“I’ve simply had no response from ANZ to my reasonable requests for information about the loan and its terms.
“To be clear: in no way do I dispute the loan or my responsibility to pay off my share of the debt as one of four personal guarantors for the facility.
“What’s perhaps most alarming is the revelation that ANZ has been unable to locate a signed copy of the original facility to NZ Girl in its files. To my mind, that credit contract is vital to outline the terms that were agreed to by NZ Girl at the origin of the loan, and the basis of which any fees and penalties are charged. I’m deeply concerned that as a customer of ANZ, I am experiencing such difficulty, or indeed a stone wall of silence, from my bank when I have asked for reasonable information to determine what I owe. I’ve had to employ a lawyer to help me navigate this, at significant personal cost.”
TSB is a good bank. I bet they would have documentation.
“Crossan said her former husband, Grant Nicholls, who is now part of the ANZ executive team, had also offered a personal guarantee, along with two other people. He held a similar shareholding in the business.
I'm surprised they said they could throw away documents after seven years. I would have thought it was 7 years after completion of the contract, not seven years from the time the contract was started.
TSB? Fuck off. TSB fucked *everything* up we had with them.
They can't even email statements, they have to print them off and scan them. And before this, you had to go into a branch to get them as they refused to do it.
Getting out of TSB was one of the best things I ever did.
Mike McRoberts will return to Syria, as he calls for more NZ Government aid
Glenn McConnell05:00, Aug 18 2019
…….The journalist has travelled to Syria and its neighbouring countries, and was last there in 2017 and says he saw destruction at a level he'd never witnessed before.
McRoberts is no stranger to carnage. He was known as New Zealand's "war correspondent", having completed assignments in Gaza, Afghanistan and Iraq. He's also reported on the aftermath of natural disasters, such as the 2011 Japan tsunami and earthquakes in Haiti and Christchurch.
But the destruction in Syria is a new level of horrible, and he's worried New Zealanders don't comprehend how bad it is.
"It's mind blowing," he says. "Entire cities have been destroyed, in a way I've never seen before. The number of places I've been, I've never before seen kilometre after kilometre of destruction. All the homes, the entire town, destroyed."
I see that Mike McRoberts will be reporting from Idlib.
Maybe if he gets the chance, and is not killed, Mike McRoberts could visit the town of Saraqib,
If any of them are still alive, he could interview Osama al-Hossein, or Ibrahim Bareesh, or a lawyer named Muthanna al-Muhammad, or even the local singer Ahmed al-Tellawi, or Manhal Bareesh, or the peace activist Iyad Jarrod, or Mousab al-Azzo the soccer coach.
Maybe Mike McRobers might be able to get hold of local journalist journalist Samar Yazbek and ask her for her account of the Syrian conflict.
Your jihadi friends have control of Saraqib Jenny. You really have no shame. You have never condemned these brutal murderers but whitter on about the Syrian Government. I can only conclude that you would be quite happy to have ISIS, Al queda et al overun Syria and turn it into a bastion of Sharia Law carrying out it's public floggings and beheadings.
"From the early start of the war on Syria, Saraqib was one of the centers of jihadi terrorist activities. In March/April 2011 it was one of the first towns that saw violent attacks on government forces and institutions. In December 2011 the notorious terrorist group Ahrar al-Sham, headed by the long time al-Qaeda member Abu Khalid al-Suri, was founded there. In 2014 the BBCreported how al-Qaeda/Nusra/HTS ruled the town:
Abu-Qedama, al-Qaida's envoy in Saraqib, North-Eastern Syria, is Jordanian. His task is to ensure that Sharia Law is enforced.
This BBC Arabic film follows him and his fellow Islamists in Saraqib, showing how they are taking control of the city. The film-makers get inside the courts and reveal how Sharia Law is applied. We see the judge at work in the Court and issuing his judgment on the public square. For the first time, we see a public flogging before a large crowd of people, as a deterrent to others.
At some point the locals in Saraqib may have hold some sham elections. But that does not change the fact that their town was and is solidly controlled by an internationally banned terrorist group. Saraqib is only a 'bastion of freedom' when one ignores everything that happened and still happens there.
This brings up a serious question. How did the author of the New Yorker piece, Anand Gopal, manage to travel through Nusra/HTS/al-Qaeda controlled Idleb governorate, visited the jihadi infested town, and avoided to be thrown into the "notorious al-Iqab Prison in Saraqib area"?"
Oh and Osama al-Hossein, Muslim Brotherhood 'activist' has fled to Turkey. Please do keep up.
Wow, that is either a very ignorant view or you are friends with headchoppers of Idlib. Mr McRoberts needs to use his intelligence and visit Damascus before venturing off to the frontlines of Idlib. Maybe you actually believe the white helmet and al Qaeda propaganda, if so you are very mistaken in your judgment. You have no reason to trust me but I have done a great deal of independent and indepth research as well as visited the Middle East.
To date The Standard has not allowed a single post that strays from the pro-regime narrative.
Will we see the Standard authors willfully ignore McRoberts commentary?
Will The Standard authors choose instead to get their views shaped by Pepe Escobar of RT and notorious batshit crazy conspiracy website Globalresearch.
You should know that attributing ulterior motives to the site, as if it has a mind of its own, or to its Authors is a bannable offense (https://thestandard.org.nz/policy/#banning).
You should know that telling Authors what to write or not write about, what views to express of not express and how is a bannable offense too.
Attacking the site for things that may never even happen is stupid behaviour and amounts to telling us what we can and cannot write about.
Stomping and ranting over everything and anything to do with Syria makes it impossible to have a rational discussion on this.
These are just the main offenses – there are too many minor ones to list here that have been wasting Moderator time.
I have checked your history here and you have been warned and banned many times before for the same offenses.
I was tossing between a permanent ban and a short educational ban. The former one may be too harsh and the latter one obviously won’t work. Therefore, I decided to hand you medium-long ban as a warning to you and others and to give us all a break from your recidivist behaviour.
Impossible Foods, a leading producer of plant-based "meat-like" patties, has launched its Impossible Burger 2.0 in more than 7,000 restaurants worldwide. The product will be sold in all Burger King locations across the US (not to mention your local grocery store) by September.
Beyond Meat, another meat-free burger company, saw similar success: The company netted $40.2 million during its first quarter as a public company (between January and April), a 215% jump from the same period in 2018.
Global consultancy firm AT Kearney projects that by 2040, 60% of the "meat" products humans consume will either be plant-based replacements or lab-grown meats.'
In the natural world, herbivores eat plant-parts and omnivores/carnivores eat herbivore-parts, along with selected plant-parts. It's for reasons other than "natural" that some present-day humans choose not to eat herbivore-parts.
I didn't mean it to be a conversation stopper, more a basis on which to build a rational discussion. Without the heat, a measured debate on diet would be enjoyable and very interesting, in my view.
I thought it was that it is natural to eat. The choice of what to eat is not related to the word 'natural', it is a choice for (most) humans. I wish more people would accept their choice and stop trying to justify it – the climate disaster we are facing isn't a practice run!
Now there's a debatable idea; choosing; do television-watching children choose to eat the sugar-infused foods they see advertised on their beloved goggle-box, or is that choice made for them by the cunning advertisers?
yeah nah – the choice to eat industrialised farmed flesh (and accept that subsequent contribution to our climate emergency) or veges and grains and fruits. Sure some may like ‘happy meat’ – good on them. I'd like people to raise their pigs and sheep and then kill and gut them, chop them up, put them in the freezer and chomp away – but easier to just buy the plastic wrapped stuff I spose.
The main impediment to people eating local meat is food safety laws that prohibits us from buying direct from farmers and small growers. That's not too hard a fix technically, but the people in government are not on board yet with the need.
This is one reason why I push back hard on the veganism will save us from climate change idea. Instead of making it easier for people to eat the least impactful foods (whether that be veg, meat, dairy, nuts), people are being actively encouraged and pressured to eat industrial soy that still has a large carbon footprint and a terrible eco footprint.
I'll never be in a position to raise my own meat, but I'm not in a position to grow my own veges either, so I tend to focus on the systems and how they can be changed.
So then there're children in families where an omnivorous diet is the norm, who find choosing not to eat farmed-animal meat very difficult, if not impossible. As well, there are those children who haven't given a thought to eating differently from their family and who, as adults, choose to continue, not having had to address the issue at any point. Demanding that they do is…interesting and needing explanation. It's a complex question, choosing what and what not to eat. The sugar story is similar.
"This is one reason why I push back hard on the veganism will save us from climate change idea."
Yes. Any single-issue campaign that claims "save us from climate-change/annihilation" falls over immediately, imo; coal, oil, meat, air-travel, stock-farming, because it's clear immediate and total change as the result of one action cannot happen, given our civilised state. I'm convinced though, that there is a pathway aside from wrack & ruin and am always hopeful that a discussion here will ignite the lamp that guides that path
"This is one reason why I push back hard on the veganism will save us from climate change idea. Instead of making it easier for people to eat the least impactful foods "
Not sure why both ideas can't be entertained – they aren't mutually exclusive.
@Robert – good you're thinking of the children.
It's not a single issue – it is among a range of issues to try to reduce the misery just around the corner. It is evidence based like the rest of them. This anti reduce meat consumption (for those that make that argument – not you R ok) is really another climate denial argument imo.
"Not sure why both ideas can't be entertained – they aren't mutually exclusive."
I don't know why either, but these are my guesses. I see a lot of resistance from the vegan movement and fundamentalist vegans to instead of telling people to eat vegan, telling people to eat vegan or omni but either way to eat from relocalised food systems where they can.
I understand this to be because not eating animals is paramount, and it's better to prioritise that than it is to let people eat local, happy meat or dairy or eggs if that is a better choice in climate terms. That ideology is a problem where it blocks locavorism, and imo this is what is happening (it's being blocked).
The vegan movement isn't championing relocalising food, but instead is pushing industrial vegan vs industrial meat/dairy. I see a kind of blindness here, and I feel an immense frustration at the amount of time spent addressing the 'go vegan and save us from climate change' (which is a nonsense, because they're really saying eat industrial soy instead of CAFO meat/dairy), and the conversation getting stuck there instead of moving on to the systems that might give all of live a chance.
Reducing global GHG emissions by x % won't save us. We have to move to zero-ish carbon at the same time as doing all the natural sequestration processes to mitigate, not to buy more carbon usage.
In all that is the issue of the industrialised wealthy nations eating way more than their fare share, so of course people that eat large amounts of meat and dairy need to rethink that. But asking people to reduce the amount of meat/dairy is very different than asking them to be vegan.
"This anti reduce meat consumption (for those that make that argument – not you R ok) is really another climate denial argument imo."
When I was vegetarian in the 80s, the common theme amongst vegetarians was that NZers ate too much protein. This was probably true for a good number of people, but for vegetarians who were eating largely plant based diets it was dangerous, because we ended up protein deficient.
Telling people to reduce meat only works for people that are eating a lot. No way in hell am I going to tell poor people who don't have enough nutrients in their diet and subsist on white carbs that they should eat less meat and dairy. Likewise chronically ill people who don't have the health resources to manage a vegetarian diet.
So when people say eat less meat/dairy to save the planet, because the Guardian is telling them that *globally* humans are eating too much, of course I am going to say hang on, there is a real problem with this approach and messaging.
@ weka I think you have a blind spot in relation to vegans and that stuff therefore this is my last comment to you on it (today that is 🙂 )
there was no protein crisis afaik
Maybe we can get the wealthy middle class western countries and citizens to reduce their meat intake first and then start on the poor people.
There are a small number of vegans pushing their position yet somehow that means they want global soy (industrial vegan) instead of rain forests – come on.
Often people don't like the message when they don't agree with it. Bit all or nothing for me.
Marty – "Extinction rebellion", are they rebelling to prevent the extinction of rhino, dolphin, butterfly, bee, etc, or are they referring to the extinction of humans, do you know?
I reckon, also, that talking to individuals, as we do here on TS, is very different to talking to corporations. It's fair to demand that soul-less, heart-less, socio/psychopathic corporate pretend-bodies, are addressed in absolute terms, but not individuals, imo. People are easily hurt and almost always compromised, so absolute claims and demands just harm, not help. Sometimes we mix the two without realising it.
"@ weka I think you have a blind spot in relation to vegans and that stuff therefore this is my last comment to you on it (today that is )"
People can and do think whatever they want, but in a political forum in the absence of explaining their thinking it doesn't really mean much. eg I have no idea what my blind spot might be. What I'm getting is there is something you don't like about my argument, and so you will stop talking to me today. All good. I hope next time you can say more.
"there was no protein crisis afaik"
No idea what that means.
"Maybe we can get the wealthy middle class western countries and citizens to reduce their meat intake first and then start on the poor people."
Sure, those wealthy people that are eating a lot of meat/dairy. Those that aren't need a different message.
"There are a small number of vegans pushing their position yet somehow that means they want global soy (industrial vegan) instead of rain forests – come on."
The vegan movement is large, well funded, and being adopted by people in positions of power.
I didn't make the comparison with rain forests, so please don't put words into my argument. I suspect you are still largely missing what I am arguing for, but to be clear, I don't support NZers to fell our rain forests to grow meat or legumes.
"Often people don't like the message when they don't agree with it. Bit all or nothing for me."
If you can't see the nuances in my arguments (and there are plenty) I think that's for you to sort out
ER's main demands are around GHGs and preventing mass species extinction so I think it's reasonable to assume the extinction rebellion applies to all of life. It’s one of the things that separates them out from some other climate activists, they saw the need to do both together.
@ Robert yes we are individuals and that is where we must start imo. Once again, why people get so defensive I'll never know – just do what you can and what you want, with knowledge – and that's the same for all eaters of food. ffs I've had enough of this bullshit – argue with yourselves on this 'political forum'.
Mmmm…I appreciate your view, weka. I'm not sure though; the 6th Great Extinction Event was, I thought, attributed to more prosaic habitat destruction by humans; city-building, forest-felling, over-fishing, pesticide-use etc. I'd always thought that was the background to Extinction Rebellion. But you may be right, in which case, I'm somewhat disappointed.
Are we talking at cross-purposes there Robert? Afaik ER want to address all the things you name, and see humans as the progenitor of mass extinction. Hence the demand to protect biodiversity. I took that to mean by humans changing their errant ways.
right. So getting humans to eat industrial soy instead of eating cows that industrial soy looks like a good thing ecologically and re CC, but only in a lesser evil way. Better to get humans to eat local (legumes, veges, animals, nuts) and regeneratively, and avoid the massive issues associated with all industrial farming.
Yes. I'd been so pleased that a global movement to protect all non-human life had come into being; learning that there was human self-interest involved is a bit disappointing.
I took it as being all of life (including humans). I don't see us as outside of nature, so can't imagine protecting biodiversity in ways that don't also protect us. There are compelling reasons to protect humans too eg so we deal with the nuclear and other high pollution issues.
solkta Now you produce another conversation stopper.
There is something wrong with the heads of a number of you. Can you concentrate on other matters when people want to discuss them. It is a virtual OCD to be in a sex default position when there are so many human bad behaviour traits.
Plastic particles falling out of sky with snow in the Arctic
Roger Harrabin BBC Wed, 14 Aug 2019 08:29 UTC
A German-Swiss team of researchers has published the work in the journal Science Advances. The scientists also found rubber particles and fibres in the snow. How did the researchers carry out the study? Researchers collected snow samples from the Svalbard islands using a low-tech method – a dessert spoon and a flask. In the laboratory at Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven they discovered far more contaminating particles than they’d expected.
Many were so small that it was hard to ascertain where they had come from.
In an ideal world, you would have made your comment slightly more relevant to this discussion thread and more on-topic if you had said something about tyre dust in lab-grown meat patties.
hahaha . You mean the factory making the protein isnt a middle man ? It may say 'plant based' but the reality is some sort of by product of an industrial process.
Plants themselves are far better than 'plant based' falsehood
Did you not read about Impossible Burgers plant based means a genetically modified version of heme to 'give it a meaty favour'
"So the researchers engineered ( notice the lack of the word genetic)yeast to mimic a plant-based heme source, as well as the flavor profile of beef "to generate the same
and then
"Impossible chose textured wheat and potato protein instead since that gives the burger a more realistic texture"
TVP, texture vegetable protein, a vegetarian staple from back in the day. Terrible stuff born from the desire to make vegetarian mince. If people want to not eat meat, then don’t eat meat. Plenty of other things to eat that don’t require a lab to make them pretend to be meat.
"Textured vegetable protein, or TVP, is made from soy and is the same thing as textured soy protein. Textured wheat protein is made from a similar process, but from wheat. They are all highly processed plant-based alternatives to meat.
Factory food processing using a lot of other stuff that would be far from those weasel words 'plant based'
Global consultancy firm AT Kearney projects that by 2040, 60% of the "meat" products humans consume will either be plant-based replacements or lab-grown meats.'
By pillaging the world's diminishing resources. Show us the ecological footprint, or it's all just BAU.
Below is the ingredients list, have a think about where those ingredients come from, how they're grown and processed, how far they travel to get to the plate, what extractive and polluting industry (incl fossil fuels) is needed in that whole process.
Then stop and think about how this might not be a good solution to climate change, and why relocalising food supplies might be.
The first part of the article is based on US populations, so very different than what people in the NZ or even somewhere like the UK are eating. It's comparing soy with meat and dairy, but that doesn't take into account things like the evolutionary human need for fats. It looks at EFAs but doesn't address two issues: one is that CAFO meats have a munted EFA ratio to start with, and two, EFAs from plants are harder for humans to utilise in their bodies.
I doubt that the GHG emission figures are true, because of what is being chosen to be counted (please, someone do the mahi to correct me), but it doesn't address the ecological footprint.
But the second part of the article is looking at fake meat, not in the context of the research in the first part of the article. The research looked at soy, green peppers, squash, buckwheat, and asparagus, not that list of ingredients above.
I could go on, lots of ways to critique this, but for me it's not a vegan vs omnivore debate, it's an industrial monsanto model of eating vs relocalising food, and how that matters in terms of climate mitigation.
Additive-laden foods designed to sit on shelves for days or weeks will always suffer by comparison with whole foods in climate terms. Be great if our food system incentivised local whole products.
All fresh fruit and veg in the supermarket have to have ecofootprint, GHG footprint, country of origin, how they were grown (organic/conventional etc), that kind of thing? That would be a total game changer.
I'm tired of their interests taking precedent too, and I suspect there would be a lot of resistance. What happened to the Greens' country of origin labelling thing?
Once frankin foods get a market share (and they will ) it is going to become fertile ground for the big companies to hollow out any nutritional goodness in pursuit low cost high profit garbage.
Yep. Looking at the list in that burger, why the need to add in all those vitamins? And how where they produced? Some people think that our bodies are machines and we can just add this component and that component and still function well. That one will come back and bite us.
i am more worried about the waste produced by this stuff.
We have become a seriously ill society. We want to feel good at all cost. We want to elevate some life more important as other life and often time that comes with the 'cute' label attached. We don't want to pay the honest price of everything, cause that would cut into the pursuit of 'lifestyle' and by gosh and golly we are owed a lifestyle. We want to continue to drive our cars, our boats, our bikes, heat in winter to 30 and cool in summer to 22, we want our booze and our frocks and our frid/sat entertainment and we want it cheap. And the rubbish of all that we consume is for another generation to care of. But at least we could pretend we are still eating meat. Right?
give me a rat burger/possum burger/ stoat burger/rabbit burger any day of the week before i would buy and eat that rubbish.
That can't have been Marie Curie as she has been dead for some time! But the male attitudes of primacy that she encountered (but always overcame) still continue their repeat – like a belch or fart.
This was interesting – an honest, objective appraisal by Pierre Curie on why it was hard for him to fine a life companion and wife:
"Women, much more than men, love life for life’s sake. Women of genius are rare. And when, pushed by some mystic love, we wish to enter into a life opposed to nature, when we give all our thoughts to some work which removes us from those immediately about us, it is with women that we have to struggle, and the struggle is nearly always an unequal one. For in the name of life and of nature they seek to lead us back." http://womenineuropeanhistory.org/index.php?title=Marie_Curie
Though Marie changed the mould still the old attitude apparently prevails.
Looks like a split at the top in the National party camp over the new Topham Guerin approach, David Farrar is publically disagreeing with Simon Bridges over his opposition to the establishment of a Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).
Extraordinary thing to do, given how hard Simon is running with this line.
"National are putting themselves right next to the anti-vax clowns with this kind of caper. Time to grow up and fight elections on policy rather than Steven Joyce's cheap sloganeering. "
While that may be true in terms of NZ democracy, there is no future for National if they fight elections on a rational basis. They need to lie, to smear, to accuse and to distract like an abusive partner, because at the end of the day they are corrupt and the policies they will actually implement are either ineffectual or disastrous.
Simon is doing the smart thing for National – but not the smart thing for New Zealand, which would be infinitely better off without them.
Maybe hard to appoint people that everyone sees as independent though. They could appoint both Michael Cullen and Steven Joyce…that would be interesting.
Chris Trotter's piece on Fascists (sidebar) is fascinating! I was immediately reminded of Incognito's suggestion of the need for a Philosopher-king to guide us all through the coming troubles with the weather
“[R]ealising the present serious National emergency, and the necessity for all good citizens to subordinate private and political interests and to make any necessary personal sacrifice for the sake of the country, [I] agree to become a member of the New Zealand Legion and to further loyally, by every means in my power, by vote, example and personal influence, the objects of the Legion."
"Politics, however, was what ultimately killed the Legion. Its leaders and members simply couldn’t agree on what it was, exactly, that patriotic New Zealanders needed to do. Unlike a genuine fascist movement, it lacked a charismatic leader capable of preventing such crippling internal debates by reserving all policy-making powers to himself."
It is a good piece though its central theme is obvious upon reflection…..the history connecting the Legion with the National Party was a revelation for me.
Was that a response though?.New Zealand being a communist country at the time,as George Bernard Shaw related in his famous radio broadcast to NZ /Aus.(4 million listeners)
"You are to some extent, thanks to your admirable communist institutions, now actually leading the world's institutions. You are second only to Russia, and there is a curious joke about it that Russia, partly by following New Zealand's example, has got a good lead, the Russians are very proud of their Communism. They know they are Communists and are proud of it…while New Zealand, which leads the world in communism, does not know it is Communist. It naturally thinks Communism is a terrible thing. Let me ask you to put that idea out of your heads… I am a Communist, I studied Karl Marx four years before Lenin did, and you see that I am a very sensible and well-meaning person."
Hard to say. Dr Woods has been completely invisible where KiwiBuild is concerned. The Property Institute even had to cancel a webinar that she’d agreed to present at on the basis that she was a no-show, so that would be a NO in relation to being on side with industry players.
I generally think that the importance of accountability is also key for Ministerial positions where responsibility for flagship Government policy lies.
I don't believe that kindness trumps accountability, which is why the current Government is falling so far short of the electorate's expectations.
In the interests of even-handedness, Sam, where are you on this:
"Mr Key signalled a National-led government would improve housing affordability by embarking on a programme of personal tax cuts, changing the building regulatory regime, keeping interest rates lower, reforming development rules to free up land, and allowing state house dwellers to buy their homes."
A three-letter word is proving sensitive today. That is 'out' when talking about cities and more building.
The government release from Twyford and Parker is headed: 'https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/helping-our-cities-grow-and-out' Helping our cities grow up and out “We need a new approach to planning that allows our cities to grow up, especially in city centres and around transport connections. We also have to allow cities to expand in a way that protects our special heritage areas, the natural environment and highly productive land.
“When overly restrictive planning creates an artificial scarcity of land, or floor space in the case of density limits, you simply drive up the price of housing and deny people housing options.
(This sounded like a repeat of the property speculators mantra to me.)
Links on google keywords:phil twyford on housing and land
It has released a document for consultation that proposes what the new NPS, set to replace the existing 2016 one, should look like.
The Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MHUD) suggest the NPS includes new policies to specifically direct councils to provide for intensification
Sam C is right. There needs to be more accountability for ministers. This current lot are terrible but having said that, the previous government had their issues too.
She was an interim CEO on a six month contract after the previous CEO was forced to resign. She departed a month early to take up a new permanent position.
Not much of a scandal in that is there Master Sam.
Gil Scott Heron – IMO someone with great insight, articulate and a pioneer in regard to music. who very few know about but many should (Similar to Robert Johnson), great documentary from the BBC on him.
National MPs embroiled in the legal case with Winston Peters are staying tight-lipped about a reported offer to settle for the scalp of Paula Bennett…..
Newstalk ZB political editor Barry Soper said that lawyers from both sides met in Auckland last week in an effort to settle the case before it goes to the Auckland High Court on November 4.
This may explain soimon going off the reservation around the PBO as discussed in 5 above.
National wanting to settle out of court is getting pretty close to an admission. And these delicious ironies (the leak this time) every time the nats end up in court is getting a bit much
Well, either Winston demanded $400k or Bennett's sacking to settle (which doesn't seem to indicate a particular desire to settle vs taking it to court), or the nats offered up Bennett of their own accord (which indicates the nats really want the case to go away).
Odds are that the meeting was a mere formality, or the nats want to settle more than Winston does.
There is another possibility – that they want Paula to go away. The imaginary threat of legal action has been used before, to bribe the Saudi sheep fellow. If the Gnats have a plan so cunning they imagine you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel, chances are that Paula isn't part of it.
There is that thing that an elbowed electorate MP lingers furiously while a list MP is not wont to stay carping in the house. Gnats are accustomed to sacking people, and disestablishing Paula's position in favour of a Topham Guerin rep. would not cause them much in the way of cognitive dissonance.
The Whale is retailing the same speculation apparently: “Bennett probably hasn’t realised yet that by giving up a safe seat for a list place she has made herself expendable. Especially if her campaign is as awful as everything else Paula Bennett does.” I won’t link it.
Postmodernism has long been looked upon as an indecipherable ideology and a source of amusement. In 1996 Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University, had a hoax article published in ‘Social Text’ an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. In ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Anew study in Nature Sustainability incorporates the damages that climate change does to healthy ecosystems into standard climate-economics models. The key finding in the study by Bernardo Bastien-Olvera and Frances Moore from the University of California at Davis: The models have been underestimating the ...
In a recent interview with RNZ (14th of January), NZ Council of Civil Liberties Chair Thomas Beagle, in response to Simon Bridges condemnation of the post-Trump Twitter purge of local far Right and other accounts, said the following: “Cos the thing about freedom of expression is that it’s not just ...
Let’s be clear: if Trump is not politically killed off once and for all, he will become a MAGA Dracula, rising from the dead to haunt US politics for years to come and giving inspiration to his wretched family of grifters and thousands of deplorables well into the next decade. ...
Since its demise as an imperial power, and especially its deindustrialisation under Thatcher, the UK's primary economic engine has been its role as a money laundry, using its network of overseas territories as tax havens to enable rich people around the world to steal from the societies they live in. ...
Last month OMV quit the Great South Basin and surrendered its offshore exploration permits outside of Taranaki. This month, Australian-owned Beach Energy has done the same: Beach Energy Resources New Zealand has decided to abandon all of its oil and gas exploration permits off the South Island coast, including ...
The new Northland case has been linked to the South African strain of Covid-19, one of a number of new, more contagious Covid variants. Here’s how they emerge and why. Let’s start with the basics. The genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for Covid-19 is a strand of RNA ...
MARVIN HUBBARD, US citizen by birth, New Zealand citizen by choice, Quaker and left-wing activist, has been broadcasting his show, "Community or Chaos", on Otago Access Radio for the best part of 30 years. On 24 November last year, I spoke with him about the outcome of the 2020 General ...
This is a guest blog post by Daniel Tamberg, Potsdam, co-founder and director of SCIARA GmbH. The non-profit organisation SCIARA is developing and operating a flexible software platform for scientific simulation games that allows thousands of players to explore, design and understand possible climate futures together. Decision-makers in politics, business, ...
Yesterday's Gone: Cold shivers are running up and down the spines of conservatives everywhere. Donald Trump may have gone, but all the signs point to there being something much more momentous in the wind-shift than a simple return to the status quo ante. A change is gonna come. ONE COULD ...
Is it possible to live and let live in the post-Trump era? The online campaign to vilify Christopher Liddell, ex-White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant to Trump, makes for an interesting case study. Liddell is a New Zealander whose illustrious career in corporate America once earned him plaudits ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 17, 2021 through Sat, Jan 23, 2021Editor's Choice12 new books explore fresh approaches to act on climate changeAuthors explore scientific, economic, and political avenues for climate action ...
This discussion is from a Twitter thread by Martin Kulldorff on 20 December 2020. He is a Professor at Harvard Medical School specialising in disease surveillance methods, infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety. His Twitter handle is @MartinKulldorff #1 Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single ...
The Treasury forecasts suggest the economy is doing better than expected after the Covid Shock. John Kenneth Galbraith was wont to say that economic forecasting was designed to make astrology look good. Unfair, but it raises the question of the purpose of economic forecasts. Certainly the public may treat them ...
Q: Will the COVID-19 vaccines prevent the transmission of the coronavirus and bring about community immunity (aka herd immunity)? A: Jury not in yet but vaccines do not have to be perfect to thwart the spread of infection. While vaccines induce protection against illness, they do not always stop actual ...
Joe Biden seems to be everything that Donald Trump was not – decent, straightforward, considerate of others, mindful of his responsibilities – but none of that means that he has an easy path ahead of him. The pandemic still rages, American standing in the world is grievously low, and the ...
Keana VirmaniFrom healthcare robots to data privacy, to sea level rise and Antarctica under the ice: in the four years since its establishment, the Aotearoa New Zealand Science Journalism Fund has supported over 30 projects.Rebecca Priestley, receiving the PM Science Communication Prize (Photo by Mark Tantrum) Associate Professor ...
Nothing more from me today - I'm off to Wellington, to participate in the city's annual roleplaying convention (which has also eaten my time for the whole week, limiting blogging despite there being interesting things happening). Normal bloggage will resume Tuesday. ...
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weaponscame into force today, making the development, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons illegal in international law. Every nuclear-armed state is now a criminal regime. The corporations and scientists who design, build and maintain their illegal weapons are now ...
"Come The Revolution!" The key objective of Bernard Hickey’s revolutionary solution to the housing crisis is a 50 percent reduction in the price of the average family home. This will be achieved by the introduction of Capital Gains, Land, and Wealth taxes, and by the opening up of currently RMA-protected ...
by Daphna Whitmore Twitter and Facebook shutting down Trump’s accounts after his supporters stormed Capitol Hill is old news now but the debates continue over whether the actions against Trump are a good thing or not. Those in favour of banning Trump say Twitter and Facebook are private companies and ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Democrats now control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives for the first time in a decade, albeit with razor thin Congressional majorities. The last time, in the 111th Congress (2009-2011), House Democrats passed a carbon cap and trade bill, but it died ...
Session thirty-three was highly abbreviated, via having to move house in a short space of time. Oh well. The party decided to ignore the tree-monster and continue the attack on the Giant Troll. Tarsin – flying on a giant summoned bat – dumped some high-grade oil over the ...
Last night I stayed up till 3am just to see then-President Donald Trump leave the White House, get on a plane, and fly off to Florida, hopefully never to return. And when I woke up this morning, America was different. Not perfect, because it never was. Probably not even good, ...
Watching today’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the United States’ 46th president, there’s not a lot in common with the inauguration of Donald Trump just four destructive years ago. Where Trump warned of carnage, Biden dared to hope for unity and decency. But the one place they converge is that ...
Dan FalkBritons who switched on their TVs to “Good Morning Britain” on the morning of Sept. 15, 2020, were greeted by news not from our own troubled world, but from neighboring Venus. Piers Morgan, one of the hosts, was talking about a major science story that had surfaced the ...
Sara LutermanGrowing up autistic in a non-autistic world can be very isolating. We are often strange and out of sync with peers, despite our best efforts. Autistic adults have, until very recently, been largely absent from media and the public sphere. Finding role models is difficult. Finding useful advice ...
Doug JohnsonThe alien-like blooms and putrid stench of Amorphophallus titanum, better known as the corpse flower, draw big crowds and media coverage to botanical gardens each year. In 2015, for instance, around 75,000 people visited the Chicago Botanic Garden to see one of their corpse flowers bloom. More than ...
Getting to Browser Tab Zero so I can reboot the computer is awfully hard when the one open tab is a Table of Contents for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and every issue has more stuff I want to read. A few highlights: Gugler et al demonstrating ...
Timothy Ford, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Charles M. Schweik, University of Massachusetts AmherstTo mitigate health inequities and promote social justice, coronavirus vaccines need to get to underserved populations and hard-to-reach communities. There are few places in the U.S. that are unreachable by road, but other factors – many ...
Israel chose to pay a bit over the odds for the Pfizer vaccine to get earlier access. Here’s The Times of Israel from 16 November. American government will be charged $39 for each two-shot dose, and the European bloc even less, but Jerusalem said to agree to pay $56. Israel ...
Orla is a gender critical Marxist in Ireland. She gave a presentation on 15 January 2021 on the connection between postmodern/transgender identity politics and the current attacks on democratic and free speech rights. Orla has been active previously in the Irish Socialist Workers Party and the People Before Profit electoral ...
. . America: The Empire Strikes Back (at itself) Further to my comments in the first part of 2020: The History That Was, the following should be considered regarding the current state of the US. They most likely will be by future historians pondering the critical decades of ...
Nathaniel ScharpingIn March, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to shut down major cities in the U.S., researchers were thinking about blood. In particular, they were worried about the U.S. blood supply — the millions of donations every year that help keep hospital patients alive when they need a transfusion. ...
Sarah L Caddy, University of CambridgeVaccines are a marvel of medicine. Few interventions can claim to have saved as many lives. But it may surprise you to know that not all vaccines provide the same level of protection. Some vaccines stop you getting symptomatic disease, but others stop you ...
Back in 2016, the Portuguese government announced plans to stop burning coal by 2030. But progress has come much quicker, and they're now scheduled to close their last coal plant by the end of this year: The Sines coal plant in Portugal went offline at midnight yesterday evening (14 ...
The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: As anybody with the intestinal fortitude to brave the commentary threads of local news-sites, large and small, will attest, the number of Trump-supporting New Zealanders is really quite astounding. IT’S SO DIFFICULT to resist the temptation to be smug. From the distant perspective of New Zealand, ...
RNZ reports on continued arbitrariness on decisions at the border. British comedian Russell Howard is about to tour New Zealand and other acts allowed in through managed isolation this summer include drag queen RuPaul and musicians at Northern Bass in Mangawhai and the Bay Dreams festival. The vice-president of the ...
As families around the world mourn more than two million people dead from Covid-19, the Plan B academics and their PR industry collaborator continue to argue that the New Zealand government should stop focusing on our managed isolation and quarantine system and instead protect the elderly so that they can ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 10, 2021 through Sat, Jan 16, 2021Editor's ChoiceNASA says 2020 tied for hottest year on record — here’s what you can do to helpPhoto by Michael Held on Unsplash ...
Health authorities in Norway are reporting some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine. Is this causally related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are the things to consider. According to the news there have been 23 deaths in Norway shortly after vaccine administration and ...
Happy New Year! No, experts are not concerned that “…one of New Zealand’s COIVD-1( vaccines will fail to protect the country” Here is why. But first I wish to issue an expletive about this journalism (First in Australia and then in NZ). It exhibits utter failure to actually truly consult ...
All nations have shadows; some acknowledge them. For others they shape their image in uncomfortable ways.The staunch Labour supporter was in despair at what her Rogernomics Government was doing. But she finished ‘at least, we got rid of Muldoon’, a response which tells us that then, and today, one’s views ...
Grigori GuitchountsIn November, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, made an attention-grabbing announcement: More than 30 of its most prestigious journals, including the flagship Nature, will now allow authors to pay a fee of US$11,390 to make their papers freely available for anyone to read ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, and Benjamin Santer Imagine a major climate change law passing the U.S. Congress unanimously? Don’t bother. It turns out that you don’t need to imagine it. Get this: The Global Change Research Act of 1990 was passed ...
“They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”WHO CAN FORGET the penultimate scene of the 1956 movie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The wild-eyed doctor, stumbling down the highway, trying desperately to warn his fellow citizens: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”Ostensibly science-fiction, the movie ...
TheOneRing.Net has got its paws on the official synopsis of the upcoming Amazon Tolkien TV series. It’s a development that brings to mind the line about Sauron deliberately releasing Gollum from the dungeons of Barad-dûr. Amazon knew exactly what they were doing here, in terms of drumming up publicity: ...
Since Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953, US presidents have joined an informal club intended to provide support - and occasionally rivalry - between those few who have been ‘leaders of the free world’. Donald Trump, elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and a constant mocker of his predecessors, ...
For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Kieren Mitchell; Alice Mouton, Université de Liège; Angela Perri, Durham University, and Laurent Frantz, Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichThanks to the hit television series Game of Thrones, the dire wolf has gained a near-mythical status. But it was a real animal that roamed the Americas for at least 250,000 ...
Tide of tidal data rises Having cast our own fate to include rising sea level, there's a degree of urgency in learning the history of mean sea level in any given spot, beyond idle curiosity. Sea level rise (SLR) isn't equal from one place to another and even at a particular ...
Well, some of those chickens sure came home bigly, didn’t they… and proceeded to shit all over the nice carpet in the Capitol. What we were seeing here are societal forces that have long had difficulty trying to reconcile people to the “idea” of America and the reality of ...
In the wake of Donald Trump's incitement of an assault on the US capitol, Twitter finally enforced its terms of service and suspended his account. They've since followed that up with action against prominent QAnon accounts and Trumpers, including in New Zealand. I'm not unhappy with this: Trump regularly violated ...
Peter S. Ross, University of British ColumbiaThe Arctic has long proven to be a barometer of the health of our planet. This remote part of the world faces unprecedented environmental assaults, as climate change and industrial chemicals threaten a way of life for Inuit and other Indigenous and northern ...
Susan St John makes the case for taxing a deemed rate of return on excessive real estate holdings (after a family home exemption), to redirect scarce housing resources to where they are needed most. Read the full article here ...
I’m less than convinced by arguments that platforms like Twitter should be subject to common carrier regulation preventing them from being able to decide who to keep on as clients of their free services, and who they would not like to serve. It’s much easier to create competition for the ...
The hypocritical actions of political leaders throughout the global Covid pandemic have damaged public faith in institutions and governance. Liam Hehir chronicles the way in which contemporary politicians have let down the public, and explains how real leadership means walking the talk. During the Blitz, when German bombs were ...
A growing public housing waiting list and continued increase of house prices must be urgently addressed by Government, Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson said today. ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Hon Nanaia Mahuta today announced three diplomatic appointments: Alana Hudson as Ambassador to Poland John Riley as Consul-General to Hong Kong Stephen Wong as Consul-General to Shanghai Poland “New Zealand’s relationship with Poland is built on enduring personal, economic and historical connections. Poland is also an important ...
Work begins today at Wainuiomata High School to ensure buildings and teaching spaces are fit for purpose, Education Minister Chris Hipkins says. The Minister joined principal Janette Melrose and board chair Lynda Koia to kick off demolition for the project, which is worth close to $40 million, as the site ...
A skilled and experienced group of people have been named as the newly established Oranga Tamariki Ministerial Advisory Board by Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis today. The Board will provide independent advice and assurance to the Minister for Children across three key areas of Oranga Tamariki: relationships with families, whānau, and ...
The green light for New Zealand’s first COVID-19 vaccine could be granted in just over a week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today. “We’re making swift progress towards vaccinating New Zealanders against the virus, but we’re also absolutely committed to ensuring the vaccines are safe and effective,” Jacinda Ardern said. ...
The Minister for ACC is pleased to announce the appointment of three new members to join the Board of ACC on 1 February 2021. “All three bring diverse skills and experience to provide strong governance oversight to lead the direction of ACC” said Hon Carmel Sepuloni. Bella Takiari-Brame from Hamilton ...
The Government is investing $9 million to upgrade a significant community facility in Invercargill, creating economic stimulus and jobs, Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson and Te Tai Tonga MP Rino Tirikatene have announced. The grant for Waihōpai Rūnaka Inc to make improvements to Murihiku Marae comes from the $3 billion set ...
[Opening comments, welcome and thank you to Auckland University etc] It is a great pleasure to be here this afternoon to celebrate such an historic occasion - the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This is a moment many feared would never come, but ...
The Government is providing $3 million in one-off seed funding to help disabled people around New Zealand stay connected and access support in their communities, Minister for Disability Issues, Carmel Sepuloni announced today. The funding will allow disability service providers to develop digital and community-based solutions over the next two ...
Border workers in quarantine facilities will be offered voluntary daily COVID-19 saliva tests in addition to their regular weekly testing, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. This additional option will be rolled out at the Jet Park Quarantine facility in Auckland starting on Monday 25 January, and then to ...
The next steps in the Government’s ambitious firearms reform programme to include a three-month buy-back have been announced by Police Minister Poto Williams today. “The last buy-back and amnesty was unprecedented for New Zealand and was successful in collecting 60,297 firearms, modifying a further 5,630 firearms, and collecting 299,837 prohibited ...
Upscaling work already underway to restore two iconic ecosystems will deliver jobs and a lasting legacy, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “The Jobs for Nature programme provides $1.25 billion over four years to offer employment opportunities for people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the COVID-19 recession. “Two new projects ...
The Government has released its Public Housing Plan 2021-2024 which outlines the intention of where 8,000 additional public and transitional housing places announced in Budget 2020, will go. “The Government is committed to continuing its public house build programme at pace and scale. The extra 8,000 homes – 6000 public ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has congratulated President Joe Biden on his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States of America. “I look forward to building a close relationship with President Biden and working with him on issues that matter to both our countries,” Jacinda Ardern said. “New Zealand ...
A major investment to tackle wilding pines in Mt Richmond will create jobs and help protect the area’s unique ecosystems, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor says. The Mt Richmond Forest Park has unique ecosystems developed on mineral-rich geology, including taonga plant species found nowhere else in the country. “These special plant ...
To further protect New Zealand from COVID-19, the Government is extending pre-departure testing to all passengers to New Zealand except from Australia, Antarctica and most Pacific Islands, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “The change will come into force for all flights arriving in New Zealand after 11:59pm (NZT) on Monday ...
Bay Conservation Cadets launched with first intake Supported with $3.5 million grant Part of $1.245b Jobs for Nature programme to accelerate recover from Covid Cadets will learn skills to protect and enhance environment Environment Minister David Parker today welcomed the first intake of cadets at the launch of the Bay ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
Just as sexuality is a spectrum, so too is asexuality. In Ace of Hearts, members of New Zealand’s asexual community talk about the challenges and misconceptions of identifying as ace.First published November 17, 2020.Ace of Hearts is part of Frame, a series of short documentaries produced by Wrestler for The Spinoff.“A ...
Sam Brooks wasn’t allowed to watch kids TV as a kid. Now, as a 30 year old man, he watches it for the first time.My mother’s approach to parenting was unorthodox. I wrote weekly book reports on top of my actual homework, I did maths equations in Roman numerals and ...
Pacific Media Watch newsdesk More leading Indonesian figures have made racial slurs against Natalius Pigai, former chair of the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) – and all West Papuans, says United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda. “Since the illegal Indonesian invasion in 1963, Indonesian ...
“The Government’s failure to even conduct a standard cost-benefit analysis for the most expensive infrastructure project in New Zealand’s history is mind-bogglingly arrogant,” says New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke. “A ...
The Ministry of Health is today drawing backlash from the local New Zealand vaping industry following its release of proposed regulations for the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act. Vaping Trade Association New Zealand (VTANZ) President, ...
Sophie Gilmour and Simon Day are joined by special guest Hugo Baird, co-owner of Grey Lynn’s Honey Bones and Lilian, to talk about opening new pub Hotel Ponsonby.Auckland is a city of many bars but few really good pubs – the kind of places you’d be just as comfortable going ...
The appointment of an advisory board for Oranga Tamariki is welcome and should be a step toward a total transformation of the care and protection system to a by Māori, for Māori approach, Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft said today. Minister ...
Taking control of your financial wellbeing can have cascading positive impacts for your life and it can also be fun. With the help of the team at Kiwi Wealth, we’ve compiled some simple tricks for balancing your books in 2021. There’s something about the beginning of a new year, especially after ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kris Gledhill, Professor of Law, Auckland University of Technology As we know, getting into New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic is difficult. There are practicalities, such as high airfare and managed isolation costs. And there are legal requirements, including pre-flight testing, mandatory ...
New Zealand faces the risk of a generation being locked out of the housing market unless land is freed up and more houses built, National Party leader Judith Collins says. ...
On Sunday, Stuff published a months-long investigation by Alison Mau detailing allegations of harassment and exploitation within the local music industry.The piece, ‘Music industry professionals demand change after speaking out about its dark side’, includes allegations of inappropriate behaviour and abuse of power by male artists, international acts and executives; ...
“The Government is all at sea on timelines for Australia and New Zealand’s respective vaccine roll-outs, with the worst news coming from the mouth of Pfizer Australia CEO Anne Harris,” says ACT Leader David Seymour. “Yesterday, under increasing ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Higgins, Senior Research Fellow, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden promised the US would demonstrate “global leadership on refugees”. Once elected, he pledged to vastly increase refugee resettlement in the US. If history is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Baumann, Casual Academic, School of Social Sciences & Psychology, Western Sydney University Among the many hard truths exposed by COVID-19 is the huge disparity between the world’s rich and poor. As economies went into freefall, the world’s billionaires increased their already ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jan Lanicek, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History and Jewish History, UNSW On January 27 communities worldwide commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz — the largest complex of concentration camps and extermination centres during the Holocaust. This is the first year the International ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lorinda Cramer, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Australian Catholic University The summer break is over, marking a return to the office. For some, this ends almost a year of working from home in lockdown. Some analysts are predicting it might also mark an enduring ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 27, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur members make The Spinoff happen! Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato New Zealand has a strong history of protecting and promoting human rights at home and internationally, and prides itself on being an outspoken critic and global leader in this area. So, when the most ...
Good morning and welcome to the Bulletin. In today’s edition: Collins outlines the plan forward for National, no spread of Covid spotted yet in Northland, and students return for climate protest.In front of a Rotary Club at the Ellerslie Racecourse in Auckland, National leader Judith Collins yesterday set out her ...
*This articlefirst appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. The tourism industry isn't holding its breath for a trans-Tasman travel bubble being in place after Australia temporarily closed its borders to New Zealand. New Zealanders could be waiting even longer for a full trans-Tasman bubble, with the ...
We continue our week-long examination of New Zealand writer Roderick Finlayson with an essay by Anahera Gildea on cultural appropriation Every night at 7pm sharp, my Irish Catholic father and his eight siblings would have to kneel on the carpet of the living room, facing the freshly polished nudity of ...
Children's Minister Kelvin Davis will have independent eyes and ears across Oranga Tamariki over the next five months as the Government tries to change the work and practices of the ministry. The Government has created a Māori-led watchdog to oversee how the children's ministry, Oranga Tamariki, deals with parents and ...
A Covid reset will force costly and inflexible cities to take a hard look at their planning systems, or people will vote with their feet. Broken urban planning systems make for misery even in the best of times. If land use and housing regulations prevent metropolitan areas from growing up or out as ...
When an Auckland school classroom went up in flames in December last year, exploding asbestos over neighbouring houses, five separate government agencies were involved. Yet stressed residents dealing with the aftermath on their homes say the response felt chaotic and uncoordinated; even local MPs who got involved couldn't get the information they wanted. Hundreds of thousands of ...
The pandemic has accelerated the trend of doing our banking online instead of in person. This rapid digital embrace has, in turn, sped up the closure of many smaller bank branches. But, as Mark Jennings writes, there are new branches springing up with a different look and purpose. Auckland’s Wynyard ...
Corrina Gage has represented New Zealand in a trio of water sports. But it's her love for waka ama - and the opportunities it gives paddlers from 5 to 85 - that keeps her racing and coaching around the world. Lake Karāpiro is quiet and still now. But last week, it was all noise ...
Telling a Rotary Club audience that housing is a serious problem and they should care deeply about it landed flat but took some daring from the National leader, writes Justin Giovannetti.Judith Collins’ level of control over the National Party is still a question best answered by a shrug.Elevated to her ...
A gang turf war gripped the South Auckland suburb in late 2020, forcing schools to lock down and armed police to patrol the streets. Community leaders are now warning the cycle of violent retribution could continue in 2021, unless radical interventions are made.The violent altercations that loomed large in Ōtara ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Véronique Duché, A.R. Chisholm Professor of French, University of Melbourne In this series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen. When I first heard that Rowan Atkinson was to put on Maigret’s velvet-collared overcoat, I wondered ...
Auckland writer Olivia Hayfield* explains how she resurrected 16th-century playwright Christopher Marlowe to star in her new novel, Sister to Sister. Olivia Hayfield is a pen name. Real name: Sue Copsey. When I’m planning my modern retellings of historical tales, I read widely on the characters and see who leaps out at ...
The Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine could be approved as early as next week, Marc Daalder reports Medsafe will be asked to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine against Covid-19 on February 2, the Government has announced. The Medicines Assessment Advisory Committee (MAAC) is an independent panel that provides advice on some medicine approvals in ...
COMMENT:By Bryan Kramer, PNG’s Minister of Police who has defended Commissioner Manning’s appointment today in The National My last article, announcing that I intend to make a submission to the National Executive Council (NEC) to amend the Public Service regulation to no longer require the Commissioner of Police to ...
The Point of Order Trough Monitor was triggered today by the announcement of a $9 million handout for Southlanders – sorry, some Southlanders. The news came from the office of Grant Robertson who, as Minister of Finance, prefers to invest public money rather than give it away – especially when ...
Few people outside of her campaign team gave Chlöe Swarbrick any chance of winning in Auckland Central this year – but the Green Party MP was too busy to listen. Here’s how they turned the electorate green.First published November 12, 2020.Three Ticks Chlöe is part of Frame, a series of short ...
Interactions between parents and healthcare providers could have a big impact on the wellbeing of our children, according to new research. The way parents and healthcare providers interact has lasting implications for children’s health, new research has found – and that includes immunisation uptake.Released today, the report is based on research ...
The Opposition starts the political year calling for emergency, temporary legislation to free up house building National leader Judith Collins has set five priorities for her party over the next three years - but excluded climate change, education and Crown-Māori relations. Giving her first 'state of the nation' speech as party ...
One of the biggest challenges facing the Ardern government is in public health. New Zealand may have escaped the pressures heaped on other health systems by the Covid-19 pandemic but its health service has had its problems, not least those exposed in the first report from Heather Simpson and her ...
New Zealand’s Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins has revealed that 14 close contacts of the Northland community case have returned negative test results. Yesterday he announced two close contacts – her husband and hair dresser – were negative. In his tweet, Hipkins described the news as “encouraging”. However, New ...
Pacific Media Watch newsdesk Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the arbitrary and opaque experiments that Google is conducting with its search engine in Australia, with the consequence that many national news websites are no longer appearing in the search results seen by some users. The Australian, ABC, Australian Financial ...
Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta says councils can take stronger action against companies dumping contaminated waste water, even though they have identified loopholes in the law on fines. ...
Drag Race Down Under, part of the popular RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise, is filming in New Zealand. In their own words, local drag talent share what drag means to them and how it might be impacted by the show.RuPaul’s Drag Race is, quite simply, a television phenomenon. Love it or ...
For a long time, weighted blankets were considered a specialist device. Now they’re popular with even the most normal sleepers.Growing up, Temple Grandin spent time on her aunt’s cattle ranch in America, watching cow after stressed cow enter a squeeze chute and come out calm as the dead sea. She ...
Increased provisional tax thresholds, immediate low-value asset write offs and allowing the deferral of tax payments and use of money interest (UOMI) write offs were the most popular tax measures introduced by the Government to help businesses survive ...
The latest fleeing driver statistics show the numbers of incidents sky-rocketing out of control through 2020 with Police deciding the only tactic is to give up on chasing altogether, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “The inconvenient truth is ...
With new revelations of the appalling racism behind Israel’s refusal to provide Covid-19 vaccines to 4.5 million Palestinians under its occupation and control, PSNA has renewed our call for the government to speak out alongside the United Nations ...
The Youth of NZ will be standing up for climate action once again, on January 26th outside of Parliament for School Strike 4 Climate NZ’s 100 Days 4 Action campaign rally. “COVID-19 may have stopped us in our tracks in the past. However, I tend ...
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ANZ in the news again…this time over missing loan documents.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/115108932/crossan-anz-needs-to-front-to-prove-no-conflict-of-interest
“I’ve simply had no response from ANZ to my reasonable requests for information about the loan and its terms.
“To be clear: in no way do I dispute the loan or my responsibility to pay off my share of the debt as one of four personal guarantors for the facility.
“What’s perhaps most alarming is the revelation that ANZ has been unable to locate a signed copy of the original facility to NZ Girl in its files. To my mind, that credit contract is vital to outline the terms that were agreed to by NZ Girl at the origin of the loan, and the basis of which any fees and penalties are charged. I’m deeply concerned that as a customer of ANZ, I am experiencing such difficulty, or indeed a stone wall of silence, from my bank when I have asked for reasonable information to determine what I owe. I’ve had to employ a lawyer to help me navigate this, at significant personal cost.”
TSB is a good bank. I bet they would have documentation.
This was telling too
“Crossan said her former husband, Grant Nicholls, who is now part of the ANZ executive team, had also offered a personal guarantee, along with two other people. He held a similar shareholding in the business.
as well as a 26% interest!!!!
I'm surprised they said they could throw away documents after seven years. I would have thought it was 7 years after completion of the contract, not seven years from the time the contract was started.
… doesn't that mean that if someone took out a 20 year mortgage, there might be no evidence that they should even be making any payments?
TSB? Fuck off. TSB fucked *everything* up we had with them.
They can't even email statements, they have to print them off and scan them. And before this, you had to go into a branch to get them as they refused to do it.
Getting out of TSB was one of the best things I ever did.
Yes agreed TSB is the best bank in NZ today.
Transferring my day-to-day and investment banking to TSB ~17 years ago worked out well for me – never regretted moving to this 100% NZ-owned bank.
Your jihadi friends have control of Saraqib Jenny. You really have no shame. You have never condemned these brutal murderers but whitter on about the Syrian Government. I can only conclude that you would be quite happy to have ISIS, Al queda et al overun Syria and turn it into a bastion of Sharia Law carrying out it's public floggings and beheadings.
What the hell is wrong with you?
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/12/whitewash-the-bastion-of-freedom-is-an-al-qaeda-infested-town.html
"From the early start of the war on Syria, Saraqib was one of the centers of jihadi terrorist activities. In March/April 2011 it was one of the first towns that saw violent attacks on government forces and institutions. In December 2011 the notorious terrorist group Ahrar al-Sham, headed by the long time al-Qaeda member Abu Khalid al-Suri, was founded there. In 2014 the BBC reported how al-Qaeda/Nusra/HTS ruled the town:
At some point the locals in Saraqib may have hold some sham elections. But that does not change the fact that their town was and is solidly controlled by an internationally banned terrorist group. Saraqib is only a 'bastion of freedom' when one ignores everything that happened and still happens there.
This brings up a serious question. How did the author of the New Yorker piece, Anand Gopal, manage to travel through Nusra/HTS/al-Qaeda controlled Idleb governorate, visited the jihadi infested town, and avoided to be thrown into the "notorious al-Iqab Prison in Saraqib area"?"
Oh and Osama al-Hossein, Muslim Brotherhood 'activist' has fled to Turkey. Please do keep up.
Wow, that is either a very ignorant view or you are friends with headchoppers of Idlib. Mr McRoberts needs to use his intelligence and visit Damascus before venturing off to the frontlines of Idlib. Maybe you actually believe the white helmet and al Qaeda propaganda, if so you are very mistaken in your judgment. You have no reason to trust me but I have done a great deal of independent and indepth research as well as visited the Middle East.
To date The Standard has not allowed a single post that strays from the pro-regime narrative.
Will we see the Standard authors willfully ignore McRoberts commentary?
Will The Standard authors choose instead to get their views shaped by Pepe Escobar of RT and notorious batshit crazy conspiracy website Globalresearch.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Globalresearch
“”In an era of media disinformation, our focus has essentially been to center on the "unspoken truth".
—True only if "unspoken" means "so embarassingly false that nobody else will say it"[2]
Pepe Escobar Author Globalresearch
https://www.globalresearch.ca/author/pepe-escobar
[As a long-time commenter here, you should be familiar with the https://thestandard.org.nz/about/ and the https://thestandard.org.nz/policy/.
You should know that Authors write in their own spare time for free about topics they want to write about (https://thestandard.org.nz/about/#you_must).
You should know that attributing ulterior motives to the site, as if it has a mind of its own, or to its Authors is a bannable offense (https://thestandard.org.nz/policy/#banning).
You should know that telling Authors what to write or not write about, what views to express of not express and how is a bannable offense too.
Attacking the site for things that may never even happen is stupid behaviour and amounts to telling us what we can and cannot write about.
Stomping and ranting over everything and anything to do with Syria makes it impossible to have a rational discussion on this.
These are just the main offenses – there are too many minor ones to list here that have been wasting Moderator time.
I have checked your history here and you have been warned and banned many times before for the same offenses.
I was tossing between a permanent ban and a short educational ban. The former one may be too harsh and the latter one obviously won’t work. Therefore, I decided to hand you medium-long ban as a warning to you and others and to give us all a break from your recidivist behaviour.
Banned for three months – Incognito]
See my Moderation note @ 9:01 PM.
'business insider' has done a what if..?
https://amp.businessinsider.com/switch-from-meat-to-meatless-diet-environmental-benefits-2019-8
(excerpt..)
Impossible Foods, a leading producer of plant-based "meat-like" patties, has launched its Impossible Burger 2.0 in more than 7,000 restaurants worldwide. The product will be sold in all Burger King locations across the US (not to mention your local grocery store) by September.
Beyond Meat, another meat-free burger company, saw similar success: The company netted $40.2 million during its first quarter as a public company (between January and April), a 215% jump from the same period in 2018.
Global consultancy firm AT Kearney projects that by 2040, 60% of the "meat" products humans consume will either be plant-based replacements or lab-grown meats.'
All meat products are plant-based
there is just no need for the middle-man..
In the natural world, herbivores eat plant-parts and omnivores/carnivores eat herbivore-parts, along with selected plant-parts. It's for reasons other than "natural" that some present-day humans choose not to eat herbivore-parts.
Elegantly stated, thank you – no need for further comment from me now.
Nice one Robert.
I didn't mean it to be a conversation stopper, more a basis on which to build a rational discussion. Without the heat, a measured debate on diet would be enjoyable and very interesting, in my view.
Yeh there are lots of things that might be 'natural' that get overridden at a cultural level. Rape is probably natural but we no do that.
Yes, culture's the issue. Rape's a plant, btw; no need to confuse the issue, solkta; in fact, let's leave that out of any discussion on diet
I completely agree Robert. I will try and find a different way to engage when I start seeing red over the climate change aspect.
@ pm + weka..
are you both sure you know what robert actually said..?
Is anyone?
I thought it was that it is natural to eat. The choice of what to eat is not related to the word 'natural', it is a choice for (most) humans. I wish more people would accept their choice and stop trying to justify it – the climate disaster we are facing isn't a practice run!
"Choice", marty mars?
Now there's a debatable idea; choosing; do television-watching children choose to eat the sugar-infused foods they see advertised on their beloved goggle-box, or is that choice made for them by the cunning advertisers?
yeah nah – the choice to eat industrialised farmed flesh (and accept that subsequent contribution to our climate emergency) or veges and grains and fruits. Sure some may like ‘happy meat’ – good on them. I'd like people to raise their pigs and sheep and then kill and gut them, chop them up, put them in the freezer and chomp away – but easier to just buy the plastic wrapped stuff I spose.
The main impediment to people eating local meat is food safety laws that prohibits us from buying direct from farmers and small growers. That's not too hard a fix technically, but the people in government are not on board yet with the need.
This is one reason why I push back hard on the veganism will save us from climate change idea. Instead of making it easier for people to eat the least impactful foods (whether that be veg, meat, dairy, nuts), people are being actively encouraged and pressured to eat industrial soy that still has a large carbon footprint and a terrible eco footprint.
I'll never be in a position to raise my own meat, but I'm not in a position to grow my own veges either, so I tend to focus on the systems and how they can be changed.
So then there're children in families where an omnivorous diet is the norm, who find choosing not to eat farmed-animal meat very difficult, if not impossible. As well, there are those children who haven't given a thought to eating differently from their family and who, as adults, choose to continue, not having had to address the issue at any point. Demanding that they do is…interesting and needing explanation. It's a complex question, choosing what and what not to eat. The sugar story is similar.
"This is one reason why I push back hard on the veganism will save us from climate change idea."
Yes. Any single-issue campaign that claims "save us from climate-change/annihilation" falls over immediately, imo; coal, oil, meat, air-travel, stock-farming, because it's clear immediate and total change as the result of one action cannot happen, given our civilised state. I'm convinced though, that there is a pathway aside from wrack & ruin and am always hopeful that a discussion here will ignite the lamp that guides that path
@ weka yep I'm a locavore.
"This is one reason why I push back hard on the veganism will save us from climate change idea. Instead of making it easier for people to eat the least impactful foods "
Not sure why both ideas can't be entertained – they aren't mutually exclusive.
@Robert – good you're thinking of the children.
It's not a single issue – it is among a range of issues to try to reduce the misery just around the corner. It is evidence based like the rest of them. This anti reduce meat consumption (for those that make that argument – not you R ok) is really another climate denial argument imo.
EXTINCTION rebellion have it framed correctly
"Not sure why both ideas can't be entertained – they aren't mutually exclusive."
I don't know why either, but these are my guesses. I see a lot of resistance from the vegan movement and fundamentalist vegans to instead of telling people to eat vegan, telling people to eat vegan or omni but either way to eat from relocalised food systems where they can.
I understand this to be because not eating animals is paramount, and it's better to prioritise that than it is to let people eat local, happy meat or dairy or eggs if that is a better choice in climate terms. That ideology is a problem where it blocks locavorism, and imo this is what is happening (it's being blocked).
The vegan movement isn't championing relocalising food, but instead is pushing industrial vegan vs industrial meat/dairy. I see a kind of blindness here, and I feel an immense frustration at the amount of time spent addressing the 'go vegan and save us from climate change' (which is a nonsense, because they're really saying eat industrial soy instead of CAFO meat/dairy), and the conversation getting stuck there instead of moving on to the systems that might give all of live a chance.
Reducing global GHG emissions by x % won't save us. We have to move to zero-ish carbon at the same time as doing all the natural sequestration processes to mitigate, not to buy more carbon usage.
In all that is the issue of the industrialised wealthy nations eating way more than their fare share, so of course people that eat large amounts of meat and dairy need to rethink that. But asking people to reduce the amount of meat/dairy is very different than asking them to be vegan.
"This anti reduce meat consumption (for those that make that argument – not you R ok) is really another climate denial argument imo."
When I was vegetarian in the 80s, the common theme amongst vegetarians was that NZers ate too much protein. This was probably true for a good number of people, but for vegetarians who were eating largely plant based diets it was dangerous, because we ended up protein deficient.
Telling people to reduce meat only works for people that are eating a lot. No way in hell am I going to tell poor people who don't have enough nutrients in their diet and subsist on white carbs that they should eat less meat and dairy. Likewise chronically ill people who don't have the health resources to manage a vegetarian diet.
So when people say eat less meat/dairy to save the planet, because the Guardian is telling them that *globally* humans are eating too much, of course I am going to say hang on, there is a real problem with this approach and messaging.
@ weka I think you have a blind spot in relation to vegans and that stuff therefore this is my last comment to you on it (today that is 🙂 )
there was no protein crisis afaik
Maybe we can get the wealthy middle class western countries and citizens to reduce their meat intake first and then start on the poor people.
There are a small number of vegans pushing their position yet somehow that means they want global soy (industrial vegan) instead of rain forests – come on.
Often people don't like the message when they don't agree with it. Bit all or nothing for me.
Marty – "Extinction rebellion", are they rebelling to prevent the extinction of rhino, dolphin, butterfly, bee, etc, or are they referring to the extinction of humans, do you know?
I don't.
I reckon, also, that talking to individuals, as we do here on TS, is very different to talking to corporations. It's fair to demand that soul-less, heart-less, socio/psychopathic corporate pretend-bodies, are addressed in absolute terms, but not individuals, imo. People are easily hurt and almost always compromised, so absolute claims and demands just harm, not help. Sometimes we mix the two without realising it.
"@ weka I think you have a blind spot in relation to vegans and that stuff therefore this is my last comment to you on it (today that is )"
People can and do think whatever they want, but in a political forum in the absence of explaining their thinking it doesn't really mean much. eg I have no idea what my blind spot might be. What I'm getting is there is something you don't like about my argument, and so you will stop talking to me today. All good. I hope next time you can say more.
"there was no protein crisis afaik"
No idea what that means.
"Maybe we can get the wealthy middle class western countries and citizens to reduce their meat intake first and then start on the poor people."
Sure, those wealthy people that are eating a lot of meat/dairy. Those that aren't need a different message.
"There are a small number of vegans pushing their position yet somehow that means they want global soy (industrial vegan) instead of rain forests – come on."
The vegan movement is large, well funded, and being adopted by people in positions of power.
I didn't make the comparison with rain forests, so please don't put words into my argument. I suspect you are still largely missing what I am arguing for, but to be clear, I don't support NZers to fell our rain forests to grow meat or legumes.
"Often people don't like the message when they don't agree with it. Bit all or nothing for me."
If you can't see the nuances in my arguments (and there are plenty) I think that's for you to sort out
ER's main demands are around GHGs and preventing mass species extinction so I think it's reasonable to assume the extinction rebellion applies to all of life. It’s one of the things that separates them out from some other climate activists, they saw the need to do both together.
@ Robert yes we are individuals and that is where we must start imo. Once again, why people get so defensive I'll never know – just do what you can and what you want, with knowledge – and that's the same for all eaters of food. ffs I've had enough of this bullshit – argue with yourselves on this 'political forum'.
Mmmm…I appreciate your view, weka. I'm not sure though; the 6th Great Extinction Event was, I thought, attributed to more prosaic habitat destruction by humans; city-building, forest-felling, over-fishing, pesticide-use etc. I'd always thought that was the background to Extinction Rebellion. But you may be right, in which case, I'm somewhat disappointed.
@ weka..re soy..
most of the soy grown is to feed animals..
"most of the soy grown is to feed animals.."
Which is largely unnecessary. Not sure what your point it phil.
Are we talking at cross-purposes there Robert? Afaik ER want to address all the things you name, and see humans as the progenitor of mass extinction. Hence the demand to protect biodiversity. I took that to mean by humans changing their errant ways.
I see you are correct, weka. Originally, I thought the "E" in ER referred to other-than-human living things.
Are you still disappointed?
@ weka..
u said: 'which is a nonsense, because they're really saying eat industrial soy instead of CAFO meat/dairy)'..
i was replying to that..
i thought it was/is relevant to the/any discussion on soy..
right. So getting humans to eat industrial soy instead of eating cows that industrial soy looks like a good thing ecologically and re CC, but only in a lesser evil way. Better to get humans to eat local (legumes, veges, animals, nuts) and regeneratively, and avoid the massive issues associated with all industrial farming.
Yes. I'd been so pleased that a global movement to protect all non-human life had come into being; learning that there was human self-interest involved is a bit disappointing.
How does one do a wan-smiley-face emoticon?
🙁
I took it as being all of life (including humans). I don't see us as outside of nature, so can't imagine protecting biodiversity in ways that don't also protect us. There are compelling reasons to protect humans too eg so we deal with the nuclear and other high pollution issues.
that’s : -( without the gaps. I use :-/ a bit.
Interesting positioning but on this occasion I suspect you have been trumped by the greywarshark….
20 August 2019 at 9:36 pm
solkta Now you produce another conversation stopper.
There is something wrong with the heads of a number of you. Can you concentrate on other matters when people want to discuss them. It is a virtual OCD to be in a sex default position when there are so many human bad behaviour traits.
With you there Greywarshark;
Sollka has tunnel vision and mind.
Remember when Solka jioned others and said tyre dust has not been found on Arctic ice/snow?
‘Raining plastic’ – fragments of rubber tyres, found by lead scientist, Dr Melanie Bergmann – QUOTE; "Can we come up with differently designed car tyres? These are important issues."
https://www.sott.net/article/418585-Plastic-particles-falling-out-of-sky-with-snow-in-the-Arctic
Plastic particles falling out of sky with snow in the Arctic
Roger Harrabin BBC Wed, 14 Aug 2019 08:29 UTC
A German-Swiss team of researchers has published the work in the journal Science Advances. The scientists also found rubber particles and fibres in the snow. How did the researchers carry out the study? Researchers collected snow samples from the Svalbard islands using a low-tech method – a dessert spoon and a flask. In the laboratory at Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven they discovered far more contaminating particles than they’d expected.
Many were so small that it was hard to ascertain where they had come from.
In an ideal world, you would have made your comment slightly more relevant to this discussion thread and more on-topic if you had said something about tyre dust in lab-grown meat patties.
It would have been even more fun to have said something about meat-dust in lab-grown tyre patties.
My car failed its WOF because the front right tyre patty was worn because the dog had been chewing on it. The bun and slice of tomato were still o.k.
The dog denies everything and blames the cat.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/08/19/burger-king-dared-me-my-cat-to-taste-test-the-impossible-whopper/
It’s a dog’s life!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-wine/115032523/why-dogfriendly-cafes-are-on-the-rise-around-nz-and-the-globe
Oh you guys!
Ridiculous to fail you your WOOf because of a dog!
That’s what I told the mechanic but he didn’t want to have a bark of it 🙁
He's probably sick and tyred of the whole thing.
"there is just no need for the middle-man.."
hahaha . You mean the factory making the protein isnt a middle man ? It may say 'plant based' but the reality is some sort of by product of an industrial process.
Plants themselves are far better than 'plant based' falsehood
@ duke – unsure of what you are saying..
and plant-based – by definition – covers a myriad of versions of that..
not necessarily 'industrial process bye-product'..(!)
It is . And it gets worse
Did you not read about Impossible Burgers plant based means a genetically modified version of heme to 'give it a meaty favour'
"So the researchers engineered ( notice the lack of the word genetic) yeast to mimic a plant-based heme source, as well as the flavor profile of beef "to generate the same
and then
"Impossible chose textured wheat and potato protein instead since that gives the burger a more realistic texture"
Go knows what textured wheat even is
https://curiosity.com/topics/how-do-they-make-meat-like-burgers-from-plants-curiosity/
TVP, texture vegetable protein, a vegetarian staple from back in the day. Terrible stuff born from the desire to make vegetarian mince. If people want to not eat meat, then don’t eat meat. Plenty of other things to eat that don’t require a lab to make them pretend to be meat.
Extruded vegetable protein might be a better description, or solvent extracted vegetable protein, but not with the same marketing appeal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textured_vegetable_protein
"Textured vegetable protein, or TVP, is made from soy and is the same thing as textured soy protein. Textured wheat protein is made from a similar process, but from wheat. They are all highly processed plant-based alternatives to meat.
Factory food processing using a lot of other stuff that would be far from those weasel words 'plant based'
https://support.brightlineeating.com/what-is-the-difference-between-textured-wheat-protein-textured-vegetable-protein-and-textured-soy-protein/
Lol, I think they're weasel words too. Just be honest.
By pillaging the world's diminishing resources. Show us the ecological footprint, or it's all just BAU.
Below is the ingredients list, have a think about where those ingredients come from, how they're grown and processed, how far they travel to get to the plate, what extractive and polluting industry (incl fossil fuels) is needed in that whole process.
Then stop and think about how this might not be a good solution to climate change, and why relocalising food supplies might be.
Impossible “meat” also contains 2% or less of:
@ weka…
um..!..if you actually read the link – the/your footprint question is answered there..and as stated there – the difference is significant..
(and lotsa good stuff in that recipie…eh..?..all those vitamins/niacin/oils etc…
gotta be good for ya..!..)
It doesn't work.
The first part of the article is based on US populations, so very different than what people in the NZ or even somewhere like the UK are eating. It's comparing soy with meat and dairy, but that doesn't take into account things like the evolutionary human need for fats. It looks at EFAs but doesn't address two issues: one is that CAFO meats have a munted EFA ratio to start with, and two, EFAs from plants are harder for humans to utilise in their bodies.
I doubt that the GHG emission figures are true, because of what is being chosen to be counted (please, someone do the mahi to correct me), but it doesn't address the ecological footprint.
But the second part of the article is looking at fake meat, not in the context of the research in the first part of the article. The research looked at soy, green peppers, squash, buckwheat, and asparagus, not that list of ingredients above.
I could go on, lots of ways to critique this, but for me it's not a vegan vs omnivore debate, it's an industrial monsanto model of eating vs relocalising food, and how that matters in terms of climate mitigation.
Additive-laden foods designed to sit on shelves for days or weeks will always suffer by comparison with whole foods in climate terms. Be great if our food system incentivised local whole products.
It would. And people could still choose, by and large, what kind of diet to eat within that. For now at least.
Wonder if clarifying impacts/options within whole foods could sidestep the processed food industry resisting even the most basic labelling.
how do you mean?
If whole foods had good information for purchasers, including the climate impacts. Local venison, out-of-season veges, imported lentils, etc.
Processed purveyors might not resist us doing that as much and I'm tired of their interests taking precedent.
All fresh fruit and veg in the supermarket have to have ecofootprint, GHG footprint, country of origin, how they were grown (organic/conventional etc), that kind of thing? That would be a total game changer.
I'm tired of their interests taking precedent too, and I suspect there would be a lot of resistance. What happened to the Greens' country of origin labelling thing?
Winston happened, I'd guess.
I think earlier than that. I'll look it up.
Once frankin foods get a market share (and they will ) it is going to become fertile ground for the big companies to hollow out any nutritional goodness in pursuit low cost high profit garbage.
Yep. Looking at the list in that burger, why the need to add in all those vitamins? And how where they produced? Some people think that our bodies are machines and we can just add this component and that component and still function well. That one will come back and bite us.
i am more worried about the waste produced by this stuff.
We have become a seriously ill society. We want to feel good at all cost. We want to elevate some life more important as other life and often time that comes with the 'cute' label attached. We don't want to pay the honest price of everything, cause that would cut into the pursuit of 'lifestyle' and by gosh and golly we are owed a lifestyle. We want to continue to drive our cars, our boats, our bikes, heat in winter to 30 and cool in summer to 22, we want our booze and our frocks and our frid/sat entertainment and we want it cheap. And the rubbish of all that we consume is for another generation to care of. But at least we could pretend we are still eating meat. Right?
give me a rat burger/possum burger/ stoat burger/rabbit burger any day of the week before i would buy and eat that rubbish.
all of this ^
The waste produced (rubbish) and the wasted resources, time, energy, life.
Please eat weeds.
Chickweed
Chickory
Burdock
Dandelion
Fat hen
Fennel
Plantain
Wild onion
and so on, and so on.
You’ll be the healthier for it.
@ sabine..
the predictions are that the burger/pizza etc chains will be the first to take it up in a big way..
in part 'cos it will be much cheaper than animal-based meat..
they will be able to offer plant-based kobe-beef burgers..any meat type at all..indistinguishable from the animal-based product..
and they will be able to market it as eco-meat..cruelty-free-meat..
these are powerful advertising messages..
and of course in the supermarkets these products will be much cheaper than the animal-based – this is a price-war the animal product will lose..
so it will be difficult to avoid – and what seems now unthinkable to many..will soon enough become the norm..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UUWkr4FUlo
(and Oim peshnut about it too)
Impossible Burger
"enjoy the "Impossible Whopper." It has no meat and a mere 1080 mg. of sodium
Thats a sign no flavour so fill with salt ( remember to double the sodium to get NaCl so thats 2 g)
1500mg is really the most an adult should consume
Massey University after a sexual assault complaint:
During a meeting with Fuller, Marie says he expressed sympathy but told her quitting her PhD might be the best option
What year is this?!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/115029105/massey-university-accused-of-mishandling-allegations-of-a-violent-sexual-assault
That can't have been Marie Curie as she has been dead for some time! But the male attitudes of primacy that she encountered (but always overcame) still continue their repeat – like a belch or fart.
This was interesting – an honest, objective appraisal by Pierre Curie on why it was hard for him to fine a life companion and wife:
"Women, much more than men, love life for life’s sake. Women of genius are rare. And when, pushed by some mystic love, we wish to enter into a life opposed to nature, when we give all our thoughts to some work which removes us from those immediately about us, it is with women that we have to struggle, and the struggle is nearly always an unequal one. For in the name of life and of nature they seek to lead us back." http://womenineuropeanhistory.org/index.php?title=Marie_Curie
Though Marie changed the mould still the old attitude apparently prevails.
Looks like they have a 'schedule of penalties' for breaches including being kicked out and yet say Student has a right to study ?
http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/calendar/studying-at-massey-university/student-disciplinary-regulations.cfm
Its terrible that she was offered even an option of ending her studies to fix his problem.
Looks like a split at the top in the National party camp over the new Topham Guerin approach, David Farrar is publically disagreeing with Simon Bridges over his opposition to the establishment of a Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).
Extraordinary thing to do, given how hard Simon is running with this line.
I guess more spend on TG might mean less on Curia?
Excellent point.
"National are putting themselves right next to the anti-vax clowns with this kind of caper. Time to grow up and fight elections on policy rather than Steven Joyce's cheap sloganeering. "
Comment below the article on Stuff.
While that may be true in terms of NZ democracy, there is no future for National if they fight elections on a rational basis. They need to lie, to smear, to accuse and to distract like an abusive partner, because at the end of the day they are corrupt and the policies they will actually implement are either ineffectual or disastrous.
Simon is doing the smart thing for National – but not the smart thing for New Zealand, which would be infinitely better off without them.
PBO sounds like a good idea as long as its implemented correctly, Bridges is wrong about this
Just add it to his growing list.
Maybe hard to appoint people that everyone sees as independent though. They could appoint both Michael Cullen and Steven Joyce…that would be interesting.
Heck no. Keep anyone with party political involvement out.
Yes – the risk is that it's captured by whatever 'orthodox' economic ideas have hegemonic status at the time.
"Bridges digs himself deeper over policy costing plans." by Sam Sachdeva on Newsroom.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/08/21/765029/bridges-digs-himself-deeper-over-policy-costing-plans
Again Bridges shouting National Radio this morning was incoherent. Paranoia creeping in? A trick to trap the Opposition?
Chris Trotter's piece on Fascists (sidebar) is fascinating! I was immediately reminded of Incognito's suggestion of the need for a Philosopher-king to guide us all through the coming troubles with the weather
“[R]ealising the present serious National emergency, and the necessity for all good citizens to subordinate private and political interests and to make any necessary personal sacrifice for the sake of the country, [I] agree to become a member of the New Zealand Legion and to further loyally, by every means in my power, by vote, example and personal influence, the objects of the Legion."
"Politics, however, was what ultimately killed the Legion. Its leaders and members simply couldn’t agree on what it was, exactly, that patriotic New Zealanders needed to do. Unlike a genuine fascist movement, it lacked a charismatic leader capable of preventing such crippling internal debates by reserving all policy-making powers to himself."
(My bold).
It is a good piece though its central theme is obvious upon reflection…..the history connecting the Legion with the National Party was a revelation for me.
Was that a response though?.New Zealand being a communist country at the time,as George Bernard Shaw related in his famous radio broadcast to NZ /Aus.(4 million listeners)
"You are to some extent, thanks to your admirable communist institutions, now actually leading the world's institutions. You are second only to Russia, and there is a curious joke about it that Russia, partly by following New Zealand's example, has got a good lead, the Russians are very proud of their Communism. They know they are Communists and are proud of it…while New Zealand, which leads the world in communism, does not know it is Communist. It naturally thinks Communism is a terrible thing. Let me ask you to put that idea out of your heads… I am a Communist, I studied Karl Marx four years before Lenin did, and you see that I am a very sensible and well-meaning person."
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/106049955/literary-goliath-was-ahead-of-his-time
lol…difficult (with any credibility) to describe NZ as a communist country at any time with the proportion of assets held in private ownership
Well, George said we were…
i think he was talking about our social polices – at the time…
another quote of his i luv from his visit was when he was asked if nz should focus on tourism for our future –
his long answer was that we are uniquely placed to become self-sufficient..
his short answer was: 'why..?..do you want to become a nation of servants..?'
(and so it came to pass…)
and Ive spent a month in France…
Commies, the French?
lol…some undoubtably, much like everywhere else….even NZ in 1934
this popped up on my twitter-feed – it's a great read..
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/magazine/neil-young-streaming-music.html
(i didn't know that neil young and joni mitchell both had polio as children – and at the same time…)
Subtitle:
“Old man with hearing loss yells at cloud”
no – that's me…most days..
Lots of John Tamihere for AKL mayor billboards around. 1/2 red and 1/2 blue. Does this mean that he is pro national and pro Labour or what?
Red-washing.
It means Tamihere has no original ideas.
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_banners/245243839/1552174107/600×200
So the word around Wellington is that Helen O'Sullivan finishes up as Head of KiwiBuild at the end of August. She only started the role in February!
What has happened to the re-set? This is turning into an unmitigated shambles. Twyford's arrogance is really starting to shine through.
It is with Megan Woods now. Please keep up.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/building-construction/news/article.cfm?c_id=24&objectid=12260342&ref=rss
Apologies. You are of course correct.
So many people circulating through this department that it is really difficult to keep up. I wonder how long Megan Woods will be in the chair.
Do you think she’ll do a good job? Have you seen early signs of improvement? Is she on side with industry players?
Hard to say. Dr Woods has been completely invisible where KiwiBuild is concerned. The Property Institute even had to cancel a webinar that she’d agreed to present at on the basis that she was a no-show, so that would be a NO in relation to being on side with industry players.
One swallow does not a summer make.
Is the Property Institute the only industry player? I hope Dr Woods sent an apology and she rescheduled for another time.
Government pushes out the unveiling of the KiwiBuild reset until late August (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12251969).
Bryan Gould on The importance of kindness.
A very good and encouraging read. You'd benefit from it, Sam C.
http://www.bryangould.com/the-importance-of-kindness/
Nice article, Robert.
I generally think that the importance of accountability is also key for Ministerial positions where responsibility for flagship Government policy lies.
I don't believe that kindness trumps accountability, which is why the current Government is falling so far short of the electorate's expectations.
Sticking to it, Sam C! Good man! Fight the good Blue fight!
If expecting Ministers to remain accountable for the election promises they made is "fighting the good Blue fight", then I'm certainly guilty.
how do you feel about john key promising not to raise g.s.t..?..and not to raise any other taxes..?
whereas the reality was – that he lied thru his teeth…
what about… what about… whereas… what about… KiwiBuild???!
In the interests of even-handedness, Sam, where are you on this:
"Mr Key signalled a National-led government would improve housing affordability by embarking on a programme of personal tax cuts, changing the building regulatory regime, keeping interest rates lower, reforming development rules to free up land, and allowing state house dwellers to buy their homes."
https://otago.nzpif.org.nz/news/view/53030
It seems National made big promises on housing that didn't come to fruition also. A critique of kiwibuild is qualified by this.
A three-letter word is proving sensitive today. That is 'out' when talking about cities and more building.
The government release from Twyford and Parker is headed: 'https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/helping-our-cities-grow-and-out'
Helping our cities grow up and out
“We need a new approach to planning that allows our cities to grow up, especially in city centres and around transport connections. We also have to allow cities to expand in a way that protects our special heritage areas, the natural environment and highly productive land.
“When overly restrictive planning creates an artificial scarcity of land, or floor space in the case of density limits, you simply drive up the price of housing and deny people housing options.
(This sounded like a repeat of the property speculators mantra to me.)
Links on google keywords:phil twyford on housing and land
Scoop follows the same heading: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1908/S00209/helping-our-cities-grow-up-and-out.htm
TVNZ: New urban growth plan touted as game changer that will fix NZ's 'dysfunctional' housing market
The NZ Herald phrases it more carefully:
The Government wants councils to focus on building up, not out, to fix the housing crisis
.
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/101304/government-proposes-new-policies-specifically-require-local-councils-leapfrog-nimbys
The Government wants to direct local councils to prioritise building up, rather than out through a new National Policy Statement (NPS) on Urban Development.
It has released a document for consultation that proposes what the new NPS, set to replace the existing 2016 one, should look like.
The Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MHUD) suggest the NPS includes new policies to specifically direct councils to provide for intensification
Phil Twyford, Labour (present roles)
Economic Development Minister 28/06/2019
Urban Development Minister 28/06/2019
Transport Minister 26/10/2017
It's not the "expecting”, Sam C, it's the harping.
Now who's not being kind, Robert?
It's tough-love, Sam.
Sam C is right. There needs to be more accountability for ministers. This current lot are terrible but having said that, the previous government had their issues too.
Sure, Sam C is Right.
As, I’m guessing, are you 🙂
Remember when Nick Smith resigned from Cabinet because he wrote something on ministerial letterhead that he shouldn't have?
Remember when Smith corruptly misused his ministerial position to advance his friend's interests?
Television advertising has a huge impact on our lives. Even if we don’t recognise that, we know it has to be true
Tune in next time for more things that Boomers believe
She was an interim CEO on a six month contract after the previous CEO was forced to resign. She departed a month early to take up a new permanent position.
Not much of a scandal in that is there Master Sam.
Gil Scott Heron – IMO someone with great insight, articulate and a pioneer in regard to music. who very few know about but many should (Similar to Robert Johnson), great documentary from the BBC on him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZvWt29OG0s
BBC Documentary for anyone interested, and less than 10 people have viewed this 🙁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p37iZ3o5k2Y
Oh dear. Not my friend Paula!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12260505
Demanding her scalp is a bit much IMHO and a decent haircut would do just fine.
Bennett in the witness box and under oath during cross examination may not be a tidy sight.
Balance of Probabilities and all that.
After all the most a Judge could decide is someone is lying when they claim “Im innocent”
She’s pretty good at performing in the House, especially when the Prosecutor is on his feet.
This may explain soimon going off the reservation around the PBO as discussed in 5 above.
National wanting to settle out of court is getting pretty close to an admission. And these delicious ironies (the leak this time) every time the nats end up in court is getting a bit much
"National wanting to settle".
How do you come to that conclusion? From the story it could equally well be Winston who wants to settle out of Court.
Well, either Winston demanded $400k or Bennett's sacking to settle (which doesn't seem to indicate a particular desire to settle vs taking it to court), or the nats offered up Bennett of their own accord (which indicates the nats really want the case to go away).
Odds are that the meeting was a mere formality, or the nats want to settle more than Winston does.
There is another possibility – that they want Paula to go away. The imaginary threat of legal action has been used before, to bribe the Saudi sheep fellow. If the Gnats have a plan so cunning they imagine you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel, chances are that Paula isn't part of it.
Would they be dumb enough to knife her and give her the campaign manager job as a payoff? Seriously. They might be, lol.
There is that thing that an elbowed electorate MP lingers furiously while a list MP is not wont to stay carping in the house. Gnats are accustomed to sacking people, and disestablishing Paula's position in favour of a Topham Guerin rep. would not cause them much in the way of cognitive dissonance.
The Whale is retailing the same speculation apparently: “Bennett probably hasn’t realised yet that by giving up a safe seat for a list place she has made herself expendable. Especially if her campaign is as awful as everything else Paula Bennett does.” I won’t link it.
When it says Nationals lawyers wanting to settle
quote 1: "where the National side expressed their interest in settling the case before .."
quote 2: "National's lawyers, Bruce Gray QC and Peter Kiely expressed their wish for the case to be settled out of court."
2 sentences where the words are 'national' and 'settle'.
national wanted to settle the Eminem case , but he wanted too much money
Surely Bennett prostrating herslef and saying I repent, and hers $50K would do nicely
Is there some other story other than the one in the Herald that was linked to by the comment by ianmac at 11 and which justifies your story?
The words you give as a quote appear nowhere in that story.
Who’s raining love here?
Better then this;
‘Raining plastic’ – fragments of rubber tyres, found by lead scientist, Dr Melanie Bergmann –
QUOTE; “Can we come up with differently designed car tyres? These are important issues.”
https://www.sott.net/article/418585-Plastic-particles-falling-out-of-sky-with-snow-in-the-Arctic
Plastic particles falling out of sky with snow in the Arctic
Roger Harrabin
BBC
Wed, 14 Aug 2019 08:29 UTC
A German-Swiss team of researchers has published the work in the journal Science Advances.
The scientists also found rubber particles and fibres in the snow.
Some apparently good moves for the Manus Island refugee group.
But a new name to beware of – Bomona. When will this Australian expensive incarceration policy end?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/397171/moresby-move-positive-for-manus-island-refugees