Open mike 23/12/2020

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 23rd, 2020 - 32 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:

Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

32 comments on “Open mike 23/12/2020 ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Ed 1
    23 December 2020 at 6:51 am

    About time hate merchants like Plunket are dealt with.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/sean-plunket-iwi-checkpoint-interview-amplified-negative-stereotypes-about-maori-bsa-says/VRYSRMTQLEO4MQQ5K5HCA4NOJ4/

    Other ‘journalists ‘ need investigation too. Such shock jocks need to be held to account for the damage they do to society’s fabric.

    The Herald’s use of quote marks suggests it’s sympathy for Plunket and his extreme rants and ramblings..

    • gsays 1.1
      23 December 2020 at 7:05 am

      The most effective way to tackle Plunkett is to put pressure on the advertisers that pollute the airways on talk hate radio.

    • Incognito 1.2
      23 December 2020 at 11:07 am

      The Herald’s use of quote marks suggests it’s sympathy for Plunket and his extreme rants and ramblings..

      I read the piece you linked to (thank you!) but I have no idea what you’re on about!?

  2. shanreagh 2
    23 December 2020 at 7:11 am

    The Herald’s use of quote marks suggests it’s sympathy for Plunket and his extreme rants and ramblings..

    The quotes, presumably you are referring to the headline, are more likely to be an extract from the BSA decision and needed to have quotes around it to distinguish it from the rest of the wording in the headline.

    Agree with decision of the BSA.

    The interrupting and speaking over a person being interviewed are not limited to Maori but with anyone being interviewed so an ‘journalist’ can get to the sound bite in this rush, rush, hurry, hurry world.

  3. Andre 3
    23 December 2020 at 8:29 am

    The organics industry and their suckers customers are barking up the wrong trees. Their sales pitch and customer perceptions are built around perceptions that are demonstrably false, mostly around delusions that organic produce is somehow healthier.

    Meanwhile, most organic (and some non-organic) producers use practices that really are beneficial, but mostly go unrecognised and unrewarded.

    It's past time to come up with alternatives to the uselessly misguided organics certification. That alternative should look much more at water and nutrient retention and management as well as general soil and ecosystem health.

    https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/531237-consumers-increasingly-buy-organic-but-for-the-wrong-reasons

    • Stuart Munro 3.1
      23 December 2020 at 8:39 am

      The States have gone further down the 'corporate organics' route than most small NZ producers, so of course their certification, like MPI's, is primarily a marketing vehicle.

      Whether the same is true for established certifications like Demeter or the like, remains to be seen. Big agriculture is suspicious of organics, and envious of their market growth – they're not above disparaging organic producers or products, or alleging that produce is all the same.

    • Nic the NZer 3.2
      23 December 2020 at 8:43 am

      Your condascending to the wrong group. The intelligent well educated organics consumers of this site don't buy their produce based on its rubber stamp certifications and always look for well labelled produce because of its higher nutritional values. In fact they are so much better than you they willingly pay up to twice the price for anything with organic in the name.

    • Ad 3.3
      23 December 2020 at 8:46 am

      As a shopper I am remarkably inchoate about why I prefer organic stuff.

      It's just an unreconstructed feels of non-supermarket + growers who make an effort + general virtue-fuzzies.

      For which I pay more, and have ugly oranges.

      • Robert Guyton 3.3.1
        23 December 2020 at 9:04 am

        I wonder if a hunter-gatherer, seeing oranges for the first time, would choose the smooth, perfectly spherical orange over the "ugly" orange and if so, why would they?

        • Ad 3.3.1.1
          23 December 2020 at 9:19 am

          As a palaeolithic hunter-gatherer, I would be putting my time into making an obsidian paring knife to peel it.

        • Adrian 3.3.1.2
          23 December 2020 at 1:51 pm

          An orange was originally a mandarin and has been bred and manipulated over thousands of years to look and taste like that and the same goes for almost anything else that we eat. The original mandarin was probably pretty vile tasting and a lot smaller than they are today. If bred today it certainly wouldn't get organic certification.

          • ianmac 3.3.1.2.1
            23 December 2020 at 2:06 pm

            In Spain we saw an orange tree that had green coloured fruit instead of orange fruit. Not ripe yet? No. Ripe alright.

    • gsays 3.4
      23 December 2020 at 1:05 pm

      IF the organic growers or buyers in this country were to take advice, it wouldn't follow what The Breakthrough Institute has to say. After all, they reckon:

      " We believe that ecological vibrancy results from human prosperity, not the other way around."
      https://thebreakthrough.org/about

      It's this money money a[other that has us entering the 6th extinction.

      • Robert Guyton 3.4.1
        23 December 2020 at 2:19 pm

        Did RedLogix write their manifesto?

        • gsays 3.4.1.1
          23 December 2020 at 3:21 pm

          This Breakthrough outfit just sound like another mouthpiece for conventional farming industrial agriculture/big business. RL does show a compassionate side from time to time.

          Weasel words always get me suspicious. I suppose it is a sign that organic/bio-dynamic/regenerative practices are gaining momentum if this sort of article gets promulgated.

  4. Ad 4
    23 December 2020 at 9:13 am

    Ok so this is about as bad as government gets on a really large scale.

    On Auckland's light rail, officials at NZTA and MoT generate a plan for it.

    So light rail is even bigger than CRL, and CRL is still NZ's largest-ever single project.

    Then NZSuper+Quebecios NZInfra rock over and smash the process. Great work officials for allowing that.

    For the next year, NZInfra and NZSuper just actively undermine the public sector proposal.

    And this year the Auditor General comes out and says it was a mess from the Minister down.

    That's a big part of why Twyford was demoted.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/433444/auckland-light-rail-project-too-complex-for-existing-public-body-officials

    But now we discover that despite proposing this plan to the government for years, all official admit that it was too big for them after all, and that a new entity needs to be set up just for that project.

    Hey top work MoT. You're champs.

  5. Incognito 5
    23 December 2020 at 1:01 pm

    I greatly enjoyed this piece, as I found it brutally honest and truthful without being naive.

    It discusses various forms of nationalism and argues that most forms carry a form of exclusion based on in- and out-groups. It ends with a reference to “internationalist nationalism” as some kind of integration or synthesis of nation-based nationalisms.

    https://www.newsroom.co.nz/nzs-new-winners-v-losers-nationalism

    • Ed 5.1
      23 December 2020 at 2:15 pm

      Really interesting article.

      As the world isn’t in it all together, we are making the fight against COVID so much harder. Imagine if we were a world where the United Nations dictated our policies and we all followed it.

      Countries that refused to play by the agreed plan would be boycotted and sanctioned.

      Imagine a world where countries and companies collaborate, rather than complete for the discovery and procurement of a vaccine.

      A world where countries share their experiences and expertise.

      Cuba.

      Vietnam.

      China.

    • Ad 5.2
      23 December 2020 at 3:51 pm

      The conclusion of the article you cite is that

      "…with the spirit of ‘60s utopianism: maybe we should ask not what other countries can do for us, but what we might do for them … And yet – when the alternative is watching with pity and smugness as infection rates rise elsewhere, when nationalism has led us into the binary of winners and losers in a pandemic that affects us all, perhaps that spirit is precisely what we need."

      New Zealand will start 2021 with an economic acceleration greater than most other countries in the world. It's a socialist moment because we have been united together in common cause. And it's a conservative moment because we have given up just the minimum degree of temporary freedom in order to gain the greatest liberty.

      We are, globally, right. We are entitled to that beer at Christmas, and we will raise a glass to all in the world who will not be able to exercise that same freedom for at least a year, maybe two.

      And yet our government is concentrating not on world ideological leadership, but on keeping our people safe and employed. We are by government direction hunkering down, finding our next job, keeping our families as safe as possible until the world re-stabilises.

      "Internationalist nationalism" or whatever gibberish the columnists are spouting today is not on anyone's agenda.

      • Incognito 5.2.1
        23 December 2020 at 5:56 pm

        I don’t want to deprive Kiwis of having a good time and celebrating how lucky they are, far from it.

        My Christmas cheer is somewhat depressed because my thoughts are with overseas family and friends. Personally, I don’t feel I have contributed to the New Zealand ‘success story’ nor have I suffered in a material sense; feeling a bit like an imposter, to be perfectly honest

        Inward-looking or -focussed governance has its drawbacks and we cannot escape the outside world. Internationalist nationalism should be high on anyone’s agenda, IMO. BTW, the piece I linked to is written by a PhD student, quite possibly as a thought initiator and conversation starter, which deserves more than the glib label “gibberish”.

        Talking of gibberish, I sometimes feel like a cynical Utopian; the spirit is not dead but its flame is flickering. Maybe this is the result of a rather stressful year and/or the anti-climax of and after the Election.

        Merry Christmas.