what follows is my view on Galloway’s utterance… it has nothing to do with Assange. Nor does it in any way suggest that I think Assange is guilty of the claims made against him.
So here we go Mr Galloway…..why do some men think it’s okay to have sex with someone after they’ve said no? And why do some men think that if you’ve already had sex once then you’ve “entered a sex game” which means ‘forced sex’ – hang on – not ‘forced’ because the woman was asleep – is somehow not rape?
Or to put it another way, rape – if you’ve never had sex with the woman before – is ‘real’ rape, but if you’ve already had sex with her before, the next time can’t be ‘real’ rape – even if she said no?
I guess that if you stay in the same bed with someone after saying no, you must have a high degree of trust that the other person will not ignore your wishes and will certainly not force themselves on you when you are asleep. How utterly awful it must be if you are then raped while asleep – and by the very person you trusted.
Those who want to debate shades of grey, simply don’t consider what it’s like from the perpective of the victim. This kind of experience can seriously scar and have awful consequences – maybe years later.
I think it’s very very sad if the man is so drunk he has no self control – but it’s no less damaging to the woman (and possibly to the man’s future), because from the woman’s point of view it’s still rape – and any amount of argument about the definition of ‘rape’ is not going to make a jot of difference to how the woman may be feeling.
I agree with you. I’m interested in who is generally making these assertions that non-consensual sex is not rape (even though it is legally rape here) – that it’s just some sex-game – they seem to be males of a certain age and I wonder why that is. Whatever their reasons, I despise them for their disgusting views.
Could it be because there are men who have a fantasy about awakening to the fuck being given them by (oh, lets go completly cliched) *that* big boobed blonde…or who-ever? Y’know, they reckon it would be a pretty damned good start to the day. And since they have no problem being fucked while asleep and actually quite like the notion, then hell! – how could anyone else possibly find anything objectionable about it?
Hmm. Not too sure about equating the attitudes of Galloway with the pronouncements of Akin. Sure, both sets of attitudes diminish or ‘disappear’ women. But I’d suggest Akin’s diminishing is of a different order in the scale of things.
Akin appears to be saying that rape or (at least some of) its consequences are kind of okay even where all and sundry would agree that rape was inflicted.
Galloway on the other hand appears confused on what might constitute sex and what might constitute rape.
I think they are similar, it’s just that Akin’s line is drawn differently than Galloways. But they both run the line that some rape is real but other rape isn’t. Akin is basically saying that most rape that results in pregnancy isn’t real: in real rape women’s bodies shut down and they don’t get pregnant, therefore any woman who wants an abortion after rape is probably lying and it wasn’t really rape to start with.
Yes, there are degrees of difference within their views, but they’re both basically saying that women don’t have sovereignty over their bodies, that they lie about rape, and both are contributing significantly to rape culture.
This kind of “argument” comes up a lot, Bill – you know, the classic “but I’d be flattered if a hot chick wolf-whistled at me from a car!” “I’d totally be okay with a woman propositioning me in an elevator!” kind of responses to serious discussions about rape culture / misogyny / women’s assumed consent etc.
Of course for some reason it’s always based on “if someone I totally already wanted to fuck”. Wishful thinking, I guess.
I wish we didn’t have to have this conversation. It’s as difficult as it is important.
I just wanted to say that husbands were still legally allowed to force their wives to have sex with them in NZ as recently as 1982. Galloway grew up in a world in which many men felt they had conquest rights over other people’s bodies.
Too many in my mother’s generation had their own potential for sexual pleasure destroyed as they found their husbands claimed their “rights” against their own wishes, when they were exhausted or in pain, when they were sleeping or, or trying to have a bath, or just whenever, with absolutely no regard for their wishes or their sovereignty to their own bodies.
It’s easy to get a rise out of you, Mozza. So you’ve got that in common with Assange, boom tssssh!
Yes, well done, Te Reo. That’s another round to you, my friend.
Anything to say about the substance of the report? Or is it too uncomfortable for you to comment on?
I think Galloway has a big mouth and he’s incapable of thinking before he speaks. His words are ill chosen and insensitive, but I don’t think he’s a rape apologist.
You don’t think this whole “crying rape” thing has any connection with Assange pissing off the most powerful and corrupt institutions and individuals in the world?
You don’t think this whole “crying rape” thing has any connection with Assange pissing off the most powerful and corrupt institutions and individuals in the world?
Certainly. There is a very clear connection between the people who think that Assange is innocent of rape and that the women complainants are liars (they’re the ones using the terms like ‘crying rape’), and the left’s agenda to resist attempts to suppress Assange and wikileaks.
Who needs the CIA when you can wind up the Feminists and point them at your target?
It’s not “the Feminists” who are going after Assange. The Swedish branch of Women Against Rape has issued the strongest possible condemnation of these wild allegations.
Following our complaint Gilligan’s Daily Telegraph blog has changed somewhat. But where is the apology for his slanderous misrepresentation of WAR?
Dear Marcus Warren
Andrew Gilligan’s blog on the Telegraph website “Ken Livingstone loses a few thousand more votes” totally misrepresents Women Against Rape. He says:
“My running-dog thesis is that both the major events of the past week – the arrest of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange on rape allegations, and the student ruck in Parliament Square – were specially arranged by some sort of Tory deity to confuse the Left and make it look stupid.
What else are we to make of the demand by Women Against Rape, no less, that the rape allegations against Mr Assange must not be investigated and the great hero immediately freed?”
We never said or implied any of this. We simply questioned the unusual zeal with which he is being pursued when so many rapists in both Britain and Sweden are not (Guardian letters, 9 December, see below). The figures speak for themselves: 90% of reported rapes never reach court in Sweden; the conviction rate is 6.5% in the UK and similar in Sweden; men accused of rape are routinely granted bail.
We are an independent women’s organisation which has campaigned for rape to be taken seriously and we have been supporting victims of rape for 34 years. We do not take kindly to women’s demand for protection and justice being misused to forward political agendas, which is what Mr Gilligan seems intent on, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst.
Mr Gilligan’s distortion of what we said misrepresents and undermines what we stand for, and we can only wonder why he is doing that. We stand for justice not for lynch mobs. Where does Mr Gilligan stand?
We would like to know what will be done to rectify his slanderous statement.
While we cannot comment on the allegations against Mr Assange since we do not know the facts of the case, we do not condone attacks against the women who reported him. Whatever the merits of their allegations, it is not them but the criminal justice authorities in both Sweden and England who are responsible for the way in which these allegations are being dealt with. The authorities’ poor record in dealing with rape has given the go-ahead to claims that most women who report rape are liars. In fact, police and prosecutors are often the first to disbelieve women – we are fighting several cases of rape victims being imprisoned for making a false allegation after they reported rape but were disbelieved by the authorities.
In defence of women and girls, and of anyone who has suffered rape or sexual assault, we cannot allow political agendas to pervert our struggle for justice.
When she says “We do not take kindly to women’s demand for protection and justice being misused to forward political agendas, which is what Mr Gilligan seems intent on, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst” she’s talking about people like you Morrissey, as well as the powers trying to suppress Assange.
More on Women Against Rape’s position on the Assange case:
It’s not “the Feminists” who are going after Assange. The Swedish branch of Women Against Rape has issued the strongest possible condemnation of these wild allegations.
Good point!
What some don’t seem to get, is that we who suspect these particular women of having let’s say, not the purest of motive, are not saying that all women who complain of rape are liars!
My question, weka, is why are otherwise-intelligent people sincerely trying to argue that being charged with rape is Totally The Worst Thing Ever?
We all know that very few rapes get reported, even fewer get prosecuted, an infinitesimal number get convictions, and whenever the accused is a celebrity (reference: any rugby played accused of sexual assault EVER) there is in fact the complete opposite of a negative societal response. Woman’s Weekly covers are practically guaranteed.
Yet we’re meant to believe that the Globalised US Hegemony can’t come up with better shit than rape accusations? At least in Blake’s 7 they had a sufficient understanding of human culture to make it child molestation.
Rape is a perfect character assassination allegation. Remember the goal here is not for the ‘charges to stick’ in a court of law. For instance no charges have to be laid, no session of court held, no finding reached, for Assange to be permanently screwed and permanently placed on the run. Job done.
NB as weka has said, its more than possible for Assange to be fully guilty of the allegations AND for these legal proceedings to be manipulated by international powers for their own advantage. The two are not mutually exclusive.
CV, the goal is to have a man accused of sexual assault face the accusation and defend himself. If Assange’s own behaviour exposes him to the risk of extradition to another country to face unrelated charges, bad luck. That sort of thing happens all the time; eg. a driver gets pulled over for a traffic violation, and gets arrested for a warrant issued on earlier alleged crimes or gets deported for being an illegal immigrant etc.
And, to be clear, if the US has a legally sound case to extradite Assange from the UK or Sweden to face charges that he has broken US law, then he should be extradited to face those charges, too. In saying that, I note that both countries will not extradite if the death penalty is a possible outcome, something I agree with.
If Assange’s own behaviour exposes him to the risk of extradition to another country to face unrelated charges, bad luck.
Extradition to another country to face unrelated charges is completely unacceptable given the specific circumstances:
– That the country in question is likely to be the US
– That relevant charges have already been secretly laid, in the US, via a sealed indictment.
– That Assange’s chances for fair treatment and a fair trial in the US is minimal.
– That permanent incarceration in a military prison like Guanatanamo Bay is tolerable by Sweden etc as it is not the “death penalty”.
– That any such charges would be based as Assange acting as a publisher or journalist, and not as a leaker of secret information (Manning supposedly leaked the information to Wikileaks, Assange’s organisation published it).
Your cavalier attitude (that it’s just “bad luck”) painfully underplays how significant an issue this is for the chilling effect it will have on whistleblowers, journalists and publishers world wide.
You also avoid the topic of deliberate manipulation of the legal system by major powers to achieve political ends other than the provision of impartial justice to victims of crime.
Nope, not even close. The only chilling effect will be on men who can’t take no for an answer, hopefully. And despite your optimism, none of the issues you list prevent Assange’s eventual extradition. And that is as it should be, because the law should not be bent or ignored for the famous. There is no Assange Exemption, just is there is no wealth or power exemption.
I’ve seen plenty of references to Assange’s ‘bravery’ in these discussions. That suggests he knew that what he did at Wikileaks had risks attached, one of which is that publishing the military secrets of a country might tend to be illegal in that country. If you know the risk and go ahead anyway, why complain if it all goes pear shaped?
One irony of this situation is that the UK will probably look to extradite him back from Sweden when his court case there is completed to face charges of skipping bail. If he ever does get sent to the USA, it’ll probably be from the UK then, not Sweden now.
Rape is a perfect character assassination allegation.
Yes, that’s why no one watches Roman Polanski films any more.
[And, just for the record, he unquestionably drugged and raped an underage woman before fleeing the country where he faced prosecution. Which is why everyone took it so seriously.]
is why are otherwise-intelligent people sincerely trying to argue that being charged with rape is Totally The Worst Thing Ever?
One of the core problems with this type of crime is that in our society sex is almost always conducted in private, so in the absence of physical evidence, the case often comes down to ‘he said, she said’. Which cuts both ways; for while this fact will often make it very difficult for a genuine prosecution to leap over the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ hurdle … it also makes it very difficult for a genuine defendant to dispel the stigma of a false accusation.
I thought the theory was that the charges were a roundabout way of getting Assange exradited to the US, not to get him stigmatised. Rape charges may or may not be useful for creating “the stigma of a false allegation”. As a vehicle for extradition they are less than ideal, and it’s hard to imagine the US couldn’t come up with something much more effective.
But you now seem to be saying that “some” women who complain of rape ARE liars. Thanks for clearing that up. Should make a good topic for discussion at the next branch meeting.
Where indeed are the missing funds? Apparently they have ‘vaporized’, MF Global style. How could the court possibly conclude that Sentinel was not acting in bad faith and did not intend to defraud its customers? If $460 million in customer funds were ‘transferred to a house account’ where they were ‘serving improperly as collateral for loans extended to Sentinel Management Group’, that clearly means they were stolen, respectively ‘misappropriated’.
Oh yes that ‘guess’ blinglish made to ‘balance’ the books which would be considered ‘fraud’ by most reasonable ethical standards if this lot had any.
Wish the MSM would grow a pair and dissect the mongrel over this and the many other fanciful BS rants he’s had on the parliamentary floor in question time.
Yeah it will for people in NZ because I turned cloudflare off and you’re now talking directly to a server inside NZ. But there is some irony in this.
It costs $20 per month for cloudflare. Normally this sends NZ traffic out to their servers which appear to be all offshore. It then caches the site so efficiently that we have a massive drop in the traffic at our main server, because we’re really only providing data to cloudflare to disperse. Nett effect is that our main server traffic is down to a trickle and most of it apart from admin is overseas traffic. Meanwhile everyone reading our site from NZ is picking up something like 250GB per month mostly over the Southern Cross cable.
So why do I do this? Well the rationing system for the Southern Cross cable is at the NZ servers. We have a ration of about GB of overseas traffic on our main dedicated server. Most plans are 20-25GB, ours is a bit larger. Almost all of our overseas traffic is bots. Searchbots and RSS are legit and wanted, and we run a persistent war against other types of bots. However we currently get charged $2/GB for anything over our ration. This in most months is at least $100. In bad months it has been known to go up and be more than the base cost of the server.
So it saves us a lot of money to increase the traffic over the southern cross using cloudflare by forcing our readers to read the site from overseas servers. We do this to reduce the excessive charging for overseas traffic at our server that we mostly don’t want. Perverse eh?
It’d be nice if cloudflare had a server inside NZ. But they won’t because the overseas data charges would be too high.
Such is the life with a monopoly supplier of bandwidth.
Cloudflare will be going back on as soon as I have chance to debug it. In the couple of months it has been on it, it has cost $40 and has saved us something like $300. It has probably cost the country a damn sight more.
But in reality it is going to be simpler to just move the main servers back offshore and get out of this bloody silly charging nightmare. There I can hire servers with massive caps that the site cannot exceed for less than we pay for here. The alternative is to run a much cheaper virtual server with cloudflare keeping the CPU down at the server.
I need to bank the deposit slip that provides a symbolic amount to The Standard.
I have been carying that bit of paper in my wallet for a while, forgetting to drop by the bank during lunchtime 🙂
It is the recognition that means a lot in this lonely life waiting for the internet to resume in its full flood… 🙂
Finally got to talk to a chorus tech. It looks like there isn’t a way to communicate a simple message from Orcon to Chorus like I need a ADSL filter taken out at the apartment blocks switchboard, and the building manager is only here for a few hours in the week. Just like I couldn’t book a move because the my tenant leaving hadn’t booked a move order. *sigh* I guess that it is still frigging ICMS – sounds like a RPG type problem. But now I have talked to an tech – friday morning!
No e-mail for a few days. My mail server is offline….
I would think not. I suspect that the problem was with some kind of minifying the CSS that resulted in not having ANY CSS from the site. So you saw the site without the makeup 🙂
Sorry but why would you use he most buggy version of Internet Exploder?? FF is the only thing I use in here, and yesterday was a little problematic. But apart from that I usually have no problems.
Because IE6 was the most secure of MS browsers, last release I could lock down & know it was safe. Never found it particularly buggy, still use it occasionally when I need ActiveX which FF doesn’t support. It also renders fonts on some sites better than FF. Bit dated now, crashes on the likes of Paypal, but I refuse to use the later versions of IE which are a security nightmare IMO.
Most people had trouble with IE because they didn’t know how to use it.
Ok I will have a look at work (haven’t set up the usual web development environ’s on this computer yet). And I’m running on my cellphone at home right now.
Waiting for Chorus at home to put my link back on. Was meant to be last night – didn’t happen (which was interesting – loading too much work on them?). And that is just at the exchange. They’re going to have to come here to remove a ADSL splitter at the apartment’s block board – had to cut the lines and remove the hole in the floor when we polished the concrete.
Not looking forward to that because I have to get a time when both the building manager and the tech actually get here at the same time and take time off work. In the meantime half of my home systems are down.
It’s nice to have the Standard back.
For those unable to access through firefox, I just bounced over from ‘idle thoughts of an idle fellow’ (always worth a read). And presto the site is restored to normality.
Under the general license, which will remain in effect until October 5, 2012, an NGO can transfer funds up to $300,000 during the 45-day period to Iran to be used for humanitarian relief and reconstruction activities related to the earthquake response,” the Treasury said.
“NGOs interested in transferring more than $300,000 during the 45-day period may apply for a specific license.”
“It is important to note that the general license specifically forbids any dealings or involvement with individuals or entities designated for support for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or terrorism,” the Treasury said.
Just had to remember to insinuate Iran has WMD’s, and sponsors “terrorism”. You wouldn’t want people to forget those crucial “facts” amongst the “charity” of lifting sanctions!
Just had to remember to insinuate Iran has WMD’s, and sponsors “terrorism”. You wouldn’t want people to forget those crucial “facts” amongst the “charity” of lifting sanctions!
America fcuk yeah…..
Governments like those in NZ and UK say they shouldn’t pick winners, shouldn’t invest directly in the country, should not plan but leave the market to decide, seem to act differently when it comes to Olympic sport where we see record investment, ruthless targeting and rigorous planning.
Good article on this (UK-based, but relevant here too):
Defamation, distortion and disinformation
Murdoch turns his guns on Ecuador
Wednesday 22 August 2012
Of course, it comes as no surprise that Ecuador’s heroic president is now the object of the scorn and fury of the U.S. and U.K. governments.
Over the last few days, we’ve looked at how British state TV and state radio, and “liberal” papers like the ridiculous but loyal Grauniad have faithfully served as an unquestioning conduit of government black propaganda, no matter how fanciful and wild it might be.
But, really, the leaders in this sort of thing are still the Murdoch outlets. From the illiberal but well-bred ideologues at the Times right through to the mouth-breathing dolts and giddy loons of Fox News, one thing you know the Murdoch empire will deliver is consistency.
This morning on TV3, I watched Rachel Smalley adopt her gravest expression to introduce an outrageous item from Murdoch’s British Sky TV. Dominic Waghorn, in tones of the deepest sincerity, tried to show how the “defiant” Ecuadorian prime minister, while appearing to protect a journalist, is in fact stomping all over press freedom.
Viewers are treated to these words by right wing Ecuadorian journalist Jorge Ortiz: “I think Correa is fooling the world. He uses very wisely the media to present himself as a leader that respects and promotes free press which is not true. We’re very worried, very worried indeed we know that he is killing the right of journalists to express themselves. I’m sure that within two or three years there will not be any free press in Ecuador.”
Dominic Waghorn ends the item with this magnificently sententious peroration: “Julian Assange may be enjoying the full protection of the Ecuadorian state; others who have spoken out against it may not be so lucky.”
Of course, if we want to find an example of leaders who actually do “kill the right of journalists” not only to “express themselves”, but to tell the truth, Mr Ortiz and Mr Waghorn would be intoning grandly (and truthfully, not dishonestly) about Barack Obama and David Cameron.
Most of South America’s media outlets are run by local versions of Murdoch who have supported dictatorships and endlessly promote military intervention against democratically elected governments. If whoever runs the media in Ecuador is anything like Brazil’s Roberto Marinho was, suppressing them is actually working in favour of freedom of the press. I also look at putting Murdoch in prison the same way.
Sadly you are generally right, hence what is needed is a balane of sorts:
This is just a selection that was also largely nver broadcast, esxscept on state media.
We have a media dictatorship in NZ, in Australia and the US, where commercial media is all that counts. The few token indepentend or left leaning journos are a fucking sick joke here. They are rather pre-occupied with some weird lifestyle choices, they do NOT give a damn about the needs and suffering of low waged, of beneficiaries and others down the ladder, they only “abuse” topics about them to get soem stories out that may sell, also in mainstream, of which they often rely for at least additional income.
NZ has NO left, it is devoid of truly independent and left thinking media and so forth, except the rudimentary forums like this perhaps.
NZ is almost a dictatorship of sorts, where the commercial elite control and manipulate the whole media, TVNZ included, daily. There is NO independent reporting, NO real information of substance, it is a DESERT media landscape not to be taken seriously, but to be a truly HOSTILE ground for free thinking and opinion now.
That is my opinon, you may think differently, but you will have to struggle to convince me of otherwise.
It will be welcomed, but make an “effort”, please, as I cannot bother with half wits.
Thanks for the response and link to Giovanni Tiso’s blog yesterday. The comments around third way politics/Tony Blair were interesting. Look where that got the UK. Fail.
It seems I doubled up on what you had previously posted re Deborah Russells article. It was heartening to read her words and like you I hope Richard Long stays away from the “Opinion” column and never comes back. It would be a breath of fresh air to have a columnist with a rational, intelligent and socially minded view featuring in the Dominion Post.
Despite Deborah Russells reassuring words I decided that David Shearers comment was the last straw for me as a Labour voter. Thats a bit sad after all these years.Theres just been too many WTF? moments and there no going back. Hunter S Thompson comes to mind. “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”. I think thats what Labour have done.
No problem re double-up – hope others here also read Deborah’s article and Giovanni’s as imo these are some of the best summations I have seen – and exactly the approach I wish Labour would take. Shearer’s bene bashing has also left me ‘cold’ and there would need to be a lot of change within Labour (parliamentary) for me to continue to vote for them.
PS – how about an update on the new home/garden etc on Weekend Social this week!
You must be a sucker for punishment if you want to hear about rock strata and grass grub:) I owe Joe90 a thank you for his advice on the “wrecking bar” to break the rocks but thats another story for another time…………
Is it just me or is David Cunliffe now sufficiently cowed by his caucus that he is letting David Parker do all Labour’s speeches and articles on the economy these days?
Parker seems to be everywhere, doing a workmanlike job. Hello, Mr Cunliffe?
One has to wonder if Cunliffe’s playing a bit of a long game. Any silence can easily be read as censorship by head office, and Shearer’s blandness and Mallard’s continuing social media fuckups are probably doing far better things for him than continually reminding the ABCs that he’s still over here being all competent and charismatic (thus making them more ABC through irritated spite).
According to this link provided by Craig Glen Eden in the “Joyce’s latest list” thread, David Cunliffe is still giving it 100% in the house despite the empty chamber.
These improvements are changing the transport face of Australia. The poor cousin, freight rail, is now being seen as a serious alternative to the big trucks. The benefits of getting freight from our roads onto rail are obvious. For the everyday motorist, it means safer highways. For the commuter, less congested city streets. And for all of us, cleaner air and a cut to our greenhouse gas output.
…rail.
Talking about transport it appears that Phil Twyford has managed to determine NACTs planning model.
Yes, they should still receive a benefit. When we have close to zero unemployment rates the issue would be different. But while we have an economy that needs to run a higher employment rate, why not let the people that don’t want to work subsist on the dole, and give the jobs to people that want them?
I am assuming of course we are talking about the small numbers of people on the dole who don’t want paid employment and who do no other work whatsoever. Most people I know on benefits do some kind of work that contributes to society, whether that be cash work or voluntary work or raising kids or looking after other family etc.
While we’re at it, please produce some reliable research that demonstrates that ‘people not wanting to work’ is an actual problem in NZ.
I don’t know if it is an actual problem nor is it encumbered on me to to provide anything. I was asking an opinion on something, not arguing an opinion.
But Contrarian your question asserts the existence of those who do not want to work.
When pressed to establish a factual base for your assertion you’re all – “Oh, just asking….”.
Not different from my asking your opinion about Martians eating their children. In a serious exchange the asking of the question necessarily implies belief in the matter asserted.
That’s why it is incumbent on you to establish the matter. Unless you were off in some Monty Pythonesque joyride throughout
Proportionately, 98% of time should be spent on discussing the creation of work for the many tens of thousands who would start a job this afternoon if they were offered one.
And 2% of the time on kicking the ass of any slackers out there.
It seems the Right Wing prefer to do the opposite though
“”She found that only new mothers and teenagers worked less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren’t under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. In addition, Forget finds that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 per cent, with fewer incidences of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse.[1]””
When benefits were proportionately much higher in NZ and there were plenty of jobs, those choosing not to work were, famously, known by name by the PM.
“Do you think money should be given to those who can but refuse to work?”
As CV states above, its a red herring. If it does exist, then it is a logical reaction.
And, my answer is yes, without a doubt, under our current situation money should be given to those who can but refuse to work…a few reasons include:
our poverty producing minimum wage, the 90 day right to fire, abuse of ‘flexibility’ by employers, step down period for benefits, temporary employment contracts, the massive amounts of money that greedy people sit on, the cost of living, education is a commodity, the stigma that is used by WINZ every time a benefit is applied for…and lastly, people are right to give up on trying to find dignified employment, because your ignorant, but supposedly ‘ethical’ perspective, has become normalised.
Yes because:-
a) They probably do some work which is beneficial to the community – it just isn’t for an employer
b) There’s so few of the people who actually don’t do anything that it just isn’t worth spending the time to even find them
c) I recall an article I read a couple of years ago about a couple that won lotto. They didn’t work, their fortune had increased from the $8m that they had won to $10m. These people and people like them are bigger bludgers than than anyone on the benefit
OMG – totally buys into the Right Wing framing. Misses the point that yes workers are taxed too much…because property and assets are not taxed at all!!!
A party that puts Trevor Mallard in its front bench instead of a woodchipper is not one I’m voting for. I thought that the man was a useless, narcissistic troughing sack of shit, but now words fail me.
Now, Is David Shearer going to say anything other than waffle? (Answer: No, of course not) The problem, sadly, is not just Mallard’s terminal dickishness, or Jones’ hissy fits, Robertson’s meaningless fluff, or Curran’s dribbling idiocy – or even the Paganis’ stale Blairism… it’s Shearer’s utter, utter uselessness. He has no ideas, no ideals, no ability to discipline his party. He’s not a leader and this is not a government in waiting; it’s not even an opposition.
I look forward to Shearer’s next newsletter – I need a laugh.
Really though, now, as much as we did in the Depression, we need a real Labour party and instead all we have is some sort of organised rort.
I propose a reform of our democracy at a fundamental level: we let focus groups replace parliament and government itself. That would be pure and honest – and best of all, of course, it would be efficient.
Wow. Interesting that he has so dramatically broken his cover to argue his position on this occasion, albeit in a snide passive-aggressive way.
Jesus “taxed to breaking point”!. Underpaid to breaking point – nah ‘parently not.. Is there any reason other than historical accident that Mallard is not a member of the National Party?
Thanks Trevor. You have helped me make my mind up – Labour will not be receiving my vote at the next election. If I wanted a bunch of dog-whistling cretins to represent me I’d vote National.
Settle down people. Of course high income people use trusts and a pile of rorts to avoid paying their tax. It really pisses me off that people on not much more than the minimum wage sometimes pay more tax than millionaires.
Now, did he just miss the substance of his own dog-whistle, or did he just miss the substance of his own dog-whistle?
And did he forget that on the tax front, those on entitlements get to pay a whopping 80c in the dollar on every dollar earned on anything over (from memory) $80 gross (this is done through reducing the core amount of welfare entitlement paid accordingly) ? And did he also forget that before that $80 limit is reached that some entitlements that are in addition to the core benefit are rebated at 100% on every dollar earned…ie, every one dollar earned = one dollar deducted from the entitlement?
I’ve no argument that poorer paid workers pay ridiculous amounts of tax (eg. student loan repayments plus [in the unlikely event you can afford it] kiwi saver contributions = somewhere in the region of 30% tax)
So, how about calling for higher wages Trevor? And how about you stop sniping at people who, if they did pick up some work, would be losing far and away more from their earnings than anyone else.
Or even better. How about you just leave parliament?
That’s a rhetorical question Mickey, a more plausible one is when is he sane ? please explain as some of us don’t facepalm or twatter etc and if I did he wouldn’t be a friend.
I thought everyone had gotten the memo that Labour are now the party of me-too beneficiary bashers, desperately trying to match National’s record of kicking the vulnerable at every turn.
I put up a post earlier in the day that one of my colleagues, whose views I respect, thought wasn’t helpful. The nice thing about Facebook is that i can choose to delete my own posts. I have.
one of my colleagues, whose views I respect, thought wasn’t helpful.
And Trevor needed to be told it wasn’t helpful? WTF?
Come on, Paganis and Salmond, you’re the self-styled “experts”, tell us again how Trevor is the smart one and the rest of us just don’t get it. Explain us how the likes of us thickies saying “Please STFU” to Mallard and Shearer are wrong, because we can’t understand the brilliance of this “strategy” (is that what you’re still calling it?).
FYI: this story was in the news headlines at 2 pm on Newstalk ZB. That’s what you wanted, right? Well done!
Except (and I’ll have to explain this slowly to you) the headline wasn’t “Labour gets tough, shifts to centre” or whatever fantasy you guys dreamed up. The headline was “Yet another Labour fuck-up” (I paraphrase, but not much).
Blame the media for shooting at Labour? Well, stop loading the fucking cannon.
And interesting comments on the imperator thread, from Deborah who did that awesome Dom Post article trying to change the narrative on beneficiaries. Good on you Anthony for saying you’ll post some extracts and a link here.
Show us these jobs Trevor, put up or shut the f**k up, the EVIDENCE Trevor, why would we bother debating anything with someone who has obviously spent way too long sucking at the teat of the highest form of State entitlement that His brain appears to have turned to mush when what He says lacks the veracity of EVIDENCE,
The EVIDENCE Trevor??? show us the WINZ figures for the number of people in the past 12 months who have been given the kick off of a benefit because they have REFUSED to accept work that has been offered,any work,
Your emotive Bulls**t Trevor is sickening, you cannot show us the EVIDENCE of a body of beneficiaries of any size who have REFUSED any work when work has been offered,
The fact is Trevor, i think with an honestly held belief that you are a Liar if you think that there are any amount of people who when offered a job, ANY JOB, by WINZ or anyone else, have REFUSED to take up that job,
Tell us all the TRUTH for once in your miserable life Trevor, its simple, there are not enough jobs in the economy to employ all those able and willing to work,
My view is that your Party should simply put you out to pasture Trevor, as your use by date has long been exceeded and the contents are beginning to smell like s**t…
The big problem with such simple slogans is that they seem reasonable. It’s not until you really think about them and compare them with reality that you get to see the lies and misdirection that are behind them.
Reading ‘Open Mike’ today is a slightly quixotic experience, we have Labour activists openly slapping a labour MP,(a well earned slap at that),
And,
National supporters giving it to their Government over their attempt to keep ACT breathing political oxygen in the form of ‘Charter Schools’,
Step to the Left people, as can be seen from the 2 small examples given, there is nothing to the right except empty rhetoric from the empty minds of a failed empty neo-Liberal ism…
I know exactly what it is, but when I read alarmist drivel like the comment below regarding the destruction of PHARMAC I’m given to flights of ridiculing such comments.
Will you be laughing when your taxes are being spent on legal disputes created by transnational companies arguing against policies arrived at democratically?
“TPP would greatly increase the number of investor-state attacks on public interest policies and would expose governments to massive new financial liabilities.”
“The rules that panelists [ICSID] will adjudicate would supersede national laws. Article 12.7 of the TPP, for instance, provides a long list of prohibitions against government actions; under it, laws imposing capital controls (even to ameliorate a crisis), rules governing domestic content of products or any protections of any domestic industry would be illegal…”
When it comes to it, you’d simply break away from the Agreement and join up with other countries who were also bearing the brunt of corporate imperialism.
Well and good CV, however what if such countries are also bearing the brunt of corporate imperialism in their mainstream media too, successfully keeping people sleepy and uninformed?
We are all becoming like the toad that was put in the cool water and slowly heated up. We put up with more and more of this b**shit. Our tolerance is remarkable and for those who have had it bought to their attention its very horrible to watch.
[lprent: Not my style. I’m more likely to use some kind of pincer. 😈 See like this horse…
I did rather like the way that the system decided to moderate you. Your other comment had the wrong e-mail address (I corrected it for you), and this one had a phrase that akismet found offensive. Good picking by the machine. ]
And Australians have a new name for NZers – refugees.
AUSTRALIA is facing a flood of economic refugees. But the big numbers aren’t from the north, they are from the across the Tasman where Statistics New Zealand yesterday announced the biggest exodus to Australia on record.
Woooooooooo! 53,900 economic refugee’s, fleeing NZ, in the year to July. This does equate roughly to the figure often cited of “1000 NZers leaving for Australia every week”, but even more. Economic refugee is a completely apt term.
Aussies must think we are idiots voting twice for a government that drives its own citizens away in droves.
I just want to comment on the Julian Assange and Equador thing.
I don’t know what Assange did or did not do in Sweden with those girls. I don’t know if the USA is behind these charges to get him to the USA.
I understand wikileaks is about speaking truth to power.
My question is how principled is Mr Assange seeking refuge from the President of Equador IF he runs a regime averse to freedom of speech, and imprisons people for speaking truth to power? Self interest rules in the end?
Nelson Mandela went to prison for 25 years, was able to make a stand, retain his principles and came out to an atmosphere which could have resulted in massive bloodshed had he given the word. he didn’t. He chose peace and dignity. He spoke truth to power in many ways.
Julian Assange…
The swedish have refused to interview Assange in the Equador Embassy. I think they should.
Yes Tracy. By edict, Julian can do no wrong and any suggestion to the opposite can only be a dastardly plot by George Bush and Dick Cheney. Those two women are actually male CIA operatives from the Treadstone project, disguised as women in order to trap our dear hero. But Julian has come up with a stunning plan , elegant in its simplicity.
I thought the same thing but the comment thread from 11 on this page (http://thestandard.org.nz/nz-vs-ecuador/) cleared things up for me on Monday.
Bill convinced me fairly quickly with his links and knowledge, I could stand corrected though.
I just want to comment on the john banks thing.
he asserts that the boorockacsee is being overrun with rationalists who dont beleive in religion abut the john banks knows that God made the world in 7 days 4,300 years ago.
he also designed his hardly davison and the medicine that keeps horrible old men alive.
Some Labour MPs know this is their last term, so they won’t be in power anyway.
Some other Labour MPs believe time is on their side, and that losing the next election will not affect them (as long as they keep their seats).
Somewhere in the middle there may be some other MPs who genuinely do want to win the next election, but for whatever reason, they seem unable to rein in the idiot(s).
If by “Labour” you mean the party membership, outside the cosseted caucus, then the answer is “Yes”. But the MPs don’t seem to care what they think.
Just watching my recording of today’s General Debate.
That politician got amnesia again
From Sue Moroney, delivering some news to John Banks following his contribution to today’s general debate: Banksie apparently predicted that Shearer would be leader of the opposition in the 50th Parliament, and that he (Banks) would be back as an MP in the 50th parliament.
I just watched Banks’ speech (myfreeview recorded it on the end of question time, and started recording the debate in the middle of the general debate).
OMG. He kept referring to the current parliament and the current leader of the opposition in THIS 40th parliament… I checked:
Most Jafas only had one opportunity to vote for Banks, and Len won. I think you could then ascertain that Jafaland became more astute thanks to the consolidation of greater Auckland. So Anne your impression may be misguided !!!!!
Yep. The south and the west voted overwhelmingly Brown. He had a meeting last night where St Heliers and Mission Bay were complaining about rates increases. He was apologetic. He should stick to his guns and tell them to complain to the Government who set super city up.
Besides 90+% of this particular area voted for Banks. Why should Len care?
Yes Len has become the sacrificial goat regarding rates.
The real issue to me is the every increasing debt. This implies to me that to keep rates down the councils utilized debt as a major source to fund councils wishes.(and some smoke and mirrors accounting to CCO’s) Not a very sustainable policy. Unfortunately the next mayor is for an even more stressful time. For Len’s sake coming 2nd at the next election could be a godsend for his family, friends and personally.
Funny how all attention is towards the mayor there are many councillors also accountable.
I suspect that most people who voted for Len knew that the rates were going up. It was, after all, fairly obvious that they would due to Rodney Hides and National’s implementation of the SuperShitty.
I read a book some years ago -one of those organisational improvements books, darned if I can remember what it was called…
basically it said when difficult people start making life unpleasant in an organisation, the traditional approach was to get rid of them , and everything would be peaceful again.
Well, this guy said we should listen to these difficult, annoying people, because they may hold the answer for the improvement of the organisation, will challenge it and come up with different outside the box ideas, ie not yes-men /women
Maybe it’s time Labour realised Cunliffe may not be the problem, he may actually be the solution, and this may be a little uncomfortable for them
General comment on quality of media journalism? (sorry sensationalism)
I listened to a report on RNZ this evening of a tragic motoring accident.
“One witness said (recording of witness voice “I heard a loud bang and rushed outside. The vehicle was turning left into a church …”)”
Why do we get these sorts of soundbites fed to us as sources of “eyewitness” accounts on so many bulletins these days.
Why do we get these sorts of soundbites fed to us as sources of “eyewitness” accounts on so many bulletins these days.
My son and I call it the ‘nosy neighbour’ phenomenon… It’s like the person who when a meth lab is discovered, or someone is arrested, says “I always thought there was something off about them”. (You don’t hear people say “she was such a nice, quiet woman” any more, fortunately..
And it now appears that we’re going to have to stop calling lying, thieving scum something other than rats as it’s now been proven that they’ve got more empathy and compassion than your average right wing politician.
The free rat, occasionally hearing distress calls from its compatriot, learned to open the cage and did so with greater efficiency over time. It would release the other animal even if there wasn’t the payoff of a reunion with it. Astonishingly, if given access to a small hoard of chocolate chips, the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive — which is a lot to expect of a rat.
The researchers came to the unavoidable conclusion that what they were seeing was empathy — and apparently selfless behavior driven by that mental state.
DTB
I thought the rat info was timely. When wouldn’t it be though? That’s amazing but humans don’t need to be shown up in this sort of way. By rats! What next? Spiders make good mothers, carry their babies on their back etc. Really we don’t live up to our brain capacity.
Evening Colin – having searched you on this site, I note that this only your second visit. Your first was on August 10. On both occasions, you targetted Bad12 – are you a stalker and is your age 16?
[lprent: By the same logic then that begs the question – is bad 12? In which case I’d have to hope that censorship act doesn’t apply here bearing in mind HS’s comment to me and my response. ]
Damn i interrupted the importance of a scrabble game to have my rawene upset by a pair of horse’s balls,
Now that could be a double intendre, but, honestly it aint people, how the hell tho did you know what i do for a day job ,
If colon16 had a ounce of intellect in it’s little snippet of spittle i could probably just gather the strength to slide my hand up it’s hole and administer a cholecystectomy, that would teach em to have the gall to address me such…
I think Trevor has upset a lot of sensible left-leaning people. Personally, I think he must be drunk when posting some of the stuff he posts online. Or is he suffering from dementia such that he now thinks he’s Paula Bennett.
This Labour Party needs reaming.of the artherosclerotic plaque that is restricting blood-flow to good leadership. Trevor is a fatty and calcified deposit on the arteries to the left.
With the government’s asset sales plan in free fall, its time for John Key to change his approach. Be bold, and just for once place yourself in the history books, and embrace state capitalism.
Turn the Future Investment Fund into a fully fledged sovereign wealth fund, and transfer ownership of our SOE’s to it — like Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, give it full range to invest in anything and everything, turn it into a balwark of NZ and public ownership, and a companion piece to the NZ Super Fund, and a huge cash cow to fund schools, hospitals, broadband, rail, roads…
If its good enough for Dubai, Kuwait, Norway and Singapore, its good enough for us.
And David Shearer, promise to do that when winning the 2014 election.
Imagine if Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble did it back in ’86, instead of flogging them off to Gordon Gekko-types. They would truly be heroes.
Way too sensible for the likes of Slippery, and, when Dave aint doing His bit to alleviate poverty via a spot of mango-skinned redistribution He’s probably still coming to grips with that overly trite piece of neo-Liberal bulls**t, ”the Government has no business in business”,
Mostly the rest of us can see that as an investment vehicle our Government has the greatest ability to be proactive within the New Zealand economy just as the many countries you have highlighted are,
Add to that list of course China where the State has no problem ‘owning’ the smallest of factory’s producing the easiest of goods to manufacture and we can see that Government does have a role in business on all levels from investment to ownership,
Unfortunately little old us seem still to be stuck in the dark ages…
That sounds like a really stupid idea. Better to just turn the SoEs back into what they were and always should have been – state services run to benefit NZ and not to make a profit.
It may sound a bit dumb to some, but this seems to be the most popular world wide song at present. It even hits tunes in European charts, and it is is highly popular. Bieber move off your top arrogant arse, this is much, much better, leaving you in the shadow.
Suck it up or hate it, your choice, it is interesting. In Brazil it is based on some tunes from certain regions, and it is also rural. It is “popular”.
After his first cabinet meeting as top dog, Chris ‘Chippy’ Hipkins gave his first speech from the podium as Prime Minister. Since his election as Labour leader he has been clear that the government’s agenda would be pared back to “bread and butter issues”. So the decision to can ...
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A deeply-statistically-flawed poll the other day reported that 43.8 percent do not trust the National Party leader. I say deeply-statistically-flawed because it can be empirically proven that this data is non-correct.Let me show my working.The Newshub-Reid Research poll asks 1,000 random New Zealanders what they reckon. Thus we can infer ...
Hipkins held his expected bonfire of the policies today, ditching the RNZ/TVNZ merger, punting hate speech legislation to the Law Commission (which basicly means it will never happen), and dumping the "bougie dole" social insurance scheme. But along the way, he also shitcanned a key part of the government's emissions ...
Fonterra’s farmers will be relieved that prices in the Global Dairy Trade auction this week have rebounded – up 3.2% across the board. It is the first rise since December 6 The index had fallen 2.8% on January 3 and 0.1% on January 17, to kick off 2023 on a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Announcements on the provision of aid – to Auckland, Turkey and Syria – are recorded on the Beehive website today along with a statement from the PM about his flying visit to Australia. This was Chris Hipkins’ first overseas visit since he took office, enabling him ...
There’s a 19th century flavour to National’s “social investment” strategy, in that it aims to seek capital from philanthropists and charitable organisations – some of them having their own religious agendas- to fund and deliver the provision of social services. Beyond that point, the details are remarkably scarce. Regardless, “social ...
Karl du Fresne writes – The jury has returned its verdict, and it’s emphatic. New Zealanders want the country’s name left as it is. In a Newshub-Reid Research poll, respondents were asked what they thought New Zealand should be known as. Fifty-two percent wanted the country to be ...
Poorly-managed diabetes results in amputations and other expensive hospital treatments – an example of how charging patients to access their medication ends up costing more in the long run. Photo: Getty ImagesTLDR: The phrase ‘penny wise and pound foolish’ is one that applies across much of the Government’s approach to ...
* Dr Bryce Edwards writes- In recent decades the Labour Party has lost its traditional connection with working-class voters, becoming more of a middle-class party of liberalism. This is especially true of Labour’s historic connection with working-class Māori. This is a constituency that the party used to monopolise. ...
In recent decades the Labour Party has lost its traditional connection with working class voters, becoming more of a middle class party of liberalism. This is especially true of Labour’s historic connection with working class Māori. This is a constituency that the party used to monopolise. But ever since the ...
Hi,I wanted to thank everyone who responded to A New Day, a New Cease & Desistover the last five days or so. So many readers have brushed up against MLMs — and they’re something I want to push further into. Did I hear from good old Jonathan Callinan, the ...
As the planet continues to cook, extreme weather events like those we experienced over the last two weeks are set to become more frequent. How we plan our cities to mitigate the risks of climate change will inevitably be more salient going forward, and that will only increase over time. ...
TLDR: For paying subscribers, here’s the key scoops, breaking news and key links I’ve picked up this morning, as at 6.40 am, including:the Reserve Bank of Australia hiked its official cash rate to a 10-year high and warned of more hikes to come, which was more hawkish than expected; RBABP ...
A year ago this week we saw the headline “Mask-wearing 17-year-old egged by aggressive convoy protesters”. As the protestors settled in for their long campout in opposition to vaccination requirements they demonstrated their commitment to standing up for the rights of the individual by verbally abusing, and throwing eggs at, ...
Chris Hipkins has become New Zealand’s 41st prime minister following Ardern’s unexpected resignation—perhaps the bold and unpredictable move Labour needed to improve its election chances. Just six days into his premiership and Labour had its first lead over National in thirteen weeks. National has had a largely uninterrupted run of ...
Good people can come into your life imperceptibly. It can seem they’re just there one day being remarkable. Nat Torkington, for instance.We were both online from the early days, I’m assuming that’s where we first connected; maybe in the UseNet newsgroups, or maybe later through Public Address.But it was when ...
One of New Zealand’s biggest electricity generators, Genesis Energy, has given the go-ahead for a large solar farm near Lauriston on the Canterbury Plains, an hour’s drive south of Christchurch. It is part of Genesis’ strategy of replacing thermal baseload with renewable generation – a mix of wind and solar. ...
Buzz from the Beehive We found just one fresh announcement on the Beehive website this morning, when we made our first visit since 4 February. It was posted in the name of Nanaia Mahuta, our Minister of Foreign Affairs, and explained why she was not at Waitangi at the weekend. ...
Hipkins is doing the right thing for New Zealanders already living in Australia, but there’s now a growing risk of a fresh surge of net emigration of frustrated young Kiwis across the Tasman. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Employers here in Aotearoa are desperate to keep their best-trained, most-productive ...
This post contains two guest posts from readers, both of which were sent to us after the flooding on Friday 27 January, both of which discuss how we handle our stormwater. This is a guest post from Ed Clayton, who’s written for us before about Auckland’s relationship with freshwater, ...
TLDR: For paying subscribers, here’s the key breaking news, scoops and links I’ve found since 4 am this morning, as of 7 am, including:A 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 2,200 in Turkey near its border with Syria; ReutersMetService has warned a new cyclone is forming north of Aotearoa that ...
The politics of Waitangi and the Treaty evident over the weekend have moved into a new space. The politics of Waitangi and the Treaty evident over the weekend have moved into a new space. There is a new wave of Maori activism, which sees the Treaty as a living ...
Originally published by The Hill After decades of failure to pass major federal climate legislation, Congress finally broke through last year with the Inflation Reduction Act and its close to $400 billion in clean energy investments. Energy modeling experts estimated that these provisions would help the U.S. cut its carbon pollution ...
Apology Accepted? “I dropped the ball on Friday, I was too slow to be seen …The communications weren’t fast enough – including mine. I’m sorry for that.”–Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown.HOW OFTEN do politicians apologise? Sincerely apologise? Not offer voters the weasel words: “If my actions have offended anyone, then I ...
At first blush, Christopher Luxon’s comment at the parliamentary powhiri at Waitangi this year sounded tone deaf. The Leader of the Opposition in talking about the Treaty of Waitangi described New Zealand as “a little experiment”. It seemed to diminish the treaty and the very idea of our nation. Yet ...
THE (new) Prime Minister said nobody understands what co-governance means, later modified to that there were so many varying interpretations that there was no common understanding. BRIAN EASTON writes: Co-governance cannot be derived from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It does not use the word. It ...
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by Don Franks While on holiday,I stayed a few days in Scotland with a friend who showed me one of the country’s great working-class achievements. It was a few miles out of central Edinburgh, a huge cantilever bridge across the river Forth. The Forth Bridge was the first major structure ...
Time To Call A Halt: Chris Hipkins knows that iwi leaders possess the means to make life very difficult for his government. Notwithstanding their objections, however, the Prime Minister’s direction of travel – already clearly signalled by his very public demotion of Nanaia Mahuta – must be confirmed by an emphatic and ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 29, 2023 thru Sat, Feb 4, 2023. Story of the Week Social change more important than physical tipping points1.5-degree Goal not plausible Photo: CLICCS / Universität Hamburg Limiting global ...
So Long - And Thanks For All The Fish: In the two-and-a-bit years since Jacinda Ardern’s electoral triumph of 2020, virtually every decision she made had gone politically awry. In the minds of many thousands of voters a chilling metamorphosis had taken place. The Faerie Queen had become the Wicked ...
Look at us here on our beautiful islands in the South Pacific at the start of 2023, we have come so far.Ten days ago we saw a Māori Governor General swearing in our new PM and our first Pasifika Deputy PM, ahead of this year’s parliament where they will be ...
The Herald’s headline writers are at it again! A sensible and balanced piece by Liam Dann on the battle against inflation carries a headline that suggests that NZ is doing worse than the rest of the world. Check it out and see for yourself if I am right. Is this ...
Photo by Anna Demianenko on UnsplashTLDR: Here’s my longer reads and listens for the weekend for sharing with The Kaka’s paying subscribers. I’ve opened this one up for all to give everyone a taste of the sorts of extras you get as a full paying subscriber.Subscribe nowDeeper reads and listens ...
Hello from the middle of a long weekend where I’m letting the last few days unspool, not ready, not yet, to give words to the hardest of what we heard.Instead, today, here are some good words from other people.Mother CourageWhen I wrote last year about Mum and Dad’s move to ...
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Our Cranky Uncle Game can already be played in eight languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. About 15 more languages are in the works at various stages of completion or have been offered to be done. To kick off the new year, we checked with how ...
The (new) Prime Minister said nobody understands what co-governance means, later modified to that there were so many varying interpretations that there was no common understanding.Co-governance cannot be derived from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It does not use the word. It refers to ‘government’ on ...
It’s that time of the week again when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kaka. Jump on this link for our chat about the week’s news with special guests Auckland Central MP Chloe Swarbrick and Auckland City Councillor Julie Fairey, including:Auckland’s catastrophic floods, which ...
In March last year, in a panic over rising petrol prices caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the government made a poor decision, "temporarily" cutting fuel excise tax by 25 cents a litre. Of course, it turned out not to be temporary at all, having been extended in May, July, ...
This month’s open thread for climate related topics. Please be constructive, polite, and succinct. The post Unforced variations: Feb 2023 first appeared on RealClimate. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two fresh press releases had been posted when we checked the Beehive website at noon, both of them posted yesterday. In one statement, in the runup to Waitangi Day, Maori Crown Relations Minister Kelvin Davis drew attention to happenings on a Northland battle site in 1845. ...
It’s that time of the week again when I’m on the site for an hour for a chat in an Ask Me Anything with paying subscribers to The Kaka. Jump in for a chat on anything, including:Auckland’s catastrophic floods, which are set to cost insurers and the Government well over ...
Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers (left) has published a 6,000 word manifesto called ‘Capitalism after the Crises’ arguing for ‘values-based capitalism’. Yet here in NZ we hear the same stale old rhetoric unchanged from the 1990s and early 2000s. Photo: Getty ImagesTLDR: The rest of the world is talking about inflation ...
A couple of weeks ago, after NCEA results came out, my son’s enrolment at Auckland Uni for this year was confirmed - he is doing a BSc majoring in Statistics. Well that is the plan now, who knows what will take his interest once he starts.I spent a bit of ...
Kia ora. What a week! We hope you’ve all come through last weekend’s extreme weather event relatively dry and safe. Header image: stormwater ponds at Hobsonville Point. Image via Twitter. The week in Greater Auckland There’s been a storm of information and debate since the worst of the flooding ...
Hi,At 4.43pm yesterday it arrived — a cease and desist letter from the guy I mentioned in my last newsletter. I’d written an article about “WEWE”, a global multi-level marketing scam making in-roads into New Zealand. MLMs are terrible for many of the same reasons megachurches are terrible, and I ...
Time To Call A Halt: Chris Hipkins knows that iwi leaders possess the means to make life very difficult for his government. Notwithstanding their objections, however, the Prime Minister’s direction of travel – already clearly signalled by his very public demotion of Nanaia Mahuta – must be confirmed by an emphatic ...
Open access notables Via PNAS, Ceylan, Anderson & Wood present a paper squarely in the center of the Skeptical Science wheelhouse: Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased. The signficance statement is obvious catnip: Misinformation is a worldwide concern carrying socioeconomic and political consequences. What drives ...
Mark White from the Left free speech organisation Plebity looks at the disturbing trend of ‘book burning’ on US campuses In the abstract, people mostly agree that book banning is a bad thing. The Nazis did us the favor of being very clear about it and literally burning books, but ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has undergone a stern baptisim of fire in his first week in his new job, but it doesn’t get any easier. Next week, he has a vital meeting in Canberra with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese, where he has to establish ...
As PM Chris Hipkins says, it’s a “no brainer” to extend the fuel tax cut, half price public subsidy and the cut to the road user levy until mid-year. A no braoner if the prime purpose is to ease the burden on people struggling to cope with the cost of ...
Buzz from the Beehive Cost-of-living pressures loomed large in Beehive announcements over the past 24 hours. The PM was obviously keen to announce further measures to keep those costs in check and demonstrate he means business when he talks of focusing his government on bread-and-butter issues. His statement was headed ...
Poor Mike Hosking. He has revealed himself in his most recent diatribe to be one of those public figures who is defined, not by who he is, but by who he isn’t, or at least not by what he is for, but by what he is against. Jacinda’s departure has ...
New Zealand is the second least corrupt country on earth according to the latest Corruption Perception Index published yesterday by Transparency International. But how much does this reflect reality? The problem with being continually feted for world-leading political integrity – which the Beehive and government departments love to boast about ...
TLDR: Including my pick of the news and other links in my checks around the news sites since 4am. Paying subscribers can see them all below the fold.In Aotearoa’s political economyBrown vs Fish Read more ...
TLDR: Including my pick of the news and other links in my checks around the news sites since 4am. Paying subscribers can see them all below the fold.In Aotearoa’s political economyBrown vs Fish Read more ...
In other countries, the target-rich cohorts of swinging voters are given labels such as ‘Mondeo Man’, ‘White Van Man,’ ‘Soccer Moms’ and ‘Little Aussie Battlers.’ Here, the easiest shorthand is ‘Ford Ranger Man’ – as seen here parked outside a Herne Bay restaurant, inbetween two SUVs. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / ...
In other countries, the target-rich cohorts of swinging voters are given labels such as ‘Mondeo Man’, ‘White Van Man,’ ‘Soccer Moms’ and ‘Little Aussie Battlers.’ Here, the easiest shorthand is ‘Ford Ranger Man’ – as seen here parked outside a Herne Bay restaurant, inbetween two SUVs. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / ...
Transport Minister and now also Minister for Auckland, Michael Wood has confirmed that the light rail project is part of the government’s policy refocus. Wood said the light rail project was under review as part of a ministerial refocus on key Government projects. “We are undertaking a stocktake about how ...
Sometime before the new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced that this year would be about “bread and butter issues”, National’s finance spokesperson Nicola Willis decided to move from Wellington Central and stand for Ohariu, which spreads across north Wellington from the central city to Johnsonville and Tawa. It’s an ...
They say a week is a long time in politics. For Mayor Wayne Brown, turns out 24 hours was long enough for many of us to see, quite obviously, “something isn’t right here…”. That in fact, a lot was going wrong. Very wrong indeed.Mainly because it turns ...
One of the most effective, and successful, graphics developed by Skeptical Science is the escalator. The escalator shows how global surface temperature anomalies vary with time, and illustrates how "contrarians" tend to cherry-pick short time intervals so as to argue that there has been no recent warming, while "realists" recognise ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Here’s a quick roundup of the news today for paying subscribers on a slightly frantic, very wet, and then very warm day. In Aotearoa’s political economy today Read more ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Here’s a quick roundup of the news today for paying subscribers on a slightly frantic, very wet, and then very warm day. In Aotearoa’s political economy today Read more ...
Tomorrow we have a funeral, and thank you all of you for your very kind words and thoughts — flowers, even.Our friend Michèle messaged: we never get to feel one thing at a time, us grownups, and oh boy is that ever the truth. Tomorrow we have the funeral, and ...
Kia ora e te whānau. Today, we mark the anniversary of the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi - and our commitment to working in partnership with Māori to deliver better outcomes and tackle the big issues, together. ...
We’ve just announced a massive infrastructure investment to kick-start new housing developments across New Zealand. Through our Infrastructure Acceleration Fund, we’re making sure that critical infrastructure - like pipes, roads and wastewater connections - is in place, so thousands more homes can be built. ...
The Green Party is joining more than 20 community organisations to call for an immediate rent freeze in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, after reports of landlords intending to hike rents after flooding. ...
When Chris Hipkins took on the job of Prime Minister, he said bread and butter issues like the cost of living would be the Government’s top priority – and this week, we’ve set out extra support for families and businesses. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to provide direct support to low-income households and to stop subsidising fossil fuels during a climate crisis. ...
The tools exist to help families with surging costs – and as costs continue to rise it is more urgent than ever that we use them, the Green Party says. ...
Work on the TVNZ/RNZ public media entity to stop; Radio NZ and NZ on Air to receive additional funding Social insurance scheme will not proceed this term The Human Rights (Incitement on Ground of Religious Belief) Amendment Bill to be withdrawn and not progressed this term. The matter to be ...
The Government is providing a $5 million package of emergency support to help businesses significantly affected by the recent flooding in Auckland. This includes: $3 million for flood recovery payments to help significantly affected businesses $1 million for mental wellbeing support through a boost to the First Steps programme $1 ...
The Government’s Temporary Accommodation Service (TAS) has been activated to support people displaced by the severe flooding and landslips in the Auckland region, Housing Minister Megan Woods says. “TAS is now accepting registrations for people who cannot return to their homes and need assistance finding temporary accommodation. The team will work ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today held their first bilateral meeting in Canberra. It was Chris Hipkins’ first overseas visit since he took office, reflecting the close relationship between New Zealand and Australia. “New Zealand has no closer partner than Australia. I was pleased to ...
New Zealand will immediately provide humanitarian support to those affected by the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta announced today. “Aotearoa New Zealand is deeply saddened by the loss of life and devastation caused by these earthquakes. Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones affected,” ...
An historic Northland pā site with links to Ngāpuhi chief Hongi Hika is to be handed back to iwi, after collaboration by government, private landowners and local hapū. “It is fitting that the ceremony for the return of the Pākinga Pā site is during Waitangi weekend,” said Regional Development Minister ...
The Government is investing in a suite of initiatives to unlock Māori and Pacific resources, talent and knowledge across the science and research sector, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. Two new funds – He tipu ka hua and He aka ka toro – set to ...
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta departs for India tomorrow as she continues to reconnect Aotearoa New Zealand to the world. The visit will begin in New Delhi where the Foreign Minister will meet with the Vice President Hon Jagdeep Dhankar and her Indian Government counterparts, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and ...
Over $10 million infrastructure funding to unlock housing in Whangārei The purchase of a 3.279 hectare site in Kerikeri to enable 56 new homes Northland becomes eligible for $100 million scheme for affordable rentals Multiple Northland communities will benefit from multiple Government housing investments, delivering thousands of new homes for ...
The Government is supporting one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most significant historic sites, the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, as it continues to recover from the impacts of COVID-19. “The Waitangi Treaty Grounds are a taonga that we should protect and look after. This additional support will mean people can continue to ...
A memorial event at a key battle site in the New Zealand land wars is an important event to mark the progress in relations between Māori and the Crown as we head towards Waitangi Day, Minister for Te Arawhiti Kelvin Davis said. The Battle of Ohaeawai in June 1845 saw ...
More Police officers are being deployed to the frontline with the graduation of 54 new constables from the Royal New Zealand Police College today. The graduation ceremony for Recruit Wing 362 at Te Rauparaha Arena in Porirua was the first official event for Stuart Nash since his reappointment as Police ...
The Government is unlocking an additional $700,000 in support for regions that have been badly hit by the recent flooding and storm damage in the upper North Island. “We’re supporting the response and recovery of Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel, Northland, and Bay of Plenty regions, through activating Enhanced Taskforce Green to ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has welcomed the announcement that Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, will visit New Zealand this month. “Princess Anne is travelling to Aotearoa at the request of the NZ Army’s Royal New Zealand Corps of Signals, of which she is Colonel in Chief, to ...
A new Government and industry strategy launched today has its sights on growing the value of New Zealand’s horticultural production to $12 billion by 2035, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor said. “Our food and fibre exports are vital to New Zealand’s economic security. We’re focussed on long-term strategies that build on ...
25 cents per litre petrol excise duty cut extended to 30 June 2023 – reducing an average 60 litre tank of petrol by $17.25 Road User Charge discount will be re-introduced and continue through until 30 June Half price public transport fares extended to the end of June 2023 saving ...
The strong economy has attracted more people into the workforce, with a record number of New Zealanders in paid work and wages rising to help with cost of living pressures. “The Government’s economic plan is delivering on more better-paid jobs, growing wages and creating more opportunities for more New Zealanders,” ...
The Government is providing a further $1 million to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Auckland following flooding, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced today. “Cabinet today agreed that, given the severity of the event, a further $1 million contribution be made. Cabinet wishes to be proactive ...
The new Cabinet will be focused on core bread and butter issues like the cost of living, education, health, housing and keeping communities and businesses safe, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has announced. “We need a greater focus on what’s in front of New Zealanders right now. The new Cabinet line ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins will travel to Canberra next week for an in person meeting with Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. “The trans-Tasman relationship is New Zealand’s closest and most important, and it was crucial to me that my first overseas trip as Prime Minister was to Australia,” Chris Hipkins ...
The Government is providing establishment funding of $100,000 to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Auckland following flooding, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced. “We moved quickly to make available this funding to support Aucklanders while the full extent of the damage is being assessed,” Kieran McAnulty ...
As the Mayor of Auckland has announced a state of emergency, the Government, through NEMA, is able to step up support for those affected by flooding in Auckland. “I’d urge people to follow the advice of authorities and check Auckland Emergency Management for the latest information. As always, the Government ...
Ka papā te whatitiri, Hikohiko ana te uira, wāhi rua mai ana rā runga mai o Huruiki maunga Kua hinga te māreikura o te Nota, a Titewhai Harawira Nā reira, e te kahurangi, takoto, e moe Ka mōwai koa a Whakapara, kua uhia te Tai Tokerau e te kapua pōuri ...
Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Social Development and Employment, has activated Enhanced Taskforce Green (ETFG) in response to flooding and damaged caused by Cyclone Hale in the Tairāwhiti region. Up to $500,000 will be made available to employ job seekers to support the clean-up. We are still investigating whether other parts ...
There’s a storm a’brewing on Treasure Island, and Alex and Jane are here to break it all down. The fans are rocked by a new team member, and the faves face the consequences of their Dame’s early morning strolls. Matty McLean is playing his heart out, Susan’s eyelids are inverted ...
It’s only week two, but already our fans and faves are feeling the strain. Tara Ward power ranks. Like a pair of Josh Kronfeld’s undies sent out to sea, our Treasure Island castaways have found themselves bobbing around on choppy waters. This was a tense week that saw one contestant ...
Chris Hipkins’ policy purge gives far more insight into how he will govern than the reshuffle he announced last week. Hate speech, biofuels, media mergers and social insurance have been dumped in the worthy, but not important bin, writes political editor Jo Moir. The front bench under Chris Hipkins’ leadership ...
You might be able to solve a delivery problem by cutting the number of packages you send. But is that enough, wonders Toby Manhire. If there’s one thing Chris Hipkins isn’t afraid of, it’s repeating himself to make the point. The first three sentences of his statement unveiling the policy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sathana Dushyanthen, Academic Specialist & Lecturer in Cancer Sciences & Digital Health| Superstar of STEM| Science Communicator, The University of Melbourne CDC/Unsplash Australians aged 18 and over will be eligible for a COVID booster from February 20 if they have ...
The state-owned radio broadcaster will keep its independence and get a cash injection after the Government scrapped the proposal to merge it with TVNZ Normal transmission has resumed for the country’s media industry. RNZ and TVNZ will remain as separate entities and the bogeyman of a monolithic public media entity ...
The EMA is relieved the Government has dedicated $5m to support Auckland businesses impacted by the recent flooding. Chief Executive Brett O’Riley says that is consistent with discussions the EMA and the Auckland Business Roundtable had been having with ...
The prime minister has unveiled what he calls a ‘new direction’ for the Labour government, and it involves launching a wrecking ball into Jacinda Ardern’s extensive policy programme. Stewart Sowman-Lund reports from parliament.We knew something was coming, but we perhaps weren’t expecting quite so much policy carnage at parliament ...
Organisations directly affected by this afternoon’s announcement that the media merger will not go ahead have issued statements in response, with a common thread of welcoming clarity after months of uncertainty and speculation. RNZ chair Jim Mather said: “Media in New Zealand is being challenged by rapidly changing commercial models, the ...
The decision to halt legislation that would bring religious grounds into existing hate speech rules, pending a referral to the Law Commission, has been rebuked by Amnesty International NZ. “We are deeply disappointed and frustrated that the government is taking so long to strengthen the country’s legislation against incitement to ...
The biggest private sector union in Aotearoa New Zealand, E tū, is concerned by the Prime Minister’s announcement today that the New Zealand Income Insurance Scheme (NZIIS) will be delayed indefinitely. The announcement was part of the new Prime ...
The Taxpayers’ Union has welcomed the Government’s decision to take the proposed social insurance scheme off the table for the rest of this parliament but has warned against bringing back similar proposals in future. Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, ...
NZ On Air welcomes the decision from Cabinet today providing certainty for the public media sector. “Our funding strategy is flexible and future-focused, and we are able to quickly respond both to audience and media environment changes, without being ...
In an email to staff distributed shortly after Chris Hipkins’ announcement that the media merger will be scrapped, RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson has said: “It is good to have clarity after recent uncertainty.” The boost in funding for RNZ, details of which are to be determined, was “an endorsement ...
Pāmu is committed to reducing its climate impact through emissions reduction and strengthening climate resilience through adaption. Doubling down on its commitment , the state-owned enterprise has now signed a second sustainability-linked loan, ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is delighted at the news that the TVNZ/RNZ media merger is to be scrapped. Taxpayers' Union Executive Director, Jordan Williams, said: “Our former Chairman, a former TVNZ board member, Barrie Saunders was among the first ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justin O’Connor, Professor of Cultural Economy, University of South Australia Federal Labor is engaged in urgent reform, making up for the “lost decade” under the Coalition. The Voice, industrial relations, climate change, universities, health, Asian-Pacific diplomacy, research and development are all undergoing ...
Prime minister Chris Hipkins has announced the end of the planned merger of TVNZ and RNZ. It’s been in the works for more than three years and was set to be up and running this year. However, speaking at a post-cabinet press conference this afternoon, Hipkins confirmed it would not ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia Talbot-Jones, Senior lecturer, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Shutterstock/Dr Ajay Kumar Singh As New Zealand’s new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins embarks on reprioritising policies to focus on “bread and butter issues”, the details of the contentious ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards. Political Roundup: Labour’s reorientation to working class MāoriPolitical scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. In recent decades the Labour Party has lost its traditional connection with working class voters, becoming more of a middle class party of liberalism. This is especially true of Labour’s historic connection with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Uri Gal, Professor in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney Shutterstock ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. Within two months of its release it reached 100 million active users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application ever launched. Users are ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bill Madden, Adjunct Professor, Australian Centre for Health Law Research, School of Law, Queensland University of Technology Shutterstock This week’s ABC Four Corners investigation revealed the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra), or tribunals determining such complaints, allowed a number ...
It appears the proposed merger of TVNZ and RNZ will indeed be scrapped in under an hour’s time. A source from within the media industry has told Te Ao Māori News that the planned entity has been abandoned by the government as new prime minister Chris Hipkins attempts to reign ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University Bianca de Marchi/AAP The New South Wales government has embraced a sweeping set of reforms to the state’s massive poker machine business. These reforms are centred on ...
At a magnitude of 7.8, this week’s horrific earthquake near the Turkish border was 177 times stronger than Christchurch’s in 2011. This week an extremely large earthquake occurred in the southeast of Turkey, near the border with Syria. Data from seismometers which measure shaking of the ground caused by ...
In the life-cycle of a reader we bet it’s the childhood reading memories that matter most. Here are Unity’s bestselling books for January.AUCKLAND1 Sleepy Kiwi by Kat Quin (Tikitibu, $20, babies) A bold, black and white board book for newborns and up.2 Midnight Adventures of Ruru and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Pawson, Professor of Housing Research and Policy, and Associate Director, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock The Albanese government’s housing package moved a step closer to delivery with the recent release of draft legislation. The bills are expected ...
It’s Wednesday, February 8 and welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates – coming to you today from Wellington. I’m Stewart Sowman-Lund, reach me on [email protected] What you need to know Chris Hipkins will chair the first meeting of his new cabinet. He will front a post-cabinet press ...
It’s been a rough ride since Louisa Opeteia hopped out of bed to find herself standing in a rising tide, but she’s grateful for the little things: a hot meal and the helping hands of friends, family and kind strangers.Friday morning, January 27. Louisa Opetaia of Māngere noticed the ...
Paved-over rivers, covered-up shorelines and filled-in wetlands reemerged during Auckland’s devastating deluge – taking the city 200 years back into the past.Tāmaki Makaurau’s recent flooding has stirred up plenty of kōrero about our biggest city. Architecture and urban planning professor Timothy Welch reminded us that we built Auckland in ...
PM Chris Hipkins is back in Wellington after his big day in Canberra. He’s chairing the first meeting of his new cabinet after last week’s reshuffle. That reshuffle saw ministers like Andrew Little and Peeni Henare demoted, while newer players like Ayesha Verrall soared up the ranks. According to the ...
Whittaker’s are putting five special “Ed-ition” blocks of their classic milk chocolate on Trade Me, with all proceeds going to help the Auckland flood relief. What makes it a special Ed-ition? The fact that pop star Ed Sheeran has come onboard, providing a selfie for the packaging and signing the ...
In the digital age, online activity can be a conduit for abusive behaviours. But secure digital tools can also offer a lifeline for victims. It’s no secret that New Zealand has a family violence epidemic, with one third of women physically or sexually assaulted by a partner over their lifetimes. ...
Thousands of people mistakenly paid the government’s cost of living payment have chosen not to repay it. And while the department responsible for sending out that money won’t say whether it’s disappointed by the lack of repayments, the prime minister was happy to express his views. Stuff has today revealed ...
A pair of Auckland councillors have leveraged the city’s flood disaster to protest government’s legislation enabling more medium density housing. Hayden Donnell says our elected representatives would be better off pointing the finger at themselves. As residents across her ward worked to clean out their waterlogged houses, Mt Eden-Puketāpapa councillor ...
Researchers from the University of Otago are “strongly” recommending the $5 fee to get a prescription filled be removed as a “simple way to reduce health inequities”. A new study has found removing the fee could significantly reduce the number of hospital admissions and length of hospital stays. The findings, published ...
We’ve known since the earliest moments of Chris Hipkins’ premiership that some of the unwieldy policy agenda of Jacinda Ardern was up for the chop. And now, about two weeks since being sworn in, the prime minister has confirmed the chopping block will be on display at today’s 3pm post-cabinet ...
The death toll for the quake that hit Turkey and Northern Syria may reach 20,000. For Syrians, the quake has struck a population already overwhelmed by the impacts of war, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full ...
Norton, a leading Cyber Safety brand of Gen, today published the New Zealand findings from a global study about online dating, associated scams, and attitudes about online stalking. The 2023 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report (NCSIR), conducted online ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University The United States’ shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina over the weekend points to international security affairs being on a knife edge. It follows ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Liknaitzky, Head of Clinical Psychedelic Research, Monash University Collaborative care teams will need to be established for safe treatment.Author provided A few days ago, the Australian drug regulator – the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) – surprised experts around the world ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kimberley Crofts, Doctoral Student, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney Shutterstock The decline of the coal industry means 17 mines in the New South Wales Hunter Valley will close over the next two decades. More than 130,000 hectares of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Jefferson, Senior Lecturer in Education, Edith Cowan University Shutterstock The first signs were the half-eaten lunches coming home from high school. This was in stark contrast to the primary school years, where the box looked as if a demolition ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Sparkes, Senior Lecturer (Media Studies and Production), University of Southern Queensland Disney When it was released 25 years ago, James Cameron’s Titanic was enormous. It made stars of its two leads, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Reviews overwhelmingly heaped ...
AI writing tools are free, easy to use and already everywhere. But is it cheating to use them to help write an essay? Shanti Mathias spoke to New Zealand academics about AI’s place in education.When California company Open AI released its ChatGPT tool to the public last November, social ...
Chris Hipkins’ first overseas trip as prime minister heralded few surprises. But, as Stewart Sowman-Lund reports from Canberra, that’s exactly what he will have wanted. It’s been just two weeks since Chris Hipkins was sworn in as prime minister, a fortnight that has seen him deal with devastating flooding, formalise ...
The Green Party wants the government to double the maximum amount it is paying out to flood-affected Aucklanders, through the Civil Defence payments. ...
Meg Parsons and Iresh Jayawardena explain why managing climate risk is a complex social justice issue Commentary and coverage of the floods in Auckland has so far focused on the severity of the flood, loss of life and injuries, damage to buildings, homes, roads and other infrastructure, on the number of people ...
A successful Minister for Auckland could foreshadow a substantially revised Cities and Regions government focusOpinion: There’s little doubt Auckland is in need of substantial ministering. It’s not just the biblical-scale deluge and resulting significant damage the region has experienced. It’s the historical sins of omission and some of commission ...
Chris Hipkins’ first offshore trip as leader went without a hitch, albeit with a low bar to clear. The challenge now is ensuring that Australian rhetoric around expat rights becomes reality, while Hipkins himself needs to figure out his own foreign policy agenda. Sam Sachdeva reports, in Canberra. Given the ...
Felicity Goodyear-Smith looks back at just how political the issue of abortion was in New Zealand On Wednesday March 25, 2020 New Zealand moved to nationwide self-isolation in response to the Covid 19 pandemic. Unless essential, there were to be no face-to-face primary care consultations. I work full-time as a professor of general ...
From purging possums and saving kiwi, to leading the Tui and turning out for the Blues, rugby record breaker Krysten Cottrell has a fascinating combination of careers, Suzanne McFadden discovers. Krysten Cottrell spends her week deep in the bush of the Kaweka Range, searching for dead rats and possums - and then ...
The money the health system has to fight Covid-19 in the first half of 2023 is less than half of what it had in the second half of 2022, Marc Daalder reports Staff on the Covid-19 response have been terminated or quietly reassigned to other health issues as funding to ...
Bow and arrow hunting There was a certain time of year I really used to live for: camping over the Christmas break. I was 15 in the Christmas of 1976 and up to that point I'd shot a heap of goats and smaller game, but the thought of maybe getting ...
International education used to be a massive earner for New Zealand. With the borders finally open, are foreign students returning? Macleans College in East Auckland used to have more international students than any other school in the country. Then, the pandemic hit and turned it upside down. Principal Steve Hargreaves doesn't ...
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By Ian Chute in Suva Fijian Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) board chairman Ajay Bhai Amrit says he has receipts to prove former FBC chief executive officer Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum received an annual package of $387,790 including benefits and entitlements. He said this worked out to $32,315 a month and that the board ...
PNG Post-Courier PNG Defence Force Commander Major-General Mark Goina says “appropriate force” will be dealt to the gunmen who ambushed and wounded two soldiers in Saugurap, Enga Province, last week. In a statement Major-General Goina said: “A section from the PNGDF contingent deployed in Enga Province were on routine duty, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation’s politics team. In this podcast Michelle and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe.Lukas Coch/AAP Australia’s cash rate has hit 3.35%, after the Reserve Bank raised interest rates for the ninth time in a row – and signalled ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Della Bosca, PhD Candidate and Research Assistant at Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney Shutterstock While the days of overt climate denial are mostly over, there’s a distinct form of denial emerging in its stead. You may have experienced ...
A potential cyclone that could bring more severe wet weather to the upper North Island is now forecast to form a day earlier, Stuff reports. Due to ideal cyclone-formation conditions over the Coral Sea, a low south of the Solomon Islands has a high chance of turning into a cyclone ...
British MP George Galloway may have to change the name of his party. ‘Respect’ doesn’t seem appropriate for a rape apologist.
http://www.theage.com.au/world/mps-defence-of-assange-triggers-consensual-sex-row-20120821-24kny.html
what follows is my view on Galloway’s utterance… it has nothing to do with Assange. Nor does it in any way suggest that I think Assange is guilty of the claims made against him.
So here we go Mr Galloway…..why do some men think it’s okay to have sex with someone after they’ve said no? And why do some men think that if you’ve already had sex once then you’ve “entered a sex game” which means ‘forced sex’ – hang on – not ‘forced’ because the woman was asleep – is somehow not rape?
Or to put it another way, rape – if you’ve never had sex with the woman before – is ‘real’ rape, but if you’ve already had sex with her before, the next time can’t be ‘real’ rape – even if she said no?
I guess that if you stay in the same bed with someone after saying no, you must have a high degree of trust that the other person will not ignore your wishes and will certainly not force themselves on you when you are asleep. How utterly awful it must be if you are then raped while asleep – and by the very person you trusted.
Those who want to debate shades of grey, simply don’t consider what it’s like from the perpective of the victim. This kind of experience can seriously scar and have awful consequences – maybe years later.
I think it’s very very sad if the man is so drunk he has no self control – but it’s no less damaging to the woman (and possibly to the man’s future), because from the woman’s point of view it’s still rape – and any amount of argument about the definition of ‘rape’ is not going to make a jot of difference to how the woman may be feeling.
This is a reply to locus at 1.1
I agree with you. I’m interested in who is generally making these assertions that non-consensual sex is not rape (even though it is legally rape here) – that it’s just some sex-game – they seem to be males of a certain age and I wonder why that is. Whatever their reasons, I despise them for their disgusting views.
and by the way this is not about julian
(also not about Julian)
Could it be because there are men who have a fantasy about awakening to the fuck being given them by (oh, lets go completly cliched) *that* big boobed blonde…or who-ever? Y’know, they reckon it would be a pretty damned good start to the day. And since they have no problem being fucked while asleep and actually quite like the notion, then hell! – how could anyone else possibly find anything objectionable about it?
That’s right bill – I’m sure they also agree with todd atkin about ‘legitimate rape’ after all, that is what they are saying too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19335083
http://mars2earth.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/birds-of-feather.html
Hmm. Not too sure about equating the attitudes of Galloway with the pronouncements of Akin. Sure, both sets of attitudes diminish or ‘disappear’ women. But I’d suggest Akin’s diminishing is of a different order in the scale of things.
Akin appears to be saying that rape or (at least some of) its consequences are kind of okay even where all and sundry would agree that rape was inflicted.
Galloway on the other hand appears confused on what might constitute sex and what might constitute rape.
I think they are similar, it’s just that Akin’s line is drawn differently than Galloways. But they both run the line that some rape is real but other rape isn’t. Akin is basically saying that most rape that results in pregnancy isn’t real: in real rape women’s bodies shut down and they don’t get pregnant, therefore any woman who wants an abortion after rape is probably lying and it wasn’t really rape to start with.
Yes, there are degrees of difference within their views, but they’re both basically saying that women don’t have sovereignty over their bodies, that they lie about rape, and both are contributing significantly to rape culture.
This kind of “argument” comes up a lot, Bill – you know, the classic “but I’d be flattered if a hot chick wolf-whistled at me from a car!” “I’d totally be okay with a woman propositioning me in an elevator!” kind of responses to serious discussions about rape culture / misogyny / women’s assumed consent etc.
Of course for some reason it’s always based on “if someone I totally already wanted to fuck”. Wishful thinking, I guess.
I wish we didn’t have to have this conversation. It’s as difficult as it is important.
I just wanted to say that husbands were still legally allowed to force their wives to have sex with them in NZ as recently as 1982. Galloway grew up in a world in which many men felt they had conquest rights over other people’s bodies.
Too many in my mother’s generation had their own potential for sexual pleasure destroyed as they found their husbands claimed their “rights” against their own wishes, when they were exhausted or in pain, when they were sleeping or, or trying to have a bath, or just whenever, with absolutely no regard for their wishes or their sovereignty to their own bodies.
Social mores do change (than goodness)
‘Respect’ doesn’t seem appropriate for a rape apologist.
He is no such thing. You’re deliberately and maliciously misconstruing his words.
It’s easy to get a rise out of you, Mozza. So you’ve got that in common with Assange, boom tssssh!
Anything to say about the substance of the report? Or is it too uncomfortable for you to comment on?
It’s easy to get a rise out of you, Mozza. So you’ve got that in common with Assange, boom tssssh!
Yes, well done, Te Reo. That’s another round to you, my friend.
Anything to say about the substance of the report? Or is it too uncomfortable for you to comment on?
I think Galloway has a big mouth and he’s incapable of thinking before he speaks. His words are ill chosen and insensitive, but I don’t think he’s a rape apologist.
You don’t think this whole “crying rape” thing has any connection with Assange pissing off the most powerful and corrupt institutions and individuals in the world?
Of course. Te Reo knows that too.
Certainly. There is a very clear connection between the people who think that Assange is innocent of rape and that the women complainants are liars (they’re the ones using the terms like ‘crying rape’), and the left’s agenda to resist attempts to suppress Assange and wikileaks.
Seconded! 🙂
Feminists are US Government tools, who would have guessed?
Some crazy feminist calling it “sexual violence”. Who needs the CIA when you can wind up the Feminists and point them at your target?
Who needs the CIA when you can wind up the Feminists and point them at your target?
It’s not “the Feminists” who are going after Assange. The Swedish branch of Women Against Rape has issued the strongest possible condemnation of these wild allegations.
No they haven’t. Stop misusing Women Against Rape to support your own rape apologist ideas.
What WAR did was point out that
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/08/wikileaks-rape-allegations-freedom-of-speech
Further
http://www.womenagainstrape.net/content/complaint-re-andrew-gilligan-misrepresenting-women
http://www.womenagainstrape.net/content/additional-statement-women-against-rape-regarding-
When she says “We do not take kindly to women’s demand for protection and justice being misused to forward political agendas, which is what Mr Gilligan seems intent on, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst” she’s talking about people like you Morrissey, as well as the powers trying to suppress Assange.
More on Women Against Rape’s position on the Assange case:
http://www.womenagainstrape.net/category/tags/julian-assange
Good point!
What some don’t seem to get, is that we who suspect these particular women of having let’s say, not the purest of motive, are not saying that all women who complain of rape are liars!
That’s right, you’re just saying that public opinion gets to decide which women lie about rape 🙄
No. Just that it is all too convenient that various people suddenly become rapists if they are too inconvenient to some Governments.
Why is that more likely than the left wing Hero having very dodgy sexual boundaries AND the powers against wikileaks using that against him?
There is nothing at all incompatible with the Hero being a hero and a rapist AND the force of evil using that to harm him.
My question, weka, is why are otherwise-intelligent people sincerely trying to argue that being charged with rape is Totally The Worst Thing Ever?
We all know that very few rapes get reported, even fewer get prosecuted, an infinitesimal number get convictions, and whenever the accused is a celebrity (reference: any rugby played accused of sexual assault EVER) there is in fact the complete opposite of a negative societal response. Woman’s Weekly covers are practically guaranteed.
Yet we’re meant to believe that the Globalised US Hegemony can’t come up with better shit than rape accusations? At least in Blake’s 7 they had a sufficient understanding of human culture to make it child molestation.
Yep.
If you wanted to frame someone with a crime and you wanted it to stick, it wouldn’t be rape.
Any KAOS agent worth their salt should know that.
Rape is a perfect character assassination allegation. Remember the goal here is not for the ‘charges to stick’ in a court of law. For instance no charges have to be laid, no session of court held, no finding reached, for Assange to be permanently screwed and permanently placed on the run. Job done.
NB as weka has said, its more than possible for Assange to be fully guilty of the allegations AND for these legal proceedings to be manipulated by international powers for their own advantage. The two are not mutually exclusive.
CV, the goal is to have a man accused of sexual assault face the accusation and defend himself. If Assange’s own behaviour exposes him to the risk of extradition to another country to face unrelated charges, bad luck. That sort of thing happens all the time; eg. a driver gets pulled over for a traffic violation, and gets arrested for a warrant issued on earlier alleged crimes or gets deported for being an illegal immigrant etc.
And, to be clear, if the US has a legally sound case to extradite Assange from the UK or Sweden to face charges that he has broken US law, then he should be extradited to face those charges, too. In saying that, I note that both countries will not extradite if the death penalty is a possible outcome, something I agree with.
Extradition to another country to face unrelated charges is completely unacceptable given the specific circumstances:
– That the country in question is likely to be the US
– That relevant charges have already been secretly laid, in the US, via a sealed indictment.
– That Assange’s chances for fair treatment and a fair trial in the US is minimal.
– That permanent incarceration in a military prison like Guanatanamo Bay is tolerable by Sweden etc as it is not the “death penalty”.
– That any such charges would be based as Assange acting as a publisher or journalist, and not as a leaker of secret information (Manning supposedly leaked the information to Wikileaks, Assange’s organisation published it).
Your cavalier attitude (that it’s just “bad luck”) painfully underplays how significant an issue this is for the chilling effect it will have on whistleblowers, journalists and publishers world wide.
You also avoid the topic of deliberate manipulation of the legal system by major powers to achieve political ends other than the provision of impartial justice to victims of crime.
Nope, not even close. The only chilling effect will be on men who can’t take no for an answer, hopefully. And despite your optimism, none of the issues you list prevent Assange’s eventual extradition. And that is as it should be, because the law should not be bent or ignored for the famous. There is no Assange Exemption, just is there is no wealth or power exemption.
I’ve seen plenty of references to Assange’s ‘bravery’ in these discussions. That suggests he knew that what he did at Wikileaks had risks attached, one of which is that publishing the military secrets of a country might tend to be illegal in that country. If you know the risk and go ahead anyway, why complain if it all goes pear shaped?
One irony of this situation is that the UK will probably look to extradite him back from Sweden when his court case there is completed to face charges of skipping bail. If he ever does get sent to the USA, it’ll probably be from the UK then, not Sweden now.
Rape is a perfect character assassination allegation.
Yes, that’s why no one watches Roman Polanski films any more.
[And, just for the record, he unquestionably drugged and raped an underage woman before fleeing the country where he faced prosecution. Which is why everyone took it so seriously.]
is why are otherwise-intelligent people sincerely trying to argue that being charged with rape is Totally The Worst Thing Ever?
One of the core problems with this type of crime is that in our society sex is almost always conducted in private, so in the absence of physical evidence, the case often comes down to ‘he said, she said’. Which cuts both ways; for while this fact will often make it very difficult for a genuine prosecution to leap over the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ hurdle … it also makes it very difficult for a genuine defendant to dispel the stigma of a false accusation.
I thought the theory was that the charges were a roundabout way of getting Assange exradited to the US, not to get him stigmatised. Rape charges may or may not be useful for creating “the stigma of a false allegation”. As a vehicle for extradition they are less than ideal, and it’s hard to imagine the US couldn’t come up with something much more effective.
Exactly.
But you now seem to be saying that “some” women who complain of rape ARE liars. Thanks for clearing that up. Should make a good topic for discussion at the next branch meeting.
So how can we tell which ones they are?
The failed futures brokerage Sentinel Management Group lost the money of its clients in when it went into bankruptcy in 2007. According to the SEC, the firm misappropriated the funds belonging to its clients.
The Sentinel Ruling: HERE
The asset sales programme is on the ropes.
Solid Energy’s latest results are poor and it would fetch a small price. Add to MRP’s water ownership issues and Tiwai Point threatening to renegotiate its contract with Meridian and all is not happy in asset sales land.
Remember the sales proceeds have been booked in the country’s accounts. There is now a $5 billion hole in the income side.
Yes, and it was the headline news on TV3 last night at 6pm – along with the likelihoon of the airnz sale not going ahead.
http://www.3news.co.nz/Asset-sales-in-Air-New-Zealand-also-doubful-this-term/tabid/1607/articleID/266255/Default.aspx
Oh yes that ‘guess’ blinglish made to ‘balance’ the books which would be considered ‘fraud’ by most reasonable ethical standards if this lot had any.
Wish the MSM would grow a pair and dissect the mongrel over this and the many other fanciful BS rants he’s had on the parliamentary floor in question time.
The Standard is looking and working fine for me on IE, but struggling on Firefox.
Yup, me too. Firefox won’t format the page but IE works fine.
Dropped cloudflare out for the moment. That seems to be the main problem.
It will tend to slow the site but will do until I can fix on some decent bandwidth with a test suite of browsers
Hold the SHIFT key down when clicking refresh. That should force the cache to reload
Thanks. Yes, I am commenting using firefox now. It loaded fine and reasonably fast, too.
The site is loading much more quickly and reliably for me this morning than it has for many weeks.
Is anyone else finding this true?
Actually, yes. And it is nice to be able to use Firefox again.
Yep, loading better than it has for some time.
Handy hint: When TS is hard to access just go to Pete George’s site instead. He reports on everything that happens here so you won’t miss a thing. 😉
Yeah it will for people in NZ because I turned cloudflare off and you’re now talking directly to a server inside NZ. But there is some irony in this.
It costs $20 per month for cloudflare. Normally this sends NZ traffic out to their servers which appear to be all offshore. It then caches the site so efficiently that we have a massive drop in the traffic at our main server, because we’re really only providing data to cloudflare to disperse. Nett effect is that our main server traffic is down to a trickle and most of it apart from admin is overseas traffic. Meanwhile everyone reading our site from NZ is picking up something like 250GB per month mostly over the Southern Cross cable.
So why do I do this? Well the rationing system for the Southern Cross cable is at the NZ servers. We have a ration of about GB of overseas traffic on our main dedicated server. Most plans are 20-25GB, ours is a bit larger. Almost all of our overseas traffic is bots. Searchbots and RSS are legit and wanted, and we run a persistent war against other types of bots. However we currently get charged $2/GB for anything over our ration. This in most months is at least $100. In bad months it has been known to go up and be more than the base cost of the server.
So it saves us a lot of money to increase the traffic over the southern cross using cloudflare by forcing our readers to read the site from overseas servers. We do this to reduce the excessive charging for overseas traffic at our server that we mostly don’t want. Perverse eh?
It’d be nice if cloudflare had a server inside NZ. But they won’t because the overseas data charges would be too high.
Such is the life with a monopoly supplier of bandwidth.
Cloudflare will be going back on as soon as I have chance to debug it. In the couple of months it has been on it, it has cost $40 and has saved us something like $300. It has probably cost the country a damn sight more.
But in reality it is going to be simpler to just move the main servers back offshore and get out of this bloody silly charging nightmare. There I can hire servers with massive caps that the site cannot exceed for less than we pay for here. The alternative is to run a much cheaper virtual server with cloudflare keeping the CPU down at the server.
Ah, the joys of the free-market – absolutely no bloody sense anywhere.
Yup and the stn cross cable has ooddles of capacity if the owners wanted to light it up they could.
Yet another con run by telecom that we pay through the nose for.
I need to bank the deposit slip that provides a symbolic amount to The Standard.
I have been carying that bit of paper in my wallet for a while, forgetting to drop by the bank during lunchtime 🙂
Always willing to take donations 🙂
Done. ‘Twas a wee one. Will make a larger donation in a couple of weeks 🙂
It is the recognition that means a lot in this lonely life waiting for the internet to resume in its full flood… 🙂
Finally got to talk to a chorus tech. It looks like there isn’t a way to communicate a simple message from Orcon to Chorus like I need a ADSL filter taken out at the apartment blocks switchboard, and the building manager is only here for a few hours in the week. Just like I couldn’t book a move because the my tenant leaving hadn’t booked a move order. *sigh* I guess that it is still frigging ICMS – sounds like a RPG type problem. But now I have talked to an tech – friday morning!
No e-mail for a few days. My mail server is offline….
Thanks lprent, FF works ok now. Was no fun using IE 6.
I would think not. I suspect that the problem was with some kind of minifying the CSS that resulted in not having ANY CSS from the site. So you saw the site without the makeup 🙂
Sorry but why would you use he most buggy version of Internet Exploder?? FF is the only thing I use in here, and yesterday was a little problematic. But apart from that I usually have no problems.
Because IE6 was the most secure of MS browsers, last release I could lock down & know it was safe. Never found it particularly buggy, still use it occasionally when I need ActiveX which FF doesn’t support. It also renders fonts on some sites better than FF. Bit dated now, crashes on the likes of Paypal, but I refuse to use the later versions of IE which are a security nightmare IMO.
Most people had trouble with IE because they didn’t know how to use it.
Ummm.
Ok I will have a look at work (haven’t set up the usual web development environ’s on this computer yet). And I’m running on my cellphone at home right now.
Waiting for Chorus at home to put my link back on. Was meant to be last night – didn’t happen (which was interesting – loading too much work on them?). And that is just at the exchange. They’re going to have to come here to remove a ADSL splitter at the apartment’s block board – had to cut the lines and remove the hole in the floor when we polished the concrete.
Not looking forward to that because I have to get a time when both the building manager and the tech actually get here at the same time and take time off work. In the meantime half of my home systems are down.
Thanks for the response. No rush.
I can manage fine with TS on IE at the moment. I hope things get sorted out at your home without any more problems.
Grr…
Worst part of moving is getting the network connections back in place.
It’s nice to have the Standard back.
For those unable to access through firefox, I just bounced over from ‘idle thoughts of an idle fellow’ (always worth a read). And presto the site is restored to normality.
US lifts sanctions, allows Iran quake relief
Just had to remember to insinuate Iran has WMD’s, and sponsors “terrorism”. You wouldn’t want people to forget those crucial “facts” amongst the “charity” of lifting sanctions!
America fcuk yeah…..
They’re rotten bar-stewards…
Governments like those in NZ and UK say they shouldn’t pick winners, shouldn’t invest directly in the country, should not plan but leave the market to decide, seem to act differently when it comes to Olympic sport where we see record investment, ruthless targeting and rigorous planning.
Good article on this (UK-based, but relevant here too):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/osborne-pay-heed-olympics-triumph
Defamation, distortion and disinformation
Murdoch turns his guns on Ecuador
Wednesday 22 August 2012
Of course, it comes as no surprise that Ecuador’s heroic president is now the object of the scorn and fury of the U.S. and U.K. governments.
Over the last few days, we’ve looked at how British state TV and state radio, and “liberal” papers like the ridiculous but loyal Grauniad have faithfully served as an unquestioning conduit of government black propaganda, no matter how fanciful and wild it might be.
But, really, the leaders in this sort of thing are still the Murdoch outlets. From the illiberal but well-bred ideologues at the Times right through to the mouth-breathing dolts and giddy loons of Fox News, one thing you know the Murdoch empire will deliver is consistency.
This morning on TV3, I watched Rachel Smalley adopt her gravest expression to introduce an outrageous item from Murdoch’s British Sky TV. Dominic Waghorn, in tones of the deepest sincerity, tried to show how the “defiant” Ecuadorian prime minister, while appearing to protect a journalist, is in fact stomping all over press freedom.
Viewers are treated to these words by right wing Ecuadorian journalist Jorge Ortiz: “I think Correa is fooling the world. He uses very wisely the media to present himself as a leader that respects and promotes free press which is not true. We’re very worried, very worried indeed we know that he is killing the right of journalists to express themselves. I’m sure that within two or three years there will not be any free press in Ecuador.”
Dominic Waghorn ends the item with this magnificently sententious peroration: “Julian Assange may be enjoying the full protection of the Ecuadorian state; others who have spoken out against it may not be so lucky.”
Of course, if we want to find an example of leaders who actually do “kill the right of journalists” not only to “express themselves”, but to tell the truth, Mr Ortiz and Mr Waghorn would be intoning grandly (and truthfully, not dishonestly) about Barack Obama and David Cameron.
Anyway, whether you’re a horror fan or just an aficionado of shameless propaganda, here’s Dominic Waghorn’s horrifying piece…
http://news.sky.com/story/975133/ecuador-leader-stays-bold-over-assange-asylum
Most of South America’s media outlets are run by local versions of Murdoch who have supported dictatorships and endlessly promote military intervention against democratically elected governments. If whoever runs the media in Ecuador is anything like Brazil’s Roberto Marinho was, suppressing them is actually working in favour of freedom of the press. I also look at putting Murdoch in prison the same way.
Sadly you are generally right, hence what is needed is a balane of sorts:
This is just a selection that was also largely nver broadcast, esxscept on state media.
We have a media dictatorship in NZ, in Australia and the US, where commercial media is all that counts. The few token indepentend or left leaning journos are a fucking sick joke here. They are rather pre-occupied with some weird lifestyle choices, they do NOT give a damn about the needs and suffering of low waged, of beneficiaries and others down the ladder, they only “abuse” topics about them to get soem stories out that may sell, also in mainstream, of which they often rely for at least additional income.
NZ has NO left, it is devoid of truly independent and left thinking media and so forth, except the rudimentary forums like this perhaps.
NZ is almost a dictatorship of sorts, where the commercial elite control and manipulate the whole media, TVNZ included, daily. There is NO independent reporting, NO real information of substance, it is a DESERT media landscape not to be taken seriously, but to be a truly HOSTILE ground for free thinking and opinion now.
That is my opinon, you may think differently, but you will have to struggle to convince me of otherwise.
It will be welcomed, but make an “effort”, please, as I cannot bother with half wits.
Buenos noches amigos
Hey Deuto,
Thanks for the response and link to Giovanni Tiso’s blog yesterday. The comments around third way politics/Tony Blair were interesting. Look where that got the UK. Fail.
It seems I doubled up on what you had previously posted re Deborah Russells article. It was heartening to read her words and like you I hope Richard Long stays away from the “Opinion” column and never comes back. It would be a breath of fresh air to have a columnist with a rational, intelligent and socially minded view featuring in the Dominion Post.
Despite Deborah Russells reassuring words I decided that David Shearers comment was the last straw for me as a Labour voter. Thats a bit sad after all these years.Theres just been too many WTF? moments and there no going back. Hunter S Thompson comes to mind. “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”. I think thats what Labour have done.
No problem re double-up – hope others here also read Deborah’s article and Giovanni’s as imo these are some of the best summations I have seen – and exactly the approach I wish Labour would take. Shearer’s bene bashing has also left me ‘cold’ and there would need to be a lot of change within Labour (parliamentary) for me to continue to vote for them.
PS – how about an update on the new home/garden etc on Weekend Social this week!
Sure thing deuto!
You must be a sucker for punishment if you want to hear about rock strata and grass grub:) I owe Joe90 a thank you for his advice on the “wrecking bar” to break the rocks but thats another story for another time…………
Is it just me or is David Cunliffe now sufficiently cowed by his caucus that he is letting David Parker do all Labour’s speeches and articles on the economy these days?
Parker seems to be everywhere, doing a workmanlike job. Hello, Mr Cunliffe?
Not fair AD. The office hands out speaking slots and arranges meetings. Besides Parker is the spokesperson for finance.
Did the office hand out the last three he did?
Time to get back in the saddle and ride Mr Cunliffe.
One has to wonder if Cunliffe’s playing a bit of a long game. Any silence can easily be read as censorship by head office, and Shearer’s blandness and Mallard’s continuing social media fuckups are probably doing far better things for him than continually reminding the ABCs that he’s still over here being all competent and charismatic (thus making them more ABC through irritated spite).
According to this link provided by Craig Glen Eden in the “Joyce’s latest list” thread, David Cunliffe is still giving it 100% in the house despite the empty chamber.
And Australias road to the future is…
…rail.
Talking about transport it appears that Phil Twyford has managed to determine NACTs planning model.
Lovely speech from Twyford there – great link! Joyce as the “Collossus of Roads” how droll!
double post
Is Trevor Mallard insane? For those who are Facebook friends with him …
That’s. Fucked. Up.
Do you think money should be given to those who can but refuse to work?
Red herring.
There are tens of thousands of people who would pick up work now if it was available. Time for the government to give them jobs directly.
Of course, but I was wondering about those who didn’t want to work.
Yes, they should still receive a benefit. When we have close to zero unemployment rates the issue would be different. But while we have an economy that needs to run a higher employment rate, why not let the people that don’t want to work subsist on the dole, and give the jobs to people that want them?
I am assuming of course we are talking about the small numbers of people on the dole who don’t want paid employment and who do no other work whatsoever. Most people I know on benefits do some kind of work that contributes to society, whether that be cash work or voluntary work or raising kids or looking after other family etc.
While we’re at it, please produce some reliable research that demonstrates that ‘people not wanting to work’ is an actual problem in NZ.
I don’t know if it is an actual problem nor is it encumbered on me to to provide anything. I was asking an opinion on something, not arguing an opinion.
actually, the way you asked it implied that you were arguing an opinion
Well I didn’t mean too
But Contrarian your question asserts the existence of those who do not want to work.
When pressed to establish a factual base for your assertion you’re all – “Oh, just asking….”.
Not different from my asking your opinion about Martians eating their children. In a serious exchange the asking of the question necessarily implies belief in the matter asserted.
That’s why it is incumbent on you to establish the matter. Unless you were off in some Monty Pythonesque joyride throughout
Trollride more like.
The Contrarian
incumbent I think is the word you are after.
It’s still a red herring.
No it isn’t – I am curious about something tangential, but related, to the post in question.
Proportionately, 98% of time should be spent on discussing the creation of work for the many tens of thousands who would start a job this afternoon if they were offered one.
And 2% of the time on kicking the ass of any slackers out there.
It seems the Right Wing prefer to do the opposite though
Well. When a GMI was tried in Canada, the only ones who didn’t want to work were young mums, and students who stayed in education instead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
“”She found that only new mothers and teenagers worked less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren’t under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. In addition, Forget finds that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 per cent, with fewer incidences of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse.[1]””
When benefits were proportionately much higher in NZ and there were plenty of jobs, those choosing not to work were, famously, known by name by the PM.
“Do you think money should be given to those who can but refuse to work?”
As CV states above, its a red herring. If it does exist, then it is a logical reaction.
And, my answer is yes, without a doubt, under our current situation money should be given to those who can but refuse to work…a few reasons include:
our poverty producing minimum wage, the 90 day right to fire, abuse of ‘flexibility’ by employers, step down period for benefits, temporary employment contracts, the massive amounts of money that greedy people sit on, the cost of living, education is a commodity, the stigma that is used by WINZ every time a benefit is applied for…and lastly, people are right to give up on trying to find dignified employment, because your ignorant, but supposedly ‘ethical’ perspective, has become normalised.
Yes because:-
a) They probably do some work which is beneficial to the community – it just isn’t for an employer
b) There’s so few of the people who actually don’t do anything that it just isn’t worth spending the time to even find them
c) I recall an article I read a couple of years ago about a couple that won lotto. They didn’t work, their fortune had increased from the $8m that they had won to $10m. These people and people like them are bigger bludgers than than anyone on the benefit
Yes I do. Especially if it’s your money, TC.
I have been wondering if Trev is positioning to jump to another party to the right of John Banks.
I wouldn’t call him insane, a troughing waste of space …..yes, certainly not insane.
OMG – totally buys into the Right Wing framing. Misses the point that yes workers are taxed too much…because property and assets are not taxed at all!!!
“I’m thinking of asking the Minister of Police for a Taser gun for Trevor.”
[lprent: removed the spam trap you were hitting (I hope) ]
A party that puts Trevor Mallard in its front bench instead of a woodchipper is not one I’m voting for. I thought that the man was a useless, narcissistic troughing sack of shit, but now words fail me.
“Not helpful” Jesus, Cthulhu, Clapton, Arkleseizure…
Now, Is David Shearer going to say anything other than waffle? (Answer: No, of course not) The problem, sadly, is not just Mallard’s terminal dickishness, or Jones’ hissy fits, Robertson’s meaningless fluff, or Curran’s dribbling idiocy – or even the Paganis’ stale Blairism… it’s Shearer’s utter, utter uselessness. He has no ideas, no ideals, no ability to discipline his party. He’s not a leader and this is not a government in waiting; it’s not even an opposition.
I look forward to Shearer’s next newsletter – I need a laugh.
Really though, now, as much as we did in the Depression, we need a real Labour party and instead all we have is some sort of organised rort.
I propose a reform of our democracy at a fundamental level: we let focus groups replace parliament and government itself. That would be pure and honest – and best of all, of course, it would be efficient.
Wow. Interesting that he has so dramatically broken his cover to argue his position on this occasion, albeit in a snide passive-aggressive way.
Jesus “taxed to breaking point”!. Underpaid to breaking point – nah ‘parently not.. Is there any reason other than historical accident that Mallard is not a member of the National Party?
Yeah, better that his true colours are visible.
I did like this comment on FB
lolz
Bye, bye, Trev. Last gasp?
+1
😆
And Trevor says
Now, did he just miss the substance of his own dog-whistle, or did he just miss the substance of his own dog-whistle?
And did he forget that on the tax front, those on entitlements get to pay a whopping 80c in the dollar on every dollar earned on anything over (from memory) $80 gross (this is done through reducing the core amount of welfare entitlement paid accordingly) ? And did he also forget that before that $80 limit is reached that some entitlements that are in addition to the core benefit are rebated at 100% on every dollar earned…ie, every one dollar earned = one dollar deducted from the entitlement?
I’ve no argument that poorer paid workers pay ridiculous amounts of tax (eg. student loan repayments plus [in the unlikely event you can afford it] kiwi saver contributions = somewhere in the region of 30% tax)
So, how about calling for higher wages Trevor? And how about you stop sniping at people who, if they did pick up some work, would be losing far and away more from their earnings than anyone else.
Or even better. How about you just leave parliament?
That’s a rhetorical question Mickey, a more plausible one is when is he sane ? please explain as some of us don’t facepalm or twatter etc and if I did he wouldn’t be a friend.
And Mallard is still in Labour’s senior ranks, why? And why is Shearer allowing this without censuring him?
Because Shearer agrees with him.
I thought everyone had gotten the memo that Labour are now the party of me-too beneficiary bashers, desperately trying to match National’s record of kicking the vulnerable at every turn.
Just went back to Mallard’s FB via Mickey’s link, and it appears the page is down.
Didn’t get the response he expected perhaps?
Given that Mallard said he expected to be flamed just like Josie Pagani, he couldn’t have been surprised.
Broken link. I wonder if anything else is getting broken along with it…
“For those who are Facebook friends with him …”
Any chance someone could post a screen grab for those of us who aren’t?
Imperator fish is onto it.
http://www.imperatorfish.com/2012/08/when-youre-in-hole.html?spref=tw
Jesus, wtf is wrong with him?
one of my colleagues, whose views I respect, thought wasn’t helpful.
And Trevor needed to be told it wasn’t helpful? WTF?
Come on, Paganis and Salmond, you’re the self-styled “experts”, tell us again how Trevor is the smart one and the rest of us just don’t get it. Explain us how the likes of us thickies saying “Please STFU” to Mallard and Shearer are wrong, because we can’t understand the brilliance of this “strategy” (is that what you’re still calling it?).
FYI: this story was in the news headlines at 2 pm on Newstalk ZB. That’s what you wanted, right? Well done!
Except (and I’ll have to explain this slowly to you) the headline wasn’t “Labour gets tough, shifts to centre” or whatever fantasy you guys dreamed up. The headline was “Yet another Labour fuck-up” (I paraphrase, but not much).
Blame the media for shooting at Labour? Well, stop loading the fucking cannon.
Actually, just stop. NOW.
And Radio Live headlines, 3 pm. Same angle – “Mallard fail, divisions in caucus”.
You think you’re going to make it all go away by doing more of the same?
Perhaps they’re trying to gain attention by doing dumb shit, which unfortunately sometimes works.
Perhaps he just thinks it’s cool to be a provocative twat. Think of him as Labour’s Pete George.
Soooo loved with Jane Clifton that he can’t think straight…
And interesting comments on the imperator thread, from Deborah who did that awesome Dom Post article trying to change the narrative on beneficiaries. Good on you Anthony for saying you’ll post some extracts and a link here.
Show us these jobs Trevor, put up or shut the f**k up, the EVIDENCE Trevor, why would we bother debating anything with someone who has obviously spent way too long sucking at the teat of the highest form of State entitlement that His brain appears to have turned to mush when what He says lacks the veracity of EVIDENCE,
The EVIDENCE Trevor??? show us the WINZ figures for the number of people in the past 12 months who have been given the kick off of a benefit because they have REFUSED to accept work that has been offered,any work,
Your emotive Bulls**t Trevor is sickening, you cannot show us the EVIDENCE of a body of beneficiaries of any size who have REFUSED any work when work has been offered,
The fact is Trevor, i think with an honestly held belief that you are a Liar if you think that there are any amount of people who when offered a job, ANY JOB, by WINZ or anyone else, have REFUSED to take up that job,
Tell us all the TRUTH for once in your miserable life Trevor, its simple, there are not enough jobs in the economy to employ all those able and willing to work,
My view is that your Party should simply put you out to pasture Trevor, as your use by date has long been exceeded and the contents are beginning to smell like s**t…
The big problem with such simple slogans is that they seem reasonable. It’s not until you really think about them and compare them with reality that you get to see the lies and misdirection that are behind them.
The title of that should actually be: “When You’re an A-Hole.”
That’s ‘currently unavailable’ Micky! I suppose that means he thought better of it, whatever it was….
A perfect example of why charter schools need to be regulated, if allowed at all….this shit makes me fucking mad
Creationism in the classroom.
Public money for public schools. No funding religious brainwashing.
Creationism in schools is disturbing
All other National Party policy is faith based. What’s so special about this one?
This one defines the faith as Christianity
Reading ‘Open Mike’ today is a slightly quixotic experience, we have Labour activists openly slapping a labour MP,(a well earned slap at that),
And,
National supporters giving it to their Government over their attempt to keep ACT breathing political oxygen in the form of ‘Charter Schools’,
Step to the Left people, as can be seen from the 2 small examples given, there is nothing to the right except empty rhetoric from the empty minds of a failed empty neo-Liberal ism…
I don’t support any of these swine at the moment.
If the election was tomorrow I’d probably stay home
Vote for the cat.
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/07/16/cat-mayor-celebrates-15-years-on-the-job
Or the hypnotoad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W84DLa0CLNE
Both a vast improvement on our current cast of buffoons in parliament.
Yeeess, the cat. Vote for the cat…
A fine ginga indeed.
Link whoring makes me mad, too.
The sky is falling the sky is falling !!!!!!
[lprent: Don’t be an idiot. Moving to OpenMike as a threadjack. ]
Really, you’d better stay inside and keep up with the meds then.
I’ll write a few scripts and send them through to the Greens caucus.
Could you make that tinfoil hat on your head look a bit better first?
What an intelligent analysis. Your mummy and daddy must be so proud that you can read Chicken Little.
Perhaps you could read The Emperor’s New Clothes and give us the analysis it contains of the National Party plan for NZ.
Perhaps you could have a little cry, suck your thumb and continue to consult your blanky on the particular merits of the various political troughers.
Good lord HS, you’ve outdone yourself. I’m guessing you don’t even know what the TPPA is..
I know exactly what it is, but when I read alarmist drivel like the comment below regarding the destruction of PHARMAC I’m given to flights of ridiculing such comments.
So those US senators who earlier put out statements saying that pharmac was a problem was just for shits and giggles?
@higherstandard
Your comments were posted earlier than any post referring to Pharmac
@ higherstandard
Will you be laughing when your taxes are being spent on legal disputes created by transnational companies arguing against policies arrived at democratically?
“TPP would greatly increase the number of investor-state attacks on public interest policies and would expose governments to massive new financial liabilities.”
“The rules that panelists [ICSID] will adjudicate would supersede national laws. Article 12.7 of the TPP, for instance, provides a long list of prohibitions against government actions; under it, laws imposing capital controls (even to ameliorate a crisis), rules governing domestic content of products or any protections of any domestic industry would be illegal…”
http://systemicdisorder.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/trans-pacific-partnership-trade-pact-more-draconian-than-nafta/
When it comes to it, you’d simply break away from the Agreement and join up with other countries who were also bearing the brunt of corporate imperialism.
Well and good CV, however what if such countries are also bearing the brunt of corporate imperialism in their mainstream media too, successfully keeping people sleepy and uninformed?
We are all becoming like the toad that was put in the cool water and slowly heated up. We put up with more and more of this b**shit. Our tolerance is remarkable and for those who have had it bought to their attention its very horrible to watch.
In that case clearly you DON’T know exactly what it is…
It is a human number…..
Suck my balls Lynn.
[lprent: Not my style. I’m more likely to use some kind of pincer. 😈 See like this horse…

I did rather like the way that the system decided to moderate you. Your other comment had the wrong e-mail address (I corrected it for you), and this one had a phrase that akismet found offensive. Good picking by the machine. ]
And Australians have a new name for NZers – refugees.
Woooooooooo! 53,900 economic refugee’s, fleeing NZ, in the year to July. This does equate roughly to the figure often cited of “1000 NZers leaving for Australia every week”, but even more. Economic refugee is a completely apt term.
Aussies must think we are idiots voting twice for a government that drives its own citizens away in droves.
I just want to comment on the Julian Assange and Equador thing.
I don’t know what Assange did or did not do in Sweden with those girls. I don’t know if the USA is behind these charges to get him to the USA.
I understand wikileaks is about speaking truth to power.
My question is how principled is Mr Assange seeking refuge from the President of Equador IF he runs a regime averse to freedom of speech, and imprisons people for speaking truth to power? Self interest rules in the end?
Nelson Mandela went to prison for 25 years, was able to make a stand, retain his principles and came out to an atmosphere which could have resulted in massive bloodshed had he given the word. he didn’t. He chose peace and dignity. He spoke truth to power in many ways.
Julian Assange…
The swedish have refused to interview Assange in the Equador Embassy. I think they should.
Tracey,
Why are you repeating the lies of Mr Assange’s pursuers?
Have you thought of doing some research before coming online with your ill informed opinions?
Yes Tracy. By edict, Julian can do no wrong and any suggestion to the opposite can only be a dastardly plot by George Bush and Dick Cheney. Those two women are actually male CIA operatives from the Treadstone project, disguised as women in order to trap our dear hero. But Julian has come up with a stunning plan , elegant in its simplicity.
meh trolling
I thought the same thing but the comment thread from 11 on this page (http://thestandard.org.nz/nz-vs-ecuador/) cleared things up for me on Monday.
Bill convinced me fairly quickly with his links and knowledge, I could stand corrected though.
I wouldn’t say I was thoroughly convinced about Ecuador, but I did learn a fair amount.
absolutely agree. But it was one of the best back and forth threads i’ve seen in a week or two.
I just want to comment on the john banks thing.
he asserts that the boorockacsee is being overrun with rationalists who dont beleive in religion abut the john banks knows that God made the world in 7 days 4,300 years ago.
he also designed his hardly davison and the medicine that keeps horrible old men alive.
And that’s the best the Nat’s could find to front the Blue/Yellow brand called ACT.
The supremacy of old white guys. Especially if you are a convicted “white collar” criminal – link
On home detention in Europe. Bloody brilliant.
I’ve commented on this (so) many times before but I still wonder why it is that Labour seem so adept at shooting themselves in the foot..
Labour could make some traction against National but instead they open their mouths and try to cram as much of their feet in as they can.
I mean its nearly as bad as the run up to the last election…
Serious question: Do Labour want to be in power?
Do Labour want to be in power?
Some Labour MPs know this is their last term, so they won’t be in power anyway.
Some other Labour MPs believe time is on their side, and that losing the next election will not affect them (as long as they keep their seats).
Somewhere in the middle there may be some other MPs who genuinely do want to win the next election, but for whatever reason, they seem unable to rein in the idiot(s).
If by “Labour” you mean the party membership, outside the cosseted caucus, then the answer is “Yes”. But the MPs don’t seem to care what they think.
Well its a serious question because last election if (IM always HO) the Labour MPs had shut their gobs then Goff would have won.
Now it seems as if others don’t want Shearer to win. I mean that MP talking about the gay marriage and Trev going off the deep end (again)
If I was a Labour supporter I’d be looking at the greens (at least they have public unity)
Yes but not as a left party
Duck feet?
Just watching my recording of today’s General Debate.
That politician got amnesia again
From Sue Moroney, delivering some news to John Banks following his contribution to today’s general debate: Banksie apparently predicted that Shearer would be leader of the opposition in the 50th Parliament, and that he (Banks) would be back as an MP in the 50th parliament.
News for Banks – THIS IS THE 50TH PARLIAMENT!
The man is not mentally stable.
I just watched Banks’ speech (myfreeview recorded it on the end of question time, and started recording the debate in the middle of the general debate).
OMG. He kept referring to the current parliament and the current leader of the opposition in THIS 40th parliament… I checked:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_New_Zealand#History
Oh dear, John. Still living in 1981. Then he talked about being back for the 50th parliament.
And as for his total misrepresentation of Labour’s position on education…. fail. You’re making it all up, John.
And here Banks is, in all his demented glory.
http://inthehouse.co.nz/node/14585
His wonderful contribution to the General Debate.
The man is not mentally stable.
He’s just plain dumb. IQ about 80 I should think. The rest is animal cunning.
Yep.
As for not being stable, I’d say he’s extremely stable. He’s literally always like this.
And Auckland voted him in????? Not long ago as Mayor and then as MP?????
Doesn’t say much for the IQ of your average Jafa.
Twice as Mayor. After booting him out in ’04 they elect him back in ’07 like it never. fucking. happened.
Honest we tried our best. Although in my personal defence I voted for Bob Harvey as the westie mayor that year!
Most Jafas only had one opportunity to vote for Banks, and Len won. I think you could then ascertain that Jafaland became more astute thanks to the consolidation of greater Auckland. So Anne your impression may be misguided !!!!!
Yep. The south and the west voted overwhelmingly Brown. He had a meeting last night where St Heliers and Mission Bay were complaining about rates increases. He was apologetic. He should stick to his guns and tell them to complain to the Government who set super city up.
Besides 90+% of this particular area voted for Banks. Why should Len care?
Yes Len has become the sacrificial goat regarding rates.
The real issue to me is the every increasing debt. This implies to me that to keep rates down the councils utilized debt as a major source to fund councils wishes.(and some smoke and mirrors accounting to CCO’s) Not a very sustainable policy. Unfortunately the next mayor is for an even more stressful time. For Len’s sake coming 2nd at the next election could be a godsend for his family, friends and personally.
Funny how all attention is towards the mayor there are many councillors also accountable.
Most Jafas only had one opportunity to vote for Banks, and Len won.
Dammit you’re right.
And now the rates demands are coming in and there are all these people with a surprised look on their face. D’oh.
I suspect that most people who voted for Len knew that the rates were going up. It was, after all, fairly obvious that they would due to Rodney Hides and National’s implementation of the SuperShitty.
http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2012/08/cunliffe-has-eyes-on-prize/
This is a pretty good speech.
I read a book some years ago -one of those organisational improvements books, darned if I can remember what it was called…
basically it said when difficult people start making life unpleasant in an organisation, the traditional approach was to get rid of them , and everything would be peaceful again.
Well, this guy said we should listen to these difficult, annoying people, because they may hold the answer for the improvement of the organisation, will challenge it and come up with different outside the box ideas, ie not yes-men /women
Maybe it’s time Labour realised Cunliffe may not be the problem, he may actually be the solution, and this may be a little uncomfortable for them
And nary a stumble or bather to be heard. Great speech.
Um blather I mean.
General comment on quality of media journalism? (sorry sensationalism)
I listened to a report on RNZ this evening of a tragic motoring accident.
“One witness said (recording of witness voice “I heard a loud bang and rushed outside. The vehicle was turning left into a church …”)”
Why do we get these sorts of soundbites fed to us as sources of “eyewitness” accounts on so many bulletins these days.
My son and I call it the ‘nosy neighbour’ phenomenon… It’s like the person who when a meth lab is discovered, or someone is arrested, says “I always thought there was something off about them”. (You don’t hear people say “she was such a nice, quiet woman” any more, fortunately..
And it now appears that we’re going to have to stop calling lying, thieving scum something other than rats as it’s now been proven that they’ve got more empathy and compassion than your average right wing politician.
DTB
I thought the rat info was timely. When wouldn’t it be though? That’s amazing but humans don’t need to be shown up in this sort of way. By rats! What next? Spiders make good mothers, carry their babies on their back etc. Really we don’t live up to our brain capacity.
poor old sad12. Twevor upset you girlie?
Evening Colin – having searched you on this site, I note that this only your second visit. Your first was on August 10. On both occasions, you targetted Bad12 – are you a stalker and is your age 16?
[lprent: By the same logic then that begs the question – is bad 12? In which case I’d have to hope that censorship act doesn’t apply here bearing in mind HS’s comment to me and my response. ]
Damn i interrupted the importance of a scrabble game to have my rawene upset by a pair of horse’s balls,
Now that could be a double intendre, but, honestly it aint people, how the hell tho did you know what i do for a day job ,
If colon16 had a ounce of intellect in it’s little snippet of spittle i could probably just gather the strength to slide my hand up it’s hole and administer a cholecystectomy, that would teach em to have the gall to address me such…
bad12
There’s a lot of bile in your gall or the other way round.
Kioara Colin
I think Trevor has upset a lot of sensible left-leaning people. Personally, I think he must be drunk when posting some of the stuff he posts online. Or is he suffering from dementia such that he now thinks he’s Paula Bennett.
This Labour Party needs reaming.of the artherosclerotic plaque that is restricting blood-flow to good leadership. Trevor is a fatty and calcified deposit on the arteries to the left.
With the government’s asset sales plan in free fall, its time for John Key to change his approach. Be bold, and just for once place yourself in the history books, and embrace state capitalism.
Turn the Future Investment Fund into a fully fledged sovereign wealth fund, and transfer ownership of our SOE’s to it — like Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, give it full range to invest in anything and everything, turn it into a balwark of NZ and public ownership, and a companion piece to the NZ Super Fund, and a huge cash cow to fund schools, hospitals, broadband, rail, roads…
If its good enough for Dubai, Kuwait, Norway and Singapore, its good enough for us.
And David Shearer, promise to do that when winning the 2014 election.
Imagine if Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble did it back in ’86, instead of flogging them off to Gordon Gekko-types. They would truly be heroes.
Way too sensible for the likes of Slippery, and, when Dave aint doing His bit to alleviate poverty via a spot of mango-skinned redistribution He’s probably still coming to grips with that overly trite piece of neo-Liberal bulls**t, ”the Government has no business in business”,
Mostly the rest of us can see that as an investment vehicle our Government has the greatest ability to be proactive within the New Zealand economy just as the many countries you have highlighted are,
Add to that list of course China where the State has no problem ‘owning’ the smallest of factory’s producing the easiest of goods to manufacture and we can see that Government does have a role in business on all levels from investment to ownership,
Unfortunately little old us seem still to be stuck in the dark ages…
That sounds like a really stupid idea. Better to just turn the SoEs back into what they were and always should have been – state services run to benefit NZ and not to make a profit.
It may sound a bit dumb to some, but this seems to be the most popular world wide song at present. It even hits tunes in European charts, and it is is highly popular. Bieber move off your top arrogant arse, this is much, much better, leaving you in the shadow.
Suck it up or hate it, your choice, it is interesting. In Brazil it is based on some tunes from certain regions, and it is also rural. It is “popular”.
Enjoy!
Good choice 😎
Who gets more than 4 million hits on You Tube, even large hits in Germany and so, a bit bizarre, maybe sign of “emerging markets”?
To me just a bit of fine tuned entertainment of better class, still like “el pueblo unido”!