“Beijing rights activist Hu Jia said the station has been set up with the aim of exporting China’s ideology beyond its borders.”
“The Voice of China is under the control of the Central Propaganda Department,” Hu said. “This is an important tactic on Xi Jinping’s part, and a huge weapon in his hands to change the world’s opinion of this dictator and his autocratic one-party rule.”
“Xi has the self-confidence of a czar following the constitutional amendments, and now he wants to bravely lead the fight against mainstream values in the rest of the world,” he said.
“He will use authoritarian power to make Chinese lies sound nice, and engage in ideological infiltration and indoctrination.”
Many on here have commented on Russia Today as a propaganda agent of the Russian Federation – yet we don’t get RT as a Freeview channel in this country.
” yet we don’t get RT as a Freeview channel in this country.”
I am sure we used to be able to get it on Freevew
Not surprised that we no longer can get this channel, Yes it is Putin’s propaganda outlet, you don’t need a degree to work that one out, but it did have some interesting programmes on it providing you looked at them with an opened mind.
Max Kaiser was one good programme. Once again had to keep an open mind but he did have some very interesting guests like Steve Keen, who had a lot of economic alternatives to this Neo shit they appear to teach in universities.
But hey the powers to be are “saving” us from making up our own minds and really why do we need RT when we have so many unbiased media outlets like Fox News The Daily Fail The Torygraph and our own very unbiased press like the Granny and reporters Hoskins, Gower, Gardner just to name a few.
By saving what they would have otherwise spent on mortgage, rates, maintenance and insurance minus rent, Mary says renters might come out as well or better off than their home-buying friends, she says.
The advantages of renting:
Better savings diversification
Less responsibility
No need to do (or pay someone else to do) maintenance
May be easier to live close to downtown
Can move easily and cheaply
Can use long-term savings for a business or other investment
That’s the way it should be. However, profiteers and price gougers have skewed the system.
I have always been happy to rent. And would welcome changes to shift the balance of power away from landlords.
I have a pretty good landlord at the moment. Rent rises are once a year and at the lower end of rises I’ve heard about. I live in a well maintained secure unit.
But even this landlord raises the rent yearly a bit above average income rises.
That housing is too expensive full stop.
Housing investment for the home owner is tax free unless you are flipping in less than 2 years.
On the average family income there is no money left over for investment.
She’s been inoculated with the Neo Liberal Bullshit. They all say that the Neo’s want the peasantry brought to heel and know their place and renting is just one other control to achieve this.
There are more people coming in than houses being built. We have had the same rental system for decades and seemed to be fine with little shortages, now it’s dramatically changed because for the last decade and in particular the last few years, there are 70+ new residents pa, 180,000 work permits given out for new residents pa, and massive tourism. Then how easy it is for other nations to invest in ‘gold bricks’ in NZ and how everyone is expected to have multiple mansions around the world. (Look where that has got Queenstown).
So you have raise taxes, have no rental fees etc etc but it will not change the fundamental problem.
There are too many people for the amount of houses and the houses being built are generally beyond the reaches of those on NZ wages.
So there is very little hope, unless the government fundamentally change immigration and neoliberalism because that is what is increasing the prices of things like building. We export logs, bring them back as wood, and end up paying more than other countries for building materials for examples even when we produce a lot of the raw products. We have plenty of skilled and unskilled local labour, but the way the industry has gone, has been to ignore those people because they don’t want to train them and instead get paid to provide a work permit or pay well below the going wage for industry AND be able to work people longer and harder which they have to put up with because they can’t change jobs.
Right there savenz,
And there are more trucks bigger longer and heavier than ever now entering our rural dirt roads now and we see less repairs to them every week until some are going to become impassable soon.
This lack of regional funding of our dirt roads will soon be stopping the farming communities in their tracks, so we are all being setup for a big fall.
Pineapple lumps to you Asleep.
Thank Warren Buffet.
Next rationalization is Watties Heinz Cerebos Gregg’s .
Same owners different vehicle.
Monopolization of food production is allowed to happen no international regulation.
I liked whittackers, but then someone said they weren’t labour-friendly (lowercase “L”).
Donovan’s does some nice confectionary, dunno much about them and their practises though.
Waiting for Ocho to make some round orange-coated chocolate balls. Chocolate with percentages is all well and good, but gimme some pineapple chumps, sniffies, Byzantine brilliantines, orange aucklanders, and other generic names for movie staples…
You heard Whitaker’s weren’t? They’re still here and employing aren’t they? Some of their employees have been there 30 years and more. Low brow, even for you
Goodby to mass and bulk production, hello to the higher-quality, fair-trade, artisan chocolate factory. Also in Dunedin. Fully crowd-sourced from locals:
Not sure why the system went down at 0652. I was already at work and there is nothing in the logs. Looked like the CPU had a temperature shutdown – but there is nothing in the logs, and it isn’t exactly summer at 0652 at this time of year even in Auckland.
Also not sure why my phone isn’t alarming me when it can’t see the website.
Bill had to send a message through to my phone (Thanks Bill).
My windows 10 computer has frequently shut down without warning. I googled it and it seems to be something that happens with windows 8-10 – some say it started suddenly on their computers last year. Various fixes are recommended online – some too technical, and delving into code, for me.
I unticked enabling quick start in power options – one of the suggestions. And that seemed to work til it ticked itself again.
However the particular computer that it normally runs on is getting pretty old. I suspect I need to have a look at the fans and cooling systems again. Or upgrade.
It is a 8 core AMD FX9590 from 2013 which was when I brought it to assemble as a workstation box. It’s most distinguishing characteristic is that it runs up to 225W on the CPU – effectively it is factory overclocked.
So it runs bloody hot and has a rather large stock water cooler with some large very silent but high volume fans on the radiator. This throws heat out of the back.
Even so when the conversation gets warm on the site, you can keep a coffee pretty warm by placing it on the top of case above the radiator. And in winter, your conversation provides my apartment’s heating.
Not so good in summer when we need open windows to prevent the apartment and the computer from cooking us or itself.
The backup server was meant to be the new server last year but wound up as being my workstation.
It is a Ryzen 7 1700 8 core (with 8 virtuals). Way more computing power, but a different design that only runs at 65W. It barely gets warm. I don’t even run it with a water cooler.
However neither the Linux kernel and ASUS motherboard firmware was really ready for it on release. It spent the first 5 months rebooting too frequently (ie about as much as a normal windows computer). It is pretty stable now – which I define as I have to think about actually manually rebooting it every few months..
But I have gotten used to its speed when building code.
I’m not going back to a AMD Piledriver. And since I have to get a new motherboard, memory and cooling system so I can upgrade TS’s server, then something like a AMD Threadripper 1960X could do some severe improvements in my compilation speeds….
But that may have to wait for a while. My partner is trying to build her own business (on one of my older discards from 2011 🙂 and her even older mac laptop). So I’m paying the mortgages and living costs while she gets it off the ground. Upgrading my already over powered workstation is low on the priority list.
I suppose I could consider Intel again – but they are always frigging overpriced and because of their builtin obsolescence policies with form factors for their sockets, too expensive to maintain.
Basically The Standard has been running since 2014 on my old development systems. Good thing that I’m an active programmer eh?
My windows 10 shut my 8 month old computer down and next time we tried to start it we had no windows 10 operating system any more; – so we had to buy a new program and get Microsoft to reload all my stuff we lost.
Dear gods. I still trust my macbook more than the windows laptop – and my second hand ubuntu one.
Edit: it’s interesting that so many windows 8 and 10 pcs started shutting down without warning around the same time. And microsoft seems to blame everything else but it’s OS.
I’ve had no issues at all, apart from some people sitting in front of the screen, with windows seven, eight and ten.
Keep up with updates and windows defender seems to do the trick.
And don’t let any geeks near them. They always want to fix something that isn’t broke.
As my network engineer cousin says. 90% of computer problems can be fixed by a restart. 9% by changing he person on the keyboard. 1% is caused by trying to make software work, in a way it is not designed to do.
SCL group (Strategic Communication Laboratories) is very intertwined with UK Tories and aristocrats. It’s the parent company for Cambridge Analytica.
SCL is another political propaganda enterprise, focusing on manipulation of people’s views by targeting emotions (like Cambridge Analytica and Crosby Textor). It has some security clearance which gives it access to confidential documents. It has done work for the UK MOD.
(SCL Group) – an organisation with its roots deeply embedded within the British political, military and royal establishment.
Indeed, as the Observer article which broke the scandal said “For all intents and purposes, SCL/Cambridge Analytica are one and the same.”
…
In 2005, SCL went public with a glitzy exhibit at the DSEI conference, the UK’s largest showcase for military technology.
It’s ‘hard sell’ was a demonstration of how the UK government could use a sophisticated media campaign of mass deception to fool the British people into the thinking an accident at a chemical plant had occurred and threatened central London. Genuinely.
Board members include an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors.
…
We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections. But these characters aren’t operating from Moscow intelligence bunkers.
Instead, they are British, Eton educated, headquartered in the city of London and have close ties to Her Majesty’s government.
The NZ Defence Service has been told it has to release the details of it’s contractual arrangements with Palantir, the intelligence gathering data base company owned by none other than our very own ‘citizen’, Peter Thiel. Should be interesting in light of what we have learned about Cambridge Analytica.
This month the firm [Palantir] won a billion-dollar contract to provide software to the United States Army, and the company has in recent years sought to expand its client base beyond the western military and spy community to include police forces, immigration enforcement agencies and Wall Street.
These data base companies – whether they’re based in Britain or the US – are all related and doing much the same thing. At least that is the way it appears on the surface.
France: Mass protests against Macron’s economic policies
Protesters march across the country to protest against government plans to change labour law, scrap social benefits.
As usual even the Daily Mail is keeping me better informed on World events than RNZ and the msm…for those who don’t want to go there, i’ve included Al Jazeera’s coverage..
But…but…but..not another poster child – a saviour no less if I remember the French Presidential campaign coverage correctly – turning out to be just another fucking liberal bastard? Surely not!
Le Pen would have the most powerless President France has had. And please, let’s not forget how the liberal media, in turn, denigrated and ignored the threat to their preferred poster boy coming from the left while simultaneously playing up ye olde fascist canard to get people to herd in the centre.
I’m guessing the argument got through then, if all you got is an ad-hominem.
I like my politics to have a bit more morality/body/do actual good not just nice words – to it, than the other guy is a little less evil than that guy. Because that road just leads to more evil guys and you end up with pig skewers and trump. (the pig skewers and trump are probably interchangeable at this point) I think the last what 35 years have proven that if you vote that way all your getting is worse and a little more worse. The last 2 PM’s anyone.
And note I said guys, because that all it ever is – le pen was just more male macho politics as well.
Bridge had a good point about this post – nothing has really changed even though the law changed for the last 30 odd years.
Someone here nailed it by recalling the expression “the perfect is the enemy of the good”. In a democracy, those who are relentlessly negative about policy (except for their preferred candidate) leave the election open to nobody except demagogues. Not even Bernie could switch off the hate some supporters have for the ideologically nearest-but-one candidates.
So yeah, Macron is better than a fucking nazi. And maybe if the left vote weren’t always so fractured by idealogues, France would have someone better than Macron. If Hamon and Mélenchon hadn’t split each other’s vote in the first round, you’d have to find something else to bitch about.
Your doing that make up an argument from what I said, so you can knock it down again. You do that a lot.
I’m not arguing for perfect, never have, nor did I go with negatives except to prove your argument is exactly that, negative. Your argument is a negative argument, which continues to have negative consequences.
How the hell did we get to nazi’s running for office in the first place, sure wasn’t via socialist policies. 35 years of hard liberalism, anyone.
That said, the left isn’t so fractured in France, see protests.
Nazis always run for office. Why are they becoming more popular?
Every time a bunch of lefties run for office, the ones who are less popular throw more shit at the others than the tories do. Every time the right wing run for office, they get past their differences and vote as their favoured candidate or group directs. Epsom, anyone?
The more ‘neoliberalism’ fails, the more extreme people want the change to be. If you knew next to fuckall about an issue other than something was seriously fucked up, would you choose:
option A (extreme but you have reservations),
option B) business as usuall but they look clean and responsible, or
option C) a random selection from indistinguishable but apparently extreme alternatives that all bitterly hate each other and are constantly throwing shit?
Because that’s what most voters are faced with when trying to figure out what party would make life better for them. So, yeah, keep being a bile-spitting depressive all you want, but unless you actually do something constructive you’re just part of the problem.
“Ordinary folk reading might think he is impartial.”
Especially as it not bylined as an opinion piece. His second sentence is blatant RW spin,
“Those of us who still believe in mainstream economics have Shane Jones to thank for again highlighting the lunacy of a government minister owning 51.9 per cent of Air New Zealand.
See, Shane Jones is part of the terrible loony left who want to destroy the economy. Which is classic Hooton. Undermine the target, mindfuck the Overton Window, mess with the left, and that’s all in the first nine words.
He really is very good at his job, but it’s not journalism.
It’s incredibly heartening to see the Prime Minister write about energy transition planning. I’ve been interested in the transition towns movement for a while and I think it’s a great step for this sort of thing to be on a national policy level.
And has taken on John Bolton. Interesting how Trump’s fans were thinking he would be such a departure from US foreign policy and now he’s taking on the most severe hawk from the GWB administration.
A new Greenpeace investigation has exposed the environmental risks of the fast-growing krill industry in one of the most pristine parts of the Antarctic Ocean.
The krill fishing industry removes a vital species from the Antarctic food web – tiny shrimp-like krill – eaten by blue whales, penguins, seals and other wildlife.
We Thestandard site shut down for a couple of hours apologies about my earlier comments it seems strange that there is not actual explanation why. Because the sandflys have been blocking me in the past I checked it at 5pm and I could get to the site come 8.30am no go. PS ECO MAORI does not mind admitting when he is wrong. I trust no one Kia kaha Ka kite ano
Very interesting comparing the general wailing and gnashing of molars in Granny by Mike Hosking and Matthew Hooton and then whoosh – a wee gem by ex Nat MP for Whanganui, Chester Borrows headed ‘Politicians bailed Air N Z out – the airline can’t now complain about Shane Jones’. It’s worth a read. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12018271
Nice dig by Garner in the Dominion at Hosking. (About the Obama dinner.)
“Some of the more miserable or perhaps unhappier grumps among us confused this for boring. They should stay at home and read car manuals next time or a book about themselves.”
Hosking’s column showed him to be an unhappy grump who found the visitor boring.
Newshub just helping son-in-law fix a trough. The Chief Highlanders will be a good Game. Mike you would have had a good time last night Ka pai. I’m on the farm and have to try and get a TV off the Mokopunas to watch the new lol. So I missed most of your new Ka kite ano
The project the sandflys have got anxiety now they no I ain’t no pushover.
The Pink and White terraces was a beautiful sight what a shame to have lossed them. That Westpack bank ad looks like another attack on brown people dont you think from ECO MAORI view Ka kite ano
Iv been getting the run around by my bank since my idiot nabour sandflys started his personal vendetta against me they won’t give me life insurance they stop my truck insurance payments I had no problem with this till the idiot stepped up his harresment. I wonder what their intentions are there is malic in his intentions in my view and some people know that they have malicious intentions against me and they still assist them?????? So I will get my Utu for there treatment of ECO MAORI. Ana to kai PS And they no I’m a good person
Ausome sounds on the radio this afternoon enough said some people mite have thought I thought that those 2 Super Rugby team that I would like to see play each other was on this weekend. I know we’re OUR Rugby team are playing I am a Kiwi after all. I Back the League as well ECO MAORI does not chose side enough said Kia kaha players Ka kite ano I have my favourite but the kumara never say how sweet it is
Newshub it was good having Obama here more Good publicity for Aotearoa one thing I noticed was he was not to comfortable around shonky I would not be comfortable around shonky ether. Global warming is hear and now we have to CHANGE OUR culture and start living in a sustainable way. I seen some other person who now knows ECO MAORI is not a pushover now. Kia kaha Ka kite ano P.S Some other people are paying back their backers with good publicity for Aotearoa to ka pai
There you go Judges bulling in my view they are bullying people to do as they are told so that they don’t question there rulings or judgements. When counsel sees bull___going down they don’t question it I say here’s the link.
Many thanks to Jacinda for letting everyone know her intention of a transition to a carbon neutral economy and OUR Coalition Government for backing her.
Negative yesterday, negative today. Negative all year, according to one departing reader telling me I’ve grown strident and predictable. Fair enough. If it’s any help, every time I go to write about a certain topic that begins with C and ends with arrrrs, I do brace myself and ask: Again? Are ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
Every year, in the Budget, Parliament forks out money to government agencies to do certain things. And every year, as part of the annual review cycle, those agencies are meant to report on whether they have done the things Parliament gave them that money for. Agencies which consistently fail to ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – Recent events in American universities point to an underlying crisis of coherent thinking, an issue that increasingly affects the progressive left across the Western world. This of course is nothing new as anyone who can either remember or has read of the late ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
This year’s Pacific Language Weeks celebrate regional unity and the contribution of Pacific communities to New Zealand culture, says Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti. Dr Reti announced dates for the 2024 Pacific Language Weeks during a visit to the Pasifika festival in Auckland today and says there’s so ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
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I have to say, I found Jacinda’s reported child related question to Obama quite touching.
Her real values shining through.
One propaganda machine to rule them all!
“Beijing rights activist Hu Jia said the station has been set up with the aim of exporting China’s ideology beyond its borders.”
“The Voice of China is under the control of the Central Propaganda Department,” Hu said. “This is an important tactic on Xi Jinping’s part, and a huge weapon in his hands to change the world’s opinion of this dictator and his autocratic one-party rule.”
“Xi has the self-confidence of a czar following the constitutional amendments, and now he wants to bravely lead the fight against mainstream values in the rest of the world,” he said.
“He will use authoritarian power to make Chinese lies sound nice, and engage in ideological infiltration and indoctrination.”
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-propaganda-03212018140841.html
Many on here have commented on Russia Today as a propaganda agent of the Russian Federation – yet we don’t get RT as a Freeview channel in this country.
The same can’t be said about Chinese propaganda!
” yet we don’t get RT as a Freeview channel in this country.”
I am sure we used to be able to get it on Freevew
Not surprised that we no longer can get this channel, Yes it is Putin’s propaganda outlet, you don’t need a degree to work that one out, but it did have some interesting programmes on it providing you looked at them with an opened mind.
Max Kaiser was one good programme. Once again had to keep an open mind but he did have some very interesting guests like Steve Keen, who had a lot of economic alternatives to this Neo shit they appear to teach in universities.
But hey the powers to be are “saving” us from making up our own minds and really why do we need RT when we have so many unbiased media outlets like Fox News The Daily Fail The Torygraph and our own very unbiased press like the Granny and reporters Hoskins, Gower, Gardner just to name a few.
Here is the Wikipedia entry for Freeview.
It lists a string of defunct channels but doesn’t include RT in the list.
This article at least seems to think that RT was never on the service.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeview_(New_Zealand)#Defunct_channels
It is conceivable it was visible at the very beginning. There seems to have been problems with lots of odd channels showing up.
From 2007
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10481054
I felt like that when i found “Friend” a Japanese magazine in our school library, many years ago.
Mary Holm is out of touch with low to middle income earners.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018637268/is-home-ownership-the-only-way-to-go
By saving what they would have otherwise spent on mortgage, rates, maintenance and insurance minus rent, Mary says renters might come out as well or better off than their home-buying friends, she says.
The advantages of renting:
Better savings diversification
Less responsibility
No need to do (or pay someone else to do) maintenance
May be easier to live close to downtown
Can move easily and cheaply
Can use long-term savings for a business or other investment
Where should we begin?
That’s the way it should be. However, profiteers and price gougers have skewed the system.
I have always been happy to rent. And would welcome changes to shift the balance of power away from landlords.
I have a pretty good landlord at the moment. Rent rises are once a year and at the lower end of rises I’ve heard about. I live in a well maintained secure unit.
But even this landlord raises the rent yearly a bit above average income rises.
That housing is too expensive full stop.
Housing investment for the home owner is tax free unless you are flipping in less than 2 years.
On the average family income there is no money left over for investment.
She’s been inoculated with the Neo Liberal Bullshit. They all say that the Neo’s want the peasantry brought to heel and know their place and renting is just one other control to achieve this.
There are more people coming in than houses being built. We have had the same rental system for decades and seemed to be fine with little shortages, now it’s dramatically changed because for the last decade and in particular the last few years, there are 70+ new residents pa, 180,000 work permits given out for new residents pa, and massive tourism. Then how easy it is for other nations to invest in ‘gold bricks’ in NZ and how everyone is expected to have multiple mansions around the world. (Look where that has got Queenstown).
So you have raise taxes, have no rental fees etc etc but it will not change the fundamental problem.
There are too many people for the amount of houses and the houses being built are generally beyond the reaches of those on NZ wages.
So there is very little hope, unless the government fundamentally change immigration and neoliberalism because that is what is increasing the prices of things like building. We export logs, bring them back as wood, and end up paying more than other countries for building materials for examples even when we produce a lot of the raw products. We have plenty of skilled and unskilled local labour, but the way the industry has gone, has been to ignore those people because they don’t want to train them and instead get paid to provide a work permit or pay well below the going wage for industry AND be able to work people longer and harder which they have to put up with because they can’t change jobs.
Right there savenz,
And there are more trucks bigger longer and heavier than ever now entering our rural dirt roads now and we see less repairs to them every week until some are going to become impassable soon.
This lack of regional funding of our dirt roads will soon be stopping the farming communities in their tracks, so we are all being setup for a big fall.
I’m guessing you mean gravel roads.
Goodbye, fare thee well, and turn out the lights.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/353180/cadbury-s-dunedin-factory-turns-out-final-sweets-today
Now it’s all Aussie (until Singapore comes online) and palm oil.
So I’m going to say you can’t call them Kiwi anymore.
Look on the bright side – at least we still have Whittakers and Mayceys.
Cadbury chocolate is fucking shit anyway.
Pineapple lumps to you Asleep.
Thank Warren Buffet.
Next rationalization is Watties Heinz Cerebos Gregg’s .
Same owners different vehicle.
Monopolization of food production is allowed to happen no international regulation.
Cerebos’s was marked over 10 years ago in East Tamaki as EOL.
+1
I liked whittackers, but then someone said they weren’t labour-friendly (lowercase “L”).
Donovan’s does some nice confectionary, dunno much about them and their practises though.
Waiting for Ocho to make some round orange-coated chocolate balls. Chocolate with percentages is all well and good, but gimme some pineapple chumps, sniffies, Byzantine brilliantines, orange aucklanders, and other generic names for movie staples…
Brilliant
I thought Whittakers were meant to be one of the better ones ethically 🙁
better than cadbury’s. I could be wrong about them, I have no actual evidence. Just a someone said.
Thinking about it, it might only be some of the Whittakers range that is more ethical. Yep, better than Cadbury’s by some margin.
You heard Whitaker’s weren’t? They’re still here and employing aren’t they? Some of their employees have been there 30 years and more. Low brow, even for you
You know so much about ’em, what’s their unionisation rate? Are all their cocoa ethically sourced?
I clearly said that’s what I’d heard, and the strongest words I used were “weren’t labour friendly”.
If you think that’s low brow, you can suck my balls.
The fairtrade beans are just in their dark Ghana and creamy milk blocks, but they are GM and Palm Oil free acros all products.
E Tu represents people in the confectionery industry. They have no posts on their site for Whittakers, but quite a few for Cadbury.
fair call, I’ll go with that then.
Goodby to mass and bulk production, hello to the higher-quality, fair-trade, artisan chocolate factory. Also in Dunedin. Fully crowd-sourced from locals:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/101329158/otago-chocolate-company-finds-new-factory-site-on-dunedins-waterfront
Let a thousand flowers bloom.
Buy Whittakers always folks.
Not sure why the system went down at 0652. I was already at work and there is nothing in the logs. Looked like the CPU had a temperature shutdown – but there is nothing in the logs, and it isn’t exactly summer at 0652 at this time of year even in Auckland.
Also not sure why my phone isn’t alarming me when it can’t see the website.
Bill had to send a message through to my phone (Thanks Bill).
Heading back to work.
Is it a windows computer?
My windows 10 computer has frequently shut down without warning. I googled it and it seems to be something that happens with windows 8-10 – some say it started suddenly on their computers last year. Various fixes are recommended online – some too technical, and delving into code, for me.
I unticked enabling quick start in power options – one of the suggestions. And that seemed to work til it ticked itself again.
I’d say the server hosting this site isn’t running Windows software.
Definitely not. Both servers run linux.
However the particular computer that it normally runs on is getting pretty old. I suspect I need to have a look at the fans and cooling systems again. Or upgrade.
It is a 8 core AMD FX9590 from 2013 which was when I brought it to assemble as a workstation box. It’s most distinguishing characteristic is that it runs up to 225W on the CPU – effectively it is factory overclocked.
So it runs bloody hot and has a rather large stock water cooler with some large very silent but high volume fans on the radiator. This throws heat out of the back.
Even so when the conversation gets warm on the site, you can keep a coffee pretty warm by placing it on the top of case above the radiator. And in winter, your conversation provides my apartment’s heating.
Not so good in summer when we need open windows to prevent the apartment and the computer from cooking us or itself.
The backup server was meant to be the new server last year but wound up as being my workstation.
It is a Ryzen 7 1700 8 core (with 8 virtuals). Way more computing power, but a different design that only runs at 65W. It barely gets warm. I don’t even run it with a water cooler.
However neither the Linux kernel and ASUS motherboard firmware was really ready for it on release. It spent the first 5 months rebooting too frequently (ie about as much as a normal windows computer). It is pretty stable now – which I define as I have to think about actually manually rebooting it every few months..
But I have gotten used to its speed when building code.
I’m not going back to a AMD Piledriver. And since I have to get a new motherboard, memory and cooling system so I can upgrade TS’s server, then something like a AMD Threadripper 1960X could do some severe improvements in my compilation speeds….
But that may have to wait for a while. My partner is trying to build her own business (on one of my older discards from 2011 🙂 and her even older mac laptop). So I’m paying the mortgages and living costs while she gets it off the ground. Upgrading my already over powered workstation is low on the priority list.
I suppose I could consider Intel again – but they are always frigging overpriced and because of their builtin obsolescence policies with form factors for their sockets, too expensive to maintain.
Basically The Standard has been running since 2014 on my old development systems. Good thing that I’m an active programmer eh?
Thanks for the explanation. So does it require some increase in donations for an upgrade?
Oh, are you a programmer?
😉
We will probably learn that is when people lose their bitcoin… or something similar.
I am always suspicious. Paranoia!!
My windows 10 shut my 8 month old computer down and next time we tried to start it we had no windows 10 operating system any more; – so we had to buy a new program and get Microsoft to reload all my stuff we lost.
Dear gods. I still trust my macbook more than the windows laptop – and my second hand ubuntu one.
Edit: it’s interesting that so many windows 8 and 10 pcs started shutting down without warning around the same time. And microsoft seems to blame everything else but it’s OS.
I’ve had no issues at all, apart from some people sitting in front of the screen, with windows seven, eight and ten.
Keep up with updates and windows defender seems to do the trick.
And don’t let any geeks near them. They always want to fix something that isn’t broke.
As my network engineer cousin says. 90% of computer problems can be fixed by a restart. 9% by changing he person on the keyboard. 1% is caused by trying to make software work, in a way it is not designed to do.
microsoft seems to have lost interest in the consumer OS space. mass market windows PCs are going the way of the dinosaurs
Only in geek land.
you seem like an expert. 🙄
http://www.zdnet.com/article/todays-most-popular-operating-systems/
So, further down the rabbit hole we go. This post by Liam O’Hare” SCL – A very british coup.
SCL group (Strategic Communication Laboratories) is very intertwined with UK Tories and aristocrats. It’s the parent company for Cambridge Analytica.
SCL is another political propaganda enterprise, focusing on manipulation of people’s views by targeting emotions (like Cambridge Analytica and Crosby Textor). It has some security clearance which gives it access to confidential documents. It has done work for the UK MOD.
Posted this late yesterday on Daily Review:
The NZ Defence Service has been told it has to release the details of it’s contractual arrangements with Palantir, the intelligence gathering data base company owned by none other than our very own ‘citizen’, Peter Thiel. Should be interesting in light of what we have learned about Cambridge Analytica.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12014265
These data base companies – whether they’re based in Britain or the US – are all related and doing much the same thing. At least that is the way it appears on the surface.
Great decision. Note it is another of the long delayed processes which might have seen info released prior to or during the election..
France: Mass protests against Macron’s economic policies
Protesters march across the country to protest against government plans to change labour law, scrap social benefits.
As usual even the Daily Mail is keeping me better informed on World events than RNZ and the msm…for those who don’t want to go there, i’ve included Al Jazeera’s coverage..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5530905/French-public-sector-rail-workers-strike-test-Macron.html
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/03/france-mass-protests-macron-economic-policies-180322203829332.html
Instead of endless coverage of Trumps Tweets, imagine a news service that covered the people making a stand??
It seems lots of I Reckons is what passes for media in NZ now
+111
Facts are inconvenient in NZ for the political class right about now.
But…but…but..not another poster child – a saviour no less if I remember the French Presidential campaign coverage correctly – turning out to be just another fucking liberal bastard? Surely not!
And there were a few dissenters to the labelling him of some kind of breath of fresh new air
New air same as the old air(really old), punishing the middle class and working people. Because they are just not rich enough.
Same liberal bastards want to drag us into a war with Russia.
The rich have enough of our blood!
Still better than Le Pen.
Le Pen would have the most powerless President France has had. And please, let’s not forget how the liberal media, in turn, denigrated and ignored the threat to their preferred poster boy coming from the left while simultaneously playing up ye olde fascist canard to get people to herd in the centre.
Oh look take this pile of crap, becasue it’s better than that pile of crap.
But make sure you don’t complain about having to take that pile of crap, becasue we will pull out the other pile of crap if you do.
It can’t be healthy, being so fucking sour all the time.
I’m guessing the argument got through then, if all you got is an ad-hominem.
I like my politics to have a bit more morality/body/do actual good not just nice words – to it, than the other guy is a little less evil than that guy. Because that road just leads to more evil guys and you end up with pig skewers and trump. (the pig skewers and trump are probably interchangeable at this point) I think the last what 35 years have proven that if you vote that way all your getting is worse and a little more worse. The last 2 PM’s anyone.
And note I said guys, because that all it ever is – le pen was just more male macho politics as well.
Bridge had a good point about this post – nothing has really changed even though the law changed for the last 30 odd years.
https://libcom.org/blog/series-interviews-working-class-women-west-london-part-4-19032018
Oh bullshit.
Someone here nailed it by recalling the expression “the perfect is the enemy of the good”. In a democracy, those who are relentlessly negative about policy (except for their preferred candidate) leave the election open to nobody except demagogues. Not even Bernie could switch off the hate some supporters have for the ideologically nearest-but-one candidates.
So yeah, Macron is better than a fucking nazi. And maybe if the left vote weren’t always so fractured by idealogues, France would have someone better than Macron. If Hamon and Mélenchon hadn’t split each other’s vote in the first round, you’d have to find something else to bitch about.
Your doing that make up an argument from what I said, so you can knock it down again. You do that a lot.
I’m not arguing for perfect, never have, nor did I go with negatives except to prove your argument is exactly that, negative. Your argument is a negative argument, which continues to have negative consequences.
How the hell did we get to nazi’s running for office in the first place, sure wasn’t via socialist policies. 35 years of hard liberalism, anyone.
That said, the left isn’t so fractured in France, see protests.
Nazis always run for office. Why are they becoming more popular?
Every time a bunch of lefties run for office, the ones who are less popular throw more shit at the others than the tories do. Every time the right wing run for office, they get past their differences and vote as their favoured candidate or group directs. Epsom, anyone?
The more ‘neoliberalism’ fails, the more extreme people want the change to be. If you knew next to fuckall about an issue other than something was seriously fucked up, would you choose:
option A (extreme but you have reservations),
option B) business as usuall but they look clean and responsible, or
option C) a random selection from indistinguishable but apparently extreme alternatives that all bitterly hate each other and are constantly throwing shit?
Because that’s what most voters are faced with when trying to figure out what party would make life better for them. So, yeah, keep being a bile-spitting depressive all you want, but unless you actually do something constructive you’re just part of the problem.
Just lower your standards Bill. 🙂
I see HootOn is writing for the Herald.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12018308
No disclaimer no description of him as formerly working for the Nat Party etc…
Ordinary folk reading might think he is impartial.
AFAIK he hasn’t done work for National for years and has been criticisng Joyce since 2014, and Key for the last two to three years. Word has it that his firm, Exceltium has done more work for ACT over that period.
Eg
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/101989860/joyce-complains-to-nbr-about-critical-piece-by-nowaxed-columnist
https://nz.linkedin.com/in/matthewhooton
https://nz.linkedin.com/in/brookevanvelden
And look who was here at No 3 for ACT in 2017 – http://act.org.nz/act-unveils-party-list/
Ben Thomas seems to be Exceltium’s National man these days.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11917012
https://thespinoff.co.nz/author/ben-thomas/
https://nz.linkedin.com/in/ben-thomas-1325a9b5
Oops I was editing the above and checking something elsewhere and it went up uncorrected.
Re Ben Thomas – was amending this to read
Ben Thomas * seemed to be Exceltium’s National man for a while but then wrote these Herald articles immediately before the 2017 election:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11917012
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11921023
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11923730
* https://thespinoff.co.nz/author/ben-thomas/ and https://nz.linkedin.com/in/ben-thomas-1325a9b5
Back to Hooton, perhaps he has taken over Ben Thomas’ slot at the Herald. Who knows/cares?
Always like Peter Aranyi’s takes on Hooton, eg this from last Sept:
http://www.thepaepae.com/about-matthew-hootons-declared-loyalties/37847/
“Ordinary folk reading might think he is impartial.”
Especially as it not bylined as an opinion piece. His second sentence is blatant RW spin,
“Those of us who still believe in mainstream economics have Shane Jones to thank for again highlighting the lunacy of a government minister owning 51.9 per cent of Air New Zealand.
See, Shane Jones is part of the terrible loony left who want to destroy the economy. Which is classic Hooton. Undermine the target, mindfuck the Overton Window, mess with the left, and that’s all in the first nine words.
He really is very good at his job, but it’s not journalism.
It’s incredibly heartening to see the Prime Minister write about energy transition planning. I’ve been interested in the transition towns movement for a while and I think it’s a great step for this sort of thing to be on a national policy level.
Thanks for the transition towns link
“Donald Trump has ousted his national security advisor HR McMaster..”
Oh boy. Next…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/102531434
And has taken on John Bolton. Interesting how Trump’s fans were thinking he would be such a departure from US foreign policy and now he’s taking on the most severe hawk from the GWB administration.
Having campaigned on getting career people out he has soon realised their value. Running a country is not the same as running a business
Yeah, but he promised..
/
Yeah right said the Tui ad.
Apparently Natz are claiming that “Gas exports would reduce global emissions’ this is based on gas is better than coal.
Natz logic seem to ignore that solar and renewable energy is going to reduce global emissions even more than gas and coal.
But I guess you write what people pay you to write if you are a Nat and thinking or even researching does not even come into it.
Greedy and fucking stupid.
Goodbye whales…
A new Greenpeace investigation has exposed the environmental risks of the fast-growing krill industry in one of the most pristine parts of the Antarctic Ocean.
The krill fishing industry removes a vital species from the Antarctic food web – tiny shrimp-like krill – eaten by blue whales, penguins, seals and other wildlife.
http://www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/en/press/Licensed-to-krill-Greenpeace-report-exposes-Antarctic-fishing-industry/
We Thestandard site shut down for a couple of hours apologies about my earlier comments it seems strange that there is not actual explanation why. Because the sandflys have been blocking me in the past I checked it at 5pm and I could get to the site come 8.30am no go. PS ECO MAORI does not mind admitting when he is wrong. I trust no one Kia kaha Ka kite ano
LPrent commented on it above:
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-23-03-2018/#comment-1464758
Very interesting comparing the general wailing and gnashing of molars in Granny by Mike Hosking and Matthew Hooton and then whoosh – a wee gem by ex Nat MP for Whanganui, Chester Borrows headed ‘Politicians bailed Air N Z out – the airline can’t now complain about Shane Jones’. It’s worth a read. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12018271
Nice dig by Garner in the Dominion at Hosking. (About the Obama dinner.)
“Some of the more miserable or perhaps unhappier grumps among us confused this for boring. They should stay at home and read car manuals next time or a book about themselves.”
Hosking’s column showed him to be an unhappy grump who found the visitor boring.
Newshub just helping son-in-law fix a trough. The Chief Highlanders will be a good Game. Mike you would have had a good time last night Ka pai. I’m on the farm and have to try and get a TV off the Mokopunas to watch the new lol. So I missed most of your new Ka kite ano
The project the sandflys have got anxiety now they no I ain’t no pushover.
The Pink and White terraces was a beautiful sight what a shame to have lossed them. That Westpack bank ad looks like another attack on brown people dont you think from ECO MAORI view Ka kite ano
To the sandflys feel the THUNDER
https://youtu.be/fKopy74weus
Iv been getting the run around by my bank since my idiot nabour sandflys started his personal vendetta against me they won’t give me life insurance they stop my truck insurance payments I had no problem with this till the idiot stepped up his harresment. I wonder what their intentions are there is malic in his intentions in my view and some people know that they have malicious intentions against me and they still assist them?????? So I will get my Utu for there treatment of ECO MAORI. Ana to kai PS And they no I’m a good person
Disregard the statement of Utu I’m just upset at the bank for mucking me around on a service that is needed in this day and age insurance Ka kite ano
Ausome sounds on the radio this afternoon enough said some people mite have thought I thought that those 2 Super Rugby team that I would like to see play each other was on this weekend. I know we’re OUR Rugby team are playing I am a Kiwi after all. I Back the League as well ECO MAORI does not chose side enough said Kia kaha players Ka kite ano I have my favourite but the kumara never say how sweet it is
Newshub it was good having Obama here more Good publicity for Aotearoa one thing I noticed was he was not to comfortable around shonky I would not be comfortable around shonky ether. Global warming is hear and now we have to CHANGE OUR culture and start living in a sustainable way. I seen some other person who now knows ECO MAORI is not a pushover now. Kia kaha Ka kite ano P.S Some other people are paying back their backers with good publicity for Aotearoa to ka pai
There you go Judges bulling in my view they are bullying people to do as they are told so that they don’t question there rulings or judgements. When counsel sees bull___going down they don’t question it I say here’s the link.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/102562165/chief-justice-dame-sian-elias-rebukes-judges-after-revelations-of-widespread-bullying
Many thanks to Jacinda for letting everyone know her intention of a transition to a carbon neutral economy and OUR Coalition Government for backing her.
We’re planning for fossil fuel transition
OPINION: Accused of delivering confusion for businesses over oil and gas, Jacinda Ardern says her vision is clear.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/102498682/jacinda-ardern-i-lived-through-fast-economic-change-in-the-80s-we-wont-repeat-that-with-our-move-to-cleaner-energy-future
Kia kaha Ka kite ano