Entrepreneurs will indeed diversify! “One thing we can be certain of: the referendum will pass comfortably. That’s because the government is organising and running it, and will not propose a question that would fail. Politically it needs at least 65% support, and ideally even more. On current polling that would stack the odds against a fully commercial market and perhaps more in favour of non-profit Cannabis Social Clubs, run along the lines of liquor licensing trusts with profits returned to the community, and who re-sell cannabis products grown and made by licensed producers.”
Opinion there from one of them. “Chris Fowlie is the CEO of Zeacann Limited, a medicinal cannabis producer; co-founder of the New Zealand Medical Cannabis Council; president of the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws NZ Inc; co-founder of The Hempstore Aotearoa; co-host of Marijuana Media on 95bFM; and court-recognised expert witness for cannabis.” https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/01/22/cannabis-predictions-and-crystal-ball-gazing/
Totally not suprised about Ohairu being light fawn – such a tough seat full of old skool conservatives and red necks of a blue persuasion. It’s an anti progressive area. We were lucky we scraped through.
Ha ha ha. Grey – I got frightened off last time I tried to come back. Instead of finding some good craic I found a seething pit of misogynists defending Brett Kavanagh – It was hideous. I felt things had changed with the nature of dialogue in these parts.
We have our bad days Rosie. The sun usually shines through after a while and we have some good thinkers with background to support their ideas and theories which are usually either helpful for understanding, or helpful and positive.
Eeek. Grey, those bad days you speak of, when I have visited and not commented have really been rather dire. Hanging out with misogynists is something I’d rather not do – I can see your point, there are good thinkers too, but yeah, a bit too much of the yucky stuff going on for my tastes.
The trouble is Rosie it’s a bit of a polluted stream. Trying to put in some fresh water that is not tainted with BS is a bit of a task. But people like you and Veutoviper are needed, not just because you are women for some sort of balance, but because you are thinking people and interested in NZrs and the world, and can articulate your thoughts in a way that others can respond to.
I think there is an important kaupapa here that allows people to be drawn in, to put their ideas down and see them printed out where they will be taken seriously enough to be read and replied to. A political discourse that is fairly immediate and more continuous than is possible through newspaper and magazine letters, and is not as open and easy through other platforms. Radio talkback can come up with some good stuff, but it is not captured in print and it is hard to build a decent discussion and there is no archived information that can be personally referred to or built onto.
And reasoned discussion that is open to the public easily is rare in NZ.
And any sort of sensible, searching political discussion is rare in NZ. That is why it is important for people to not just push off in disgust as I have attempted to do a few times. Take a breather by all means you past commenters but please lets keep the stream going,; okay never pure, never quite to your satisfaction but join in the swim when the water isn’t too murky, that is my plea.
It is very affirming to know that people are thinking and trying to find a pathway to follow to the future, it stops me getting depressed and I think many others also. Where there is a lively, intelligent discussion there is hope!
Thank you for your comments and for making some points – I hadn’t thought about. I certianly agree with you on this point you make:
“reasoned discussion that is open to the public easily is rare in NZ.”
I guess for me, in the past i just ignored some off the more off commenters on here, and generally there would be a pile on anyway that I stayed out of most times, but what I experienced a few weeks ago, put me in an unsafe space, as a woman. I felt vulnerable and re traumatised by these misogynists.
It was compouned by regular TS commenters then having a petty argument about the fiidly points of the Brett Kavanagh case, who had avoided my whole point entirely. Initially I had responded to some one who had started off the Open Mike thread with “Oh, blah blah blah, bad Herlad newspaper, there’s far more important things than the Brett Kavanagh story”
For any person reading that, who has been affected by rape and sexual assault it would have felt like someone had minimised the reality of what they had been through. It was selfish and thoughtless thing for that person to say.
I pointed this out and it turned into an open forum for MRA’s and gendered violence deniers. It was really horrific. It never would have happened on this site previously without just one person, me, to argue against. It was like a verbal assault but the most vile people imaginable to me.
I am quite tough and I do get into scrapes in real life with jerks like that but I don’t feel I should have to be defending the abused in what used to be a safe place. I just thought “well f*ck this you know. I’m not coming back”
And Grey don’t feel despondant as there are some wonderful things happening in our country and around the world. Really good advancements and achievements, from thinking to doing. The young people are fantastic. It sounds corny but our future is their thinking, now. Leaders are getting younger and solving the problems that the generations above them caused for them. If you want to feel hopeful, talk to a young person with a vision. We even managed to get some into Parliament! So that is progress 🙂
Finally back to a point you made earlier, about the lack of reasoned discourse in NZ. I’ve found it really quite refreshing looking at what other countries are talking about. Just one example might be a site called Bella Caledonia: A left wing Scottish prespective on world and local affairs from an Indepedence veiwpoint.
Sorry to hear that Rosie. I feel that if you can’t educate them, and they resist any points of view, you shouldn’t argue or attempt to reason or explain with such a group of men. They will find justification in the most unlikely places.
Yesterday there were amazing arguments about whether it was okay for a young man to stand in front of some Omaha Indian people who wanted to walk up some steps to make some protest or announcement. The number who argued about rights when it was a matter of lack of courtesy to someone different and older than himself, and a lack of respect for the other, was amazing. I felt bad about that response and its vehemence. So I realise that was peanuts to what you felt.
I think there is nothing you can do except to make a statement about how we should treat each other, and how taking advantage of others can affect them badly lifelong. Also the point should be made that you would never think of treating anyone in a bad way and expect that respect should be a two-way thing. After that you should withdraw to preserve your own peace and stability, hopefully more in sorrow than in anger. But that sort of discord makes you aware that behind apparently trustworthy and honest faces, there can be traces of something deeply unpleasant, more than just the light and dark side that we all have controlled by the brain in one of its functions.
And you too, super Rongotai trooper! Hope you are well.
Please see reply to Grewarshark above, as to my absence.
I did come back for a sniff around and found sword fishs’ interesting graph and info. That was the kind of analysis I used to enjoy, and it was good to see he was still contributing.
Swordfish is only an intermittent these days unfortunately, Last time a month or so ago, I did my best to encourage more frequency!
I thought I had done the same when you came for your ‘sniff around’ because I was thrilled to see you and then you disappeared again; but I was also thinking at that time of disappearing myself.
TS certainly goes through changes from time to time!
It’s probably a good thing that the site goes through changes with commenters, but there are voices I miss. I have noticed there are less women, which I find disappointing. I can imagine there are good reasons for that.
Are you on any social/political faceblba pages? I occasionally get involved with some discussions on that platform, but not often.
I don’t have a Twitter account which means I can read lots without having to befriend the owner of the accounts I read (LOL). I do have a (ghost) Facebook page but in my real name so will not disclose that here. If there is a Facebook political site you are on, we could perhaps meet up there and then use Facebook Messenger/chat for private chat?
There’s just few faceblab sites that I follow, but I have zero political friends on faceblab, with the exception of one person actually, come to think of it. I find it hard to find people willing to discuss politics and social issues that are just ordinary people.
Not suggesting that you are any old ordinary person 🙂
Please feel free to send me a facebook message to pacific rosie.
I also have a petition you may or may not be interested in!
Pretty clear that the Nat vote is based on the urban upper class and farmers – class divisions are highlighted with the strong red preferences in working class suburbs, and deep blue in wealthy areas. Good to see some of the lighter blue areas that could flip to red in the next election.
But the left should take nothing for granted – NZF support has collapsed and the Greens could implode at any minute.
I wonder if we’ll find out who the MP that sent the ‘you deserve to die’ text to JLR is? Or will they be quietly shuffled off stage? It’s hard to imagine a parliamentary career surviving such an unpleasant incident.
I know who the MP is alleged to be Cinny. What I don’t know yet is how National is going to deal with the situation. A potential crime has allegedly been committed that’s punishable with up to 3 years jail time.
The party comes first with the nat’s and they will bury any and everything that could damage their brand.
People have never been a priority, neither is accountability.
I’d like to see action taken by the police, the way I see it is a person in a position of responsibility/public office sent such a vile text it near on caused a suicide.
If that is the way a person treats their exlover one can only imagine how they would treat strangers/voters. Freaking disgusting behaviour no matter which party a person supports,
So we should hold National to account for their hypocrisy. Why isn’t this happening? After all they they were very keen for Ardern to act in respect of Meka Whaitiri before any facts of that matter had been established.
With regard to “A potential crime has been committed”, JLR’s facebook post and media reports are that this text is now being investigated by NZ Police and is out of the hands of both JLR and National.
However, it remains to be seen whether NZ Police will decide to prosecute etc. Personally, on NZ Police’s form in usually not taking such political related issues further, I personally am not holding my breath that we will see anything other than “we have investigated and do not deem it appropriate to take the matter further”, insignificant evidence etc etc .
Looks like one of his advisors alerted him a while back to the `pale stale male’ meme trending on social media, and it’s been percolating away in the back of his mind ever since. So he’s made Nick Smith the spokesperson for Crown-Maori relations.
If the brilliance of this master-stroke is not immediately apparent, think about it. It reassures those in the Nat hinterland that colonialism is not yet dead. It reassures his Chinese overlords that the upstart natives will be kept in check. It shows his gratitude that his Chinese caucus colleagues are still refraining from pointing out that the Treaty gives Maori a permanent privileged status. It must be galling that the colonial aristocracy have been joined by the Maori aristocracy in solidarity, but the asian influx can compete via wealth-accumulation as consolation for being unable to gain parity in law.
You’d think it would have been sensible to give Shane Reti that job – someone who can see both sides and has proven competent. But being sensible would send the wrong signal. Reti now has the tertiary education, skills and employment portfolio. If he’s an ideas man, an excellent basis on which to build a political career.
I would have preferred Mr Reti in health.
Eminently qualified.
Question to me is who is competent to take the attack to Labour on tax; carbon tax, income tax, capital tax. Sure the hell ain’t their finance spokesperson.
Tax should be the principle attack line from National in 2020.
Competitive, with artistry: “Paul is an enthusiastic pianist and has a broad interest in the arts; he is a 2nd dan black belt in Tae Kwon Do and plays on the right wing for the Parliamentary Rugby team.” https://paulgoldsmith.national.org.nz/about_paul
“Cavusoglu said in a speech that some Western countries were trying to cover up Mr Khashoggi’s murder”. C’mon dude, point the finger! Which ones? “There are Western countries trying to cover this case up. I know the reasons.” “We know and see what sorts of deals are made. We see how those who spoke of freedom of press are now covering this up after seeing money.”
“Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said Mr Khashoggi’s killing was ordered by the highest level of Saudi leadership”. So does Cavusoglu mean “the US, its closest ally, whose Senate has voted for a resolution blaming the prince for the murder”?? Trump, then, resisting the Senate? Or does he mean Britain & Europe?
Governance is trending towards unfashionable in the anglo-saxon world, observes Gordon Campbell on the PM’s visit to Downing St: “New Zealand is useful only insofar as we can contribute to the illusion that Number 10 is open for something that looks like business as usual. It isn’t, of course. On both sides of the Atlantic, the practices of normal government are in virtual shutdown.”
The “Marpol Treaty is a set of UN-mandated regulations (devised by the International Maritime Organisation) that among other things, is aimed at cracking down on the pollution emitted by ships, and the crucial bits are in Annex VI. As Bloomberg News recently reported, the global shipping fleets currently consume about 3.8 million barrels a day of fuel oil — in the main, this is heavy, lower-value stuff from a refining process that contains about 1 to 3.5 percent sulphur. That content level is about to change: from January 2020, new rules from the International Maritime Organization will limit sulphur-dioxide emissions from ships. All else equal, a ship would need to burn fuel with only 0.5 percent sulphur content or less to comply.”
This pollution-reduction of 50-90% is terrific news for Greens globally! It implements the principle of true-cost accounting, and seems the first major step in international law that signals a global trajectory beyond neoliberalism. It tilts the economic balance back towards regional economies, and resilience.
This, alongside of increasing storms making shipping harder to insure, means countries need to start putting local manufacturing back in place.
It just wont be WORTH it to ship nonsense around the globe anymore. Yesterday I observed the garden ties a friend got me were imported from Spain. We don’t need Spain to make material strips WTF are we useless?
When it comes to looking after ourselves. Can we?
We used to make all manner of things. As a lad off to church in Te Aroha it was not uncommon for me to sit in church and dream sinfully of the factory full of girls making bras down the road (Bendon).
But that factories gone.
We can’t even can food without needing several countries involved.
Now we’ve got useless Kardashian c**** selling us bras. Global economy – global shutdown of local independence is what it is. Pro american corporate everything.
Wait for the climate change derivatives. AAA rated insurance bundles. Buy now to save the planet.
Britain can be bought to a halt by a truck driver strike in a few days when food and resources are curbed. In a strike there is chaos, the supermarkets and petrol stations are empty within 3 days.
Who needs military when you rely on about 5 third parties for the basics of life, and seem to have no contingency plans for disasters, strikes or soft power approaches and your country bought to their knees by old fashioned methods like a siege.
NZ as a food and commodities producer like wood/steel seems to has lost our way. So busy putting up speculative houses which 40% (or more) of people can’t even afford on their incomes for the world’s middle classes to get residency here as a Ponzi that the government is scared to stop.
Still the mantra is, build more of these speculative houses. Wonder how many of the 1000 Kiwibuild houses that are supposed to be built shortly are for the state houses and the poor? Then deduct off the state houses that were demolished to create the new houses to work out the final tally of increased state housing.
Normally don’t bother watching the MSM news but saw an article about housing the other day. Nice (sarcasm) to see they are still beating the same drums about the causes of housing un affordability. One commentator said we needed to make land more available (a common right wing approach) and the other that tax treatment was the answer.
Nobody mentioned the effect of the third highest immigration in the world per capita in NZ for the past decade or our low wages. Then the media people fail to understand why nobody trusts them anymore or tunes in with that tripe and propaganda being fed out to the masses, which the masses don’t actually consume anymore.
Weird how inspite of the Natz ideas of putting unitary plan zoning in place and throwing out democracy and basic planning measures the land prices in creased and that the last decade of increased taxes on property have actually also increased the shortages in particular of rental properties as landlords bail out and with hundreds of thousands of new residents also competing who often have $40k and more up their sleeve to outcompete those who are in debt in NZ.
It’s a further irony that the houses are being built that increase the cost of food and petrol taxes but are just or even more unaffordable than the existing houses and we are bringing in more unemployed (aka the unemployed Chinese workers holed up with no work after paying third parties $40k to get them work in NZ) and low cost people who need to be housed in competition to make the houses which are generally more unaffordable than before!
Where is the diversification strategy. Like the UK and their ‘favourite industries to support, like finance and nuclear’ they are left out in the cold when they realise that those industries are gone in a flash and industries that used to prop up Britain are non existent anymore after going out of business with the government uninterested in helping new fledging businesses or even most British based ones.
If there was a world shortage would NZ own many of our resources anymore (after our current records of giving them away virtually for free like water and sand), and would we be like the UK that failed to diversify and was in the pockets of Thatcherism for decades and after screwing up socially with their bad decisions are now about to lose their Ponzi businesses like finance and global headquarters bases for global business with Brexit uncertainty.
A return to local manufacturing is not part of the global plan to make us bitches of the riches.
But the rich are too stupid to see their grand schemes are as flimsy as their arguments for austerity.
It’s entirely possible to have a global village scenario, AND local economies… We’re all hooked up via the internet but the status quo learned to use it to forge greater divides, to allow the rampant spread of hate and disinformation. Religious memes, class memes, fuck the plebs divide and conquer.
Global tech and information sharing, and trade in materials not locally available… this is sensible. Everything we can do ourselves, we should bloody well do. Is it really worth it to buy cheap crap and enrich foreign sociopathic entities rather than our own people.
There’s a reason tomatoes get picked in Australia, packed in South America and sold in NZ – so we all get used to the idea we’re so useless we can’t even can our own tomatoes – so we NEED the global economy, these corporate ticket clippers/subsidy scramblers embedded every step of the way.
Criminally negligent companies being bailed out by governments rather than sanctioned/governed show they are not only onside with each other, they’re in bed together and they’re cheating on you.
When the seas become uninsurable some common sense must prevail and local manufacture might return. More likely the eejits will try air freight tomatoes from aus to brasil to nz. Cos the economy!
I can only suggest to buy local. To grow local. And where you might be in a position to do so, to make local stuff. This is not xenophobic nonsense, it it corporate-phobic common sense.
I realise the housing market was a ponzi scheme (use one house as collateral for the next), but fail to see the current govt playing into that, rather, they’re trying to get us out of it.
Some speculators might suffer, those money for nothing types, I’m not weeping for them personally.
And those tomatoes taste like water and are utterly overpriced. They also come in dainty little plastic containers – all so that a series of ticket clippers engaged in nothing more productive than exercising their egos can get an earn.
(Very efficient and effective – NOT)
NZ as a food and commodities producer like wood/steel seems to has lost our way. So busy putting up speculative houses which 40% (or more) of people can’t even afford on their incomes for the world’s middle classes to get residency here as a Ponzi that the government is scared to stop.
That is what I have been banging on about for years. Concern for the people of NZ is not fscken xenophobia. It’s hatred of injustice. I hate the idea of Kiwis coming last in a greedy scramble for profit, competing against half the world, rather than just building houses for people to live in.
Criminally negligent companies being bailed out by governments rather than sanctioned/governed show they are not only onside with each other, they’re in bed together and they’re cheating on you.
save nz has been thinking again. And deeply. Thanks for presenting us with what we should know and projecting into the likely future, another thing that should be going through our brains but isn’t. You can’t be right always, but what you do is transfixing us on the problems and you get through the trashy glamour life projected onto us.
The word you were looking for is brought which is to bring.
NZ as a food and commodities producer like wood/steel seems to has lost our way.
Back in the 19th century, under the influence of free-market economics, NZ decided that we specialised in producing food and selling it to Britain. This was based upon the idea of specialisation advanced by Adam Smith. Of course, Adam Smith was only talking about specialist jobs in a factory that made an entire product. He would have been horrified at the idea of a country specialising as a country has vast and diverse resources available to it and a lot of people most of whom aren’t going to be interested in doing the same thing as their neighbour.
We seem to have held on to that delusional idea despite everyone;s insistence that everyone is different and has different skills and interests. National tends to be the loudest about these differences and that one size doesn’t fit all and they’re also the loudest about NZ being a bloody farm.
It’s this continued delusional thinking that keeps getting us into trouble as the free-market system continuously fails to work as advertised.
This was the beginning of the mania for public declarations of impotence by democratically elected leaders. Globalization became their excuse for not dealing with difficult issues, for not using their levers of power and large budgets to effect. They made the forces of inevitability credible.
Globalization had brilliant proponents–Mrs. Thatcher first among them, and economists like Milton Friedman… Government after government, as if in a fit of moralism, legislated away its right to take on debt or collect new taxes, even though both of these were fundamental governmental powers, central to the construction and maintenance of democracies…
From the early 1970s to late in the century, multiple binding international economic treaties were put in place, while almost no counterbalancing binding treaties were negotiated for work conditions, taxation, the environment, or legal obligations. For 250 years the painful job of building the modern nation-state had depended on a continual rebalancing of binding rules for both the public good and self-interest. Now this balance was tipped violently one way by simply shifting much of our economic power out into the global marketplace.
Perhaps development of forward progress maximised for all the people in this country, should develop in such a way that there is a replacement economy just humming along below the surface that will serve the sort of a simpler society here similar to that in the quote from Joseph Cederwall in Scoop.
Okay, try to keep us afloat in the present asset-stripping money culture, but encourage community enterprise wherever it occurs. Often people just need funding for facilities and travel, they volunteer their time and expertise. We could make NZ more resilient and greater than it ever was. We will need to so we can attempt to cope with our looming future.
I love the Gili Islands, they are like stepping back in time as no petrol vehicles or generators are allowed on the islands. They are Isles with no dogs but many stray cats, no petrol cars or scooters but coconut palm oil powered scooters, E-bikes and electric mopeds, and even horse and carts.
The Sasak of the Gilis are a friendly, resilient, devoutly Muslim and community-focused people. They have made the best of a difficult task of rebuilding and welcoming back the tourists and I saw evidence of a highly community oriented and cooperative rebuild. I encourage people to consider going there and helping out with getting the economy back on track…
Note the highly community oriented and co-operative rebuild. We don’t have this sort of pulling together in our country, we are still locked into an individualistic go-getter capital-accreting type that seems to have been present from the colonialists.
Perhaps we should institute sister islands and states as a way of making friends, and joining with, and showing solidarity with places like this who still have a system that works for them and can all pull their weight in running small business at a humble level that works both for the individual and for the greater good. I think a lot of our problems started with aspirational people who wanted to live a richer lifestyle in NZ than the country could afford.
They had to change the system and get more moneyed people here at the cost of losing our simpler lifestyle.
So right, Greywarshark, those who wished to turn us into another Switzerland with the likes of dodgy law firms looking after dodgy trusts dodging taxes… those people?
Going from what is practical for shipping businesses to make a profit on their present routes and contracts to 0.5% sulphur content in that short of a time will definitely ’tilt the economic balance’. Full stop! The rest of the sentence “towards regional economies and resilience” may never get to apply as quick effects drive us in quick time to recession and the appalling conflation of all the problems we already are facing in so-called good times. Huh.
A low limit, a low limit of time, a low level of achievability. Ships aren’t cramped together cardboard cartons. (Now is there a market for a new idea? “I have one word to say to you young man plastics [cardboard]: The Graduate.) Turn a bad situation into profitable ones, with a greenwash too!)
There is the cost of perhaps a year of our nation’s income goes into the really big ships. (Go on correct me about this and ignore all my other points you nutty nitpickers.) Definitely a ‘He’s also warning us of an imminent structural adjustment to global trade.’
What is the matter with these supposed wise businessmen and world advisors?
They do nothing for decades, and then apparently panic, and set impossible targets to achieve from the height of their elevated tables and padded chairs having a Picard Star Trek moment “MAKE IT SO”.
Think Green. 😊 Rotorua emissions are just nature doing it’s thing. It’s the artificial additives that are creating run-away global warming. If a Nat tells you we ought to stop all emissions, natural as well, tell him to email Bridges asking him to hold a press-conference and announce that National in govt will award a knighthood to the first person who successfully plugs an erupting volcano.
With Auckland house sales dropping 20%, but prices merely flat, looks like the desired outcome of killing the commodification of housing is heading to being achieved.
The day I can go to an Auckland barbeque and people aren’t wanking on about whether one kind of landscaping increases their capital value over another, will be a welcome day indeed.
Agreed – but the horse has bolted.
Unless we see an ideally slow and graceful deflation by about 50%, the next generation will face lifelong debt serfdom in order to buy a home.
And all it takes to restart the lunacy, is another National government deliberately cranking up demand via immigration and tax policy – to the point that demand overwhelms supply again.
Not just the next generation. At present there are people on working incomes that had no chance of buying a home, and have been trapped into renting. Unless you have access to low-paid/free accommodation, are able to fund the deposit outside of the banking system, or have an exceptionally high wage/income compared to others – you are already locked out of home ownership.
The issue regarding overseas ownership of residential homes still requires attention, and effective management. (Along with many other issues, housing affordability is a problem that has been created by the failure to address many factors.)
Since I moved back up north from the South Island Ad, I’ve noticed that Aucklanders spend a lot of their time engaged in rather vulgar talk about the value of their houses.
Saw Ritchie McCaw and John Key on Seven Sharp last night. What I picked up from it (coming from a point of ignorance on the subject) is that that there is a rich foreign benefactor who wanted to help Christchurch after the earthquakes and set up some sort of organisation to use sport to boost morale. Now McCaw and Key are onboard with him and want to do some more sporty help stuff. However, no specific projects were talked about it, and all we learned was that it wasn’t Key’s fault there was a three way handshake at the Rugby World Cup.
John Key’s deals with billionaires somehow seem to enrich the world’s billionaires at the expense of opportunities for locals to get wealthier and have access to the same tax payer funded ‘sweetheart’ deals as his billionaire mates….
Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after ‘sweetheart’ deal with Government
No doubt will be entered around a ‘sports stadium’, marina or convention centre for elite sports that already have funding and support at the exclusion of everyone else…
meanwhile obesity levels for most Kiwis are increasing partly because there are little opportunities and government schemes at grass roots level as our schools swimming pools and sports fields are eroded like our public spaces, full of tourists and rubbish….
And our footpaths and walkways (both applying to feet and people movement) being hijacked by the machine-mad younger people and businesses. Just another way of putting some manufactured item or practice as a barrier to natural and simple ways that should be available to all without cost.
And don’t forget apparently not many questions asked when one of China’s most wanted gambled in excess of $500 million through Sky City – but apparently the penalty for money laundering was 5 months in his pent house in Auckland and giving back millions to China and NZ?????
It looks like Yong Ming Yan alias Yang Liu alias William Yan’s alias Bill Liu’s only came to governments attention even though he used multiple identities and was money laundering because he did a business deal with Dot Com… if he had not done that it is debatable whether NZ government would have worried about the 500 million + money laundering and multiple identities because they prefer to turn a blind eye to Chinese big money and the activities in NZ…
I’ll hop straight to Godwin. If only Hitler had not dropped the ball and taken his own and Eva’s life, he too might have apologised and ‘moved on with his life and work’, or until the Nuremburg trials anyway. As there would have been for him along with his compatriots. But perhaps they should all have been let off on diversion so they could make recompense for their bad behaviour. The apology system and looking and saying sorry in Court which Judges seem to think is meaningful, may lead to less harsh sentences and offer a lot of savings for the justice system in NZ.
/sarc
If apologies are splashed all over the media are they just PR exercises? If apologies aren’t splashed all over the media does that mean they’re not genuine? Or if apologies aren’t splashed all over the media does that mean they weren’t given?
If someone says an apology sounds like a PR exercise and someone says of the same apology it doesn’t sound like a PR exercise who is right?
IMO, yet’ another case of ‘right’ in such situations being “in the eye of the beholder”.
Or rather, there is no ‘right’ – it is purely a matter of personal opinion. Debating who is ‘right’ just becomes a circular (pointless?) argument with no absolute answer.
The way in which an apology is given speaks volumes to me.
In which instance jlr appeared more genuine than the spotlight longing roastbuster rapist.
That ego driven roastbuster should be charged and chucked into the big house. Maybe he could learn a bit more about rape there. Yeah I’m majorly pissed about his recent actions.
Great to see Minister Woods providing more funding for low emission transport of $11 million.
Foodstuffs, Meridian, Ngai Tahu Tourism, Taraua District Council and others are co-funders.
“This funding is made up of $4.3 million of government co-funding and $7.3 million of funds from the private sector. That’s a smart investment that means the maximum benefit for the taxpayers spend.
She notes:
“From 100% electric campervans for tourists to hydrogen fuel cell powered buses at the Ports of Auckland to solar panel charged electric vehicles and trial of smart chargers in people’s homes, we’re backing new technologies that will make a difference.
“We’re also funding a further 34 new public charging spaces for electric vehicles right around New Zealand, including several at South Island tourism hot-spots. This is about creating a truly national infrastructure of EV charging so that all major trips around our country are available to EV users.
Does anyone mind if I’m a little underwhelmed?
Surely it’s time to look at what EECA is actually doing with itself as part of Shaw’s Carbon Zero thing?
EECA are lovely people trying hard, but they are one of those little funds that pisses itself into tiny teensy weenie little pools and you really have to work hard to get wet.
Please can we have something more muscular and believable for 2019 in transport energy?
Noelle McCarthy is not the worst thing to slither out of the Emerald Isle, it seems. Meet Sorcha Ryder, and try not to grind your teeth or smash a window. This spineless scoundrel rejoices in the splendid title of “President of the Trinity University Philosophical Society, Dublin.” Read the following and you’ll weep for Ireland, for the fate of academia, and for humanity….
Looks like the shortfall is actually explained by their reliance on builders: “It’s been more difficult than we expected to really shift developers off their existing business model”. Lame excuse, but what we expect from Labour.
Come July, we’ll be able to award Twyford three out of ten for his performance. Will Ardern be able to replace him with someone competent? Probably not. Relying on builders to learn a new business model is like expecting old dogs to learn new tricks.
So how did the first Labour govt succeed? Did they provide the designs and let competition between builders drive the output? If so, is the current govt copying that strategy?
Sir James Fletcher snr, perhaps fearing the Fletcher Construction Co Ltd would be nationalised, took up the invitation of the new Labour Government in 1935 to prepare a scheme to build state rental houses. This was opposed by his brothers as too risky, and they were initially right. The houses proved much more expensive to build than first thought. This was because of the high building and design standards insisted on by the enthusiastic parliamentary undersecretary to the minister of finance, John A. Lee, who had no experience of building.
His scheme provided for most houses to be individual units and to be built from New Zealand-produced materials wherever possible. No two houses in an area were to be of the same design, and construction was to be of a high order. Lee also insisted that interior planning of all houses should conform to modern civilised standards. The New Zealand Institute of Architects’ president considered the scheme expensive and inefficient and Fletcher himself claimed that civil servants had provided house designs and demanded standards of construction on “too lavish a scale”.
The first house was built in 1937 and by March 1939 more than 5000 state houses were built or were under construction, and contracts had been let for 700 more. Residential Construction lost between £200 and £300 a house and survived only by virtue of a £200,000 government-guaranteed overdraft. It was one of several contractors, and by 1939 it had virtually withdrawn from the business.
So they got 5000 built in two years. We need the media to explain why this success isn’t being replicated. Market failure, or poor govt design, or both? I’d like to hear from any experts who reckon they can account for the difference!
I thought everyone had decided that there was not enough available timber in NZ and that we would have to buy it back from Australian entities which had bought it from us originally.
Interesting – I haven’t seen that story. You mean not enough dry cut pine? If so, does that mean nobody checked the resource stocks before designing the construction plan??
Yes, just a question of whether that is all the explanation or just part. It wasn’t there in the 1930s, so time was required to find or create usable land. But they knew that! Labour’s poll rating will slide unless they can explain themselves.
Said houses, thanks to JA Lee’s insistence on high standards, saved New Zealand millions in building replacement houses, and still provide value, even today.
Fifties and sixties State houses attract a premium on the market.
Doesn’t sound anywhere like the National parties expensive theft/fuckup, with selling them off.
Kiwibuild is nothing like the First Labour Government’s State house building programme. Then again that wasn’t entirely earth shattering either. Only 30,000 houses were built between 1937 and 1950. That works out to be less than 2500 per year. Also most of them were still built by the private sector.
Sure, the government via it’s agencies financed, designed, and clerked residential construction but AFAIK the work was always done by the private sector.
@ Gosman, The difference then, was that NZ immigration was not the third highest in the world per capita in the 1930’s to 1950’s, at the same time as they were constructing the state houses… hard to keep up with that sort of impact on population growth with housing, especially when NZ is not exactly choosy on who we are importing into NZ to reside here, with aged people, criminals, 11 day marriage and retail/hospitality workers being popular by immigration as new citizens and residents… many are not actually working but retiring or just living here and able to claim benefits within very short time frames…
some are unemployed before they even get here aka the Chinese workers holed up recently after paying $40k and having no work or money to pay rent.
Let alone all the alias that are being discovered by many coming and going from NZ…
no wonder jobseekers benefits are up. Unlike Kiwi’s who have their benefit cut when they leave NZ, many on multiple passports under different names can come and go as they please and therefore their benefits are not cut, when they leave…
Not sure how motivated the govt was during 1939-45 to build houses and if there was a workforce available at the time.
From memory there was some other event that captured the attention of the world at that time (though I must admit not recorded as part of my writings 😉) ??
So the govt IMO had a valid reason of averaging 2,500/year Though I think you are being a little mischievous in how you have framed your point ??
@ Dennis Frank What are they talking about, it’s the same business model the government uses as the construction industry approach.
That’s the problems as is relying on very poorly trained, low waged imports to build our houses who many are sitting around unemployed after paying $40k to lawyers and third party recruiters, when what we needed was building and planning skills at a higher local level….
As they say, from wiki
“The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.”
In terms of NZ building it seems that allowing hundreds of thousands of low skilled people into NZ will some how create a master piece of engineering and construction over the age of the universe as they all seem to use the infinite monkey theorem in construction here…
could have been a better bet to give free trades training to NZ citizens already here which would take 2 -4 years and be on the ground now instead of the import strategy from National from 2010, (aka in that 8 years we could have had two rounds of new trainees who are NZ born and trained and likely to stay in NZ if the wage and conditions are high enough), or import in quality international people on $100k+ , use habitat for humanity man power for the rest, have people who speak and read English fluently to follow the plans and communicate on site so we don’t have remedial work and it taking forever to get a building completed, and with tradies with decades of experience (aka not likely to respond to $NZ 20 – 40 p/h jobs)….
Even easier go back to the immigration levels that the new government planned for aka 15,000 max, stop the temporary work permits that are a massive burden on infrastructure, stamp on poor tourism and aged parents actually being in NZ and ‘working’ looking after kids on a tourism visa that use our hospitals etc, and actually look at people who want to live here and have something great to offer the country… and the appropriate level of insurance for people who are actually living here, but not qualified to do so, using a tourist or student visa but without means to properly support themselves in NZ…
Build a wall, sounds less complex. Across the Bombay hills.
I agree with the 15,000 figure. Some non partisan think tank looked at the issue. I would include more temporary work visa programmes for the pacific islands. Better than strait handouts to there governments.
It won’t happen as our GDP growth and housing price stability is tied to immigration. No way Labour could survive a house price fall as its doing next to nothing to stimulate other parts of the economy.
In terms of election margin a debate could exist about a few percent that Labour presently gets from poorer immigrants who are still by any method trying to get the extended family into NZ. They will vote against such a control on immigration. Hence since it’s the margin that wins or looses the election Labour can’t act.
It was clear at the point that they announced it that he wouldn’t hit 1000 houses per year for a while and certainly ramping up to 3000 plus a year is pie in the sky dreaming at the moment.
They successfully avoided addressing their unrealistic targets in the first year in office as they could use the excuse that they were putting in place the framework for the programme. No such excuses exist now although I am sure they will attempt variations on this theme.
What a lovely duet Gosman and Puckish Rogue make. Each feeding into the others negative warblings. I prefer Bjorling and Merrill in In the Depths of the Temple myself.
The thing about opera singers is that they can’t usually do pop for anything worth a damn. Their breath control is too deliberate and it screws the natural sound. But opera is totally my thing, some days. Just awesome.
On the other hand, Mercury had an amazing range (with no gaps) and style that is rare in pop music. It’s funny to try to follow his style in karaoke – most of the songs sound simple to sing, but then the note increments keep going up or down so far that one’s throat really gets into difficulty. I mean, you can sing them all in your own range, but they sound so much more flat.
There’s something special about that song – it’s like three different songs with some lyrics being oscure to the point of nonsensical, and the lyrics with obvious meaning are very loosely related if at all, but it just connects with people.
I doubt they could spin any such line but I don’t expect them to try. They need to take responsibility. All they need blame National for is creating the problem in the first place. If National had been responsible and only imported as many foreigners as the infrastructure could provide for, the problem would not exist, right? No need to point out that Helen Clark made the same stupid mistake. I know that already. 🙄
Eventually. Depends if they can produce a feasible excuse from the logistics. Twyford ought to be demanding an explanation from the public servants responsible for implementing the policy. We still haven’t had any explanation at all.
Twyford could tell a press conference that it was lack of leadership: “Well, we contracted a CEO for Kiwibuild, then we had to shift his goalposts, which he decided was a breach of contract. But privacy law prevents me saying so. You know, the same lame excuse National always used to evade accountability. We always copy National!” 😎
Key highlighted NZ’s housing crisis in 2007. Like Chris T, I can’t remember what the National-led government promised either; how did they avoid criticism for failing to provide more affordable housing while ramping up immigation?
Simple, really – National had no housing targets, homelessness isn’t their problem, and they have (blind) faith that the market will provide (never mind Mainzeal (Shipley) and Fletcher Building failures).
If the number of KiwiBuild homes built so far is disappointing (and it is), then how best to describe National’s housing ‘achievements’ over nine years in office, and do we really want a repeat of those achievements?
Looking forward to comparing the numbers after the coalition’s first nine years.
Homelessness doesn’t appear to be Labour’s problem either given their 2 billion in last years budget looks like it will produce 300 houses that no one seems to want and will probably end up on the open market, while 2 billion could have housed the homeless.
4 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ro Khanna, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib — have reportedly been named to the House Oversight Committee. https://t.co/M0FspIgB9s
Two Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are urging Michael Cohen’s attorney to prove that his client’s upcoming February 7 public testimony before the committee won’t just be a “media stunt.”
In a Tuesday letter, House Freedom Caucus Members Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mark Meadows (R-NC) asked Guy Petrillo for firm answers on the scope of Cohen’s testimony, claiming that Cohen’s public relations representative in the probe, Lanny Davis, cautioned that much of what Cohen can say will be restricted by his cooperation with multiple ongoing investigations.
The congressmen write that Davis told GOP committee staff that he “pushed” Cohen to testify, saying “this was my idea; nobody’s else.”
The irony of a Brexit Leave supporter, now leaving Britain… also what happens with globalism it is a race to the bottom and company headquarters can come and go as they please, with few incentives of old like redundancy payments, or tax treatment to stop them…. more like encourage corporations to leave western countries and manufacture else where, while bringing in cheap products and selling them to the consumers of the western world… how free trade really works.
And how thoughtful all those Leave people were… they are the first to leave the sinking May ship
“Dyson will move its headquarters from the UK to Singapore ahead of Brexit
Founder James Dyson is in favor of the UK exiting the EU. But even with Brexit going ahead, his company is now leaving for Singapore.”
His company is leaving as Singapore has signed a free trade agreement with Europe and he now has the same access if not better to the european market then he is going to have by staying in Britain.
And that is the crux of the matter, capital will always find a way to get out. Its just the ordinary workers that will stay behind. 🙂 Oh well, as some said, they voted for it, and all those that did not vote for it, sucks to be them, right?
The scum trolls led by hedonist non empathetic nationals, are delighted that the Coalition cannot meet the present extreme demand of housing and rentals.
They are drunk with the success of their massive destruction of the low waged Kiwi family and their own rise and rise of ostentatious dirty Greed.
Thanks to John Key and Billy English – and a number of other slobs Their success has been so Rapid. And Rabid.
Knighted by a pleasant but unkowing Monarch. Who has not an inkling of Democracy – or Equity. The same Monarch appears to have no idea of a Treaty struck by a simple Queen Victoria, which has failed to keep the Maori peoples and individuals, in the same luxury as the wealthy of Auckland or Tauranga.
The Coalition of NZ – will soon have to discuss with every Wealthy person in Aotearoa a meaningful reduction in their wealth.
For, there will be many means of humiliating wealthy persons who have failed Democracy. The wealthy know that. It will not take many matches to burn off Greed.
Housing was not just a National issue. The ramping up in prices, debt, rents, immigration began with Clarke and Cullen. National just did nothing to change as it was the haves that got more wealthy as a result.
I don’t think saying that the few wealthy should have assets confiscated will solve anything. Such a move would cause a flight of wealth resulting in economic collapse. Then you will have a meaningful reduction of wealth. Our tax rates are already high. So any of the Moari that get educated and able to command high pay will just leave to work in the long list of low tax nations. Buisiness confidence would collapse, as the owners flee with whatever assets they can recover and unemployment would increase. Harming Moari the most.
I am a bit more occupied with a place called New Zealand. Have you heard of New Zealand ?
You wealthy guys and girls have been buying up houses and selling them off at some of the highest prices on the planet. Just dumpy old three bedroom stuff. at that.
Heaps of them you turn into Rentals at outrageous weekly amounts. Most of them mouldy cold rat ridden slums. And then you run off to Simon and Paula (the one in the Leopard skin) and cry on his shoulder about how the poor wretches are complaining about low wages and poverty.
Simon says in his unique obscure way, well we must tread on the throats of the Poor until they get used to their Poverty and become grateful. Children, Women and Men.
Simon says the National Party exists to get rid of all people who have no wealth. It is what National People expect and you expect D J Ward. National stands for getting rid of the decent people of New Zealand.
But you already know that. That’s why a lot of you pay hardly any Tax. Scummy eh .
Kia ora Newshub Inflation is low in NZ that is only the case because the price of oil has come back from the highs of last year.
Tawhirirmate is a powerful force and these strong winds are part of human caused Global Warming and climate change that’s a fact. Its good to see that the #metoo movement has given the young people the courage to call out the powerful in the movie making world who abuse their staff.
Lloyd I say that Davos is going to make good changes they are taking about climate change and unequal income distribution finally . I also say that if national was still in power there will have been thousands of broken people under the bridge and on the bread line. The the Coalition Government has made a positive changes to Aotearoa.
Its not on that people leave any living thing in a car on a hot day. duncan at least the Coalition Government is trying to fix the homeless people problems in Aotearoa national just denied it rubbing there hands together hogging the tax free capital gains they are getting from their housing market short.
The digital language gives people a consciences one cannot just tell porkies or do bad things just because someone is filling there hip pockets with $$$$$$$$$$. Shamubeel the way the world is at the minute is a very good reason not to load the government with DEPT. Like I have stated before if programs are targeted at Maori that will give national a tool to hit the Coalition Government on the head with anyway its best to lift all poor minority culture up with policy’s not just one sector of OUR society.
Good on Hinewehi Mohi for singing the Maori only national anthem at Twickenham All blacks England game 20 years ago. Its cool that most Kiwis are giving Maori culture respect .
The provincial growth fund has helped Maori and rural communities all over Aotearoa. duncan their are hundreds of people who are not locked up in jail now collecting the dole that is better than pay paying A $100.000 a year to keep them in the farcical jail system just to keep you happy. No wonder Winston stayed away from the am show you are a disrespectful person. That $400 is a pack of porkies duncan that’s is what the contractor gets if a worker plants 10 bags a day the worker will get $200 gross a day from that a reasonable fit person will only hit that if they are good hard workers at the end of the season most people will only make $100 a day YOUR MEDIA mates telling bullshit again I seen that story $400 planting trees and know one wants the job YEA RIGHT to I no this for a Fact. Ka kite ano. P.S duncan I would like to see you on a spade you would break in half a day
Americans’ concerns about climate change have surged to record levels, new polling shows, following a year marked by devastating storms, wildfires and increasingly dire warnings from scientists.
A total of 72% of polled Americans now say global warming is personally important to them, according to the Yale program on climate change communication. This is the highest level of concern since Yale starting polling the question in 2008.
Overall, 73% of Americans accept that global warming is happening, outnumbering those who don’t by five to one. This acceptance has strengthened in recent years, rising by 10% since March 2015. The proportion that grasps that humans are the primary cause of warming is smaller, with 62% understanding this to be the case.
About two-thirds of Americans believe that global warming is influencing the weather, in the wake of a string of deadly extreme events in the US. About half say the disastrous wildfires in California and Hurricanes Florence and Michael, which flattened parts of North Carolina and Florida, were worsened because of rising global temperatures.
“Global warming used to be viewed as a problem distant in time and space,” said report co-lead researcher Ed Maibach, a climate change and public health communications expert at George Mason University.
“But Americans increasingly understand that global warming is here and now and are growing concerned about the threat to themselves, their communities and the nation.” Ka kite ano links below.
Giving money to the oil barons who are poising the enviroment that has to stop. I wonder how much Aotearoa gives to the carbon barons will check that out a put a post up about that.
The UK leads the European Union in giving subsidies to fossil fuels, according to a report from the European commission. It found €12bn (£10.5bn) a year in support for fossil fuels in the UK, significantly more than the €8.3bn spent on renewable energy.
The commission report warned that the total subsidies for coal, oil and gas across the EU remained at the same level as 2008. This is despite both the EU and G20 having long pledged to phase out the subsidies, which hamper the rapid transition to clean energy needed to fight climate change.
Fossil fuels subsidised by $10m a minute, says IMF
Read more
Germany provided the biggest energy subsidies, with €27bn for renewable energy, almost three times the €9.5bn given to fossil fuels. Spain and Italy also gave more subsidies to renewable energy than fossil fuels.
But along with the UK, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Ireland all gave more to fossil fuels. The report is based on 2016 Eurostat data, the latest available, and found that across the EU renewable energy received 45% of subsidies and fossil fuels 33%.
The commission report said policies were being pursued to cut carbon emissions and meet the Paris climate agreement goals of limiting global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels. “However, despite this and the international commitments made in the context of G20 and G7, fossil fuel subsidies in the EU have not decreased,” it said. “EU and national policies might need to be reinforced to phase out such subsidies.”
The total fossil fuel subsidies in the EU were €55bn in 2016, the report concluded. “This is a very high number, given we are reaching the deadline for some of their [phase out] promises,” said Ipek Gencsu, subsidies expert at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Ka kite ano links below
Kia ora Newshub That’s is Tawhirirmate and Tangaroa. Tawhirirmate gets a lot of Mana from a warning Tangaroa.
That looked like a big slip at Cape Kidnappers small compared to the Tarndale slip in Te tairawhiti that one is the biggest in Australaysa.
I bet if that suburbia rubbish dump in Auckland was in a affluent suburb it would have been cleaned up by the council.
ECO MAORI will do more research before I comment on Foreign topics.
Go on Winston for defending Jacinda not being present at the Ratana the biggest threat to US is Climate change and the faster we get on top of global warming the better Papatuanukue we will leave te Mokopunas. Its a big mess that national has left OUR Coalition Government with the Housing crisis to clean up it will be cleaned up. Mike Australia has just started there summer not so long ago Global warming record hot temperature are what some priditived that phenomenon here on thestandard but they we saying later on in about 5 to 10 years not 2019?????? Milisa shonky is a climate change denier he was just rednosing at Davos. Kate I seen the Movie AquaMan it was excellent watching especially with the sean of all the waste that we POUR into The Ocean being washed back on LAND a very Clean and Green MOVIE.KA PAI Ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub It’s a good business idea for a gondola zip line on Rangitoto Island championed By Ngai tai tamariki so long as the project does not indanger our beautiful wildlife. Ua te reira I teie ona ringihia I runga I reira parade whakawhiti I. national that is with there TX problems Ana to kai. Some say how did the tsunami of working poor people phenomenon eventuate well its quite clear for me to see that if the country is run in favour of one small sector of society business and all other sectors ills are ignored well there it is. I did said that the tsunami of boke poor people was just starting last year. It’s s so harlious that someone is trying to pin this massive transfer of wealth from the many to the few 00.1% on the Coalition Government YEA RIGHT. Only fools and horses Flogging the same
Horses Kiwi build and the unjustice system and POOR people bashing Mitchell your complexion is going red because you no your party is losing and you are lying .
Good on Hannah for swimming the Koveaux strait raising money for mental health awareness Kia kaha Hannah.
AM Show your polls are rigged mark mitchell as leader of national for one he was closely linked to the whale oil bullshit how he got out of that crap is a wonder O that’s correct he is a ex Cop they look after there OWN I have Alot of reservations about this person possibly running the country on the ideals of a crooked cop mentality lock em up first and any bad facts getting covered up like the cops do it’s well known that the cops serve the wealthy first they give the biggest kick back and lock up the poor common people to show the world that they are doing there job and that they need more cops. Big know to mark Ana to kai. Ka kite ano P.S wasn’t mark’s family part of the Air force his parents would have known about the Gropper case.
I’m looking after my Mokopunas to puppets trying to float marks toilet I will point the facts out on that you two look so sad that national is were they deserve to be and the only reason they stayed in power for so long is of the spinning the media put on shonky.
The whole world needs to action a sharp reduction in OUR use of carbon that is poisning OUR GRANDCHILDRENS FUTURES.
Removing coal from the global energy mix is taking too long, too many forests are still being destroyed, and fossil fuel subsidies are ongoing despite their distorting effect on the market, a study has found.
There has also been insufficient progress in agriculture to stop harmful practices that increase carbon dioxide production, and heavy industry is not doing enough to use energy more efficiently, according to analysis carried out by the World Resources Institute thinktank.
Without progress on all these fronts, the world is unlikely to see global greenhouse gas emissions peak in 2020, which is likely to be necessary to stay within the 1.5C or 2C warming thresholds that scientists have identified as key to the future safety of the planet.
But the analysis also found important steps forward, on renewable energy, curtailing greenhouse gas emissions from shipping, and public sector investment in reducing emissions. These suggest progress in other aspects of tackling climate change is also possible, with greater effort from the public and private sectors.
The WIR looked at six key goals that have been pegged as necessary to cause emissions to peak in 2020 and achieve the targets of the 2015 Paris agreement. They include goals on energy, transport, land use, industry, infrastructure and finance.
The report found that renewable energy accounted for about a quarter of global electricity generation in 2017, and more than two-thirds of new power generation capacity. By 2020, electricity from renewables is likely to be consistently cheaper than fossil fuel energy, making it possible that 30% of electricity could come from renewable sources by 2030, one of the Mission2020 milestones.
But coal-fired generation is still increasing, with coal-fired power plants continuing to be built in some areas, while existing plants are not being removed from service fast enough. Electric vehicles, meanwhile, comprise 1.4% of overall sales, making a 2020 milestone of 15% of new car sales hard to reach.
The goals are the work of Mission 2020, a global coalition of several climate analysis organisations, headed by Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief who negotiated the Paris accord. Mission 2020 has calculated that if these milestones are achieved by 2020, it will make the longer-term Paris goals possible – because progress now on reducing emissions will make it easier and cheaper to reduce them in the longer term – and wants to spur sufficient progress on climate change to bring that about. Ka kite ano links below P.S The people that shonky put in power running our industrys in Aotearoa will throw a spanner in the works on our Coalition Goverments goals of a sharp reduction in OUR carbon emmision’s they need to be weeded out and given a short sharp shift .
How to solve the world’s plastics problem: Bring back the milk man
It’s the early 1960s. Girls are fainting over the Beatles, Sean Connery is James Bond and a revolutionary trend is sweeping the United States: Plastic.
Plastic is about to have its breakthrough moment in the food industry. The plastic milk jug, specifically, is on the brink of taking off: the “market potential is huge,” the New York Times correctly notes.
To American families, a third of which are still getting their milk from a milk man, plastic is a wonder package. It’s lighter than glass. It doesn’t break. Unlike paper cartons, it’s translucent. You can see how much liquid is left in the jug. With a plastic container, everybody wins.
Except for the milk man. And, as it would turn out, the planet.
Fast forward to now. Plastics are expected to outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050. Marine life is choking on the debris: Microplastics are in our soil, our water, our air, getting into our bodies with potential consequences that we don’t fully understand yet. Massive amounts of plastic have piled up in landfills, some emitting greenhouse gases and contributing to global warming over the seeming eternity they take to degrade. Plastics are threatening the health of the planet and its inhabitants, and they’re not going away.
Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Danone, Mars Petcare, Mondelēz International and others — some of the world’s largest consumer goods companies — are partnering on a potential solution to limit future waste. They’re working together on a project known as Loop, announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday. It offers consumers an
alternative to recycling — a system that isn’t working well these days.
At this point, the partners are testing the waters. It’s an experiment they’ll roll out to several thousand consumers in New York and Paris this May, with plans to expand to London later in 2019 and Toronto, Tokyo and San Francisco in 2020.
The Loop tote bag (Mark Kauzlarich for CNN)
Loop is a new way to shop, offering about 300 items — from Tide detergent to Pantene shampoo, Häagen-Dazs ice cream to Crest mouthwash — all in reusable packaging. After using the products, customers put the empty containers in a Loop tote on their doorstep. The containers are then picked up by a delivery service, cleaned and refilled, and shipped out to consumers again. Ka kite ano links below P.S The movie AquaMan high lights the waste we are pour into our Oceans Tangaroa Also it a exelent move to watch
Here you go humans are the intelligent the most intelligent being’s but we can not come to a agreement to stop Burning Carbon we can see the effects of green house warming now . We let the media be brought by oil baron’s and let them manipulate the systems and the people to steal power from the many 99.9 %. We are letting them steal our grandchildrens future for there greed of power and money. IF we don’t stop them and stop burning carbon humanity will go extint .Life will carry on on Papatuanuku but with out most animal’s that we know of we will have to stop burning carbon or go BUST.
Global Warming: News, Facts, Causes & Effects
Global warming is the term used to describe a gradual increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and its oceans, a change that is believed to be permanently changing the Earth’s climate. There is great debate among many people, and sometimes in the news, on whether global warming is real (some call it a hoax). But climate scientists looking at the data and facts agree the planet is warming. While many view the effects of global warming to be more substantial and more rapidly occurring than others do, the scientific consensus on climatic changes related to global warming is that the average temperature of the Earth has risen between 0.4 and 0.8 °C over the past 100 years. The increased volumes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released by the burning of fossil fuels, land clearing, agriculture, and other human activities, are believed to be the primary
sources of the global warming that has occurred over the past 50 years. Scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate carrying out global warming research have recently predicted that average global temperatures could increase between 1.4 and 5.8 °C by the year 2100. Changes resulting from global warming may include rising sea levels due to the melting of the polar ice caps, as well as an increase in occurrence and severity of storms and other severe weather events.
Healthy corals grow in the shallows fringing a mangrove forest in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. This area is known as the “heart of the Coral Triangle” due to its incredible marine biodiversity.
Credit: Shutterstock
David Steen received his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Auburn University and is now a Research Ecologist at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island. Steen has published dozens of scientific papers about wildlife ecology and conservation biology and is also an award-winning science communicator known for his wide-ranging outreach efforts (find him on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Finally, Steen is Executive Director of The Alongside Wildlife Foundation, a nonprofit he founded to promote science-based solutions to living alongside wildlife in perpetuity. Steen contributed this article to Live Science’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Species are rapidly disappearing all around us; indeed, you and I are living through Earth’s sixth great extinction. Most reasonable people agree that losing species is a problem. However, as a conservation biologist and a science communicator, I am used to hearing the occasional argument from radicals about why we need not be especially concerned about that loss. Imagine my horror to see these arguments compiled into a Perspectives piece published in The Washington Post, and written by a professor of biology no less! I cannot believe that it is 2018 and I have to explain why extinction is actually a bad thing, but here we are.
The piece works hard to make the case that we need not be particularly distressed about the loss of biodiversity by arguing, if you will humor me some loose paraphrasing, that we are going to lose species no matter what and extinction does not make much of a difference anyway because new species might evolve in the future. But for this line of reasoning to make sense one must ignore decades of conservation science and centuries of art, literature and philosophy, not to mention millions of years of evolution. Although there have already been many responses to the article — nearly unanimous in their disapproval — I feel compelled to go on record as well and explain why the article was so aggravating to me, as someone who puts a lot of time and effort into helping people appreciate and value biodiversity.
Ka kite ano links below P.S I say that all climate change spinning denier’s are open for Eco Maori’s warth as they are indangering our Grandchildrens future.
There you go the sandflys were playing heaps of silly bugger games on the road on my to and from Tokoroa TO DROP MY MOKOPUNAS OFF they even had some gturms puppet actor’s in their game playing to. They must have smoke coming out of there ass,s from my post on Mark the neo redneck national mp there were marked cop cars in their play to Ana to kai Ka kite ano P.S they love shonky as well they need big boxes of tissue LOL
I have been reading and listening to the aftermath of Trump’s comments about the four female first term Democratic representatives, all of whom are “people of color.” I found the US coverage interesting both as evidence of partisanship and the ...
The Herald reports that the housing shortage / bubble has hit a new level:New Zealand is short of 130,000 homes, the tally having risen lately by 30,000, two economists say. Jarrod Kerr and Jeremy Couchman, Kiwibank economists said: "This time ...
Milk producer Fonterra is one of New Zealand's biggest coal-users, using it to power all its South Island (and a few of its North Island) dairy factories. They'd previously "committed" to not building any new coal boilers after 2030. Now, ...
The proposed Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill treats biogenic methane emissions differently from all other carbon emissions. The latter are to be measured net so that emissions from fossil fuels can be offset by carbon stored in trees. ...
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh This article aims to answer a simple question, whether the conflict is only a rural one or whether it is also urban. The verb ‘to be’ is conjugated in the present tense as ,despite what some ...
Yesterday the government released its discussion document on action on agricultural emissions. As sadly usual, it proposed enormous subsidies for farm emissions, including for nitrogen-based fertiliser. This is a huge mistake. In addition to being one of the chief drivers ...
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Justice conducted a public consultation exercise on whether to hold a review of the Official Information Act (this replaced their previous plans to hold a secret consultation with handpicked people). 285 people submitted on ...
Always Playing Catch-Up: Throughout the 1970s, the purchasing power of the ordinary worker’s pay packet – the only meaningful measure of his or her wealth – was being eaten away every passing year by seemingly inexorable rises in the cost-of-living. ...
The Interim Climate Change Committee's report on Action on agricultural emissions: Evidence, analysis and recommendations was finally released today, and as you might guess from the title, it is recommending that we actually act, rather than let farmers keep ...
On Sunday July 7, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter announced their intention to review the Ministry of Health’s Funded Family Care policy and repeal Part 4Aof the 2000 NZ Public Health and Disability Act. These are festering injustices ...
Agriculture is our biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for 48% of the total. It follows that meeting any credible emissions reduction target requires cutting agricultural emissions, most likely by having fewer cows. But National thinks people shouldn't be ...
How scummy is the UK Home Office? This scummy:The Home Office lied to EU member states to remove victims of human trafficking and modern slavery in breach of European law, according to whistleblowers. Legal experts have said the practice is ...
Belle is a lovely fifteen year-old border collie who belongs to our friends and neighbours at Bryan’s Beach, Michael and Judy Corboy. Belle, in her old age, can hardly see or hear, but – as a constant participant at social ...
“We wuz robbed!” is the classic cry of the disappointed losers of a closely contested sporting contest – it is very much to the credit of the Black Caps that we heard no such sentiment from them following the stunning ...
The Youth Parliament is being held this week, and some of the youth MPs are campaigning for a lower voting age:Molly Doyle, 17, is one Youth MP who wants this to change. She is part of a non-partisan campaign run ...
Up till now, Australia has made its living by digging up coal and exporting it to other countries, destroying the global climate in the process. But now they have a new option: exporting solar power:The desert outside Tennant Creek, deep ...
Later this month, thousands of people are expected to march to parliament as part of the #HandsOffOurTamaraki movement. At its heart, the movement is about preserving whānau and demanding that the state stop removing children from their whānau, hapū and iwi. ...
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh The recent statements made by the former FARC commander, Carlos Lozada (legal name Julian Gallo), where, from his seat in Congress, he praised the Colombian Army demonstrate how low the farianos have sunk. Lozada began by ...
A Woman’s Place is on the Podium was a public meeting in London on 10 July to discuss women’s sports and the impact of transwomen competing against women. The venue was sold out with a packed hall of 750 people. ...
Last month I talked about the no-fly movement: people who refuse to fly or limit it to absolute necessity to avoid destroying the climate. Now, that movement has a somewhat surprising new member: Dutch airline KLM:Dutch airline KLM has launched ...
In the 1960's, humanity faced a terrible threat: global thermonuclear war. Nuclear weapons were uniquely destructive and dangerous, and if more countries got them, the logic of MAD and the pre-emptive strike would put us on a hair-trigger to destruction. ...
An occasional series where I will ponder allegations of anti-Semitism directed at the British Labour Party and its members.In this case, we are thinking about an allegedly anti-Semitic image shared by a Labour Party member. Its origins appear to be ...
Matariki has been and gone, but this year we saw a couple of op-eds arguing that it should be a public holiday, replacing the foreign monarch's fake birthday. And now, New Zealand Republic - a group which campaigns for an ...
The discussion on the quality of economic advice, which we reported last week, has spilled over into a discussion about whether so many senior appointments should be of non-New Zealanders. Recall I discussed the failure to develop career paths within ...
When Nicky Hager revealed US footage of the Operation Burnham raid, obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act, one of the obvious questions was whether Ministers had seen it - and in particular, whether they'd been told that it ...
Northern Ireland is the Alabama of the UK: a backwards region where women and gay people are denied fundamental rights. But Westminster has just decided to fix that:MPs have voted resoundingly to extend same-sex marriage and access to abortion to ...
There's a problem with "synthetic cannabis", and not just the one you think. It's the name.We're in the midst of a wave of news stories that link synthetic drugs to serious harm, through deadly road accidents and accidental overdoses (which ...
Ranjit Kauri, The Dancing Maharani and Other Stories, Swansea, Head and Heart, 2019, £6.99; reviewed by Don Franks Working people are not the same country to country. Our struggles for a better life take place in surroundings of very different ...
Let's Do Them! All Jacinda Ardern has to do to clinch the 2020 General Election is frighten the bejesus out of the electorate by describing in the most graphic terms imaginable what will happen to all the positive beginnings her ...
It may be that we have all misinterpreted the somewhat surprising “bromance” between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. It has been all too easy to assume that it is Kim who is cosying up to Trump rather than the ...
by Michael Roberts So the full circle is completed. The corrupt pro-business conservative New Democracy party in Greece that was ousted by the anti-capitalist Syriza party in 2015 has been returned to office in yesterday’s general election, with an outright ...
When the Australian government passed a series of new spy laws over the last few years, they pinky-promised that they wouldn't use them to spy on journalists and subvert freedom of the press. They lied:The anti-encryption laws passed by the ...
From 1975 to 1989, the spy agencies of South America's right-wing military dictatorships cooperated in Operation Condor, a joint campaign of extermination against the continent's left. Roughly 400,000 people were imprisoned, 30,000 disappeared, and 60,000 murdered - kidnapped, tortured, executed, ...
When she was standing for office, Jacinda Ardern promised she would take abortion out of the Crimes Act. And to be fair, there was some early action on that, with an immediate referral of the issue to the Law Commission ...
When the government introduced the Zero Carbon Bill, people rightly asked what they planned to do to reduce transport emissions, which basicly had no policy at all other than the ETS. Today, they responded, announcing a "feebate" system which would ...
At almost every level, the problem with medicinal cannabis is a lack of good information. In the US, FDA regulations make it hard to research. Most doctors aren't familiar with what research there is and most patients don't know either. ...
Redline is critical of Corbyn for his political weaknesses, but he’s no anti-Semite. There is no substance to the McCarthyist witch-hunt being run by the right wing, and the pro-Israel lobby inside and outside the Labour Party in the UK. ...
The government's billion trees program is the sort of policy which could make a real difference to our emissions and the fight against climate change. But climate scientist Jim Salinger isn't convinced:The Forestry Minister Shane Jones' one billion trees won't ...
Last month the government was celebrating another surplus. Meanwhile, children are starving:One in five children are living in households where putting food on the table is a struggle, according to a new report from the Ministry of Health. It found ...
Show Me The Money! The alternative to state funding of infrastructure is, of course, to fund it by taking on massive amounts of private debt. On this issue, at least, Auckland mayoral challenger, Tamihere, has some solid points to make. ...
If we are to avoid making the earth uninhabitable, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to practically nothing over the next decade. But that will still leave us with the problem of the carbon we have already emitted, which ...
Former Waikato DHB CEO Nigel Murray allegedly misused public funds, spending more than $120,000 of public money on unjustified travel. He was forced to resign and the Serious Fraud Office began an investigation. But despite the SFO finding that the ...
Jeremy Corbyn, we are told, is being advised – not least by his deputy (as well as by some of his would-be successors) – that he must come “off the fence” on the Brexit issue if he wants to bolster ...
The End of Life bill has been read a second time and is now heading for the House for further debate. Personally, I support the proposal. I don't ever epect to take advantage of the Bill's provisions myself, but as ...
Before the substantive issue which this column is about – whether there has been a deterioration in the economic advice given to the government – a paragraph about the budget leaks.read more ...
Below is a translation of the editorial in the June 24 round of weekly workplace bulletins issued all over France by the revolutionary workers’ organisation Lutte Ouvriere. Last Saturday, 8,000 people took to the streets of Belfort (eastern France) to ...
Why hasn't Parliament followed the lead set by our local authorities and declared a climate emergency? The answer is the National Party:The Prime Minister’s admission that she is open to the idea of declaring a climate change emergency is nothing ...
Back in May the government released its Zero Carbon Bill. While much of the bill was welcome, there was one big exception: it contained a secrecy clause, requiring the Climate Change Commission to maintain secrecy over practically everything it does. ...
by Phil Duncan This past week has marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Stonewall Inn riots in Christopher Street, New York, the event generally regarded as kicking off the gay liberation movement. Quite a few articles have ...
Southland - land of coal-burning dairy farmers - has become the first region in the country to explicitly vote against declaring a climate emergency. Their reason? They didn't want to "devalue" the word "emergency". Its an argument addressed powerfully in ...
New Zealand has a problem with police chases: officers going after fleeing drivers like rabid dogs, without any consideration for proportionality or public safety, often with fatal results. And according to an in-depth article in the Guardian today, the UK ...
Welcome to another heaping helping of research publications related to climate change drivers and mechanisms, the effects of climate change and how we might yet grope our way into systems approaches to dealing with the mess we're making, despite ourselves. ...
Holly Lawford-Smith is a senior lecturer in political philosophy at the University of Melbourne. She’s currently writing a book about radical feminism. This article appeared on Feminist Current Academics should be standing together in defence of universities’ fundamental values: the ...
The Otago Daily Times has an in-depth article about the future of wind energy in New Zealand, and it is looking bright:The news that wind will play the leading role in New Zealand’s energy future was put up in lights ...
If the sight of schoolkids striking for a future has been filling you with hope, good news: they want you to join them on September 27:Students will take to the streets again demanding action on climate change, and this time ...
The People's "Friend": In this masterpiece of revolutionary propaganda, the homicidal political psychopath, Jean-Paul Marat, has been transformed by Jacques-Louis David, the French Revolution's most accomplished artist, into a martyred hero of the ordinary people of Paris. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, ...
The principle of one person, one vote doesn’t apply for local elections. In fact, you don’t even need to be a person to have voting rights. Welcome to the ratepayer roll. While the ratepayer roll accounts for less than 1% ...
I have been working my way through a 47,000 document tranche of declassified US government communications related to Argentina and the “Dirty War” of 1976-83. I grew up in Argentina in the period leading up to the March 24, 1976 ...
To express concern about foreign ownership and control in New Zealand is often to invite accusations of xenophobia and economic illiteracy. It is worthwhile, therefore, to rehearse the grounds for that concern, and to explore the various forms it can ...
It must be a day ending in Y because the Guardian - remember when it used to be a good paper1 - is running another spurious story about Corbyn's leadership being threatened over anti-Semitism.The headline the Guardian runs is: "MPs tell ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Jun 23 through Sat, June 29, 2019 Editor's Pick When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: 'Hope is contagious'Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and ...
When people slate the current Government for taking too long on certain issues, or not getting everything right, just check the outrage and quit helping National manufacture consent for their decade of Disaster Economics and much more. Bill couldn’t ...
Robots could soon replace many low-skill jobs, such as President of the United States. US Presidential hopeful and doomsday prophet Andrew Yang went to extreme lengths to make a point in the first round of Democratic primary debates today, replacing ...
More people have died in the shower this year than will die in a KiwiBuild home. KiwiBuild home owners are experiencing a surprise windfall this month, as the price of their houses have begun to rise dramatically, due to growing ...
First way – the state, Keynesian demand management, the working class as the base of support. Second way – free-market, reduce the scope of the state and cut taxes, relative indifference to social justice. Third Way – well that's the ...
A new digital platform aims to make it easier for small businesses to access services from multiple government agencies, leaving them more time to focus on their own priorities. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash ...
Million-dollar start to gun collection eventsPolice Minister Stuart Nash says a solid start has been made to the gun buyback and amnesty after the first weekend of community collection events. “Gun owners will walk away with more than ...
Police Minister Stuart Nash has praised Police and gun owners after the first firearms collection event saw a busy turnout at Riccarton Racecourse in Christchurch. “Police officers and staff have put a tremendous effort into planning and logistics for the ...
Seventy-eight new Police constables are heading out to the regions following today’s graduation of a new recruit wing from the Royal New Zealand Police College. Police Minister Stuart Nash says the record high number of new Police officers being recruited, ...
Fonterra’s use of coal has been the target of numerous grassroots campaigns in recent years. Last year 350 Aotearoa affiliated groups, Fossil Free Aoraki and 350 Nelson launched a petition dismissing the dairy giant’s initial target of no new ...
Information sessions on proposals for The Medicinal Cannabis Scheme take place in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch over the next fortnight. The sessions are open to anyone with an interest in learning more about the proposed scheme. ...
“Our children are our most vulnerable, most innocent victims and we do not want to see any more children harmed by these ‘known sex offenders’. The safety of our community must be the paramount consideration.” ...
“The announcement that Fonterra will immediately stop installing any new coal boilers or increasing capacity to burn coal is the signal that the biomass fuel supply industry welcomes” said Brian Cox, Executive Officer of the Bioenergy Association. ...
18 July 2019-- Coal Action Network Aotearoa (CANA) today welcomed Fonterra’s commitment to build no new coal plants, a “no brainer” for the climate crisis the world faces. The group has been urging this transition for six years now and ...
The increase in demand for cage-free eggs is set to continue according to animal rights organisation SAFE, who says the egg industry should expect this and prepare. ...
Wellington, New Zealand – 350 Pacific made a formal submission to the New Zealand Government’s Environment Parliamentary Select Committee on the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, led by the Pacific Climate Warriors (PCWs) based in ...
There used to be a school of thought on the centre right side of politics that the best way to neuter the Greens as a political force would be to let them have a spell in government. Then, according to ...
Today (18 July) is Nelson Mandela International Day when the United Nations highlights the importance of humane conditions of imprisonment. In New Zealand our prisons are overcrowded and understaffed. At 214 prisoners per 100,000 people, we have the fifth ...
NZEI Te Riu Roa will take legal action over the lengthy delay in implementing pay increases for teachers. Novopay announced yesterday that teachers would have to wait until 11 September to see pay increases that they won when they settled ...
EDS has filed its submission on the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill. The Bill sets targets for greenhouse gas reductions, provides for the government to set a series of carbon budgets, and sets up a new, independent, Climate ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union has identified an absurd case of mission creep at Wellington City Council: the decision to spend $21,750 on two Consumer NZ investigations into different brands of bike lights. ...
The Motor Trade Association is welcoming the release of the Government’s new draft road safety strategy. MTA Chief Executive Craig Pomare says the association is pleased to see vehicle safety has been made a priority in the Road to Zero ...
The Department of Conservation continue to repeat the same old story about attacks on staff and how it is affecting their role in protecting our precious wildlife. NZ herald https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12249704 ...
The government's silence on the fact that the country's second-largest milk processor is on the brink of becoming 25% Chinese Government owned has been deafening. ...
School Strike 4 Climate NZ welcomes the coalition Government’s endeavour to take action on reducing agricultural emissions but is disappointed at the weak stance that the Government has taken on the issue. ...
The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has issued a formal warning under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (AML/CFT Act) to seven reporting entities within the Regus Management Limited (RNZML) designated business ...
The Northland Regional Council (NRC) has voted to exclude all GM/GE precautionary provisions in its regional plan, despite years of community engagement showing support for such protection. There is a sense of betrayal following the way the NRC Chairman ...
New Zealand’s ‘mission-driven’ charities working in international aid are showing early signs of changing the way they work, in particular prioritising building the capacity and resilience of local communities to do their own development. ...
Teachers will have to wait until 11 September for pay increases won as part of their collective agreement negotiations settled in June, according to an update sent to schools today from Novopay. ...
July 16 (BusinessDesk) - Energy Minister Megan Woods says the government “won’t die in a ditch” if its goal of 100 percent renewable electricity generation isn't reached by 2035. ...
The Electricity Networks Association (ENA) is welcoming the Government’s response to the Interim Climate Change Committee (ICCC) Report released today. Graeme Peters, chief executive of the ENA, said one of the key recommendations, endorsed by the ...
An article* published this month in the Journal of Health Organization and Management raises questions over the way health board members are elected and whether the boards are even needed. ...
NZEI Te Riu Roa's kindergarten teacher members will vote on a proposed settlement to their collective agreement after four days of negotiations with the Ministry of Education and kindergarten employers. ...
Vector has today welcomed the ICCC’s report on Accelerated Electrification . Vector agrees that accelerating the electrification of transport and process heat will play a major role in reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Initiatives to ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is calling on the Porirua City Council to cancel its underwriting of a proposed Canadian-led privately owned adventure park slated for public land after a similar project created a huge liability for Christchurch ...
Youth climate change campaigners Generation Zero welcome the Interim Climate Change Committee’s (ICCC’s) reports: Accelerated Electrification and Action on agricultural emissions ; which were finally released by the Government today, almost three months ...
Fish & Game New Zealand notes the announcement today that the Government and the intensive agriculture leadership have reached a ‘historic consensus’ and are exploring using a formal sector-government agreement instead of bringing agriculture ...
The independent Interim Climate Change Committee’s report on Accelerated Electrification was released today by the Minister for Energy and Resources, Hon Dr Megan Woods. ...
The independent Interim Climate Change Committee’s report Action on agricultural emissions was released today by the Minister for Climate Change, Hon James Shaw and the Minister of Agriculture, Hon Damien O’Connor. ...
Please find attached embargoed copies of two media statements from the Interim Climate Change Committee http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1907/Embargoed_Interim_Climate_Change_Committee_Accelerated_electrification_MEDIA_STATEMENT.pdf ...
Greenpeace Executive Director, Dr Russel Norman, has reacted with disbelief that the Government’s latest climate proposal includes an option for dairy to voluntarily deal with their emissions over the next six years. ...
This week’s “Youth Parliament” is an expensive waste of time that promotes taxpayer-funded junketeering, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . “We shouldn’t be training kids on the joys of the trough,” says Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones admitted on Q+A tonight that the state of New Zealand’s infrastructure planning is “dismal” and the government needs to get on with building “rather than writing more reports about it.” ...
DairyNZ has released its submission on the Zero Carbon Bill and is calling on the Government to revise the methane target in the Bill to one that does not put at risk New Zealand’s world-leading dairy sector. Farm profit could ...
July 15 (BusinessDesk) - Foreign Minister Winston Peters will have bi-lateral meetings with two of US president Donald Trump's most hawkish defence and security advisers in a five day trip to Washington D.C. ...
Youth climate change campaigners Generation Zero are calling for Members of Parliament to show political courage as the Zero Carbon Bill goes through the crucial Select Committee process. ...
Annual net migration was provisionally estimated at 50,200 (± 800) in the year ended December 2018 compared with 52,600 in the previous year, Stats NZ said today. ...
New Zealanders have the opportunity to contribute to the government’s Review of Retirement Income Policies, including questions around Superannuation and KiwiSaver. Submissions are now open for the Review, being run by the Commission for Financial ...
Yesterday at Mataatua Marae the Tamaki Makaurau Electorate of the Māori party congratulated Rangi Mclean who was appointed to the Vice president Tāne role of the party nation-wide executive. ...
The funding crisis facing the disability sector has become more urgent following the disturbing news that the Ministry of Health will not increase contract prices for providers this year, the New Zealand Disability Support Network said today. ...
The growing number of working poor is an alarming indicator that the regulatory Minimum Wage does not cut it said Closing the Gap spokesperson Peter Malcolm. ...
Historic hui gives overwhelming agreement for a Māori Inquiry The inquiry into state run Oranga Tamariki will be led by whanau, kaimahi and Māori leaders. ...
Drug infiltration into our maximum security prisons is putting prisoners and staff at unnecessary risk, and one tool that would be of huge benefit is a full body scanner. ...
By RNZ Pacific The United Nations in Papua New Guinea is boosting its presence in the Highlands as it works with the government to improve access to justice for tribal communities. The acting resident coordinator said the massacre of ...
A children’s television presenter, New Zealand’s first supermodel, and bloody Cocksy! Jordan Hamel pays tribute to the Kiwi icons that helped get him through his life.Adolescence was not a great time for me. Depression, anxiety, sexuality, awkward social interactions, emotional ...
The House - The Youth Parliament has beat the real thing to the punch by declaring a climate change emergency this week. Youth Press Gallery member Sophie Dixon reports. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rona Macniven, Research Fellow, University of Sydney Indigenous Australians have a long and proud heritage in both traditional sports and games, and in modern sport through the achievements of people like Johnathan ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Gorman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University It’s 50 years since the two Apollo 11 astronauts – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – spent 22 hours collecting samples, ...
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s.It’s a wacky, wacky week on The Real Pod this week. But is it wackier than the fact that Gilda Kirkpatrick saw a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neal Hughes, Senior Economist, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) Water prices in the southern Murray-Darling Basin have reached their highest levels since the worst of the Millennium ...
It seems inevitable that New Zealand will soon officially be in a state of emergency over climate change, with a declaration likely to be passed in Parliament. Is this a good thing? The debate over moving into official emergency status ...
The newsreader turned talkback host Peter Williams (not Peter Williams) is furious about the mainstream refusal to acknowledge the cheesiness of the moon.I’m sorry but my head still hurts.Yesterday I blew to smithereens the so-called “consensus” on the “science” around ...
Every fish on the iconic New Zealand Commercial Fish Species poster, ranked. There are a few staples of the quintessential fish and chip shop: sticky plastic curtains, soggy paper tickets with a little red number, tin pottles of Wattie’s tomato sauce, ...
Eligible home owners will be able to claim grants for energy-efficient heaters this winter as part of the government's Warmer Kiwi Homes programme. ...
MediaRoom this week: the Media Council backs reporters asking questions, urges caution linking a group to the Christchurch attacks, muses on news vs advertising and wants corrections published faster. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Even though we can see the Moon shining brightly in the night sky – and sometimes in daylight – it’s hard to put into ...
By Pacific Media Centre NewsdeskIndonesian President Joko Widodo’s threat to pursue anyone who impedes investment is worrying environmental activists who claim that such actions could criminalise those fighting for the environment, reports CNN Indonesia.Jokowi made the threat ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Monica Barratt, Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University A NSW Coronial Inquest investigating a series of drug-related deaths at Australian music festivals has heard evidence of ...
The Netball World Cup grand final is tie-proof and won't end in any kind of super over. RNZ's netball reporter Ravinder Hunia who's in Liverpool explains why. ...
Party Line is a new audio work by Evangeline Riddiford Graham that reinvestigates the Cartwright Inquiry, medical mispractice and misogyny through the lens of the #metoo era. In a red room six handsets dangle from the ceiling on their spiral cords. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil R Jordan, Lecturer, UNSW Humans and dogs go way back. From wolf totems to the big bad wolf of fact and fairy tale, through sheepdogs, lap dogs, and labradoodles, our relationships ...
For Auckland is a new Spinoff podcast of civic conversations with people working to create and sustain a better Auckland for all. In episode three, host Timothy Giles speaks to Grace Stratton about accessibility, in fashion and in Auckland.She’s launched ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s contentForeign affairs and trade Peter Dunne (Newsroom): Beware, nice ...
Human rights activists and refugees are calling on the PM to use her international profile to speak out against China’s persecution of religious groups. ...
Instead of buying a cuppa in exchange for a place to work, Coffee Supreme is flipping the script.For the last 25 years, Coffee Supreme has stuck to what it does best, which is sourcing, roasting, brewing and selling some seriously ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Blaskovich, Senior Research Officer, The University of Queensland Artistic depictions of several chemical elements feature in a new exhibition from today as part of Australia’s celebrations for the International Year of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Hopkins, Senior Lecturer, Australian National University In 2017, a small group of male prisoners participated in an eight-week yoga program at the Alexander Maconochie Centre(AMC), which houses all adult prisoners in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ramon Zenel Shaban, Clinical Chair and Professor of Infection Prevention and Disease Control at the University of Sydney, University of Sydney “Travel safe, travel far, travel wide, and travel often,” saysNomadic ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Bone, Lecturer, Massey University A majority of academic staff at some of Australia’s top universities work in casual or fixed-term positions. This reflects a trend towards casualisation in academia, and other ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Smith, Professor of Archaeology, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in south-west Victoria is the first Indigenous Australian landscape to be gazetted on ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will touch down in Melbourne this afternoon, four months after her planned visit to the city was called off due to the Christchurch terror attack. ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Union to take legal action against Novopay, building site sediment damaging waterways, and the govt’s road safety strategy explained.Teachers are taking legal action against Novopay, amidst the news their payrise ...
The lawyer representing bankrupt blogger Cameron Slater in a defamation case has been trying since February to withdraw from the case, but a judge keeps declining. Tim Murphy reports. ...
Net migration, skills shortage, and the challenge for employers to hire the people they need are frequent themes in our media, but there is a talent pool trained right here many are overlooking. ...
The young Kiwi sprinters who won relay bronze at the World University Games - setting a new NZ record - can still go much faster on the world stage. ...
A recent issue of Air Force News revealed that a senior NZDF officer served a six-month posting at the Qatar base, placing New Zealanders at the heart of the main targeting and bombing centre in that region, writes Darius ShahtahmasebiLast ...
Figure 10: A Kanak voter wearing a ‘Kanaky New Caledonia’ flag tee shirt at the Loyalty Islands special polling booth in Vallee du Tir, Noumea. Image: David Robie David Robie Wednesday, July 17, 2019 Abstract The French-ruled ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren Paul Fisher, Head of Directing, Department of Film, Screen and Creative Media, Bond University Something incredible might be happening to James Bond: a separation, a personal Brexit of sorts. According to ...
Depending on which coalition party you ask, the Government is either introducing a new way to fund community wellbeing or using the same funds to tackle organised crime. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University A freedom of information request has revealed Adani sought the names of CSIRO and Geoscience ...
For generations, women have done the heavy lifting in the fight for social change. What will it take to get more men to give a fuck about their children’s future?At every question and answer session I attend, I get a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kang, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney I Need to Know is an ongoing series for teens in search of reliable, confidential advice about life’s tricky questions. If you’re a teen, ...
Open Mike 23/01/2019 
I have been reading and listening to the aftermath of Trump’s comments about the four female first term Democratic representatives, all of whom are “people of color.” I found the US coverage interesting both as evidence of partisanship and the ...2 hours ago
The Herald reports that the housing shortage / bubble has hit a new level:New Zealand is short of 130,000 homes, the tally having risen lately by 30,000, two economists say. Jarrod Kerr and Jeremy Couchman, Kiwibank economists said: "This time ...2 hours ago
The proposed Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill treats biogenic methane emissions differently from all other carbon emissions. The latter are to be measured net so that emissions from fossil fuels can be offset by carbon stored in trees. ...18 hours ago
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How Red was my Valley
Maps of the 2017 Party-Vote
(admittedly somewhat low-tech … but still …)
https://sub-zero-politics.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-red-was-my-valley.html
If the cannabis law goes through it might be
how green and blue is my valley 🙂
Entrepreneurs will indeed diversify! “One thing we can be certain of: the referendum will pass comfortably. That’s because the government is organising and running it, and will not propose a question that would fail. Politically it needs at least 65% support, and ideally even more. On current polling that would stack the odds against a fully commercial market and perhaps more in favour of non-profit Cannabis Social Clubs, run along the lines of liquor licensing trusts with profits returned to the community, and who re-sell cannabis products grown and made by licensed producers.”
Opinion there from one of them. “Chris Fowlie is the CEO of Zeacann Limited, a medicinal cannabis producer; co-founder of the New Zealand Medical Cannabis Council; president of the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws NZ Inc; co-founder of The Hempstore Aotearoa; co-host of Marijuana Media on 95bFM; and court-recognised expert witness for cannabis.” https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/01/22/cannabis-predictions-and-crystal-ball-gazing/
Thank you swordfish.
That was an interesting gander.
Totally not suprised about Ohairu being light fawn – such a tough seat full of old skool conservatives and red necks of a blue persuasion. It’s an anti progressive area. We were lucky we scraped through.
But Rongotai – you rock.
Oh Rosie so good to see you. Going to be a regular are you, eh eh?
Ha ha ha. Grey – I got frightened off last time I tried to come back. Instead of finding some good craic I found a seething pit of misogynists defending Brett Kavanagh – It was hideous. I felt things had changed with the nature of dialogue in these parts.
Stay well Grey 🙂
We have our bad days Rosie. The sun usually shines through after a while and we have some good thinkers with background to support their ideas and theories which are usually either helpful for understanding, or helpful and positive.
Eeek. Grey, those bad days you speak of, when I have visited and not commented have really been rather dire. Hanging out with misogynists is something I’d rather not do – I can see your point, there are good thinkers too, but yeah, a bit too much of the yucky stuff going on for my tastes.
The trouble is Rosie it’s a bit of a polluted stream. Trying to put in some fresh water that is not tainted with BS is a bit of a task. But people like you and Veutoviper are needed, not just because you are women for some sort of balance, but because you are thinking people and interested in NZrs and the world, and can articulate your thoughts in a way that others can respond to.
I think there is an important kaupapa here that allows people to be drawn in, to put their ideas down and see them printed out where they will be taken seriously enough to be read and replied to. A political discourse that is fairly immediate and more continuous than is possible through newspaper and magazine letters, and is not as open and easy through other platforms. Radio talkback can come up with some good stuff, but it is not captured in print and it is hard to build a decent discussion and there is no archived information that can be personally referred to or built onto.
And reasoned discussion that is open to the public easily is rare in NZ.
And any sort of sensible, searching political discussion is rare in NZ. That is why it is important for people to not just push off in disgust as I have attempted to do a few times. Take a breather by all means you past commenters but please lets keep the stream going,; okay never pure, never quite to your satisfaction but join in the swim when the water isn’t too murky, that is my plea.
It is very affirming to know that people are thinking and trying to find a pathway to follow to the future, it stops me getting depressed and I think many others also. Where there is a lively, intelligent discussion there is hope!
Thank you for your comments and for making some points – I hadn’t thought about. I certianly agree with you on this point you make:
“reasoned discussion that is open to the public easily is rare in NZ.”
I guess for me, in the past i just ignored some off the more off commenters on here, and generally there would be a pile on anyway that I stayed out of most times, but what I experienced a few weeks ago, put me in an unsafe space, as a woman. I felt vulnerable and re traumatised by these misogynists.
It was compouned by regular TS commenters then having a petty argument about the fiidly points of the Brett Kavanagh case, who had avoided my whole point entirely. Initially I had responded to some one who had started off the Open Mike thread with “Oh, blah blah blah, bad Herlad newspaper, there’s far more important things than the Brett Kavanagh story”
For any person reading that, who has been affected by rape and sexual assault it would have felt like someone had minimised the reality of what they had been through. It was selfish and thoughtless thing for that person to say.
I pointed this out and it turned into an open forum for MRA’s and gendered violence deniers. It was really horrific. It never would have happened on this site previously without just one person, me, to argue against. It was like a verbal assault but the most vile people imaginable to me.
I am quite tough and I do get into scrapes in real life with jerks like that but I don’t feel I should have to be defending the abused in what used to be a safe place. I just thought “well f*ck this you know. I’m not coming back”
And Grey don’t feel despondant as there are some wonderful things happening in our country and around the world. Really good advancements and achievements, from thinking to doing. The young people are fantastic. It sounds corny but our future is their thinking, now. Leaders are getting younger and solving the problems that the generations above them caused for them. If you want to feel hopeful, talk to a young person with a vision. We even managed to get some into Parliament! So that is progress 🙂
Finally back to a point you made earlier, about the lack of reasoned discourse in NZ. I’ve found it really quite refreshing looking at what other countries are talking about. Just one example might be a site called Bella Caledonia: A left wing Scottish prespective on world and local affairs from an Indepedence veiwpoint.
Kia Ora Grey.
Sorry to hear that Rosie. I feel that if you can’t educate them, and they resist any points of view, you shouldn’t argue or attempt to reason or explain with such a group of men. They will find justification in the most unlikely places.
Yesterday there were amazing arguments about whether it was okay for a young man to stand in front of some Omaha Indian people who wanted to walk up some steps to make some protest or announcement. The number who argued about rights when it was a matter of lack of courtesy to someone different and older than himself, and a lack of respect for the other, was amazing. I felt bad about that response and its vehemence. So I realise that was peanuts to what you felt.
I think there is nothing you can do except to make a statement about how we should treat each other, and how taking advantage of others can affect them badly lifelong. Also the point should be made that you would never think of treating anyone in a bad way and expect that respect should be a two-way thing. After that you should withdraw to preserve your own peace and stability, hopefully more in sorrow than in anger. But that sort of discord makes you aware that behind apparently trustworthy and honest faces, there can be traces of something deeply unpleasant, more than just the light and dark side that we all have controlled by the brain in one of its functions.
Thank you Grey – and yes, people can find justification in the most unlikely places. Well said. Take care.
Great to see you.
Of course Rongotai rocks! I live there, LOL. Come back Rosie. We Rongotains miss you.
And you too, super Rongotai trooper! Hope you are well.
Please see reply to Grewarshark above, as to my absence.
I did come back for a sniff around and found sword fishs’ interesting graph and info. That was the kind of analysis I used to enjoy, and it was good to see he was still contributing.
Swordfish is only an intermittent these days unfortunately, Last time a month or so ago, I did my best to encourage more frequency!
I thought I had done the same when you came for your ‘sniff around’ because I was thrilled to see you and then you disappeared again; but I was also thinking at that time of disappearing myself.
TS certainly goes through changes from time to time!
Kind words veutoviper 🙂
It’s probably a good thing that the site goes through changes with commenters, but there are voices I miss. I have noticed there are less women, which I find disappointing. I can imagine there are good reasons for that.
Are you on any social/political faceblba pages? I occasionally get involved with some discussions on that platform, but not often.
I don’t have a Twitter account which means I can read lots without having to befriend the owner of the accounts I read (LOL). I do have a (ghost) Facebook page but in my real name so will not disclose that here. If there is a Facebook political site you are on, we could perhaps meet up there and then use Facebook Messenger/chat for private chat?
Ha.
There’s just few faceblab sites that I follow, but I have zero political friends on faceblab, with the exception of one person actually, come to think of it. I find it hard to find people willing to discuss politics and social issues that are just ordinary people.
Not suggesting that you are any old ordinary person 🙂
Please feel free to send me a facebook message to pacific rosie.
I also have a petition you may or may not be interested in!
Pretty clear that the Nat vote is based on the urban upper class and farmers – class divisions are highlighted with the strong red preferences in working class suburbs, and deep blue in wealthy areas. Good to see some of the lighter blue areas that could flip to red in the next election.
But the left should take nothing for granted – NZF support has collapsed and the Greens could implode at any minute.
interesting.
Probably a more useful visual than simply colouring the map, as population density varies so much.
what a nifty little map.
thanks for that.
I wonder if we’ll find out who the MP that sent the ‘you deserve to die’ text to JLR is? Or will they be quietly shuffled off stage? It’s hard to imagine a parliamentary career surviving such an unpleasant incident.
common knowledge Scott,or is this your idea of humour.
Humour? No. National is trying hard to sweep this one under the carpet.
Ask the google Scott, it is common knowledge.
Same party, female, southern NZ. And that’s all I’ll say about that on here.
I know who the MP is alleged to be Cinny. What I don’t know yet is how National is going to deal with the situation. A potential crime has allegedly been committed that’s punishable with up to 3 years jail time.
The party comes first with the nat’s and they will bury any and everything that could damage their brand.
People have never been a priority, neither is accountability.
I’d like to see action taken by the police, the way I see it is a person in a position of responsibility/public office sent such a vile text it near on caused a suicide.
If that is the way a person treats their exlover one can only imagine how they would treat strangers/voters. Freaking disgusting behaviour no matter which party a person supports,
So we should hold National to account for their hypocrisy. Why isn’t this happening? After all they they were very keen for Ardern to act in respect of Meka Whaitiri before any facts of that matter had been established.
Absolutely, and if neither the party, the media or the police hold the person to account, then that too needs to be discussed.
It’s up to all of us who care to initiate such conversation topics with others, least that’s how I see it.
With regard to “A potential crime has been committed”, JLR’s facebook post and media reports are that this text is now being investigated by NZ Police and is out of the hands of both JLR and National.
However, it remains to be seen whether NZ Police will decide to prosecute etc. Personally, on NZ Police’s form in usually not taking such political related issues further, I personally am not holding my breath that we will see anything other than “we have investigated and do not deem it appropriate to take the matter further”, insignificant evidence etc etc .
VV, am with you on not holding my breath re police.
Dirty ole roastbusters is prime example.
“Bridges has begun the year with a small reshuffle of his shadow cabinet”: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/@politics/2019/01/22/409336/bridges-begins-year-with-a-reshuffle
Looks like one of his advisors alerted him a while back to the `pale stale male’ meme trending on social media, and it’s been percolating away in the back of his mind ever since. So he’s made Nick Smith the spokesperson for Crown-Maori relations.
If the brilliance of this master-stroke is not immediately apparent, think about it. It reassures those in the Nat hinterland that colonialism is not yet dead. It reassures his Chinese overlords that the upstart natives will be kept in check. It shows his gratitude that his Chinese caucus colleagues are still refraining from pointing out that the Treaty gives Maori a permanent privileged status. It must be galling that the colonial aristocracy have been joined by the Maori aristocracy in solidarity, but the asian influx can compete via wealth-accumulation as consolation for being unable to gain parity in law.
You’d think it would have been sensible to give Shane Reti that job – someone who can see both sides and has proven competent. But being sensible would send the wrong signal. Reti now has the tertiary education, skills and employment portfolio. If he’s an ideas man, an excellent basis on which to build a political career.
I would have preferred Mr Reti in health.
Eminently qualified.
Question to me is who is competent to take the attack to Labour on tax; carbon tax, income tax, capital tax. Sure the hell ain’t their finance spokesperson.
Tax should be the principle attack line from National in 2020.
How about their revenue spokesman? “Goldsmith, Paul (2008). We Won, You Lost, Eat That!: A Political History of Tax in New Zealand Since 1840. David Ling Publishing.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Goldsmith_(politician)
https://www.interest.co.nz/category/people/paul-goldsmith
Competitive, with artistry: “Paul is an enthusiastic pianist and has a broad interest in the arts; he is a 2nd dan black belt in Tae Kwon Do and plays on the right wing for the Parliamentary Rugby team.” https://paulgoldsmith.national.org.nz/about_paul
“Turkey is planning to launch an international investigation into the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and will take further steps in coming days, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu says.” https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/380690/turkey-calls-for-international-investigation-into-khashoggi-murder
“Cavusoglu said in a speech that some Western countries were trying to cover up Mr Khashoggi’s murder”. C’mon dude, point the finger! Which ones? “There are Western countries trying to cover this case up. I know the reasons.” “We know and see what sorts of deals are made. We see how those who spoke of freedom of press are now covering this up after seeing money.”
“Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said Mr Khashoggi’s killing was ordered by the highest level of Saudi leadership”. So does Cavusoglu mean “the US, its closest ally, whose Senate has voted for a resolution blaming the prince for the murder”?? Trump, then, resisting the Senate? Or does he mean Britain & Europe?
It seems like some lives matter, some not so much,
http://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/crimecourtscalamity/crime-crime/2019/01/22/police-say-2nd-mutilated-body-belongs-to-anti-monarchist-aide/?fbclid=IwAR00fjgeSUDqJ55hN49u52VecXJ8cT2uUQbJDD6HQfWCeDASxS1cSoKURKE
so it goes
Governance is trending towards unfashionable in the anglo-saxon world, observes Gordon Campbell on the PM’s visit to Downing St: “New Zealand is useful only insofar as we can contribute to the illusion that Number 10 is open for something that looks like business as usual. It isn’t, of course. On both sides of the Atlantic, the practices of normal government are in virtual shutdown.”
He’s also warning us of an imminent structural adjustment to global trade. “In 2019 though, a new and different kind of fuel price Godzilla is coming over the horizon, and it is likely to boost the prices of everything going in and out of the country.” http://werewolf.co.nz/2019/01/gordon-campbell-on-why-shipping-is-new-zealands-big-new-trade-problem/
The “Marpol Treaty is a set of UN-mandated regulations (devised by the International Maritime Organisation) that among other things, is aimed at cracking down on the pollution emitted by ships, and the crucial bits are in Annex VI. As Bloomberg News recently reported, the global shipping fleets currently consume about 3.8 million barrels a day of fuel oil — in the main, this is heavy, lower-value stuff from a refining process that contains about 1 to 3.5 percent sulphur. That content level is about to change: from January 2020, new rules from the International Maritime Organization will limit sulphur-dioxide emissions from ships. All else equal, a ship would need to burn fuel with only 0.5 percent sulphur content or less to comply.”
This pollution-reduction of 50-90% is terrific news for Greens globally! It implements the principle of true-cost accounting, and seems the first major step in international law that signals a global trajectory beyond neoliberalism. It tilts the economic balance back towards regional economies, and resilience.
This, alongside of increasing storms making shipping harder to insure, means countries need to start putting local manufacturing back in place.
It just wont be WORTH it to ship nonsense around the globe anymore. Yesterday I observed the garden ties a friend got me were imported from Spain. We don’t need Spain to make material strips WTF are we useless?
When it comes to looking after ourselves. Can we?
We used to make all manner of things. As a lad off to church in Te Aroha it was not uncommon for me to sit in church and dream sinfully of the factory full of girls making bras down the road (Bendon).
But that factories gone.
We can’t even can food without needing several countries involved.
Now we’ve got useless Kardashian c**** selling us bras. Global economy – global shutdown of local independence is what it is. Pro american corporate everything.
Wait for the climate change derivatives. AAA rated insurance bundles. Buy now to save the planet.
Britain can be bought to a halt by a truck driver strike in a few days when food and resources are curbed. In a strike there is chaos, the supermarkets and petrol stations are empty within 3 days.
Who needs military when you rely on about 5 third parties for the basics of life, and seem to have no contingency plans for disasters, strikes or soft power approaches and your country bought to their knees by old fashioned methods like a siege.
NZ as a food and commodities producer like wood/steel seems to has lost our way. So busy putting up speculative houses which 40% (or more) of people can’t even afford on their incomes for the world’s middle classes to get residency here as a Ponzi that the government is scared to stop.
Still the mantra is, build more of these speculative houses. Wonder how many of the 1000 Kiwibuild houses that are supposed to be built shortly are for the state houses and the poor? Then deduct off the state houses that were demolished to create the new houses to work out the final tally of increased state housing.
Normally don’t bother watching the MSM news but saw an article about housing the other day. Nice (sarcasm) to see they are still beating the same drums about the causes of housing un affordability. One commentator said we needed to make land more available (a common right wing approach) and the other that tax treatment was the answer.
Nobody mentioned the effect of the third highest immigration in the world per capita in NZ for the past decade or our low wages. Then the media people fail to understand why nobody trusts them anymore or tunes in with that tripe and propaganda being fed out to the masses, which the masses don’t actually consume anymore.
Weird how inspite of the Natz ideas of putting unitary plan zoning in place and throwing out democracy and basic planning measures the land prices in creased and that the last decade of increased taxes on property have actually also increased the shortages in particular of rental properties as landlords bail out and with hundreds of thousands of new residents also competing who often have $40k and more up their sleeve to outcompete those who are in debt in NZ.
It’s a further irony that the houses are being built that increase the cost of food and petrol taxes but are just or even more unaffordable than the existing houses and we are bringing in more unemployed (aka the unemployed Chinese workers holed up with no work after paying third parties $40k to get them work in NZ) and low cost people who need to be housed in competition to make the houses which are generally more unaffordable than before!
Where is the diversification strategy. Like the UK and their ‘favourite industries to support, like finance and nuclear’ they are left out in the cold when they realise that those industries are gone in a flash and industries that used to prop up Britain are non existent anymore after going out of business with the government uninterested in helping new fledging businesses or even most British based ones.
If there was a world shortage would NZ own many of our resources anymore (after our current records of giving them away virtually for free like water and sand), and would we be like the UK that failed to diversify and was in the pockets of Thatcherism for decades and after screwing up socially with their bad decisions are now about to lose their Ponzi businesses like finance and global headquarters bases for global business with Brexit uncertainty.
Yep.
A return to local manufacturing is not part of the global plan to make us bitches of the riches.
But the rich are too stupid to see their grand schemes are as flimsy as their arguments for austerity.
It’s entirely possible to have a global village scenario, AND local economies… We’re all hooked up via the internet but the status quo learned to use it to forge greater divides, to allow the rampant spread of hate and disinformation. Religious memes, class memes, fuck the plebs divide and conquer.
Global tech and information sharing, and trade in materials not locally available… this is sensible. Everything we can do ourselves, we should bloody well do. Is it really worth it to buy cheap crap and enrich foreign sociopathic entities rather than our own people.
There’s a reason tomatoes get picked in Australia, packed in South America and sold in NZ – so we all get used to the idea we’re so useless we can’t even can our own tomatoes – so we NEED the global economy, these corporate ticket clippers/subsidy scramblers embedded every step of the way.
Criminally negligent companies being bailed out by governments rather than sanctioned/governed show they are not only onside with each other, they’re in bed together and they’re cheating on you.
When the seas become uninsurable some common sense must prevail and local manufacture might return. More likely the eejits will try air freight tomatoes from aus to brasil to nz. Cos the economy!
I can only suggest to buy local. To grow local. And where you might be in a position to do so, to make local stuff. This is not xenophobic nonsense, it it corporate-phobic common sense.
I realise the housing market was a ponzi scheme (use one house as collateral for the next), but fail to see the current govt playing into that, rather, they’re trying to get us out of it.
Some speculators might suffer, those money for nothing types, I’m not weeping for them personally.
And those tomatoes taste like water and are utterly overpriced. They also come in dainty little plastic containers – all so that a series of ticket clippers engaged in nothing more productive than exercising their egos can get an earn.
(Very efficient and effective – NOT)
100% savenz:
That is what I have been banging on about for years. Concern for the people of NZ is not fscken xenophobia. It’s hatred of injustice. I hate the idea of Kiwis coming last in a greedy scramble for profit, competing against half the world, rather than just building houses for people to live in.
Corporatism.
I suggest people start saving glass jars for bottling again. It tastes better anyway, doesn’t have the leached baddies or the additives.
save nz has been thinking again. And deeply. Thanks for presenting us with what we should know and projecting into the likely future, another thing that should be going through our brains but isn’t. You can’t be right always, but what you do is transfixing us on the problems and you get through the trashy glamour life projected onto us.
Bought is to buy.
The word you were looking for is brought which is to bring.
Back in the 19th century, under the influence of free-market economics, NZ decided that we specialised in producing food and selling it to Britain. This was based upon the idea of specialisation advanced by Adam Smith. Of course, Adam Smith was only talking about specialist jobs in a factory that made an entire product. He would have been horrified at the idea of a country specialising as a country has vast and diverse resources available to it and a lot of people most of whom aren’t going to be interested in doing the same thing as their neighbour.
We seem to have held on to that delusional idea despite everyone;s insistence that everyone is different and has different skills and interests. National tends to be the loudest about these differences and that one size doesn’t fit all and they’re also the loudest about NZ being a bloody farm.
It’s this continued delusional thinking that keeps getting us into trouble as the free-market system continuously fails to work as advertised.
From Poission’s brilliant link in the other thread:-
Perhaps development of forward progress maximised for all the people in this country, should develop in such a way that there is a replacement economy just humming along below the surface that will serve the sort of a simpler society here similar to that in the quote from Joseph Cederwall in Scoop.
Okay, try to keep us afloat in the present asset-stripping money culture, but encourage community enterprise wherever it occurs. Often people just need funding for facilities and travel, they volunteer their time and expertise. We could make NZ more resilient and greater than it ever was. We will need to so we can attempt to cope with our looming future.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1901/S00052/the-gili-islands-a-community-earthquake-recovery-effort.htm
Note the highly community oriented and co-operative rebuild. We don’t have this sort of pulling together in our country, we are still locked into an individualistic go-getter capital-accreting type that seems to have been present from the colonialists.
Perhaps we should institute sister islands and states as a way of making friends, and joining with, and showing solidarity with places like this who still have a system that works for them and can all pull their weight in running small business at a humble level that works both for the individual and for the greater good. I think a lot of our problems started with aspirational people who wanted to live a richer lifestyle in NZ than the country could afford.
They had to change the system and get more moneyed people here at the cost of losing our simpler lifestyle.
So right, Greywarshark, those who wished to turn us into another Switzerland with the likes of dodgy law firms looking after dodgy trusts dodging taxes… those people?
Going from what is practical for shipping businesses to make a profit on their present routes and contracts to 0.5% sulphur content in that short of a time will definitely ’tilt the economic balance’. Full stop! The rest of the sentence “towards regional economies and resilience” may never get to apply as quick effects drive us in quick time to recession and the appalling conflation of all the problems we already are facing in so-called good times. Huh.
A low limit, a low limit of time, a low level of achievability. Ships aren’t cramped together cardboard cartons. (Now is there a market for a new idea? “I have one word to say to you young man plastics [cardboard]: The Graduate.) Turn a bad situation into profitable ones, with a greenwash too!)
There is the cost of perhaps a year of our nation’s income goes into the really big ships. (Go on correct me about this and ignore all my other points you nutty nitpickers.) Definitely a ‘He’s also warning us of an imminent structural adjustment to global trade.’
What is the matter with these supposed wise businessmen and world advisors?
They do nothing for decades, and then apparently panic, and set impossible targets to achieve from the height of their elevated tables and padded chairs having a Picard Star Trek moment “MAKE IT SO”.
Shit ! Does this sulphur thing mean we’ve got to shut down Rotorua and bury it under 200 metres of dirt ?
Think Green. 😊 Rotorua emissions are just nature doing it’s thing. It’s the artificial additives that are creating run-away global warming. If a Nat tells you we ought to stop all emissions, natural as well, tell him to email Bridges asking him to hold a press-conference and announce that National in govt will award a knighthood to the first person who successfully plugs an erupting volcano.
With Auckland house sales dropping 20%, but prices merely flat, looks like the desired outcome of killing the commodification of housing is heading to being achieved.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12194306
The day I can go to an Auckland barbeque and people aren’t wanking on about whether one kind of landscaping increases their capital value over another, will be a welcome day indeed.
But you were branded a racist if you suggested foreigners were pushing up house prices!
I wonder if the all the righties will start conceding they were wrong…
Somehow I suspect they won’t.
No they won’t:
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-thebullring/thats_odd/#comment-4302140311
Agreed – but the horse has bolted.
Unless we see an ideally slow and graceful deflation by about 50%, the next generation will face lifelong debt serfdom in order to buy a home.
And all it takes to restart the lunacy, is another National government deliberately cranking up demand via immigration and tax policy – to the point that demand overwhelms supply again.
Not just the next generation. At present there are people on working incomes that had no chance of buying a home, and have been trapped into renting. Unless you have access to low-paid/free accommodation, are able to fund the deposit outside of the banking system, or have an exceptionally high wage/income compared to others – you are already locked out of home ownership.
The issue regarding overseas ownership of residential homes still requires attention, and effective management. (Along with many other issues, housing affordability is a problem that has been created by the failure to address many factors.)
See working people selling up in Auckland, and even losing their jobs, because Auckland rates, costs of housing are now beyound their reach.
Pushing up towns like Whangarei. 25% in two years.
Since I moved back up north from the South Island Ad, I’ve noticed that Aucklanders spend a lot of their time engaged in rather vulgar talk about the value of their houses.
Now they just need to find away to bring farms and orchards back into reach of young kiwis that don’t have family backing.
This looks interesting and Jacinda is there in the spotlight.
https://twitter.com/KensingtonRoyal?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Saw Ritchie McCaw and John Key on Seven Sharp last night. What I picked up from it (coming from a point of ignorance on the subject) is that that there is a rich foreign benefactor who wanted to help Christchurch after the earthquakes and set up some sort of organisation to use sport to boost morale. Now McCaw and Key are onboard with him and want to do some more sporty help stuff. However, no specific projects were talked about it, and all we learned was that it wasn’t Key’s fault there was a three way handshake at the Rugby World Cup.
John Key’s deals with billionaires somehow seem to enrich the world’s billionaires at the expense of opportunities for locals to get wealthier and have access to the same tax payer funded ‘sweetheart’ deals as his billionaire mates….
Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after ‘sweetheart’ deal with Government
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11794020
No doubt will be entered around a ‘sports stadium’, marina or convention centre for elite sports that already have funding and support at the exclusion of everyone else…
meanwhile obesity levels for most Kiwis are increasing partly because there are little opportunities and government schemes at grass roots level as our schools swimming pools and sports fields are eroded like our public spaces, full of tourists and rubbish….
And our footpaths and walkways (both applying to feet and people movement) being hijacked by the machine-mad younger people and businesses. Just another way of putting some manufactured item or practice as a barrier to natural and simple ways that should be available to all without cost.
Even the NBR had this to say about the Sky city deal John Key championed…
Analysis: Close to corruption
https://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/skycity-debacle-offers-morbid-fascination
they did not even get into the moral catastrophe ….
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/6715420/Critics-slam-Sky-City-pokie-deal
And don’t forget apparently not many questions asked when one of China’s most wanted gambled in excess of $500 million through Sky City – but apparently the penalty for money laundering was 5 months in his pent house in Auckland and giving back millions to China and NZ?????
It looks like Yong Ming Yan alias Yang Liu alias William Yan’s alias Bill Liu’s only came to governments attention even though he used multiple identities and was money laundering because he did a business deal with Dot Com… if he had not done that it is debatable whether NZ government would have worried about the 500 million + money laundering and multiple identities because they prefer to turn a blind eye to Chinese big money and the activities in NZ…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11837117
All statutory holidays should be scrapped.
They are all plain silly and unnecessary.
lmao, just like your comment.
Give workers 6 weeks holidays a year and I reckon you could be onto something.
Yep that’s my point.
Take em when you want to.
yes and weekends
hell lets abolish days of the week
and night time.. its really unproductive
Simple, rata – just don’t take ’em.
Every day’s a holiday isn’t it ratty.
rata
Stupid flame war starter.
+1 Greywarshark. Absolute nonsense statment.
Another fizzer
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/110097837/model-who-claimed-to-have-evidence-of-usrussia-collusion-freed-from-jail
along with the rest
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/20/beyond-buzzfeed-the-10-worst-most-embarrassing-u-s-media-failures-on-the-trumprussia-story/
The dems would be better off listening to the people , getting back to their roots and putting up a halfway decent candidate
Bravo re the headline….. “ Sorry is not a PR exercise “
‘This week New Zealand saw two men – known for their mistreatment of women – address the nation, to tell their side of the story.
Both men said they wanted to make amends by apologising and moving on with their lives, and their work.
But in both cases, these so-called apologies felt more like PR exercises than a genuine effort to atone.’
Good work Laura Walters via Newsroom
Sounds interesting, Cinny.
Found it and here is the link; have yet to read it.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/01/22/411114/sorry-is-not-a-pr-exercise
Thanks beautiful, much appreciated, forgot to post the link lmao.
Schools back soon, yay, a week to reclaim my sanity before work starts 🙂
I’ll hop straight to Godwin. If only Hitler had not dropped the ball and taken his own and Eva’s life, he too might have apologised and ‘moved on with his life and work’, or until the Nuremburg trials anyway. As there would have been for him along with his compatriots. But perhaps they should all have been let off on diversion so they could make recompense for their bad behaviour. The apology system and looking and saying sorry in Court which Judges seem to think is meaningful, may lead to less harsh sentences and offer a lot of savings for the justice system in NZ.
/sarc
If apologies are splashed all over the media are they just PR exercises? If apologies aren’t splashed all over the media does that mean they’re not genuine? Or if apologies aren’t splashed all over the media does that mean they weren’t given?
If someone says an apology sounds like a PR exercise and someone says of the same apology it doesn’t sound like a PR exercise who is right?
Good points, Peter.
IMO, yet’ another case of ‘right’ in such situations being “in the eye of the beholder”.
Or rather, there is no ‘right’ – it is purely a matter of personal opinion. Debating who is ‘right’ just becomes a circular (pointless?) argument with no absolute answer.
The way in which an apology is given speaks volumes to me.
In which instance jlr appeared more genuine than the spotlight longing roastbuster rapist.
That ego driven roastbuster should be charged and chucked into the big house. Maybe he could learn a bit more about rape there. Yeah I’m majorly pissed about his recent actions.
I wonder if stuff paid for the privilege of promoting his shit music.
Cindy making prison rape jokes. Classy.
Actions speak louder than words petie,
The exclusions from JLR’s apology are worth reflection.
A certain chinese gentleman ,100000.00 and the comparative worth of some races.
Great to see Minister Woods providing more funding for low emission transport of $11 million.
Foodstuffs, Meridian, Ngai Tahu Tourism, Taraua District Council and others are co-funders.
“This funding is made up of $4.3 million of government co-funding and $7.3 million of funds from the private sector. That’s a smart investment that means the maximum benefit for the taxpayers spend.
She notes:
“From 100% electric campervans for tourists to hydrogen fuel cell powered buses at the Ports of Auckland to solar panel charged electric vehicles and trial of smart chargers in people’s homes, we’re backing new technologies that will make a difference.
“We’re also funding a further 34 new public charging spaces for electric vehicles right around New Zealand, including several at South Island tourism hot-spots. This is about creating a truly national infrastructure of EV charging so that all major trips around our country are available to EV users.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/record-investment-low-emissions-vehicles-announced
Does anyone mind if I’m a little underwhelmed?
Surely it’s time to look at what EECA is actually doing with itself as part of Shaw’s Carbon Zero thing?
EECA are lovely people trying hard, but they are one of those little funds that pisses itself into tiny teensy weenie little pools and you really have to work hard to get wet.
Please can we have something more muscular and believable for 2019 in transport energy?
Animals Without Backbones
No. 2: Sorcha Ryder
Noelle McCarthy is not the worst thing to slither out of the Emerald Isle, it seems. Meet Sorcha Ryder, and try not to grind your teeth or smash a window. This spineless scoundrel rejoices in the splendid title of “President of the Trinity University Philosophical Society, Dublin.” Read the following and you’ll weep for Ireland, for the fate of academia, and for humanity….
http://normanfinkelstein.com/2019/01/22/hello-darkness-my-old-friend-how-the-president-of-trinity-university-philosophical-society-rectified-an-error/
Animals Without Backbones is an occasional series compiled and presented by RALPH BUCHSBAUM, for Daisycutter Sports Inc.
No. 1: Bill English
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/110100100/phil-twyford-cant-guarantee-kiwibuild-will-meet-its-target
Oh dear, never mind. Over promised and under delivered. Wasn’t it meant to be the other way around?
Phil’s discovered that builders would rather build big pricey houses. He’s on the ball our Phil.
Yes how terribly unsurprising.
He has missed his targets by a whopping 70% though. What a muppet.
Admission: “Phil Twyford says only 300 KiwiBuild homes are due to be finished by July” https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/110113848/phil-twyford-says-only-300-kiwibuild-homes-are-due-to-be-finished-by-july
Yes, as I have pointed out it is a serious clusterf#ck. Twyford needs to realise his limitations as a Minister and revise his plans.
Looks like the shortfall is actually explained by their reliance on builders: “It’s been more difficult than we expected to really shift developers off their existing business model”. Lame excuse, but what we expect from Labour.
Come July, we’ll be able to award Twyford three out of ten for his performance. Will Ardern be able to replace him with someone competent? Probably not. Relying on builders to learn a new business model is like expecting old dogs to learn new tricks.
So how did the first Labour govt succeed? Did they provide the designs and let competition between builders drive the output? If so, is the current govt copying that strategy?
By muddling their way through.
Sir James Fletcher snr, perhaps fearing the Fletcher Construction Co Ltd would be nationalised, took up the invitation of the new Labour Government in 1935 to prepare a scheme to build state rental houses. This was opposed by his brothers as too risky, and they were initially right. The houses proved much more expensive to build than first thought. This was because of the high building and design standards insisted on by the enthusiastic parliamentary undersecretary to the minister of finance, John A. Lee, who had no experience of building.
His scheme provided for most houses to be individual units and to be built from New Zealand-produced materials wherever possible. No two houses in an area were to be of the same design, and construction was to be of a high order. Lee also insisted that interior planning of all houses should conform to modern civilised standards. The New Zealand Institute of Architects’ president considered the scheme expensive and inefficient and Fletcher himself claimed that civil servants had provided house designs and demanded standards of construction on “too lavish a scale”.
The first house was built in 1937 and by March 1939 more than 5000 state houses were built or were under construction, and contracts had been let for 700 more. Residential Construction lost between £200 and £300 a house and survived only by virtue of a £200,000 government-guaranteed overdraft. It was one of several contractors, and by 1939 it had virtually withdrawn from the business.
http://www.businesshistory.auckland.ac.nz/fletchers/key_events.html
So they got 5000 built in two years. We need the media to explain why this success isn’t being replicated. Market failure, or poor govt design, or both? I’d like to hear from any experts who reckon they can account for the difference!
I thought everyone had decided that there was not enough available timber in NZ and that we would have to buy it back from Australian entities which had bought it from us originally.
I know not that was a story Dennis,
Interesting – I haven’t seen that story. You mean not enough dry cut pine? If so, does that mean nobody checked the resource stocks before designing the construction plan??
4 letters
Really expensive. Screwed by the RMA
Starts with “L” and ends in “d”
Yes, just a question of whether that is all the explanation or just part. It wasn’t there in the 1930s, so time was required to find or create usable land. But they knew that! Labour’s poll rating will slide unless they can explain themselves.
Just a part I think, but a incredibly massive one.
Said houses, thanks to JA Lee’s insistence on high standards, saved New Zealand millions in building replacement houses, and still provide value, even today.
Fifties and sixties State houses attract a premium on the market.
Doesn’t sound anywhere like the National parties expensive theft/fuckup, with selling them off.
Kiwibuild is nothing like the First Labour Government’s State house building programme. Then again that wasn’t entirely earth shattering either. Only 30,000 houses were built between 1937 and 1950. That works out to be less than 2500 per year. Also most of them were still built by the private sector.
Sure, the government via it’s agencies financed, designed, and clerked residential construction but AFAIK the work was always done by the private sector.
@ Gosman, The difference then, was that NZ immigration was not the third highest in the world per capita in the 1930’s to 1950’s, at the same time as they were constructing the state houses… hard to keep up with that sort of impact on population growth with housing, especially when NZ is not exactly choosy on who we are importing into NZ to reside here, with aged people, criminals, 11 day marriage and retail/hospitality workers being popular by immigration as new citizens and residents… many are not actually working but retiring or just living here and able to claim benefits within very short time frames…
some are unemployed before they even get here aka the Chinese workers holed up recently after paying $40k and having no work or money to pay rent.
Let alone all the alias that are being discovered by many coming and going from NZ…
no wonder jobseekers benefits are up. Unlike Kiwi’s who have their benefit cut when they leave NZ, many on multiple passports under different names can come and go as they please and therefore their benefits are not cut, when they leave…
Not sure how motivated the govt was during 1939-45 to build houses and if there was a workforce available at the time.
From memory there was some other event that captured the attention of the world at that time (though I must admit not recorded as part of my writings 😉) ??
So the govt IMO had a valid reason of averaging 2,500/year Though I think you are being a little mischievous in how you have framed your point ??
@ Dennis Frank What are they talking about, it’s the same business model the government uses as the construction industry approach.
That’s the problems as is relying on very poorly trained, low waged imports to build our houses who many are sitting around unemployed after paying $40k to lawyers and third party recruiters, when what we needed was building and planning skills at a higher local level….
As they say, from wiki
“The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.”
In terms of NZ building it seems that allowing hundreds of thousands of low skilled people into NZ will some how create a master piece of engineering and construction over the age of the universe as they all seem to use the infinite monkey theorem in construction here…
could have been a better bet to give free trades training to NZ citizens already here which would take 2 -4 years and be on the ground now instead of the import strategy from National from 2010, (aka in that 8 years we could have had two rounds of new trainees who are NZ born and trained and likely to stay in NZ if the wage and conditions are high enough), or import in quality international people on $100k+ , use habitat for humanity man power for the rest, have people who speak and read English fluently to follow the plans and communicate on site so we don’t have remedial work and it taking forever to get a building completed, and with tradies with decades of experience (aka not likely to respond to $NZ 20 – 40 p/h jobs)….
Even easier go back to the immigration levels that the new government planned for aka 15,000 max, stop the temporary work permits that are a massive burden on infrastructure, stamp on poor tourism and aged parents actually being in NZ and ‘working’ looking after kids on a tourism visa that use our hospitals etc, and actually look at people who want to live here and have something great to offer the country… and the appropriate level of insurance for people who are actually living here, but not qualified to do so, using a tourist or student visa but without means to properly support themselves in NZ…
Build a wall, sounds less complex. Across the Bombay hills.
I agree with the 15,000 figure. Some non partisan think tank looked at the issue. I would include more temporary work visa programmes for the pacific islands. Better than strait handouts to there governments.
It won’t happen as our GDP growth and housing price stability is tied to immigration. No way Labour could survive a house price fall as its doing next to nothing to stimulate other parts of the economy.
In terms of election margin a debate could exist about a few percent that Labour presently gets from poorer immigrants who are still by any method trying to get the extended family into NZ. They will vote against such a control on immigration. Hence since it’s the margin that wins or looses the election Labour can’t act.
“It’s clear now that we won’t meet our first year target, and that’s a really disappointment to me,” Twyford said.
Well its been clear to a lot of people for a very long time that those targets weren’t going to be met
It was clear at the point that they announced it that he wouldn’t hit 1000 houses per year for a while and certainly ramping up to 3000 plus a year is pie in the sky dreaming at the moment.
Over promising wins you an election but under delivering might may well lose you one
They successfully avoided addressing their unrealistic targets in the first year in office as they could use the excuse that they were putting in place the framework for the programme. No such excuses exist now although I am sure they will attempt variations on this theme.
I’m pretty sure it’ll be Nationals fault some how
What a lovely duet Gosman and Puckish Rogue make. Each feeding into the others negative warblings. I prefer Bjorling and Merrill in In the Depths of the Temple myself.
I think this is more accurate 🙂
I’ve always liked that one.
Always lends itself to a gentle sway, like the rocking of a boat on calm water.
I thought how do modern singers of The Depths compare to Queen’s style. Here are two with appeal and power.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2MwnHpLV48
The thing about opera singers is that they can’t usually do pop for anything worth a damn. Their breath control is too deliberate and it screws the natural sound. But opera is totally my thing, some days. Just awesome.
On the other hand, Mercury had an amazing range (with no gaps) and style that is rare in pop music. It’s funny to try to follow his style in karaoke – most of the songs sound simple to sing, but then the note increments keep going up or down so far that one’s throat really gets into difficulty. I mean, you can sing them all in your own range, but they sound so much more flat.
Singer and voice coach on Freddie Mercury and his voice.
This is pretty damn special, too.
http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/listen_to_freddie_mercury_and_david_bowie_on_the_isolated_vocal_track_for_the_queen_hit_under_pressure_1981.html
Freddy Mercury still teaching people how to sing in 2017…
There’s something special about that song – it’s like three different songs with some lyrics being oscure to the point of nonsensical, and the lyrics with obvious meaning are very loosely related if at all, but it just connects with people.
Great way to keep a bored crowd occupied, too 🙂
@ greywarshark
It’s hard to better this version of the Pearl Fishers duet though with Luciano Pavarotti and Nicolai Ghiarov:
An old recording but straight from the heavens.
Very nice work Grey.
Hope you’ve seen this duet live; it’s pretty magic.
I doubt they could spin any such line but I don’t expect them to try. They need to take responsibility. All they need blame National for is creating the problem in the first place. If National had been responsible and only imported as many foreigners as the infrastructure could provide for, the problem would not exist, right? No need to point out that Helen Clark made the same stupid mistake. I know that already. 🙄
“They need to take responsibility.”
Can you see them doing that though
Eventually. Depends if they can produce a feasible excuse from the logistics. Twyford ought to be demanding an explanation from the public servants responsible for implementing the policy. We still haven’t had any explanation at all.
Twyford could tell a press conference that it was lack of leadership: “Well, we contracted a CEO for Kiwibuild, then we had to shift his goalposts, which he decided was a breach of contract. But privacy law prevents me saying so. You know, the same lame excuse National always used to evade accountability. We always copy National!” 😎
Some better then none which is what the nothing to see here nats would have built
Yes but when you were in Parliament how many houses did you get built
I don’t remember National promising 100,000 in 10 years
That would be Ardern and her buddy Twyford
Key highlighted NZ’s housing crisis in 2007. Like Chris T, I can’t remember what the National-led government promised either; how did they avoid criticism for failing to provide more affordable housing while ramping up immigation?
Simple, really – National had no housing targets, homelessness isn’t their problem, and they have (blind) faith that the market will provide (never mind Mainzeal (Shipley) and Fletcher Building failures).
If the number of KiwiBuild homes built so far is disappointing (and it is), then how best to describe National’s housing ‘achievements’ over nine years in office, and do we really want a repeat of those achievements?
Looking forward to comparing the numbers after the coalition’s first nine years.
Homelessness doesn’t appear to be Labour’s problem either given their 2 billion in last years budget looks like it will produce 300 houses that no one seems to want and will probably end up on the open market, while 2 billion could have housed the homeless.
Actual accountability is a bugger, eh.
We’ll see how far he misses by, and if it’s a fair effort I’m sure he’ll survive. If it turns into novopay he’ll be stuffed.
Oh boy, popcorn time.
Totally.
Hypocrisy on stilts.
https://twitter.com/Ned_Newhouse/status/1087803082522746882
Two Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are urging Michael Cohen’s attorney to prove that his client’s upcoming February 7 public testimony before the committee won’t just be a “media stunt.”
In a Tuesday letter, House Freedom Caucus Members Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mark Meadows (R-NC) asked Guy Petrillo for firm answers on the scope of Cohen’s testimony, claiming that Cohen’s public relations representative in the probe, Lanny Davis, cautioned that much of what Cohen can say will be restricted by his cooperation with multiple ongoing investigations.
The congressmen write that Davis told GOP committee staff that he “pushed” Cohen to testify, saying “this was my idea; nobody’s else.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/house-oversight-republicans-want-answers-cohen-testimony
The irony of a Brexit Leave supporter, now leaving Britain… also what happens with globalism it is a race to the bottom and company headquarters can come and go as they please, with few incentives of old like redundancy payments, or tax treatment to stop them…. more like encourage corporations to leave western countries and manufacture else where, while bringing in cheap products and selling them to the consumers of the western world… how free trade really works.
And how thoughtful all those Leave people were… they are the first to leave the sinking May ship
“Dyson will move its headquarters from the UK to Singapore ahead of Brexit
Founder James Dyson is in favor of the UK exiting the EU. But even with Brexit going ahead, his company is now leaving for Singapore.”
https://www.cnet.com/news/dyson-moves-hq-to-singapore-from-the-uk-ahead-of-brexit/
Bet BlobbyJobby and Moggy move their dosh offshore well in advance of the deluge too.
His company is leaving as Singapore has signed a free trade agreement with Europe and he now has the same access if not better to the european market then he is going to have by staying in Britain.
And that is the crux of the matter, capital will always find a way to get out. Its just the ordinary workers that will stay behind. 🙂 Oh well, as some said, they voted for it, and all those that did not vote for it, sucks to be them, right?
Time they redo the referendum before Britain loses more of their industry headquarters based there.
It sucks to live in the UK.
It rains every day and even millionaires live in tiny houses.
Yeah the houses of rich people are tiny.
https://goo.gl/images/HA6Qcm
Lucky there are so many billionaires that like to own a house there even if they only live in it for a few weeks a year.
Being a millionaire is small fry these days.
It’s easier to be tax resident in a tax haven and just own houses and assets around the world as gold bricks.
The Scourge of the Wealthy
The scum trolls led by hedonist non empathetic nationals, are delighted that the Coalition cannot meet the present extreme demand of housing and rentals.
They are drunk with the success of their massive destruction of the low waged Kiwi family and their own rise and rise of ostentatious dirty Greed.
Thanks to John Key and Billy English – and a number of other slobs Their success has been so Rapid. And Rabid.
Knighted by a pleasant but unkowing Monarch. Who has not an inkling of Democracy – or Equity. The same Monarch appears to have no idea of a Treaty struck by a simple Queen Victoria, which has failed to keep the Maori peoples and individuals, in the same luxury as the wealthy of Auckland or Tauranga.
The Coalition of NZ – will soon have to discuss with every Wealthy person in Aotearoa a meaningful reduction in their wealth.
For, there will be many means of humiliating wealthy persons who have failed Democracy. The wealthy know that. It will not take many matches to burn off Greed.
Housing was not just a National issue. The ramping up in prices, debt, rents, immigration began with Clarke and Cullen. National just did nothing to change as it was the haves that got more wealthy as a result.
I don’t think saying that the few wealthy should have assets confiscated will solve anything. Such a move would cause a flight of wealth resulting in economic collapse. Then you will have a meaningful reduction of wealth. Our tax rates are already high. So any of the Moari that get educated and able to command high pay will just leave to work in the long list of low tax nations. Buisiness confidence would collapse, as the owners flee with whatever assets they can recover and unemployment would increase. Harming Moari the most.
Have you heard of Venezuela.
You want there stuff. Isn’t that greed.
Hi – D J Ward.
Whitewash
I am a bit more occupied with a place called New Zealand. Have you heard of New Zealand ?
You wealthy guys and girls have been buying up houses and selling them off at some of the highest prices on the planet. Just dumpy old three bedroom stuff. at that.
Heaps of them you turn into Rentals at outrageous weekly amounts. Most of them mouldy cold rat ridden slums. And then you run off to Simon and Paula (the one in the Leopard skin) and cry on his shoulder about how the poor wretches are complaining about low wages and poverty.
Simon says in his unique obscure way, well we must tread on the throats of the Poor until they get used to their Poverty and become grateful. Children, Women and Men.
Simon says the National Party exists to get rid of all people who have no wealth. It is what National People expect and you expect D J Ward. National stands for getting rid of the decent people of New Zealand.
But you already know that. That’s why a lot of you pay hardly any Tax. Scummy eh .
Kia ora Newshub Inflation is low in NZ that is only the case because the price of oil has come back from the highs of last year.
Tawhirirmate is a powerful force and these strong winds are part of human caused Global Warming and climate change that’s a fact. Its good to see that the #metoo movement has given the young people the courage to call out the powerful in the movie making world who abuse their staff.
Lloyd I say that Davos is going to make good changes they are taking about climate change and unequal income distribution finally . I also say that if national was still in power there will have been thousands of broken people under the bridge and on the bread line. The the Coalition Government has made a positive changes to Aotearoa.
Its not on that people leave any living thing in a car on a hot day. duncan at least the Coalition Government is trying to fix the homeless people problems in Aotearoa national just denied it rubbing there hands together hogging the tax free capital gains they are getting from their housing market short.
The digital language gives people a consciences one cannot just tell porkies or do bad things just because someone is filling there hip pockets with $$$$$$$$$$. Shamubeel the way the world is at the minute is a very good reason not to load the government with DEPT. Like I have stated before if programs are targeted at Maori that will give national a tool to hit the Coalition Government on the head with anyway its best to lift all poor minority culture up with policy’s not just one sector of OUR society.
Good on Hinewehi Mohi for singing the Maori only national anthem at Twickenham All blacks England game 20 years ago. Its cool that most Kiwis are giving Maori culture respect .
The provincial growth fund has helped Maori and rural communities all over Aotearoa. duncan their are hundreds of people who are not locked up in jail now collecting the dole that is better than pay paying A $100.000 a year to keep them in the farcical jail system just to keep you happy. No wonder Winston stayed away from the am show you are a disrespectful person. That $400 is a pack of porkies duncan that’s is what the contractor gets if a worker plants 10 bags a day the worker will get $200 gross a day from that a reasonable fit person will only hit that if they are good hard workers at the end of the season most people will only make $100 a day YOUR MEDIA mates telling bullshit again I seen that story $400 planting trees and know one wants the job YEA RIGHT to I no this for a Fact. Ka kite ano. P.S duncan I would like to see you on a spade you would break in half a day
Americans’ concerns about climate change have surged to record levels, new polling shows, following a year marked by devastating storms, wildfires and increasingly dire warnings from scientists.
A total of 72% of polled Americans now say global warming is personally important to them, according to the Yale program on climate change communication. This is the highest level of concern since Yale starting polling the question in 2008.
Overall, 73% of Americans accept that global warming is happening, outnumbering those who don’t by five to one. This acceptance has strengthened in recent years, rising by 10% since March 2015. The proportion that grasps that humans are the primary cause of warming is smaller, with 62% understanding this to be the case.
About two-thirds of Americans believe that global warming is influencing the weather, in the wake of a string of deadly extreme events in the US. About half say the disastrous wildfires in California and Hurricanes Florence and Michael, which flattened parts of North Carolina and Florida, were worsened because of rising global temperatures.
“Global warming used to be viewed as a problem distant in time and space,” said report co-lead researcher Ed Maibach, a climate change and public health communications expert at George Mason University.
“But Americans increasingly understand that global warming is here and now and are growing concerned about the threat to themselves, their communities and the nation.” Ka kite ano links below.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/22/climate-change-concern-americans-poll
Giving money to the oil barons who are poising the enviroment that has to stop. I wonder how much Aotearoa gives to the carbon barons will check that out a put a post up about that.
The UK leads the European Union in giving subsidies to fossil fuels, according to a report from the European commission. It found €12bn (£10.5bn) a year in support for fossil fuels in the UK, significantly more than the €8.3bn spent on renewable energy.
The commission report warned that the total subsidies for coal, oil and gas across the EU remained at the same level as 2008. This is despite both the EU and G20 having long pledged to phase out the subsidies, which hamper the rapid transition to clean energy needed to fight climate change.
Fossil fuels subsidised by $10m a minute, says IMF
Read more
Germany provided the biggest energy subsidies, with €27bn for renewable energy, almost three times the €9.5bn given to fossil fuels. Spain and Italy also gave more subsidies to renewable energy than fossil fuels.
But along with the UK, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Ireland all gave more to fossil fuels. The report is based on 2016 Eurostat data, the latest available, and found that across the EU renewable energy received 45% of subsidies and fossil fuels 33%.
The commission report said policies were being pursued to cut carbon emissions and meet the Paris climate agreement goals of limiting global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels. “However, despite this and the international commitments made in the context of G20 and G7, fossil fuel subsidies in the EU have not decreased,” it said. “EU and national policies might need to be reinforced to phase out such subsidies.”
The total fossil fuel subsidies in the EU were €55bn in 2016, the report concluded. “This is a very high number, given we are reaching the deadline for some of their [phase out] promises,” said Ipek Gencsu, subsidies expert at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Ka kite ano links below
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/23/uk-has-biggest-fossil-fuel-subsidies-in-the-eu-finds-commission
Here is a good video for our muso’s
Kia ora Newshub That’s is Tawhirirmate and Tangaroa. Tawhirirmate gets a lot of Mana from a warning Tangaroa.
That looked like a big slip at Cape Kidnappers small compared to the Tarndale slip in Te tairawhiti that one is the biggest in Australaysa.
I bet if that suburbia rubbish dump in Auckland was in a affluent suburb it would have been cleaned up by the council.
ECO MAORI will do more research before I comment on Foreign topics.
Go on Winston for defending Jacinda not being present at the Ratana the biggest threat to US is Climate change and the faster we get on top of global warming the better Papatuanukue we will leave te Mokopunas. Its a big mess that national has left OUR Coalition Government with the Housing crisis to clean up it will be cleaned up. Mike Australia has just started there summer not so long ago Global warming record hot temperature are what some priditived that phenomenon here on thestandard but they we saying later on in about 5 to 10 years not 2019?????? Milisa shonky is a climate change denier he was just rednosing at Davos. Kate I seen the Movie AquaMan it was excellent watching especially with the sean of all the waste that we POUR into The Ocean being washed back on LAND a very Clean and Green MOVIE.KA PAI Ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub It’s a good business idea for a gondola zip line on Rangitoto Island championed By Ngai tai tamariki so long as the project does not indanger our beautiful wildlife. Ua te reira I teie ona ringihia I runga I reira parade whakawhiti I. national that is with there TX problems Ana to kai. Some say how did the tsunami of working poor people phenomenon eventuate well its quite clear for me to see that if the country is run in favour of one small sector of society business and all other sectors ills are ignored well there it is. I did said that the tsunami of boke poor people was just starting last year. It’s s so harlious that someone is trying to pin this massive transfer of wealth from the many to the few 00.1% on the Coalition Government YEA RIGHT. Only fools and horses Flogging the same
Horses Kiwi build and the unjustice system and POOR people bashing Mitchell your complexion is going red because you no your party is losing and you are lying .
Good on Hannah for swimming the Koveaux strait raising money for mental health awareness Kia kaha Hannah.
AM Show your polls are rigged mark mitchell as leader of national for one he was closely linked to the whale oil bullshit how he got out of that crap is a wonder O that’s correct he is a ex Cop they look after there OWN I have Alot of reservations about this person possibly running the country on the ideals of a crooked cop mentality lock em up first and any bad facts getting covered up like the cops do it’s well known that the cops serve the wealthy first they give the biggest kick back and lock up the poor common people to show the world that they are doing there job and that they need more cops. Big know to mark Ana to kai. Ka kite ano P.S wasn’t mark’s family part of the Air force his parents would have known about the Gropper case.
I’m looking after my Mokopunas to puppets trying to float marks toilet I will point the facts out on that you two look so sad that national is were they deserve to be and the only reason they stayed in power for so long is of the spinning the media put on shonky.
The whole world needs to action a sharp reduction in OUR use of carbon that is poisning OUR GRANDCHILDRENS FUTURES.
Removing coal from the global energy mix is taking too long, too many forests are still being destroyed, and fossil fuel subsidies are ongoing despite their distorting effect on the market, a study has found.
There has also been insufficient progress in agriculture to stop harmful practices that increase carbon dioxide production, and heavy industry is not doing enough to use energy more efficiently, according to analysis carried out by the World Resources Institute thinktank.
Without progress on all these fronts, the world is unlikely to see global greenhouse gas emissions peak in 2020, which is likely to be necessary to stay within the 1.5C or 2C warming thresholds that scientists have identified as key to the future safety of the planet.
But the analysis also found important steps forward, on renewable energy, curtailing greenhouse gas emissions from shipping, and public sector investment in reducing emissions. These suggest progress in other aspects of tackling climate change is also possible, with greater effort from the public and private sectors.
The WIR looked at six key goals that have been pegged as necessary to cause emissions to peak in 2020 and achieve the targets of the 2015 Paris agreement. They include goals on energy, transport, land use, industry, infrastructure and finance.
The report found that renewable energy accounted for about a quarter of global electricity generation in 2017, and more than two-thirds of new power generation capacity. By 2020, electricity from renewables is likely to be consistently cheaper than fossil fuel energy, making it possible that 30% of electricity could come from renewable sources by 2030, one of the Mission2020 milestones.
But coal-fired generation is still increasing, with coal-fired power plants continuing to be built in some areas, while existing plants are not being removed from service fast enough. Electric vehicles, meanwhile, comprise 1.4% of overall sales, making a 2020 milestone of 15% of new car sales hard to reach.
The goals are the work of Mission 2020, a global coalition of several climate analysis organisations, headed by Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief who negotiated the Paris accord. Mission 2020 has calculated that if these milestones are achieved by 2020, it will make the longer-term Paris goals possible – because progress now on reducing emissions will make it easier and cheaper to reduce them in the longer term – and wants to spur sufficient progress on climate change to bring that about. Ka kite ano links below P.S The people that shonky put in power running our industrys in Aotearoa will throw a spanner in the works on our Coalition Goverments goals of a sharp reduction in OUR carbon emmision’s they need to be weeded out and given a short sharp shift .
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/22/analysis-warns-lack-progress-2020-global-emissions-target
Video for above post.
How to solve the world’s plastics problem: Bring back the milk man
It’s the early 1960s. Girls are fainting over the Beatles, Sean Connery is James Bond and a revolutionary trend is sweeping the United States: Plastic.
Plastic is about to have its breakthrough moment in the food industry. The plastic milk jug, specifically, is on the brink of taking off: the “market potential is huge,” the New York Times correctly notes.
To American families, a third of which are still getting their milk from a milk man, plastic is a wonder package. It’s lighter than glass. It doesn’t break. Unlike paper cartons, it’s translucent. You can see how much liquid is left in the jug. With a plastic container, everybody wins.
Except for the milk man. And, as it would turn out, the planet.
Fast forward to now. Plastics are expected to outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050. Marine life is choking on the debris: Microplastics are in our soil, our water, our air, getting into our bodies with potential consequences that we don’t fully understand yet. Massive amounts of plastic have piled up in landfills, some emitting greenhouse gases and contributing to global warming over the seeming eternity they take to degrade. Plastics are threatening the health of the planet and its inhabitants, and they’re not going away.
Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Danone, Mars Petcare, Mondelēz International and others — some of the world’s largest consumer goods companies — are partnering on a potential solution to limit future waste. They’re working together on a project known as Loop, announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday. It offers consumers an
alternative to recycling — a system that isn’t working well these days.
At this point, the partners are testing the waters. It’s an experiment they’ll roll out to several thousand consumers in New York and Paris this May, with plans to expand to London later in 2019 and Toronto, Tokyo and San Francisco in 2020.
The Loop tote bag (Mark Kauzlarich for CNN)
Loop is a new way to shop, offering about 300 items — from Tide detergent to Pantene shampoo, Häagen-Dazs ice cream to Crest mouthwash — all in reusable packaging. After using the products, customers put the empty containers in a Loop tote on their doorstep. The containers are then picked up by a delivery service, cleaned and refilled, and shipped out to consumers again. Ka kite ano links below P.S The movie AquaMan high lights the waste we are pour into our Oceans Tangaroa Also it a exelent move to watch
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/01/business/loop-reusable-packaging-mission-ahead/index.html
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
Here you go humans are the intelligent the most intelligent being’s but we can not come to a agreement to stop Burning Carbon we can see the effects of green house warming now . We let the media be brought by oil baron’s and let them manipulate the systems and the people to steal power from the many 99.9 %. We are letting them steal our grandchildrens future for there greed of power and money. IF we don’t stop them and stop burning carbon humanity will go extint .Life will carry on on Papatuanuku but with out most animal’s that we know of we will have to stop burning carbon or go BUST.
Global Warming: News, Facts, Causes & Effects
Global warming is the term used to describe a gradual increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and its oceans, a change that is believed to be permanently changing the Earth’s climate. There is great debate among many people, and sometimes in the news, on whether global warming is real (some call it a hoax). But climate scientists looking at the data and facts agree the planet is warming. While many view the effects of global warming to be more substantial and more rapidly occurring than others do, the scientific consensus on climatic changes related to global warming is that the average temperature of the Earth has risen between 0.4 and 0.8 °C over the past 100 years. The increased volumes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released by the burning of fossil fuels, land clearing, agriculture, and other human activities, are believed to be the primary
sources of the global warming that has occurred over the past 50 years. Scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate carrying out global warming research have recently predicted that average global temperatures could increase between 1.4 and 5.8 °C by the year 2100. Changes resulting from global warming may include rising sea levels due to the melting of the polar ice caps, as well as an increase in occurrence and severity of storms and other severe weather events.
https://www.livescience.com/topics/global-warming
Healthy corals grow in the shallows fringing a mangrove forest in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. This area is known as the “heart of the Coral Triangle” due to its incredible marine biodiversity.
Credit: Shutterstock
David Steen received his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Auburn University and is now a Research Ecologist at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island. Steen has published dozens of scientific papers about wildlife ecology and conservation biology and is also an award-winning science communicator known for his wide-ranging outreach efforts (find him on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Finally, Steen is Executive Director of The Alongside Wildlife Foundation, a nonprofit he founded to promote science-based solutions to living alongside wildlife in perpetuity. Steen contributed this article to Live Science’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Species are rapidly disappearing all around us; indeed, you and I are living through Earth’s sixth great extinction. Most reasonable people agree that losing species is a problem. However, as a conservation biologist and a science communicator, I am used to hearing the occasional argument from radicals about why we need not be especially concerned about that loss. Imagine my horror to see these arguments compiled into a Perspectives piece published in The Washington Post, and written by a professor of biology no less! I cannot believe that it is 2018 and I have to explain why extinction is actually a bad thing, but here we are.
The piece works hard to make the case that we need not be particularly distressed about the loss of biodiversity by arguing, if you will humor me some loose paraphrasing, that we are going to lose species no matter what and extinction does not make much of a difference anyway because new species might evolve in the future. But for this line of reasoning to make sense one must ignore decades of conservation science and centuries of art, literature and philosophy, not to mention millions of years of evolution. Although there have already been many responses to the article — nearly unanimous in their disapproval — I feel compelled to go on record as well and explain why the article was so aggravating to me, as someone who puts a lot of time and effort into helping people appreciate and value biodiversity.
Ka kite ano links below P.S I say that all climate change spinning denier’s are open for Eco Maori’s warth as they are indangering our Grandchildrens future.
https://www.livescience.com/61548-saving-imperiled-species-op-ed.html
There you go the sandflys were playing heaps of silly bugger games on the road on my to and from Tokoroa TO DROP MY MOKOPUNAS OFF they even had some gturms puppet actor’s in their game playing to. They must have smoke coming out of there ass,s from my post on Mark the neo redneck national mp there were marked cop cars in their play to Ana to kai Ka kite ano P.S they love shonky as well they need big boxes of tissue LOL