Open mike 22/04/2011

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, April 22nd, 2011 - 25 comments
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25 comments on “Open mike 22/04/2011 ”

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  1. joe90 1
    22 April 2011 at 8:59 am

    I’m not sure what beats what in the lunacy stakes, a governors days of prayer to break a drought or parliamentarians slaughtering sheep to banish the evil spirits disrupting their work.

  2. millsy 2
    22 April 2011 at 9:22 am

    Happy Easter everyone.

    Hope your enjoying your days off, if youre in retail, enjoy it while you can, its probably going to be your last. I’m picking shop trading restrictions will be repealed by Easter 2012.

    There are no real justifications for the restrictions any more, and despite the efforts of some, we are now a more enlightened secular society that belives that the earth and its living things came into existince by scientific processes, and that there is no old guy in the sky who can wave a magic wand (though the Jehovah’s Witnesse’s try to put a scientific spin on it – they are the ones who came up with the concept of intellegent design long before Republican controlled school boards tried to have it taught).

    Its time for a wholesale repeal of restrictions on shop trading hours. Plain and simple. Its going to go against the grain here, but I dont see how stopping a supermarket from opening when a petrol station, or cafe down the road can open is some how ‘social justice’. Given that workers in cafes, petrol stations, hospitals, fire stations, superettes, video stores, fast food outlets, etc would have been asked or told to volunteer to come into work, and all of them would be getting generous compensation, ranging from time and a half to possible generous penal rates for the case of the cops and firefighters — plus a repeal would force the unions to get off their arses and negotiate more generous penal rates for members.

    Of course I would put several caevats on this:

    1) All restrictions are abolished – including Xmas and Anzac day morning. None of these half heated measures.
    2) This is decided by public referendum — the precedent here is the 1967 vote on ending the 6 o’clock swill — This is something that the politicians need to be kept out of and the people themselves need to decide on this.
    3) Easter Sunday is made a public holiday.

    • Carol 2.1
      22 April 2011 at 9:33 am

      Well, I have mixed feeelings about this as someone who works Sundays but not in retail.  Up til now I have had to work Easter Sunday, this year my workplace is closing, and I had the choice of taking it as annual leave or as unpaid leave.  I think, in view of the fact that many people work hours other than Monday to Friday 9-5, all workers should have a set number of annual leave days, which mostly align with public holidays, but which can be adapted to fit people’s work schedules.

    • Deborah Kean 2.2
      22 April 2011 at 5:44 pm

      <blockquote>
      <p>Given that workers in cafes, petrol stations, hospitals, fire stations, superettes, video stores, fast food outlets, etc would have been asked or told to volunteer to come into work, and all of them would be getting generous compensation, ranging from time and a half to possible generous penal rates for the case of the cops and firefighters — plus a repeal would force the unions to get off their arses and negotiate more generous penal rates for members.</p>
      </blockquote>
      <p>The devil\’s in the details! \’Told to volunteer\’, there\’s the problem right there! A worker who has no family considerations might be happy to come into the cafe or whatever, provided she\’s compensated adequately, but will she be?</p>
      <p>My son\’s a nurse. He chooses to work on public holidays because they do get generous penal rates, and because many of his colleagues have children to spend time with and he doesn\’t.</p>
      <p><em>But it\’s got to be voluntary and penal rates must be enforced!</em></p>

  3. todd 3
    22 April 2011 at 10:23 am

    The week that was

    http://thejackalman.blogspot.com/2011/04/week-that-was_22.html

    National says cuts to the youth justice system are necessary to ensure funding is only given to high quality legal services. This led one family court lawyer to say that the review is “frightening” and “to slash and burn something you don’t understand isn’t particularly wise or fair.”

  4. todd 4
    22 April 2011 at 11:14 am

    Holes In Heaven? HAARP and Advances in Tesla Technology

    http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/holes-in-heaven/

    The late Carl Sagan said (which is related to this documentary) “We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We’ve also arranged things so that almost no one understands science or technology. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later, this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces”. This documentary film poses the question: Are we making Holes in Heaven? HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is a controversial high frequency radio transmitter, or “ionospheric heater,” which is believed to be descended from the works of Nikola Tesla and is operated by the U.S. Navy/Air Force and Phillip Laboratories in remote Gakona, Alaska.

    • ZeeBop 4.1
      22 April 2011 at 12:49 pm

      German is one of the few countries running right. Maybe it because it leader is a physicist. Not one of those mathematical physicist that leaves their physical understanding at home to write derivative algorithms. Would Merkel have let Big Nuclear run its Japanese nuclear power plants that way? No.
       
      Once upon a time we used to judge government by its results. Yet here we are after thirty years of neo-liberalism and the results are horrendous, yet still our governments tipsy around neo-liberalism hoping one day to resurrect it.

      • Draco T Bastard 4.1.1
        22 April 2011 at 6:04 pm

        They’ve been trying to resurrect liberalism/Laissez-faire ever since the Great Depression. The conservatives got it back on path in the late 1970s/early 1980s with neo-liberalism and now we’re headed back to another depression. You’d think that people would learn from the past wouldn’t you?
         
        Add on to that the fact that our entire global civilisation is about to crash because we’ve used up all the available resources. The next century is going to be hell on earth all because we were to stupid to limit population growth and resource use.

  5. Jim Nald 5
    22 April 2011 at 11:31 am

    “In Australia, Anzac Day is commemorated on Monday as a public holiday, with the Easter Monday break being shifted to Tuesday.”
    ~ Newsflash ~

    Yippee yay yay!
    Here’s another fresh gap with Australia that John Key will close … more ambition and aspiration coming our way!

  6. mickysavage 6
    22 April 2011 at 12:16 pm

    Maestro of spin David Farrar has just come out and criticised Labour’s signs because they will be, gasp, campaigning and trying to persuade people to vote.

    Where the wails of creeping fascism and the gradual erosion of free speech? Where are the billboards of Fijian dictators approving wholeheartedly the removal of our rights?  Where is the Free Speech Coalition when you need them?

    Can I scent more than a whiff of hypocrisy in the air?

    • todd 6.1
      22 April 2011 at 12:29 pm

      Smells like David Farrar all right. Oil lard seems to have a bee in his bonnet about the Stop Asset Sales campaign signs as well. In my opinion, anybody who is driving a car will know the difference and if you don’t, you should loose your license because you’re even dumber than those right wing bloggers. Those sower grapes probably don’t taste very good.

      • the pink postman 6.1.1
        22 April 2011 at 3:55 pm

        Seems to me that at last Labour has a decent break . I would say the Tory bastards have been caught napping. What a two faced lot they are have they already forgot the Kiwi /Iwi coreflutes that  they swamped the country with , ? Also seems to me that asset sales is the achilles heel that will hurt National. Labour needs to emphasive this issue every way and tell Farrar and his mates to get stuffed !!!

        • Anne 6.1.1.1
          22 April 2011 at 4:58 pm

          Yes indeed pp. PB talked about Labour’s need for a ‘circuit breaker’ the other day. Fingers and toes crossed that the Stop Asset Sales campaign is it!

          captcha: PRINCIPLES.
          well said.

    • Draco T Bastard 6.2
      22 April 2011 at 1:00 pm

      Awwww, the poor boy’s upset that the campaigning started before he was ready.
       
      BTW, DPF, the signs aren’t hoardings.

    • Penny Bright 6.3
      22 April 2011 at 3:56 pm

      FYI folks!
      Must be touching a nerve somewhere on Kiwiblog!
      Just got pinged 10 ‘demerit points’ for being ‘off topic’.
      David Farrar has made a rather serious error in his ‘belief’ that” all super city laws had select committee hearings”.
      [DPF: Off topic Penny for this thread. 10 demerits. Use general debate.
      On the substance I believe all super city laws had select committee hearings]
      No David – you are wrong in your ‘belief’.
      The Act which established the framework for the Auckland $upercity was railroaded through – under ‘urgency’ and did NOT have any select committee hearings:
      This is what your good mate Phil Goff had to say about the ‘Supercity’ legislative process:
      http://www.labour.org.nz/supercity
      “Then they rammed through the first super city bill under urgency.
      It is a major constitutional change to our system of local government and they didn’t even allow a select committee process to give Aucklanders a genuine chance to have their say.
      They claimed Aucklanders had been consulted by the Royal Commission – but we didn’t get a say on the alternative to the Royal Commission’s plans that the government put into law.
      The government was utterly dismissive of how Aucklanders felt about what was being proposed.
      The first bill rammed through under urgency removed the right Aucklanders had under the Local Government Act to approve or reject a forced amalgamation in a referendum.”
      I don’t think Labour Party Leader Phil Goff would lie about such a thing – do you?
      Penny Bright
      http://waterpressure.wordpress.com

      • wtl 6.3.1
        22 April 2011 at 4:15 pm

        Indeed, the first bill was rammed through under urgency. I remember it quite clearly because Labour tried to filibuster it.

  7. the pink postman 7
    22 April 2011 at 4:21 pm

    This government cannot decide how to help the people of Christchurch with their electricity bill ,yet whilst these unfortunate people are suffering from cold homes this Tory lot willing give $36 million to a rich mans sport. $36 million to the Americas Cup team is a disgrace .Now before you Right-Wingers rush to put pen to paper to tell me it was a Labour Government who passed this let me remind you that this government has  cancelled most of Labours laws .,Especially those that helped working people .

  8. Pascal's bookie 8
    22 April 2011 at 10:48 pm

    From the “It’s not irony when it’s exactly what you’d expect” file:

    Mr. Fields told the jurors that much of the evidence at the trial, expected to last four months, would focus on the removal of a 42-foot section of standpipe that would have allowed firefighters to get water to the building’s upper floors and fight the fire.
    Without that standpipe system, which is required by law, it took more than an hour to get water to the affected floors, he said, and by then the fire was out of control.
    The pipe was removed even though the men knew that the building was in constant danger of fire, Mr. Fields said: torches were being used to cut steel, creating slag — dripping molten metal that burned whatever it touched — in a building filled with debris, plywood and other flammable material. Indeed, he said, fires were breaking out with worrisome regularity in the days leading up to the fire.

    That doesn’t sound good. It’s in court obviously, what’s the dope?

    A prosecutor at the trial of three construction supervisors charged in the deaths of two firefighters at the former Deutsche Bank Building told the jury on Monday that the defendants had “put profit over people,” a decision that led to the deaths and put the lives of hundreds of firefighters, inspectors and workers at risk

    The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Brian J. Fields, laid out the government’s case in his opening statement on the first day of the trial, saying that it was “all about money” and that “the evidence will establish that defendants took that risk for money — they gambled with lives for money.”

    Hmm ok. Who are these arseholes who ignored laws established for fire safety in a fire hazard environment leading to the deaths of two firefighters, just to save a few pingas?

    The three men, and the demolition contractor for which two of them worked, the John Galt Corporation, are charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

    But of course.

  9. Glee McPerkins 9
    22 April 2011 at 10:49 pm

    If people want to work over easter they should be allowed, no one should be forced, here in chch people want to work, they should be allowed.

    • the pink postman 9.1
      23 April 2011 at 4:19 pm

      Well there is plent off voluntary work and nobody is complaining about that. However is it too much to ask that workers have a few days off with their families. A lot of the family troubles are caused by stressed out parents who have to work all hours.We would all be better off with more time away from work.
      And any way do we have to shop ! shop! shop!

    • Colonial Viper 9.2
      23 April 2011 at 4:24 pm

      Ban Sunday trading from 2pm every weekend, I say.

      • Jim Nald 9.2.1
        23 April 2011 at 5:09 pm

        There should a closer look at retail opening hours to maximise efficiency and productivity, and minimise energy use. So, yes, there is a prima facie case to reduce retail opening hours to increase a greater rate of, for eg, number of sales per hour. Correspondingly, wages can be reviewed upwards, people have a bit more remaining time to choose to spend with family, involve themselves into other and more work, or put into study/training.

  10. Jenny 10
    23 April 2011 at 12:03 am

    Genius! The sort of mindset demonstrated by the moronic masked idiots of Operation 8

    http://asset.soup.io/asset/1786/7073_5726.gif

    capcha – “uniforms”