambam, you big ol' cuck.
pfft. You are a bigger wast of time than McTrash
For all I know, Morrison may be a creationist.
I recall a discussion with a fellow MP (in National) who told me he was a creationist. I had very open conversations with colleagues. I asked him how that affected his policy decisions. He said; " In Wellington, I have a Wellingtonian approach to policy. In my personal life I have my beliefs."
In my experience, this approach is quite common among those who have strong religious views and who are also in politics in a major party. They don't only exist in National. Traditionally some are in Labour. There are none in the Greens and probably none were in ACT.
The areas where their religious views does affect their political views is conscience issues. If you know a person is a religious conservative, you also know their views on euthanasia, abortion, gay marriage, drinking age, cannabis, shop trading hours, casinos.
But outside those things you don't. They can be big social spenders or small social spenders, they can be free market or they can be market interventionists.
as we can currently see this approach worked well in the United States were creationism is thought more in schools then actuall science and where god put babies in the bellies of little girls – thus no abortion.
Bill English comes to mind, so godly, so very very godly especially when it comes to the decision that women make about their bodies and reproductive rigths, but then issue defrauding (we would call it theft for any person not Bill English) the goverment to the tune of 40 odd grand for houses that he may or may not live in cause 'he did not know' – even so he never did anything else in his whole working life then life of the government tit.
but i guess so as long as they are National its all good. right?
" If you know a person is a religious conservative, you also know their views on euthanasia, abortion, gay marriage, drinking age, cannabis, shop trading hours, casinos."
Aren't politicians in Government bound to be open-minded and free of prejudice, in the way local body politicians are, Wayne? The training local body politicians regularly undergo, Making Good Decisions, requires a suspension of bias when it comes to making decisions on behalf of the ratepayers. To say that the views of politicians who are religious conservatives is fixed and can be listed, as you have done, is…disturbing.
Robert,
The things I noted are all regarded as conscience issues. It should not surprise anyone that religious conservatives would vote on these things in a very specific way. I never saw any religious conservative, no matter what their party, who didn't vote in an entirely predictable way on these issues.
In the major parties, once these items were settled by a vote, there was never any further agitation by religious conservatives to change the outcome. They just accepted it. Neither did they ever promote their views outside a specific conscience vote, that is they didn't drive Members Bills on these issues. They would never get consent from their colleagues to do so, and it was never pushed, even sotto voce.
However, in a party where these things were more central, there would be continuing agitation. But such a party would be 5% or less of there parliament and couldn't force a major party to change it views on these issues. What a minor party could do is promote Members bills on these issues. Then others would vote according to conscience.
Have you followed the US over the last three decades or so?
Do you believe that 'it' could not happen here, or are you so cynical that the only thing that matters is hte Party and the country and those that are against the honestly held religious believes of politicians be damned?
And do you really believe that that stale milk toast covered in Margarine has any any chance to keep anything together when religious zealots are a lot more attractive to a certain type of voter then the default National they vote now for lack of choices?
Because at the moment, religious minded people may vote for National as the default party – cause, godly Bill English, godly Alfred Ngaro, goldy Milktoast, – and yes all of these men use their religion and their religious conviction to appeal to their voters more then actual policy that would help the poor, feed the hungry, house the homeless and welcome the stranger to their house.
Do you really thing that the current lot that is running the National party has any chance against some cynical god botherers? Because i don't think so, and i don't think so because i can look at other countries and see what is happening in real time rather then your make believe fantasy world in which the National Party is a force for good rather then just an assembly of men and women happy to be bought at the right price by anyone who would keep them on the government tit – and eventually to a board of a company that they then can help bankrupt.
It’s more interesting that the fringies are falling out of favour with the major parties. So any true radical will see this as an opportunity to unite.
Alfred Ngaro has a choice, be a list MP or be head honcho.
What pays better?
Well "what pays better?" Well it's Braitbart and the Israel lobby that pays better but they've fallen out of favour with the National Party image. To much sin.
It's 'Breitbart'.
And the lobby who pay particularly well are the Palestinian Authority. If you're the family of a terrorist that is.
The only way that your comment makes sense is if the National Party minders are desperate for coalition partners.
My comment had nothing to do with coalition partners. Yet it still makes sense. Don't wind yourself up too much trying to understand.
Sabine,
New Zealand is much less interested in conservative religious/moral issues than the United States. I would say vastly less so. So no real risk of what you are suggesting.
This is reflected in the major parties. For instance we have had two conservative catholic prime ministers in the last 30 years. Neither of them used their positions to promote those views. The only way their views on such matters were manifested was through their conscience votes.
As I have already said, conscience issues are essentially sectioned off from broader public policy.
An explicitly religious party would be able to get more conscience votes because they most frequently come from Members Bills, and such a party would promote such Bills. However, they would most likely fail in the wider parliament.
Such a party could not force National MP's to vote for these Bills. There is a strong group of socially liberal National MP's (and "middle of the road" MP's) who would not permit that.
However I imagine a religiously based party would be very keen on partnership schools, and faith based welfare programmes. A significant number of conservative Pacific Island communities would want to establish schools with a strong faith based approach, but still teaching the required curriculum. Similar to Catholic integrated schools.
The partnership school approach would make that affordable. Since many Pacific Island communities do not have substantial wealth, they typically cannot afford the high capital costs of establishing a school in the way the traditional churches have done. Partnership school would provide the option.
you don't have the slightest idea, do you?
Such a party could very well make National into a minor party. 🙂 as one could argue that Labour is a 'minor party albeit the largest one among the minor parties. Also see the republican party in the US. it took them a few years, but they – the tea party / evangelic right managed to take over the party. I beg you to point to one sane republican politician who currently would protect a womens right to choose, not threaten her with a criminal offense for having an abortion (irrespective the reason), who did not at some stage favor to electrocute or otherwise train the gays into behaving like a heterosexual, believes that allowing gays to marry is akin bestiality and such. Cause they all said that, enabled it, supported it.
And your current margarine covered milk toast will do exactly that if it means to keep his paycheck, as sitting in parliament is literally the easiest job in the country. You have to achieve nothing and still get paid and perks for life.
The reason many pacific islander don't have wealth is racism (yo National), low wages (yo National), and religion (tithing, no abortion, women submit joyfully to your husband/father, large families a blessing from god etc)
Partnership? The last time National went into partnership with an ethnic party – Maori Party they killed them. I don't think you have the slightest idea what you talk about, but then, you already received your easy wages and now live of your life long government issued tax payer funded perks, so you would be literally the last person to suffer if my scenario would come true rather then your pie in the sky fantasy scenario.
And as the 9 years under national have shown, your party will fuck up given half a chance – so as long as they get to bank, and bank they did.
Sabine,
It is clear from numerous MMP elections, there is around about 4 to 5% conservative christian vote. It comes from across the political spectrum. In fact, arguably more from Labour than National because when the conservative christian vote is high, Labour is low.
Conservative christian vote is no danger to National. Very few National voters are conservative christian, and certainly not to the extent that it is the main determinant of how a person votes. For instance neither of the conservative catholic PM's would have been remotely interested in a conservative christian party. It would be way too narrow for them.
The Maori Party almost survived the last election. It would have had two MP's, but for Tamiti Coffey who beat Te Uroroa Flavell by about 1500 votes. Labour was determined to kill the Maori Party. They succeeded.
yes dear.
Hi Wayne. I understand your meaning. You wrote:
"I never saw any religious conservative, no matter what their party, who didn't vote in an entirely predictable way on these issues."
I've found that: "I never saw any farmer-conservative who didn't vote in an entirely predictable way on environmental issues.
We need the farmer equivalent word for Godwins law .
he said 'farmer – conservative'
that does not include 'environmentally fair, respectful, inovative, and socially minded farmer' .
you know like the dude that has 8 children living of 'working for family' tax payer funded subsidy while holding a sign that says "She's a pretty communist'. What 'godwin type' word would love for that guy? or the guys that killed their cattle with a preventable diseases by flaunting the laws and transporting them willy nilly all over the greenery for profits shits n giggles and now need government tax payer funded hand out to make up for the thousands of dead cows so they then in a few years time can repeat the exact same shit?
The word is 'flouting'
I've decided the word for commenters bringing farmers in to a post that has nothing to do with farming will be hogwin .
not mooving the goalposts?
You've decided?
Good-O.
That's reassuring we have your word on that…
I'm sure the party religious conservatives never "agitated" on things like wiping historical crimes for homosexuality. You know it only took until 2018 for that to finally happen.
Are MP's their to represent their constituents or themselves?
Act would have to be the ultimate faith-based party.
and Epsom votes for them all the time, cause the faith is strong in those that benefit from certain tax cuts and tax loopholes.
Their prayers to the almighty market are answered daily.
@ Wayne
"this approach is quite common among those who have strong religious views"
Yes but that doesn’t justify holding this view. They are complete nutters to believe this Wayne. It is bollocks. Do you want a nutter running the country?
How do muslim countries manage to function gitty?
well are you talking about Saudi Arabia? Quatar? Pakistan? Afghanistan? Iran? Iraq? Algeria? Malaysia? UAE? Marocco? Indonesia? Epypt? Turkey? or any of the others that are too numerous to mention?
They all do have a few things in common.
Very little freedom unless you are the default best human being – a man.
Very little reproductive choices unless you are the default best human being – a man
Very little government representation unless you are the default best human being – a man
Very little education for all (i would exclude the Asian muslim countries as they generally have a good grip on education for all) unless of course you are a male
Very little career option for all, unless you are a male. Then of course you must work cause someone has to feed the little dears women will bear if they have no access to reproductive choice but has to put out on demand in order to earn her dinner. (Women of course also work, but often times only within the family and often times they don't get to keep their pay – very much like it was in our western society until having bank accounts in ones own name became the norm in the late seventies of the last century – 1970 not 1870)
Marriage at a very early age – unless your family is of a certain income aka not poor, or you are a male, then you deserve a pre-teen or several to keep your house and birth you lots of manly children.
Healthcare in certain countries for women does not exist – if she dies in childbirth its gods will.
So you could posit that they indeed manage, and i would posit that the US would also manage under a theocracy, but i would also posit that it would be mainly the women, children, homosexuals, trans, anyone not identifying as a heterosexual, atheist, non Christian that would not manage.
But i understand, details, pesky pesky details. Lucky us right, cause it could never ever happen here.
I would also like to point out that these are stereo types that while all true – not always apply to all countries and certainly don't apply to all people that live in these countries but are bound by the rules.
I for one am very much aware of my privilege and luck – yes luck – to have been born a white girl into a white country at a time or relative enlightenment. If i would have been born into Afghanistan/Bangladesh/Anatolia/Saudi Arabia/Eqypt/Mali/Somalia/Indonesia by now i would have a good chance of being dead. I could have died in the wedding night due to internal injuries/bleeding after fulfilling my martial duties, or died in childbirth, or died of starvation as a widow, or died in a bombing by russia (afghanistan) and then the us, or died being stoned by the taliban/saudi arabia/islamic state for 'crimes against god and such' for trying to survive with my children as a widow by prostituting myself, or for refusing to marry some bloke old enough to by my grandfather.
So yeah, they manage, like we manage, but a lot of that managing comes at the cost of keeping women out of public life, and of denying sexual right and freedom men and women alike, and to chop of hands and legs and whippings in public space. But in saying that Europe survived and they burned women alive at the stake. So its all in good fun, so as long as we manage?
If it would lower his taxes half a point, Wayne would vote for Ted Bundy.
I think it'd take just a smidgeon more than lowering his taxes half a point. If you could throw in a gig or two in the media as a talking head to make sure he remains relevant – that'd be good
Why would christens be against cannabis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb5EjflughU
They should be happy that the stuff that come out of the ground has trickled through to all wages in Au, hence the highest wage costs in the world
So…
Why be surprised that the ockies got the leader they deserve?
Perhaps Australia is a just joke country that's too far gone to worry about? Maybe all we can do is try to avoid unworthy feelings of schadenfreude as they burn up over the next 40 years, while trying to make ourselves more resilient.
Though there's a depressing takeaway about the continuing ability of private money-power (Rupert Murdoch & Clive Palmer) to sway elections. You can't have a proper democracy until private money-power is curbed. Which might lead some people to conclude that democratic means of curbing it are unavailable, and other methods must be employed. And that is a particularly worrisome conclusion.
There's not much point in worrying about Australia. Climate change means the entire country will likely spontaneously combust in the very near future. I keep telling my sisters they should probably move before it's too late.
And while everyine would like to see nurses and teachers pay rates really reflect their input few employees today have the same level of long term job security that goes with those positions.
Both sectors had very little to say and curbed their demands for nine years or so years but now expect magic wand to be whipped out to meet their demands despite the knowledge that housing and the health and welfare of a good number of their pupils is very important to their ability to learn.
NZ deserves to be governed with the "long game" in mind. Funnily I doubt that very many will be willing to sacrifice the balance that is returning to NZers lives and will risk the return of another National Party govt any time soon. They show the same self-interest that led to the "catch-up" being required across many issues and no concern for NZ nothing has changed there, something, if it is not fully realised now, that a lot of NZers will reflect on with their choices next election.
NZ deserves to be governed with the "long game" in mind.
so well said it needed to be repeated.
sadly we are governed by the interest of some to be re-elected.
Yes "some" solely obsessed with being elected, that has ever been the case but the intentions after that matter the most. I see merit in righting the ship and keeping the passengers on board before deciding how the deck chairs arranged to get the best outcome for all.
i think sadly, that the left needs to be as radical as the right. Or let me put it this way, if we are not radical, demanding radical solutions everyone is drowning as the whole in the ships bottom is never gonna get fixed. Currently we are all standing in a line bucketing the water out while some of our precious dears are in the captains lodging arguing of whom should get in the one life boat that is on the ship.
We are living in extreme times – environmentally its gonna get worse not better – and we have no plan but a bunch of over paid suits pretending that they can go back to a past that did not exist.
In the meantime we scold kids for taking of fridays.
I'm not scolding kids for taking off Fridays that's for sure, I'm hoping that that will coax some of their "elders" to think hard about how they can be more open to what needs to be done. Currently it is a hard-sell with some people despite it being for a better future, why that is bedevils me and commonsense. In some ways that is possibly how it needs to be to change direction permanently instead of duck-shoving everything back to "government" and expecting overnight miracles. If that is the way it is temporarily it is better than nine more years of willingly damaging lives via divide and rule.
i am not talking about you, but the ones in our media that are so concerned with children taking off school to go on a strike.
also i would like to point to the orange shitshow in the united states that is currently pissing all over the country because the democrats did neither show spine nor guts
Simon Bridges was on natrrad this morning, it sounds like the National party is gearing up to go full culture war next election.
It is dispiriting to see the USA exporting it's ideological poison of far right culture wars.
Still, it is good to know a vote for National will be a vote for the religious extremism of whatever fundy party National tries to cuddle up to.
You may need to be more specific. On the AM show he definitely ruled out mandating Ngaro's christian revival attempt. Said they would stand a Nat candidate in Botany next year and expect to win there. Since the Nats got 60% there last time, he's right – unless Ngaro stands there for the christians. That could create a three-way split.
Anyway, if your culture war thesis was correct, Bridges would be supporting the artificial construction of a support partner for the Nats, huh?
A three-way split between the Nat Electorate Candidate (not on the List, of course, unlike Paul Goldsmith in Epsom), Ngaro, and JLR?
It would maximise the prospects of JLR, although if Labour fronts with a good candidate a four-way split seems feasible (with rough parity) but tribalism will always give the Nats the edge on the basis of 60% last time.
JLR will come a distant 4th in that race
Who are you, Pete George?
Bridges spent the whole interview speaking out of sides of his mouth but it is crystal clear that National is planning a dishonest scare campaign based on culture war issues, from saying they support evidence based drug reform whilst pandering to the Family Fist crowd to saying they support conscience votes on issue like abortion whilst offering mealy mouthed equivocation on the establishment of a religious extremist party to help them game MMP.
Seems a reasonable apprehension, but it would be equally reasonable to frame it as simply appealing appealing to the biases of their voter base, wouldn't it?
Anyway, there's an obvious danger for them if they do decide to try the culture war strategy: alienating centrists. So I see it as self-defeating, short-sighted.
Across the Tasman, the Liberals won by refusing to have a detailed manifesto, engaging is dishonest representations of selected opponents policies and running a culture wars by proxy campaign in Queensland and in the Murdoch press.
The lesson National will take from that is that they can wage a proxy culture war by a bunch of extremists – hence this Christian party – and that they should double down on the dishonest culutre war attacks via their media proxies such as Mike Hosking and via the likes of Paula "Gummi Bears" Bennett.
It is an open question if this approach will succeed, especially given how ill-equipped our ideological bankrupt and intellectually cowardly Labour would be to deal with such an assault.
+ 1 yep and they will utilize their sub-groups to hate on people, to create strife, issues – oh we need strong gnat govt to fix these 'issues' blah blah blah
I think the lazer of Jacinda will vapourise them – but the battery life isn't infinity and others are going to have to step up. They are beginning to – the bishop got dealt to, paula benefit is being dealt to, and so on – be good to save winnie for the mega hit counterattack or defense imo
i have said before and i will say it again,
if National wants to win they will run on decriminalizing or tolerating weed as in Holland or based on the system of the US. – i know a few non – voters that will vote for that and they are old, middle aged and young, who literally have no reason to vote for either party other then civic mindedness.
And its nobodies fault but that of the coalition. Every now and then one has to take a risk, and on this issue they actually could.
the rest is business as usual for National. No ideas but pondering to the lowest common denominator and bigotry.
Did you watch the rise of the Tea Party in the US?
Do you understand that the Tea Party has become the Republican Party?
And do you understand that the only Party really in danger of the rise of the christo fascist are those on the right? As they – in order to keep their constituancy need to move ever more right in order to stay electable to the God freaks on the right?
And yes, God Freaks, not godly, not christian, cause anyone who – as in the states, can not allow gun control cause 'fredom and personal choice' but has no issues condeming little girls to give birth to their own aunties/uncles/brothers/sistes/cuzzies is not a christian or a person of faith, but rather a cynical being who literally would offer little girls as a sacrament to advance their very own agenda.
And I have personally met Alfred Ngaro, a man who will not introduce himself when he comes to the shop of a women, who will not say anything other then 'Can i speak to your husband'. WTF? Mr. , I don't have a husband. It was a funny scene, where it no so fucking sad.
You better watch out that you don't end up being the Sorcerers apprentice " the ghost that i have called, i can not rid myself of anymore'.
None of that stuff has anything to do with me. Nor does it seem relevant to my comment. You seem to have someone else in mind…
yep, Alfred Ngaro and hte no mates party and their apologists. 🙂
Well, Sabine, all I can say is that if you think I'm apologising for the Nats then it appears to be evidence of a tendency to read motives into text. Such tendencies, when the motives aren't actually there, can make people delusional!
For the record, I consider your warnings re christian bigotry totally appropriate. The Alabama/Missouri roll-back of abortion rights is a travesty of justice. Even Trump has now found it necessary to disagree with the patriarchs: "Trump reiterated his position that abortion should be legal following rape or incest." https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-republicans-distance-themselves-from-alabama-abortion-law/2019/05/19/d44036d8-7a3f-11e9-8bb7-0fc796cf2ec0_story.html?utm_term=.cd7722fa42b2
"The most recent poll on the issue by the Kaiser Family Foundation, conducted in late April, found that two-thirds of the public wants Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, to remain in place. Slightly more than half of Republicans disagree."
i don't say you are a National applogist, and if that is what you got from my comment that says more about you then me.
all i am saying is that we should look at the US and see what happened there and thus stop making fun about it, stop pretending it can't happen here and maybe just be a bit more cautious, cause it can happen here and i fear it will.
Our current lot of do very little politicians do not address climate change with the urgency needed, do not address job security, food security, housing security and energy security with the urgency needed.
And thus they leave a space to be filled by hate peddlers and tithing grifters like tamaki and his ilk. And Alfred Ngaro falls under ilk, as do the brethren, the gloriavale cultists, jehova witnesses and the likes. And i will also tell you that they vote, and their women vote, and they will vote for the hate peddlers and tithing grifters so as long as they pretend to be forced birth, anti gay / other orientation, anti freedom of movement for women (ohio, missoury both have lawed it that a women who leaves the state for an abortion is still a criminal should she dare to come back and so is the driver of the car btw), do with your children as you please – i .e. beat the life out of them (blanket training read up on it), don't vaccinate, don't take to the hospital, don't educate cause property of men.
The point is that they have promised these things, and now thanks to the orange shitshow they are getting what they want. (after all as they said a few years ago, we only need a president who can hold the pen to sign the laws we put in front of him, he is not needed to advance laws or make them). And if you believe that our lot is not equally cynical and monstrous in their intention then i have a two lane bridge flanked by a kauri on either side or ten in Northland to sell to you.
the wall in the US is not to keep the South Americans out, it is to keep the US Americans in.
Sabine And I have personally met Alfred Ngaro, a man who will not introduce himself when he comes to the shop of a woman, who will not say anything other then 'Can i speak to your husband'. WTF?
I know that was the sort of thing that men said and did in the 1960s before the new wave of womens lib/feminism. That was what they organised and protested to change. To hear it has still lingered on and is trying to rise up again from the crypt is very concerning.
Watch this trend of people wanting to take the podium and pronounce on how women should be; jealous men (of their paramount rights) and priggish women (wanting to be seen as perfect examples of womanhood and behaviour, both moral and super-smart, eg Ruth Richardson, Denise L'Estrange-Corbet, Jenny Shipley & other status seekers). Watch for the patriarchal cults, the ones that want women kept in their (lower) place; they are toxic. And often there are economic features and a desire to rob females of their opportunity to develop as their own person, behind the moral pose.
Some thoughts from Jane Clifton in the Listener of August 13 2011 archived now from Noted: The Princess Industrial Complex. https://www.noted.co.nz/archive/listener-nz-2011/the-princess-industrial-complex/
https://www.peggyorenstein.com/potowski-; Peggy Orenstein Cinderella Ate My Daughter! She explored the commercialisation by Disney of an interest that little girls had for dressing as princesses in home-made outfits.
My feeling is that females are the subject of much commercialising and image-making and are vulnerable to peer pressure. They front nearly every magazine in the supermarkets near the checkouts, featuring body shape, looks, scandals, sexual lives, marital tiffs.
Women are squeezed into shape by popular culture and commercialisation – chick flicks where they can watch romantic movies and ditzy stories about the combination of worries they take on as they try to find themselves in a complex of possible images. Cosmetics to cover their faces and bodies to enhance and preserve is a billion dollar industry.
Now it has gone full circle in Alabama and other States of misrule, and the disrespect and downgrading of females has descended to extreme and punitive levels, showing a hate that has been mainly masked with occasional eruptions. Now it has been exposed in all its ugly conceptions, and we need to watch for its diseased head here; no vaccinations are available, but an alert populace knowing the signs of rash behaviour may check and contain it. But it will always remain in pockets of cults here and there which have precepts that aren't well understood. There was a doco in recent NZ Film Festival called Angie about Bert Potter's creative urges that led to his Commune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZlQDHpcMG4 This story Angie shows the difficulty of growing up in a place with no respect for your person, your body and soul.
How can a woman be respected as a person in the USA States that have brought in such strict abortion laws. In other countries if a woman reports her rape, then she becomes a criminal. I thought that western nations had advanced in the respect and rights of all, but it has apparently been a facade. Respect and rights have never reached the skin-deep stage in Alabama, with their violent, hate-filled, race-crimes past and the volume of hate has increased and overflowed to find further victims.
Don't let any of this unChristian posing come to rest in NZ. This is not Christianity and Ngaro and his ilk should be charged with hate speech talking about abortions as being like a holocaust.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1905/S00188/ngaros-support-of-abortion-equals-holocaust.htm
Botany MP Jami-Lee Ross has criticised National's Alfred Ngaro for sharing a controversial abortion post https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12232353
Simon Bridges: "National leader Simon Bridges is defending one of his MP's comments on abortion, saying while "it's not something I would say", people have a right to voice their opinion." https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/audio/simon-bridges-weighs-in-on-mps-abortion-post-its-not-something-i-would-say/
Would National develop into a clone of the USA Republican Party if there was advantage for them in it?? Have they already and I have been too naive to see it?
they have.
bill english, stale margarine toast, that 'fornication for procreation only dude', the conservative party, the alfred ngaro party
we really in this country and elsewhere need to stop crying about spilled beans and start seeing what is now. We can't go back to the past. Chances are many of us not white standard issue males would not want to go back, and yet, it seems that many in order to receive a few crumbs are very happy to sacrifice women, children, brown people, non conformist people on the altar of 'privileges lost'.
If you mean that Ngaro is brown, and is interested in privileges lost I think that may be a side track. I think he may be a Pacific Islander and has decided to move into what is called conservative Christianity, with a touch of 'prosperity church' and a strength of purpose and mind that is partly built on blame for male violence on women. There is also a trend to small neighbourhood Christian type groups looking for community and companionship and if you can get what is regarded as a Church going, there may be tax advantages.
Motivation of that sort is probably higher than perhaps what you have referred to. Conservative Christians are always bubbling away and see their ideas as being recipes for straightening out the debased society that we live in. A lot of what we have now is modelled on television presentations and sport, which is becoming more aggressive and more lucrative, and self-directed rather than community-connecting. There is less cohesive community mores and goodwill round sport than previously. Maori though seem to do better, they have kapa haka and try to maintain their cohesiveness.
Edit:
But Tamaki, Ngaro are entrepreneurs who can build on isolation and frustration and lack of purpose and belonging in the midst of suburbs in towns and cities; a built-up society without real community. I think this puts their position and that they are politically adept and worldly, and see their tipping point in today's universal and National's particular, dilemmas.
No i say Ngaro is a cynical man who knows that men lost privileges.
Not only white ones ,but men in general, and there is quite a bit of anger out there in some men that would like to get back their union jobs (but without the evil unions) that would like women to be less independent (no birth control / abortion for you missy, you have sex you deserve that pregnancy – all 20 of them even), that would like to spank/beat their kids without government interference and the missus too if she has an issue joyfully submitting to the husband, and that would like to go back to the top of the picking order. And this has very little to do with race but all to do with gender…..and aren't we lucky, the bible agrees with them.
One can be a sexist even when brown.
And yes, there is money – a lot of money in churches, as they are tax exempt, people are expected to tithe, often time all free time is spend in these churches as they pick up were government fails due to lack of funds. Because the same guys that scream government is bad and should be small and lower the taxes are the same guys that will stand at the pulpit and demand their due in the name of god. Tamaki comes to mind. Ngaro in my book wants a piece of the action, and national will enable him at their own peril.
But at the end of the day, as the United States has shown us over the last few weeks, it is not only a problem for the Party that will get taken over, and that is what i now predict for Natonal Politicians to do – our christianise the evangelic / reborn/ christian in order to get elected in the future as seen in the States – but also for the opposition. Cause they have no response to what is happening on the right. They have no response to the misery of people and other then a few band aids in order to 'not rock the boat', get 're-elected' to maybe offer a few more band aids in the next cycle they have nothing on their plate.
I predict the next election to be a shit show of epic proportions. And I predict National to go so far right that if they don't watch out the fall of the plate and to stay on the plate they will do much damage to the most vulnerable of our society, women, children, people of color, elderly, sick and so forth. Cause 'charity' rather then government. I am sure Tamaki can't believe that he will now receive tax payer funded government largess due to the inaction of the same governments of all the previous years irrespective of stripe. Cause we can't for example decrim weed to keep men out of prison. We can't spend money of preventable health care. We can't spend money on decent schools for all. We can't spend moeny on decent housing for all. We can't spend money on equal opportunties. We can do any of that, but we can pay tamaki to go to prison and tell men to 'men up' and please don't beat your wife to the point where she or the kid needs a burial.
(i point to russia into decriminalisng domestic violence 🙂
Can't make that shit up. And yes, all of that has to do with loss of privilege, gender privilege, followed by income privilege, followed by racial privilege and all of that anger will be born by women and children.
you really need to get a grip of yourself Sabine, you are becoming delusional as you work yourself up
care to point to anything i said that is 'delusional'
delusional
/dɪˈluːʒ(ə)n(ə)l/
adjective
"hospitalization for schizophrenia and delusional paranoia"
"their delusional belief in the project's merits never wavers"
I don't know you, but, bless your cotton socks dear, and get a dictionary.
That's just it they won't "say" on anything they can get away with, whereas it seems the govt must reply to the "nth degree" at all times, any slight variation becomes a headline.
He says that now because it's the only thing he can say. Anything else would be political suicide given the ratings he's on.
At least there is recorded evidence of what he said – just got to hope that when he flips that the media has a long enough memory to come back and revisit this recording.
We'll see about that won't we franko. Me, I wouldn't be surprised to find the gnatty candidate helping Alfy Aggro's mob tear down his own posters in praxis.
Sensible centrists and compassionate conservatives seem quite happy to cuddle an authoritarian/fascist when times are tough and their cash-flow is threatened.
they have done that for a while now. They now just admit to it, a bit like in the US where they now happily admit to send women to the death row for having an abortion. Cause 'murder'.
Partisan lines have been widening for a while now. I'm fairly sure the level of animosity between left and right wasn't so toxic or shrill even a decade ago. Social media has exacerbated this. It's easy to be an awful human being when nobody knows who you are or where you live.
Except for lprent. He's like the Eye of Sauron.
TDB has a good review of the Taranaki fracking situation here, by a trade unionist: https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/05/16/guest-blog-edward-miller-why-is-it-ok-to-frack-taranaki-if-were-going-carbon-neutral/
"Green MP Chloe Swarbrick explained to her followers that this under the current law this was an administrative decision, while Energy Minister Megan Woods was quick to note that among the offer’s benefits was that it didn’t include offshore oil and gas."
Seems like a damage-control exercise, eh? Yes, we need to get off fossil fuels. No, we don't need to do it fast. Classic centrism, to keep NZF on board.
“Bizarrely, fracking didn’t get a mention in the Ministry for the Environment Environment Aotearoa 2019 report, which clearly identifies climate change as one of its major themes. And yet in Russia, China, the USA and Australia fracking has become one of the most important areas of discussion on environment and energy.”
“The fracking boom in the USA – a country whose conventional oil supplies peaked in 1970 (kept on life support when extraction began in Alaska in the 1980s) – pushed US oil production back to those record levels of 10 million barrels a day in November 2017, likely surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia sometime last year to become the world’s largest producer again.”
As Bill Clinton famously once said “It’s the economy, stupid.” Electoral success means giving voters what they want, and they want more business as usual.
From reporter interview on Radionz this morning – Antony Green says about coal mining inAaustralia having a big effect on voting against Labour. They want BAU and jobs. Labour and Greens have to find a way for them to be employed or go whistle.
Find some work for the working man to do, or face trouble. It isn't rocket science, apparently we can work out the delicate scientific processes that enable rockets, but the well-known human problems are not as intensely interesting, and well-funded, as those of humans which actually will lead to greater disasters than rockets may cause.
maybe the government could people to pick up rubbish, or would that be to demeaning and not manly enough?
there are jobs, as here in NZ, it is just that there is also a certain population that does not want these jobs.
Or is it only coalworkers that have a right to a job that literally needs to be eradicated if we want to survive? Is that again the song of the poor white male working class with economic anxiety?
"For nearly two decades, one of the most overlooked and little known arrests made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was that of the so-called “High Fivers,” or the “Dancing Israelis.” However, new information released by the FBI on May 7 has brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the “Dancing Israelis,” at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Shortly after 8:46 a.m. on the day of the attacks, just minutes after the first plane struck the World Trade Center, five men — later revealed to be Israeli nationals — had positioned themselves in the parking lot of the Doric Apartment Complex in Union City, New Jersey, where they were seen taking pictures and filming the attacks while also celebrating the destruction of the towers and “high fiving” each other. At least one eyewitness interviewed by the FBI had seen the Israelis’ van in the parking lot as early as 8:00 a.m. that day, more than 40 minutes prior to the attack. The story received coverage in U.S. mainstream media at the time but has since been largely forgotten."
Further on in the story: "Yet, the picture released includes a visible date of September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks,"
And: Of the explosive residue, the declassified FBI report states:
A search of the van and individuals was conducted at the time of the vehicle stop. The vehicle was also searched by a trained bomb-sniffing dog which yielded a positive result for the presence of explosive traces. Swabs of the vehicle’s interior were taken, and those samples were sent to the FBI laboratory for further analysis. Final results are still pending.”
And:
According to a FOX News report from December 2001, 60 Israelis were apprehended or detained after September 11, with most deported, and a total of 140 Israelis were arrested and detained in all of 2001 by federal authorities."
and;" The company’s owner — Dominik Otto Suter, an Israeli citizen — had fled to Israel on September 14, 2001, two days after he had been questioned by the FBI. The FBI told ABC News that “Urban Moving may have been providing cover for an Israeli intelligence operation.” Surprisingly, since at least 2016, Suter has been living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works for a contractor for major tech companies like Google and Microsoft. According to the public records database Intelius, in 2006 and 2007 Suter also worked for a telecommunications company — Granite Telecommunications — that works for the U.S. military and several other U.S. government agencies."
https://www.mintpressnews.com/newly-released-fbi-docs-shed-light-on-apparent-mossad-foreknowledge-of-9-11-attacks/258581/?fbclid=IwAR2Jp39KcfTgrd9WWW4Rz7fuPY4isBREzuS4yQtZd1ktQTznK9R8KddtycA#.XOCL6V0eb2o.facebook
There's always been the suspicion that that most efficient spy agency ,Mossad was tracking the hijackers, was aware of their goals, but kept quiet because of the ultimate potential to win sympathy for the Israeli cause
Well, thats the most charitable explanation of Mossad's role
Here's Netenyahu on the very day
"Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied, “It’s very good.” Then he edited himself: “Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.” He predicted that the attack would “strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.”
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/its-very-good-recalling-benjamin-netanyahus-words-day-911-attacks
Yeah, a bunch of folks here around a year ago were doing the usual conspiracy theory debunking, so I reminded them of the dancing Israelis. Mossad is known for that kind of thing. It's actually a traditional imperialist strategy: steer a conspiracy from above, without the conspirators knowing that they are merely puppets. Game of thrones has it in various plot-lines due to it being even more traditional than imperialism!
If Iraq wants all foreign troops gone, why is the New Zealand government still uncertain as to whether we will continue to have toops there? My feeling is that Iraq remains an occupied country and sovereignty has never really been returned to it.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-18/iraqi-parliament-vote-bill-would-ban-us-military-troops-iraq
that was the outcome from the get go.
After all we can't have the dears decide what they do with their country, their resources, their lifes right?
For anyone with a Rebel Soul,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khX3Gokb-LQ&ab_channel=Robbero
Love it. Shows what the thinking French people think of their police.
well the police shows them what they think of the populace
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-03/wheelchair-bound-yellow-vest-pepper-sprayed-french-cops-another-shot-man-face
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/30/french-police-tactics-scrutiny-gilets-jaunes-injuries-paris
https://www.rt.com/news/452916-man-shot-yellow-vests-paris/
Interesting view on the cultural context of story telling, and goes on to explain why the last season of GOT is so disappointing for fans.
Not a facile Hollywood take
Also explains why The Wire was so appealing .That show was a brilliant portrayal of a city (Baltimore)and the power structures that underpinned it.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/?redirect=1
"George R. R. Martin, who seemed to specialize in having characters evolve in response to the broader institutional settings, incentives and norms that surround them." Subtlety of an author isn't easily recycled on television, eh?
"Benioff and Weiss steer the narrative lane away from the sociological and shifted to the psychological. That’s the main, and often only, way Hollywood and most television writers tell stories. This is an important shift to dissect because whether we tell our stories primarily from a sociological or psychological point of view has great consequences for how we deal with our world and the problems we encounter."
Seems profound, but is it really? Motives are the key to behaviour, and in politics they are as likely to derive from social context as from personal values & priorities. So both/and logic applies.
"Hollywood mostly knows how to tell psychological, individualized stories. They do not have the right tools for sociological stories, nor do they even seem to understand the job." Precisely. Worse than that, they rarely even get the basics right!
I watched the first episode of GoT (was it really 8 years ago?), thought the casting of spoilt American brats so pathetic a misrepresentation of Martin's characters that I couldn't bring myself to watch another, despite the excellent stagecraft.
"The appeal of a show that routinely kills major characters signals a different kind of storytelling, where a single charismatic and/or powerful individual, along with his or her internal dynamics, doesn’t carry the whole narrative and explanatory burden."
That is indeed a key point! From a semiotic perspective, it signals that the political context is where the action is. Even heroes are merely the cresting waves of the ocean, and the currents in that ocean have their equivalent in the group motivations that drive inter-group competition.
GRR Martin hasn't been involved in GoT the series since season 5 when the series went totally off book. Martin has also stated many times that he's not into allegory story telling, so Star Wars used a lot of WW2 themes in it and G.R.R Martin is against using real world examples because he wants his story telling to be relevant in 200 years time when people can use there own experiences to tell the story.
Dan and Dave who are the directors went straight for CG in season 7 and 8 at the expense of story writing. GoT was supposed to be 10 seasons but for some reason that I don't know it was decided that there would be only 8 seasons and the final 2 seasons would be shortened from 10 episodes to 6. This shortening of screen time has squished the plot so decisions you would expect to be teased over a season happen in one episode. And spoilers, so it took King Robb Stark 1 or 2 seasons to make it to the Northern Boarders of the Kings Lands of Westeros and in the final season the Northern Armies just pop in Kings Landing in one episode.
So in the final 2 seasons we didn't get to see all the plot twists and suttle decision making that went into the battles of the final seasons and because we don't get to see that intricate detail characters are looking extra dictatorial and extra genocidal as all the decisions just look rushed and not really connected to any parts of the show instead relying on CG to compensate the audience.
But there is a consolation to a shortened 2 season series. They've already begun filming of the spin off series of Game of Thrones.
I watched the first episode of GoT (was it really 8 years ago?), thought the casting of spoilt American brats so pathetic a misrepresentation of Martin's characters that I couldn't bring myself to watch another, despite the excellent stagecraft.
Apart from Peter Dinklage who plays Tyrion Lannister, there are no American actors in Game of Thrones.
No kidding? Hollywood really has gone global? Well, if so, my take is that cellphone addiction has morphed youngsters elsewhere into a similar simulation of prefrontal lobotomy as the yanks…
well if we are really nitpicking it was 9 years ago episode one was released. The finanal season was meant to air March 2018 but it had to be delayed a year because it takes ages to CG Dragons to be able to look that cool.
Yeah I don't think GOT was ever that meaningful.I only ever liked Tyrion .Bran became an awful bore, and you’re right, the earlier stuff had less CGI
In the early seasons there was an awful lot of lustiness and explicit sex.When Daenerys(mother of dragons) got mixed up with those horse type people, there was a big animalistic orgy.While I was watching, there seemed to be a lot of slow motion action, then speeding up.I thought for goodness sake, thats getting a bit porn…too far altogether… then I realised my internet speed wasn't up to it and the computer was buffering .
Yes I found that an interesting read too. Here's my takeaway segment:
This aligns with something a good friend once said, "we need to emerge from the age of the sanctified individual, to the sanctified society".
Perhaps when we start teaching our children social history instead of 'great white men' stuff they will understand this and act accordingly
Well the trouble with this 'universal white male guilt' hypothesis is that there have indeed been a lot of 'great white men'. Here is one; Fritz Haber:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber
He had a turbulent, morally challenging life, yet he left one legacy most people are completely unaware of, that almost half the nitrogen/protein in your body is derived from the Haber-Bosch process that enables the production of industrial scale fertilisers.
Without his contribution you most likely would have never lived. Should that be ‘forgotten’?
History is what is and erasing the parts we find politically inconvenient never helps. While it is true that white people have dominated much of the past 400 odd years of human development, that phase is passing. We are now a global society, albeit one that lacks a moral and political framework to moor it.
Developing a universal social history, and a fresh moral narrative to underpin it, entails embracing all of our past both good and evil. It must be a synthesising, collating, unifying process. Starting from a position of divisiveness ensures only that we remain stuck in the old modes of rivalry, resentment and confrontation.
"Haber is also considered the "father of chemical warfare" for his years of pioneering work developing and weaponizing chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I, especially his actions during the Second Battle of Ypres."
not so cool – chemical fertilizers that have (imo) fucked the ecosystems and created an illusion of eternal growth that has led to the global warming catastrophe.
Precisely; as I said Haber was a complex character who faced greater moral challenges in his life than most.
Haber bequeathed to us both the gift of abundant protein and the curse of chemical warfare. One enabled agriculture to feed billions, the other was the first weapon of mass destruction, a pre-cursor to the nuclear bomb. Few people left us such a stark legacy. It’s why his story is interesting and cautionary at the same time.
Still it's worth saying that war is hell; that no-one wins with a clear conscience. It is why I persistently return to the theme of the need for a global institution with the sole authority to direct military force at scale. Only this can ultimately eliminate war as the scourge on humanity it has been for so long.
the achievements you mention seem ugly and detrimental to me.
Well as I said, half the protein molecules in your body derive ultimately from the process he invented. If you think that ugly and detrimental, then so also must be the large fraction of living people who depend on it.
Large scale industrial fertilisers are similar to coal, they've enabled the human race to bootstrap out of mean brutal poverty into our modern world. But we cannot rely on either of these long-term; both come with an environmental cost and we have to move beyond them, on that I think we can agree. In my view only the science and engineering platform we have built can do that on the scale necessary for 9 billion people to thrive.
Industrial fertilizer – lol good for you.
Look around idiot – we are fucking the planet and animals and ourselves – good that you are proud of your cohorts contribution to that.
But without industrial fertilizer you likely would not be alive. You need to decide which you prefer.
Look around idiot
Where I said "both come with an environmental cost and we have to move beyond them".
hey you and your mate industrial fertilizer are well suited
You mock it, yet without it billions would starve. Why do you think this is funny?
are there any negative effects from industrial fertilizers iyo
Yes of course there are:
https://agrihunt.com/articles/fertilizer-industry/negative-effects-of-chemical-fertilizers/
When they first became available they were overused. The big trend now is toward using them more accurately and combined with methods that protect the soil organics.
oh is that the big trend
Fritz Haber invented a process that with little exaggeration, was a crucial factor in doubling the human population. Perhaps more. In 1900 we struggled to feed about 1.6 billion people, now it's over 7 billion.
Along with mechanisation and improved plant genetics, synthetic fertilisers have freed most of humanity from the terrible threat of starvation every winter and killing famines every decade or so.
That's an extraordinary legacy, one that I think few other humans who have ever lived can match. It seems to me would could be at least a little more grateful.
Nine billion people thriving! [RL @12:14 pm]
The associated consumption doesn't bear thinking about.
Shouldn’t ‘we’ be "cutting one's coat according to one's cloth"? Because we are seriously running out of 'cloth'.
The reduction of atmospheric dinitrogen (N2) to two molecules of ammonia (NH3) by the Haber process requires hydrogen (natural gas/methane are sources), an iron-based catalyst, high pressures (200-300 atmospheres), and high temperatures (400-550 degrees Celcius). Yet nitrogen-fixing bacteria (diazotrophs) manage the same feat at 1 atmosphere pressure and ambient temperatures. One day we might catch up to those 'clever' microbes, but not yet!
All true; I've been aware of all this much of my life. Hell I recall cycling through the East Coast backcountry in the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Bola to attend a biodynamics course in Hastings.
Above I drew the comparison with coal which for several centuries has been vital in building an industrial society and a platform from which we can now build solar, wind and next gen nuclear power sources to replace it.
Very irritating not to mention boring when people respond like this. Either you do not understand what I'm saying or you are wilfully derailing. If the latter your time could probably be spent better elsewhere.
Either you do not understand what I'm saying
If you explained yourself in whole thoughts maybe I'd stand a better chance. Putting up something cryptic and then attacking me for not getting it correct is also boring and derailing.
It wasn't intended to be cryptic – the terms I used are common enough in the study of history – obviously not your forte.
It wasn't intended to be cryptic – the terms I used are common enough in the study of history – obviously not your forte.
Well as the expert in the study of history could you please explain it to this dumbarse engineer.
Social history is the study of society structures in previous times whereas most history taught is about society's leaders as though the rest of us are of no account
OK thanks … that makes excellent sense. Human history across all of it's dimensions is way more complex than we get taught at school. Personally I've a particular attraction to the history of science and engineering and the impact this has on social development, but that is only one view of the whole story.
The story of how ordinary people lived their lives, and the reason why social structures evolved as they did is also fascinating. It was these people who are our forebears for the most part, who they lay at the turbulent intersection of religion, politics, war, feast and famine every day of their lives. We are the offspring of thousands of generations smart enough and tough enough to survive …
Sorry about the misunderstanding.
All ok
Well, when I studied History through to honours level at Uni (two decades ago)… it was almost entirely Social & Cultural history.
It began to eclipse Political & Intellectual history (the areas you're thinking of) back in the 60s and early 70s (although social history had been around in one form or another since at least the 20s … particularly Marxist historiography & the French Annales School).
Maybe it's different at secondary school level … but I doubt it.
JanM Saying 'old white men' would be an opener for Redlogix.
After that it all ended up as fertiliser.
lol – very good that one
He he
One human, two barrows.
https://twitter.com/Sammy4121958/status/1129788862878965760
That was an amazingly interesting tweet joe 90 thanks.
it is way easier to wait for a saviour / hero then actually be a decent human being.
its a bit like waiting for Godot.
Waiting for God-oh! Perhaps there is a little bit of God in all of us, and waiting for the great creator to appear is superfluous – showing a cargo-cult mentality. And on that theme, if we all have a bit of God inside us waiting to be called on and shine, if we meet with others who are the same, do we end up with a large, loving group of people who are more than the sum of their parts?
“Let's go." "We can't." "Why not?" "We're waiting for Godot.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
current world governments in regards to everything.
I plucked this from a quick Google search and I think you (and Dennis Frank) might like it.
Hero Archetype: Decoding This Powerful Archetype in Film & Life
This bit is significant: "the Hero archetype actually represents an advanced form of child (boy) psychology. That is, while it does represent the peak of the adolescent stage of development, the Hero archetype is still immature."
Young men historically became heroes due to indoctrination of the archetype, because it was promoted by the social matrix they grew up in. We could say it was an off-shoot of the warrior archetype. Knights of the round table mythology is a good example in which a culture developed around an ethical basis for heroism.
Heroism in our culture is exemplified in media stories of men saving someone, and usually denying in subsequent interviews that they are heroes. This tacit discounting of their personification of the archetype is also a cultural bias.
All those Super-Heroe movies are great entertainment and wonderful escapism, don’t get me wrong. But they keep us stuck at an immature stage of development.
Many superhero movies essentially place the elite individual as more significant than social structures and cooperation. Iron Man is essentially John Galt with wrist rockets.
Invincible, indestructible, and almightily good looking with a razor-sharp tongue. The delusional self-image of the average young male high on roids feeding more fantasy stuff into his immature brain. The only social structure and cooperation they are interested in is copulation.
Although to be fair to Stan Lee, apparently he was trying to make an intensely unlikable "hero". But the irony has been lost, except in the name. Most teams are teams of exceptional people largely acting independently (and stupidly).
But there are changes in some movies – Wonder Woman had quite a bit of teamwork in it, including with non-super people.
The juvenile bit is that movies tend to say "willing to sacrifice all", but almost never do. Even when they die, it's just a matter of time until they come back. Heck, Batman retires at least once.
One of the worst ones is Transformers IMO. It has got juvenile boys written all over it and seems like a bad marriage between The Fast and the Furious and The Terminator. I have to confess that I have a soft spot for The Matrix.
Transformers are very bad movies. Bay does excellent composition of large, dynamic scenes, not so hot on everything else.
I thought the first couple of terminator movies were better than the matrix movies, to be frank. Matrix is all about teen fool who is the chosen one and can see through the illusion, Terminator movies started as 4D chess.
I might be a bit sour on Matrix now so many fools talk about red and blue pills.
Fair enough.
Big Pharma must love that movie (TM) 😉
The themes and symbolism are great IMO and it felt like a Dickian movie to me. But you do have to see through or past all the teen angst stuff …
Killed too many security guards for my taste. But I do love me some Dick…
There was an interesting recent streaming series based on his stuff called "Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams". Not as NSFW as it sounds lol. Stand-alone episodes, with some top line actors.
Yes, I did read that with interest but had forgotten about it so thanks for the reminder.
"while it does represent the peak of the adolescent stage of development, the Hero archetype is still immature"
And boys used to die young, before they could grow out of it. With today's life expectancy, older manbabies like many of those in charge have no excuse.
Problem with GOT final season is GRR Martin gave Benniof and Weiss an outline of what was to happen (as final book not complete) and left them to fill in the dialogue, then for what ever reason they decide to jam it all into 6 episodes.
Hence, unhappy viewers.
The Wire was outstanding, from first episode to last.
I loved that series
It gave such an understanding of how stuff works.It encompassed both the personal and the wider sociological/political context.
Yes, thanks – this angle is interesting too
Good point. Seems like tacit racism, eh? However, Martin did acknowledge that he modelled the series on 14th century Europe. If my memory is correct. So no surprise that a crusader ethic can be detected…
That's just woke bullshit designed to signal how in touch one is with feelings. There is no racism. Every slave master relationship has its fairytales of triumph and backhanded comments laced with key words designed to get around the censor and communicate complex ideas to simple people with out incurring the wrath of the masters. That's why we only hear of story's about the wealthy because making fun of slaves just ain't funny.
oh sham you know nothing – woke up dim
The writers of the show had to make the main characters older and prettier so the show would get a R15 rating instead of the R18 rating the books should have. King Tommen Lanister I mean Beratheon was 9 in the books while he consummated his marriage with Margery, much older. But who gives a flying fuck about Westerosy morals when cancerous normies are attempting to hijack the Game of Thrones logo and reputation so they can build bottom up jargon to demonstrate how fucken awesomely woke they are.
That's a pretty fair call, although not a dealbreaker by any means for me.
The small cove point though, that pissed me off at the time.
What I found disappointing about the penultimate episode was that many of the individual sequences were a pastiche of iconic sequences – Arya does an extended Children of Men finishing with a Jarhead, for example.
I mean, visually it was all awesome, but it wasn't quite as originally awesome as the battle with the night king (that's where I disagree with the article – retconned or deliberately foreshadowed, none of the death came out of nowhere).
And at least we finally saw why dragons were hyped.
The thin-skinned, brain-damaged orange shit-gibbon is anything but a peace-maker. The potential for global disaster grows every day.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/389584/us-president-donald-trump-threatens-iran-in-tweet
Christ. That's like school-yard stuff. "Oh yeah? I'm going to punch you in the face!" "Well, I'm going to kick you in the balls!"
Why are we afflicted with leaders who have an overabundance of testosterone and an obvious lack of grey matter? If America marches to war again, they should use John Bolton and Donald Trump as human shields.
Jenny H at No. 8 in How to Get There 19th May explains her motivations and successes. I don't think I've enough to warrant being in that post of doing and exploring ideas. So I've put mine on open mike.
That was really inspiring Jenny H. I am trying and am concerned just not about CC but also the way that the economic system impoverishes people while it gloats about how good the surface money figures are while those outside the charmed circle wait and whose deficits seem to be a permanent bypass in the body politic. I write here, which I regard as work, and try to keep informed with people from different sectors here and elsewhere, and try to keep the idea of respect and kindness going balanced with practicality.
Aiming for a system that provides balance while not settling down to a 'don't rock the boat at all' approach requires constant adjustment. I also am supportive of various friends, family not far from death, including my oldish self. I am thinking of how I can help young people, and have various ideas that I need to research to do with people support which enhances our lives and adds resilience for the future. A work in progress.
It seems easier for people to latch on to environmental matters but we get annoyed with each other, and pass judgment on and eventually ignore the strugglers – don't give money to beggars say a Council and regard that as dealing with problem people. The animals we can excuse, like destructive kea, but people who have had bad childhoods and upbringing, we can't be bothered looking after them, or really helping parents and children coming along to be both loving and strong and capable. I don't like a possible scenario of a tree covered country full of active animals going about their lives with half-naked people fighting off a powerfully armed bunch of marauding groups; a possibility that must be prevented.
Finding a way to live more simply is hard; we need to accept a less glossy vision for people to aim for, not huge houses on the hill that get redecorated every three years and the change of cars before the warranty expires. More harmony, more respect, more giving a little in many ways, more pleasure in what we have, and trust, these need to be talked about and aimed for.
Knowing how to spot poseurs is helpful, you can't be too trusting as Greenpeace found out after being infiltrated by the French before they fixed a bomb to the Rainbow Warrior – an act of war if done elsewhere. Do we have Sleepers here from the USA as in the TV series from 2013*? Has our government been infiltrated by 5Eyes partners who can request actions of our police and defence forces? We might wonder.
*(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4D96fPl_hI
At present I am concerned about the rise of cults that appear to offer stability, security and morality, but in payment want to suck in your soul and mind. We have become aware of EB who were vying to help National. Who issues forth next – Ngaro? Do we need to wipe the no-tax ban on churches, which seems to be a temptation for entities that look more devilish than Christian. We need to look for the worm in the apple, and stop these so-called Christians acting out their swagger over 'dark' people which they found mentioned somewhere in the Bible, and over females with whom there can be no latitude because of the myth of Eve, and who need protecting from themselves. Today they trash USA laws – tomorrow?
The ongoing political quake in Britain has now produced a three-way split: "More voters now say they would back the Brexit Party at a general election than the Conservatives, according to a new poll. Nigel Farage’s five-week-old outfit would finish second in the popular vote, pushing the Tories into third place, the research conducted by Opinium suggests. In total, the Brexit Party would collect 24 per cent of the ballot, with the Conservatives trailing on just 22 per cent, it was found. Labour would win with 27 per cent of the electorate backing them."
"The surprise finding comes as the group – which has no manifesto and just a single policy of demanding a no-deal Brexit – continue to top the polls for next week’s European Parliament elections. Some 34 per cent of voters say they will back it on Thursday, Opinium found. That compares to just 20 per cent who say they will support Labour in second place and 15 per cent who indicate they would vote for the Lib Dems." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-party-poll-election-farage-tories-labour-lib-dems-change-uk-a8920371.html
"The Conservatives, in that poll, remain fourth – a finding that is expected to heighten despondency in the party and lead to renewed calls for Theresa May to set a definitive timetable for standing down as prime minister. Change UK, meanwhile, a party formed with the express intention of forcing a second Brexit referendum, is struggling with just 3 per cent of voters saying they would back them in either ballot."
Remainers are history then! I suppose most remainers aren't supporting the remainer party, instead clinging to the delusion that Labour will represent them. So the tories may look like the biggest losers, but remainers are really.
Wouldn't it be good for government to have planning ability and use it? That's what the are thinking in Wellington. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/389599/council-powerless-to-stop-waste-of-space-housing-development
The developers behind The Paddington want to build about 150 upmarket terraced houses on Taranaki Street in the central city, with prices starting at $788,000.
The complex is expected to become home to about 300 people, however, the buildings are only two or three storeys high, in an area with a maximum limit of 27 metres…
At the showroom, Thames Pacific developer Stephen Sutorius said there were too many apartment blocks nearby to build another one on the site.
"You can't have high-rise blocks all next to each other. You'll get a city where you have no sun, you have no light throughout the developments or throughout the city," Mr Sutorius said.
Construction was likely to start in November this year, with completion estimated for mid-2021, he said.
Weak. The architect designs, spaces and places so that all share sun and shade. The Council are saying twice the number could be housed there, so that would only be max six storeys high. I am not sure what earthquake possibilities would allow safely. Over a certain height different construction wold be needed perhaps.
And then there's the whole insurance problem…
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018695812/earthquake-damage-insurance-dr-megan-woods
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018686414/no-secret-about-wellington-insurance-risk-insurance-council
Yes Rosemary I forgot about that and the latest worrying news for Wellington. Looking at history it seems we haven't even got as far with facing our problems as Ethelred the Unready.
And Labour Coalition may yet have to carry out a symbolic trip to the beach where they will demonstrate the truths of our reality as did King Canute when he pointed out his limited powers compared to expectations – he couldn't hold back the tide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_tide
And Cnut the Great 995-1035 He had a father called Sweyn Forkbeard. That’s a great name too. He was King of Denmark, England and Norway. They had interesting relationships then in that area. Now we have come to the end of the world and our Australian cousins don’t add to our gene pool. If we wish to advance the nation I think, if the Maori continue putting up with us, we could build a great nation with their staunchness and practicality. So don’t listen to defunct Brash with his criticism of Maori greetings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great
Moved a bit to the side there Rosemary. Back to the point – the insurance matter is something that Robertson and his advisors will need to look at along with the insurance council to see what can be provided by the state.
Or perhaps all the filthy rich who were prepared to work hard and get their hands dirty reorganising the positions of power and privilege after Douglas and neolib and free markets. They can bring Eric Watson's money back and stop him wasting it in foreign lands and Australian ventures that should be here, and tax etc. so we can get some stability for the country.
"You can't have high-rise blocks all next to each other"
Genius, Bruce.
Stealing – rustling in rural communities. Farmers need protection from crime.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/389590/65-000-worth-of-sheep-stolen-from-southland-property-police
Millsy you are so Right.
We don't don't need a Creator. We got John Key and his ugly duckling Simon Bridges to do that for us. Best Creators ever.
We really need Stalin again- that great great man who did so much good too. We need Mr Lenin too. Is he a mate of yours ?
Or do you prefer Hitler. Anorher fine Man of the Right. He got rid of God long before you. While you at it, why not rubbish Confucius. As well as the dutch Apartheid Mongrels of Africa. Also Kill that magnificent Ruler Of Babylon. Such a good man. Kill him !
I imagine that you pagans kill the Women and children first. Like the Americans do. Day after day. You know, – when they Bomb innocent people. I am glad you support those bad men. Keep up the madness Millsy.
Kia ora The AM Show.
I don't think that that man's words should be heard by the tangata of the Papatuanukue Christchurch desaster.
I hope not to many people are losted in the atrocious weather events affecting 4 state in America don that's climate change.
I don't think Trevor should be hung out to dry you have to remember that happened a long time ago things we different in those days it was much easier to servive in those days.
Bulling is a behaviour humans have had for millions of years you see it in the animal herd group culture there is always one in the group that is picked on the same in human societies. I have bullied I try not to but I don't not like seeing it happen to vanuralble tangata I userly call out the bullie. I had that problem in one work place they young fellas try to bullie me I stood them up they ganged up on me and got me sacked because of the 90 day clause there loss.
Muppet puppet after my journey back home.( I have every right to call out muppets puppets who use the word CRACK ARE you marketing the shit.)
Gloriz it's a shame that people like seenothing will use anything to try and float their toilets with out a care on whom they hurt in the process.
Aziz m8 Eco Maori is discrimination against every day of the year.
Moniqe doc is doing a excellent job caring for OUR wild life but I still want a bounty put on opossum and stotes that will give money to the common people and get rid of the vermin I have read about the places in Freordland being the last place Kakapo were found on the main land. The problem with the tourist model doc model is the common people are left in the COLD. Te tangata te tangata te tangata. You mite say that te tangata won’t be able to get into all the hard terrain that’s true but if you wipe out all the vermin in the easy places that will bennafit the wild life and te tangata
The culture needs to change keeping Aotearoa and Papatuanukue free from rubbish and plastic waste is going to be the normal thing as it takes a thousand years to degrade plastic we need to protect Papatuanukue for te Mokopuna Ka kite ano
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
https://youtu.be/fKopy74weus
He tangata he tangata he tangata
Its all the people that need to be loved and cared for not just the wealthy.
I'm glad I called them out this morning PEEEEE is killing the common people off
Nicola is an outreach worker and helps homeless Aucklanders in desperate need.
The video above is episode three of K Rd Chronicles, an eight-part video web series about homelessness in New Zealand's biggest city.
This episode focuses on Nicola, an outreach worker who helps Aucklanders in desperate need.
K Rd Chronicles was made for Stuff by Top Shelf Productions, funded by NZ On Air.
The series is hosted by a transgender journalist called Six, who was homeless for six years.
The videos touch on addiction, specifically P and synthetic cannabis abuse Ka kite ano links below.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/112462604/k-rd-chronicles-episode-3-nicola-the-outreach-worker
https://youtu.be/OxhyumdiVtw
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
https://youtu.be/w5tWYmIOWGk
Kia Kaha students To Eco Maori Your future is so special I Tau toko you 100%
Tens of thousands of students are planning to take to the streets for the second time this year to strike for climate change action.
On Friday, Kiwi students will "rise up to demand climate action from our Government".
From marches and rallies to tree planting and beach clean ups, New Zealand's youth are doing all they can to bring attention to the issue of climate change.
Here's everything you need to know about the upcoming strike
Ka kite ano links below
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/112728366/school-students-strike-for-climate-change-what-you-need-to-know
https://youtu.be/LHULg2BefKg
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
https://youtu.be/Xo7WjnC8ekQ