I've been wondering if Pence will run against Trump next time. A youngster compared to Biden & Trump (he's 62), his solid fundamentalist credentials would pull plenty of votes away from the top flake – who mysteriously held up a Bible for the tv cameras during last year's campaign without explaining why.
In response to a reporter Trump said "It's a Bible." There was no poll of how many viewers knew he was lying. Anyway, this report suggests Pence has a huge hill to climb before he seems sufficiently competitive: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/19/pence-flatlines-2024-499919
“There are some Trump supporters who think he’s the Antichrist,” said one Iowa GOP official. Obviously not protestants (who traditionally believe that's the Pope).
"“He’s got to justify to the Trumpistas why he isn’t Judas Iscariot, and then he’s got to demonstrate to a bunch of other Republicans why he hung out with someone they perceive to be a nutjob,” said Sean Walsh, a Republican strategist who worked in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses and on several presidential campaigns."
"Many Iowa Republicans had seen the results of the most recent Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll, released just days earlier, in which Pence flatlined, drawing no more than 1 percent support."
That would be due to the charisma deficit. The rabble do like a rouser & Trump gets them fired up. So looks like the Bible reader won't stand a chance against the Bible place-holder.
The US democratic system is going through one of it's periodic re-arrangements. While the nature of their voting system will ensure that the two big brand vehicles (Dem and Rep) will endure – their support factions and what they stand for, every now and then undergoes a dramatic reshuffle. It's happened before, and we're roughly in the middle of another one.
Reports of a democratic US in terminal decline are premature.
They so need preferential voting – within party candidate selection and to allow a third party Independent candidate to beat extremists who cannot get to 50%.
Yes. I'm on record here has regarding the democratic West and the US in particular being flawed but still better than all the proven alternatives.
What I do expect from the US is a capacity to change and evolve in response to an always shifting world. And in particular it needs to find a path to unshackling it's electoral system from 19th century. The US Constitution has largely served that nation well for a very long time, but nothing can stand untouched forever. Electoral reform has to be at the front of the queue.
The big challenge is that once the door is cracked to changing the electoral system, a flood of competing self-interests inevitably barge into the room. I'm not sure how to have such a discourse in the present circumstances. Maybe the reform we need runs deeper than an electoral system.
Reducing the risk of swings to the extreme helps lower the social media temperature a notch.
The problem in their system is that GOP use the Senate filibuster to block federal government while they assert their power at state level – gerrymander, voter suppression, conservative social regimes, low MW, minimal public health in their states (which just expands the old southern order nationwide into other GOP regions). This is leading to a fracture as distinct as the one of the 1850's and one now under protection of a GOP controlled SCOTUS (and likely to be so for a generation).
Pence hasn't a hope. Reason? So many Republican/Trump supporters see him as evil for doing what they think he should've done on January 6th. No, not be slain, (although that would have been acceptable), but stopped Biden being declared President.
Which he couldn't do, but who cares about trivialities?
Yes, but for me more middle class incentive than rewards for those that were early adopters and current users.
I would have preferred to see RUC deferred as long as possible. All EV owners would have had equal benefit, and we would not be subsidising those that could have afforded it already, but just couldn't be arsed.
How many of these vehicles are bought on tick, based on housing equity and such? Anyways the floodwaters of the future will not care one bit.
I am just "hoping" that there will be some government largesse trickling down to public transport users maybe in a rebate at the end of the tax year? 🙂
Only those with no choice will continue to take public transport under a global pandemic. We are heading for the lowest public transport use since the early 1990s.
This is the magic to the privacy, security and autonomy of your own car.
Public transport improvement and affordability should be the number one priority for transport.
I see the narrative around this being morphed into alternative transport systems that often benefit recrational middle class users. The focus should primarily be on commuter traffic – for all.
Molly half the folk I know including both our sons and most of their friends work from home. They avoid Public transport because of the virus, they find it hard to believe a piece of cloth will help. They shop by click and collect as a rule.
For the remaining aspirant middle class that we have, Mercedes have finally decided to step into the higher-end market that they had ceded for 6 years to Tesla.
The obvious problem with all these billionaires heading off into outer space is that they keep coming back.
Jimmy Buffet sang about a Beach House on the Moon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_House_on_the_Moon) a while back, so the billionaires ought to acquire real estate as per usual. Sailing on the lunar seas requires novel technology, of course. No water, so wheels. No wind, so Tesla batteries…
It's interesting that our Jeff thinks that in the future we can do dirty industrial stuff and mining in space – an all we can eat Warren Space Buffet – and keep the Earth green.
Indeed an interesting scenario. Long been a staple of sci-fi. Asteroid mining ought to be a goer. Residential hotels on hollowed-out & honeycombed asteroids would then become the next step (developed from initial miner habitat).
Yes, your view has been mine since the tide went out on the promethean stance in the '70s. The Russian/American collaboration on the space station was excellent but you did always have that sense that they were fighting a losing battle to maintain momentum.
My positive comment earlier was due to seeing a resurgence of promethean endeavour into space. First from Musk, now with the other two megadudes.
The difference is primarily due to the shift from public funding of space exploration to private funding. Think of it as x zillion dollars with nowhere to go since the megadudes already have all the toys they want. The scenario opening up is capitalists co-creating a new market. The bandwagon effect then takes over and drives the enterprise forward.
That said, I'm just as sceptical as I ever was re tech `perfection'. To keep people alive in a vacuum requires it. Shit always happens eventually…
The nice thing about the first few seasons of the Expanse TV show was that no society had a particularly good life – Belters had it tough, Mars was totalitarian, and Earth was a shithole. And this applied to everyone except the privileged few.
Space mining will not keep the Earth green, because we've already fucked it. The overlap is too long – 20-30 years at the earliest for scaled-up space mining, and we're already getting severe climate conditions.
Al Gillespie (Professor of Law @ University of Waikato) points to the crux of the problem: "most cybercrime originates overseas, and global solutions don’t really exist."
"In theory, the attacks can be divided into two types — those by criminals and those by foreign governments. In reality, the line between the two is blurred. Dealing with foreign criminals is slightly easier than combating attacks by other governments, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has recognised the need for a global effort to fight this kind of cybercrime."
"Unfortunately, some of the countries most often suspected of allowing international cybercrime to be committed from within their borders have not signed, meaning they are not bound by its obligations. That includes Russia, China and North Korea. Along with several other countries not known for their tolerance of an open, free and secure internet, they are trying to create an alternative international cybercrime regime, now entering a drafting process through the United Nations."
So we're part of a global network of 66 nations operating independently of the UN, and the baddies are using the UN to compete with us. Shows how low the UN has now sunk in international esteem.
Along with several other countries not known for their tolerance of an open, free and secure internet…
Those "several other countries" include, of course, the notorious regimes in Washington and London. Any principled analyst or commentator would make that clear—but this is Professor Al Gillespie, who after the Key government had sustained serious and prolonged criticism for secretly negotiating the TPPA in 2015, expressed his faith that they would "not be as secretive in the future. … I think they will learn from this, and negotiations will not be as secretive in the future.”
As a critic of the US/UK establishment my entire adult life I'm happy to acknowledge that the goodies vs baddies framing is simplistic at best and serves to mask the truth at worst. However, it does persist as our cultural norm. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Thus nuance gets sacrificed on the altar of convention.
Rhetorically, it persists. In reality, as evidenced by the state persecution of (to name just a few) Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, and the destruction of (to cite just a few) Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, the reality is something else entirely.
By the way, I forgot to add this damning statement from that little homily by Professor Gillespie: “To a degree we have to trust the government.”
"Quantitative easing spent its life buying up government and local government debt with the Reserve Bank’s money, effectively keeping the price of this debt low by moving around a couple of numbers on a spreadsheet. However, this is not how most people will remember it. They will instead fondly look back on it the way they imagined it: an inkjet printer in Orr’s office spitting out banknotes with an audible “brrrr”, and assistant governor Christian Hawkesby running the printouts down to Finance Minister Grant Robertson".
Our qe was gifted a lengthy name: "So the Large-Scale Asset Purchase (LSAP) programme was born. It started out capped at $30b with the Reserve Bank only able to hold a maximum of 50 per cent of all government bonds, but later expanded to $100b with a limit of 60 per cent. Its spending would never get anywhere near this last total; when its death was announced just $53b had been spent."
"Buying up so many of these bonds forced investors to put money into riskier assets. In New Zealand the word ‘’asset’’ is pretty much synonymous with the word “house”, which is one reason why property prices soared. Kerr said everyone was a little awkward about this very much intended side-effect now". No shit! Some are even a lot awkward. “We’ve found ourselves with this gaping hole and councils which are insufficiently funded. That is the New Zealand problem right there,” Kerr said. “That is the reason why we have a housing market which is up 30 per cent."
Given that qe was created in the US to save the capitalist system with imaginary money, the learning seems to be that usage of magical thinking in government policy produces big holes in other parts of the economy.
Not really buying that QE was a cause of house price increases.
The lockdowns definitely took the smashed avocado away from potential buyers causing savings (also due to the wage subsidy providing lockdown income). Once the lockdowns ended this enabled house buying to continue apace, with buyers being even more willing to push out fully paying off their mortgage. Also some long meaningful zoom calls with the parents (and future co-owners) were involved.
QE reduced what interest rate the govt pays on its debt and gets it paid to itself (RBNZ profits are rebated anyway). But it should be pretty obvious that if the govt paid more stiff interest rates but still had a lockdown and wage subsidy similar house price rises would have occurred.
The OCR rate drop, the greater availability of money to banks, and the suspension of the deposit requirements were the more direct reasons for the house price increase.
Banks don't need deposits to make additional loans, at last resort the funds to complete the transaction can always be borrowed at the OCR from the RBNZ.
The most important criteria for borrowing will be ability to repay the loan and having a deposit to complete the house purchase.
So as Robertson and yourself don’t believe yet we have had massive property increases (just as the experts predicted) what now? The last 9 months increases will take 10years of wage growth at 2% before we are in the same position as late last year and that is with a stagnant property market for 10 years 🤬
So when warned, Robertson did nothing but play his fiddle, he had options open. Yet have we not been told how this government is to implement policies to improve the situation, the actions suggest otherwise. Over promised to act and deliver nothing but dissappointment.
The Treasury advise Robertson and they forecast a fall in the property market.
It was because of Treasury advice that Orr of the RB decided to lower the OCR, expand money available to banks and suspend the equity/deposit requirement for bank lending.
How about this warning – and Robertson was …. Doing nothing, I know is is not normal to expect to ignore advice that holds true that Robertson and con are accountable for the balls up , unless the govt want property to dramatically increase in value. I am sure the promise regarding housing was made in the previous election but was it intended to be acted on ?
In Jan 2020 Orr advised the government that LSAP would cause house price inflation (this was not being practiced at the time).
In March Orr begins LSAP as a pandemic response – as Treasury expects there to be a recession (and fall in property values).
Since then
The governments incomes support, and successful end to community spread prevents a recession (two terms of decline).
Orr maintains the low OCR and suspension of the equity/deposit for home loans for 6 more months (rather than actively intervene in a market rising in value).
After we continue without community spread well into winter 2021 and look to have vaccination roll out in play with inflation rising above 3% and unemployment below 5% and falling he formally ends LSAP – presumably because we still have some money set aside for another lock down.
Experts or no, I really just don't think a lot the stories projecting where the economy (and particularly inflation) is heading in response to govt economic policy are credible. For this case we are told by Mr Kerr that the 30% increases only happened because of QE. But whats his counterfactual, because there were a bunch of policies around the lockdown not just QE.
And yet the QE program didn't do much for several recent months while further price increases continued and its hardly like house price increases were unprecedented before QE started either.
If you look further into QE you will find its just a permitted (e.g market inclusive) way for the RBNZ to fund the govt at low interest rates. Notice the RBNZ holds 53% of govt debt presently. Once you have that understanding the idea that the govt owning its own debt influences house prices seems a bit weird.
The minimum standard for claiming QE is causing a 30% house price appreciation should be, explain how these transactions influence people to buy into housing at 30% higher prices.
Also keeping amo spare is not a thing, the RBNZ can at any time repeat its QE policy to fund the govt further. It can do that while being in negative equity because the only institution it answers to is parliament and their not going to do anything if the RBNZ is in this state. This means (if it mattered) that govt debt held by the RBNZ could just be written off by mutual agreement.
Shock jocks who ran interference about vaccinations in USA such as Hannity are asking their audience to basically forget what they said and get the jab.
Interesting times…..Tucker’s unmoved as expected as Dominic Cummins keeps giving it up.
I travelled from Wellington to Auckland a return trip with a 12 month old in the mid 1980s on the over nighter. I shared both ways in a single bunk bed. The bed was to narrow for an infant and a skinny adult. I ended up sleeping on the floor so the infant got a good sleep.
We had one of the 1970's Auckland/Wellington silver star carriages here in a paddock behind A&G Price for years. Gone now – probably to a tramcar Bay 🙂
I used to have to travel on it frequently when I was on the Naval Staff in Def HQ and had to visit the Auckland Naval Base as part of my duties. It was either that or spend a day travelling on the Air Force Shuttle. (If you have time to spare – go by Air!). It wasn't the most comfortable of conveyances and although it was supposedly a sleeper – sleeping was pretty hard to do. The following day was pretty much a write-off.
For those who like to keep tabs on how corrupted Donald Trump was by foreign agents and foreign countries, we have a new addition to the current list of his indicted and convicted White House staff:
– Paul Manafort, his Campaign Chairman, acting for Ukrainian interests
– Rick Gates, another senior Trump campaign official, country name redacted as part of FBI deal
– Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump's National Security Adviser, for Russian interests
– Michael Cohen Trump's commercial lawyer for years, for Russian interests
– Ken Kurson, President Trump's speechwriter, cyberstalking, country name redacted
– Roger Stone, Trump and Republican Party senior operative, for Russian interests
– George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign aide, acting for Russian interests
– Elliott Broidy, senior Trump campaign fundraiser, operating for Chinese and Malaysian interests
– George Nader, for the United Arab Emirates. And child pornography.
– Imaaz Zuberi, major Trump donor, country redacted as part of deal
– Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, major Trump donors, for Ukrainian interests
– Sam Patten, senior Republican lobbyist, for Ukrainian interests
I'm not convinced that Deutsche Bank dirt will ever properly see the light of day with Trump and the house Democrats likely to "resolve issues" surrounding congressional subpoenas of his financial records from that bank.
"The parties are “continuing to engage in negotiations intended to narrow or resolve their disputes and believe they are close to an agreement,” the filing said. They asked a federal judge in New York for another 30 days to continue negotiations.
The House Financial Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Deutsche Bank in 2019, seeking years of the president’s personal and business records. Trump challenged the subpoenas as an intrusion on his powers as president.“:
That may well be true – but the stench will continue to linger. What other explanation can there be for the many millions in "loans" to a bankrupt when almost every other major bank in the US wouldn't touch him again with a barge pole.
The dislike is mutual. After Trump's first bankruptcy, major banks grew considerably more skittish about doing business with him.
"When underwriting some of these very large loans with very visible borrowers, there is an element or the possibility of headline risk," Chandan says.Lenders tend to look askance at borrowers who have a history of walking away from debts too quickly, says economist Sam Chandan, who is the Larry & Klara Silverstein chair of New York University's Schack Institute of Real Estate. They also avoid borrowers whose exploits can generate bad press.
To borrow money, Trump has had to turn to smaller and less conventional sources of capital, such as Ladder Capital Finance, a New York real estate investment trust that holds mortgages on several Trump properties. Ladder doesn't keep the mortgages it issues and instead packages them into securities and resells them to other financial institutions. It therefore has somewhat more freedom to take risks with its customers than more heavily regulated banks.
More troubling is Trump's relationship with his other major lender, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, a subsidiary of the giant German bank, says Eisen of the Brookings Institution.
Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas is in talks with the federal government over various financial irregularities and faces big potential fines over its handling of mortgage-backed securities. Like other big banks, it will be affected by Trump's vow to overhaul bank regulations.
"Here you have one of the world's largest financial institutions, Mr. Trump's principal lender, whom he owes many, many millions of dollars to, that creates a conflict that cuts across Mr. Trump's job as president, " Eisen says.
Agree generally, though I think Trump Org will just trade their bank debt into lower-tier banks i.e. even below Deutsche Bank who are pretty scummy already. That's a pretty useful escape route.
Problem is those lower-order banks tend to co-operate when squeezed, apropos the Cyprus bank that became a co-operating witness in the 2018 Manafort trial.
My instinct is that he will go to a very friendly Gulf State bank to re-set himself.
Trump is doing remarkably well to survive all of this since 2016, and while it would be great for some moment of high hubris to descend, I'm not counting on it.
Cost and relevance as it's neither amateur or the pinnacle of (insert sport/activity here) anymore in the 21st century which were almost a quarter through.
But then cost is all relative as Tokyo whined about the fine they'll cop if it doesn't go ahead. So on we go, fingers crossed for our competitors and support crews.
The current ambition is to have hosts who can cover their costs with TV and other revenues. Paris 2024 and LA 2028 will tell. If that is not possible, the option is either a permanent venue (Athens is favoured), or a small number of alternate venues (quick rotation would allow re-use of facilities).
Yup. While I think we can all hold some nostaglic regard for the original Olympic ideal, the ever advancing professionalisation and multiplying diversity of sports themselves has rather overtaken it.
Worse has been the exploitation of the Olympics for nationalistic purposes. The prospect of the 2022 Winter Olympics looking like a re-run of 1936 brings no-one any joy either.
It occurs to me that several thousand years ago, some Greeks and Romans were probably holding exactly this same conversation.
The Greeks were indeed having this conversation Isocrates in the Panegyricus argued strongly for wisdom over athletics.
Many times have I wondered at those who first convoked the national assemblies and established the athletic games,1 amazed that they should have thought the prowess of men's bodies to be deserving of so great bounties, while to those who had toiled in private for the public good and trained their own minds so as to be able to help also their fellow-men they apportioned no reward whatsoever.
when, in all reason, they ought rather to have made provision for the latter; for if all the athletes should acquire twice the strength which they now possess, the rest of the world would be no better off; but let a single man attain to wisdom, and all men will reap the benefit who are willing to share his insight.
A fit man is no burden, but the indolent man behind the keyboard eating junk food, while gaming or blogging, is only a decade from consequences for the taxpayer.
Wouldn't it have been wonderful if the New Zealand Government had said this a couple of years ago before we blew hundreds of millions on the fiasco that was the America's Cup?
Could even have been able to pay the nurses a bit more and have kept those heading off to the greener fields in Australia here in New Zealand where we need them.
One does not afford an annual expense by pruning capital spending (and the assets that remain in Auckland are real assets and are worth more than the net cost of the event).
This is kinda nice. Lots of businesses jump on the Pride bandwagon for marketing, only to send their ad money elsewhere on the first of July. So it's good to see a small gesture of inclusion actually progresses outside the month of June.
It's more shutting off the road for the paint to dry that would be difficult. A few litres of paint don't cost much on DCC scale of expenses.
That is what our last, unlamented, Mayor Justin Lester claimed in Wellington. Then the Wellington ratepayers found out that Lester had managed to blow $40,000 on the stupid thing!
Gosh. The Council come up with a claimed $27,000 and you think that is an acceptable number?
Where did you ever work? It sounds as if you never worked at anything outside of the Public Sector. Only people there would think that painting a few coloured stripes on a road was worth spending that sort of money. You certainly wouldn't think so if it was your own money, that is for sure.
Traffic management – including closing Dixon Street and diverting traffic while the installation was underway – cost $11,710.
Security guards were employed at a cost of $2,304 to make sure the rainbow crossing was installed safely in the heart of Wellington’s bustling entertainment district over the weekend of 6 and 7 October 2018.
We also took the opportunity to install and upgrade safety features in Dixon Street at a cost of $3,998.61
The remaining expenses (security fencing, signage and communication to neighbours) totalled $4,841.86.
$4k for a few coats of what I'm assuming is something more substantial than timbacryl and applied by people earning a living wage.
As for where I've worked, you seem to be confusing "spending your own money" with actually knowing the cost of doing the job.
You'd want to spend the minimum amount on inadequate paint and less on the people to do the job. I've definitely worked for arses like that before, generally in hospo. They looked a lot like the ones now bitching about a "skills shortage" because they don't have enough unemployed people to exploit.
Because there has been no official investigation of any such influence by any branch of the American government – so he cannot refer to it.
Which means it's a conspiracy theory … unlike UFO's (the cover up created by the US Air Force in 1947 to suppress public reference in media to sightings of spy craft in test flight development), esp since Space Force …
In a globalised world it's quite unrealistic to imagine every nation can politically stand in isolation. Influence will always be sought and wielded to some degree. In the absence of a formal, function global scale governance – all the more so.
The real question I would ask – how transparent is this influence? Right now the answer everywhere seems to be 'very opaque'.
"GCSB Minister Andrew Little said that the foreign intelligence agency has established links between Chinese state-sponsored actors known as Advanced Persistent Threat 40 (APT40) and malicious cyber activity in New Zealand. The GCSB had "worked through a robust technical attribution process" to establish its conclusions, Little said." https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/447239/government-points-finger-at-china-over-cyber-attacks
"The term "advanced persistent threat" has been cited as originating from the United States Air Force in 2006 with Colonel Greg Rattray cited as the individual who coined the term." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_persistent_threat
"APT40, also known as BRONZE MOHAWK, FEVERDREAM, G0065, Gadolinium, GreenCrash, Hellsing, Kryptonite Panda, Leviathan, MUDCARP, Periscope, Temp.Periscope, and Temp.Jumper, is an advanced persistent threat located in Haikou, Hainan Province, People's Republic of China (PRC), and has been active since at least 2009. APT40 has targeted governmental organizations, companies, and universities in a wide range of industries, including biomedical, robotics, and maritime research, across the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and the South China Sea area, as well as industries included in China's Belt and Road Initiative."
So it's official from the government that these cyber attacks emanate from a threat located in China (APT40) and this entity consists of "Chinese state-sponsored actors" which have been producing similar organised attacks against diverse targets in various countries for 12 years. Other western govts accept this reality also. Forensic computer analysis seems to have confirmed the identity of the source.
Assumption of Chinese state sponsoring the organisation derive, presumably, from the expectation that the state would eliminate the organisation if it were not operating in accord with state policy. Makes sense, but a sceptic would point out there's no proof and the authorities are basing foreign policy on blind faith in their spooks…
So wer,re expected to believe now that china is behind the latest cyber attacks in this country really ??what could they possibly gain from the somewhat seedy takedown of a hospitals network system ?Call me a CT if you wish but i seem to remember amongst the very large disclosure of documents released by wikileaks a few years ago called vault 7 there was evidence of american abilities to falsely attribute hacks and computer intrusions to another party .Personally given their past record for fabricating untruths i wouldnt trust any american intelligence source to tell me the time of day !
Your opinion isn't worth much unless you can do better than the evidence released yesterday.
Yesterday, the collected governments heading respective intelligence communities from the United States, NATO, EU, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, and little old New Zealand came out simultaneously with the same message, and this is just New Zealand's bit of it:
What China has done is manage to unify the entire developed world against them in this kind of cyber war.
It’s now much more likely that you will see global cybersecurity enforcement formed into multilateral security agreements far, far larger than Five Eyes.
Is it a matter of trust, or competence? Most of them could be misled by colleagues and not realise it.
Most of the Senate did not know the difference between Sunni and Shia when voting on regime change in Iraq – that sort of advanced knowledge was to be found only on the Foreign Relations Committee.
And then again if you rang up Foggy Bottom or Langley and asked for the time and they got it right, you would have to suspect they were using NSA tracking sources to know your location.
According to the leaked documents, the NSA intercepts and stores the communications of over a billion people worldwide, including United States citizens. The documents also revealed the NSA tracks hundreds of millions of people's movements using cellphones' metadata.
NSA warns that the location of any powered-on smartphone can have its location tagged. … “Even if cellular service is turned off on a mobile device,” NSA says, “Wi-Fi and Bluteooth can determine a user's location
Seymour frames PM: "One has to ask, is the real reason we do not have a plan to get our way of life back is that the Government is still focus-grouping it?"
Flawed premise right there! We don't plan to get our way of life back while in the midst of a pandemic, so why expect the govt to do it for us??
"It's time to start treating New Zealanders like adults. Let us know what's going on in a timely way. Be up-front with us as issues arise instead of relying on polls and focus groups. Our COVID response is more important than Jacinda Ardern's popularity."
She doesn't need to worry about that – it's already right up there! Haven't you noticed?? She's crowd-sourcing feedback, obviously. Only people who volunteer it are those with a chip on their shoulder, eh? So making an organised effort to evaluate how folks see the thing going is sensible. You could even call it adult.
Seymour's childish need to get the govt to return his privileged way of life is just nanny-state thinking. Yet he can't see that he's just complaining about the pandemic tugging his security blanket away. A mental age of two years…
For mine that would mean the independently rich and publicly involved (as group leaders or associates) would retain freedom of speech, the rest would risk consequence – in employment, elsewhere online on other platforms and harrassment where they lived.
SPC you nail it – Free speech can never be truly free, but especially when you fix your moniker to it, it can be like punching yourself somewhere vital.
I sat on a board of trustees and we needed to do some recruitment. Most of the trustees wanted to scan the applicants social media accounts before shortlisting. I put my foot down and said that if they thought that was the right thing to do then w needed to be upfront about it with the applicants, tell them what we had found and how we used that information in our decision-making.
In the end they didn't want to be held accountable for their desire to be nosy. Trolling peoples social media as part of the recruitment of staff is the refuge of cowards for the most part.
“In Israel there is a strong political movement to make diplomacy through business,” said the person, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Business first, diplomacy later. When you make a deal together, it opens a lot of doors to diplomacy.” It is common for governments to help companies export their products. NSO, after all, employs former Israeli cyber-intelligence officials and retains links to the defence ministry."
"In the case of Saudi Arabia, sources familiar with the matter said the kingdom was temporarily cut off from using Pegasus in 2018, for several months, following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but was allowed to begin using the spyware again in 2019 following the intervention of the Israeli government. It is unclear why the Israeli government urged NSO to reconnect the surveillance tool for Riyadh."
"NSO's founders are ex-members of Unit 8200, the Israeli Intelligence Corps unit responsible for collecting signals intelligence." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group
Benjamin Netanyahu once said that "Talpiot" was better than Five Eyes. His meaning would not be an elite unit within the IDF (10 year service and training in maths, physics IT), but the areas where they dispersed to – Shin Bet, Mossad, military intelligence and various tech firms like NSO.
Kushner and co – play nice with Israel and we'll flog you suites of nifty, purpose built tech to surveille and repress any and all domestic opposition.
Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Turkey, Morocco, Saudi Arabia- righto!
Bibi and the Donald – we'll call it the Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People plan.
The Greens want a WOF for rental property, rather than require tenants to complain about the property meeting the standard (often renters are being offered dubious property and take it rather than miss out).
The Healthy Homes Standards, which became law on July 1, 2019, outline the minimum standards for heating, insulation, ventilation, moisture ingress and drainage, and draught-stopping in rented properties.
Last month, the Government announced that all private rentals must comply with the Healthy Homes Standards within 90 days of any new or renewed tenancy after July 1, with all private rentals complying by July 1, 2024
At current, all houses rented by Kāinga Ora (formerly Housing New Zealand) and registered Community Housing Providers must comply with the Healthy Homes Standards by July 1, 2023.
For mine what is needed is a random check policy between now and 2024 (covering all properties by July 2024), with a short period of notice to the landlord (tenants being able to "anonymously" notify the agency concerned about properties of concern, so the problem ones are sorted out more quickly).
Sounds like good thinking SPC. And on why everything is SNAFU on housing and everything:
Here is some more – a Ted talk on capitalism by someone who says he is at the top level of the 1% wweeaalltthhyy – people who have multiples of everything!
The point of course being to provide free checks, rather than charge for a WOF, and cover the cost by fining those landlords whose properties were not up to standard.
Right on SPC. Make it easy to be gooder, until the whole lot go up on a rising tide. Carrots needed more with sticks available to be used, that do get used.
And what about if you're renting a sound place at a really reasonable rental – and you can't afford any more. It has full spec insulation and an extractor fan over the oven. I keep it clean and well ventilated, there is no mould and it doesn't need a heat pump or extractor fans in the bathroom. Why should my landlord be forced to do unnecessary stuff – resulting in me paying more rent? Where is the common sense?
Poto Williams – You need to up your game. You need to represent all NZ'ers not just Maori and Pacific communities. What a train wreck of an interview – luckily it wasn't Mike Hosking.
Yes, as an elected member from Christchurch and a Minister of the Crown you would think she represents (1) the people of her electorate and (2) all New Zealanders. Clearly the Minister thinks otherwise. Doh!
Even though a lot has changed, historically speaking, the Democratic Party was the party of the Ku Klux Klan and slavery.
It's only when you step back and take a longer view of US politics that you begin to see just how much the support factions for each of the two major Parties (the two big brand vehicles) has changed over time in adaptation to the changing social ground. And will continue to change into the future.
Sure wind/solar being intermittent require a spare capacity such as gas (better than coal). Even our hydro based system needs back up in dry years (battery dam maybe) or we use Huntly (at some point only gas and no longer any coal).
He seems to be arguing for 100% nuclear as per France as better for AGW and the local environment. But how does anyone go from zero to 100% nuclear quickly?
There are all sorts of combinations possible 33%+- nuclear, 33%+- hydro and or dry year battery and 33%+- solar/wind with gas back up.
or we use Huntly (at some point only gas and no longer any coal).
The local gas is drying up.
From memory there hasn’t been a decent sized field found since Kupe in about 1986. That is despite significiant searches for new fields from the 2000s until recently. A couple of onshore small oil fields with a small gas compenent..
The large Kapuni was discovered when I was born (1959) and the massive Maui was when I listening to the moon landing (1969).
Our geology around the Zealandia continental area doesn’t really make it likely that we’ll find large cheap viable fields. Kupe has only recently started being exploited simply because it was far more expensive than Maui to exploit.
The plan is still to shut down the coal or gas fired units and only use the gas fired turbines (it seems we made a mistake exporting methanol to Japan etc) … importing gas from Oz?
That's only the plan if you follow the government's climate agenda, not its energy agenda.
In the same year the government declared a climate emergency, imports of an especially dirty type of coal from Indonesia topped a million tonnes for the first time since 2006.
New Zealand’s totally addicted to coal until there are huge new reliable wind farms all over the place. After the Lammermoor disaster and the Blueskin Bay nightmare, new projects large and small have been very slow to market – and who can blame them?
Fukushima is widely regarded as the second worst nuclear power incident ever. It should however teach us two important lessons.
One is the inherent vulnerability of large reactor designs that use water as their coolant/moderator. The critical necessity of needing to maintain both high pressure and high flow of this water through these reactor types even after the reaction has been shut down, was always their Archilles Heel. This is why all new Gen 4 designs eliminate this requirement in one manner or another, directly leading to substantial improvements in both innate safety and costs at the same time.
Lesson 1: Plan to replace the existing fleet of Gen 3 PWR type reactors as they reach the end of their life with better designs with innately lower risk profiles and costs.
The second idea to be learned is this, that the second worst nuclear power accident of all time has directly caused zero deaths and zero demonstrable harm to anyone. (This sets aside the 1600 odd deaths indirectly attributed to authorities panicking and evacuating many vulnerable people, completely unnecessarily, in sub-optimal circumstances.)
The reality is that we evolved and live on a planet bathed in a certain low level of ionising radiation. Below a certain level (probably about 100mSv) there is no possible harm, because the body repairs DNA damage much faster than the radiation causes it. In fact the data suggests that people living in areas with elevated background levels have somewhat lower rates of cancer. A fuller explanation here.
Lesson 2 : Not understanding that modest levels of ionising radiation is a normal and natural aspect of our world has led to irrational fearmongering that closed off decades ago the best path we had to avoiding climate change. This has been an incalculably high opportunity cost we have to address before any real progress in reducing CO2 levels (ie getting the atmospheric CO2 number back down under 350ppm) can be made.
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
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. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
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. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
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. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
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. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
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 ...
The Government Communications Security Bureau denies hosting a foreign spying capability flagged by the watchdog, differentiating it from the system recently criticised. ...
RNZ News A group of academic staff at New Zealand’s largest university have expressed concern at the administration’s move to block a protest encampment that was planned to take place on campus calling for support for the rights of Palestinians. This week, the University of Auckland warned that while it ...
Genterwocky After a hard days marching, Sir Doocey calls in at the Village Tavern For a pint of ale and a pork pie. The grim villagers stare at him. “Do not be travelling on the forest road,” warns a crusty old beak. “And why is that, antique peasant?” Grins Sir ...
Political conferences after a party returns to power are usually a chance for some healthy, even unhealthy backslapping. Yet National Party president Sylvia Wood’s address to its mainland representatives on Saturday hardly contained the unalloyed delight that one might have expected following National’s escape from the wilderness of opposition. Yes, ...
Comment: Almost half the world is voting in national elections this year and artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. There are genuine fears AI-generated or AI-edited deepfakes will potentially manipulate election outcomes not just in the US and UK, but critically in countries such as India. For that ...
Ahead of the reality franchise’s return to New Zealand, allow us to introduce the eight brides and grooms. Chuck on a veil and tie back your man bun, because it’s time to say “I do” to a new season of Married at First Sight NZ. The reality TV “social experiment” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Vanuatu’s former prime minister and opposition MP Ishmael Kalsakau has stepped down — just two days after he confirmed he was the rightful opposition leader. Kalsakau, MP for Port Vila, confirmed to ABC’s Pacific Beat, and the Vanuatu Daily Post on Thursday that he ...
What’s to blame for the coalition’s choppy start? Six months in, and the mojo meter is in the doldrums. A new poll would put National out of power and sees its leader, Chris Luxon, sliding in popularity. How much is it about policy, how much coalition management and a perception ...
The striking report goes far beyond the proposed repeal of the Oranga Tamariki Act’s Treaty of Waitangi provision, and its impact should be felt far beyond the unique circumstances of the claim it addresses. Earlier this week, the Waitangi Tribunal released an interim report on the government’s proposed repeal of ...
The world has been experiencing a productivity slowdown, from which New Zealand has not been exempt. COVID-19 temporarily boosted labour productivity, but more recently, productivity has retreated. The overall trend since 2007 has been one of slow productivity ...
What’s more wasteful than spending $315k on syrup and machine maintenance? Trying to drum up a controversy about it.Cast your mind back to the pre-pandemic idylls of 2019. A “rat” was a disgusting rodent and not a self-administered plague test; the sixth Labour government was in power; and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Monash University Ken stocker/Shutterstock In the wake of numerous killings of women allegedly by men’s violence in 2024, thousands of Australians have joined rallies across the country to demand action ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University Oleg Ivanov IL/Shutterstock Waiting times for public hospital elective surgery have been in the news ahead of this year’s federal budget. That’s the type of non-emergency surgery ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne Amna Artist/Shutterstock One of the earliest descriptions of someone with cancer comes from the fourth century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the city of Heracleia on the Black Sea, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rose, Professor of Sustainable Future Transport, University of Sydney LanaElcova/Shutterstock Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport. Is this view correct? Yes – but only once uptake accelerates. Despite the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Natassia Woodley, Researcher and Phd Candidate, Edith Cowan University There is widespread agreement Australia needs to do better when it comes to gender-based violence. Anger and frustration at the numbers of women being killed saw national rallies over the weekend and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Graham, Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney Mark and Anna Photography/Shutterstock As home ownership moves further out of reach for many Australians, “rentvesting” is being touted as a lifesaver. Rentvesting is the practice of renting one property to live ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sukhmani Khorana, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW Sydney Netflix The new season of Heartbreak High is garnering mixed reviews. Critics are writing about the racy story lines, comparing it to other coming-of-age series about teenage relationships and ...
Bob Carr intends to launch legal action against Winston Peters and Julie Anne Genter is facing a second allegation of bullying. Both sucked the air out of an announcement on education, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in ...
I've been wondering if Pence will run against Trump next time. A youngster compared to Biden & Trump (he's 62), his solid fundamentalist credentials would pull plenty of votes away from the top flake – who mysteriously held up a Bible for the tv cameras during last year's campaign without explaining why.
In response to a reporter Trump said "It's a Bible." There was no poll of how many viewers knew he was lying. Anyway, this report suggests Pence has a huge hill to climb before he seems sufficiently competitive: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/19/pence-flatlines-2024-499919
“There are some Trump supporters who think he’s the Antichrist,” said one Iowa GOP official. Obviously not protestants (who traditionally believe that's the Pope).
"“He’s got to justify to the Trumpistas why he isn’t Judas Iscariot, and then he’s got to demonstrate to a bunch of other Republicans why he hung out with someone they perceive to be a nutjob,” said Sean Walsh, a Republican strategist who worked in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses and on several presidential campaigns."
"Many Iowa Republicans had seen the results of the most recent Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll, released just days earlier, in which Pence flatlined, drawing no more than 1 percent support."
That would be due to the charisma deficit. The rabble do like a rouser & Trump gets them fired up. So looks like the Bible reader won't stand a chance against the Bible place-holder.
De Santis is odds on (once the courts are finished with Trump), with a Senate Democratic majority to leaven him.
Can anyone see a decent Democratic nominee contender against Biden yet?
If De Santis wins the Presidential election in 2024, there is unlikely to be a Democratic majority in the Senate.
Naturally I'm ever hopeful that the United States electorate will, state by state, start to reward the Democrats. Here's my quick reasons:
– Ohio. Retirement of Republican Senator Rob Portman puts that fully in play for the Dems
– North Carolina. Republican Bill Burr not standing again. My bet is Jeff Jackson takes it.
– Wisconsin. Republican Ron Johnson will either not stand, or he will lose to a Democrat.
– Pennsylvania. Republican Pat Toomey is retiring. Plenty of good Democratic contenders there including Fetterman
– Ohio is such a Republican political mess maybe the Democrats will find a good contender
– And they have a good shot against Rubio in Florida this time with Val Demings who is a female black police captain and solid Blue Dog Dem
Democrats also have a good shot at defending their marginals in:
– Arizona
– Georgia
– Nevada, and
– New Hampshire
I'm not even going to bother with Missouri or the rest.
If anyone complains that this is simply managing the decline in US democracy, well of course that's true. But you deal with what you're dealt.
2022 will be telling (2016 reprise). The Democratic Party did well in 2018 (so might lose ground if the de Santis wins in 2024).
The unknown is the impact of GOP state voter suppression and whether this will get more extreme if they lose races in 2022.
Agree.
Yeah.
Hopefully they say the quiet bit out loud one too many times and even a particularly conservative SCOTUS kicks the effort out.
The US democratic system is going through one of it's periodic re-arrangements. While the nature of their voting system will ensure that the two big brand vehicles (Dem and Rep) will endure – their support factions and what they stand for, every now and then undergoes a dramatic reshuffle. It's happened before, and we're roughly in the middle of another one.
Reports of a democratic US in terminal decline are premature.
They so need preferential voting – within party candidate selection and to allow a third party Independent candidate to beat extremists who cannot get to 50%.
Yes. I'm on record here has regarding the democratic West and the US in particular being flawed but still better than all the proven alternatives.
What I do expect from the US is a capacity to change and evolve in response to an always shifting world. And in particular it needs to find a path to unshackling it's electoral system from 19th century. The US Constitution has largely served that nation well for a very long time, but nothing can stand untouched forever. Electoral reform has to be at the front of the queue.
The big challenge is that once the door is cracked to changing the electoral system, a flood of competing self-interests inevitably barge into the room. I'm not sure how to have such a discourse in the present circumstances. Maybe the reform we need runs deeper than an electoral system.
Reducing the risk of swings to the extreme helps lower the social media temperature a notch.
The problem in their system is that GOP use the Senate filibuster to block federal government while they assert their power at state level – gerrymander, voter suppression, conservative social regimes, low MW, minimal public health in their states (which just expands the old southern order nationwide into other GOP regions). This is leading to a fracture as distinct as the one of the 1850's and one now under protection of a GOP controlled SCOTUS (and likely to be so for a generation).
Pence hasn't a hope. Reason? So many Republican/Trump supporters see him as evil for doing what they think he should've done on January 6th. No, not be slain, (although that would have been acceptable), but stopped Biden being declared President.
Which he couldn't do, but who cares about trivialities?
This is a good result of the EV feebate scheme.
Feebate: Huge uptick in electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid sales in early weeks of new scheme | Stuff.co.nz
Yes, but for me more middle class incentive than rewards for those that were early adopters and current users.
I would have preferred to see RUC deferred as long as possible. All EV owners would have had equal benefit, and we would not be subsidising those that could have afforded it already, but just couldn't be arsed.
How many of these vehicles are bought on tick, based on housing equity and such? Anyways the floodwaters of the future will not care one bit.
I am just "hoping" that there will be some government largesse trickling down to public transport users maybe in a rebate at the end of the tax year? 🙂
Only those with no choice will continue to take public transport under a global pandemic. We are heading for the lowest public transport use since the early 1990s.
This is the magic to the privacy, security and autonomy of your own car.
Public transport improvement and affordability should be the number one priority for transport.
I see the narrative around this being morphed into alternative transport systems that often benefit recrational middle class users. The focus should primarily be on commuter traffic – for all.
Molly half the folk I know including both our sons and most of their friends work from home. They avoid Public transport because of the virus, they find it hard to believe a piece of cloth will help. They shop by click and collect as a rule.
For the remaining aspirant middle class that we have, Mercedes have finally decided to step into the higher-end market that they had ceded for 6 years to Tesla.
https://www.mercedes-benz.co.nz/passengercars/mercedes-benz-cars/models/eqa/charging-and-range/overseas-disclaimer.module.html
The XPeng seems to be taking too long to get here. Otherwise it looks pretty shiny.
The rest can go for the Toyota Camry hybrid once all those taxi drivers have run them into the ground.
Jeff the Gray leaves People of the Earth, then returns to his Amazonian (reptilian) sidekick.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57849364
The obvious problem with all these billionaires heading off into outer space is that they keep coming back.
Jimmy Buffet sang about a Beach House on the Moon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_House_on_the_Moon) a while back, so the billionaires ought to acquire real estate as per usual. Sailing on the lunar seas requires novel technology, of course. No water, so wheels. No wind, so Tesla batteries…
It's interesting that our Jeff thinks that in the future we can do dirty industrial stuff and mining in space – an all we can eat Warren Space Buffet – and keep the Earth green.
Indeed an interesting scenario. Long been a staple of sci-fi. Asteroid mining ought to be a goer. Residential hotels on hollowed-out & honeycombed asteroids would then become the next step (developed from initial miner habitat).
If there is a sci-fi comparison to be made. It seems less to the a cyberpunk Schismatrix, than to Elton's dark comedy; StArk.
If you feel like some intelligent goofiness thought up by clever collegians and profs, you can't go beyond Tom Lehrer's lucidity.
Except it's utter bollocks. We can barely keep the astronauts in the space station up there and that's an international effort using vast resources.
Space tourism is utter BS both now, and in the forseeable future.
Yes, your view has been mine since the tide went out on the promethean stance in the '70s. The Russian/American collaboration on the space station was excellent but you did always have that sense that they were fighting a losing battle to maintain momentum.
My positive comment earlier was due to seeing a resurgence of promethean endeavour into space. First from Musk, now with the other two megadudes.
The difference is primarily due to the shift from public funding of space exploration to private funding. Think of it as x zillion dollars with nowhere to go since the megadudes already have all the toys they want. The scenario opening up is capitalists co-creating a new market. The bandwagon effect then takes over and drives the enterprise forward.
That said, I'm just as sceptical as I ever was re tech `perfection'. To keep people alive in a vacuum requires it. Shit always happens eventually…
The nice thing about the first few seasons of the Expanse TV show was that no society had a particularly good life – Belters had it tough, Mars was totalitarian, and Earth was a shithole. And this applied to everyone except the privileged few.
Space mining will not keep the Earth green, because we've already fucked it. The overlap is too long – 20-30 years at the earliest for scaled-up space mining, and we're already getting severe climate conditions.
Al Gillespie (Professor of Law @ University of Waikato) points to the crux of the problem: "most cybercrime originates overseas, and global solutions don’t really exist."
https://theconversation.com/calling-out-china-for-cyberattacks-is-risky-but-a-lawless-digital-world-is-even-riskier-164771
"In theory, the attacks can be divided into two types — those by criminals and those by foreign governments. In reality, the line between the two is blurred. Dealing with foreign criminals is slightly easier than combating attacks by other governments, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has recognised the need for a global effort to fight this kind of cybercrime."
"To that end, the government recently announced New Zealand was joining the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime, a global regime signed by 66 countries based on shared basic legal standards, mutual assistance and extradition rules."
"Unfortunately, some of the countries most often suspected of allowing international cybercrime to be committed from within their borders have not signed, meaning they are not bound by its obligations. That includes Russia, China and North Korea. Along with several other countries not known for their tolerance of an open, free and secure internet, they are trying to create an alternative international cybercrime regime, now entering a drafting process through the United Nations."
So we're part of a global network of 66 nations operating independently of the UN, and the baddies are using the UN to compete with us. Shows how low the UN has now sunk in international esteem.
Along with several other countries not known for their tolerance of an open, free and secure internet…
Those "several other countries" include, of course, the notorious regimes in Washington and London. Any principled analyst or commentator would make that clear—but this is Professor Al Gillespie, who after the Key government had sustained serious and prolonged criticism for secretly negotiating the TPPA in 2015, expressed his faith that they would "not be as secretive in the future. … I think they will learn from this, and negotiations will not be as secretive in the future.”
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-17082015/#comment-1059852
As a critic of the US/UK establishment my entire adult life I'm happy to acknowledge that the goodies vs baddies framing is simplistic at best and serves to mask the truth at worst. However, it does persist as our cultural norm. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Thus nuance gets sacrificed on the altar of convention.
However, it does persist as our cultural norm.
Rhetorically, it persists. In reality, as evidenced by the state persecution of (to name just a few) Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, and the destruction of (to cite just a few) Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, the reality is something else entirely.
By the way, I forgot to add this damning statement from that little homily by Professor Gillespie: “To a degree we have to trust the government.”
And yet here you are free to voice your opinion. Amazing this is tolerated considering how evil the regime is according to you.
Ha! To a degree! Which degree??
Edward Snowden, President, Freedom of the Press Foundation. "I used to work for the government. Now I work for the public." https://foundation.app/@Snowden/stay-free-edward-snowden-2021-24437
"New Zealand’s version of quantitative easing will die on Friday" https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/125769412/quantitative-easing-an-obituary
"Quantitative easing spent its life buying up government and local government debt with the Reserve Bank’s money, effectively keeping the price of this debt low by moving around a couple of numbers on a spreadsheet. However, this is not how most people will remember it. They will instead fondly look back on it the way they imagined it: an inkjet printer in Orr’s office spitting out banknotes with an audible “brrrr”, and assistant governor Christian Hawkesby running the printouts down to Finance Minister Grant Robertson".
Our qe was gifted a lengthy name: "So the Large-Scale Asset Purchase (LSAP) programme was born. It started out capped at $30b with the Reserve Bank only able to hold a maximum of 50 per cent of all government bonds, but later expanded to $100b with a limit of 60 per cent. Its spending would never get anywhere near this last total; when its death was announced just $53b had been spent."
"Buying up so many of these bonds forced investors to put money into riskier assets. In New Zealand the word ‘’asset’’ is pretty much synonymous with the word “house”, which is one reason why property prices soared. Kerr said everyone was a little awkward about this very much intended side-effect now". No shit! Some are even a lot awkward. “We’ve found ourselves with this gaping hole and councils which are insufficiently funded. That is the New Zealand problem right there,” Kerr said. “That is the reason why we have a housing market which is up 30 per cent."
Given that qe was created in the US to save the capitalist system with imaginary money, the learning seems to be that usage of magical thinking in government policy produces big holes in other parts of the economy.
Not really buying that QE was a cause of house price increases.
The lockdowns definitely took the smashed avocado away from potential buyers causing savings (also due to the wage subsidy providing lockdown income). Once the lockdowns ended this enabled house buying to continue apace, with buyers being even more willing to push out fully paying off their mortgage. Also some long meaningful zoom calls with the parents (and future co-owners) were involved.
QE reduced what interest rate the govt pays on its debt and gets it paid to itself (RBNZ profits are rebated anyway). But it should be pretty obvious that if the govt paid more stiff interest rates but still had a lockdown and wage subsidy similar house price rises would have occurred.
The OCR rate drop, the greater availability of money to banks, and the suspension of the deposit requirements were the more direct reasons for the house price increase.
Banks don't need deposits to make additional loans, at last resort the funds to complete the transaction can always be borrowed at the OCR from the RBNZ.
The most important criteria for borrowing will be ability to repay the loan and having a deposit to complete the house purchase.
I was referring to the lack of need for a 20% deposit to buy a house, a requirement suspended by the RBG in 2020.
I agree that likely had some effect.
So as Robertson and yourself don’t believe yet we have had massive property increases (just as the experts predicted) what now? The last 9 months increases will take 10years of wage growth at 2% before we are in the same position as late last year and that is with a stagnant property market for 10 years 🤬
So when warned, Robertson did nothing but play his fiddle, he had options open. Yet have we not been told how this government is to implement policies to improve the situation, the actions suggest otherwise. Over promised to act and deliver nothing but dissappointment.
The Treasury advise Robertson and they forecast a fall in the property market.
It was because of Treasury advice that Orr of the RB decided to lower the OCR, expand money available to banks and suspend the equity/deposit requirement for bank lending.
But from about Oct 2020, it was becoming obvious Treasury was wrong and Orr did nothing for months.
How about this warning – and Robertson was …. Doing nothing, I know is is not normal to expect to ignore advice that holds true that Robertson and con are accountable for the balls up , unless the govt want property to dramatically increase in value. I am sure the promise regarding housing was made in the previous election but was it intended to be acted on ?
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300223358/reserve-bank-repeatedly-warned-government-money-printing-would-lead-to-house-price-inflation
The article says
Since then
Experts or no, I really just don't think a lot the stories projecting where the economy (and particularly inflation) is heading in response to govt economic policy are credible. For this case we are told by Mr Kerr that the 30% increases only happened because of QE. But whats his counterfactual, because there were a bunch of policies around the lockdown not just QE.
And yet the QE program didn't do much for several recent months while further price increases continued and its hardly like house price increases were unprecedented before QE started either.
If you look further into QE you will find its just a permitted (e.g market inclusive) way for the RBNZ to fund the govt at low interest rates. Notice the RBNZ holds 53% of govt debt presently. Once you have that understanding the idea that the govt owning its own debt influences house prices seems a bit weird.
The minimum standard for claiming QE is causing a 30% house price appreciation should be, explain how these transactions influence people to buy into housing at 30% higher prices.
Also keeping amo spare is not a thing, the RBNZ can at any time repeat its QE policy to fund the govt further. It can do that while being in negative equity because the only institution it answers to is parliament and their not going to do anything if the RBNZ is in this state. This means (if it mattered) that govt debt held by the RBNZ could just be written off by mutual agreement.
53 billion not 53%. (Think its about 35%).
Shock jocks who ran interference about vaccinations in USA such as Hannity are asking their audience to basically forget what they said and get the jab.
Interesting times…..Tucker’s unmoved as expected as Dominic Cummins keeps giving it up.
https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2021/07/21/is-there-a-case-for-an-overnight-sleeper-train-between-auckland-and-wellington/
Lots to recommend it. Especially the low carbon footprint.
My wife and I would use it.
The Milan to Paris overnight is not too bad; 7.5 hours.
Kiwirail would need to assure us that our carriage would still be attached.
There was one back in the 1970's. I used it the following day to journey north on annual holidays.
I travelled from Wellington to Auckland a return trip with a 12 month old in the mid 1980s on the over nighter. I shared both ways in a single bunk bed. The bed was to narrow for an infant and a skinny adult. I ended up sleeping on the floor so the infant got a good sleep.
Whack a car carrying bogey on the back so you can take you wheels with you.
I recently drove to gaore fron picton if a coulda out the wagon on a train and had a few cold ones then woken up down there it would be ace.
Now we're talking!
I'd use it as I dislike flying and long drives.
We had one of the 1970's Auckland/Wellington silver star carriages here in a paddock behind A&G Price for years. Gone now – probably to a tramcar Bay 🙂
I used to have to travel on it frequently when I was on the Naval Staff in Def HQ and had to visit the Auckland Naval Base as part of my duties. It was either that or spend a day travelling on the Air Force Shuttle. (If you have time to spare – go by Air!). It wasn't the most comfortable of conveyances and although it was supposedly a sleeper – sleeping was pretty hard to do. The following day was pretty much a write-off.
For those who like to keep tabs on how corrupted Donald Trump was by foreign agents and foreign countries, we have a new addition to the current list of his indicted and convicted White House staff:
– Paul Manafort, his Campaign Chairman, acting for Ukrainian interests
– Rick Gates, another senior Trump campaign official, country name redacted as part of FBI deal
– Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump's National Security Adviser, for Russian interests
– Michael Cohen Trump's commercial lawyer for years, for Russian interests
– Ken Kurson, President Trump's speechwriter, cyberstalking, country name redacted
– Roger Stone, Trump and Republican Party senior operative, for Russian interests
– George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign aide, acting for Russian interests
– Elliott Broidy, senior Trump campaign fundraiser, operating for Chinese and Malaysian interests
– George Nader, for the United Arab Emirates. And child pornography.
– Imaaz Zuberi, major Trump donor, country redacted as part of deal
– Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, major Trump donors, for Ukrainian interests
– Sam Patten, senior Republican lobbyist, for Ukrainian interests
https://www.thedailybeast.com/all-of-the-trumpworld-figures-whove-been-arrested-indicted-or-jailed
Today we can now add:
– Tom Barrack, Chair of Trump's Inaugural Committee, charged with supporting the United Arab Emirates
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/20/politics/tom-barrack-arrested/index.html
I don't need to bother with Steve Bannon, Brad Parscale, Elliott Broidy, George Nader, and all the rest about to come out in the wash.
Trump's government was totally corrupted by multiple foreign governments.
Wasn't Paul Manafort supposed to be a Russian intelligence asset, rather than Ukranian?
The Ukrainians were after Manafort because of his assistance to a Russian backed Ukrainian politician (a former President of Ukraine).
What policy position did Trump pursue that was not what you would have expected him to do prior to him getting elected?
Actively seeking to be corrupted by foreign governments.
Actually Ad that is precisely what I thought he would do, and hoped he would resist the temptation. He was already compromised by foreign powers prior to his election having been bailed out financially through backhand deals through Deutsche Bank and money laundering for Russian billionaires through his property deals and casinos.
I'm not convinced that Deutsche Bank dirt will ever properly see the light of day with Trump and the house Democrats likely to "resolve issues" surrounding congressional subpoenas of his financial records from that bank.
"The parties are “continuing to engage in negotiations intended to narrow or resolve their disputes and believe they are close to an agreement,” the filing said. They asked a federal judge in New York for another 30 days to continue negotiations.
The House Financial Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Deutsche Bank in 2019, seeking years of the president’s personal and business records. Trump challenged the subpoenas as an intrusion on his powers as president.“:
https://fortune.com/2021/05/17/donald-trump-house-democrats-deutsche-bank-2019-subpoenas-financial-records/
Also:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/trump-house-democrats-working-resolve-dispute-deutsche-bank-subpoenas-2021-06-18/
Maybe if the New York indictments are successful, the broader team will go the next stage.
That may well be true – but the stench will continue to linger. What other explanation can there be for the many millions in "loans" to a bankrupt when almost every other major bank in the US wouldn't touch him again with a barge pole.
https://www.npr.org/2017/06/20/533552769/trump-may-have-a-lot-of-money-but-documents-show-he-owes-a-lot-too
Agree generally, though I think Trump Org will just trade their bank debt into lower-tier banks i.e. even below Deutsche Bank who are pretty scummy already. That's a pretty useful escape route.
Problem is those lower-order banks tend to co-operate when squeezed, apropos the Cyprus bank that became a co-operating witness in the 2018 Manafort trial.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-paul-manaforts-trial-a-cyprus-bank-is-a-cooperating-witness-1533643200
My instinct is that he will go to a very friendly Gulf State bank to re-set himself.
Trump is doing remarkably well to survive all of this since 2016, and while it would be great for some moment of high hubris to descend, I'm not counting on it.
Stuff has an article calling for the end of the Olympics on grounds of cost.
I suspect the same person who wrote it gets jobs writing music for the Jackson movies made here on the taxpayer dime.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/olympics/125806596/why-the-olympic-games-should-be-scrapped-forever#comments
Cost and relevance as it's neither amateur or the pinnacle of (insert sport/activity here) anymore in the 21st century which were almost a quarter through.
But then cost is all relative as Tokyo whined about the fine they'll cop if it doesn't go ahead. So on we go, fingers crossed for our competitors and support crews.
The IOC passes on TV rights money to the Japanese Games host only if the Games are held.
https://playthegame.org/news/comments/2020/1002_a-leaked-list-discloses-how-much-cash-the-ioc-paid-for-the-2016-olympics-in-rio-de-janeiro/
The current ambition is to have hosts who can cover their costs with TV and other revenues. Paris 2024 and LA 2028 will tell. If that is not possible, the option is either a permanent venue (Athens is favoured), or a small number of alternate venues (quick rotation would allow re-use of facilities).
Brisbane will host in 2032.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/brisbane-wins-bid-to-host-2032-olympics/Q3COQLL4KXHBU2OTLFTKFLVOV4/
It is written by a sports journalist.
Yup. While I think we can all hold some nostaglic regard for the original Olympic ideal, the ever advancing professionalisation and multiplying diversity of sports themselves has rather overtaken it.
Worse has been the exploitation of the Olympics for nationalistic purposes. The prospect of the 2022 Winter Olympics looking like a re-run of 1936 brings no-one any joy either.
It occurs to me that several thousand years ago, some Greeks and Romans were probably holding exactly this same conversation.
The Greeks were indeed having this conversation Isocrates in the Panegyricus argued strongly for wisdom over athletics.
Greek thought,outlasting the memory of who one the Javelin at marathon.
Brilliant Poission
A fit man is no burden, but the indolent man behind the keyboard eating junk food, while gaming or blogging, is only a decade from consequences for the taxpayer.
No “one” venturing forth, nothing “won”
A fit man constantly in physio through overexertion is a bit of a burden.
"the end of the Olympics on grounds of cost".
Wouldn't it have been wonderful if the New Zealand Government had said this a couple of years ago before we blew hundreds of millions on the fiasco that was the America's Cup?
Could even have been able to pay the nurses a bit more and have kept those heading off to the greener fields in Australia here in New Zealand where we need them.
I guess you have never worked in finance.
One does not afford an annual expense by pruning capital spending (and the assets that remain in Auckland are real assets and are worth more than the net cost of the event).
This is kinda nice. Lots of businesses jump on the Pride bandwagon for marketing, only to send their ad money elsewhere on the first of July. So it's good to see a small gesture of inclusion actually progresses outside the month of June.
It's more shutting off the road for the paint to dry that would be difficult. A few litres of paint don't cost much on DCC scale of expenses.
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/rainbow-crossing-supported
How can that be anything other than distracting? Surely a safety issue. We have the Carmen lights in Cuba street. Maybe something like that.
"A few litres of paint don't cost much".
That is what our last, unlamented, Mayor Justin Lester claimed in Wellington. Then the Wellington ratepayers found out that Lester had managed to blow $40,000 on the stupid thing!
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1803/S00375/the-40000-price-tag-for-justin-lesters-rainbow-crossing.htm
Funny how it came in well below budget, and ended up costing about the same as a regular crossing.
But I wouldn't expect you to let reality get in the way of parroting whatever the state-funded taxpayer's "union" complains about.
Gosh. The Council come up with a claimed $27,000 and you think that is an acceptable number?
Where did you ever work? It sounds as if you never worked at anything outside of the Public Sector. Only people there would think that painting a few coloured stripes on a road was worth spending that sort of money. You certainly wouldn't think so if it was your own money, that is for sure.
$4k for a few coats of what I'm assuming is something more substantial than timbacryl and applied by people earning a living wage.
As for where I've worked, you seem to be confusing "spending your own money" with actually knowing the cost of doing the job.
You'd want to spend the minimum amount on inadequate paint and less on the people to do the job. I've definitely worked for arses like that before, generally in hospo. They looked a lot like the ones now bitching about a "skills shortage" because they don't have enough unemployed people to exploit.
AD
Why is it you totally missed out the immense influence Israel had and has on the US govt?
Under Trump , even more so
Because there has been no official investigation of any such influence by any branch of the American government – so he cannot refer to it.
Which means it's a conspiracy theory … unlike UFO's (the cover up created by the US Air Force in 1947 to suppress public reference in media to sightings of spy craft in test flight development), esp since Space Force …
In a globalised world it's quite unrealistic to imagine every nation can politically stand in isolation. Influence will always be sought and wielded to some degree. In the absence of a formal, function global scale governance – all the more so.
The real question I would ask – how transparent is this influence? Right now the answer everywhere seems to be 'very opaque'.
Digging down in steps:
So it's official from the government that these cyber attacks emanate from a threat located in China (APT40) and this entity consists of "Chinese state-sponsored actors" which have been producing similar organised attacks against diverse targets in various countries for 12 years. Other western govts accept this reality also. Forensic computer analysis seems to have confirmed the identity of the source.
Assumption of Chinese state sponsoring the organisation derive, presumably, from the expectation that the state would eliminate the organisation if it were not operating in accord with state policy. Makes sense, but a sceptic would point out there's no proof and the authorities are basing foreign policy on blind faith in their spooks…
Plenty of nut jobs here still support the Chinese Communist Party, headed by the Chinese Head of State XI Jinping.
This sustained attack is but one of their gifts to the world.
So wer,re expected to believe now that china is behind the latest cyber attacks in this country really ??what could they possibly gain from the somewhat seedy takedown of a hospitals network system ?Call me a CT if you wish but i seem to remember amongst the very large disclosure of documents released by wikileaks a few years ago called vault 7 there was evidence of american abilities to falsely attribute hacks and computer intrusions to another party .Personally given their past record for fabricating untruths i wouldnt trust any american intelligence source to tell me the time of day !
That's the spirit. It's Something Else. And Russiagate OMG.
"Personally given their past record for fabricating untruths i wouldnt trust any american intelligence source to tell me the time of day !"
Obviously plenty of nut job propagandists here would.
Your opinion isn't worth much unless you can do better than the evidence released yesterday.
Yesterday, the collected governments heading respective intelligence communities from the United States, NATO, EU, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, and little old New Zealand came out simultaneously with the same message, and this is just New Zealand's bit of it:
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2107/S00143/new-zealand-condemns-malicious-cyber-activity-by-chinese-state-sponsored-actors.htm
What China has done is manage to unify the entire developed world against them in this kind of cyber war.
It’s now much more likely that you will see global cybersecurity enforcement formed into multilateral security agreements far, far larger than Five Eyes.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2107/S00143/new-zealand-condemns-malicious-cyber-activity-by-chinese-state-sponsored-actors.htm
China issued the usual denials. They are lying.
But at least they are bringing the world together again.
Is it a matter of trust, or competence? Most of them could be misled by colleagues and not realise it.
Most of the Senate did not know the difference between Sunni and Shia when voting on regime change in Iraq – that sort of advanced knowledge was to be found only on the Foreign Relations Committee.
And then again if you rang up Foggy Bottom or Langley and asked for the time and they got it right, you would have to suspect they were using NSA tracking sources to know your location.
Yeah they would know the time where you lived.
Elderly native gets restless, issues policy critique: https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2021/07/21/open-letter-blueprint-to-megan-woods-to-solve-housing-crisis/
Seymour frames PM: "One has to ask, is the real reason we do not have a plan to get our way of life back is that the Government is still focus-grouping it?"
Flawed premise right there! We don't plan to get our way of life back while in the midst of a pandemic, so why expect the govt to do it for us??
"It's time to start treating New Zealanders like adults. Let us know what's going on in a timely way. Be up-front with us as issues arise instead of relying on polls and focus groups. Our COVID response is more important than Jacinda Ardern's popularity."
She doesn't need to worry about that – it's already right up there! Haven't you noticed?? She's crowd-sourcing feedback, obviously. Only people who volunteer it are those with a chip on their shoulder, eh? So making an organised effort to evaluate how folks see the thing going is sensible. You could even call it adult.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/07/prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-under-fire-for-spending-250-000-on-covid-19-polls.html
Seymour's childish need to get the govt to return his privileged way of life is just nanny-state thinking. Yet he can't see that he's just complaining about the pandemic tugging his security blanket away. A mental age of two years…
It's behind a paywall … so I have not read it.
Apparently hate speech can be managed by ending online anonymity.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/ben-goodale-why-the-hate-speech-law-change-could-be-meaningless/NQDTAECXUBJDFEZTYCIQPEH34M/
For mine that would mean the independently rich and publicly involved (as group leaders or associates) would retain freedom of speech, the rest would risk consequence – in employment, elsewhere online on other platforms and harrassment where they lived.
SPC you nail it – Free speech can never be truly free, but especially when you fix your moniker to it, it can be like punching yourself somewhere vital.
I sat on a board of trustees and we needed to do some recruitment. Most of the trustees wanted to scan the applicants social media accounts before shortlisting. I put my foot down and said that if they thought that was the right thing to do then w needed to be upfront about it with the applicants, tell them what we had found and how we used that information in our decision-making.
In the end they didn't want to be held accountable for their desire to be nosy. Trolling peoples social media as part of the recruitment of staff is the refuge of cowards for the most part.
Israel & the Saudis have been collaborating: "NSO Group had been given explicit permission by the Israeli government to try to sell the homegrown hacking tools to the Saudis. It was a classified arrangement and resulted in the sale later being sealed in Riyadh in a deal reportedly worth at least $55m." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/20/pegasus-project-turns-spotlight-on-spyware-firm-nso-ties-to-israeli-state
“In Israel there is a strong political movement to make diplomacy through business,” said the person, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Business first, diplomacy later. When you make a deal together, it opens a lot of doors to diplomacy.” It is common for governments to help companies export their products. NSO, after all, employs former Israeli cyber-intelligence officials and retains links to the defence ministry."
"In the case of Saudi Arabia, sources familiar with the matter said the kingdom was temporarily cut off from using Pegasus in 2018, for several months, following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but was allowed to begin using the spyware again in 2019 following the intervention of the Israeli government. It is unclear why the Israeli government urged NSO to reconnect the surveillance tool for Riyadh."
"NSO's founders are ex-members of Unit 8200, the Israeli Intelligence Corps unit responsible for collecting signals intelligence." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group
Benjamin Netanyahu once said that "Talpiot" was better than Five Eyes. His meaning would not be an elite unit within the IDF (10 year service and training in maths, physics IT), but the areas where they dispersed to – Shin Bet, Mossad, military intelligence and various tech firms like NSO.
Kushner and co – play nice with Israel and we'll flog you suites of nifty, purpose built tech to surveille and repress any and all domestic opposition.
Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Turkey, Morocco, Saudi Arabia- righto!
Bibi and the Donald – we'll call it the Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People plan.
Qatar as well? Despite the Kushner family business not getting the loan …
Israel and Qatar have been besties for years so they probably got the extended warranty, too.
The Greens want a WOF for rental property, rather than require tenants to complain about the property meeting the standard (often renters are being offered dubious property and take it rather than miss out).
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/07/rental-property-wofs-greens-chl-e-swarbrick-says-rental-property-wofs-would-protect-good-landlords-as-well-as-tenants.html
For mine what is needed is a random check policy between now and 2024 (covering all properties by July 2024), with a short period of notice to the landlord (tenants being able to "anonymously" notify the agency concerned about properties of concern, so the problem ones are sorted out more quickly).
Sounds like good thinking SPC. And on why everything is SNAFU on housing and everything:
Here is some more – a Ted talk on capitalism by someone who says he is at the top level of the 1% wweeaalltthhyy – people who have multiples of everything!
The point of course being to provide free checks, rather than charge for a WOF, and cover the cost by fining those landlords whose properties were not up to standard.
Right on SPC. Make it easy to be gooder, until the whole lot go up on a rising tide. Carrots needed more with sticks available to be used, that do get used.
And what about if you're renting a sound place at a really reasonable rental – and you can't afford any more. It has full spec insulation and an extractor fan over the oven. I keep it clean and well ventilated, there is no mould and it doesn't need a heat pump or extractor fans in the bathroom. Why should my landlord be forced to do unnecessary stuff – resulting in me paying more rent? Where is the common sense?
You do not need to heat or cool the place?
Poto Williams – You need to up your game. You need to represent all NZ'ers not just Maori and Pacific communities. What a train wreck of an interview – luckily it wasn't Mike Hosking.
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/audio/poto-williams-public-and-cops-react-as-police-minister-says-she-is-not-in-favour-of-general-arming-of-police/
There are all sorts of people around New Zealand who no more want the police armed than those of south Auckland.
Yes, as an elected member from Christchurch and a Minister of the Crown you would think she represents (1) the people of her electorate and (2) all New Zealanders. Clearly the Minister thinks otherwise. Doh!
And it took only one John (Birch) to take Jim (Crow) nationwide.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/16/the-john-birch-society-is-alive-and-well-in-the-lone-star-state-215377/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/11/a-view-from-the-fringe
Very droll, but overlooks some important history.
It's only when you step back and take a longer view of US politics that you begin to see just how much the support factions for each of the two major Parties (the two big brand vehicles) has changed over time in adaptation to the changing social ground. And will continue to change into the future.
Energy wind, solar, nuclear? 2019 Ted talks
Questions about our green accepted wisdoms.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak
Why I changed my mind about nuclear power | Michael Shellenberger
…………………..
Why renewables can’t save the planet | Michael Shellenberger
Sure wind/solar being intermittent require a spare capacity such as gas (better than coal). Even our hydro based system needs back up in dry years (battery dam maybe) or we use Huntly (at some point only gas and no longer any coal).
He seems to be arguing for 100% nuclear as per France as better for AGW and the local environment. But how does anyone go from zero to 100% nuclear quickly?
There are all sorts of combinations possible 33%+- nuclear, 33%+- hydro and or dry year battery and 33%+- solar/wind with gas back up.
The local gas is drying up.
From memory there hasn’t been a decent sized field found since Kupe in about 1986. That is despite significiant searches for new fields from the 2000s until recently. A couple of onshore small oil fields with a small gas compenent..
The large Kapuni was discovered when I was born (1959) and the massive Maui was when I listening to the moon landing (1969).
Our geology around the Zealandia continental area doesn’t really make it likely that we’ll find large cheap viable fields. Kupe has only recently started being exploited simply because it was far more expensive than Maui to exploit.
The plan is still to shut down the coal or gas fired units and only use the gas fired turbines (it seems we made a mistake exporting methanol to Japan etc) … importing gas from Oz?
That's only the plan if you follow the government's climate agenda, not its energy agenda.
In the same year the government declared a climate emergency, imports of an especially dirty type of coal from Indonesia topped a million tonnes for the first time since 2006.
New Zealand’s totally addicted to coal until there are huge new reliable wind farms all over the place. After the Lammermoor disaster and the Blueskin Bay nightmare, new projects large and small have been very slow to market – and who can blame them?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/300356959/new-zealand-imported-more-than-a-million-tonnes-of-dirty-coal-last-year
Yes, because clearly we have nothing to worry about with regards to nature destroying reactors.
It's come down to the wire now, and the wire is consciousness/spirituality; that's where our only chance lies 🙂
Nothing could possibly go wrong!
But.
Fukushima nuclear disaster haunts Japan’s climate change debate
Ten years after the tsunami struck, most citizens are vehemently opposed to restarting the reactors
Fukushima is widely regarded as the second worst nuclear power incident ever. It should however teach us two important lessons.
One is the inherent vulnerability of large reactor designs that use water as their coolant/moderator. The critical necessity of needing to maintain both high pressure and high flow of this water through these reactor types even after the reaction has been shut down, was always their Archilles Heel. This is why all new Gen 4 designs eliminate this requirement in one manner or another, directly leading to substantial improvements in both innate safety and costs at the same time.
Lesson 1: Plan to replace the existing fleet of Gen 3 PWR type reactors as they reach the end of their life with better designs with innately lower risk profiles and costs.
The second idea to be learned is this, that the second worst nuclear power accident of all time has directly caused zero deaths and zero demonstrable harm to anyone. (This sets aside the 1600 odd deaths indirectly attributed to authorities panicking and evacuating many vulnerable people, completely unnecessarily, in sub-optimal circumstances.)
The reality is that we evolved and live on a planet bathed in a certain low level of ionising radiation. Below a certain level (probably about 100mSv) there is no possible harm, because the body repairs DNA damage much faster than the radiation causes it. In fact the data suggests that people living in areas with elevated background levels have somewhat lower rates of cancer. A fuller explanation here.
Lesson 2 : Not understanding that modest levels of ionising radiation is a normal and natural aspect of our world has led to irrational fearmongering that closed off decades ago the best path we had to avoiding climate change. This has been an incalculably high opportunity cost we have to address before any real progress in reducing CO2 levels (ie getting the atmospheric CO2 number back down under 350ppm) can be made.