I agree with Chris T. Chloe is like a young Helen, and somewhere down the line she will very likely have a significant role in shaping the future for many.
“John Key always wanted to be PM since he was a boy” rofl yeah right, more like when the currency trading puppet was told by his American string pulling masters.
No, its not at all Puckish Rogue. You know John key’s back story doesn’t seem to add up. Too much of a Crosby Textor fabrication maybe? and since when has anyone from the Herald, like John Roughan for instance, been honest and told the truth?
Dude you probably think 9/11 was a conspiracy, that there’s something up with chemtrails and that the moon landings were faked so I’m comfortable with you thinking theres something up with John Keys backstory
(Don’t worry about those black helicopters over your house, its totally coincidental)
Is that the best you can do? What black helicopters? And I don’t have any “9/11, chemtrails and moon landings” conspiracy theories and it’s pretty obvious that you are not “comfortable” either Puckish Rogue.
A plane ain’t a bowling ball Bill – the pins don’t destroy a ball but a plane that hits a building isn’t much more than a cloud of debris. Now I wasn’t there – don’t know everything about it – but the official story does not come close to explaining what happened.
Any particular reason you played the false analogy card?
Stuart
“WTC 7 collapsed because of fires fueled by office furnishings. It did not collapse from explosives or from diesel fuel fires.” Conspiracy theorists have long pointed to the collapse of the 47-story structure as key evidence that the U.S. government orchestrated or abetted the 9/11 attacks” http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/design/a3524/4278874/
Not remotely Bob – for your bowling ball to be a credible analogy the plane would need to be substantially intact – enough to support a hypothesis that its kinetic energy contributed materially to the collapse. High rise buildings do not collapse from office materials fires – they rarely collapse at all because fire is one of the things they are designed to withstand.
This lame chiropracter has fuck all engineering competence either, for that matter. Otherwise their takedown of NIST’s analysis would be delivered using Maths in an appropriate technical journal.
cv trying to be intellectual yet remaining idiotic is a fail – you rely on others expertise, own up to that one mate, save yourself some OAB learning which I’m sure is coming, deservedly so imo.
No Stuart, it is you who “has to do better than that”: your incompetence at reading a detailed engineering analysis (such as NIST’s report on WTC7, for example) is evidence of nothing.
Your comments clearly reveal said incompetence, in case you’re wondering.
A Popular Mechanics article that addresses none of the the anomalies the collapse raises is enough to satisfy you?
It is, as the article reports a unique event. There have been numerous high rise fires around the world and none of them caused collapses. Done any firefighting OAB? Thought not.
Do you suppose any of those buildings contained office furnishings? You know they most probably did.
To cause a structural failure of the steel encased in concrete columns requires very high temperatures. These typically do not occur for sustained periods in office block fires. The fuel is exhausted or fails to burn in such a way as to maintain the 1000 degree plus temperatures for long enough. To obtain the effect would have required the building to act somewhat like a chimney or blast furnace – blast furnaces being a contrivance invented because ordinary fires do not reach temperatures that melt steel. Had the building chimneyed video would have shown this.
The clincher is probably the conjecture about the decibel level of thermite charges – no witness reports of explosions the report claims. Human attention is a focused phemonon and people on the spot at the time may have been slightly distracted. But an engineer would look for robust physical evidence rather than bystander conjecture.
But since you’re so pro OAB – you’d better tell us something to enlighten us.
No Stuart, I’ve cited NIST’s WTC7 analysis. If you can’t demonstrate it’s flawed using appropriate engineering calculations your reckons have no standing.
I’m happy to let them speak for me in this matter.
Long on rhetoric, short on Maths. Pack a sad, Stu.
Personally, I’m pretty sure US foreign policy was a contributing factor (not as much as the lame tanties of wannabe hero boys who think daesh are the solution, but still), and the buildings collapsed exactly as the various engineering reports describe.
Can’t debate with someone too frightened to put up any evidence – but that would require you to have read and understood the NIST report. And I don’t think the NIST report is the basis of your disagreement for some reason.
Let’s be clear here – I don’t have all the evidence on 9/11 – it’s not really a big deal for me, but I have read the substance of shortcomings of the NIST report.
The first and largest is that NIST is not a professional engineering body – it was a political assemblage like FEMA, and thus it didn’t follow the kinds of processes that engineers usually would. Most specifically it had a tight timeframe to report in, whereas engineers usually want to get to the bottom of things however long that might take.
There was a lot of computer modelling – but computer modelling is not necessarily reflective of reality. Even among impartial operators there is a temptation to adjust data points until you arrive at the solution you desire – a criticism that was made of climactic models that predicted global warming.
The prevailing engineering criticism of the NIST report considers the collapse anomalous. The building imploded symetrically – this is not an easy feat to achieve – the leading experts on it, demolitions engineers, build very complex firing plans to achieve it, and their impression of film of the building is generally that it was demolished.
If it were demolished the support beams would typically be cut with thermite charges or hexagen cutting bars. This would produce the symmetrical implosion that a randomly occurring natural fire would be unlikely to replicate.
Such a demolition would leave ample chemical and particulate evidence. There is evidence of thermite microspheres consistent with demolition, but it is contested, a debate which I imagine neither of us is qualified to parse.
a criticism that was made of climactic models that predicted global warming.
Svante Arrhenius’ adjusted the data of his global circulation models until they produced warming, and that’s the reason they accurately predicted the consequences of the greenhouse effect?
Or are you talking about the models the IPCC cites, which predict the lower range of consequences?
The capacity to adjust results makes them deservedly suspect.
But the object of climactic modelling was originally to understand the interrelations of complex systems, not to produce evidentiary quality outcomes to sway a political debate.
They were useful for that. More refined models eventually become predictive and reliable – but those of us who are not climate scientists cannot determine how reliable they are.
We do better with robust concrete data like glacier shrinkage, vegetation patterns, weather event frequency and so forth.
& CV agreed – the thing about NIST is that they were a Bush creation, and Bush was not overattached to the truth, as various WMD pronouncements established.
Funny how you are confident in your opinion of NIST’s work and then fail to summarise it.
Or perhaps you’re dishonest as opposed to incompetent, in which case I suppose it’s not really funny, eh.
My personal experience of your unethical rhetoric suggests the latter, but that doesn’t really matter: Occam’s Razor provides your inability to present the Maths involved as sufficient to support the former hypothesis, and charity does the rest.
@Stuart – Svante Arrhenius published his model of the atmosphere in 1896. Everything he predicted has occurred, within the limits of accuracy provided by the model.
This is the sense of George Box’s aphorism – “all models are wrong, some are useful”.
To criticise NIST’s model as not describing the exact minutiae of the collapse of WTC7 is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of what models are for: they assist curiosity.
Of course, in the stupid world where engineers are in league with the Illuminatii this cuts no ice. Still, maths, eh. Got any?
But no, – I don’t have any maths on building 7. Nor do I need any.
What math explains the presence of thermite microspheres?
If they were present in large quantities as some chemists and engineers state then no amount of modelling can overturn the presumption that thermite explosives were present.
I’d love, personally, to have been in a position to check out samples for myself, but what I have is hearsay from two groups of engineers. One group has a potential political motive to support the establishment story, the other may be provocative trouble makers for all I know. Still, NIST should have done the tests.
There were the Moscow apartment bombings of 1999 as a precedent, and the buildings in the Twin Towers district were plausible targets for anarchist terrorist demolition.
To criticise NIST’s model as not describing the exact minutiae of the collapse of WTC7 is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of what models are for: they assist curiosity.
Actually, engineering modelling (aka simulation) is used to determine how engineering structures will perform under different loading, stress and event scenarios.
It is used to help determine many things from ‘buildability’, normal engineering performance, materials cost reduction and of course, evaluation of the design in catastrophic failure.
Yes, you are not an expert on thermite, nor iron rich spheres. That being so, see point 1 on the number of engineers who would have to be bribed forever to keep them quiet and incurious.
No, actually, yawny yawn yawn, believe whatever you like and say a prayer for poor old Schiller and the dummheit.
I think you underestimate the effect of the media consensus at the time – it was about two years before any media could look critically at anything the Bush administration did.
Whether by chance or by design Bush had the perfect situation to launch his middle eastern adventures, which at least in terms of the Iraq invasion seem not to have been justified by the events of 9/11.
No, I’m not an expert on thermite microspheres, but I could probably determine their presence or absence. This was an important historical event as well as a crime scene, I’d expect it to have been explored thoroughly – but the NIST report does not give that impression. Nor am I alone in saying so.
The bribery thing is perhaps not as clear as black and white. After a time a report tends to be accepted. You seem to claim some kind of academic mantle but your acceptance of it is based on its authority, not its content. You haven’t checked the math, and I presume no-one has bribed you. Engineers are busy, and 9/11 truth fixations are probably not career enhancing.
But something is anomalous about it being the only highrise to have collapsed due to fire. People will continue to look for evidence – and the chance that Bush manufactured this event as blithely as he manufactured Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction makes the search somewhat consequential.
Yeah I always figured that in the absence of a provenance in National Party circles in his youth that was always a bunch of Crosby Textor shit, like the salary donated to charity. No provenance, no proof. Part of the package the country was sold when Michelle Boag and The Roundtable imported him.
Yeah, he was so into politics that he can’t remember what he was thinking in ’81. Nothing apparently.
Good point – it’s good pāhekā get to nut out their side. Middle class conservation and indigenous rights have pretty much always been in conflict and with the effects of climate change being felt AND the denial of government to do actual meaningful things many people of the left will be faced with stark and uncomfortable choices and decisions. As a Māori activist I also feel the toughness of those choices and I’m her to say that are FALSE. The dicotomy is not true both can be protected but it will take a change of attitude. The one that needs to change is that indigenous rights are expendable – they arent.
marty mars, that this guy made an effort like this must be encouraging for the future don’t you think? Combine this with the generation coming through now who have been raised with far more te reo and te ao maori and the older bigotries must be beginning to disappear.
Yes it is encouraging. I hope people reach out and offer the guy a course. Imagine him coming back next election being fluent or much better than his current level.
Maybe this might be true if he actually tried. Getting “some Maori woman” in the office to translate his bio is not much of a try, and the fact it appears that he doesn’t even know this women or what she does speaks even more volumes of his mindset and level of commitment to the betterment of society.
UK, Danish military admit to air striking Syrian Government Army
The US, Brits and the Danes have admitted their involvement in a prolonged US airstrike which killed 62 Syrian Army soldiers, wounded over 100 and destroyed Syrian army equipment and installations.
The airstrike hit a Syrian Government forward operating base which had been besieged on all sides by ISIS/ISIL for the last 2 years.
Immediately after the western airstrike the militants launched an attack and overran the Syrian Government base, leading to accusations that the US had in this case acted as the ISIL airforce.
Russia immediately called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council; the US said that such a meeting was unnecessary and that it was a “stunt” by Russia.
Yes, after 4 attack runs over 20 minutes, the Western attack stopped. The position was then immediately overrun by an ISIS/ISIL offensive.
Do you know anyone personally who has the level of prescience and control you regularly ascribe to the US military?
Fire control is a basic element of military operations.
These attacks are monitored by NATO and the US in real time by satellite. It wasn’t some squad or platoon which was hit as a target of opportunity and then later found out to be friendly.
It was a long standing forward base.
In addition, it appears that the target would also have been reviewed and cleared by Australians, Danes and Brits.
IMO the Pentagon has wanted from day one the ceasefire Kerry signed with Lavrov a few weeks ago to fail.
It’s a fucking static base McFlock that the Syrian Government had been defending from for fucking years; the Americans have also hit Syrian forces in this same immediate area with airstrikes prior to 2016.
It’s a frontline target. Get the camera angle off by a degree when you estimate its position, it’s fucked. If nobody tells the yanks that it’s friendly, it’s fucked. If it’s misidentified as enemy rather than dodgy third party with a common enemy, it’s fucked. If the yanks fail to pass on to the controllers that it’s friendly, it’s fucked. If the controllers fuck up the fire mission or plug the wrong numbers into the gps, it’s fucked.
The don’t get targeting data from the intrinsic intelligence of the universe.
Oh, so you’re a theatre critic or a eunuch: you know what needs to be done, you can tell people where they went wrong, you know when you’ve seen it done badly, but you can’t do it yourself.
He hasn’t said anything about it, but to be fair, the various western democracies involved in the attack on Syrian government forces killed military personnel of a murderous dicatorship, while the authoritarian nationalist regime involved in the attack on an aid convoy killed humanitarian aid workers. Obviously a person is going to rate one of those incidents as much worse than the other, and CV has done his rating…
Don’t propagandise about Assad’s “murderous regime” when the West is drowning in culpability for the destruction of the Syrian state.
The basis for that “stability” you’re so keen on in Syria was the efficient and ruthless torture and murder of the Assad regime’s opponents and anyone associated with them. For my money, that warrants the term “murderous dictatorship.” Your imaginings of how the uprising against that murderous dictatorship was somehow a plot by Western governments, on the other hand, doesn’t warrant some bullshit exercise in false equivalence.
Psycho Milt, I don’t particularly give a flying fuck if in fact Assad was disappearing hundreds of protestors into his secret prison system.
The US/Saudi/Turkey/Qatar used that – and their own agent provocateurs – to provide a pretext to fuel an illegal, geopolitically motivated war of regime change via Jihadist proxies. A war which has killed 400,000 to 500,000 Syrians, displaced several million more, and left an entire country on the verge of imploding just like the other Clinton pet project, Libya.
That’s the real fucking crime here.
Maybe someone even as morally blind as you can finally figure out where the truly “murderous regimes” lie in this picture.
Imaginary crimes you’ve convinced yourself of aren’t the “real” crime when compared to actual real crimes. And I don’t need lectures on morality from someone who thinks a friendly fire incident against military personnel is a duplicitous attack that warrants a lengthy diatribe while a friendly fire incident against an aid convoy isn’t worth a mention.
So its not a real crime that the US and NATO have allowed NATO member Turkey to fund, restock, regroup and rearm head chopping Islamist fighters across Turkish borders for the last four plus years?
Thats a real crime which has caused tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Syrian deaths.
And no mate, despite your delusions, its very real, up to and including the ISIS oil tankers crossing the Turkish border, inconvenient as these facts may be to your stupidly misplaced outrage.
UN rows back from calling attack on aid convoy as being due to an airstrike, Russia/Syria deny involvement of air forces, say that attack damage to convoy not consistent with blast damage and cratering of an airstrike.
However it seems that some people still remain too quick to swallow the over-simplified anti-Assad, anti-Russian feed of the corporate MSM
Could you tell the difference? So you rely on the guys on the ground communicating their position to you. When that has to happen through three or more seperate command structures, mistakes will be made.
the old joke from WW2 was “When the English fly over, the Germans hit the ground. When the Germans fly over, the English and Americans hit the ground. When the Americans fly over, everyone hits the ground”.
I think that the Pentagon and the White House are at loggerheads over what to do in Syria. Obama and Kerry want to leave a legacy of co-operating with the Russians to destroy ISIS/ISIL.
The Pentagon neocons refuse to have anything to do with that and are undermining the efforts of both the President and the Sec State John Kerry.
I missed the duplicity in this specific case, although given Sun Tzu’s famous dictum – the art of war is deception – it would be unusual if the Pentagon weren’t from time to time, lying.
The same is true of all the other players.
This, on the other hand, has SNAFU written all over it.
#pt: Initial reports suggest 10/20 aid trucks are totally destroyed & all staff are either wounded or dead.The convoy was to feed 78,000.— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) September 19, 2016
Omar Barakat the director of the Syrian Red Crescent had been killed by the bombing on a convoy of aid in western Aleppo with more than 25 barrels and rocket
If your not wealthy, chinese and donating millions to National you can fuck off, we don’t care you created a wifi network and are a extremely highly university skilled IT person who made the area connected which helps business, in fact everyone, we don’t count that sort of thing here.
Donations lady and if you havn’t got one for us you can fuck off..eh?
“Larsen originally came to New Zealand on a long term business visa with plans for a personal development business which did not work out. Instead, she got involved with community projects, including helping to get internet access for rural areas.
Larsen said the problem was although she had a degree [a PhD in telecommunications], she was not actively using that degree to earn more than $45,000 which meant she did not qualify as a skilled immigrant. ”
reporting on immigration issues is routinely utter shit. This likely has very little to do with MPs and much more to do with a failure to meet policy or a failure to carry out required steps under the visa category
in short – never believe a single article about immigration.
This will be up soon everywhere, for the fact probably that Hekia is leaving for a study of privatisation in the us under the disguise of education research..
We gonna have to pay for our kids educations soon..and on the minimum wage..
Is it time to get the AR-15 out yet, I need protection from my government..one thing the US got right maybe, just.., gun laws. I got to protect myself and kids from these psychopaths surely.
Global funding eh, so do we put our kids up for something, is that like crowd funding? Like a photo on the internet.., a stunning pic of your kid and see how much you get for it?
I could PR, Not too sure about an SKS CV, as with my deep knowledge of guns due to all the hours of gun games I play the SKS is slow and gives a high recoil.
My preferred method of cleaning out the garbage would probably be a grenade.
Or perhaps as in BattleField I could just plant a shit load of mines around the house to keep them away.
God help election time if some idiot from National happens to have the misfortune to knock at my door. I may brew up a special concoction of mine I use for the garden, you know fermented seafood that sort of thing 🙂 Give him a grenade alright.
Well as long as you have the licence and then endorsement to buy a MSSA then its all good and good luck to you though I really should let you know the authorities tend to look down on people being shot
This is one of the problems of PC linguistic imperialism – there are some gender linked behaviours that nevertheless ought to attract condemnation. Of the two I think the ‘boys with guns’ trope is the more sociopathic, but doubtless there are vicious condemnations of females that also bear the inconvenient ring of truth.
I’m not offended by you talking about my boner, I’m ackshully quite proud of my boner and I feel it should be talked about more but I am confused because I haven’t mentioned my boner on this thread
I’ve got a feeling the phrase ‘Can you reference my boner’ may become a TS go to put down in future. Definitely funnier than ‘yes, dear’.
On a more serious matter, talking about using weapons against political opponents, even with tongue in cheek, is crossing a line, people. Please take care with your words.
It’s getting bad in NZ when old hippies are getting so pissed off with the actions of the government and what this once caring land has become, that he actually experiences emotions of anger.
Declining NZ – 1st world to 5th? Stop the rot! Stop the rort!
3 Fish stocks unknown – information faulty.
MPI making deals to try and get some precise information thru observers, upsetting level playing field.
30% of catch may be thrown back – probably dead or maimed – as it is presently uneconomic to harvest.
Quota system not working for the health of sea harvest – but no 💡 to introduce newer appropriate and necessary legislation.
4 People in severe pain and left unable to work and earn after having metal-on-metal hip replacements. World recall by Johnson and Johnson (a trusted company and brand) after metalosis from the two metals cobalt and something else (my ignorance would be similar to those of the recipients who would rely on the integrity of supply
company and their specialists).
Specialists were advised about recall but government does not make it mandatory for them to advise their clients. 500 of these hip-ops supplied to NZ, about 400 used and about 25 applying to sue for their rightful share of payout from Johnson and Johnson to help with their disablement and suffering, now and almost certainly, in future. ACC rules allow suing for punitive and exemplary damages but still the decision of the Courts is needed. Don’t know why. Again ignorance would be widespread amongst all who haven’t training in this particular field of sorrows. Believed that many people still not informed about having a toxic implant inside them. E&OE
Hide had a grizzle piece in The Horrid on Sunday about how his holiday as a wee boy was ruined because of Cook Straight ferry workers’ industrial action and presumably sees all worker representation evil as a result.
Under the current government policy of floating bizarre and discredited ideas for industry and public consumption before sniffing the wind and canning said idea, unions have never had it better.
Well of course the unions would reject anything the National government said, I don’t think anyone would surprised about the teachers unions putting ideology above kids best interests
What PR? Do you actually agree that Key’s Nat government are; “putting ideology above kids best interests”? Or did you just not understand RR’s comment?
Either way does not convince me to pay heed to anything you have to say on the topic of education.
You got it round the wrong way. We’re putting childrens best interests before National Party ideology. Just remember that teachers working conditions are children’s learning conditions. Make it too hard for teachers to do their job and the children are the ones that suffer.
You have a peculiar Pink Floyd view of the world no doubt fashioned from where you get your opinions. That somehow NZ teachers are out to destroy kids.
Still no evidence of that provided by you. 99% against global funding isn’t some sort of anomaly. There could not be a greater mandate rejecting Parata’s, the current government’s, and your opinion unless it were 100%.
As You_fool describes below, how can the entire teaching profession be wrong, while one proven incompetent minister who never taught a classroom in her life, and uses google for education policy, be right?
Oh please, NCEA was the end of the world, Tomorrows Schools was the end of the world, I’m guessing it was the end of the world when NZ changed to metric and the dollar
The teaching unions default position when it comes to National or change is the same, against it (whatever it is)
NZ has slid in international rankings with all these changes. Teachers I guess want to arrest a further slide. You be the judge – it’s what you like to do.
Novapay PR – and every other lamebrained educational disaster the Gnats have come up with – stupid wasteful ideas that have not advanced education. The Gnats have long since burned any shreds of credibility they could have had with teachers and thus the unions, as democratic organisations, are obliged to oppose their every ill-conceived whim.
NCEA and Tomorrow’s Schools were both incompetent mismanagement of the education system, and so is this. It was correctly rejected by the teacher’s union.
Why not ? They are all self-optimising individuals in a free market. Just teach the “kids” how to think rationally and get the perfect information “they need” and all’s sweet. And grades achievement skills too, for “teacher’s ” sake.
How is a funding regime that will see schools having to balance numbers of teachers and support staff against ever increasing operational costs thus seeing class sizes increase and support staff numbers dropping in the children’s best interests.
What evidence do you have that National’s ideological experimentation is in childrens’ best interests? Because they say it is? There doesn’t seem to be any grounding in research of successful practice in their adoption of failed overseas trials.
The current government’s strategy toward public service is to throw any old idea at it in the hope it will stick. Where education is concerned however it’s not a case of it being broken, because the teaching and the curriculum is fine, it’s the neoliberal policy of keeping the disenfranchised crushed which makes home life in certain communities very hard for kids to study in.
No, your response here is a parroting of noted anti-worker collective shills like Slater, Hooton, Farrar, and Hide. It would be good if you could have a thought of your own once in a while.
It always surprises me that we train up people to teach our kids, ensuring that they have the best skills, knowledge and techniques to teach the next generation and then routinely ignore them on how best to actually do the job of teaching.
Yes… And may I point out to Poxish Rogue that the PPTA did NOT oppose NCEA, despite the reservations of many members. By and large PPTA has supported NCEA. PPTA does not automatically oppose every proposed change.
Poxish Rogue demonstrates an abysmal ignorance of what motivates good teachers. Engaging with their students and caring about them is the first element. And the vast majority of those good teachers belong to and support the PPTA, just to forestall the crap argument that the union is only there to protect incompetent teachers. Good teachers want to protect their students from pernicious, ideologically-based Government policies that have shown no benefits overseas, and will fight tooth and nail to do so.
Just read an article, drone with arms could lift toddler..
imaginings of dirty old pedies in raincoats lining up at hobby shops comes to mind.
I mean why do they print articles like that? Some sick Journo having a fantasy moment?
I know you know what..some jobsworth is going to have to make a law/bylaw now, stating all drones have to have a , ” CAUTION do not lift toddlers or young children, dogs cats or your grandma with this device” warning sticker placed on them.
This is part of Part One of Five by Katherine Dolan who has left NZ looking for something better.
It would be good if people could see it as from a female who feels and sees it both as a female,and a NZr who assesses that we all should expect better. And also not be like some of the commenters who look at themselves, their own family and locale which they find satisfactory, and who then reject it as being untrue. There is an opportunity to see beyond our own little personal understandings to the truth of the bigger picture.
Part one of New Zealand is no paradise: Sex, Drugs and Denial, a five-part series about growing up hating New Zealand by Katherine Dolan, written for Stuff Nation. And after being homeless in Canada, swaddled in black in Saudi Arabia and living hand to mouth in the Balkans, why do I still consider my New Zealand a uniquely lonely and uncomfortable place?
I say “my New Zealand” because the place I grew up perhaps no longer exists. I hope it doesn’t, because rural New Zealand in the 1980s and ’90s was a puritanical, misogynist, authoritarian, anti-intellectual, alcohol-dependent society that specialised in casual brutality.
I grew up in a New Zealand that worshipped the Spartan virtues: stoicism, masculinity, physical strength, group cohesion, terseness.
Pony-tail guy wields the TPP as a threat to the US in his most recent speak/slur on the world stage.
My question is if he’s that afraid of Chinese influence in the region, why doesn’t he address the massive influence of cheap, laundered, and ill-gotten Chinese money flooding into the New Zealand residential property market?
Yet again, dropped-soap guy says one thing yet does another and fails to recognise he doesn’t stand for the people of the Asia Pacific region at all.
It would be interesting to know if there has been more to this trip he is on than batting for his former enemy and parading around the UN …. maybe Bilderberg?
What I do know is the international community don’t take him seriously. Obama is on record wondering why Australia listens to him. Clark is tainted in UN circles because of her association with Key and his anti-worker government.
“What I do know is the international community don’t take him seriously”
Really? Do you have anything other than your overactive imagination to justify this, and the comments that follow this, statement?
Helen Clark certainly seemed very grateful for Key’s supporting he candidacy on TV last night? Is there something you know that she doesn’t?
Obama certainly didn’t to seem to hold the views you subscribe to when he was overheard talking to the Australian PM did he?
Obama did hold the views I subscribe to. He questioned Turnbull on wether he listened to the New Zealanders, and followed by saying Key was a great guy to play golf with. Damned by faint praise on the second part, for sure.
Fair enough that you query there Alwyn but what we’ve got here is a ‘machine’. Dear Helen, whom (for my sins) I’d re-vote for at the drop of a hat…..reasons later…..is part of that ‘machine’. “Hate and damn you today, hold you close and kiss you tomorrow.” There’s nothing as mind-altering as power/the prospect of it.
To wit, Marigold Barry when asked why she was standing in North Shore, was it?…… produced the howler that she she had “a great deal to offer……” Hmm, Hmm…..Ahem.
What is wrong with an actual train? Countless developed and developing countries use them and have used them for many decades since the beginning of the industrial revolution. They are a very efficient form of transport, local, public, and otherwise.
That New Zealand has not kept up with this technology is our own fault and one which must be paid for now.
especially if you import some steel from china that comes with a ‘good quality’ certification. Yeah, cheap must be good and practical.
in saying that, Wuppertal has had a sky gondola since the beginning of the last century, mainly due to the roads being so small that a tram or bus would not pass. its quite awesome fun taking a trip over the Wupper.
NZers always seem to choose the short-term cheap, worst option and long term most expensive option. It doesn’t help when the politicians keep telling us we can have things ever cheaper.
So 4,000+ sky cabs reaching the cbd every hour. Sorry I can’t see it. Then there’s the issue of keeping something with so many moving parts running freely. Any human error or emergency in one cab holds up the whole system and everyone is left dangling in the air. Potential nightmare scenarios are high.
Due to their simplistic design they are low maintenance.
Nonetheless, one would assume they would have procedures in place in the event of a breakdown. For example, units would have an auxiliary motor or could be pushed or towed by another unit.
Simplistic designs tend to be more low maintenance as there is generally less to go wrong.
The lifespan and overall maintenance requirements of the network itself will largely come down to the construction materials used. One would expect they will be aware of the elements, thus requirements.
It would probably be like the monorail that used to run in Sydney.
They finally scrapped it in 2013, from memory.
It was estimated to be about 40% more expensive than even light rail would have been. I think the idea that it would be “cheaper than rail” would prove to be someone’s wet dream.
Of course the cost estimate would probably be like the one some of the Wellington Regional Council candidates have. They just claim that we could have light rail at half the cost determined in an evaluation of the idea. Bloody idiots the lot of them.
No train expert here, but the big advantage to me is that you wouldn’t have to construct a rail corridor through Auckland, this could be tacked onto the side of existing roads or run up the middle.
Yep. I think public servants top salaries need to be capped at $100k. Provides a good living standard without being over the top as what we have now is.
Kermadecs and the Foreshore.
Is this just another instance of Key not having any knowledge of history. His tendency of governing in the now reflects his poor judgement. His allowing Smith to be anywhere near the Kermadecs issue in the first place would seem to bear this out. The sidelining of Smith from the Kermadec issue should not come as a surprise to many – remember the Foreshore issue and the disgraceful grandstanding of Smith and Peter Dunne in Nelson.
Wow! thanks for the link – that is definitely well worth remembering, and certainly pertinent to the current clusterfuck. Smith, needs to be as far away from this as possible.
No it has a well documented history of Polynesian settlement or use. But it was abandoned hundreds of years before European arrival. So claims of customary use are nonsense.
Well the archeology I’m aware of is that there is no evidence of regular journeys, that raoul was settled for a period by eastern Polynesians (not Maori) but it was abandoned in the 15th century. Apart from a small number of flakes of obsidian there’s no evidence of any kind of ongoing transit between nz and the kermadecs.
Eastern Polynesian was the originating culture of Maori but that does not mean the people who travelled to the kermadecs and then onto Norfolk and lord Howe islands were Maori
Four flakes, from Raoul Island in the Kermadec Group, are identical to obsidian from Mayor Island, New Zealand. The four flakes, from a Polynesian settlement site between 450 and 640 years old, provide the first clear demonstration that Polynesians who had reached New Zealand had, as Maori tradition records, some success in return voyaging…
Read atholl Anderson in ‘ Tangata whenua An illustrated history ‘ a much more recent book that contains a summary of recent research.
There he says that no archeological evidence exists of return trips to eastern Polynesia despite the wealth of new and useful materials found in NZ. The people who went to the kermadecs likely left nz soon after arrival and then went on to Norfolk Island, lord Howe island and then New South Wales. Artefacts of these travels have been found but none going back east.
Polynesian people were there. I’m told they weren’t Maori. The Prime Minister is John Key – you should get out more, try Venezuela it would suit your thinking or lack there of.
He tells too many lies. That’s why I wondered if he’s the one spoon-feeding you.
Here’s RTM from the Kermadecs thread to set you straight:
…archaeologists have found obsidian from Mayor Island in the Bay of Plenty on Raoull, the largest of the Kermadec Islands, alongside recognisably Maori artefacts…
Now you know the facts make sure not to keep spreading the lies, there’s a dearie. You could even elect not to trust your source on other matters if you were smart.
Now there’s some expert trolling, behold! Peter Jackson has certainly done all right for himself, well done him, shame he had to shaft a bunch of NZ workers to get there, & a bit disappointing he hasn’t made a decent movie in over a decade (but hey, check out that new frame rate!).
Apparently David Seymour thinks tax payers need to fund a ‘Ministry of Men’.
How about a “Ministry of Vulnerable Men’? The Chief’s players, Tony Veitch and Nikolas Delegat can lodge complaint’s there about their appalling and unfair treatment from Women and the NZ political system. (sarc.)
He does actually make some good points:
“A Few Stats
Where once women were clearly marginalised, men are now behind in most social statistics. University graduates: women 60/40. Imprisonment: men 94/6. Life expectancy: women 84/80 (non-Maori), 77/73 (Maori). Suicide rate: men 74/16. We could go on. The only significant stat running against women is income (Men 53/47)”
So women are better educated, imprisoned less, live longer, but still earn less? How does that work without omitting criteria that doesn’t suit your narrative?
What narrative? That David Seymour has a point?
We have a Ministry for Women which seems to have two primary goals, gender pay equality, and reducing violence against Women. These are two very significant social ills that need addressing, but are they any more significant than our men growing up poorly educated with high imprisonment rates (I would suggest there is a link right there) and dying younger?
Well, the first step would be to see whether other socioeconomic or demographic factors have a greater correlation and causal relationship than “men”, and whether those factors are being independantly addressed by other responsible ministries.
By just ignoring the historic and current power imbalance within society and leaping upon arbitrary gender distinctions, your narrative of “what about teh menz” is shallow, venal, self-absorbed and stupid. If a targeted effort is needed, it should target the division that causes the power imbalance that causes the negative outcomes, which does not necessarily equate to the most obvious example of division within those outcomes.
Search for the confounding variable, not the one that matches your preconceptions.
See response to Sabine below. The gender links regarding education have already been identified, perhaps the idea of a ‘Ministry for Men’ doesn’t fit your preconceptions. Or perhaps it is just because of who raised the issue…
You’re welcome to demonstrate the systemic issues that make your whinge du jour a male issue rather than a cultural or socioeconomic issue. Because domestic violence and income disparities are direct results of historic treatment and social relegation of women. But men were always the main populators of prison, for example, even when women were little more than property. Prison isn’t a male problem it’s a social problem . Addressing it as a male problem restricts the list of observable solutions.
Damn, if those pesky women would just go back to the three K’s. Kinder, Kirche, Kueche.
Surely all would be good for the poor misunderstood man that fail in all other categories other then wages. Despite being lesser educated, more often imprisoned and live shorter yet they still earn more money.
For what its worth my wife earns more then I do but its my hope that one day I can finally achieve my dream of become a kept man, living off my wifes earnings
average Puckish Rogue, on average women earn less then man. And i really hope that we don’t have to re-hash this truth.
My partner also hopes he could be a kept man, however i have been telling him for years that i started working at an earlier age (cause girls will have husbands and need no stinkn higher education 🙂 ) as he did cause he got that higher education thingy, so if anyone is to be kept it would be me. But alas, i don’t really function well when kept and having to ask for stuff. So i go to work every day 🙂 and count my pennies.
Interestingly enough even though my wife makes more then me (its not a great deal more to be completely honest) I pretty much the financial decisions in our household because, in her words, its “I trust you” and when it comes to decisions about our retirement its “I’m not interested in that, I’ll leave it up to you”
prison? so that has got nothing to do with man offending at a higher rate?
early death? maybe you want to complain to certain businesses that don’t implement safety for their workers, the forestry industry comes to mind for once.
low education? Are you saying that boys in NZ are not going to the same schools as girls? Are you saying that schools in NZ are discriminating against boys? Or may it be that boys often don’t get the support they need from their families, where as girls know that if they don’t finish schools they will never ever be anything other the a min wage slave? (the boys in my partners family who have not finished school did so cause ‘school was boring’ and ‘ i am not learning anything’ and ‘i don’t need this i can be like my dad’).
suicide: this is the one thing in NZ that always stumps me, it is such an issue and the country as a collective refuses to talk about it and do something about it. . (the mind does not understand)
Good for you Sabine, at least you are starting to ask the questions that need to be asked about the hard raw life so very many men get..
Though I do worry that there is a lack of consistency when similar such questions are put about other sectors of our population, for example your question one and Maori and prison…. we know the question is not that simple is it ….
at least the issues are getting out there though
cos you know, I don’t want to die early just because I’m male, nor go to prison – but that is the reality for us
You’re not going to die early because you’re male, or go to prison because you’re male. Statistical differences at the population level tell us nothing about particular individuals, that’s why the whole “paid 12% less because you’re a woman” thing was a crock of shit. We don’t need a “sent to prison because you’re a man” crock of shit to even things out…
but frankly do not blame the success of the girls to the failure of the boys.
or let me rephrase this, would the failure of your son be the result of your daughters success? or would you rather your daughter pretend to fail so your son could be successful?
If and when women commit more crimes and are apprehended for it they will end up in prison.
This has got nothing to do with Maori men being more likely to be arrested then white men – this has more to do with institutionalized racism, alive and very well in NZ as recent cases have shown again. btw. no girl forced that rich boy to beat a women unconscious, and no girl forced that judge to give that rich boy a slap with a very wet bus ticket.
as for you dying early, eat well, drink in moderation, laugh a lot and you may live long, do not offend, don’t piss off popo and you will not go to prison.
Again, this has got nothing to do with women.
care to comment that the women despite it all still earn less then men? or is it that men should earn more cause men? 🙂
“low education? Are you saying that boys in NZ are not going to the same schools as girls? Are you saying that schools in NZ are discriminating against boys?”
It may have a link to the ratio’s of Female/Male teachers in our system,:
“The dominant research perspective is that connected to issued of male identity formation – specifically how boys see themselves as learners. Much of the research suggests that issues of gender identity are the most significant area to understand and address in boys’ education issues. In this approach, consideration is given to how boys perceive themselves as learners in contemporary classrooms and how this translates into educational achievement.
It also claimed in some research that aspects of education are ‘feminised’ and inherently biased towards the achievement of girls” http://www.ero.govt.nz/publications/boys-education-good-practice-in-secondary-schools/introduction/
Perhaps the boys in your family were ‘bored’ and didn’t learn anything because the teaching methods being used were not conducive to their learning requirements.
This could be the root cause of why male incarceration rates and suicide rates are so high also. If you don’t feel like you fit in…if only we had a Ministry that could be researching these links further.
so who is stopping the men from educating boys? Who is stopping men from going into the teaching profession? Why not more boys only schools?
as for the teaching methods, is that the fault of girls? Or is that the fault of governments? And the fact that maybe some kids are not made for long studies? you will find if you search here that I am one who advocates for proper apprenticeships as i fully understand that not every one is made for the academics.
But is that the fault of girls?
I can’t and won’t comment on the suicide rates, as i stated above, i can not understand why NZ is refusing to have an open and honest discussion about it. Maybe it has to do with that stupid bull shit about ‘harden up’, have a beer mate ‘she’ll be alright’ attitude that is so prevalent in this country.
Maybe we should just have a Ministry for Vulnerable Humans.
But non of this has anything to do with Girls, how they do in school, how old they live and how much less they get paid then their male counterparts in equal roles.
“men don’t go into primary or early childhood education any more for obvs reasons.” – Coz the work is too hard? Can get better pay laying gravel on roads? Funny how most principals are males innit?
just sad then, how a few fuckwits have fucked it up for the men and the teaching profession. No?
I still believe that Gangnam Style reasons have more to do with it, namely that they pay is too lowly for men to even apply.
But I can see how some men may fear these accusations so much that all of the men refuse to be teachers. Especially when one considers the girls and their knobbly knees that adult male teachers must be protected from.
Primary teacher salaries
The current starting salary for a primary school teacher with a Bachelor’s teaching degree is $47,039.
Secondary teacher salaries
The current entry salary for a secondary school teacher who holds registration granted by The Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand and a New Zealand Qualifications Framework (NZQF) Level 7 subject or specialist qualification (the qualification must have at least 72 credits at Level 7) and a recognised teaching qualification is $50,268.
so essentially there is not a lot of pay involved in teaching, despite a high level of qualification demanded.
Might it not just be that many blokes look at teaching and go nah, can’t be arsed, to hard and not enough pay.
but hey, i can see where ‘i might get accused of inapropriate behaviour’ seems like an nicer out instead of saying i am not paid enough to bother with the badly educated kids of others.
Yeah, the pay isn’t stellar ether, other reasons include.
!. low pay.
2, Mainly Woman environment
3,Accusations of kiddy fiddling
4.Seems to be very little career prospects.
5. Getting hit on by kids Mothers.
6,Looked on with suspicion by a good percentage of the public.
The only positive is the amount of holidays you get.
!. low pay. – Well maybe if men were to join the service pay would go up?
2, Mainly Woman environment – Maybe if men were to join the service it would be a mixed environment?
3,Accusations of kiddy fiddling – both men and women have been found guilty of the offense, so really that is just a cheap cop out, also cops, doctors, sales people, it people and all other sorts of people have been accused and found guilty of the offense. so maybe men should just stay at home and never leave the house without an appropriate chaperone? A mother, wife, or aunty would do. Only old women of course. Lest you get accused?
4.Seems to be very little career prospects. – principal? become Hekia Parata Minister of ‘Education’ at least you would be a Minister with teaching credentials?
5. Getting hit on by kids Mothers. – why no gay men have children in school?
6,Looked on with suspicion by a good percentage of the public. -you have a very low opinion of a. yourself, and b. the public
The only positive is the amount of holidays you get. – yei, upside.
t
but the reason there are no more men in teaching is men like yourself, as it is you who would taunt the male teacher with your bogus accusations, your bogus snide remarks and your bullshit suspicion.
But it lets you blame the women for not doing their job education your son or your future son should he fail in school. Cause while a man may have been better we can fully understand why no man would want that low pay, low career option, surrounded by women, low regards type o job.
Hi m pledger, I read recently, a few essays on suicide in aotearoa.
Disconnection from community seemed to be a strong factor in suicide.
That is not to deny the part alcohol may play.
I agree with Sabine, the silence around this issue is not helping.
Re-upping for Don Jr Twitter: He said his mom had "great boobs" when he toasted her at her wedding https://t.co/F6ik5S6tPE— Betsy Woodruff (@woodruffbets) September 20, 2016
Also one time Don Jr got intv'd by a radio host who has said interracial sex is bad and slavery was good https://t.co/F6ik5ROSY6— Betsy Woodruff (@woodruffbets) September 20, 2016
A man who had blown up bombs in New York, and shot multiple times at the police. He is wounded and then arrested.
An African-American is shot dead for walking or driving and is unarmed.
Anyone else see the blatant contradiction?
Excellent comment Ianmac ! Whom amongst us can’t see the blatant contradiction ? “Black Lives” DON’T matter. In contrast to other rotten lives which DO matter. If only for the purposes of the show trial which follows.
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Chris Bishop’s bill has stirred up a hornets nest of opposition. Photo: Lynn Grieveson for The KākāTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate from the last day included:A crescendo of opposition to the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill is ...
Monday left me brokenTuesday, I was through with hopingWednesday, my empty arms were openThursday, waiting for love, waiting for loveThe end of another week that left many of us asking WTF? What on earth has NZ gotten itself into and how on earth could people have voluntarily signed up for ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past week’s editions.State of humanity, 20242024, it feels, keeps presenting us with ever more challenges, ever more dismay.Do you give up yet? It seems to ask.No? How about this? Or this?How about this?Full story Share ...
Determining the hardest sport in the world is a subjective matter, as the difficulty level can vary depending on individual abilities, physical attributes, and experience. However, based on various factors including physical demands, technical skills, mental fortitude, and overall accomplishment, here is an exploration of some of the most challenging ...
The allure of sport transcends age, culture, and geographical boundaries. It captivates hearts, ignites passions, and provides unparalleled entertainment. Behind the spectacle, however, lies a fascinating world of financial investment and expenditure. Among the vast array of competitive pursuits, one question looms large: which sport carries the hefty title of ...
Introduction Pickleball, a rapidly growing paddle sport, has captured the hearts and imaginations of millions around the world. Its blend of tennis, badminton, and table tennis elements has made it a favorite among players of all ages and skill levels. As the sport’s popularity continues to surge, the question on ...
Abstract: Soccer, the global phenomenon captivating millions worldwide, has a rich history that spans centuries. Its origins trace back to ancient civilizations, but the modern version we know and love emerged through a complex interplay of cultural influences and innovations. This article delves into the fascinating journey of soccer’s evolution, ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Magdalena M.E. Bunbury, Postdoctoral Researcher, James Cook University Burial with a horse at the Rákóczifalva site, Hungary (8th century AD).Sándor Hegedűs, Hungarian National Museum, CC BY How do we understand past societies? For centuries, our main sources of information have been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Willis, Postdoctoral Researcher, CSIRO Xavier Boulenger/Shutterstock In the two decades to 2019, global plastic production doubled. By 2040, plastic manufacturing and processing could consume as much as 20% of global oil production and use up 15% of the annual carbon ...
With our collective remembrance, and steadfast belief in our common humanity, we strengthen our hope and resolve to do what we can to foster dialogue and understanding, and to heal divisions in our pursuit of peace. ...
Principal reasons for the opposition is the loss of the public’s democratic right to have “a fair say” and the vital need for a government free from corruption, said Casey Cravens of Dunedin, president of the New Zealand Federation of Freshwater ...
Never mind the scoreboard – in the 2000 Bledisloe Cup decider, the real trans-Tasman battle was won before kickoff.First published in 2016. The dawn of the new millennium was a dark time for the All Blacks. Their final game pre-Y2K was a 22-18 loss to South Africa in the ...
I’m on the wrong side of 40, I never pursued creative work and now my job is killing my soul. Help! Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,May I start with the least original conversation opener you’re likely to hear around the motu at the moment, particularly in Wellington: ...
“Never again - No AUKUS” was the message of the wreath laid at this morning’s national ANZAC Day commemorative service at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park this morning by the Stop AUKUS group. ...
Until this month, Auckland swimmer Hazel Ouwehand had never met a qualifying time in an Olympic event for a New Zealand team, even as a junior. Now she’s very likely off to the Paris Olympics after swimming well under the qualifying standard in the 100m butterfly twice – both in ...
While Anzac Day has experienced a resurgence in recent years, our other day of remembrance has slowly faded from view.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand. Original illustrations by Hope McConnell.First published in 2022.The high school’s head girl and ...
Australian and New Zealand volunteers fought together in the Waikato War, yet still its place in the Anzac tradition is unacknowledged by our defence forces or Returned Services Association.First published in 2018.When I was a boy cub I attended Anzac Day services in the South Auckland suburb of ...
A poem by Wellington writer Tayi Tibble.Hoki Mai She kisses him goodbye with her eyes still wet and alight from their last swim in the Awatere river. At the train station celebration, she leads the Kapa Haka but her voice keeps breaking under and over itself like waves. ...
A poem from Bill Manhire’s 2017 book of verse Some Things to Place in a Coffin.My World War I Poem Inside each trench, the sound of prayer. Inside each prayer, the sound of digging. Image courtesy of Auckland War Memorial Museum. ...
There are three books I have wolfed down in one sitting over the last two years. Colleen Maria Lenihan’s gorgeous and sad debut Kōhine, Noelle McCarthy’s memoir Grand about becoming her mother and then unbecoming her, and now Hine Toa, a staunch yet gentle self-portrait by living legend Ngāhuia te ...
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Asia Pacific Report Students and activist staff at Australia’s University of Sydney (USyd) have set up a Gaza solidarity encampment in support of Palestinians and similar student-led protests in the United States. The camp was pitched as mass graves, crippled hospitals, thousands of civilian deaths and the near-total destruction of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James B. Dorey, Lecturer in Biological Sciences, University of Wollongong Australian teddy bear bees are cute and fluffy, but get a look at that massive (unbarbed) stinger! James Dorey Photography Most of us have been stung by a bee and we ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Roberts, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong Aussie~mobs/FlickrVictor Farr, a private in the 1st Infantry Battalion, was among the first to land at Anzac Cove just before dawn on April 25 1915. Victor Farr ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Gregory Moore I had the good fortune to care for the sugar gum at The University of Melbourne’s Burnley Gardens in Victoria where I worked for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra BagzhanSadvakassov/Upsplash, CC BY-SA Australia’s inflation rate has fallen for the fifth successive quarter, and it’s now less than half of what it was back in late 2022. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Ong ViforJ, ARC Future Fellow & Professor of Economics, Curtin University Just when we think the price of rentals could not get any worse, this week’s Rental Affordability Snapshot by Anglicare has revealed low-income Australians are facing a housing crisis like ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meighen McCrae, Associate Professor of Strategic & Defence Studies, Australian National University American and Australian stretcher bearers working together near the front line during the Battle of Hamel in 1918.Australian War Memorial While the AUKUS alliance is new, the Australian-American partnership ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tracey Holmes, Professorial Fellow in Sport, University of Canberra When the news broke last weekend that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive to a banned drug in early 2021 and were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympic Games six months later ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cally Jetta, Senior Lecturer and Academic Lead; College for First Nations, University of Southern Queensland Australian War MemorialAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people, as well as sensitive historical information ...
RNZ News Melissa Lee has been ousted from New Zealand’s coalition cabinet and stripped of the Media portfolio, and Penny Simmonds has lost the Disability Issues portfolio in a reshuffle. Climate Change and Revenue Minister Simon Watts will take Lee’s spot in cabinet. Simmonds was a minister outside of cabinet. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University laurello/Shutterstock Some reports and popular books, such as Bill Gammage’s Biggest Estate on Earth, have argued that extensive areas of Australia’s forests were kept open through frequent burning by ...
Analysis - Christopher Luxon framing the demotion of two ministers as the portfolios getting "too complex" is a charitable way of saying they weren't up to the job. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra With Jim Chalmers’s third budget on May 14, Australians will be looking for some more cost-of-living relief – beyond the tax cuts – although they have been warned extra measures will be modest. As ...
Analysis: Melissa Lee has lost the media portfolio and her spot in Cabinet after multiple failed attempts to find solutions for a media industry in crisis. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister announced Lee would be losing her spot in Cabinet along with her media and communications ministerial portfolio. The job ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Wilmot, Senior Lecturer, Film, Deakin University Among the many Australian who served during the second world war, there is a small group of people whose stories remain largely untold. These are the Muslim men and women who, while small in number, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Saunders, PhD Candidate, University of Canberra There has been much analysis and praise of Justice Michael Lee’s recent judgement in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case against Channel Ten. Many people were openly relieved to read Lee’s “forensic” and “nuanced” application of law ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathy Gibbs, Program Director for the Bachelor of Education, Griffith University zEdward_Indy/Shutterstock Around one in 20 people has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It’s one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in childhood and often continues into adulthood. ADHD is diagnosed ...
The Fairer Future coalition of anti-poverty groups say Whaikaha must be properly funded going forward, and that to argue that poor financial management of the new Ministry is a red herring by the Prime Minister. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is today congratulating Hon. Paul Goldsmith on his appointment as Minister for Media and Communications and urges him to rule out state intervention in the private media sector. ...
Asia Pacific Report The West Papuan resistance OPM leader has condemned Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden, accusing their countries of “six decades of treachery” over Papuan independence. The open letter was released today by OPM chairman Jeffrey P Bomanak on the eve of ANZAC Day ...
Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits and quirks of New Zealanders at large. This week: writer and one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2024, Lauren Groff.The book I wish I’d writtenIf I wish I’d written a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Fechner, Research Fellow, Social Marketing, Griffith University mavo/Shutterstock Imagine having dinner at a restaurant. The menu offers plant-based meat alternatives made mostly from vegetables, mushrooms, legumes and wheat that mimic meat in taste, texture and smell. Despite being given that ...
“Three Strikes is a dead-end policy proposed by a dead-end government. The Three Strikes law ignores the causes of crime, instead just brutalising people already crushed by the cost of living.” ...
By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist An Australian-born judge in Kiribati could well face deportation later this week after a tribunal ruling that he should be removed from his post. The tribunal’s report has just been tabled in the Kiribati Parliament and is due to be debated by MPs ...
With its clear mandate for police use, political nuances, and nuanced public trust, Denmark's insights provide valuable considerations for Australia and New Zealand. ...
Books editor Claire Mabey reviews poet Louise Wallace’s debut novel. A famous poet once said to me that he’s always suspicious when a poet publishes a novel. I never really understood why but maybe it’s something to do with cheating on your first form. Louise Wallace is a poet. She’s ...
For a few months at the turn of the millennium, TrueBliss burned bright as the biggest pop stars in the country. Alex Casey chats to two superfans who still hold the flame. During a humble backyard wedding in Nelson, 1999, one of the cordially invited guests had to excuse themselves ...
How will the recent wave of job cuts impact ethnic diversity in the media? In November last year, I was working a very busy day in the newsroom of a large online news site, interviewing whānau about their concerns over the imminent closure of one of the few puna reo ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ruth Knight, Researcher, Queensland University of Technology Have you ever felt sick at work? Perhaps you had food poisoning or the flu. Your belly hurt, or you felt tired, making it hard to concentrate and be productive. How likely would you be ...
Despite heavy criticism and an ongoing select committee process, the Police Minister says the Government will forge ahead with a ban on gang patches. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Whiting, Lecturer – Creative Industries, University of South Australia Shutterstock Everyone has a favourite band, or a favourite composer, or a favourite song. There is some music which speaks to you, deeply; and other music which might be the current ...
A new survey says ‘outlook not great’ for those charged with building infrastructure, while RMA changes delight farmers and depress environmentalists, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. First RMA changes announced ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olli Hellmann, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Waikato Getty Images When New Zealanders commemorate Anzac Day on April 25, it’s not only to honour the soldiers who lost their lives in World War I and subsequent conflicts, but also ...
A leaked document shows the Canterbury/Waitaha arm of health agency Te Whatu Ora is scurrying to save $13.3 million by July. The “financial sustainability target”, which was “allocated” to Waitaha, is consistent with what’s happening in other districts, says Sarah Dalton, executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists. ...
A look at the state of the previous government’s affordable housing scheme, and what could come next.Remind me: What’s KiwiBuild again?First announced in 2012, KiwiBuild was a flagship policy of the Labour Party heading into both its 2014 and 2017 election campaigns. With Jacinda Ardern as prime minister, ...
Labour in opposition will be shocked to learn which party had six years in power but squandered any chance to make real change. Grant Robertson’s valedictory speech was a predictably entertaining trip down memory lane. The acid-tongued incoming Otago University chancellor administered a sick burn to the coalition government. He ...
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is seen some as its ‘silicon shield’ against invasion – but how will overseas expansion affect that protection? The post The state of Taiwan’s silicon shield appeared first on Newsroom. ...
There’s relief for building owners bending under the weight of earthquake strengthening rules – and costs – that came into force seven years ago. Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk has announced a scheduled 2027 review of the earthquake-prone building regulations will now start this year. Owners will also get ...
Opinion: It has been announced that nine percent of roles at Oranga Tamariki will be disestablished, presumably to help fund the tax cuts promised by the coalition Government. I am reminded of the graphics used to illustrate pandemic events, where five thousand people are standing in a field and then ...
After more than two sleepless days, running through savage terrain, Greig Hamilton didn’t know if he was going to finish one of the most gruelling psychological assaults in sport. He was metres away from the finish line, a yellow gate made famous in a Netflix documentary; a race he’d dreamed ...
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The following interview with former Green Party MP Sue Kedgley came about because she features in the new memoir Hine Toa by activist Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku; the two knew each other at the University of Auckland in the early 70s, when they were both took on leadership roles in the ...
Keith Olbermann on Trump, – 176 remarks by the US Republican presidential nominee.
http://www.vox.com/2016/9/14/12919744/trump-keith-olbermann
Reporter Chris Chang interviews 22-year-old Chloe Swarbrick who wants to be the mayor of Auckland.
http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news/chloe-swarbrick-wants-auckland-s-top-job-video-6493381
Build The Surge For Chloe Swarbrick!
Chris Trotter
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/09/19/build-the-surge-for-chloe-swarbrick/
I agree with Chris T. Chloe is like a young Helen, and somewhere down the line she will very likely have a significant role in shaping the future for many.
A 22 year old who wants to be Mayor of Auckland, how horrific.
Well, John Key always wanted to be PM since he was a boy. Why not support those who want political power ahead of all else?
I have to agree cv. Not about the power bit.
Not so sure about Chloe’s pro development endorsements. Her policy reads like the Young Natz on the property development roundtable.
“John Key always wanted to be PM since he was a boy” rofl yeah right, more like when the currency trading puppet was told by his American string pulling masters.
Yes because the very idea of someone having a previous career before becoming a politician is so unbelievable these days
No, its not at all Puckish Rogue. You know John key’s back story doesn’t seem to add up. Too much of a Crosby Textor fabrication maybe? and since when has anyone from the Herald, like John Roughan for instance, been honest and told the truth?
Dude you probably think 9/11 was a conspiracy, that there’s something up with chemtrails and that the moon landings were faked so I’m comfortable with you thinking theres something up with John Keys backstory
(Don’t worry about those black helicopters over your house, its totally coincidental)
Is that the best you can do? What black helicopters? And I don’t have any “9/11, chemtrails and moon landings” conspiracy theories and it’s pretty obvious that you are not “comfortable” either Puckish Rogue.
2 planes 3 buildings mate – something ain’t right there.
You’ll need a bit more detail than that, otherwise 10 pin bowling is impossible! (1 ball, 10 pins, something ain’t right there…)
hi bob, why did wtc tower 7 collapse?
the one the bbc reprted as having collapsed, before the tower collapsed.
A plane ain’t a bowling ball Bill – the pins don’t destroy a ball but a plane that hits a building isn’t much more than a cloud of debris. Now I wasn’t there – don’t know everything about it – but the official story does not come close to explaining what happened.
Any particular reason you played the false analogy card?
Stuart
“WTC 7 collapsed because of fires fueled by office furnishings. It did not collapse from explosives or from diesel fuel fires.” Conspiracy theorists have long pointed to the collapse of the 47-story structure as key evidence that the U.S. government orchestrated or abetted the 9/11 attacks” http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/design/a3524/4278874/
So the 10 pin bowling analogy stands.
Not remotely Bob – for your bowling ball to be a credible analogy the plane would need to be substantially intact – enough to support a hypothesis that its kinetic energy contributed materially to the collapse. High rise buildings do not collapse from office materials fires – they rarely collapse at all because fire is one of the things they are designed to withstand.
You’ll have to do better than that.
…for example, you don’t appear to understand the meaning of “kinetic”.
There’s a zero percent chance that office fires caused the collapse of WTC7.
Popular Mechanics, and the NIST report, have it demonstrably wrong.
This lame chiropracter has fuck all engineering competence either, for that matter. Otherwise their takedown of NIST’s analysis would be delivered using Maths in an appropriate technical journal.
It’s okay, apparently zero percent has a margin for error that’s just as wide as 50/50 lol
OAB, this “lame chiropractor” knows quite a bit about mechanics, and NIST have it 100% wrong.
cv trying to be intellectual yet remaining idiotic is a fail – you rely on others expertise, own up to that one mate, save yourself some OAB learning which I’m sure is coming, deservedly so imo.
of course I rely on others’ expertise, I ain’t no genius level savant.
wicked!
set fire to a few la-zy-boys, and down comes a 47 story building, 7 hours later.
who woulda thunk.
No Stuart, it is you who “has to do better than that”: your incompetence at reading a detailed engineering analysis (such as NIST’s report on WTC7, for example) is evidence of nothing.
Your comments clearly reveal said incompetence, in case you’re wondering.
Charming –
A Popular Mechanics article that addresses none of the the anomalies the collapse raises is enough to satisfy you?
It is, as the article reports a unique event. There have been numerous high rise fires around the world and none of them caused collapses. Done any firefighting OAB? Thought not.
Do you suppose any of those buildings contained office furnishings? You know they most probably did.
To cause a structural failure of the steel encased in concrete columns requires very high temperatures. These typically do not occur for sustained periods in office block fires. The fuel is exhausted or fails to burn in such a way as to maintain the 1000 degree plus temperatures for long enough. To obtain the effect would have required the building to act somewhat like a chimney or blast furnace – blast furnaces being a contrivance invented because ordinary fires do not reach temperatures that melt steel. Had the building chimneyed video would have shown this.
The clincher is probably the conjecture about the decibel level of thermite charges – no witness reports of explosions the report claims. Human attention is a focused phemonon and people on the spot at the time may have been slightly distracted. But an engineer would look for robust physical evidence rather than bystander conjecture.
But since you’re so pro OAB – you’d better tell us something to enlighten us.
I note that NIST ≠ Popular Mechanics, despite the latter’s established credibility.
Still nothing evidence based OAB – put up or shut up.
No Stuart, I’ve cited NIST’s WTC7 analysis. If you can’t demonstrate it’s flawed using appropriate engineering calculations your reckons have no standing.
I’m happy to let them speak for me in this matter.
You’re not worth my time
https://books.google.co.nz/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XaQDAQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR8&dq=9/11+collapse&ots=O0S6lNrNrl&sig=mMceKwfprz6fMiDI3ICDBzxKVDQ#v=onepage&q=9%2F11%20collapse&f=false
OAB the NIST analysis of the WTC7 failure is completely wrong.
Get it into your head.
That report is not to be relied upon.
…I seen it! Or at least, Jesse Ventura seen it, and he’s inphalloble!
Long on rhetoric, short on Maths. Pack a sad, Stu.
Personally, I’m pretty sure US foreign policy was a contributing factor (not as much as the lame tanties of wannabe hero boys who think daesh are the solution, but still), and the buildings collapsed exactly as the various engineering reports describe.
Still seen no maths from you OAB.
Can’t debate with someone too frightened to put up any evidence – but that would require you to have read and understood the NIST report. And I don’t think the NIST report is the basis of your disagreement for some reason.
So what’s your beef?
My confidence in NIST is based on:
1. Common sense.
2. My personal experiences with engineering software.
3. In this context, I know what kinetic means, and you don’t.
So – you go with the establishment view without trying to understand the evidence. Congratulations – you probably wouldn’t have understood it anyway.
‘Common sense’ is neither abundant nor shared.
Engineering software is neither here nor there.
I know perfectly well what kinetic means – but I’m so impressed by your dishonest attempt at one-upmanship.
.
1. It would take far too many engineers to be part of the conspiracy.
2. It would be horribly expensive and time consuming to concoct the false software required.
3. You used the word first, apparently blissfully unaware of the fact that thermal expansion is kinetic.
The stupid consequences of stupid US foreign policy fail do not require a giant conspiracy of civil and structural engineers.
Let’s be clear here – I don’t have all the evidence on 9/11 – it’s not really a big deal for me, but I have read the substance of shortcomings of the NIST report.
The first and largest is that NIST is not a professional engineering body – it was a political assemblage like FEMA, and thus it didn’t follow the kinds of processes that engineers usually would. Most specifically it had a tight timeframe to report in, whereas engineers usually want to get to the bottom of things however long that might take.
There was a lot of computer modelling – but computer modelling is not necessarily reflective of reality. Even among impartial operators there is a temptation to adjust data points until you arrive at the solution you desire – a criticism that was made of climactic models that predicted global warming.
The prevailing engineering criticism of the NIST report considers the collapse anomalous. The building imploded symetrically – this is not an easy feat to achieve – the leading experts on it, demolitions engineers, build very complex firing plans to achieve it, and their impression of film of the building is generally that it was demolished.
If it were demolished the support beams would typically be cut with thermite charges or hexagen cutting bars. This would produce the symmetrical implosion that a randomly occurring natural fire would be unlikely to replicate.
Such a demolition would leave ample chemical and particulate evidence. There is evidence of thermite microspheres consistent with demolition, but it is contested, a debate which I imagine neither of us is qualified to parse.
a criticism that was made of climactic models that predicted global warming.
Svante Arrhenius’ adjusted the data of his global circulation models until they produced warming, and that’s the reason they accurately predicted the consequences of the greenhouse effect?
Or are you talking about the models the IPCC cites, which predict the lower range of consequences?
Or are you just galloping with Mr. Gish?
No, you’re wrong. You should have zero confidence in NIST. They have got it wrong when it comes to WTC7. Their analysis is faulty in the extreme.
There is zero chance that WTC7 collapsed due to fires.
A computer model is not evidence.
The capacity to adjust results makes them deservedly suspect.
But the object of climactic modelling was originally to understand the interrelations of complex systems, not to produce evidentiary quality outcomes to sway a political debate.
They were useful for that. More refined models eventually become predictive and reliable – but those of us who are not climate scientists cannot determine how reliable they are.
We do better with robust concrete data like glacier shrinkage, vegetation patterns, weather event frequency and so forth.
& CV agreed – the thing about NIST is that they were a Bush creation, and Bush was not overattached to the truth, as various WMD pronouncements established.
@CV
Funny how you are confident in your opinion of NIST’s work and then fail to summarise it.
Or perhaps you’re dishonest as opposed to incompetent, in which case I suppose it’s not really funny, eh.
My personal experience of your unethical rhetoric suggests the latter, but that doesn’t really matter: Occam’s Razor provides your inability to present the Maths involved as sufficient to support the former hypothesis, and charity does the rest.
@Stuart: Arrhenius didn’t use a computer.
Cheap shots and no content – I neither know nor care who Arrhenius is.
Occam’s razor – principals are not to be multiplied beyond necessity – excludes him.
You want math when the evidence is microspheres.
Disingenuous.
@Stuart – Svante Arrhenius published his model of the atmosphere in 1896. Everything he predicted has occurred, within the limits of accuracy provided by the model.
This is the sense of George Box’s aphorism – “all models are wrong, some are useful”.
To criticise NIST’s model as not describing the exact minutiae of the collapse of WTC7 is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of what models are for: they assist curiosity.
Of course, in the stupid world where engineers are in league with the Illuminatii this cuts no ice. Still, maths, eh. Got any?
Thanks – always good to know.
But no, – I don’t have any maths on building 7. Nor do I need any.
What math explains the presence of thermite microspheres?
If they were present in large quantities as some chemists and engineers state then no amount of modelling can overturn the presumption that thermite explosives were present.
NIST made no such tests.
http://journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/Ryan_NIST_and_Nano-1.pdf
I’d love, personally, to have been in a position to check out samples for myself, but what I have is hearsay from two groups of engineers. One group has a potential political motive to support the establishment story, the other may be provocative trouble makers for all I know. Still, NIST should have done the tests.
There were the Moscow apartment bombings of 1999 as a precedent, and the buildings in the Twin Towers district were plausible targets for anarchist terrorist demolition.
Actually, engineering modelling (aka simulation) is used to determine how engineering structures will perform under different loading, stress and event scenarios.
It is used to help determine many things from ‘buildability’, normal engineering performance, materials cost reduction and of course, evaluation of the design in catastrophic failure.
“Assisting curiosity” is a quaint idea though.
Yes, you are not an expert on thermite, nor iron rich spheres. That being so, see point 1 on the number of engineers who would have to be bribed forever to keep them quiet and incurious.
No, actually, yawny yawn yawn, believe whatever you like and say a prayer for poor old Schiller and the dummheit.
I think you underestimate the effect of the media consensus at the time – it was about two years before any media could look critically at anything the Bush administration did.
Whether by chance or by design Bush had the perfect situation to launch his middle eastern adventures, which at least in terms of the Iraq invasion seem not to have been justified by the events of 9/11.
No, I’m not an expert on thermite microspheres, but I could probably determine their presence or absence. This was an important historical event as well as a crime scene, I’d expect it to have been explored thoroughly – but the NIST report does not give that impression. Nor am I alone in saying so.
The bribery thing is perhaps not as clear as black and white. After a time a report tends to be accepted. You seem to claim some kind of academic mantle but your acceptance of it is based on its authority, not its content. You haven’t checked the math, and I presume no-one has bribed you. Engineers are busy, and 9/11 truth fixations are probably not career enhancing.
But something is anomalous about it being the only highrise to have collapsed due to fire. People will continue to look for evidence – and the chance that Bush manufactured this event as blithely as he manufactured Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction makes the search somewhat consequential.
Yeah I always figured that in the absence of a provenance in National Party circles in his youth that was always a bunch of Crosby Textor shit, like the salary donated to charity. No provenance, no proof. Part of the package the country was sold when Michelle Boag and The Roundtable imported him.
Yeah, he was so into politics that he can’t remember what he was thinking in ’81. Nothing apparently.
+1 North. Yes, you are onto it. It’s surprising how people who should know better (i.e CV) still have their eyes closed to the spin.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11713057
Looks like we’re about to find out if mccullys corruption bares fruit.
Anything written by Audrey Young has to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Nah Paul, it’s way past that, more like anything said in NZ is to be taken as spin and bullshit.
I’m not exaggerating either. It is exactly like that. Nothing printed is the truth anymore at all.
Liar
Yes you are Stunned Mullet.
Or is I ?
We all am.
veritasly
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/84398001/hamilton-candidates-google-translation-misguided-gibberish-maori-likely-to-switch-off
Way to encourage Te reo Maori fellas, no wonder no one bothers.
Try supporting the Left in general lol
What do you mean? You are not left and in fact you act like you spit on the left from your exhalted position of judgment.
How are you enjoying Left Wing support of the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary.
That’s what I mean.
Good point – it’s good pāhekā get to nut out their side. Middle class conservation and indigenous rights have pretty much always been in conflict and with the effects of climate change being felt AND the denial of government to do actual meaningful things many people of the left will be faced with stark and uncomfortable choices and decisions. As a Māori activist I also feel the toughness of those choices and I’m her to say that are FALSE. The dicotomy is not true both can be protected but it will take a change of attitude. The one that needs to change is that indigenous rights are expendable – they arent.
Yeah I give the guy ups for giving it a go – good lesson about g-translate. And a lesson about seeking help real help if you want to get it right.
marty mars, that this guy made an effort like this must be encouraging for the future don’t you think? Combine this with the generation coming through now who have been raised with far more te reo and te ao maori and the older bigotries must be beginning to disappear.
Yes it is encouraging. I hope people reach out and offer the guy a course. Imagine him coming back next election being fluent or much better than his current level.
Agree BM, fuck the media vilifying this guy, big ups & a ‘Kia Ora’ from me.
Maybe this might be true if he actually tried. Getting “some Maori woman” in the office to translate his bio is not much of a try, and the fact it appears that he doesn’t even know this women or what she does speaks even more volumes of his mindset and level of commitment to the betterment of society.
Bill mitchell on Basic Income guarantees.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=34448
UK, Danish military admit to air striking Syrian Government Army
The US, Brits and the Danes have admitted their involvement in a prolonged US airstrike which killed 62 Syrian Army soldiers, wounded over 100 and destroyed Syrian army equipment and installations.
The airstrike hit a Syrian Government forward operating base which had been besieged on all sides by ISIS/ISIL for the last 2 years.
Immediately after the western airstrike the militants launched an attack and overran the Syrian Government base, leading to accusations that the US had in this case acted as the ISIL airforce.
Russia immediately called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council; the US said that such a meeting was unnecessary and that it was a “stunt” by Russia.
https://www.rt.com/uk/359856-uk-hit-syria-troops/
Aus was involved: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-19/syria-air-strikes-will-continue-despite-botched-operation/7858694
IMO there is no way US target intel could have mistaken a long held Syrian Govt base beseiged on all sides by ISIS for years, for an ISIS position.
SNAFU. Friendly fire is a thing.
Does the rt report mention that the bombing ceased as soon as the Russians updates the “intel”.
Or did you leave that part out?
Do you know anyone personally who has the level of prescience and control you regularly ascribe to the US military?
Yes, after 4 attack runs over 20 minutes, the Western attack stopped. The position was then immediately overrun by an ISIS/ISIL offensive.
Fire control is a basic element of military operations.
These attacks are monitored by NATO and the US in real time by satellite. It wasn’t some squad or platoon which was hit as a target of opportunity and then later found out to be friendly.
It was a long standing forward base.
In addition, it appears that the target would also have been reviewed and cleared by Australians, Danes and Brits.
IMO the Pentagon has wanted from day one the ceasefire Kerry signed with Lavrov a few weeks ago to fail.
🙄
“Fire control”
Which works 100% of the time, eh. In my opinion, your opinion of the Pentagon is informed by little but Russian “news” reports.
RAF reaper drones were used in the attack. These drones have extremely high tech, high resolution sensors used for correctly identifying targets.
A Syrian Govt base isn’t a rag tag bunch of guys with AK47s on a goat track.
Nor is daesh.
I doubt you could tell the difference between the sides, even with a drone as good as you think they are in optimal viewing conditions.
It’s a fucking static base McFlock that the Syrian Government had been defending from for fucking years; the Americans have also hit Syrian forces in this same immediate area with airstrikes prior to 2016.
It’s a frontline target. Get the camera angle off by a degree when you estimate its position, it’s fucked. If nobody tells the yanks that it’s friendly, it’s fucked. If it’s misidentified as enemy rather than dodgy third party with a common enemy, it’s fucked. If the yanks fail to pass on to the controllers that it’s friendly, it’s fucked. If the controllers fuck up the fire mission or plug the wrong numbers into the gps, it’s fucked.
The don’t get targeting data from the intrinsic intelligence of the universe.
Full of excuses.
Time for the US to open up to a full investigation of the incident.
Meanwhile, the US aircover for ISIS has meant that ISIS has now gained a critical firing position over a key Syrian Govt airbase.
I’m sorry that the real world isn’t as perfect as you are.
If you reckon you can do better, you’re a fool.
Listen up dickhead, I’m not a forward air controller or an air mission planner.
In fact, let’s see the US present to the UN Security Council their story of what really happened. Instead of avoiding it. Or minimising it.
Oh, so you’re a theatre critic or a eunuch: you know what needs to be done, you can tell people where they went wrong, you know when you’ve seen it done badly, but you can’t do it yourself.
You demand the US “open up to a full investigation” of how they bombed troops that were incredibly close to the guys you’re happy for them to bomb (close enough to be overwhelmed “immediately” afterwards), and yet your total response to comments about the Syrians and/or Russians bombing a routine aid convoy with the appropriate permissions and notifications is zero.
We don’t need to see up your kilt to know which side you dress to, do we…
He hasn’t said anything about it, but to be fair, the various western democracies involved in the attack on Syrian government forces killed military personnel of a murderous dicatorship, while the authoritarian nationalist regime involved in the attack on an aid convoy killed humanitarian aid workers. Obviously a person is going to rate one of those incidents as much worse than the other, and CV has done his rating…
Don’t propagandise about Assad’s “murderous regime” when the West is drowning in culpability for the destruction of the Syrian state.
The West greenlit and supported the Turkish/Saudi/Qatari fuelled+funded war in Syria which has killed 400,000 to 500,000 Syrians now.
Various estimates has the US supplying roughly US$1B of aid to anti-Assad islamist fighters per year, over the last 4 years.
While the russians and syrians just bomb hospitals and relief convoys. Got that.
let’s see what happens after Nov 8.
Don’t propagandise about Assad’s “murderous regime” when the West is drowning in culpability for the destruction of the Syrian state.
The basis for that “stability” you’re so keen on in Syria was the efficient and ruthless torture and murder of the Assad regime’s opponents and anyone associated with them. For my money, that warrants the term “murderous dictatorship.” Your imaginings of how the uprising against that murderous dictatorship was somehow a plot by Western governments, on the other hand, doesn’t warrant some bullshit exercise in false equivalence.
Psycho Milt, I don’t particularly give a flying fuck if in fact Assad was disappearing hundreds of protestors into his secret prison system.
The US/Saudi/Turkey/Qatar used that – and their own agent provocateurs – to provide a pretext to fuel an illegal, geopolitically motivated war of regime change via Jihadist proxies. A war which has killed 400,000 to 500,000 Syrians, displaced several million more, and left an entire country on the verge of imploding just like the other Clinton pet project, Libya.
That’s the real fucking crime here.
Maybe someone even as morally blind as you can finally figure out where the truly “murderous regimes” lie in this picture.
That’s the real fucking crime here.
Imaginary crimes you’ve convinced yourself of aren’t the “real” crime when compared to actual real crimes. And I don’t need lectures on morality from someone who thinks a friendly fire incident against military personnel is a duplicitous attack that warrants a lengthy diatribe while a friendly fire incident against an aid convoy isn’t worth a mention.
So its not a real crime that the US and NATO have allowed NATO member Turkey to fund, restock, regroup and rearm head chopping Islamist fighters across Turkish borders for the last four plus years?
Thats a real crime which has caused tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Syrian deaths.
And no mate, despite your delusions, its very real, up to and including the ISIS oil tankers crossing the Turkish border, inconvenient as these facts may be to your stupidly misplaced outrage.
You really have developed false equivalence to a kind of art form.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idUSKCN11Q1NR
UN rows back from calling attack on aid convoy as being due to an airstrike, Russia/Syria deny involvement of air forces, say that attack damage to convoy not consistent with blast damage and cratering of an airstrike.
However it seems that some people still remain too quick to swallow the over-simplified anti-Assad, anti-Russian feed of the corporate MSM
A base that was right on the front line, close enough to immediately fall to daesh.
You can’t have it both ways. Either it was close enough to be taken immediately, or it was far enough away to be clearly not daesh.
Huh? It was a long standing forward base which was overrun by ISIS/ISIL straight after the US destroyed its fighting capability.
Indeed. Which means daesh must have been fucking close, no?
Yes probably within 5km. Outside of machine gun/sniper range but well inside mortar range.
Well within. Closer than Syrian reinforcements.
Could you tell the difference? So you rely on the guys on the ground communicating their position to you. When that has to happen through three or more seperate command structures, mistakes will be made.
US friendly fire casualties are so high that the screwup is quite likely.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2002/04/generals_apathy.html
Estimates put US friendly fire at between 25 and 40% of their casualties. The Brits, who are our usual model, managed closer to 3% in the Falklands.
Good outfit to stay away from in combat – though it’s often air-ground rather than ground – ground.
the old joke from WW2 was “When the English fly over, the Germans hit the ground. When the Germans fly over, the English and Americans hit the ground. When the Americans fly over, everyone hits the ground”.
Another blatant example of American stupidity and duplicity. Just watch all the anti Russian rhetoric drown out what has actually happened.
I think that the Pentagon and the White House are at loggerheads over what to do in Syria. Obama and Kerry want to leave a legacy of co-operating with the Russians to destroy ISIS/ISIL.
The Pentagon neocons refuse to have anything to do with that and are undermining the efforts of both the President and the Sec State John Kerry.
Stupidity, yes. The gods themselves and so-forth…
I missed the duplicity in this specific case, although given Sun Tzu’s famous dictum – the art of war is deception – it would be unusual if the Pentagon weren’t from time to time, lying.
The same is true of all the other players.
This, on the other hand, has SNAFU written all over it.
pretty much. Hell, the yanks have been bombing themselves and their allies for decades.
Meanwhile….
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/syria-deadly-aid-convoy-bombing-ceasefire-ends-160919194433498.html
well that sucks.
Killed one of the good guys, too.
Omar Barakat the director of the Syrian Red Crescent had been killed by the bombing on a convoy of aid in western Aleppo with more than 25 barrels and rocket
http://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2016/19-september-omar-barakat-the-director-of-the-syrian-red
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/84436652/immigration-new-zealand-tells-danish-woman-in-nelson-silke-larsen-she-must-go
If your not wealthy, chinese and donating millions to National you can fuck off, we don’t care you created a wifi network and are a extremely highly university skilled IT person who made the area connected which helps business, in fact everyone, we don’t count that sort of thing here.
Donations lady and if you havn’t got one for us you can fuck off..eh?
This fucking government is FUBAR.
“Larsen originally came to New Zealand on a long term business visa with plans for a personal development business which did not work out. Instead, she got involved with community projects, including helping to get internet access for rural areas.
Larsen said the problem was although she had a degree [a PhD in telecommunications], she was not actively using that degree to earn more than $45,000 which meant she did not qualify as a skilled immigrant. ”
reporting on immigration issues is routinely utter shit. This likely has very little to do with MPs and much more to do with a failure to meet policy or a failure to carry out required steps under the visa category
in short – never believe a single article about immigration.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11713072
This will be up soon everywhere, for the fact probably that Hekia is leaving for a study of privatisation in the us under the disguise of education research..
We gonna have to pay for our kids educations soon..and on the minimum wage..
Is it time to get the AR-15 out yet, I need protection from my government..one thing the US got right maybe, just.., gun laws. I got to protect myself and kids from these psychopaths surely.
Global funding eh, so do we put our kids up for something, is that like crowd funding? Like a photo on the internet.., a stunning pic of your kid and see how much you get for it?
Choose an SKS, not an AR15.
Showing your age there CV?
I always liked the Vintorez.
Or, perhaps, the Barrett.
Don’t worry about it, you probably couldn’t afford an AR-15 🙂
http://www.guncity.com/firearms/all-firearms/ec-category-lic./ecategory/223
I could PR, Not too sure about an SKS CV, as with my deep knowledge of guns due to all the hours of gun games I play the SKS is slow and gives a high recoil.
My preferred method of cleaning out the garbage would probably be a grenade.
Or perhaps as in BattleField I could just plant a shit load of mines around the house to keep them away.
God help election time if some idiot from National happens to have the misfortune to knock at my door. I may brew up a special concoction of mine I use for the garden, you know fermented seafood that sort of thing 🙂 Give him a grenade alright.
Well as long as you have the licence and then endorsement to buy a MSSA then its all good and good luck to you though I really should let you know the authorities tend to look down on people being shot
Well I spent some time on COD4 so if not an SKS maybe a G3 that seemed pretty good in the game
That’s because demand for particular firearms skyrocket when they get the free advertising of being used to kill defenceless people.
As soon as firearms are mentioned the conversation never seems to head in a good direction. There has to be a better way to express anger imo.
I disagree, as soon as firearms gets mentioned the conversations seems to get more interesting/amusing so its all good
I agree mauī – some boys get too physically excited by firearms.
Thats sexist
Some kinds of sexism are fine and acceptable, apparently
Nope – it’s an immaturity putdown.
What about women giggling like little girls? Is that an “immaturity put down” as well? In fact, double standards is what it is.
Nah you’re confusing inclusion with exclusion.
This is one of the problems of PC linguistic imperialism – there are some gender linked behaviours that nevertheless ought to attract condemnation. Of the two I think the ‘boys with guns’ trope is the more sociopathic, but doubtless there are vicious condemnations of females that also bear the inconvenient ring of truth.
So why not just say some people, why single out boys and not girls?
I was referring to your boner and the specific conversation. Sorry if you were offended.
I’m not offended by you talking about my boner, I’m ackshully quite proud of my boner and I feel it should be talked about more but I am confused because I haven’t mentioned my boner on this thread
Yes i hear your confusion.
Can you please reference my boner so I know what you’re on about
Freud would have a field day…
@ p.s. no I quite like your freigned confusion it suits you.
I’ve got a feeling the phrase ‘Can you reference my boner’ may become a TS go to put down in future. Definitely funnier than ‘yes, dear’.
On a more serious matter, talking about using weapons against political opponents, even with tongue in cheek, is crossing a line, people. Please take care with your words.
oh fuck, I missed the ideal response for “can you please reference my boner?”: “did you just ask for a sightation?” 🙂
http://www.superdickery.com/batmans-boner/
It’s getting bad in NZ when old hippies are getting so pissed off with the actions of the government and what this once caring land has become, that he actually experiences emotions of anger.
The dude is not impressed.
Declining NZ – 1st world to 5th? Stop the rot! Stop the rort!
3 Fish stocks unknown – information faulty.
MPI making deals to try and get some precise information thru observers, upsetting level playing field.
30% of catch may be thrown back – probably dead or maimed – as it is presently uneconomic to harvest.
Quota system not working for the health of sea harvest – but no 💡 to introduce newer appropriate and necessary legislation.
4 People in severe pain and left unable to work and earn after having metal-on-metal hip replacements. World recall by Johnson and Johnson (a trusted company and brand) after metalosis from the two metals cobalt and something else (my ignorance would be similar to those of the recipients who would rely on the integrity of supply
company and their specialists).
Specialists were advised about recall but government does not make it mandatory for them to advise their clients. 500 of these hip-ops supplied to NZ, about 400 used and about 25 applying to sue for their rightful share of payout from Johnson and Johnson to help with their disablement and suffering, now and almost certainly, in future. ACC rules allow suing for punitive and exemplary damages but still the decision of the Courts is needed. Don’t know why. Again ignorance would be widespread amongst all who haven’t training in this particular field of sorrows. Believed that many people still not informed about having a toxic implant inside them. E&OE
Would this be the same union power Rodney Hide and Dirty Politics David Farrar said is dead?
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/teachers-vote-overwhelmingly-against-global-funding-2016092010
Hide had a grizzle piece in The Horrid on Sunday about how his holiday as a wee boy was ruined because of Cook Straight ferry workers’ industrial action and presumably sees all worker representation evil as a result.
Under the current government policy of floating bizarre and discredited ideas for industry and public consumption before sniffing the wind and canning said idea, unions have never had it better.
Well of course the unions would reject anything the National government said, I don’t think anyone would surprised about the teachers unions putting ideology above kids best interests
Could say that about National! PR. Exactly that.
Yup
What PR? Do you actually agree that Key’s Nat government are; “putting ideology above kids best interests”? Or did you just not understand RR’s comment?
Either way does not convince me to pay heed to anything you have to say on the topic of education.
sorry for the misunderstanding, I’m agreeing that Richard could say that not that I agree with him
But you don’t have any coherent argument against RR, so you just resorted to facile glibness? That is at least in character for you.
Still not convinced of why I should pay any attention to your hollow opinions on this topic.
Only you can answer that one
And there’s the facile glibness in action.
Yep the cardboard cutout of commenters shows his depth.
Still waiting for you to bring up my boner…
Is key in your office today? I thought he was away trying to build his credibility against insurmountable odds
Forgive my naievity but I always thought you couldn’t bring up a boner without having first swallowed it……must we discuss this ?
Back to sense and my (home cooked) green curry pork dinner this is a very comical thread. Thank you everyone !
You got it round the wrong way. We’re putting childrens best interests before National Party ideology. Just remember that teachers working conditions are children’s learning conditions. Make it too hard for teachers to do their job and the children are the ones that suffer.
Indeed, and 99% of teachers agreed this is the case.
There could hardly be a more convincing ‘get stuffed’ to Hekia Parata.
I sometimes wonder if she has forgotten where she came from.
The unions are doing whats best for their members as they’ve always done, not whats best for the kids
You have a peculiar Pink Floyd view of the world no doubt fashioned from where you get your opinions. That somehow NZ teachers are out to destroy kids.
Destroy kids no, put teachers interests ahead of kids interests, yes
Still no evidence of that provided by you. 99% against global funding isn’t some sort of anomaly. There could not be a greater mandate rejecting Parata’s, the current government’s, and your opinion unless it were 100%.
As You_fool describes below, how can the entire teaching profession be wrong, while one proven incompetent minister who never taught a classroom in her life, and uses google for education policy, be right?
Oh please, NCEA was the end of the world, Tomorrows Schools was the end of the world, I’m guessing it was the end of the world when NZ changed to metric and the dollar
The teaching unions default position when it comes to National or change is the same, against it (whatever it is)
NZ has slid in international rankings with all these changes. Teachers I guess want to arrest a further slide. You be the judge – it’s what you like to do.
Novapay PR – and every other lamebrained educational disaster the Gnats have come up with – stupid wasteful ideas that have not advanced education. The Gnats have long since burned any shreds of credibility they could have had with teachers and thus the unions, as democratic organisations, are obliged to oppose their every ill-conceived whim.
NCEA and Tomorrow’s Schools were both incompetent mismanagement of the education system, and so is this. It was correctly rejected by the teacher’s union.
No they are not trying to destroy kids. But the interests of the kids and the teachers most certainly do not coincide.
Right. And I suppose Hekia Parata’s interests and the kids’ are one and the same?
Why not ? They are all self-optimising individuals in a free market. Just teach the “kids” how to think rationally and get the perfect information “they need” and all’s sweet. And grades achievement skills too, for “teacher’s ” sake.
And unions having in their membership real human beings who have kids prefer to proceed without thought for their children. Puleez !
How is a funding regime that will see schools having to balance numbers of teachers and support staff against ever increasing operational costs thus seeing class sizes increase and support staff numbers dropping in the children’s best interests.
What evidence do you have that National’s ideological experimentation is in childrens’ best interests? Because they say it is? There doesn’t seem to be any grounding in research of successful practice in their adoption of failed overseas trials.
The current government’s strategy toward public service is to throw any old idea at it in the hope it will stick. Where education is concerned however it’s not a case of it being broken, because the teaching and the curriculum is fine, it’s the neoliberal policy of keeping the disenfranchised crushed which makes home life in certain communities very hard for kids to study in.
No, your response here is a parroting of noted anti-worker collective shills like Slater, Hooton, Farrar, and Hide. It would be good if you could have a thought of your own once in a while.
It always surprises me that we train up people to teach our kids, ensuring that they have the best skills, knowledge and techniques to teach the next generation and then routinely ignore them on how best to actually do the job of teaching.
Yes… And may I point out to Poxish Rogue that the PPTA did NOT oppose NCEA, despite the reservations of many members. By and large PPTA has supported NCEA. PPTA does not automatically oppose every proposed change.
Poxish Rogue demonstrates an abysmal ignorance of what motivates good teachers. Engaging with their students and caring about them is the first element. And the vast majority of those good teachers belong to and support the PPTA, just to forestall the crap argument that the union is only there to protect incompetent teachers. Good teachers want to protect their students from pernicious, ideologically-based Government policies that have shown no benefits overseas, and will fight tooth and nail to do so.
It’s National and its support puppets that are putting ideology above the well-being of our children and society in general.
Just read an article, drone with arms could lift toddler..
imaginings of dirty old pedies in raincoats lining up at hobby shops comes to mind.
I mean why do they print articles like that? Some sick Journo having a fantasy moment?
I know you know what..some jobsworth is going to have to make a law/bylaw now, stating all drones have to have a , ” CAUTION do not lift toddlers or young children, dogs cats or your grandma with this device” warning sticker placed on them.
the issue is not that.
the issue is when are drones going to be able to lift adults….. and become our own personal flying devices …. coming soon to a store near you …
Interesting series on Stuff Nation. They put out an invitation for people to contribute. Why not have a go and say how yiu find NZ its highs and lows.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/84158436/New-Zealand-is-no-paradise-it-is-brutal
This is part of Part One of Five by Katherine Dolan who has left NZ looking for something better.
It would be good if people could see it as from a female who feels and sees it both as a female,and a NZr who assesses that we all should expect better. And also not be like some of the commenters who look at themselves, their own family and locale which they find satisfactory, and who then reject it as being untrue. There is an opportunity to see beyond our own little personal understandings to the truth of the bigger picture.
Part one of New Zealand is no paradise: Sex, Drugs and Denial, a five-part series about growing up hating New Zealand by Katherine Dolan, written for Stuff Nation.
And after being homeless in Canada, swaddled in black in Saudi Arabia and living hand to mouth in the Balkans, why do I still consider my New Zealand a uniquely lonely and uncomfortable place?
I say “my New Zealand” because the place I grew up perhaps no longer exists. I hope it doesn’t, because rural New Zealand in the 1980s and ’90s was a puritanical, misogynist, authoritarian, anti-intellectual, alcohol-dependent society that specialised in casual brutality.
I grew up in a New Zealand that worshipped the Spartan virtues: stoicism, masculinity, physical strength, group cohesion, terseness.
I’ve been following it. There is some discussion on it in open mike the 17th.
Pony-tail guy wields the TPP as a threat to the US in his most recent speak/slur on the world stage.
My question is if he’s that afraid of Chinese influence in the region, why doesn’t he address the massive influence of cheap, laundered, and ill-gotten Chinese money flooding into the New Zealand residential property market?
Yet again, dropped-soap guy says one thing yet does another and fails to recognise he doesn’t stand for the people of the Asia Pacific region at all.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/313728/john-key-warns-us-of-risks-in-failing-to-ratify-tpp
It would be interesting to know if there has been more to this trip he is on than batting for his former enemy and parading around the UN …. maybe Bilderberg?
Not sure on that.
What I do know is the international community don’t take him seriously. Obama is on record wondering why Australia listens to him. Clark is tainted in UN circles because of her association with Key and his anti-worker government.
“What I do know is the international community don’t take him seriously”
Really? Do you have anything other than your overactive imagination to justify this, and the comments that follow this, statement?
Helen Clark certainly seemed very grateful for Key’s supporting he candidacy on TV last night? Is there something you know that she doesn’t?
Obama certainly didn’t to seem to hold the views you subscribe to when he was overheard talking to the Australian PM did he?
Obama did hold the views I subscribe to. He questioned Turnbull on wether he listened to the New Zealanders, and followed by saying Key was a great guy to play golf with. Damned by faint praise on the second part, for sure.
John Key fluffers can’t read between the lines.
I suggest that you actually listen to what Obama said
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11548292
“He’s a wonderful guy. He and I have become good friends. And not just because we play golf together.”
Nothing like what you are saying is it?
Recall Key declaring war on North Korea? I doubt the international community take the nitwit that seriously.
Really?
And what are the grounds for this wild figment of your imagination?
Declaring war? Do you even know what that means?
Fair enough that you query there Alwyn but what we’ve got here is a ‘machine’. Dear Helen, whom (for my sins) I’d re-vote for at the drop of a hat…..reasons later…..is part of that ‘machine’. “Hate and damn you today, hold you close and kiss you tomorrow.” There’s nothing as mind-altering as power/the prospect of it.
To wit, Marigold Barry when asked why she was standing in North Shore, was it?…… produced the howler that she she had “a great deal to offer……” Hmm, Hmm…..Ahem.
Do you favour SkyCabs for Auckland?
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11627681
Looks like shit.
Next.
I like it.
It looks modern. It’s practical, cost efficient and environmentally friendly.
What is wrong with an actual train? Countless developed and developing countries use them and have used them for many decades since the beginning of the industrial revolution. They are a very efficient form of transport, local, public, and otherwise.
That New Zealand has not kept up with this technology is our own fault and one which must be paid for now.
“What is wrong with an actual train?”
This can compliment the rail network where it is more cost effective and practical to do so.
especially if you import some steel from china that comes with a ‘good quality’ certification. Yeah, cheap must be good and practical.
in saying that, Wuppertal has had a sky gondola since the beginning of the last century, mainly due to the roads being so small that a tram or bus would not pass. its quite awesome fun taking a trip over the Wupper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Suspension_Railway
It’s cost effective because of its simplistic design and ease to install.
Interestingly enough, I think you’ll find that it’s harder to install than a good underground. People simply won’t want them mucking up their skyline.
The rate burden that comes with going underground would soon entice them to change their mind.
Possibly or they’ll just stop everything.
NZers always seem to choose the short-term cheap, worst option and long term most expensive option. It doesn’t help when the politicians keep telling us we can have things ever cheaper.
Good idea, Looks a hell of a lot cheaper than rail.
Love to see the data on what it can handle peak time.
It can pickup 8 people at a time, about as much use as building a mini van only lane on the motorway. Stupid.
32,000 people into the CBD per hour, or 64,000 people per morning peak with all seated or 120,000 people with standees.
http://www.skycabs.co.nz/documents/AucklandStrategyForeword.pdf
So 4,000+ sky cabs reaching the cbd every hour. Sorry I can’t see it. Then there’s the issue of keeping something with so many moving parts running freely. Any human error or emergency in one cab holds up the whole system and everyone is left dangling in the air. Potential nightmare scenarios are high.
Due to their simplistic design they are low maintenance.
Nonetheless, one would assume they would have procedures in place in the event of a breakdown. For example, units would have an auxiliary motor or could be pushed or towed by another unit.
LOL
Your not actually buying that BS are you?
Or, to put it another way:
Due to them being in the open, salt saturated air of Auckland, they’ll be bloody high maintenance.
Simplistic designs tend to be more low maintenance as there is generally less to go wrong.
The lifespan and overall maintenance requirements of the network itself will largely come down to the construction materials used. One would expect they will be aware of the elements, thus requirements.
http://www.skycabs.co.nz/documents/AucklandStrategyForeword.pdf
It would probably be like the monorail that used to run in Sydney.
They finally scrapped it in 2013, from memory.
It was estimated to be about 40% more expensive than even light rail would have been. I think the idea that it would be “cheaper than rail” would prove to be someone’s wet dream.
Of course the cost estimate would probably be like the one some of the Wellington Regional Council candidates have. They just claim that we could have light rail at half the cost determined in an evaluation of the idea. Bloody idiots the lot of them.
No train expert here, but the big advantage to me is that you wouldn’t have to construct a rail corridor through Auckland, this could be tacked onto the side of existing roads or run up the middle.
It’s got great potential.
New Zealanders paid $1.3 billion dollars more in council rates in 2015 than in 2009.
Since 2009, increases at a national level have outstripped both population growth and inflation.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/84015499/local-government-rates-are-up-government-funding-is-down
Six figure council ‘manager’ salaries seem common as nowadays.
It’s outrageous what some are being paid.
Yep. I think public servants top salaries need to be capped at $100k. Provides a good living standard without being over the top as what we have now is.
I like it.
Kermadecs and the Foreshore.
Is this just another instance of Key not having any knowledge of history. His tendency of governing in the now reflects his poor judgement. His allowing Smith to be anywhere near the Kermadecs issue in the first place would seem to bear this out. The sidelining of Smith from the Kermadec issue should not come as a surprise to many – remember the Foreshore issue and the disgraceful grandstanding of Smith and Peter Dunne in Nelson.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/treaty-of-waitangi/news/article.cfm?c_id=350&objectid=3515159
It would also be interesting to know what Key’s own utterances on the Foreshore issue were back then – … he probably “couldn’t quite remember”.
Wow! thanks for the link – that is definitely well worth remembering, and certainly pertinent to the current clusterfuck. Smith, needs to be as far away from this as possible.
I’m told Maori had no idea the Kermadecs existed before Cook and co turned up. Is this right?
Possibly, but would they have found had Cook and co not taken their rights away?
same logic as the radio frequencies.
No it has a well documented history of Polynesian settlement or use. But it was abandoned hundreds of years before European arrival. So claims of customary use are nonsense.
Apart from the custom of seafarers to stop there to restock etc.
Well the archeology I’m aware of is that there is no evidence of regular journeys, that raoul was settled for a period by eastern Polynesians (not Maori) but it was abandoned in the 15th century. Apart from a small number of flakes of obsidian there’s no evidence of any kind of ongoing transit between nz and the kermadecs.
Perhaps you can invent an alternative scenario. Aliens visited tangata whenua, perhaps…
Alien: “What can we do for you?”
Tangata Whenua: “Can you put these flakes on Raoul Island for us? “
Eastern Polynesian was the originating culture of Maori but that does not mean the people who travelled to the kermadecs and then onto Norfolk and lord Howe islands were Maori
It’s time for your reality check.
My bold.
Perhaps it was the doing of an alien?
After all, people have found rocks from the Moon and even Mars on Earth.
http://www.space.com/178-crater-moon-linked-rock-earth.html
http://www.space.com/14268-rare-mars-meteorite-rocks-tissint.html
Amazing isn’t it?
Only joking about the aliens. Donald Trump was not in the vicinity of these being found.
Read atholl Anderson in ‘ Tangata whenua An illustrated history ‘ a much more recent book that contains a summary of recent research.
There he says that no archeological evidence exists of return trips to eastern Polynesia despite the wealth of new and useful materials found in NZ. The people who went to the kermadecs likely left nz soon after arrival and then went on to Norfolk Island, lord Howe island and then New South Wales. Artefacts of these travels have been found but none going back east.
Check http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/79760636/atholl-Anderson-where-did-Maori-come-from
Irrelevant. This is about Treaty rights, not customary ones. You’re getting mixed up with the foreshore law.
Some were saying yesterday that there were customary trips to the kermadecs, so it’s relevant in that sense
Not exactly. Customary trips that used the Kermadecs as a place to re-stock on the journey.
Nobody said that they were customary.
As discussed yesterday, they left artefacts there, so no, your source is feeding you false information. Who is it, the Prime Minister?
Polynesian people were there. I’m told they weren’t Maori. The Prime Minister is John Key – you should get out more, try Venezuela it would suit your thinking or lack there of.
He tells too many lies. That’s why I wondered if he’s the one spoon-feeding you.
Here’s RTM from the Kermadecs thread to set you straight:
Now you know the facts make sure not to keep spreading the lies, there’s a dearie. You could even elect not to trust your source on other matters if you were smart.
Oh do float off Tarquin.
You race batting pillock.
Oh wait, what new from national supporters who write on the standard…
National party supporters default; Racist, sexist, and smug Tory scum – I’m sure I missed somthing. 😉
Fraudulent through wilful ignorance and prejudice. I’m sure I have also forgotten something.
#only POKEMONES
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/09/15/wellington-the-little-city-that-could-and-did/?ncid=tweetlnkauhpmg00000001
“If you were to pinpoint a person and a moment in time for Wellington’s transformation, it would probably be Peter Jackson and the late 1990s.”
Hes a good man Sir Peter
Now there’s some expert trolling, behold! Peter Jackson has certainly done all right for himself, well done him, shame he had to shaft a bunch of NZ workers to get there, & a bit disappointing he hasn’t made a decent movie in over a decade (but hey, check out that new frame rate!).
+1 Gangnam Style – yep we value those that help others as well as themselves in a decent society.
Ok so I disagree with you on the shafting of the workers, they were treated decently.
On the decent movie…yeah fair enough
Apparently David Seymour thinks tax payers need to fund a ‘Ministry of Men’.
How about a “Ministry of Vulnerable Men’? The Chief’s players, Tony Veitch and Nikolas Delegat can lodge complaint’s there about their appalling and unfair treatment from Women and the NZ political system. (sarc.)
He does actually make some good points:
“A Few Stats
Where once women were clearly marginalised, men are now behind in most social statistics. University graduates: women 60/40. Imprisonment: men 94/6. Life expectancy: women 84/80 (non-Maori), 77/73 (Maori). Suicide rate: men 74/16. We could go on. The only significant stat running against women is income (Men 53/47)”
So women are better educated, imprisoned less, live longer, but still earn less? How does that work without omitting criteria that doesn’t suit your narrative?
Seymour just trolling surely, MRAs prob closely linked to ACT I would imagine.
What narrative? That David Seymour has a point?
We have a Ministry for Women which seems to have two primary goals, gender pay equality, and reducing violence against Women. These are two very significant social ills that need addressing, but are they any more significant than our men growing up poorly educated with high imprisonment rates (I would suggest there is a link right there) and dying younger?
Well, the first step would be to see whether other socioeconomic or demographic factors have a greater correlation and causal relationship than “men”, and whether those factors are being independantly addressed by other responsible ministries.
By just ignoring the historic and current power imbalance within society and leaping upon arbitrary gender distinctions, your narrative of “what about teh menz” is shallow, venal, self-absorbed and stupid. If a targeted effort is needed, it should target the division that causes the power imbalance that causes the negative outcomes, which does not necessarily equate to the most obvious example of division within those outcomes.
Search for the confounding variable, not the one that matches your preconceptions.
See response to Sabine below. The gender links regarding education have already been identified, perhaps the idea of a ‘Ministry for Men’ doesn’t fit your preconceptions. Or perhaps it is just because of who raised the issue…
You’re welcome to demonstrate the systemic issues that make your whinge du jour a male issue rather than a cultural or socioeconomic issue. Because domestic violence and income disparities are direct results of historic treatment and social relegation of women. But men were always the main populators of prison, for example, even when women were little more than property. Prison isn’t a male problem it’s a social problem . Addressing it as a male problem restricts the list of observable solutions.
Damn, if those pesky women would just go back to the three K’s. Kinder, Kirche, Kueche.
Surely all would be good for the poor misunderstood man that fail in all other categories other then wages. Despite being lesser educated, more often imprisoned and live shorter yet they still earn more money.
Ministry of vulnerable men indeed. 🙂
For what its worth my wife earns more then I do but its my hope that one day I can finally achieve my dream of become a kept man, living off my wifes earnings
Sadly though its yet to happen 🙂
average Puckish Rogue, on average women earn less then man. And i really hope that we don’t have to re-hash this truth.
My partner also hopes he could be a kept man, however i have been telling him for years that i started working at an earlier age (cause girls will have husbands and need no stinkn higher education 🙂 ) as he did cause he got that higher education thingy, so if anyone is to be kept it would be me. But alas, i don’t really function well when kept and having to ask for stuff. So i go to work every day 🙂 and count my pennies.
Come on Sabine, PR hates women – of course he going to rehash it.
What makes you say that?
Your comments and your attitude here.
I mean look at your history PR. It shows.
Interestingly enough even though my wife makes more then me (its not a great deal more to be completely honest) I pretty much the financial decisions in our household because, in her words, its “I trust you” and when it comes to decisions about our retirement its “I’m not interested in that, I’ll leave it up to you”
Men definitely get the raw end of the stick as the stats show
Are we allowed to say such yet? Or we not that advanced to recognise these things ……
prison
early death
low education
suicide
great aint it
prison? so that has got nothing to do with man offending at a higher rate?
early death? maybe you want to complain to certain businesses that don’t implement safety for their workers, the forestry industry comes to mind for once.
low education? Are you saying that boys in NZ are not going to the same schools as girls? Are you saying that schools in NZ are discriminating against boys? Or may it be that boys often don’t get the support they need from their families, where as girls know that if they don’t finish schools they will never ever be anything other the a min wage slave? (the boys in my partners family who have not finished school did so cause ‘school was boring’ and ‘ i am not learning anything’ and ‘i don’t need this i can be like my dad’).
suicide: this is the one thing in NZ that always stumps me, it is such an issue and the country as a collective refuses to talk about it and do something about it. . (the mind does not understand)
Good for you Sabine, at least you are starting to ask the questions that need to be asked about the hard raw life so very many men get..
Though I do worry that there is a lack of consistency when similar such questions are put about other sectors of our population, for example your question one and Maori and prison…. we know the question is not that simple is it ….
at least the issues are getting out there though
cos you know, I don’t want to die early just because I’m male, nor go to prison – but that is the reality for us
You’re not going to die early because you’re male, or go to prison because you’re male. Statistical differences at the population level tell us nothing about particular individuals, that’s why the whole “paid 12% less because you’re a woman” thing was a crock of shit. We don’t need a “sent to prison because you’re a man” crock of shit to even things out…
mate i have always asked the question.
but frankly do not blame the success of the girls to the failure of the boys.
or let me rephrase this, would the failure of your son be the result of your daughters success? or would you rather your daughter pretend to fail so your son could be successful?
If and when women commit more crimes and are apprehended for it they will end up in prison.
This has got nothing to do with Maori men being more likely to be arrested then white men – this has more to do with institutionalized racism, alive and very well in NZ as recent cases have shown again. btw. no girl forced that rich boy to beat a women unconscious, and no girl forced that judge to give that rich boy a slap with a very wet bus ticket.
as for you dying early, eat well, drink in moderation, laugh a lot and you may live long, do not offend, don’t piss off popo and you will not go to prison.
Again, this has got nothing to do with women.
care to comment that the women despite it all still earn less then men? or is it that men should earn more cause men? 🙂
Ahhh, a classic victim blaming argument.
😛
“low education? Are you saying that boys in NZ are not going to the same schools as girls? Are you saying that schools in NZ are discriminating against boys?”
It may have a link to the ratio’s of Female/Male teachers in our system,:
“The dominant research perspective is that connected to issued of male identity formation – specifically how boys see themselves as learners. Much of the research suggests that issues of gender identity are the most significant area to understand and address in boys’ education issues. In this approach, consideration is given to how boys perceive themselves as learners in contemporary classrooms and how this translates into educational achievement.
It also claimed in some research that aspects of education are ‘feminised’ and inherently biased towards the achievement of girls”
http://www.ero.govt.nz/publications/boys-education-good-practice-in-secondary-schools/introduction/
Perhaps the boys in your family were ‘bored’ and didn’t learn anything because the teaching methods being used were not conducive to their learning requirements.
This could be the root cause of why male incarceration rates and suicide rates are so high also. If you don’t feel like you fit in…if only we had a Ministry that could be researching these links further.
A Ministry genuinely makes sense in light of these massive issues …
so who is stopping the men from educating boys? Who is stopping men from going into the teaching profession? Why not more boys only schools?
as for the teaching methods, is that the fault of girls? Or is that the fault of governments? And the fact that maybe some kids are not made for long studies? you will find if you search here that I am one who advocates for proper apprenticeships as i fully understand that not every one is made for the academics.
But is that the fault of girls?
I can’t and won’t comment on the suicide rates, as i stated above, i can not understand why NZ is refusing to have an open and honest discussion about it. Maybe it has to do with that stupid bull shit about ‘harden up’, have a beer mate ‘she’ll be alright’ attitude that is so prevalent in this country.
Maybe we should just have a Ministry for Vulnerable Humans.
But non of this has anything to do with Girls, how they do in school, how old they live and how much less they get paid then their male counterparts in equal roles.
men don’t go into primary or early childhood education any more for obvs reasons.
“men don’t go into primary or early childhood education any more for obvs reasons.” – Coz the work is too hard? Can get better pay laying gravel on roads? Funny how most principals are males innit?
what reasons?
and why obvious?
Thought that was fairly obvious, accusations of kiddy fiddling,
Men fear career-ending accusations of paedophilia. It’s not a trivial concern.
Someone even made a movie about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_(2012_film)
just sad then, how a few fuckwits have fucked it up for the men and the teaching profession. No?
I still believe that Gangnam Style reasons have more to do with it, namely that they pay is too lowly for men to even apply.
But I can see how some men may fear these accusations so much that all of the men refuse to be teachers. Especially when one considers the girls and their knobbly knees that adult male teachers must be protected from.
http://www.newstalk.com/New-Zealand-school-girls-told-to-wear-longer-skirts-to-create-a-good-work-environment-for-male-staff
“This was reportedly to ‘keep our girls safe, stop boys from getting ideas and create a good work environment for male staff’.”
– cause we can’t trust men and boys to behave themselves appropriatly we must cover our girls to keep them safe. Yeah, right fucking Tui.
There’s also the issue of young girls using the “he touched me accusation” to get leverage over or get back at male teachers.
As demonstrated on this site on numerous occasions, the female is always truthful and honest and the man is always guilty.
Your career could be over just like that.
seriously BM there are how many Girls accusing teachers of having touched them? In NZ?
when you google Girls accusing teachers of molestation what comes up are cases of teachers – male and female – of having been accused and found guilty of molestation, or sexual misconduct.
https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=teachers+accused+of+sexual+molestation+in+NZ&oq=teachers+accused+of+sexual+molestation+in+NZ&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.6305j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
I still believe that the low pay is more of an issue
https://www.teachnz.govt.nz/teaching-in-new-zealand/salaries/
Primary teacher salaries
The current starting salary for a primary school teacher with a Bachelor’s teaching degree is $47,039.
Secondary teacher salaries
The current entry salary for a secondary school teacher who holds registration granted by The Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand and a New Zealand Qualifications Framework (NZQF) Level 7 subject or specialist qualification (the qualification must have at least 72 credits at Level 7) and a recognised teaching qualification is $50,268.
so essentially there is not a lot of pay involved in teaching, despite a high level of qualification demanded.
Might it not just be that many blokes look at teaching and go nah, can’t be arsed, to hard and not enough pay.
but hey, i can see where ‘i might get accused of inapropriate behaviour’ seems like an nicer out instead of saying i am not paid enough to bother with the badly educated kids of others.
Yeah, the pay isn’t stellar ether, other reasons include.
!. low pay.
2, Mainly Woman environment
3,Accusations of kiddy fiddling
4.Seems to be very little career prospects.
5. Getting hit on by kids Mothers.
6,Looked on with suspicion by a good percentage of the public.
The only positive is the amount of holidays you get.
!. low pay. – Well maybe if men were to join the service pay would go up?
2, Mainly Woman environment – Maybe if men were to join the service it would be a mixed environment?
3,Accusations of kiddy fiddling – both men and women have been found guilty of the offense, so really that is just a cheap cop out, also cops, doctors, sales people, it people and all other sorts of people have been accused and found guilty of the offense. so maybe men should just stay at home and never leave the house without an appropriate chaperone? A mother, wife, or aunty would do. Only old women of course. Lest you get accused?
4.Seems to be very little career prospects. – principal? become Hekia Parata Minister of ‘Education’ at least you would be a Minister with teaching credentials?
5. Getting hit on by kids Mothers. – why no gay men have children in school?
6,Looked on with suspicion by a good percentage of the public. -you have a very low opinion of a. yourself, and b. the public
The only positive is the amount of holidays you get. – yei, upside.
t
but the reason there are no more men in teaching is men like yourself, as it is you who would taunt the male teacher with your bogus accusations, your bogus snide remarks and your bullshit suspicion.
But it lets you blame the women for not doing their job education your son or your future son should he fail in school. Cause while a man may have been better we can fully understand why no man would want that low pay, low career option, surrounded by women, low regards type o job.
i can see how that makes sense.
The biggest thing that would help men would be to restrict alcohol – alcohol is a contributing factor in crime, early death and suicide.
Hi m pledger, I read recently, a few essays on suicide in aotearoa.
Disconnection from community seemed to be a strong factor in suicide.
That is not to deny the part alcohol may play.
I agree with Sabine, the silence around this issue is not helping.
They’d be happier and live longer if they stayed at home and looked after their children.
Does Seemore Coq know what the incarceration rates were when fewer women got degrees? I’m betting it was similar to now.
The apple doesn’t fall far….
A man who had blown up bombs in New York, and shot multiple times at the police. He is wounded and then arrested.
An African-American is shot dead for walking or driving and is unarmed.
Anyone else see the blatant contradiction?
Excellent comment Ianmac ! Whom amongst us can’t see the blatant contradiction ? “Black Lives” DON’T matter. In contrast to other rotten lives which DO matter. If only for the purposes of the show trial which follows.
NZ should sell all its best food producing companies to the Chinese, that’s the way forward for this country.
You forgot the /sarc
Things gotten too peaceful for you CV?
The 9/11 and trump squabbles aren’t enough.
The agitation is strong in this one.
Damn right I am agitated.
Silver Fern Farms, sold off to the Chinese
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/84462859/government-approves-shanghai-malingsilver-fern-farms-deal
Hi Colonial Viper
The response can be distilled to TINA
we clearly need 3 more years of National then, cause job well done.
ahh.. i see.
apparently its going to
‘ create substantial and identifiable benefit’.
excellent, i can rest easy with paula bennett on the case.