it’s very interesting…the peak oil “fast collapse” types have been proven wrong, as John Michael Greer predicted they would. But nevertheless the gradual grinding slowdown of the ‘long descent’ has caught up with The Oil Drum.
The other aspect to this is: no one has come up with implementable solutions to what we are facing as a civilisation.
On Crosby Textor, who seem to own John Key — Guardian reporting on Lynton Crosby and ties to David Cameron .. and Crosby’s more than $10 million contract with British Tobacco and his ties to fracking industries and alcohol, all vital social issues upon which Cameron has unexpectedly back-tracked … see any similarities here ??
This reader’s comment could have been on The Standard with just a small name change … amazing … but maybe Cameron will be called to account, unlike here … certainly it’s heating up …
From reader Steve Ten:
“Cameron should be honest, give back his Parliamentary salary and, like Crosby, become a paid lobbyist for multinational corporations – for that is what he is. His masquerading as a representative of the people is an insult to the intelligence, compounded by his taking money under false pretences.
We need ministers who represent the public interest, not private corporations.”
Here the several links :
“David Cameron urged to probe claim that aide had £6m tobacco deal — Lynton Crosby comes under renewed fire over Philip Morris links as row over cigarette packaging rages on” July 20
Wanted to include this sample paragraph from the last link above …
‘ Will Crosby become roadkill, as David Cameron struggles to counter Labour claims that the lobbyist has improperly succeeded in having plain packaging for cigarettes dumped and restrictions on alcohol curbed? ‘
For example, how you bypass the local community-based decision making-process, enshrined in the Resource Management Act, is to ask the relevant ministers to “call it in” on the basis that it is a project of national significance.
Success in that has ensured it will now come under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Agency rather than the Environment Court.
This is a project in a fragile part of the country so far accurately predicted to be hit first and hardest by climate change. It simply won’t stand up to further agricultural intensification.
It does seem that this government set up the “Environmental Protection Agency” to screw over the environment and to bypass any democratic accountability.
I presume Dr Bertram will be repaying the University rather a lot of money, if he is willing to follow these expressed principles.
He was, when he finally retired, a senior lecturer and as such would have been on a salary of at least $100,00 per year. There are automatic pay-rises up to about this figure. No doubt he will return every dollar he received above $75,00 per year.
He was a mediocre member of the academic fraternity from my memories of him.
At least Dr Bertram would realise that plagiarism is a mortal sin in the academic environment.
Did you really come up with these words on your own or have you been reading Kiwiblog?
That is truly amazing! Why is it that I find it rather hard to believe you?
I posted those exact words on Kiwiblog at 11.22am. They turn up here, apart from a spelling mistake. at 11.27am.
Isn’t it miraculous that two people can say, separately, exactly the same thing?
Classic catch lol and a double lie for Santi – first for saying he wrote it and second for saying that last line – hey Santi you are a very weak link indeed but please tell us more about your memories of Dr Bertram lol.
Santi, if you were one of Bertram’s students, I reckon you probably failed in two areas; maths and comprehension. Firstly, you claim that the lowest paid Victoria University job is set at 33k pa, without offering any evidence to support your proposition. Secondly, you have completely missed the bit were Bertam talks about this ratio applying to CEO’s and other exec’s. He was neither, so the proposition would not apply to himself anyway.
If you look at the Collective agreement for general staff you will find some jobs, such a Library shelvers that pay about $25,000 per annum. I have no idea what a cleaner gets.
As far as not applying to Dr Bertram I find it amazing that you appear to think that a University Senior Lecturer is apparently worth more than the CEO of Air New Zealand or Fletcher Building.
Yeah, nah bro. I’m pretty sure Vic doesn’t pay any staff below the adult minimum wage. So shall we move on to to addressing your comprehension difficulty? Any explanation for missing the relevant point of who the ratio was suggested for?
They work 37.5 hours per week so the library shelvers on about $26,000 (was slightly off there) are paid above minimum wage.
As for his reading comprehension – its a reasonable assumption he is talking about the gap between the highest paid person in the company (whether executive or not) and the lowest paid.
“As for his reading comprehension – its a reasonable assumption he is talking about the gap between the highest paid person in the company (whether executive or not) and the lowest paid.”
No, it’s not a reasonable assumption. The first line of the article makes it plain: “The Government should stop giving contracts – and knighthoods – to companies that pay their bosses more than three times their lowest-paid workers, an economist has suggested.”
Bertram goes on to say: “Then the Government should say no Government contracting, no knighthoods, make them feel some tangible pain [if they exceed whatever limit is agreed].”
He’s not talking about workers, but bosses.
The maths is equally straightfoward. The lowest paid worker earns $13.826 per hour, significantly more than Alwyn’s suggested rate of $12.88.*
*I’ve used the 37.5 hour week in that calculation. On a forty hour week Alwyn’s figure is $12.02.
The point is there is too much wage inequality you can be picky and say that he is focussing on executives. However, that is likely because he is being realistic that that is where the highest paid people are grouped.
You honestly think he would be fine with someone being paid 7 times more (as an example) than someone else in the company just because that higher paid person isn’t part of key management?
So if the maths is straight forward and the lowest paid person gets $13.826 per hour how does that fit with your original argument that Alwyn’s maths was terrible because no-one would be below $33k.
Absolute rubbish.
Why do you even bother to waffle on about $33K?
You are the only one to mention it and it has absolutely nothing to do with my assumption that Bertram would have been on $100K.
What I said was that he had been, before he retired, a Senior Lecturer. He had been in that position for a number of years and I presumed therefore that he would have at least reached the bar of about $100K. Given that the minimum pay I found for anyone covered by the General Award was about $25K (and someone pointed out to me that the current award is about $26K, I suggested that he should not have accepted more that three times that figure.
If, in fact, the absolute minimum that the University paid any employee was $33K, a number you introduced it would be reasonable for Bertram to have received $100K.
He should however demand that NO-ONE employed by the University should get any more than that.
Yeah, not making much sense there, Alwyn. It was your figure, after all. And you don’t get to define Bertram’s idea, so demanding he demand a different thing altogether than his actual concept is a tad lame.
That wasn’t my question I asked if he would be happy if some workers were paid 7 times more than the lowest paid employee not if you would be happy if some workers were paid more than the boss. I expect you know the answer and that’s why you decided to answer a question I didn’t ask instead.
I know where you got the $33k figure from but that doesn’t change the fact that his maths was correct if he was on $100k then he was being paid more than 3 times the lowest paid employee.
He did not advocate legislating any particular wage ratio between the highest and lowest-paid because that would always be a matter of debate.
“I’d settle for 3:1, others might settle for 10:1,” he said.
“Then the Government should say no Government contracting, no knighthoods, make them feel some tangible pain [if they exceed whatever limit is agreed].”
What does Government funding of universities have to do with anything Bertram has suggested? Funding is not contracting. Funding does not involve knighthoods.
Looks like the Great Barrier Reef it received a warning shot from the boys with the big, bad toys.
Commander William Marks, spokesman for the 7th Fleet, said the emergency jettison was made in consultation with Australian officials.
”There is minimal environmental impact,” Marks said today.
”It is a safe situation for the environment, for shipping, for navigation.”
The four bombs, weighing a total of 900 kilograms, were dropped into more than 50 metres of water away from coral to minimise possible damage to the reef, the statement said. None exploded.
It is a known fact that that reef is struggling to pay its way because it has not accessed health benefits, and generally mooches around – it is in effect becoming a economic reefugee to the country and borders of Austrauntiedstateia. I hope the reef listens to this warning shot and starts paying its way instead of bludging and taking resources from real Austrauntiedstateians, as we all know – not everyone or thing can be saved and the measure of whether, is how much it pays.
Of interest from the previous Roy Morgan Poll is the Mana Party reaching 1% of polled Party vote support,
Mana at present features in the Parliament by dint of Party leader Hone Harawira holding the electorate seat of Te Tai Tokerau and in my opinion has a 50/50 chance of securing the Waiariki seat in the 2014 election,
The thresh-hold for the Mana Party to gain a further MP from it’s list is according to wisdom 1.2-1.5% of the Party Vote and if the polling for Mana stays above 1% leading into the election i for one will have to reconsider my Party Vote with a view to helping Mana gain that list MP, (hopefully John Minto)…
Geoff Bertram was not mediocre and trying to belittle him only shows what sort of person you are.
i.e. trying to put him down does not make you one up on him.
the fact of the matter is that most university staff are not paid enough and universitys are trying to do everything on the cheap after the Business Round Table privatised all their money making activities in the 90’s.
Other nutty ideas are things like nursing degrees where the job is vocational training and not the creating of new knowledge.
Everybody in New Zealnd is continually trying to turn grapes inot oranges at the lowest possible cost and the results are heaps of sh*t.
This minister woodhouse (never heard of him btw) is useless for demanding that the veterans provide proof before he will set up a study “into the effects of radiation on the health of naval frigate crews who witnessed nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll in 1973.”
Mururoa Veterans Society president Peter Mitchell said 180 men had died in the years after the tests and the number who had cancer was out of proportion to the population.
This must be due to radiation exposure which declassified French documents said was higher than known at the time, said Mr Mitchell…
“We want to turn it around and say, ‘we claim, believing that it is’. We even go to doctors to sign a medical certificate to say they believe, or know it is, related in order to receive the pension.
“It’s time the Government believed us and proves that it is not radiation-related.”…
Returned and Services Association national president Don McIver said he understood that veterans were concerned how long a study would take when time was running out.
“The RSA has great sympathy for the nuclear veterans and I understand why they don’t feel they have been properly treated at this stage.”
There should be a study and the Government should stop using the, waiting for everyone to die angle, to get out of it. The concerns are real as they say, “The most important question for the men was whether they had passed on the effects of radiation to their children and grandchildren and what help would be given to them.”
I’d like the study done for personal reasons as my father was in the merchant marine and witnessed a few tests – he wrote me a letter once saying that he didn’t believe there were any hereditary effects, he’s dead now (cancer related in early 60’s) but his grandchildren are alive and they deserve to know.
Not well done at all, Santi. Jones disses his own people in the north in that story – the ones who are opposed to gold mining in their rohe because of real concerns about water contamination. And as far as I can make out – in all his years in Parliament – he’s done very little to engender more jobs in the north for his people. IMO Jones is just a big I AM – and it looks to me like he’s making a play to be the Labour Leader !
Stuff.co.nz and Dominion Post publishers Fairfax Media have barred their reporters from covering lectures on inequality by visiting London School of Economics Professor Robert Wade.
News staff were told early last week not to cover Wade’s visit, and to ignore press releases relating to it.
Well I emailed them about this got a reply saying we don’t ban our jouno’s covering stories. So I replied back saying that I look forward to a critic of the lectures by a qualified in that stuff journo and not just the new boy. See what that brings
Not surprising but he knew all along what he’d do. Total slime. This time though he’s underestimated his electorate. Just signed his ticket out of there.
Just the logo you reckon not the man. Anyway he’s someone who left a big mark, and although his wartime service tends to be what is focused on, isn’t it the maths behind it that really made the difference. Anyway I admire the man’s work.
BTW weren’t the local police under instruction not to arrest him during the war?
I actually didn’t know that Turing, who was brilliant, a war hero and father of computer science, met such an unfortunate end. Great Britain robbed itself of genius.
It was dreadful. He went in to advise police that one of his friends may have accessed top secret papers at his place and when the police understood the nature of the relationship it was “to hell with the theft of important documents let’s get on with persecuting you for something our brains comprehend.” Makes you wonder what discoveries have simply not been made.
redbaroncv
One, was that after a dreadful war, being kind and loving to one another must be kept under strict control, just in case you may want to bash a protester, or invade another country etc. And that it’s not the nobility of Turing’s mind and the gift of his commitment of total brain and body excellence applied to assist the war effort and help save the country, it’s whether you look right, act according to Hoyle, are one of us.
And whose maths lies behind the P vs NP mathematical problem-where “the answer knows the question”. It is easy to work back from the answer but difficult to work forward from the question. It fascinates me, I reckon when this is solved then we will be on our way to the stars because what is there is also here? Probaly not a mathematician’s view though.
GB’s history probably shows a trend to do that. I have a book written by Reginald Hill going into the large number of their own men they killed by edict for this or that. Probably would have served well in some other field. Cold-hearted so and sos for a supposedly developed nation.
Someone close to me was forced to work in Wellington’s CBD today against the directive of the Civil Defence and the Mayor of Wellington. This person was due to start work at 11am but the other worker, who was the key holder, had to open the shop at 9am. This person couldn’t get into the CBD by public transport to do this.
However, this person managed to get into the city by mid afternoon. Both workers were told that if the shop didn’t open both of them would have to take annual leave.
So here we have two young people on minimum wage forced to open a retail shop in the middle of the CBD at 3.00pm for 2 hours! This is after a severe earthquake when the advice from all and sundry was not to go into the CBD. Inspections of buildings needed to take place (and the shop is part of a high rise complex, including a car park) and to keep the public away as a safety precaution.
The CBD is a ghost town today so there are little, if no people, shopping.
I guess that if you were desperate for a pair of shoes, or an ouffit for a special occasion…this is the very day you would go shopping to get these vital items. Straight after an earthquake and continuing after shocks – and in defiance of the Civil Defence!
Shame on this business owner for putting the company’s profits before anything else. Shame on this business owner for putting these two young people at risk. And shame on this business owner for forcing these two young people to work for 2 hours, or else.
Other major companies such as Farmers and Kirks were closed, as were the majority of small retailers.
Just realized who Patrick Gower is on TV…. He has integrity and ethics comparable to those professional people at Fox news.Apart from John Campbell have we any real journalists in this country?
Just read those: two different but interesting perspectives.
Trotter says Shearer, a right winger, had ambitions to be leader of the Labour caucus as soon as he was elected to parliament, and started courting key media figures on the right and left. He did this courting instead of, trying to learn about the Labour Party, its history, systems, etc.
Mr Shearer possessed no long or strong connections with either the national or the local party organisation when he put himself forward as the candidate for Mount Albert. He still doesn’t. He was selected only because Phil Goff (his former boss) stood behind him. Such connections as have developed since he entered Parliament are largely the work of dedicated party workers and supporters.
This is telling, because no sooner was he elected, than Mr Shearer began building a strong and extensive network of media contacts. He would, for example, get together on nearly a weekly basis with the Radio Live politicos John Tamihere, Willie Jackson, Matt McCarten and Matthew Hooton at a fashionable Ponsonby bar. Backbenchers host, Wallace Chapman, was wooed, and even the Daily Blog editor, Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury, found himself on the list of media figures to be courted by the new member for Mt Albert. Mr Shearer also acquired a regular spot on the UNITEC radio station during which he interviewed everyone from the war correspondent, Jon Stephenson, to the author of this posting.
[…]
Mr Shearer’s rival for the Labour leadership, David Cunliffe, may have been a West Auckland MP since 1999, and served as a Cabinet Minister in the Labour Government led by Helen Clark, but during that 12 year career he had signally failed to construct a media network of Mr Shearer’s power and reach. Caucus voted for Mr Shearer.
However, Trotter argues that Shearer is clearly not up to the job, is a “cuckoo” in Labour’s nest, and should go now.
Bomber says he now has heard via his contacts and/or tipsters, that it is the ABC faction that is trying to get rid of Shearer, and they want to install another ABC candidate – not Robertson – as leader. Bomber concludes, it’d be better for Shearer to stay, than to have another lame duck ABC choice as leader – though Shearer may not be up to winning the election.
I’ve been waiting for someone to out the leaker/ texter. We need to know who it is and then we can make an informed judgement whether Bomber is right. If he is, I suppose they are looking to replace Shearer with Shane Jones or Andrew Little. Shane Jones has been noticeably prominent in the public arena in recent times.
Tracked it down and turned it off. New “feature” in jetpack. What is irritating about it is that it is only meant to work in posts and pages – not comments.
So who does Bomber think is behind what (if it exists) must be the most incompetent leadership challenge Labour’s seen in a while, I wonder?
If Shearer’s perceived as being to the right of the party (or, as Trotter calmly and subtly put it, “a huge and dangerous cuckoo in Labour’s nest”), who would be even worse? Jones? Mallard? Is Peter Dunne seeing an opportunity to reclaim a “party leader” pay grade? Will Chris Hipkins go all “stabby stabby stabby, cut cut cut”?
And when can we buy the box set, or will next season simply be cancelled?
I think it was CV mentioned it – as I understand the idea, the LECs refuse to do any of their regular work (especially campaigning, but they’d want to threaten that before the actual campaign) unless caucus vote no confidence in shearer and force a leadership election under the new rules. I’m sure CV will correct me if I’m wrong on the details 🙂
That won’t work McFlock and CV. It only hits the Labour Party HO – not the MPs and certainly not the Leader. Plus the threat to not do the campaigning is a long way off – we’re talking 2014 and there’s still most of 2013 to get thru with a (non) Leader who says he’s going to lead Labour into the 2014 election (and presumably into sunset, or wherever it is that dead political parties end up).
More drastic action is needed – and IMO its up to the rest of the Labour caucus to finally understand they have a rightwing rat in their midst, and its time to dump him !
More drastic action is needed – and IMO its up to the rest of the Labour caucus to finally understand they have a rightwing rat in their midst, and its time to dump him !
While I disagree with that opinion, I also think the way it is expressed is part of the reason this is dragging on so long. Even if such an understanding were required, that is the outcome, not the mechanism by which it is achieved.
We are also working on ways to minimise the harm being caused to us by Duncan Garner and Patrick Gower and their constant speculation about my leadership. Some of my caucus members have been sharply critical of Garner and Gower, but I’m prepared to try a different tactic. Duncan, Paddy, all I ask is that you give me a fair go. Please. Please? Come on, I’m begging you. I’m on my knees here. I am literally on my knees as I write this, and the tears are streaming down my face. I’m a broken man. Please stop this. It hurts so much. The pain! Oh god, the pain…
And, as this government seems to be following the UK in so many things, there’s this:
All new internet connections will have default “family-friendly” filters preventing access to porn, and all existing customers will be contacted and asked to choose between a porn and no-porn internet.
Well, I have no interest in porn…. but I don’t feel a need to have my access to it blocked – a non issue for me. Don’t want/need the filter, don’t want to be asked.
My concern is whether other stuff will be inadvertently blocked.
Will words like breasts, penis etc. become transgressions that will be filtered out? In this modern age of prudish purity by those elevated in society and wanting to behave ‘nicely’ all the time, while at the same time we are surrounded by vulgarity, huge breasts featured on the front of women’s magazines, (‘huge melons’) and regular sexist and discriminatory language, it is possible.
The pornography etc is irrelevant. UK is home of the page 3 girl and they aren’t suggesting getting rid of her.
Its simply an angle allowing a first step to wider government censorship and control of the internet. Hadrians Firewall, as it were. The regulatory bodies and technical mechanisms will be set up, and then they will be applied to additional terms as required.
Don’t forget, the UK Govt already knows the contents of each persons internet searches and emails.
Also in the USA, Occupy found out that authorities could shut down txt and mobile phone coverage at will, to disrupt the organisation of activists and protestors.
Sorry mate, but people who can’t tell the difference between page 3 pornography and internet pornography probably shouldn’t be allowed to discuss the issue.
The acceptance of government control, regulation and censorship of the internet is the objective. The porn angle is classic Crosby Textor style framing to wedge open the door to achieving that objective.
I mean – would you really fall for this strategy? It’s actually well calculated. A lot of people will.
Proponents of internet freedom and an unregulated internet will be framed as being “for child porn” etc. Its so bleeding obvious.
Next step will then be to ban searches associated with the promotion of terrorism and Islamic radicalism. And so on and so forth. You don’t want your children to be exposed to extremist ideology, do you?
I’d like to see you prove that. Including how CT-type bods mamanged to dupe all those feminist anti-violence groups as well as the child-protection ones. Are you suggesting there is no real issue here and they got brainwashed?
btw, it is possible to address important issues of govt surveillance and control without minimising sexual safety and violence issues. Just saying.
Yes it is possible in theory to address the problem of government control of the internet, but it won’t happen. You are talking about the home of the GCSB.
This is a government which infiltrated environmental groups with secret police and surveilled the family of a murdered boy in order to discredit them.
You have so much faith in these authorities to do the right thing after they have spit on you over and over and over again, it’s laughable.
Of course it is an expression of your trust in the authorities. More specifically, in their good faith to do the right thing and not attempt to over-reach in their control of the internet, its content, and their monitoring of your activities online.
Go on, show me specifically where I’ve said that I trust the UK govt to act in good faith to do the right thing and not attempt to over-reach in their control of the internet, its content, and their monitoring of your activities online.
Honestly, I think you are making shit up, although you may not realise it. I don’t believe that about the UK govt.
Nah, I’m over this conversation. You implicitly accept government assurances regarding control of the internet. The last two months should have made you extremely wary of that, but it appears it hasn’t, so maybe you weren’t paying attention.
Child porn
Rape porn
Easy access of porn for children
The amount of porn promoting degradation of women
How porn socialises many men, esp young men, into unhealthy ways of relating with women sexually, and in power relations.
The connections between porn and rape
That’s just a short list off the top of my head.
Like I said, I don’t have a problem with porn per se (in the sense of portraying sexual acts for other people’s pleasure). I do have a problem with how the porn industries operate, many of the kinds of porn that exist, and that the porn industry doesn’t want to address child porn in any meaningful way.
Well, I have no interest in porn…. but I don’t feel a need to have my access to it blocked – a non issue for me.
Same here – got bored with porn last century – but also don’t want my name on a database saying that I watch porn which will happen if such comes in.
My concern is whether other stuff will be inadvertently blocked.
Always have been before and indications were that it wasn’t inadvertent. Free sexual health sites, especially ones that deal with LGBT, seem to get blocked quite regularly and as the blocking software uses a blacklist which nobody can see or appeal legitimate sites that have been blocked don’t have any way to get themselves removed. I’ve heard here and there that such blacklists have actually resulted in the bankruptcy of some small businesses that didn’t have anything to do with porn or sex.
It’s not about me wanting or not wanting to watch porn*. It’s about the access that children have to porn, how that changes them and society.
How is someone being penalised by turning off a family filter?
*but I’m glad you brought that up, because I suspect that part of the motivation in this conversation is the freedom to watch porn. I don’t have a problem with porn per se, and as soon as the porn industry chooses to clean it’s act up, so to speak, and separate out healthy porn from porn that degrades people (esp women) and promotes violence and damages children, then we won’t need to have laws around it.
It’s about the access that children have to porn, how that changes them and society.
The problem you mention is socialisation, not the porn.
BTW, you can buy filters that go on your PC and thus not have your morality forced upon others.
How is someone being penalised by turning off a family filter?
Because they’d have to put in extra effort and be put on a database for porn watchers. (and that’s what they will be called if they have the filter turned off)
because I suspect that part of the motivation in this conversation is the freedom to watch porn.
You can suspect whatever you like. I’m quite open about the fact that I’ve watched porn and I’m also open about the fact that I now find it boring and thus don’t bother with it.
and separate out healthy porn from porn that degrades people (esp women) and promotes violence and damages children, then we won’t need to have laws around it.
Well, the laws banning child pornography are quite strict and they’re laws that will never be rescinded because there’s some real sick fucks out there. Having a government sponsored filter won’t stop these people because they don’t use public sites and often the only way you can get to the site is by word of mouth and having the encryption key. Same goes for the really violent porn as well.
As for the industry cleaning itself up? Well, some parts of the industry are already doing that.
As for the violence? Well, there you run into complications because of BDSM porn. Of course, the BDSM community is probably more aware that what they do could be misconstrued than anybody and do stress the need for consent and set limits. That said, there’s more violence on the nightly news than what I’ve ever seen in porn.
The new measures will apply to both existing and new customers.
Family-friendly filters will be automatically selected for all new customers – though they can choose to switch them off.
And millions of existing computer users will be contacted by their internet providers and told they must decide whether to activate “family friendly filters” to restrict adult material.
Customers who do not click on either option – accepting or declining – will have filters activated by default, Tory MP Claire Perry, Mr Cameron’s adviser on the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood, told the BBC.
Every single person in the country who wants to access pornography will have to tell some unknown stranger on the telephone, “Yes, give me the sexual deviant special, please.” You don’t just get to quietly do your business without anyone knowing anymore. As you can imagine, that’s uncomfortable. But that’s only the temporary, fleeting effect.
The bigger effect is that you’re keeping privately-held databases of every single person in the country that you can blackmail with “YOU WATCH PORN AND THAT’S DIRTY.” The government will have this information, the ISPs will have this information, and any hacker or scammer who gains access to their database through technical skills or social engineering will have this information.
That sounds totally unreasonable to me and yet this is what such a law will do.
This is information that doesn’t need to be gathered and can cause untold harm to someone if the wrong people get a hold of it.
The first quoted paragraph isn’t at all what is being suggested and strikes me as a somewhat reactionary response. From what I can tell the filter will be an electronic opt in/out kind of thing that comes from the ISP.
I agree the second point is an issue, but I’d like to see some discussion on it. It doesn’t appear to be cataloguing content, just whether someone ticked a no filter option. There are so many people watching porn online, and there will be others who will refuse the filter because of the reasons Karol suggested, that I think being on such a list will be not that relevant. I might not choose the filter, as I don’t let kids have access to my computer, and I’m happy enough with the level of filtering I get with from my browsers. So I end up on a list of people who turned off a family filter, so what? I expect that there will be much discussion about the range of reasons people turn the filter off. To say that anyone who turns the filter off will be labelled DIRTY PORN LOVER is a bit hysterical to be honest. I’d like to see some discussion about this from Civil Liberties groups though, and more information on the technology used.
The thing I would be more concerned about is the relationship between the ISPs and the govt (legal ones, we know about the others already), and the precedent setting, thin end of the wedge stuff that CV is referring to.
To say that anyone who turns the filter off will be labelled DIRTY PORN LOVER is a bit hysterical to be honest.
You’re expressing even more faith in the authorities to do the right thing? Perhaps you should look up the scope and reach of the TEMPORA system. Trying to claim that people are being paranoid or hysterical about government internet monitoring and control is to admit that you’ve been snoozing for the last several weeks.
Show me how the UK govt intends to monitor people more than it already is, and specifically how it will monitor which people turn off the family filter and what it will do with that data.
“Trying to claim that people are being paranoid or hysterical about government internet monitoring and control is to admit that you’ve been snoozing for the last several weeks”
I’m not claiming that. I’m saying that I’d like to see some credible discussion about how being labelled as someone who turned off the family filter could cause harm. Rather than just having blanket accusations of evil govt surveillance thrown down (and yes, I do believe the govt does evil surveillance, and no I haven’t been asleep in the last month).
What I’m failing to see is how this particular scheme is as bad as you say, and I remain unconvinced that this discussion isn’t largely about protecting rights to watch porn (not that those are being challenged) or being anti controlling the internet (I think the internet is already controlled, and some of that is for the good).
I’m not claiming that. I’m saying that I’d like to see some credible discussion about how being labelled as someone who turned off the family filter could cause harm.
That was in the bit I quoted and you ignored it.
Think of a politician running for office who had the porn filter turned off. Someone hacks the ISPs database and then sells that information to the politician’s opponents who then have a way to attack them. And don’t say it won’t happen as all we have to do is point to that politician a few years ago who hired a few videos. That made headline news and resulted in the politician resigning. I very much doubt that would have happened if they hadn’t been porn.
Snowden has already relayed what he thought about the ability to reveal peoples online activities, txts, emails etc. “that is the power to change peoples fates”.
“Weak”? Sheeple to the slaughter. Creeping government control over the internet. As if Cameron gives a shit about children, in a country where child poverty is projected to climb from 2.4M to 3.4M in the next few years, and a couple of thousand children die in avoidable medical deaths per annum.
But yeah, the big danger to kids is internet porn thats where the real gutsy action and leadership in child wellbeing has to be taken.
Oh yeah weka, I know, they aren’t mutually exclusive etc.
I think we would need to know technical detail about the filter, and how data will be collected and used.
FFS you really love and trust the authorities don’t you?
What I’m finding interesting is your overreaction to what I am saying, and your insistence that I trust the authorities, when you haven’t even bothered to ask me what I actually think about that. You ARE misinterpreting what I am saying, or you simply can’t manage a coherent response to the issues I’ve started to raise around sexual violence and the internet
So keep throwing out incorrect assertions about what I think and believe, ignore the points I raise, and the conversation will go nowhere.
“As if Cameron gives a shit about children, in a country where child poverty is projected to climb from 2.4M to 3.4M in the next few years, and a couple of thousand children die in avoidable medical deaths per annum.”
You really have no idea of the actual scale of child poverty, child harm and child mortality issues in the UK do you? Why don’t you do some reading up.
The Tories pretend to be all lovey dovey caring about family values and child wellbeing. What a joke. They are single handedly breaking up families and impoverishing children on a massive scale.
You probably think that is “hyperbole” too.
What I’m finding interesting is your overreaction to what I am saying, and your insistence that I trust the authorities, when you haven’t even bothered to ask me what I actually think about that.
I already understand your mentality. It’s embedded again here:
I think we would need to know technical detail about the filter, and how data will be collected and used.
You want to believe in their assurances about how data will be collected and used. You think that investigating those details will make a difference. It shows that you have been completely asleep for the last 2 months. Look up TEMPORA.
Dude, I know what TEMPORA is. And until you get off your high horse and start discussing with me instead of dictating what I believe, you’re just being an arse.
The hyperbole is in saying that no Tory cares about children at all, not even a jot. It’s a black and white view of the world that means we should line all the Tory’s up against the wall now. In the world I live in, people are rarely wholly evil.
“You want to believe in their assurances about how data will be collected and used.”
I haven’t read their assurances, so no, that’s not what I believe. I was wanting independant views on the technology. Duh.
I do however believe in being informed, and when you can show me something credible about this particular scheme that demonstrates its evil, or even potential evil, and allows rational discussion of it (rather than “it’s the govt, it’s evil, make the aversion sign”) then I’ll stop being so critical of your knee jerk reaction.
then I’ll stop being so critical of your knee jerk reaction.
NZ will only be 2-3 years behind the UK in bringing in additional government controls and monitoring over the internet. I hope you are consistent and cheer for it then as well.
According to an new report by David Hirsch of Loughborough University’s Centre for Social Policy, the estimated minimum cost of child poverty in the UK today stands at £29bn £4bn higher than in 2008 when the last calculations were carried out.
These costs are set to rise – the Joseph Rowntree Foundation predicts that the number of children living in poverty will increase to 3.4m by 2020, a rise of 700,000. This could cost the UK an estimated £35bn in today’s terms unless action is taken to reverse the upward trend.
Tonight on Radionz there has been an interesting piece on prosperity church movement. It started in the USA in the 1950s and then was taken to Nigeria and Nigerians in Britain have very large congregations now.
One pastor was said to have spent 80,000 pounds on his brithday, or the church did. His CEO said that it was okay because all the people of the church wanted the pastor to have the money for his birthday. Were they given a vote he was asked. But he didn’t like that and his voice started to rise. The people are okay with everything that’s all we ned to know, and also for the pastor to have a time share in Florida.
That’s where the Bee Gees went to live and no doubt all celebrity pastors like to show their success in similar opportunities. After all if God blesses you with money for being good, you deserve it. Some who have found the positive messages and the expectation that they will become comfortably off church members with good jobs keep them believing in themselves and they have followed their dreams and are quite happy with their 10% tithing.
I had an irritating day today at work. Made me reflect on that saying about inevitability – only three things are certain in life – death, taxes and hard disk failure. The latter should be joined with the inevitable wasting of precious time waiting for data to copy (which I have done entirely too much of over the years).
Needless to say, my work workstation decided that it wasn’t cooperating when I waved the mouse at it this morning. I tend to leave it running most of the time as waking it up each day takes rather a long time and I use it to monitor various systems related to work. It just shuts down most of the CPU’s, drops its clock rates, and shuts off the screen and most peripheral devices – but leaves the hard disk running. The HDD has had less than 250 starts in the last 3 years, and most of those would have been from the occasional spin-downs from the “green” features built into the drive.
Rebooted the system in case it was stray cosmic ray and found a pile of console warning about ata5. Looked at the SMART diagnostics and found that the 3 year old 1TB Hitachi HDD had nearly 400 remapped sectors and 40 tagged for checking when next written to. The hard disk was also making the system run like a wet week as it kept re-trying suspect sectors.
Even worse the HDD at my work workstation is not obsessively RAID mirrored like my home systems because all of the strange laptop people around couldn’t see the value. They tend to replace their laptops with lowspeed hard drives faster than the hard disks failed. Instead they seem to prefer complaining about the small disk space of a 300GB drive.
While it had backups of all of the critical configuration, it’d take a day or maybe two to reinstall from scratch because it simply isn’t worth imaging a system that mostly has old branch copies of code and the binaries generated from them. A linux programmers hard disk mostly consists of stuff that is held elsewhere on version control systems, and software that is downloadable from the online distributions. There is exactly one bit of paid software on the system – my personal linux copy of my favourite editor – also available online from my server at home.
So after a long design session related to issues identified over the weekend, it was off to PBTech to pick up a new ITB drive, and off home to get my external dual HDD dock. Because there is an easier way than reinstalling – cloning. And these days I clone in external hardware rather than trying to boot systems up and doing it through clonezilla and the like.
Back to work to extract the failing drive and pop it and the new drive in the dock and then press the “Clone” button …. Doesn’t have to be connected to a computer – it copies direct from one drive to the other. Have I mentioned how often this frigging device has saved my arse before? I’d mention the model but I suspect someone (Whale, PG) will start whining that I’m being paid to do it.
But while the device is great at getting a really good copy of the data across accurately, it has one big problem. It can only move data as fast as the electronics and software allow. And since this device is designed for a 5Gbps USB3 connection, that probably equates to a maximum throughput of something in the order of 0.6 mega bytes per second not counting the delays due to head-seeking, rereading, verifying and errors etc etc. And of course all of those things slow it down. Slow it down quite a lot. Rather than taking about half an hour, it took almost 2 and half hours of unadulterated boredom reading the Androif SDK on my tablet.
While I was doing that, I was reflecting on the ever increasing size of HDD’s, their short lives, and that I have (I counted them) 12 drives in my home system for a total of ~6.6TB of available storage. Most are in 2TB mirrored HDD pairs and some hot spares. But there are now just over 600GB of boot and scratch/working solid state drives that just run backups onto the HDD’s. And that is just at home… Now a lot of that data are just backups either as mirrors, or as backups of the unmirrored drives or offsite data. For instance there are almost 60GB of encrypted backups of this site sitting in a directory.
But really we need something a damn sight faster to copy data with. Because I’m spending far too much time just copying it between disks to keep ahead of the storage systems failure rates 😈
lol
I accidentally overwrote half a day’s work with a garbage set. Ended up redoing it because it was quicker (what with already knowing the road to travel down) than getting a restore from IT support (their job queue is quite long and seems to involve a random weighting of “what the techs feel like doing”).
There but for the grace of god, I guess 🙂
I eventually managed to get some code written – between 1630 and 1930. It was just starting to get interesting and produce results when I realised that I had to get home to cook dinner* Drat.
I haven’t been around IT “support” since I was at Clear in 1995 – not that I used it then. Since then I’ve usually been the backing IT support if it comes to software and usually for swapping out component hardware simply because I’ve usually done everything at least a few times on my own systems already. This current job is nice because there are electron pushers there, which tends to make the diagnosis side of my “support jobs” a whole lot easier.
* I can’t be bothered doing dishes or cleaning up – as in dirt and mess doesn’t concern me much. However I can make a variety of good simple meals from scratch very fast provided I shop for them and have them pre-programmed in my head. And if something is pre-programmed I don’t get bored with doing it because I can think about code or blogs or politics while my hands do their thing. The division of labour in our household is quite delineated but based on personal preferences/phobias rather than any traditional roles. It does however mean that I have to get home and serve food in what Lyn deems to be an acceptable time rather than indulge in extended work sessions 🙂
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
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The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
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Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
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Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
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Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
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Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
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Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
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span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
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The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
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Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
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The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
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Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Vanuatu’s former prime minister and opposition MP Ishmael Kalsakau has stepped down — just two days after he confirmed he was the rightful opposition leader. Kalsakau, MP for Port Vila, confirmed to ABC’s Pacific Beat, and the Vanuatu Daily Post on Thursday that he ...
What’s to blame for the coalition’s choppy start? Six months in, and the mojo meter is in the doldrums. A new poll would put National out of power and sees its leader, Chris Luxon, sliding in popularity. How much is it about policy, how much coalition management and a perception ...
The striking report goes far beyond the proposed repeal of the Oranga Tamariki Act’s Treaty of Waitangi provision, and its impact should be felt far beyond the unique circumstances of the claim it addresses. Earlier this week, the Waitangi Tribunal released an interim report on the government’s proposed repeal of ...
The world has been experiencing a productivity slowdown, from which New Zealand has not been exempt. COVID-19 temporarily boosted labour productivity, but more recently, productivity has retreated. The overall trend since 2007 has been one of slow productivity ...
What’s more wasteful than spending $315k on syrup and machine maintenance? Trying to drum up a controversy about it.Cast your mind back to the pre-pandemic idylls of 2019. A “rat” was a disgusting rodent and not a self-administered plague test; the sixth Labour government was in power; and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Monash University Ken stocker/Shutterstock In the wake of numerous killings of women allegedly by men’s violence in 2024, thousands of Australians have joined rallies across the country to demand action ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University Oleg Ivanov IL/Shutterstock Waiting times for public hospital elective surgery have been in the news ahead of this year’s federal budget. That’s the type of non-emergency surgery ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne Amna Artist/Shutterstock One of the earliest descriptions of someone with cancer comes from the fourth century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the city of Heracleia on the Black Sea, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rose, Professor of Sustainable Future Transport, University of Sydney LanaElcova/Shutterstock Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport. Is this view correct? Yes – but only once uptake accelerates. Despite the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Natassia Woodley, Researcher and Phd Candidate, Edith Cowan University There is widespread agreement Australia needs to do better when it comes to gender-based violence. Anger and frustration at the numbers of women being killed saw national rallies over the weekend and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Graham, Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney Mark and Anna Photography/Shutterstock As home ownership moves further out of reach for many Australians, “rentvesting” is being touted as a lifesaver. Rentvesting is the practice of renting one property to live ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sukhmani Khorana, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW Sydney Netflix The new season of Heartbreak High is garnering mixed reviews. Critics are writing about the racy story lines, comparing it to other coming-of-age series about teenage relationships and ...
Bob Carr intends to launch legal action against Winston Peters and Julie Anne Genter is facing a second allegation of bullying. Both sucked the air out of an announcement on education, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in ...
In 1995, Sally Clark went out on her own in a bold and unorthodox attempt to join an illustrious group of equestrian riders conquering the world. In the days of glovebox road maps, brick cell phones, and the hit song How Bizarre, Clark refused to follow Sir Mark Todd, Blyth ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Beaglehole, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago niphon/Getty Images The number of people accessing medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in Aotearoa New Zealand increased significantly between 2006 and 2022. But the disorder is still under-diagnosed and ...
To celebrate the start of New Zealand music month, we look back at the best local tuneage that managed to weasel its way into Hollywood productions. There’s nothing quite like the thrilling zap of recognition when New Zealand weasels its way into a glamorous Hollywood production. Crack open a Tui ...
People trust other people more than institutions. So how can the media gain that trust through journalists without losing what’s important about the institution? Anna Rawhiti-Connell reflects on two years of curating the news for The Bulletin.Amonth ago, armed cops descended on my neighbourhood as calls to “lock your ...
Essay: If the Crown harms children, how do you hold it accountable? Analysis by Aaron Smale in light of the Waitangi Tribunal court decision. The post The Crown versus Māori Children appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Opinion: PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – are a class of thousands of man-made chemicals used widely in everyday consumer items such as textiles, packaging, and cookware, popular for their water, grease and stain-repellent properties. However, the very properties that make PFAS so attractive to manufacturers are also what ...
NONFICTION 1 The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)’ This is the hottest book in New Zealand, number one with a bullet in its first week, selling more than any overseas title, and demand is so huge that it’s already been reprinted. A ...
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The Oil Drum site to close at the end of August (but archives will remain on the web).
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/10059
it’s very interesting…the peak oil “fast collapse” types have been proven wrong, as John Michael Greer predicted they would. But nevertheless the gradual grinding slowdown of the ‘long descent’ has caught up with The Oil Drum.
The other aspect to this is: no one has come up with implementable solutions to what we are facing as a civilisation.
Hey, we haven’t passed October yet, there’s still a chance of a massive collapse this year.
Ahhhhh another Black October? Let’s wait and see.
On Crosby Textor, who seem to own John Key — Guardian reporting on Lynton Crosby and ties to David Cameron .. and Crosby’s more than $10 million contract with British Tobacco and his ties to fracking industries and alcohol, all vital social issues upon which Cameron has unexpectedly back-tracked … see any similarities here ??
This reader’s comment could have been on The Standard with just a small name change … amazing … but maybe Cameron will be called to account, unlike here … certainly it’s heating up …
From reader Steve Ten:
“Cameron should be honest, give back his Parliamentary salary and, like Crosby, become a paid lobbyist for multinational corporations – for that is what he is. His masquerading as a representative of the people is an insult to the intelligence, compounded by his taking money under false pretences.
We need ministers who represent the public interest, not private corporations.”
Here the several links :
“David Cameron urged to probe claim that aide had £6m tobacco deal — Lynton Crosby comes under renewed fire over Philip Morris links as row over cigarette packaging rages on” July 20
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jul/20/cameron-lynton-crosby-contract-philip-morris
“David Cameron under attack over fracking firm links to Lynton Crosby” July 19
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jul/19/david-cameron-fracking-lynton-crosby?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
“Lynton Crosby: David Cameron’s Lizard of Oz” ( love it !) July 20
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2013/jul/21/lynton-crosby-cameron-lizard-oz
And in future, perhaps we all offer him this marvelous name, Crosby, Lizard of Oz !
Wanted to include this sample paragraph from the last link above …
‘ Will Crosby become roadkill, as David Cameron struggles to counter Labour claims that the lobbyist has improperly succeeded in having plain packaging for cigarettes dumped and restrictions on alcohol curbed? ‘
guardian refers to crosby texter as the lizards of OZ
and this, Monsanto retreats from Europe …
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aed5e0a8-ef1e-11e2-9269-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fglobal-economy%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct
Scheme a gamble
It does seem that this government set up the “Environmental Protection Agency” to screw over the environment and to bypass any democratic accountability.
Is it a joke? Has anyone seen this madness? http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10899996
I presume Dr Bertram will be repaying the University rather a lot of money, if he is willing to follow these expressed principles.
He was, when he finally retired, a senior lecturer and as such would have been on a salary of at least $100,00 per year. There are automatic pay-rises up to about this figure. No doubt he will return every dollar he received above $75,00 per year.
He was a mediocre member of the academic fraternity from my memories of him.
At least Dr Bertram would realise that plagiarism is a mortal sin in the academic environment.
Did you really come up with these words on your own or have you been reading Kiwiblog?
The words are all mine.
That is truly amazing! Why is it that I find it rather hard to believe you?
I posted those exact words on Kiwiblog at 11.22am. They turn up here, apart from a spelling mistake. at 11.27am.
Isn’t it miraculous that two people can say, separately, exactly the same thing?
Classic catch lol and a double lie for Santi – first for saying he wrote it and second for saying that last line – hey Santi you are a very weak link indeed but please tell us more about your memories of Dr Bertram lol.
Santi caught lying! Boy, that’ll shock a lot of folks here.
Alwyn, my apology for saying Santi was hopeless at maths and comprehension. It’s actually you with those failings.
Naah he begrudingly took the money (probably say it was in his contract) but believes everyone else should does as he says
Santi, if you were one of Bertram’s students, I reckon you probably failed in two areas; maths and comprehension. Firstly, you claim that the lowest paid Victoria University job is set at 33k pa, without offering any evidence to support your proposition. Secondly, you have completely missed the bit were Bertam talks about this ratio applying to CEO’s and other exec’s. He was neither, so the proposition would not apply to himself anyway.
If you look at the Collective agreement for general staff you will find some jobs, such a Library shelvers that pay about $25,000 per annum. I have no idea what a cleaner gets.
As far as not applying to Dr Bertram I find it amazing that you appear to think that a University Senior Lecturer is apparently worth more than the CEO of Air New Zealand or Fletcher Building.
Yeah, nah bro. I’m pretty sure Vic doesn’t pay any staff below the adult minimum wage. So shall we move on to to addressing your comprehension difficulty? Any explanation for missing the relevant point of who the ratio was suggested for?
You should probably read the things he is referring to before you write his maths off as wrong:
http://teu.ac.nz/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/VUW-general-staff-01-July-2012-30-June-2014-signed1.pdf
They work 37.5 hours per week so the library shelvers on about $26,000 (was slightly off there) are paid above minimum wage.
As for his reading comprehension – its a reasonable assumption he is talking about the gap between the highest paid person in the company (whether executive or not) and the lowest paid.
“As for his reading comprehension – its a reasonable assumption he is talking about the gap between the highest paid person in the company (whether executive or not) and the lowest paid.”
No, it’s not a reasonable assumption. The first line of the article makes it plain: “The Government should stop giving contracts – and knighthoods – to companies that pay their bosses more than three times their lowest-paid workers, an economist has suggested.”
Bertram goes on to say: “Then the Government should say no Government contracting, no knighthoods, make them feel some tangible pain [if they exceed whatever limit is agreed].”
He’s not talking about workers, but bosses.
The maths is equally straightfoward. The lowest paid worker earns $13.826 per hour, significantly more than Alwyn’s suggested rate of $12.88.*
*I’ve used the 37.5 hour week in that calculation. On a forty hour week Alwyn’s figure is $12.02.
The point is there is too much wage inequality you can be picky and say that he is focussing on executives. However, that is likely because he is being realistic that that is where the highest paid people are grouped.
You honestly think he would be fine with someone being paid 7 times more (as an example) than someone else in the company just because that higher paid person isn’t part of key management?
So if the maths is straight forward and the lowest paid person gets $13.826 per hour how does that fit with your original argument that Alwyn’s maths was terrible because no-one would be below $33k.
The $33 k came from Alwyn’s assumption that Bertram was on $100k. Not my figure, Alwyn’s.
And yes, I’m perfectly happy for some workers to be paid more than the boss. Indeed, I sincerely wish it happened more often.
Absolute rubbish.
Why do you even bother to waffle on about $33K?
You are the only one to mention it and it has absolutely nothing to do with my assumption that Bertram would have been on $100K.
What I said was that he had been, before he retired, a Senior Lecturer. He had been in that position for a number of years and I presumed therefore that he would have at least reached the bar of about $100K. Given that the minimum pay I found for anyone covered by the General Award was about $25K (and someone pointed out to me that the current award is about $26K, I suggested that he should not have accepted more that three times that figure.
If, in fact, the absolute minimum that the University paid any employee was $33K, a number you introduced it would be reasonable for Bertram to have received $100K.
He should however demand that NO-ONE employed by the University should get any more than that.
Yeah, not making much sense there, Alwyn. It was your figure, after all. And you don’t get to define Bertram’s idea, so demanding he demand a different thing altogether than his actual concept is a tad lame.
That wasn’t my question I asked if he would be happy if some workers were paid 7 times more than the lowest paid employee not if you would be happy if some workers were paid more than the boss. I expect you know the answer and that’s why you decided to answer a question I didn’t ask instead.
I know where you got the $33k figure from but that doesn’t change the fact that his maths was correct if he was on $100k then he was being paid more than 3 times the lowest paid employee.
All based on
He doesn’t have a knighthood, does he?
No he doesn’t but Im pretty sure while he was working at Victoria University he benefitted from government funding.
What does Government funding of universities have to do with anything Bertram has suggested? Funding is not contracting. Funding does not involve knighthoods.
Why should he give anything back? The lowest paid lecturer probably gets about $50k.
Looks like the Great Barrier Reef it received a warning shot from the boys with the big, bad toys.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/8948298/Great-Barrier-Reef-bombing-safe
It is a known fact that that reef is struggling to pay its way because it has not accessed health benefits, and generally mooches around – it is in effect becoming a economic reefugee to the country and borders of Austrauntiedstateia. I hope the reef listens to this warning shot and starts paying its way instead of bludging and taking resources from real Austrauntiedstateians, as we all know – not everyone or thing can be saved and the measure of whether, is how much it pays.
marty m
lolz
I understand that they are recovering the bombs. Must be some fibre optic cable down there to check out while they are in the neighbourhood.
Of interest from the previous Roy Morgan Poll is the Mana Party reaching 1% of polled Party vote support,
Mana at present features in the Parliament by dint of Party leader Hone Harawira holding the electorate seat of Te Tai Tokerau and in my opinion has a 50/50 chance of securing the Waiariki seat in the 2014 election,
The thresh-hold for the Mana Party to gain a further MP from it’s list is according to wisdom 1.2-1.5% of the Party Vote and if the polling for Mana stays above 1% leading into the election i for one will have to reconsider my Party Vote with a view to helping Mana gain that list MP, (hopefully John Minto)…
probably a bit of a boost from telling MP to get stuffed unless they ditch national.
Peter…..we are not amused.
Geoff Bertram was not mediocre and trying to belittle him only shows what sort of person you are.
i.e. trying to put him down does not make you one up on him.
the fact of the matter is that most university staff are not paid enough and universitys are trying to do everything on the cheap after the Business Round Table privatised all their money making activities in the 90’s.
Other nutty ideas are things like nursing degrees where the job is vocational training and not the creating of new knowledge.
Everybody in New Zealnd is continually trying to turn grapes inot oranges at the lowest possible cost and the results are heaps of sh*t.
captain hook
Sounds true from what I’ve observed.
Can’t argue with that. Universities seem to be turning more and more into places to get kids into debt and that’s about it.
And plenty of people doing postgrad who have no intellectual business being there, but basically don’t have anything else to go and do.
Ain’t self-regulation a marvellous thing.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/21/19601083-with-no-safety-oversight-six-flags-will-investigate-coaster-death-itself?lite
This minister woodhouse (never heard of him btw) is useless for demanding that the veterans provide proof before he will set up a study “into the effects of radiation on the health of naval frigate crews who witnessed nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll in 1973.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10901274
There should be a study and the Government should stop using the, waiting for everyone to die angle, to get out of it. The concerns are real as they say, “The most important question for the men was whether they had passed on the effects of radiation to their children and grandchildren and what help would be given to them.”
I’d like the study done for personal reasons as my father was in the merchant marine and witnessed a few tests – he wrote me a letter once saying that he didn’t believe there were any hereditary effects, he’s dead now (cancer related in early 60’s) but his grandchildren are alive and they deserve to know.
This is the common sense that needs to be espoused for the ratings to go up:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/8937854/Labour-duo-keen-to-talk-jobs-and-growth
Well done, Shane Jones.
Not well done at all, Santi. Jones disses his own people in the north in that story – the ones who are opposed to gold mining in their rohe because of real concerns about water contamination. And as far as I can make out – in all his years in Parliament – he’s done very little to engender more jobs in the north for his people. IMO Jones is just a big I AM – and it looks to me like he’s making a play to be the Labour Leader !
Looks like Jones been at the Porn again, too much Monkey Spanking.
Yeah Jones will put his hat in the ring.
This is disturbing if true:
Fairfax has a blacklist of economists whom they will not talk to
I wonder if the little altercation with English has had something to do with it
If Fairfaxes ban is real, it is internationally newsworthy in of itself. What is required is a leaked email or memo from Fairfax.
I’m on to it. Stat.
Well I emailed them about this got a reply saying we don’t ban our jouno’s covering stories. So I replied back saying that I look forward to a critic of the lectures by a qualified in that stuff journo and not just the new boy. See what that brings
Not surprising but he knew all along what he’d do. Total slime. This time though he’s underestimated his electorate. Just signed his ticket out of there.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8949243/Dunne-backs-expanded-spy-powers
About time too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/2013/jul/19/enigma-codebreaker-alan-turing-posthumous-pardon
+1
+10110 10
And a knighthood too perhaps?
And a directorship at a partially privatised power generator.
No he was better than that. Director of Apple?
Apple is likely to pay him good money to stay away…”non-executive director at large”
Just the logo you reckon not the man. Anyway he’s someone who left a big mark, and although his wartime service tends to be what is focused on, isn’t it the maths behind it that really made the difference. Anyway I admire the man’s work.
BTW weren’t the local police under instruction not to arrest him during the war?
I actually didn’t know that Turing, who was brilliant, a war hero and father of computer science, met such an unfortunate end. Great Britain robbed itself of genius.
It was dreadful. He went in to advise police that one of his friends may have accessed top secret papers at his place and when the police understood the nature of the relationship it was “to hell with the theft of important documents let’s get on with persecuting you for something our brains comprehend.” Makes you wonder what discoveries have simply not been made.
redbaroncv
One, was that after a dreadful war, being kind and loving to one another must be kept under strict control, just in case you may want to bash a protester, or invade another country etc. And that it’s not the nobility of Turing’s mind and the gift of his commitment of total brain and body excellence applied to assist the war effort and help save the country, it’s whether you look right, act according to Hoyle, are one of us.
And whose maths lies behind the P vs NP mathematical problem-where “the answer knows the question”. It is easy to work back from the answer but difficult to work forward from the question. It fascinates me, I reckon when this is solved then we will be on our way to the stars because what is there is also here? Probaly not a mathematician’s view though.
GB’s history probably shows a trend to do that. I have a book written by Reginald Hill going into the large number of their own men they killed by edict for this or that. Probably would have served well in some other field. Cold-hearted so and sos for a supposedly developed nation.
Not a nation, an empire, even in the 1950’s.
I am angry.
Someone close to me was forced to work in Wellington’s CBD today against the directive of the Civil Defence and the Mayor of Wellington. This person was due to start work at 11am but the other worker, who was the key holder, had to open the shop at 9am. This person couldn’t get into the CBD by public transport to do this.
However, this person managed to get into the city by mid afternoon. Both workers were told that if the shop didn’t open both of them would have to take annual leave.
So here we have two young people on minimum wage forced to open a retail shop in the middle of the CBD at 3.00pm for 2 hours! This is after a severe earthquake when the advice from all and sundry was not to go into the CBD. Inspections of buildings needed to take place (and the shop is part of a high rise complex, including a car park) and to keep the public away as a safety precaution.
The CBD is a ghost town today so there are little, if no people, shopping.
I guess that if you were desperate for a pair of shoes, or an ouffit for a special occasion…this is the very day you would go shopping to get these vital items. Straight after an earthquake and continuing after shocks – and in defiance of the Civil Defence!
Shame on this business owner for putting the company’s profits before anything else. Shame on this business owner for putting these two young people at risk. And shame on this business owner for forcing these two young people to work for 2 hours, or else.
Other major companies such as Farmers and Kirks were closed, as were the majority of small retailers.
And by the way – zilch purchases were made.
Name and shame the business.
Too much detail – the employers will take it out on the staff members.
Exactly…
Oh what a pity. I do like to know where not to go to spend my money.
We need a new Prime Minister that doesn’t bring earthquakes.
He was wishing Wellington ill just very recently 😐
Just realized who Patrick Gower is on TV…. He has integrity and ethics comparable to those professional people at Fox news.Apart from John Campbell have we any real journalists in this country?
Christ on a cross, now Bomber is championing Shearer to stay on.
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/07/22/labour-down-in-latest-poll-why-shearer-may-be-the-best-option/
(no GoT spoilers please!)
Thankfully Trotter says the opposite.
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/07/22/cuckoo-in-the-nest-in-the-name-of-god-david-shearer-go/
Still no real solutions in sight.
Trotter has it wrapped up.
Just read those: two different but interesting perspectives.
Trotter says Shearer, a right winger, had ambitions to be leader of the Labour caucus as soon as he was elected to parliament, and started courting key media figures on the right and left. He did this courting instead of, trying to learn about the Labour Party, its history, systems, etc.
However, Trotter argues that Shearer is clearly not up to the job, is a “cuckoo” in Labour’s nest, and should go now.
Bomber says he now has heard via his contacts and/or tipsters, that it is the ABC faction that is trying to get rid of Shearer, and they want to install another ABC candidate – not Robertson – as leader. Bomber concludes, it’d be better for Shearer to stay, than to have another lame duck ABC choice as leader – though Shearer may not be up to winning the election.
Sheeessshhhh. What a miserable situation!
Good summing up karol.
I’ve been waiting for someone to out the leaker/ texter. We need to know who it is and then we can make an informed judgement whether Bomber is right. If he is, I suppose they are looking to replace Shearer with Shane Jones or Andrew Little. Shane Jones has been noticeably prominent in the public arena in recent times.
And paraphrasing from that 1940 House of Commons quote:
Dear Shearer,
“In the name of Go[ff], go!”
And Robertson, before he loses any claim on his past initials H.3., should not let the ABCs fk it up with anointing another lame duck leader.
Is it really necessary to embed video on ts? Big blocks of blackness are hardly conducive to reading flow.
/grumpiness.
I did it too on the rudd thread – I was expecting just the link to show not the embedded video might need a tech explanation.
It’s the WordPress software being helpful. I certainly wasn’t expecting it to embed the way that it did.
ah ok, sorry. I saw Brett do it the other day and had to walk away from the computer 😉
Tracked it down and turned it off. New “feature” in jetpack. What is irritating about it is that it is only meant to work in posts and pages – not comments.
So who does Bomber think is behind what (if it exists) must be the most incompetent leadership challenge Labour’s seen in a while, I wonder?
If Shearer’s perceived as being to the right of the party (or, as Trotter calmly and subtly put it, “a huge and dangerous cuckoo in Labour’s nest”), who would be even worse? Jones? Mallard? Is Peter Dunne seeing an opportunity to reclaim a “party leader” pay grade? Will Chris Hipkins go all “stabby stabby stabby, cut cut cut”?
And when can we buy the box set, or will next season simply be cancelled?
Trotter is hilarious, having gone from being a vocal Shearer supporter to his opinion today.
He had me laughing when he sang the Internationale in 1999 just because labour got in. Went downhill from there.
meh – Bomber is only suggesting Shearer should possibly stay if the alternative is another ABC jack-up.
edit. oops. Should have read Karol’s comment before submitting that
Solution is a grassroots revolt by Labour members.
I want to see the LEC “strike” suggested a while back. Sort this bollocks one way or t’other.
how would that work?
I think it was CV mentioned it – as I understand the idea, the LECs refuse to do any of their regular work (especially campaigning, but they’d want to threaten that before the actual campaign) unless caucus vote no confidence in shearer and force a leadership election under the new rules. I’m sure CV will correct me if I’m wrong on the details 🙂
And refuse to pay their levies to head office. That’s the bit which really smarts.
That won’t work McFlock and CV. It only hits the Labour Party HO – not the MPs and certainly not the Leader. Plus the threat to not do the campaigning is a long way off – we’re talking 2014 and there’s still most of 2013 to get thru with a (non) Leader who says he’s going to lead Labour into the 2014 election (and presumably into sunset, or wherever it is that dead political parties end up).
More drastic action is needed – and IMO its up to the rest of the Labour caucus to finally understand they have a rightwing rat in their midst, and its time to dump him !
Labour list selection is just around the corner, mate. The party can apply a shit load of pressure on caucus.
While I disagree with that opinion, I also think the way it is expressed is part of the reason this is dragging on so long. Even if such an understanding were required, that is the outcome, not the mechanism by which it is achieved.
A short statement from David Shearer
Christ on a cross – is that the new expressive from of compressed frustration? Not just what the hell, but combining a query and a prayer all in one.
Good article about temperatures:
Simple enough that even the climate change deniers may be able to understand it.
EDIT:
and this is good news too.
And, as this government seems to be following the UK in so many things, there’s this:
Well, I have no interest in porn…. but I don’t feel a need to have my access to it blocked – a non issue for me. Don’t want/need the filter, don’t want to be asked.
My concern is whether other stuff will be inadvertently blocked.
Will words like breasts, penis etc. become transgressions that will be filtered out? In this modern age of prudish purity by those elevated in society and wanting to behave ‘nicely’ all the time, while at the same time we are surrounded by vulgarity, huge breasts featured on the front of women’s magazines, (‘huge melons’) and regular sexist and discriminatory language, it is possible.
The pornography etc is irrelevant. UK is home of the page 3 girl and they aren’t suggesting getting rid of her.
Its simply an angle allowing a first step to wider government censorship and control of the internet. Hadrians Firewall, as it were. The regulatory bodies and technical mechanisms will be set up, and then they will be applied to additional terms as required.
Don’t forget, the UK Govt already knows the contents of each persons internet searches and emails.
Also in the USA, Occupy found out that authorities could shut down txt and mobile phone coverage at will, to disrupt the organisation of activists and protestors.
Sorry mate, but people who can’t tell the difference between page 3 pornography and internet pornography probably shouldn’t be allowed to discuss the issue.
The acceptance of government control, regulation and censorship of the internet is the objective. The porn angle is classic Crosby Textor style framing to wedge open the door to achieving that objective.
I mean – would you really fall for this strategy? It’s actually well calculated. A lot of people will.
Proponents of internet freedom and an unregulated internet will be framed as being “for child porn” etc. Its so bleeding obvious.
Next step will then be to ban searches associated with the promotion of terrorism and Islamic radicalism. And so on and so forth. You don’t want your children to be exposed to extremist ideology, do you?
I’d like to see you prove that. Including how CT-type bods mamanged to dupe all those feminist anti-violence groups as well as the child-protection ones. Are you suggesting there is no real issue here and they got brainwashed?
btw, it is possible to address important issues of govt surveillance and control without minimising sexual safety and violence issues. Just saying.
OK, sign away your own civil rights then, sheep to the NewSpeak slaughter I say.
Which civil right would that be?
That would be the right to privacy.
people actually want to give up their civil liberties in exchange for temporary safety; TPTB have figured out the psychology pretty well.
How would the right to privacy be breached?
Well you are right weka, TEMPORA already fully breaches the privacy of UK citizens communications, so this makes no difference.
“You don’t want your children to be exposed to extremist ideology, do you?”
Like I said, it is possible to deal with the problems of internet porn AND the problems of govt control. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Yes it is possible in theory to address the problem of government control of the internet, but it won’t happen. You are talking about the home of the GCSB.
This is a government which infiltrated environmental groups with secret police and surveilled the family of a murdered boy in order to discredit them.
You have so much faith in these authorities to do the right thing after they have spit on you over and over and over again, it’s laughable.
“You have so much faith in these authorities to do the right thing”
[citation needed]
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-22072013/#comment-666582
That’s an expression of faith in the UK authorities. I laugh at that.
“That’s an expression of faith in the UK authorities”
Actually it’s not. Why not try having a conversation with me instead of jumping to a whole bunch of inaccurate conclusions?
Of course it is an expression of your trust in the authorities. More specifically, in their good faith to do the right thing and not attempt to over-reach in their control of the internet, its content, and their monitoring of your activities online.
[citation needed]
Go on, show me specifically where I’ve said that I trust the UK govt to act in good faith to do the right thing and not attempt to over-reach in their control of the internet, its content, and their monitoring of your activities online.
Honestly, I think you are making shit up, although you may not realise it. I don’t believe that about the UK govt.
Nah, I’m over this conversation. You implicitly accept government assurances regarding control of the internet. The last two months should have made you extremely wary of that, but it appears it hasn’t, so maybe you weren’t paying attention.
As you said, this conversation is going nowhere.
There aren’t any problems with internet porn.
Yes there are.
Such as?
Child porn
Rape porn
Easy access of porn for children
The amount of porn promoting degradation of women
How porn socialises many men, esp young men, into unhealthy ways of relating with women sexually, and in power relations.
The connections between porn and rape
That’s just a short list off the top of my head.
Like I said, I don’t have a problem with porn per se (in the sense of portraying sexual acts for other people’s pleasure). I do have a problem with how the porn industries operate, many of the kinds of porn that exist, and that the porn industry doesn’t want to address child porn in any meaningful way.
None of those are “problems with internet porn” though.
Weka may also have no idea that 99% of what is on the internet is not search engine findable.
I’ll look into it or at it or something….
Same here – got bored with porn last century – but also don’t want my name on a database saying that I watch porn which will happen if such comes in.
Always have been before and indications were that it wasn’t inadvertent. Free sexual health sites, especially ones that deal with LGBT, seem to get blocked quite regularly and as the blocking software uses a blacklist which nobody can see or appeal legitimate sites that have been blocked don’t have any way to get themselves removed. I’ve heard here and there that such blacklists have actually resulted in the bankruptcy of some small businesses that didn’t have anything to do with porn or sex.
So lobby for better filtering.
There’s no such thing and besides, the filtering doesn’t work as there’s too many ways around it.
If you don’t want to watch porn then don’t watch porn. Don’t penalise those who do just because you don’t want to.
It’s not about me wanting or not wanting to watch porn*. It’s about the access that children have to porn, how that changes them and society.
How is someone being penalised by turning off a family filter?
*but I’m glad you brought that up, because I suspect that part of the motivation in this conversation is the freedom to watch porn. I don’t have a problem with porn per se, and as soon as the porn industry chooses to clean it’s act up, so to speak, and separate out healthy porn from porn that degrades people (esp women) and promotes violence and damages children, then we won’t need to have laws around it.
The problem you mention is socialisation, not the porn.
BTW, you can buy filters that go on your PC and thus not have your morality forced upon others.
Because they’d have to put in extra effort and be put on a database for porn watchers. (and that’s what they will be called if they have the filter turned off)
You can suspect whatever you like. I’m quite open about the fact that I’ve watched porn and I’m also open about the fact that I now find it boring and thus don’t bother with it.
Well, the laws banning child pornography are quite strict and they’re laws that will never be rescinded because there’s some real sick fucks out there. Having a government sponsored filter won’t stop these people because they don’t use public sites and often the only way you can get to the site is by word of mouth and having the encryption key. Same goes for the really violent porn as well.
As for the industry cleaning itself up? Well, some parts of the industry are already doing that.
As for the violence? Well, there you run into complications because of BDSM porn. Of course, the BDSM community is probably more aware that what they do could be misconstrued than anybody and do stress the need for consent and set limits. That said, there’s more violence on the nightly news than what I’ve ever seen in porn.
Following the links
The new measures will apply to both existing and new customers.
Family-friendly filters will be automatically selected for all new customers – though they can choose to switch them off.
And millions of existing computer users will be contacted by their internet providers and told they must decide whether to activate “family friendly filters” to restrict adult material.
Customers who do not click on either option – accepting or declining – will have filters activated by default, Tory MP Claire Perry, Mr Cameron’s adviser on the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood, told the BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076
That doesn’t sound totally unreasonable to me.
This is good too –
In addition, Mr Cameron will say possessing online pornography depicting rape will be illegal, bringing England and Wales in line with Scotland.
That sounds totally unreasonable to me and yet this is what such a law will do.
This is information that doesn’t need to be gathered and can cause untold harm to someone if the wrong people get a hold of it.
The first quoted paragraph isn’t at all what is being suggested and strikes me as a somewhat reactionary response. From what I can tell the filter will be an electronic opt in/out kind of thing that comes from the ISP.
I agree the second point is an issue, but I’d like to see some discussion on it. It doesn’t appear to be cataloguing content, just whether someone ticked a no filter option. There are so many people watching porn online, and there will be others who will refuse the filter because of the reasons Karol suggested, that I think being on such a list will be not that relevant. I might not choose the filter, as I don’t let kids have access to my computer, and I’m happy enough with the level of filtering I get with from my browsers. So I end up on a list of people who turned off a family filter, so what? I expect that there will be much discussion about the range of reasons people turn the filter off. To say that anyone who turns the filter off will be labelled DIRTY PORN LOVER is a bit hysterical to be honest. I’d like to see some discussion about this from Civil Liberties groups though, and more information on the technology used.
The thing I would be more concerned about is the relationship between the ISPs and the govt (legal ones, we know about the others already), and the precedent setting, thin end of the wedge stuff that CV is referring to.
You’re expressing even more faith in the authorities to do the right thing? Perhaps you should look up the scope and reach of the TEMPORA system. Trying to claim that people are being paranoid or hysterical about government internet monitoring and control is to admit that you’ve been snoozing for the last several weeks.
Show me how the UK govt intends to monitor people more than it already is, and specifically how it will monitor which people turn off the family filter and what it will do with that data.
“Trying to claim that people are being paranoid or hysterical about government internet monitoring and control is to admit that you’ve been snoozing for the last several weeks”
I’m not claiming that. I’m saying that I’d like to see some credible discussion about how being labelled as someone who turned off the family filter could cause harm. Rather than just having blanket accusations of evil govt surveillance thrown down (and yes, I do believe the govt does evil surveillance, and no I haven’t been asleep in the last month).
What I’m failing to see is how this particular scheme is as bad as you say, and I remain unconvinced that this discussion isn’t largely about protecting rights to watch porn (not that those are being challenged) or being anti controlling the internet (I think the internet is already controlled, and some of that is for the good).
That was in the bit I quoted and you ignored it.
Think of a politician running for office who had the porn filter turned off. Someone hacks the ISPs database and then sells that information to the politician’s opponents who then have a way to attack them. And don’t say it won’t happen as all we have to do is point to that politician a few years ago who hired a few videos. That made headline news and resulted in the politician resigning. I very much doubt that would have happened if they hadn’t been porn.
Snowden has already relayed what he thought about the ability to reveal peoples online activities, txts, emails etc. “that is the power to change peoples fates”.
Weak CV. I think we would need to know technical detail about the filter, and how data will be collected and used.
Then put it on a scale comparing say google’s collection of data on searches at one end, and the GCSB’s collection of data on everything at the other.
Kep the kids on dial up -narrow band- those pictures take ages to load.
“Weak”? Sheeple to the slaughter. Creeping government control over the internet. As if Cameron gives a shit about children, in a country where child poverty is projected to climb from 2.4M to 3.4M in the next few years, and a couple of thousand children die in avoidable medical deaths per annum.
But yeah, the big danger to kids is internet porn thats where the real gutsy action and leadership in child wellbeing has to be taken.
Oh yeah weka, I know, they aren’t mutually exclusive etc.
FFS you really love and trust the authorities don’t you?
What I’m finding interesting is your overreaction to what I am saying, and your insistence that I trust the authorities, when you haven’t even bothered to ask me what I actually think about that. You ARE misinterpreting what I am saying, or you simply can’t manage a coherent response to the issues I’ve started to raise around sexual violence and the internet
So keep throwing out incorrect assertions about what I think and believe, ignore the points I raise, and the conversation will go nowhere.
“As if Cameron gives a shit about children, in a country where child poverty is projected to climb from 2.4M to 3.4M in the next few years, and a couple of thousand children die in avoidable medical deaths per annum.”
Hyperbole much?
You really have no idea of the actual scale of child poverty, child harm and child mortality issues in the UK do you? Why don’t you do some reading up.
The Tories pretend to be all lovey dovey caring about family values and child wellbeing. What a joke. They are single handedly breaking up families and impoverishing children on a massive scale.
You probably think that is “hyperbole” too.
I already understand your mentality. It’s embedded again here:
You want to believe in their assurances about how data will be collected and used. You think that investigating those details will make a difference. It shows that you have been completely asleep for the last 2 months. Look up TEMPORA.
Dude, I know what TEMPORA is. And until you get off your high horse and start discussing with me instead of dictating what I believe, you’re just being an arse.
The hyperbole is in saying that no Tory cares about children at all, not even a jot. It’s a black and white view of the world that means we should line all the Tory’s up against the wall now. In the world I live in, people are rarely wholly evil.
“You want to believe in their assurances about how data will be collected and used.”
I haven’t read their assurances, so no, that’s not what I believe. I was wanting independant views on the technology. Duh.
I do however believe in being informed, and when you can show me something credible about this particular scheme that demonstrates its evil, or even potential evil, and allows rational discussion of it (rather than “it’s the govt, it’s evil, make the aversion sign”) then I’ll stop being so critical of your knee jerk reaction.
NZ will only be 2-3 years behind the UK in bringing in additional government controls and monitoring over the internet. I hope you are consistent and cheer for it then as well.
UK child poverty to hit 3.4M by 2020
http://www.gcvs.org.uk/news_and_information/2331_cost_of_child_poverty_colossal
so is that “hyperbole”, weka?
No, that’s not hyperbole and wasn’t what I was referring to.
So what were you referring to when you said it here
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-22072013/#comment-666669
I was interested in the comment about Hannah Tamaki from yesterday on – http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-21072013/#comment-665718
Tonight on Radionz there has been an interesting piece on prosperity church movement. It started in the USA in the 1950s and then was taken to Nigeria and Nigerians in Britain have very large congregations now.
One pastor was said to have spent 80,000 pounds on his brithday, or the church did. His CEO said that it was okay because all the people of the church wanted the pastor to have the money for his birthday. Were they given a vote he was asked. But he didn’t like that and his voice started to rise. The people are okay with everything that’s all we ned to know, and also for the pastor to have a time share in Florida.
That’s where the Bee Gees went to live and no doubt all celebrity pastors like to show their success in similar opportunities. After all if God blesses you with money for being good, you deserve it. Some who have found the positive messages and the expectation that they will become comfortably off church members with good jobs keep them believing in themselves and they have followed their dreams and are quite happy with their 10% tithing.
/rant begins
I had an irritating day today at work. Made me reflect on that saying about inevitability – only three things are certain in life – death, taxes and hard disk failure. The latter should be joined with the inevitable wasting of precious time waiting for data to copy (which I have done entirely too much of over the years).
Needless to say, my work workstation decided that it wasn’t cooperating when I waved the mouse at it this morning. I tend to leave it running most of the time as waking it up each day takes rather a long time and I use it to monitor various systems related to work. It just shuts down most of the CPU’s, drops its clock rates, and shuts off the screen and most peripheral devices – but leaves the hard disk running. The HDD has had less than 250 starts in the last 3 years, and most of those would have been from the occasional spin-downs from the “green” features built into the drive.
Rebooted the system in case it was stray cosmic ray and found a pile of console warning about ata5. Looked at the SMART diagnostics and found that the 3 year old 1TB Hitachi HDD had nearly 400 remapped sectors and 40 tagged for checking when next written to. The hard disk was also making the system run like a wet week as it kept re-trying suspect sectors.
Even worse the HDD at my work workstation is not obsessively RAID mirrored like my home systems because all of the strange laptop people around couldn’t see the value. They tend to replace their laptops with lowspeed hard drives faster than the hard disks failed. Instead they seem to prefer complaining about the small disk space of a 300GB drive.
While it had backups of all of the critical configuration, it’d take a day or maybe two to reinstall from scratch because it simply isn’t worth imaging a system that mostly has old branch copies of code and the binaries generated from them. A linux programmers hard disk mostly consists of stuff that is held elsewhere on version control systems, and software that is downloadable from the online distributions. There is exactly one bit of paid software on the system – my personal linux copy of my favourite editor – also available online from my server at home.
So after a long design session related to issues identified over the weekend, it was off to PBTech to pick up a new ITB drive, and off home to get my external dual HDD dock. Because there is an easier way than reinstalling – cloning. And these days I clone in external hardware rather than trying to boot systems up and doing it through clonezilla and the like.
Back to work to extract the failing drive and pop it and the new drive in the dock and then press the “Clone” button …. Doesn’t have to be connected to a computer – it copies direct from one drive to the other. Have I mentioned how often this frigging device has saved my arse before? I’d mention the model but I suspect someone (Whale, PG) will start whining that I’m being paid to do it.
But while the device is great at getting a really good copy of the data across accurately, it has one big problem. It can only move data as fast as the electronics and software allow. And since this device is designed for a 5Gbps USB3 connection, that probably equates to a maximum throughput of something in the order of 0.6 mega bytes per second not counting the delays due to head-seeking, rereading, verifying and errors etc etc. And of course all of those things slow it down. Slow it down quite a lot. Rather than taking about half an hour, it took almost 2 and half hours of unadulterated boredom reading the Androif SDK on my tablet.
While I was doing that, I was reflecting on the ever increasing size of HDD’s, their short lives, and that I have (I counted them) 12 drives in my home system for a total of ~6.6TB of available storage. Most are in 2TB mirrored HDD pairs and some hot spares. But there are now just over 600GB of boot and scratch/working solid state drives that just run backups onto the HDD’s. And that is just at home… Now a lot of that data are just backups either as mirrors, or as backups of the unmirrored drives or offsite data. For instance there are almost 60GB of encrypted backups of this site sitting in a directory.
But really we need something a damn sight faster to copy data with. Because I’m spending far too much time just copying it between disks to keep ahead of the storage systems failure rates 😈
/rant over
lol
I accidentally overwrote half a day’s work with a garbage set. Ended up redoing it because it was quicker (what with already knowing the road to travel down) than getting a restore from IT support (their job queue is quite long and seems to involve a random weighting of “what the techs feel like doing”).
There but for the grace of god, I guess 🙂
I eventually managed to get some code written – between 1630 and 1930. It was just starting to get interesting and produce results when I realised that I had to get home to cook dinner* Drat.
I haven’t been around IT “support” since I was at Clear in 1995 – not that I used it then. Since then I’ve usually been the backing IT support if it comes to software and usually for swapping out component hardware simply because I’ve usually done everything at least a few times on my own systems already. This current job is nice because there are electron pushers there, which tends to make the diagnosis side of my “support jobs” a whole lot easier.
* I can’t be bothered doing dishes or cleaning up – as in dirt and mess doesn’t concern me much. However I can make a variety of good simple meals from scratch very fast provided I shop for them and have them pre-programmed in my head. And if something is pre-programmed I don’t get bored with doing it because I can think about code or blogs or politics while my hands do their thing. The division of labour in our household is quite delineated but based on personal preferences/phobias rather than any traditional roles. It does however mean that I have to get home and serve food in what Lyn deems to be an acceptable time rather than indulge in extended work sessions 🙂