The COC around the place are in fact key players in the theft of assets….since when does the COC get to decide when debate should be held about public governence?
After writing several MSM propaganda posts on why we should attack Syria, why China would be the next empire and a post on Iran were he, while still maintaining that Iran has a repressive regime (most notably for that typical Muslim hatred for women) and we are the good guys, at least comes to the conclusion that attacking them would maybe not be such a good idea (which again is the MSM stance so no surprise there) I would like to present Michael Valley with a challenge!
More and more information comes out of Libya (not in the MSM of course) indicating that very predictably the “liberation” of Libya doesn’t mean the same for all Libyans and that as was predicted by many geopolitical strategists Libya is now being Balkanised (ad in cut up in three states) by flaming inter tribal rivalries with the tribal area from whence the “revolution” started and the most oil rich looking forward to a hansom reward for assisting in throwing out the only man strong enough to resist the US and removing the only viable obstacle towards the re-colonisation of the African continent (Kony anyone?) Colonel Gaddafi (No I’m not saying he was a nice guy)
My challenge to Michael Valley is the following. I would like to see his analysis from his point of view which I suspect is that there was no hidden agenda on the part of the Hillary led war crime syndicate called the US/NATO liberation forces and that Libya is now free to do what it wants even if that means the killing of black people by the thousands. That is what freedom means.
That at least is what the MSM seems to suggest by their dead silence on the developing situation in Libya.
That at least is what the MSM seems to suggest by their dead silence on the developing situation in Libya.
Right. It’s all a conspiracy, nothing to do with the fact that MSM has the attention span of a tweaking flea and is averse to anything that can’t be thoroughly expressed in a 5-second sound bite.
Right. It’s all a conspiracy, nothing to do with the fact that MSM has the attention span of a tweaking flea and is averse to anything that can’t be thoroughly expressed in a 5-second sound bite.
Jeff Robinson interviewed the chairman of ACC on RNZ Morning Report this morning. Jeff Robinson does not appear to know much about the chairman. Robinson asked him a question, “Have any other ministers of ACC written letters while you have been chairman of ACC?”
For your info Jeff, The chairman of ACC was appointed by Nick Smith as part of the preparation for the sale of ACC. The chairman of the ACC is/was a member of the Business Round Table. He probably doesn’t party much with members in Mana, the Labour Party, the Greens, or NZF. Doesn’t leave many other parties that he might share a beer at a barbecue with really and “chat about things…” (Chats like our PM did with Ashcroft when he was here.)
Jeff Robinson has been kept on because he toes Griffins line of don’t ask any tough questions, be nice to govt ministers and cronies alike……who’s a good boy then.
Mercep’s no better, Mary Wilson’s kept her credibility whereas Mora/Ryan etc are about as cutting as a sponge.
Linda Clark was the same, just didn’t know how to ask the next question. Some idiot she’d be interviewing would say something that just begged the most obvious next question that would have had them cornered, and what would Clark do every time: miss the chance by asking the next bloody question on her list. Just hopeless. Ryan’s no better. Contrast them with what Kim Hill used to do. Politicians have it so easy here. The Aussies have got it all over us on this, too.
Jeff Robinson has been kept on because he toes Griffin’s line of don’t ask any tough questions
I think you could be right. Yesterday (Thursday) morning Robinson interviewed Phoebe Greenwood from the Guardian about the Toulouse murders at a Jewish school. Pro-Israeli propagandists have been trying their best (or worst) to use the deaths of the children and their teacher to invoke support not for the victims, but for the state of Israel. To do this, they need useful idiots in the media—people like Geoff Robinson.
His brief interview with Phoebe Greenwood was toe-curlingly, embarrassingly awful….
ROBINSON:[voice croaking with empathy] Israelis are more STOIC about terror attacks, aren’t they.
GREENWOOD: Stoic and accustomed. One rabbi here in France says that this is a turning point for the diaspora. Now Jews must RETURN to Israel, for their own safety.
Pro-Israeli propagandists have been trying their best (or worst) to use the deaths of the children and their teacher to invoke support not for the victims, but for the state of Israel.
What interests me greatly, is how the story has changed! Days ago, it was about three Muslim soldiers murdered by a gunman on a scooter, and the French authorities were not all that fussed. (The lone gunman was assumed to belong to a para-military right wing group..) Then the shooting at the Jewish school happened – sparking the largest manhunt in French history! In about 5 minutes, they found the guy – I mean that – I was listening to the BBC World Service that day – and it took all of 45 minutes from one half hourly news bulletin to the next for them to say ‘the manhunt has begun’ to ‘he’s holed up in an apartment building’… 24 hours later, the perp is dead, he’s said to be an Islamist belonging to Al Quaeda, and Radio NZ describes him as the man who killed “Three Jewish children and four adults’ – giving the impression to anyone who hadn’t been following the story, that all the victims were Jewish! How the gunman’s new backstory fits with his first 3 victims being North African Muslims, doesn’t matter – according to the new story he was just an “Islamist” whatever one of those is – and no explanation is needed…
Read the literature of empire from the Victorian period and the connection is impossible to miss. Why did industrial nations want imperial colonies? The reason given in book after book and speech after speech at the time is that the industrial nations needed markets. Free trade rhetoric, then as now, insisted that all an industrial nation had to do was to build a better mousetrap and the world would beat a path to its door, but then as now, that’s not how things worked; the markets that mattered were the ones where a single industrial nation could exclude competitors and impose the unequal exchange of cheap labor and raw materials for expensive manufactured products that would keep the wealth pump churning away.
A good read I agree. The most salient point for me was Greers contention (with which I also agree) that capital aggregation and the consequent impoverishment of the consumer base never gets talked about.
Greer commented that one of the most incisive commentaries on “capital aggregation” was that of Marx BUT that the Cold War climate limited any institutional interest in what is a very valid criticism. In fact economists and their masters dont actually want capital aggregation examined as it threatens their very assumptions about wealth and distribution there of.
My take is that this lack of focus on how capital (and finance) aggregate is at the centre of todays crisis and is being ignored totally, along with the other great driver of our current crisis: resource diminution. NZs treasury and politicians of all colours here seem totally blind to both.
If schools, as part of a balanced education, examined just the first three chapters of the first part of the first volume of Das Kapital, in the same way they uphold current flawed economic indoctrination in classes, the world would change overnight.
Capital
A Critique of Political Economy
Karl Marx 1867
Volume I
Book One: The Process of Production of Capital
Part 1: Commodities and Money
Chapter 3: Money, Or the Circulation of Commodities
Section 3: Money
“…The continual movement in circuits of the two antithetical metamorphoses of commodities, or the never ceasing alternation of sale and purchase, is reflected in the restless currency of money, or in the function that money performs of a perpetuum mobile of circulation. But so soon as the series of metamorphoses is interrupted, so soon as sales are not supplemented by subsequent purchases, money ceases to be mobilised; it is transformed, as Boisguillebert says, from ―meuble‖ into ―immeuble, from movable into immovable, from coin into money.
With the very earliest development of the circulation of commodities, there is also developed the necessity, and the passionate desire, to hold fast the product of the first metamorphosis. This product is the transformed shape of the commodity, or its gold-chrysalis.[39] Commodities are thus sold not for the purpose of buying others, but in order to replace their commodity-form by their money-form. From being the mere means of effecting the circulation of commodities, this change of form becomes the end and aim. The changed form of the commodity is thus prevented from functioning as its unconditionally alienable form, or as its merely transient money-form. The money becomes petrified into a hoard, and the seller becomes a hoarder of money.
As the production of commodities further develops, every producer of commodities is compelled to make sure of the nexus rerum or the social pledge.[41] His wants are constantly making themselves felt, and necessitate the continual purchase of other people‘s commodities, while the production and sale of his own goods require time, and depend upon circumstances. In order then to be able to buy without selling, he must have sold previously without buying. This operation, conducted on a general scale, appears to imply a contradiction. But the precious metals at the sources of their production are directly exchanged for other commodities. And here we have sales (by the owners of commodities) without purchases (by the owners of gold or silver). [42] And subsequent sales, by other producers, unfollowed by purchases, merely bring about the distribution of the newly produced precious metals among all the owners of commodities. In this way, all along the line of exchange, hoards of gold and silver of varied extent are accumulated. With the possibility of holding and storing up exchange-value in the shape of a particular commodity, arises also the greed for gold. Along with the extension of circulation, increases the power of money, that absolutely social form of wealth ever ready for use. ―Gold is a wonderful thing! Whoever possesses it is lord of all he wants. By means of gold one can even get souls into Paradise.‖ (Columbus in his letter from Jamaica, 1503.) Since gold does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and buyable. The circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to come out again as a gold-crystal. Not even are the bones of saints, and still less are more delicate res sacrosanctae, extra commercium hominum able to withstand this alchemy.[43] Just as every qualitative difference between commodities is extinguished in money, so money, on its side, like the radical leveller that it is, does away with all distinctions.[43a] But money itself is a commodity, an external object, capable of becoming the private property of any individual. Thus social power becomes the private power of private persons. The ancients therefore denounced money as subversive of the economic and moral order of things.[43b] Modern society, which, soon after its birth, pulled Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels of the earth,[44] greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the glittering incarnation of the very principle of its own life.
In the early stages of the circulation of commodities, it is the surplus use-values alone that are converted into money. Gold and silver thus become of themselves social expressions for superfluity or wealth. This naive form of hoarding becomes perpetuated in those communities in which the traditional mode of production is carried on for the supply of a fixed and limited circle of home wants. It is thus with the people of Asia, and particularly of the East Indies. Vanderlint, who fancies that the prices of commodities in a country are determined by the quantity of gold and silver to be found in it, asks himself why Indian commodities are so cheap. Answer: Because the Hindus bury their money. From 1602 to 1734, he remarks, they buried 150 millions of pounds sterling of silver, which originally came from America to Europe.[40] In the 10 years from 1856 to 1866, England exported to India and China £120,000,000 in silver, which had been received in exchange for Australian gold. Most of the silver exported to China makes its way to India.
A commodity, in its capacity of a use-value, satisfies a particular want, and is a particular element of material wealth. But the value of a commodity measures the degree of its attraction for all other elements of material wealth, and therefore measures the social wealth of its owner. To a barbarian owner of commodities, and even to a West-European peasant, value is the same as value-form, and therefore, to him the increase in his hoard of gold and silver is an increase in value. It is true that the value of money varies, at one time in consequence of a variation in its own value, at another, in consequence of a change in the values of commodities. But this, on the one hand, does not prevent 200 ounces of gold from still containing more value than 100 ounces, nor, on the other hand, does it hinder the actual metallic form of this article from continuing to be the universal equivalent form of all other commodities, and the immediate social incarnation of all human labour. The desire after hoarding is in its very nature unsatiable. In its qualitative aspect, or formally considered, money has no bounds to its efficacy, i.e., it is the universal representative of material wealth, because it is directly convertible into any other commodity. But, at the same time, every actual sum of money is limited in amount, and, therefore, as a means of purchasing, has only a limited efficacy. This antagonism between the quantitative limits of money and its qualitative boundlessness, continually acts as a spur to the hoarder in his Sisyphus-like labour of accumulating. It is with him as it is with a conqueror who sees in every new country annexed, only a new boundary…”
What a splendid passage, thoroughly enjoyed reading about about the ancients finding money was “subversive”….
In business I find very few employees actually understand how we employers make money…margin…profit. I have always found Marx’s analysis of relation to production and surplus value as the simplest explanation to the uninformed. You can get a straight explanation out of the likes of Freidman, they all try and hide the reality from the “workers”.
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
Your right, how the banking system works and how the capitalists actually becomes rich really is hidden from the people. I had my opened when I was in Amway when one of the Diamond level people told a conference that you don’t get rich by working but by having a lot of people work for you. It’s why capitalism is hierarchical and why the books are hidden from the workers. Basically, you have a lot of people below you that do the work but, instead of them being paid directly, you get paid and then you pay the workers. The hidden aspect of the accounts means that the workers don’t know how much you’ve just clipped the ticket and have no say in it.
@Bored
I am reading Bruce Jessons Fragments of Labour. He might explain the background to the magnificent and determined lack of thought and wide, wise understanding by our politicians and their Sir Humphreys. On p12 he says
New Zealand’s lack of intellectual vitality has always been related to its background of colonialism: lacking ideas of their own, New Zealanders have imported them wholesale and uncritically from overseas. In the 1980s, the New Zealand Treasury has been thoroughly colonised by the libertarian ideas of the Chicago school of economics, and has tried to reconstruct New Zealand society in that image.
He refers to some in Labour having “ideas, less well developed, of social liberalism”….as in the Report of the Royal Commission. “It was only a matter of time before the different sets of ideas clashed”
To right Prism, we frown on intellectuals here in NZ, only do “faux” intellectual stuff like film criticism etc etc (all good valid things but never too close to the real meat on socio economic reality).
Thanks for the tip, will have a read of Jesson. On that note I grabbed a copy of Sutch “The Quest for Security in NZ” at a garage sale recently…well worth a read. NZ prior to the First Labour Government was a very insecure place, we are headed rapidly back to that era courtesy of a millionaire who just does not have a clue (or care I suspect).
One outcome of globalisation and consumersim where profit is god and must increase year on year is you end up with few players controlling everything as M&A’s are eventually always approved by weakened anti-monopoly agencies/laws.
Brands have been used to mask this making people feel like they’re making a choice when the only choice is which marketing/advertising/packaging/presentation won the decision to purchase.
When you are planning to produce your own NZ based dairy factories, i guess pricing out the competition is to be expected. Is the PM relaxed that this also spits in the face of TPP discussions and exposes the endgame of excessive foreign ownership of our farms ?
I believe it spits in the face of the FTA we have with China as well and certainly makes it look as if the Crafar purchase actually was part of Chinese government action.
I just read that and nearly spewed tea all over the laptop screen. The world is full of crazies but it did brighten the first few minutes of my days off
It’s funny in some respects, but it does have the rather more serious effect of nurturing a racist narrative, not to mention the mental illness of the true believers.
Hi Grumpy, it is safe to assume that there is much about history, ours and abroad which we have been fed, is little more than self interest!
I recall a few years back listening to a historian/anthropologist on national radio, while I was home from abroad, saying he was aware of large swaths of NZ historical records and the like being destroyed. I am unable to recall his name, nor provide any links, so was not able to check into his background. He also made reference to some sort of ancient boat!
Clever bastard eh? There is another story about a stone village in a Northland forest. The story is that the archeological report is embargoed to 2060’s. Anyone know anything about that?
You mean this? http://www.kaimaiview.co.nz/an_unpalitable_truth
Funnily enough featuring the very same Noel Hilliam also seen here
//readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2010/03/why-is-kiwibank-honouring-grave-robbing
Take his tales with several handfuls of salt, me thinks
Seven or eight feet eh! That ties in with Northern Hemisphere legends about all the “Tall Bastards” that were driven out by their angrier neighbours.
The ancient volume (kept under lock and key in the British Museum) “The Righteous Rage of Shorty the Red”, details how Shorty drove them from their homes with the following warning :
“Yer Talle Bastardds, wu knew nott ur oun Godds, yer’ll niver retoorn hier! If yer doos yer’ll bee bluddy!”
This and other “Tall Tales” have long been suppressed all over the world.
I don’t believe any of it to be true. There are a number of quasi anthropologist / archaeologist crackpots out there who have had a lot of publicity making claims that have been easily refuted on closer examination of the so called evidence.
I have very good personal reasons for being sceptical about this stuff, none of it attributable to Treaty of Waitangi settlement debates
Why would archeologists want to shut down such a ground breaking , and career making discovery? It would be a greater find than Troy, or the opening of the pyramids.
Why would the state want to hide something that would attract tourists by the plane load and raise huge awareness of NZ. Think of the publicity this would bring, if true.
Seems to me the threorists here want it to be true for some reason. What is that reason?
Please tell me it isn’t anything to do with the Treaty. But from reading various pushers of the idea, it seems to be that they have the idea that if someone else got here first, then the Treaty would be null and void. that belief would account for their passion I suppose, if they don’t like the Treaty.
Perhaps someone could explain to me why the Trety would be null and void though. It’s not a long document.
If Greeks or celts or egyptions got here first, why would that mean Maori weren’t soveriegn when Pakeha arrived?
And even if, somehow, it did, we are left with the problem of the Crown covering up something that would get them off the hook for treaty settlements. Why would they do that?
It’s just a big old pile of pudding son.
Best left to the lizard brains squeeking away over at farrers place I reckon.
It wouldn’t matter if 30 different groups had arrived here at different times from different places. If they were alive to intermarry with Māori, by the time Te Tiriti was signed they would have been well and truly intergrated and therefore part of the various iwi.
The trouble is, given that iwi were an oral culture, there would have been waiata and kōrero purākau about there presence. Given the lack of that, it would seem to be unlikely that, should they have ever been here, they were living during the migration period.
As well as that, there would be middens, at the very least.
Hogwash I say but I am just another layperson. What would I know
Yes that was my concern to Kotahi. While it made me laugh out loud initially, I groaned inwards at the fuel it gives the racists. I am just waiting for my redneck, racist uncle to post the link on Facebook….shouldn’t take him long.
Show me the midden pits and other signs of people living here Grumpy and I might open my fixed mind a little. Till then, this sounds like more Muriel Newman-promulgated “stop the uppity Maoris and their uppity claims” bullshit
I don’t know… I just try to keep an open mind. It is entirely conceiveable that NZ was visited/settled by other cultures pre-Maori. My point was there is a lot of money being made by individuals out of the grievance process which will ensure a vested interest in maintaining a narrative that Maori were the first to NZ, irrespective of any evidence to the contrary.
1) Lot’s of things are concievable. It’s concievable that NZ was discovered by a reverse engineered invisible spacecat from the far distant future who zipped back in time, snooped about, spotted the place, picked up a few humans and plopped them down with his plopper ray before popping back to his sparkly litterbox in the future. I just concieved it, but it doesn’t count for shit.
2) “a narrative that Maori were the first to NZ” has no bearing at all on the Treaty of Waitangi. None. Not even a little bit.
“Lot’s of things are concievable. It’s concievable that NZ was discovered by a reverse engineered invisible spacecat from the far distant future who zipped back in time, snooped about, spotted the place, picked up a few humans and plopped them down with his plopper ray before popping back to his sparkly litterbox in the future. I just concieved it, but it doesn’t count for sht”
What is even more conceiveable than your example, is the level of control and manipulation from monetary flows into almost any industry you could name. There are the known interational infrastructure networks, and there are networks which facillitate money flows which are not monitored, measured or reported on.
Controlling money and finance can give almost endless ability to manipulate….
If AML means “anti-money-laundering”, first you say it’s not being monitored, now you say there’s a whole “space” devoted to it. I wish you’d make your “mind” up.
You are absolutely right – I do not know the details of that particular business. I was merely pointing out the self-contradictory nature of your argument.
To recap:
1. “…there are networks which facillitate money flows which are not monitored, measured or reported on.”
2. “The AML space”
Which is it – is there no monitoring measurement or reporting, or is there in fact an entire network that is dedicated to them?
Or do you need me to make you a tin-foil hat before you can work it out?
Still not quite getting it because you have assumed the word “space” incorrectly from the context I meant it.
I will explain this very slowly for you…
1. “…there are networks which facillitate money flows which are not monitored, measured or reported on.” – Thats right, there are monitored networks, gateways etc, and there are those which are not reported on, which could be referred to as back doors, and if you had worked in the “AML Space”, you would know what I am talking about, but you dont, so you can’t!
2 – AML Space – What I meant here was the the part of the business that AML operates inside of, and also the space that as a contractor, I operated in – AML Space.
Maybe not jumpt to conclusions to support your ignorance, but it does amuse me!
No need to mention the tin foil hat , because you have made yourself look ignorant enough by now!
And these money laundering channels (which are monitored measured and reported on by law-enforcement agencies), your thesis is they they “give almost endless ability to manipulate” information, which in this case is being used to suppress archaeological data, for unknown reasons.
Except of course that doesn’t work on you, because you know the truth.
I’ll tell you what happened to all those 7-8′ tall fair-skinned types that used to live here: they moved on, and their descendants formed the HAARP Cabal. I learned this from Buzz Aldrin in a dream, but don’t worry, he’s going to bust them wide open.
“And these money laundering channels (which are monitored measured and reported on by law-enforcement agencies” – You seem to believe you know alot about it, have you worked in AML? Oh no thats right, we have established by now that you have not! – It’s ok though Bloke, you dont’t have to know everything, its not a competition, but it is good sense to pull back when you have no idea what you are talking about!
“your thesis is they they “give almost endless ability to manipulate” – Correct, imagine the level of what is possible when you can control, and hide money flows, into almost any industry. After this you tried to tell me about AML, which we have already established you know nothing about, yet you then decided to try and tell me about my job – Schoolboy!
“information, which in this case is being used to suppress archaeological data, for unknown reasons.” – Your words Nostradamus, not mine. I only offered the line that “Controlling money and finance can give almost endless ability to manipulate”, and you then tried to debate the in’s and out’s of my experience of the AML Space – Schoolboy!
In brief, I think the flaw in your argument is that attempts to manipulate are not always successful. You overestimate the power of money.
Certainly an individual can probably control aspects of debate – look at the small number of people who currently distort Climatology, for example. But these influences are only ever pertinent within lifetimes. The campaign to distort information about tobacco, for example, successfully fended off the medical profession et al for decades, but no-one seriously questions the fact that smoking is bad for you any more.
Things that happened in the distant past, though – who cares enough to spend money to intentionally suppress them? Make no mistake – if there were lots of DNA evidence of European rats (Rattus Rattus, Rattus Norvegicus, whatever) that was carbon dated to pre-Maori times that would be a very big deal. Historians, anthropologists etc. would be all over that like a rash.
However, Kiore DNA matches the human DNA chain in exactly the same way – and funnily enough, they match the oral history too – that of the South Pacific being gradually inhabited by the same group of people – a story of deliberate exploration.
The “evidence” advanced for counter-claims is based almost universally on cherry-picked information or simple misunderstanding.
The “evidence” advanced for counter-claims is based almost universally on cherry-picked information or simple misunderstanding.
If your follow Reading the Maps you’ll see that it’s primarily driven by racist ideologues, with intersections from New Age mysticism bullshit and a hefty helping of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, when it comes to recruitment to and persistence of these meme sets.
So yeah, more wilful cherry picking and complete failure to understand the basics of archaeology, especially when it clashes with a priori beliefs…
Read, think, even look up fallacies on wikipedia, then come back and try and argue your line of pure bullshit.
Because we teh science, teh archaeological evidence, and teh genetics analyses that show Polynesians were first in New Zealand.
Sheesh, next you’ll be telling us there’s a lot of money invested in evolution, therefore it’s wrongzors, or worse yet, HIV…
And muzza, I’ll cluebat you on vaccines when I can, Nick be depressed at present and thus all out of teaspoons for trudging through stuff that’s easily found via googling science-based medicine sites.
“Nick be depressed at present ” – Maybe get yourself a vaccination to fix that then eh, or some big pharma pills! As long as they are getting paid, all is good!
It would be your choice to take the vaccination/pills of course, which was only ever my point. That topic was over weeks ago, but by all means add to your low by wasting your time…
It would have to be a solution diluted thousands of times more to cure the abysmal cash-control, idiotic math, and an overwhelming sense of entitlement held for the 40 years since they were in the school first fifteen that those tossers are afflicted by.
Why the pricks couldn’t have gone under before we built them a $300mil stadium I don’t know. Oh, wait – it was the idiotic excess of the stadium that got their 3 biggest supporters kicked from local council, so then the council stopped permanently rolling over loans and writing off debts. I think that counts as “irony”.
“After the shocking figures were revealed last month, Prime Minister John Key agreed the health gap was a wider social issue that needed to be addressed.”
Cue a move to outsource, sorry “bestsource”, healthcare to Serco. They’re got their fingers in everything else.
Roughly 30 years ago NZ radically updated its fiscal laws, but crucially it failed to reward good endeavors and punish bad. Property speculation took off and the wealth of NZ, in a world awash with cheap oil and easy credit, funneled growth in the wrong areas of the economy. And now the economy is suffering, since we need a deeper and wider economy to draw upon, yet we built crap leaky homes,and hire shrill poor managers in the private and public sectors.
Wakeup NZ, it was easy to grow, now its going to be tough, and no its not the workers fault. In fact we need a German like outlook to employer-employee relationships.
Death by a 1000 cuts – Just another cut to households. Just been sent from Mercury gas charges going up. Currently paying 7.98/kWh price to go up to 8.99 (increase by 12.6%) but if I fix for 3 years it will be 9.17 (and only an increase of 14.9%). Add on rate increases and other non tradables how can households survive in NZ? Just waiting for interest rates to start increasing.
The price could “shoot up” just with the continued threat of conflict. If the insurers up premiums for transport/cargo on perceived risk, that will push prices up also.
Violent conflict will send the price right up – As SpaceMonkey says, thats the purpose of it!
Insurance company goes bust, govt bails them out eating all the shit and leaving the above water parts of the business intact, govt builds a temporary stadium, insurance company sponsors stadium.
It’s the barefaced ‘F You’ that grates the most…..bet they’re busy cooking up a way to bail out that RU that went bust or have I missed a few meetings …..
“The terms of the bailout will see AMI’s earthquake liabilities transferred to a Crown-owned company, leaving IAG free to pick up the good assets.” Like rugby stadia?
Just as well we do not take baseball seriously. I just love the way Amercian communism system works or was that private enterprise !! 😉 http://www.american.com/archive/2008/april-04-08/a-closer-look-at-stadium-subsidies
And no longer does the public sector determine the appropriate price to charge private enterprise for use of this publicly supplied resource. Today, sports stadiums are largely the private domain of for-profit businesses that the public sector subsidizes, often with special taxes. http://www.fieldofschemes.com/news/archives/2009/01/3496_nyc_baseball_st.html
Of that, the public – city, state, and federal taxpayers – are now covering just shy of $1.2 billion, by far the largest stadium subsidy ever. In fact, even discounting the $417 million in property-tax breaks (if you’re inclined to agree with Lieber), it’s still the largest stadium subsidy ever. The Yankees, meanwhile, would be on the hook for just $670 million, after counting property-tax breaks.
Sharopetrosian is a member of the Armenian Power organized crime group hmmm, there is anopther organised criminal group working the other side of the States, they are known collectively as Goldman Sachs. We have are own GS operative here in NZ.
The Gormless Fool formerly known as Oleolebiscuitbarrell 17
Sometimes, the most resource-intensive people are the ones who kind’ve stay just sane enough to keep out of the health system, but in one or two precise areas they are still very irrational, obsessive, and create detailed fantasies over months or years.
Sucks for everyone involved. And the paperwork is a bitch.
The Gormless Fool formerly known as Oleolebiscuitbarrell 17.1.1
I enrolled in a maori language course at southland Polytech in 1993 and the teacher took us through how to introduce youreself, referring to your ancestor and your mountain or lake or whatever. He said his ancestor was Tutankhamen and that was why his surname began with Tut. I got put off by this. Was the guy serious ? I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I never asked.
I like the truth of people searching the greatest ocean and finding the land of birds. The Egyptians and Phoenicians would never have bothered to voyage son far, even had they been able to. So many resources precious to them much closer to home.
All humans came from Africa, but this was long before Tutankhamen and the thousands of ancient egyptian years, and the phoenicians.
Florida House, Senate Pass Troubling Resolutions Regarding Israel
March 12, 2012 at 10:16 pm
J Street is concerned about nearly identical resolutions regarding Israel that were passed by the Florida House and Senate last week.
Those who voted for the resolutions thinking they were simply expressing straightforward support for Israel probably had little clue that the language they endorsed contains the seeds of Israel’s destruction as a democratic state and Jewish homeland. Keeping “the entirety of the land” under Israeli control and granting all those who live there democratic rights (“one law for all people”) is actually the agenda of those who seek a “one-state solution” – a binational state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, better thought of as the end of Israel as we know it.
With the demographic data clearly telling us that the number of non-Jews will exceed the number of Jews over time, the formula passed by the Florida legislature leads inexorably to the eradication of Israel as a democratic national home for the Jewish people.
These Florida resolutions are good examples of what it looks like to hug a friend so tightly that you unintentionally suffocate him.
We urge both chambers of the Florida Legislature to revoke these egregiously-misguided resolutions and to support the only route to Israel being both Jewish and democratic – a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Research finds that forgiving home loans will save money – the problem?
But this solution has raised passionate opposition: Many borrowers who are paying their mortgages every month feel it is unfair. Why, they ask, should they have to keep paying the full amount while others who took a loan they ultimately couldn’t afford or saw their house plummet in value get a break? Some economists and policy makers argue that borrowers might intentionally stop paying their mortgages to score a reduction. Indeed, the prospect that the government would help troubled homeowners was a spark that created the Tea Party movement.
Too many US citizens don’t give a fuck about anyone else in their communities now. If they can’t clamber off in a lifeboat themselves, they’ll make sure no one else does either.
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Tuesday, March 19:Kāinga Ora’s dry rot The Spinoff DailyBill McKibben on ‘Climate Superfunds’ making Big Oil pay for climate damage The Crucial YearsPreston Mui on returning to 1980s-style productivity growth NoahpinionAndy Boenau on NIMBYs needing unusual bedfellows Urbanism SpeakeasyNed Resnikoff's case ...
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, ...
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 is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
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 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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Pacific Media Watch Earthwise hosts Lois and Martin Griffiths. Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths on Plains FM 96.9 community radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region. David talks about the struggle to raise awareness ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. 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 ...
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 ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Tuesday 19 March appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
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, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/6616197/Chamber-in-super-council-push
The COC around the place are in fact key players in the theft of assets….since when does the COC get to decide when debate should be held about public governence?
Alamgamate, bankrupt, sell off….
After writing several MSM propaganda posts on why we should attack Syria, why China would be the next empire and a post on Iran were he, while still maintaining that Iran has a repressive regime (most notably for that typical Muslim hatred for women) and we are the good guys, at least comes to the conclusion that attacking them would maybe not be such a good idea (which again is the MSM stance so no surprise there) I would like to present Michael Valley with a challenge!
More and more information comes out of Libya (not in the MSM of course) indicating that very predictably the “liberation” of Libya doesn’t mean the same for all Libyans and that as was predicted by many geopolitical strategists Libya is now being Balkanised (ad in cut up in three states) by flaming inter tribal rivalries with the tribal area from whence the “revolution” started and the most oil rich looking forward to a hansom reward for assisting in throwing out the only man strong enough to resist the US and removing the only viable obstacle towards the re-colonisation of the African continent (Kony anyone?) Colonel Gaddafi (No I’m not saying he was a nice guy)
My challenge to Michael Valley is the following. I would like to see his analysis from his point of view which I suspect is that there was no hidden agenda on the part of the Hillary led war crime syndicate called the US/NATO liberation forces and that Libya is now free to do what it wants even if that means the killing of black people by the thousands. That is what freedom means.
That at least is what the MSM seems to suggest by their dead silence on the developing situation in Libya.
Right. It’s all a conspiracy, nothing to do with the fact that MSM has the attention span of a tweaking flea and is averse to anything that can’t be thoroughly expressed in a 5-second sound bite.
Er, how about both?
Ty, V
To have both would require simultaneous competence and incompetence. A contradiction.
Jeff Robinson interviewed the chairman of ACC on RNZ Morning Report this morning. Jeff Robinson does not appear to know much about the chairman. Robinson asked him a question, “Have any other ministers of ACC written letters while you have been chairman of ACC?”
For your info Jeff, The chairman of ACC was appointed by Nick Smith as part of the preparation for the sale of ACC. The chairman of the ACC is/was a member of the Business Round Table. He probably doesn’t party much with members in Mana, the Labour Party, the Greens, or NZF. Doesn’t leave many other parties that he might share a beer at a barbecue with really and “chat about things…” (Chats like our PM did with Ashcroft when he was here.)
Jeff Robinson has been kept on because he toes Griffins line of don’t ask any tough questions, be nice to govt ministers and cronies alike……who’s a good boy then.
Mercep’s no better, Mary Wilson’s kept her credibility whereas Mora/Ryan etc are about as cutting as a sponge.
Linda Clark was the same, just didn’t know how to ask the next question. Some idiot she’d be interviewing would say something that just begged the most obvious next question that would have had them cornered, and what would Clark do every time: miss the chance by asking the next bloody question on her list. Just hopeless. Ryan’s no better. Contrast them with what Kim Hill used to do. Politicians have it so easy here. The Aussies have got it all over us on this, too.
Jeff Robinson has been kept on because he toes Griffin’s line of don’t ask any tough questions
I think you could be right. Yesterday (Thursday) morning Robinson interviewed Phoebe Greenwood from the Guardian about the Toulouse murders at a Jewish school. Pro-Israeli propagandists have been trying their best (or worst) to use the deaths of the children and their teacher to invoke support not for the victims, but for the state of Israel. To do this, they need useful idiots in the media—people like Geoff Robinson.
His brief interview with Phoebe Greenwood was toe-curlingly, embarrassingly awful….
ROBINSON: [voice croaking with empathy] Israelis are more STOIC about terror attacks, aren’t they.
GREENWOOD: Stoic and accustomed. One rabbi here in France says that this is a turning point for the diaspora. Now Jews must RETURN to Israel, for their own safety.
ROBINSON: [thoughtfully] Mmmmm….
What interests me greatly, is how the story has changed! Days ago, it was about three Muslim soldiers murdered by a gunman on a scooter, and the French authorities were not all that fussed. (The lone gunman was assumed to belong to a para-military right wing group..) Then the shooting at the Jewish school happened – sparking the largest manhunt in French history! In about 5 minutes, they found the guy – I mean that – I was listening to the BBC World Service that day – and it took all of 45 minutes from one half hourly news bulletin to the next for them to say ‘the manhunt has begun’ to ‘he’s holed up in an apartment building’… 24 hours later, the perp is dead, he’s said to be an Islamist belonging to Al Quaeda, and Radio NZ describes him as the man who killed “Three Jewish children and four adults’ – giving the impression to anyone who hadn’t been following the story, that all the victims were Jewish! How the gunman’s new backstory fits with his first 3 victims being North African Muslims, doesn’t matter – according to the new story he was just an “Islamist” whatever one of those is – and no explanation is needed…
Another good JMG read on the American Empire and Capitalism.
A good read I agree. The most salient point for me was Greers contention (with which I also agree) that capital aggregation and the consequent impoverishment of the consumer base never gets talked about.
Greer commented that one of the most incisive commentaries on “capital aggregation” was that of Marx BUT that the Cold War climate limited any institutional interest in what is a very valid criticism. In fact economists and their masters dont actually want capital aggregation examined as it threatens their very assumptions about wealth and distribution there of.
My take is that this lack of focus on how capital (and finance) aggregate is at the centre of todays crisis and is being ignored totally, along with the other great driver of our current crisis: resource diminution. NZs treasury and politicians of all colours here seem totally blind to both.
If schools, as part of a balanced education, examined just the first three chapters of the first part of the first volume of Das Kapital, in the same way they uphold current flawed economic indoctrination in classes, the world would change overnight.
Capital
A Critique of Political Economy
Karl Marx 1867
Volume I
Book One: The Process of Production of Capital
Part 1: Commodities and Money
Chapter 3: Money, Or the Circulation of Commodities
Section 3: Money
“…The continual movement in circuits of the two antithetical metamorphoses of commodities, or the never ceasing alternation of sale and purchase, is reflected in the restless currency of money, or in the function that money performs of a perpetuum mobile of circulation. But so soon as the series of metamorphoses is interrupted, so soon as sales are not supplemented by subsequent purchases, money ceases to be mobilised; it is transformed, as Boisguillebert says, from ―meuble‖ into ―immeuble, from movable into immovable, from coin into money.
With the very earliest development of the circulation of commodities, there is also developed the necessity, and the passionate desire, to hold fast the product of the first metamorphosis. This product is the transformed shape of the commodity, or its gold-chrysalis.[39] Commodities are thus sold not for the purpose of buying others, but in order to replace their commodity-form by their money-form. From being the mere means of effecting the circulation of commodities, this change of form becomes the end and aim. The changed form of the commodity is thus prevented from functioning as its unconditionally alienable form, or as its merely transient money-form. The money becomes petrified into a hoard, and the seller becomes a hoarder of money.
As the production of commodities further develops, every producer of commodities is compelled to make sure of the nexus rerum or the social pledge.[41] His wants are constantly making themselves felt, and necessitate the continual purchase of other people‘s commodities, while the production and sale of his own goods require time, and depend upon circumstances. In order then to be able to buy without selling, he must have sold previously without buying. This operation, conducted on a general scale, appears to imply a contradiction. But the precious metals at the sources of their production are directly exchanged for other commodities. And here we have sales (by the owners of commodities) without purchases (by the owners of gold or silver). [42] And subsequent sales, by other producers, unfollowed by purchases, merely bring about the distribution of the newly produced precious metals among all the owners of commodities. In this way, all along the line of exchange, hoards of gold and silver of varied extent are accumulated. With the possibility of holding and storing up exchange-value in the shape of a particular commodity, arises also the greed for gold. Along with the extension of circulation, increases the power of money, that absolutely social form of wealth ever ready for use. ―Gold is a wonderful thing! Whoever possesses it is lord of all he wants. By means of gold one can even get souls into Paradise.‖ (Columbus in his letter from Jamaica, 1503.) Since gold does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and buyable. The circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to come out again as a gold-crystal. Not even are the bones of saints, and still less are more delicate res sacrosanctae, extra commercium hominum able to withstand this alchemy.[43] Just as every qualitative difference between commodities is extinguished in money, so money, on its side, like the radical leveller that it is, does away with all distinctions.[43a] But money itself is a commodity, an external object, capable of becoming the private property of any individual. Thus social power becomes the private power of private persons. The ancients therefore denounced money as subversive of the economic and moral order of things.[43b] Modern society, which, soon after its birth, pulled Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels of the earth,[44] greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the glittering incarnation of the very principle of its own life.
In the early stages of the circulation of commodities, it is the surplus use-values alone that are converted into money. Gold and silver thus become of themselves social expressions for superfluity or wealth. This naive form of hoarding becomes perpetuated in those communities in which the traditional mode of production is carried on for the supply of a fixed and limited circle of home wants. It is thus with the people of Asia, and particularly of the East Indies. Vanderlint, who fancies that the prices of commodities in a country are determined by the quantity of gold and silver to be found in it, asks himself why Indian commodities are so cheap. Answer: Because the Hindus bury their money. From 1602 to 1734, he remarks, they buried 150 millions of pounds sterling of silver, which originally came from America to Europe.[40] In the 10 years from 1856 to 1866, England exported to India and China £120,000,000 in silver, which had been received in exchange for Australian gold. Most of the silver exported to China makes its way to India.
A commodity, in its capacity of a use-value, satisfies a particular want, and is a particular element of material wealth. But the value of a commodity measures the degree of its attraction for all other elements of material wealth, and therefore measures the social wealth of its owner. To a barbarian owner of commodities, and even to a West-European peasant, value is the same as value-form, and therefore, to him the increase in his hoard of gold and silver is an increase in value. It is true that the value of money varies, at one time in consequence of a variation in its own value, at another, in consequence of a change in the values of commodities. But this, on the one hand, does not prevent 200 ounces of gold from still containing more value than 100 ounces, nor, on the other hand, does it hinder the actual metallic form of this article from continuing to be the universal equivalent form of all other commodities, and the immediate social incarnation of all human labour. The desire after hoarding is in its very nature unsatiable. In its qualitative aspect, or formally considered, money has no bounds to its efficacy, i.e., it is the universal representative of material wealth, because it is directly convertible into any other commodity. But, at the same time, every actual sum of money is limited in amount, and, therefore, as a means of purchasing, has only a limited efficacy. This antagonism between the quantitative limits of money and its qualitative boundlessness, continually acts as a spur to the hoarder in his Sisyphus-like labour of accumulating. It is with him as it is with a conqueror who sees in every new country annexed, only a new boundary…”
What a splendid passage, thoroughly enjoyed reading about about the ancients finding money was “subversive”….
In business I find very few employees actually understand how we employers make money…margin…profit. I have always found Marx’s analysis of relation to production and surplus value as the simplest explanation to the uninformed. You can get a straight explanation out of the likes of Freidman, they all try and hide the reality from the “workers”.
Henry Ford
Your right, how the banking system works and how the capitalists actually becomes rich really is hidden from the people. I had my opened when I was in Amway when one of the Diamond level people told a conference that you don’t get rich by working but by having a lot of people work for you. It’s why capitalism is hierarchical and why the books are hidden from the workers. Basically, you have a lot of people below you that do the work but, instead of them being paid directly, you get paid and then you pay the workers. The hidden aspect of the accounts means that the workers don’t know how much you’ve just clipped the ticket and have no say in it.
@Bored
I am reading Bruce Jessons Fragments of Labour. He might explain the background to the magnificent and determined lack of thought and wide, wise understanding by our politicians and their Sir Humphreys. On p12 he says
He refers to some in Labour having “ideas, less well developed, of social liberalism”….as in the Report of the Royal Commission. “It was only a matter of time before the different sets of ideas clashed”
To right Prism, we frown on intellectuals here in NZ, only do “faux” intellectual stuff like film criticism etc etc (all good valid things but never too close to the real meat on socio economic reality).
Thanks for the tip, will have a read of Jesson. On that note I grabbed a copy of Sutch “The Quest for Security in NZ” at a garage sale recently…well worth a read. NZ prior to the First Labour Government was a very insecure place, we are headed rapidly back to that era courtesy of a millionaire who just does not have a clue (or care I suspect).
He has a good clue himself to care for himself?
One outcome of globalisation and consumersim where profit is god and must increase year on year is you end up with few players controlling everything as M&A’s are eventually always approved by weakened anti-monopoly agencies/laws.
Brands have been used to mask this making people feel like they’re making a choice when the only choice is which marketing/advertising/packaging/presentation won the decision to purchase.
That’s similar to what I’ve been saying for the last few years about the impossibility of exporting our way to wealth.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/market-data/currencies/6617519/Kiwi-nosedives-on-China-news
When you are planning to produce your own NZ based dairy factories, i guess pricing out the competition is to be expected. Is the PM relaxed that this also spits in the face of TPP discussions and exposes the endgame of excessive foreign ownership of our farms ?
I believe it spits in the face of the FTA we have with China as well and certainly makes it look as if the Crafar purchase actually was part of Chinese government action.
Looks like Fairfax media has finally lost the plot. They faked the moon landings too you know!
I just read that and nearly spewed tea all over the laptop screen. The world is full of crazies but it did brighten the first few minutes of my days off
It’s funny in some respects, but it does have the rather more serious effect of nurturing a racist narrative, not to mention the mental illness of the true believers.
Would it upset your views on feeling like you are in control of your thoughts bloke?
Mental illness, true believers…
Just is not possible that some things can’t be as they seem is it!
Nah its all black and white!
….maybe Egypt and Greece could put a claim into the Waitangi Tribunal?
I seem to remember someone claiming years ago that an ancient boat had been dug out of a seaside cliff near Timaru?????
Hi Grumpy, it is safe to assume that there is much about history, ours and abroad which we have been fed, is little more than self interest!
I recall a few years back listening to a historian/anthropologist on national radio, while I was home from abroad, saying he was aware of large swaths of NZ historical records and the like being destroyed. I am unable to recall his name, nor provide any links, so was not able to check into his background. He also made reference to some sort of ancient boat!
Bugger me muzzy, I agree with you.
Just off to the doctor for a checkup……….
Try the Moeraki Boulders near Oamaru.
You may be thinking of this. It is all utter bunkum, of course. You will note that there has been no update with the ‘concrete’ analysis promised
http://www.gavinmenzies.net/Evidence/15-chinese-ship-construction/
No-one seems to know who coined the phrase:
“Keep an open mind – but not so open that your brain falls out.”
Nostradamus predicted that Woolworths would stay open late on a Thursday.
Clever bastard eh? There is another story about a stone village in a Northland forest. The story is that the archeological report is embargoed to 2060’s. Anyone know anything about that?
You mean this?
http://www.kaimaiview.co.nz/an_unpalitable_truth
Funnily enough featuring the very same Noel Hilliam also seen here
//readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2010/03/why-is-kiwibank-honouring-grave-robbing
Take his tales with several handfuls of salt, me thinks
It also has a potentially serious effect on the industry that has grown around the grievances.
OK, since you seem to be serious about this, I have some conundra for you. In the words of Michael Shermer:
“Where are the rest of the artifacts of those people? Where are their works of art, their weapons, their clothing, their tools, their trash?”
Where are the bones of the rats they brought with them?
One Anonymous Bloke predicts that sooner or later, archaeologists will start receiving death threats over this crap.
Have you looked a hateatea’s link?
Interesting stuff, I can see why, if true, some people would want it shut down. A conspiracy here for travellrev?
Seven or eight feet eh! That ties in with Northern Hemisphere legends about all the “Tall Bastards” that were driven out by their angrier neighbours.
The ancient volume (kept under lock and key in the British Museum) “The Righteous Rage of Shorty the Red”, details how Shorty drove them from their homes with the following warning :
“Yer Talle Bastardds, wu knew nott ur oun Godds, yer’ll niver retoorn hier! If yer doos yer’ll bee bluddy!”
This and other “Tall Tales” have long been suppressed all over the world.
KTH
Golly I didn’t know that. How amazing.
I don’t believe any of it to be true. There are a number of quasi anthropologist / archaeologist crackpots out there who have had a lot of publicity making claims that have been easily refuted on closer examination of the so called evidence.
I have very good personal reasons for being sceptical about this stuff, none of it attributable to Treaty of Waitangi settlement debates
Why would *they* want it shut down grumps?
Let’s think about it.
Why would archeologists want to shut down such a ground breaking , and career making discovery? It would be a greater find than Troy, or the opening of the pyramids.
Why would the state want to hide something that would attract tourists by the plane load and raise huge awareness of NZ. Think of the publicity this would bring, if true.
Seems to me the threorists here want it to be true for some reason. What is that reason?
Please tell me it isn’t anything to do with the Treaty. But from reading various pushers of the idea, it seems to be that they have the idea that if someone else got here first, then the Treaty would be null and void. that belief would account for their passion I suppose, if they don’t like the Treaty.
Perhaps someone could explain to me why the Trety would be null and void though. It’s not a long document.
If Greeks or celts or egyptions got here first, why would that mean Maori weren’t soveriegn when Pakeha arrived?
And even if, somehow, it did, we are left with the problem of the Crown covering up something that would get them off the hook for treaty settlements. Why would they do that?
It’s just a big old pile of pudding son.
Best left to the lizard brains squeeking away over at farrers place I reckon.
It wouldn’t matter if 30 different groups had arrived here at different times from different places. If they were alive to intermarry with Māori, by the time Te Tiriti was signed they would have been well and truly intergrated and therefore part of the various iwi.
The trouble is, given that iwi were an oral culture, there would have been waiata and kōrero purākau about there presence. Given the lack of that, it would seem to be unlikely that, should they have ever been here, they were living during the migration period.
As well as that, there would be middens, at the very least.
Hogwash I say but I am just another layperson. What would I know
😉
Pascal’s bookie, I like your style
Dunno if they lost the plot…we all read the headline because even if its bunk it grabs our attention and sells papers……
Yes that was my concern to Kotahi. While it made me laugh out loud initially, I groaned inwards at the fuel it gives the racists. I am just waiting for my redneck, racist uncle to post the link on Facebook….shouldn’t take him long.
So sick of Fairfax.
Don’t worry about it upsetting your fixed views and just labeling it “racist”. You should keep an open mind, like me………
Truthers unite, you have nothing to lose but your credibility.
Show me the midden pits and other signs of people living here Grumpy and I might open my fixed mind a little. Till then, this sounds like more Muriel Newman-promulgated “stop the uppity Maoris and their uppity claims” bullshit
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/6625136/Search-and-Surveillance-Bill-passes
Should be good for filling up those new private prisons I would imagine!
I don’t know… I just try to keep an open mind. It is entirely conceiveable that NZ was visited/settled by other cultures pre-Maori. My point was there is a lot of money being made by individuals out of the grievance process which will ensure a vested interest in maintaining a narrative that Maori were the first to NZ, irrespective of any evidence to the contrary.
Spacemonkey.
1) Lot’s of things are concievable. It’s concievable that NZ was discovered by a reverse engineered invisible spacecat from the far distant future who zipped back in time, snooped about, spotted the place, picked up a few humans and plopped them down with his plopper ray before popping back to his sparkly litterbox in the future. I just concieved it, but it doesn’t count for shit.
2) “a narrative that Maori were the first to NZ” has no bearing at all on the Treaty of Waitangi. None. Not even a little bit.
No 1 – Roflmao
Lol re 1… and 2 good point.
“Lot’s of things are concievable. It’s concievable that NZ was discovered by a reverse engineered invisible spacecat from the far distant future who zipped back in time, snooped about, spotted the place, picked up a few humans and plopped them down with his plopper ray before popping back to his sparkly litterbox in the future. I just concieved it, but it doesn’t count for sht”
What is even more conceiveable than your example, is the level of control and manipulation from monetary flows into almost any industry you could name. There are the known interational infrastructure networks, and there are networks which facillitate money flows which are not monitored, measured or reported on.
Controlling money and finance can give almost endless ability to manipulate….
That’s how you can tell something definitely exists: when it is not “monitored, measured or reported on.” Nice of you to clear that up.
All the time you have spent working in the AML space Bloke, I thought you would have have had some idea what I was talking about. Oh wait on…
Can you clear something up for me – Did Nostradamus also say that Woolworths was going to be consigned to the dustbin of NZ supermarket chain history?
If AML means “anti-money-laundering”, first you say it’s not being monitored, now you say there’s a whole “space” devoted to it. I wish you’d make your “mind” up.
Well done, that is what the acronym stood for – Gold Star
In reality though you have no idea how AML functions or fits inside the world of banking & your silly responses only serve to highlight that fact!
Maybe you can ask Nostradamus to enlighten you!
You are absolutely right – I do not know the details of that particular business. I was merely pointing out the self-contradictory nature of your argument.
To recap:
1. “…there are networks which facillitate money flows which are not monitored, measured or reported on.”
2. “The AML space”
Which is it – is there no monitoring measurement or reporting, or is there in fact an entire network that is dedicated to them?
Or do you need me to make you a tin-foil hat before you can work it out?
Still not quite getting it because you have assumed the word “space” incorrectly from the context I meant it.
I will explain this very slowly for you…
1. “…there are networks which facillitate money flows which are not monitored, measured or reported on.” – Thats right, there are monitored networks, gateways etc, and there are those which are not reported on, which could be referred to as back doors, and if you had worked in the “AML Space”, you would know what I am talking about, but you dont, so you can’t!
2 – AML Space – What I meant here was the the part of the business that AML operates inside of, and also the space that as a contractor, I operated in – AML Space.
Maybe not jumpt to conclusions to support your ignorance, but it does amuse me!
No need to mention the tin foil hat , because you have made yourself look ignorant enough by now!
And these money laundering channels (which are monitored measured and reported on by law-enforcement agencies), your thesis is they they “give almost endless ability to manipulate” information, which in this case is being used to suppress archaeological data, for unknown reasons.
Except of course that doesn’t work on you, because you know the truth.
I’ll tell you what happened to all those 7-8′ tall fair-skinned types that used to live here: they moved on, and their descendants formed the HAARP Cabal. I learned this from Buzz Aldrin in a dream, but don’t worry, he’s going to bust them wide open.
“And these money laundering channels (which are monitored measured and reported on by law-enforcement agencies” – You seem to believe you know alot about it, have you worked in AML? Oh no thats right, we have established by now that you have not! – It’s ok though Bloke, you dont’t have to know everything, its not a competition, but it is good sense to pull back when you have no idea what you are talking about!
“your thesis is they they “give almost endless ability to manipulate” – Correct, imagine the level of what is possible when you can control, and hide money flows, into almost any industry. After this you tried to tell me about AML, which we have already established you know nothing about, yet you then decided to try and tell me about my job – Schoolboy!
“information, which in this case is being used to suppress archaeological data, for unknown reasons.” – Your words Nostradamus, not mine. I only offered the line that “Controlling money and finance can give almost endless ability to manipulate”, and you then tried to debate the in’s and out’s of my experience of the AML Space – Schoolboy!
Time to let you run along now!
In brief, I think the flaw in your argument is that attempts to manipulate are not always successful. You overestimate the power of money.
Certainly an individual can probably control aspects of debate – look at the small number of people who currently distort Climatology, for example. But these influences are only ever pertinent within lifetimes. The campaign to distort information about tobacco, for example, successfully fended off the medical profession et al for decades, but no-one seriously questions the fact that smoking is bad for you any more.
Things that happened in the distant past, though – who cares enough to spend money to intentionally suppress them? Make no mistake – if there were lots of DNA evidence of European rats (Rattus Rattus, Rattus Norvegicus, whatever) that was carbon dated to pre-Maori times that would be a very big deal. Historians, anthropologists etc. would be all over that like a rash.
However, Kiore DNA matches the human DNA chain in exactly the same way – and funnily enough, they match the oral history too – that of the South Pacific being gradually inhabited by the same group of people – a story of deliberate exploration.
The “evidence” advanced for counter-claims is based almost universally on cherry-picked information or simple misunderstanding.
If your follow Reading the Maps you’ll see that it’s primarily driven by racist ideologues, with intersections from New Age mysticism bullshit and a hefty helping of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, when it comes to recruitment to and persistence of these meme sets.
So yeah, more wilful cherry picking and complete failure to understand the basics of archaeology, especially when it clashes with a priori beliefs…
A lot like young earth creationists really.
http://archaeologyaotearoa.blogspot.co.nz/
Read, think, even look up fallacies on wikipedia, then come back and try and argue your line of pure bullshit.
Because we teh science, teh archaeological evidence, and teh genetics analyses that show Polynesians were first in New Zealand.
Sheesh, next you’ll be telling us there’s a lot of money invested in evolution, therefore it’s wrongzors, or worse yet, HIV…
And muzza, I’ll cluebat you on vaccines when I can, Nick be depressed at present and thus all out of teaspoons for trudging through stuff that’s easily found via googling science-based medicine sites.
“Nick be depressed at present ” – Maybe get yourself a vaccination to fix that then eh, or some big pharma pills! As long as they are getting paid, all is good!
It would be your choice to take the vaccination/pills of course, which was only ever my point. That topic was over weeks ago, but by all means add to your low by wasting your time…
Rip into it!
I caught autism from my flu jab this year, but a statistically-insignificant solution of henbane cleared it right up.
Should have given it to the ORU then mate, sounds like they could have used a dose!
It would have to be a solution diluted thousands of times more to cure the abysmal cash-control, idiotic math, and an overwhelming sense of entitlement held for the 40 years since they were in the school first fifteen that those tossers are afflicted by.
Why the pricks couldn’t have gone under before we built them a $300mil stadium I don’t know. Oh, wait – it was the idiotic excess of the stadium that got their 3 biggest supporters kicked from local council, so then the council stopped permanently rolling over loans and writing off debts. I think that counts as “irony”.
More positive effects of the neo-con model in NZ
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10794083
“After the shocking figures were revealed last month, Prime Minister John Key agreed the health gap was a wider social issue that needed to be addressed.”
Cue a move to outsource, sorry “bestsource”, healthcare to Serco. They’re got their fingers in everything else.
Roughly 30 years ago NZ radically updated its fiscal laws, but crucially it failed to reward good endeavors and punish bad. Property speculation took off and the wealth of NZ, in a world awash with cheap oil and easy credit, funneled growth in the wrong areas of the economy. And now the economy is suffering, since we need a deeper and wider economy to draw upon, yet we built crap leaky homes,and hire shrill poor managers in the private and public sectors.
Wakeup NZ, it was easy to grow, now its going to be tough, and no its not the workers fault. In fact we need a German like outlook to employer-employee relationships.
It’s Peters vs Hide. Grudge match.
Radio Live right now, streaming here: http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Portals/0/popup/Listen.htm
Winston is entertaining and credible. A good advocate Felix.
bloody entertaining radio, peters:”rodney hyde thinks manual labour is the president of mexico”
Damn is there a podcast of this anywhere?
Yep, everything broadcast on radiolive is archived here: http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Audio.aspx
Think it ran from 2pm to 3pm.
Chur Felix.
Just listened to it. Notice how everyone who wanted to talk to Winston sounded like he had a brain injury?
I particularly liked Sarah.
Sarah: Ooh, Can I speak to Winston, please ?
Winston: Go ahead.
Sarah: This is the first time I ever got to spoke to you. I will say, you are a very lovely man.
Sounds like she had her finger on the dial while she was talking to him haha.
radio live.
Death by a 1000 cuts – Just another cut to households. Just been sent from Mercury gas charges going up. Currently paying 7.98/kWh price to go up to 8.99 (increase by 12.6%) but if I fix for 3 years it will be 9.17 (and only an increase of 14.9%). Add on rate increases and other non tradables how can households survive in NZ? Just waiting for interest rates to start increasing.
Expect petrol to go up rapidly if a shooting war starts in the Straits of Hormuz.
That’s the purpose of the conflict.
The price could “shoot up” just with the continued threat of conflict. If the insurers up premiums for transport/cargo on perceived risk, that will push prices up also.
Violent conflict will send the price right up – As SpaceMonkey says, thats the purpose of it!
It just gets worse and worse, I seriously dont know how much more I can take. More corporate welfare?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10794106
What a farce.
Insurance company goes bust, govt bails them out eating all the shit and leaving the above water parts of the business intact, govt builds a temporary stadium, insurance company sponsors stadium.
Just fuck off.
Clashman, thats hilarious, you have to laugh, just like dan “can you believe they got away with this shit” carters smile …
Depends what the liabilities are – but I’m picking they’re going to be more than the $380m we got for the assets.
No, wait, who got the $380m?
It’s the barefaced ‘F You’ that grates the most…..bet they’re busy cooking up a way to bail out that RU that went bust or have I missed a few meetings …..
“The terms of the bailout will see AMI’s earthquake liabilities transferred to a Crown-owned company, leaving IAG free to pick up the good assets.” Like rugby stadia?
Rugby stadia are a useless money losing waste of time. Which is why they always get public money to fund them.
Just as well we do not take baseball seriously. I just love the way Amercian communism system works or was that private enterprise !! 😉
http://www.american.com/archive/2008/april-04-08/a-closer-look-at-stadium-subsidies
And no longer does the public sector determine the appropriate price to charge private enterprise for use of this publicly supplied resource. Today, sports stadiums are largely the private domain of for-profit businesses that the public sector subsidizes, often with special taxes.
http://www.fieldofschemes.com/news/archives/2009/01/3496_nyc_baseball_st.html
Of that, the public – city, state, and federal taxpayers – are now covering just shy of $1.2 billion, by far the largest stadium subsidy ever. In fact, even discounting the $417 million in property-tax breaks (if you’re inclined to agree with Lieber), it’s still the largest stadium subsidy ever. The Yankees, meanwhile, would be on the hook for just $670 million, after counting property-tax breaks.
But what about the banks, bankers Fraud , Doesn’t count I guess!
Sharopetrosian is a member of the Armenian Power organized crime group hmmm, there is anopther organised criminal group working the other side of the States, they are known collectively as Goldman Sachs. We have are own GS operative here in NZ.
Has anyone else been following this:
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/13244696/man-harassed-woman-over-olivia-case/
I am not sure the criminal justice system needed to be called in for this one. I would have gone with the Mental Health system.
Sometimes, the most resource-intensive people are the ones who kind’ve stay just sane enough to keep out of the health system, but in one or two precise areas they are still very irrational, obsessive, and create detailed fantasies over months or years.
Sucks for everyone involved. And the paperwork is a bitch.
Still. I am grateful. Fucking hilarious.
I enrolled in a maori language course at southland Polytech in 1993 and the teacher took us through how to introduce youreself, referring to your ancestor and your mountain or lake or whatever. He said his ancestor was Tutankhamen and that was why his surname began with Tut. I got put off by this. Was the guy serious ? I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I never asked.
I like the truth of people searching the greatest ocean and finding the land of birds. The Egyptians and Phoenicians would never have bothered to voyage son far, even had they been able to. So many resources precious to them much closer to home.
All humans came from Africa, but this was long before Tutankhamen and the thousands of ancient egyptian years, and the phoenicians.
http://jstreet.org/blog/florida-house-senate-pass-troubling-resolutions-regarding-israel/
Florida House, Senate Pass Troubling Resolutions Regarding Israel
March 12, 2012 at 10:16 pm
J Street is concerned about nearly identical resolutions regarding Israel that were passed by the Florida House and Senate last week.
Those who voted for the resolutions thinking they were simply expressing straightforward support for Israel probably had little clue that the language they endorsed contains the seeds of Israel’s destruction as a democratic state and Jewish homeland. Keeping “the entirety of the land” under Israeli control and granting all those who live there democratic rights (“one law for all people”) is actually the agenda of those who seek a “one-state solution” – a binational state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, better thought of as the end of Israel as we know it.
With the demographic data clearly telling us that the number of non-Jews will exceed the number of Jews over time, the formula passed by the Florida legislature leads inexorably to the eradication of Israel as a democratic national home for the Jewish people.
These Florida resolutions are good examples of what it looks like to hug a friend so tightly that you unintentionally suffocate him.
We urge both chambers of the Florida Legislature to revoke these egregiously-misguided resolutions and to support the only route to Israel being both Jewish and democratic – a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
http://jstreet.org/blog/florida-house-senate-pass-troubling-resolutions-regarding-israel/
UK Conservatives pass “Fiscally Neutral” Budget giving tax cuts to millionaires
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEu5uFDlQvg&context=C4cf22e2ADvjVQa1PpcFPzEQVXUK23JLMVr5jqR-JhctteyyNzscM=
The neolibs must share an international dictionary of bullshit.
Birds of a feather flock together
Research finds that forgiving home loans will save money – the problem?
The Tea Partiers and other selfish pricks.
Too many US citizens don’t give a fuck about anyone else in their communities now. If they can’t clamber off in a lifeboat themselves, they’ll make sure no one else does either.