As cultures break down, alcohol consumption rises, so I've read recently. Saying goodbye to a culture and it's practices will be like farewelling a very, very close friend.
"A culture faces and interprets pain, deviance and death. It endows them with meaning; it illuminates how they are a part of the whole and thereby makes them tolerable … The widespread use of alcohol and other central nervous system anaesthetics is directly linked to a decline in culture. The wider their use, the harder it becomes to preserve, renew and invigorate the wisdom that a culture should hold. This doubles back and escalates. Alcoholism spreads when a culture is dying, just as rickets appears when there is no Vitamin D."
I know it's a quote, but that makes no sense. A declining culture promotes alcoholism, and the decline will reverse if people drink less alcohol? That's like saying it's getting cold and people dress warmer. If only they didn't, the weather would get warmer again. Cause and effect…
I think it's like saying it's getting cold and people drink more alcohol. They feel good for a while but are more likely to suffer death from exposure. Also, a clear mind, rather than one anaesthetisedone, is more likely to make a life-saving decision, imo.
It reminded me of ACT welfare policy. Persistent unemployment causes benefit dependency. So if we take away the benefit, there is no unemployment.
Won’t argue re decision making
Being clever, they had performed the u-turn from exclusive to inclusive, realised the best way to include typical Labour voters was to operate at their mental level of capability, so they used a method suitable for kindergarten children.
"You take a deck of Heartwork cards: these are thin, circular, like coasters in mid-range wine bars, only instead of inspirational quotes or vineyard logos they’re printed with sun feelings, moon feelings and needs. You think about a confrontation you’ve had, or a meeting you’re doing to have, and you pick three cards to represent your needs."
Heartwork is the business consultancy who supplied the method. It "is also a game… in which you learn to talk about your feelings and emotional needs, and this aims to solve the problems of the DEVUCA world by building empathy and psychological safety creating organisational win-win-wins through people-centered product, service and policy design via system leadership."
"Next you pick three cards to represent the needs of the other person. There are 50 to choose from. They might want (random shuffle): Stability, or Understanding, or Sense-of-team, or Clarity. Now that you’ve defined everyone’s needs – “all human behaviour is a strategy to meet our needs,” Rousseau explains – you simply envision a win-win-win scenario in which everyone’s needs are met."
"Treasury is working hard to return New Zealand to a pre-neoliberal, prelapsarian state. Next month the government will release its first “Wellbeing Budget”’ It uses the Treasury’s Living Standards Framework, a world leading concept which, Ross informs us, the department has been working on for 18 years. Instead of focusing purely on economic capital the public service, led by Treasury, will seek to grow the country’s human, social and environmental capital."
Nice curve ball there, Danyl. Prelapsarian is indeed a word. Google defines it thus: characteristic of the time before the Fall of Man; innocent and unspoilt. I'll leave readers to puzzle over whether the definition is sexist or not. Gender equality has gotten ever so complicated after trending non-binary, so I suggest keeping it simple. Would the Fall of Woman be a suitable political topic nowadays, or should we leave as is?
So you still haven't figured out the difference between practice & praxis?? Even though I gave you the explanation in a single sentence with no long words? Give some thought to the old adage `if at first you don't succeed, try harder'.
As regards how it works, rebels tend not to get into management so I can't help you from the perspective of operational experience. Best guess: tell them what to do. Always worked perfectly with Labour voters, eh? Anyone else asks why, of course.
"Gaelic's attentiveness to place is reflected in its topographical precision. It has a plentiful vocabulary to describe different forms of hill, peak or slope (beinn, stob,dún, cnoc, sròn), for example, and particular words to describe each of the stages of a river's course from its earliest rising down to its widest point as it enters the sea. Much of the landscape is understood in anthropomorphic terms, so the names of topographical features are often the same as those for parts of the body. It draws a visceral sense of connection between sinew, muscle and bone and the land. Gaelic poetry often attributes character and agency to landforms, so mountains might speak or be praised as if they were a chieftain; the Psalms (held in particular reverence in Gaelic culture) talk of landscape in a similar way, with phrases such as the 'hills run like a deer.' In both, the land is recognized as alive."
Question: “Following the Christchurch terrorist attack, do you think the Crusaders rugby team should change their name?”
Yes …………. 14%
No ………….. 76%
DK …………… 8%
Refused …… 1%
Above Average: No
▪Those living in Otago and Southland (90%)
▪National Party supporters (87%)
▪Those aged 18-29 (85%).
Above Average: Yes
▪Those with annual household income $150,000+ (25%).
▪Labour Party supporters (22%).
.
So … very strong Public support for the Government's Gun Law changes (About Right … 61%, … Not Far Enough … 19% (= 80%), … Goes Too Far … 14%) … but minimal endorsement of Crusaders name change. (Yes, by all means take the necessary practical steps … but Don’t fuck with the Rugby / Don’t fuck with the Culture, basically)
You'd be surprised how many there are in that category – a lot of couples with both working in the public sector bring in upwards of $150,000, and plenty of them are Labour or Green voters.
Whoaaaa there, Compardre, Don’t be quite so quick on the draw !
The category is: 150k Plus !!!
That 25% might come entirely from the 300K brigade, nested deep within that particular demographic.
The New Middle Class are precisely the people I'd expect to be most supportive of a name change. Affluent Moral Liberals / Craft Beer Hipsters / People with unusually refined sensibilities who insist on Minimalist Interior Design and the like.
Of which ours is one, well until this year when retirement will change that a bit. Earning as much as possible – mainly from my husband's hard work, he likes it fortunately and it keeps him fit – has become a must over recent years so that we can genuinely trickle it down to move people forward. Car repairs, dental visits, bonds for rentals were clear to us not easily obtainable to many young hard workers trying to get traction in the world or those who faced unforeseen "hiccups". Being on one end of "it is better to give than receive" too is not something I am unaware of aware of that an element of "sefishness" is normal in wanting to see good outcomes and to sleep peacefully at night.
If anyone needs to see National Party desperation and complete cynicism at work page five of our local paper below a heartfelt obituary for local man Tommy Gear and co-founder of NZ First at the outset is somewhat conveniently placed an electoral advert for the National Party. As a consequence our long term subscription has been cancelled and a full discussion had with the staff member who took the cacellation as to why.
Past experience has me 100% certain, I read the paper daily and these local adverts are now rare, that in no way was the placement "accidental".
It confirmed all the dislike I have for a political party clearly, to me, interested in votes to retain the parliamentary benches and nothing about working for NZ.
We're pacing it, money is not "god" but it does have it's uses, beyond that you can't take it with you thought some seem to adhere to that thought. Best are the times we have had along the way and long may that continue:)
Awww sad for those people – don't wanna keep their stupid made up name for their made up team – I can't say I'm going to be sorry seeing all these people eat the shit sandwich of change.
Perhaps the respondents had a better understanding of the wider meaning of the words 'crusader' or 'crusade'. Or maybe, just maybe, people can scoff at the stupidity of all the fuss over events that happened almost 1,000 years ago?
I don’t know how closely everyone is following the US elections for next year but I have been following the potential nominees are am really liking that Pete Buttigieg. Do you think the US is ready for an openly gay president?
Also I’m wondering if the Republicans think they’ll lose with Trump will they step-in to remove him (say if his tax returns so him to be a shameless crook)?
That's very democratic approach. Anyone can be President – and so anyone who has the funding to make a name for himself or her, is having a go. That's the spirit. Perhaps the term should be divided up into quarters like they do in business, and at that time they report their activity and their effectiveness and then get voted in or out, with a sort of list of waiting opportunists who want a turn and are ready to step up if called.
I reckon the states where being openly gay would reduce his vote are states that are currently solid Repug anyway. That opinion is based on working with manufacturing workforces in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (admittedly the more liberal parts of those states) and even a couple of decades ago openly gay staff seemed totally accepted.
So I don't reckon that will directly affect his chances, but the electoral downside in solid red states may be more on tight House and Senate races. If there's a population that leans Dem but are unenthusiastic about the prez candidate, then it's so much harder to deal with the incredible hassle and time-suck involved in voting so it's a whole lot more tempting to just not bother.
As a candidate for prez, seems to me he needs to learn to spend more time considering the downsides to his policies. This HuffPo piece goes into some detail about issues with the housing policies he came up with and implemented as mayor.
The natural successor to the Trump presidency would be a Toon. Daffy Duck has the drive but seems aggressive. Jessica Rabbit might make a decent contender – not bad, but drawn that way.
Also I’m wondering if the Republicans think they’ll lose with Trump will they step-in to remove him (say if his tax returns so him to be a shameless crook)?
Let's look at the numbers. Impeachment in the House should probably work, the Dems have a comfortable majority. But to convict Darth Drumpf in the Senate requires 67 votes, and the Dems only have 47 senators, and up to maybe 4 of those might not have the spine to vote for conviction. So between 20 and 25 Repug senators would need to vote for conviction.
Right now, Mitt Romney probably would vote for conviction, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins are definite maybes. The rest of them would look at their political futures, ponder the examples of Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Mark Sanford and others, and weigh the risk of getting primaried by vengeful Drumpfkins versus the risk of losing to a Democrat in the election.
There's a maximum of 8 Repug Senators at risk of losing to a Dem in 2020 (Collins being one), and 7 in 2022 (Murkowski being one). So even if all 15 Repugs that could conceivably be at risk of losing to a Dem in their next election plus Mitt Romney plus all Dems vote for conviction, that's still only 63.
The only way I see Il Douche out of the Oval Office before the 2020 election is either a medical event, or enough info comes out about his criminal exposure to actually penetrate the Supreme Orange Ego's consciousness and he realises he genuinely needs a legitimate pardon, so he negotiates his exit and pardon with Pence.
Its a funny thing..in this household we don't have a TV, so rely on RNZ to keep us in the loop on NZ news…so I was somewhat relieved to hear this the other morning..
"The New Zealand Disability Support Network says it is thankful to ministers who stepped in to prevent sector-wide funding cuts."..though as we all know, avoiding cuts never actually means that much as costs and demand inevitably rises.
But then I looked into it further..and sure enough..
'Every hour is questioned' – Advocates say Health Ministry quietly reducing funding for disabled after ruling out big cuts….
"Every hour of support is being questioned," said Community Care Trust (CCT) chief executive Mike Brummitt, whose Dunedin-based organisation looked after 280 people. "If someone gets 12 hours, they are saying do you need 10, or eight hours?"
Brummitt said he was recently informed by email that an intellectually disabled man in his 20s would have his funding cut in half – from $415 a day to $210.
"We know nobody has seen him since early 2017. No one spoke to our staff, his parents, advocate, no assessment. I've written back and said this is totally unsustainable."
CCT would continue to provide the same support to him, but at a financial loss.
The man's needs were complex and he required around-the-clock care, Brummitt said. When the organisation first took him on, he would not sleep in a bed, and curled up on the floor in the fetal position.
Anyone who can read that, and feel we are on the right path, has no heart.
"incrementalism" and Budget Responsibility Rules are going to be the death of some of us. Its a shame the disabled don't offer nice photo ops. in the minds of Labour Party spin doctors and publicists.
And if you can judge a society and people by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable citizens..how well are we doing?
I was going to suggest copious amounts of alcohol (see @ 2) because our culture is breaking down but then realised that this has been ‘our culture’ for yonks …
She wants it fixed, not ignored. If you send something like this to the Minister it will go straight into the round filing cabinet on the floor by the Minister's desk.
Now in 1999 the industry recognised there was a slight problem in that there was a small but significant number of people needing home based disability supports who needed a higher level of care than would normally be provided by unregulated carers. More registered/enrolled nurse level. My partner and I knew that the Miserly had not yet sorted this issue but had not seen anything in writing that actually defined the problem. Until I found that 1999 document…and until I got a dump of emails from the Misery in response to my OIA request. This was 2017.
And the bastards still hadn't sorted the problem. Now these are the super efficient bureaucrats Macro was lauding the other day. /open-mike-21-04-2019/#comment-1609899
I still haven't stopped laughing/crying/beating my fists against the wall.
I wish I could share with you those emails…the file is huge unfortunately…but these are the people on the big salaries getting backslaps from the Commonwealth Fund for their efficiency.
What the problem boils down to is that these Advanced Personal Cares attract 'risk' if performed by unqualified carers. And the funder (the Miserly) would be liable if for adverse events. So providers most often than not refuse to provide this level of care at the rate at which the MOH funds HCSS. And when challenged, the Ministry bureaucrats just say "we don't fund x,y or z." , even if the client would die without these tasks being performed. Hence family care, or incarceration in a residential facility where theoretically there is RN oversight…
ACC, on the other hand, get round this problem (I think) by funding 1/2 hour per week per client of RN oversight. The RN does not have to be there…just be available. And to my knowledge, this works.
But it is a simple solution that is way beyond the ability of those super efficient MOH bureaucrats to accept or implement for those eligible clients that need that level of care.
But this is super-efficient… as many of those needing this level of care have no option but to turn to family…who are paid nothing (as in my case) or a pittance compared to the NZDSN employed carers.
This is my world Siobahn, and those people have no heart.
Someone described them as sociopaths…I tend to agree.
And it is unlikely to change under this government.
Rosemary – I completely agree with you about the plight of disabled people in this country, and the lack of care that they receive, and the huge load that that places upon family and friends. The NGO's I know are struggling to make ends meet and the continual lack of funding that has been given to the sector over the years just makes things worse.
I think you get the wrong end of the stick when you think that I am not supportive of you, and when I say that despite all the problems you and others face, it may not be the bureaucrats who are completely at fault here. Now I too ,agree that many in the upper echelons of the MoH are in ordinary terms overpaid. But that doesn't mean that they are not doing their job properly within the funding constraints that they are given. They are the managers of the system – the governance of the system falls on the government of the day – and unfortunately over the past couple of decades NZers have elected governments that have failed to place a high priority on funding Health and Disability services in particular.
Looking at this from a macro level there are essentially 3 ways for a country to administer its Health services
A fully funded Public Health service (eg UK)
A mix of Public and Private Insurance (eg Australia)
A completely Private system of Health supported by Insurance (eg the USA)
The first Labour Govt introduced a health system in the 1935 along the lines of the first model. Over the years that model has been watered down as more affluent individuals have taken out Private Health Insurance. The effect of that has been to reduce pressure on the Government to fully fund Health in this country and over the years the effect has been that Governments fund as minimally as they can, and rely on the Private sector and individuals to pick up the slack. Australia has now a similar system but the difference is that they ensure that all (or most) can afford to back up their Health Insurance so that there is more equity within the system. There is also greater funding available across the Health service.
We certainly do not want devolve into the Health system of the US which has one of the highest costs and poorest outcomes of any health system in the developed world. Even on Faux News the other day – when Bernie proposed a Medicare for all ( a complete anathema to the Trump administration) he was met with resounding applause.
“…it may not be the bureaucrats who are completely at fault here. Now I too ,agree that many in the upper echelons of the MoH are in ordinary terms overpaid. But that doesn’t mean that they are not doing their job properly within the funding constraints that they are given. They are the managers of the system – the governance of the system falls on the government of the day – and unfortunately over the past couple of decades NZers have elected governments that have failed to place a high priority on funding Health and Disability services in particular.”
Hmmm…funny how governments have changed but the culture within the Ministry has largely remained the same?
I too used to blame ‘the Government’, until reading about the estimated cost of paying family carers should we “all come out of the woodwork” and demand to be paid like any other carer providing assessed supports. In 2008…under Labour…the estimated cost (as told to the HRRT) of paying family carers was between $17-593 million dollars.
Now let that sink in a minute…this is the very best the Ministry of Health could do by way of a guesstimate? This was 2006-2008…not exactly the dark ages and even then the NASCs were collecting data on all clients.
Even when all was lost through the Judicial system, (under National now, in 2012) and with the omnipotent Socrates database well established, the Minister was still making dire predictions of fiscal apocalypse should there be unrestrained payment of family members providing assessed care of those with high and very high support needs.
I almost, (but not quite) felt sorry for Ryall as he demonstrated to the media cameras his appalling lack of knowledge of New Zealand’s disability system. ‘Eek, shriek!”, he implied,’..and if you factor in ACC, you’ll see how the costs just go up and up!’..Stupid bugger didn’t even know that ACC had been paying family carers for over a decade…in fact 50% of the paid carers of ACC clients were family. So who was feeding this pile of twaddle to the Government Minister?
Yet it was next door to impossible to even get anything close to an actual number of MOH:DSS clients, over the age of 18 with assessed high and very high support needs who were not receiving any funding for their care because family were providing most or all of their care. It wasn’t that the information wasn’t there…it was that the Ministry wasn’t offering it willingly and the Government seemed unable to ask the right questions of the Ministry.
There was talk of there being 30,000….(the latest count of the total number of DSS clients is 33,000.https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/report-clients-allocated-dss-funding-jul17.pdf) Frustrated, I asked a few specific questions of MOH DSS in late 2012 to try to get a more accurate picture of the situation, and it transpired that the number of very high needs over 18 year old DSS clients with little or no hourly based funding for their care was 1286.
And if you’ve followed this particular case…through the many court hearings and discussions etc you will know that the National Government opted to fund 1600 parent carers.
And if you also followed up you’ll know that the number of DSS clients who chose the option of Funded Family Care was less than 400. One quarter of the number budgeted for…so what happened to the rest of the $$$?
Some of us have kept track over the years, through different governments and different Ministers. There have been two constants…one, the Ministers have been largely ignorant ineffectuals and two, the same old names keep being mentioned in MOH dispatches.
Only a complete purge of MOH bureaucrats will bring about the necessary culture change. The Ministry needs to be staffed by actual Public Servants.
And I do think you do the NZ voter a disservice by implying that we keep voting in Governments that fail to “… to place a high priority on funding Health and Disability services in particular.”
How about we have a referendum..”Would you be willing to pay an extra 1.5-2.5% tax which would be dedicated solely to rehabilitating our health and disability system, in addition to the current Vote Health budget?”
"In talks, I would tell the story of the Natufians. Late in the last Ice Age, in the territory marked on our maps as Israel and Palestine, they lived in year-round villages. They were among the first people anywhere to settle and they lived like this for 1,500 years, fifty generations, long enough for any memory of their ancestors’ wanderings to pass into the dreamtime of gods and culture heroes. Then came the Younger Dryas, the 1,200-year cold snap that turned Europe back to tundra and broke the pattern of the seasons which watered the wooded valleys in which they had made their homes. They knew nothing of the processes by which this climate change had come upon them; it was not a consequence of their actions, only a shift in the weather. Within a short time, they abandoned their settled way of life and became wandering gatherers and hunters, returning to the old villages only to rebury the bones of their dead in the ruins of the houses.
Then I would recall a passage in After the Ice, Stephen Mithen’s history of the prehistoric world, where I first learned about the Natufians. He sends a time-traveller to walk unobserved through the lives of the people he is writing about: coming upon a band of late Natufian nomads, he follows them to a gathering in one of the ruined villages. The interment of bones is accompanied by storytelling, feasting and celebration; the connection between past and present is reaffirmed. In Mithen’s reconstruction, these days of festival offer a respite from the hardships of the present. Yet afterwards, as the people go back out onto the land, they do so gladly: ‘They are all grateful for the return to their transient lifestyle within the arid landscapes of the Mediterranean hills, the Jordan valley and beyond. It is, after all, the only lifestyle they have known and it is the one that they love.’"
I got that Mithen book last year, haven't started it yet. "If everyone does X, then all this scary stuff will go away" is typical leftist thought. Proceeds from a false assumption. Since when have humans ever acted in unison?? Anyway, moving on, we could liken the climate-change impact on expectations to oceanic navigation of old.
I'm no sailor, but I know plain sailing only lasts awhile. Adaption to changing weather is essential. Using ocean currents is intelligent. People don't usually do it unless they have a plan, or at least an imagined destination of sorts, so when there's a small tribe in the waka collective intent drives the enterprise.
This is turning into a typical `how to get there' post so I'll just finish by pointing out how suitable the analogy seems to be. Despair isn't part of the scenario!!
Yet more leftist hypocrisy? Only if the prof is a leftist. Mentally-ill folk are now part of the community. We're meant to view them as normal citizens, ever since politically-correct decision-making deemed this stance proper in the nineties. As such, they have citizens' rights, including the right to be a political leader. It's how democracy works.
The prof may get brain police knocking on his door sometime soon, taking him away to a re-education camp, where some kind person will explain the facts of life to him, and he will be required to write this line a thousand times: I must not discriminate against the mentally ill, not even Trump.
"Mentally-ill folk are now part of the community."
They always were dennis you just ignored and pretended they weren't there. You do seem to have some major prejudice against those you deem to have mental health issues and your writing on this subject is woeful. Even here in defending you make snide asides about those trying to protect the many many people with mental health issues. You should be ashamed imo.
Crap, Marty. Everyone knows they were institutionalised until the closing of the mental hospitals. And don't insinuate prejudice where none exists. That's unethical. You know perfectly well that I did not criticise any victim. Any reader can see for themselves that I was criticising the prof!
"We're meant to view them as normal citizens, ever since politically-correct decision-making deemed this stance proper in the nineties."
These type of statements from you indicate a strange attitude imo. You love 'othering' those with mental health issues using language like 'them' and 'they' and you don't even get it – possibly an age thing but whatever – not a good attitude imo
Not strange unless you have no empathy with victims. When that guy was killed with an axe by his flatmate (a mental-health patient released into the community) while in bed (asleep, I presume), a story that made headlines back then, it made the policy seem insane to me. Not to you??
In regard to hitting the red button, you have a point. I vaguely recall there's a fail-safe design around that though (chain-of-command operational consensus).
In all other respects, you're wrong. If it were obvious, there would already be high-level discussions on a bipartisan basis, reported in the media. So you're just doing the same jerk-off as the prof. Evidence to the contrary required!
I vaguely recall there's a fail-safe design around that though (chain-of-command operational consensus).
No. There isn't. There really isn't.
When Nixon was showing obvious signs of stress leading those around him to fear a breakdown, Schlesinger committed an act of gross insubordination and instructed those further down the chain of command to check with him or Kissinger before acting on any orders from Nixon. Thank fuck it was never tested what would actually happen if Nixon tried to launch nukes.
There's a good chance Mattis did the same, and I'd guess it would be fairly likely those down the chain of command would actually check with Mattis before launching.
But Mattis is gone, and the acting Secretary of Defense is ex-Boeing swampthing Shanahan. Who almost certainly wouldn't dare do anything that might be construed as standing up to Grand Generalissimo Bonespurs. Nor would he have any standing or respect from those further down the chain, so it would be very unlikely Shanahan would be able to stop a madman launch order even if he wanted to.
Everyone knows “they” were institutionalised’
No. “they” were not.
The vast majority of people with mental health issues led normal functional contributing lives.
DF. You are full of prejudice and misinformation. Otherwise known as full of shit.
Just to change the topic for a break. some kind person will explain the facts of life to him, and he will be required to write this line a thousand times:
That made me think of Bart Simpson and his frequent interaction with lines written on the blackboard. (Did you know he leapt up in ballet showing amazing talent. You might wait for the same to happen with Trump, but truth is stranger than fiction.)
Heh. I'm going to be off-line awhile. My laptop has developed sleep problems halfway thro its 6th year, so I got a cheap notebook as insurance policy & now have to get all my useful stuff duplicated onto it in case the laptop decides to die as well. Fortunately my local computer dudes always seem able to solve my problems quickly at reasonable cost…
The UK government’s active support for fossil fuels and airport expansion is “beyond absurd”, Greta Thunberg has told MPs.
The 16-year-old Swedish student, who sparked a global youth-based movement when she began a “climate strike” outside Sweden’s parliament last year, gave a typically blunt speech. She told MPs: “This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.”
The dreaming continues from the rear guard protecting their world from the inevitable change occuring. They will be remembered all right as will we. What will they say about what you/we did to change?
Why don't you tell us the rest of the story? After talking to the MPs she went straight back to the Airport and caught her next flight to a place where she could spread the word that flying must stop.
You know. Just like James Shaw it is a case of don't do what they do. Do what they tell you to do because they know better.
"After talking to the MPs she went straight back to the Airport and caught her next flight to a place where she could spread the word that flying must stop."
Did she? Can you link to this information, because AFAIK she attends meetings by land-based travel.
And also, your criticism – well used by practised diverters, fails to recognise that current society and systems support and encourage individual choices both financially and in convenience, that are detrimental to the environment and community wellbeing.
The premise that the system needs to change stands – separate from individual instances.
After talking to the MPs she went straight back to the Airport and caught her next flight to a place where she could spread the word that flying must stop.
If you actually bother to go and read the article, it includes a graphic: "Greta's train journey through Europe." Electric trains, at that.
She may have arrived in London by train as that diagram shows. However you don't think she was going to remain there did you?
I was assured, by someone who heard her, that she was heading back to Sweden by plane. As I said "After talking to MPs." I'll admit that the statement "went straight back to the airport" rather condenses the time scale.
Do you have any actual evidence or link? Or are you just repeating a hearsay smear?
If there were any factual basis to that claim, it would be astonishing for right-wing media to be silent, they would be much more likely to scream it from the front page as hypocrisy to try to discredit her. But so far … zip.
Māori television showed a documentary on the work of photographer Sebastião Salgado a couple of nights ago. I missed seeing it at the International Film Festival, and was hooked when I found it while channel surfing.
It documents his decades of travelling and immersion into some of the most undeveloped and/or deprived communities. As well as capturing some of the most atrocious human behaviours and crimes. A harrowing but very informative watch, which also records his understandably bleak conclusion of the irredeemable nature of the human race.
The final project is his personal redemption – a trite description – moving into nature photography and planting millions of trees on an inherited drought ridden family farm.
A very minor observation – disappointed to hear Lisa Owen (RNZ Checkpoint, ~5:24 pm, 23 April 2019) refer to the Government's 'Provincial Growth Fund' as "Shane Jones' regional money bag" (@00:25).
It would help if Jones stopped giving people excellent reasons for assuming the provincial growth fund is being used as an influence-peddling fund for NZ First in general and Jones in particular.
Dunno if this is really a reality thing. Seems more like perceptions to me. I agree that his style of operating encourages the perception. But he's just doing his job.
If his allocations were unreasonable, evidence of that would be accumulating. I've seen no such compilation in the media, so I'm inclined to think DMK has a valid point. She ought not to be seen as recycling National's spin.
Northland, Tree planting, Logging Companies, The Semenoff Family long long history', Family connections, filipino workers, Sand, DOC, Talleys, political donations…How Things are Done 'up North'….nothing to see here of course
His habit of intervening on behalf of his donors and his spurning conflict-of-interest mitigation measures all by themselves should rule him out of being put in charge of distributing a billion dollars, let alone when an electorate he plans to contest is likely to be a major beneficiary of the funding decisions. In other words, it's a real thing – his demonstrated lack of integrity, not media bias, is prompting the cynicism.
Not only but also – today's Herald "Barry Soper: Killing capital gains tax the painful part of politics for Jacinda Ardern" no it wasn't, well I bet it wasn't, but fools like Soper can't see or will admit it.
You a bit out of sorts today? Simon getting to be a bit much for you perhaps. He seems to have Psycho problems like yourself.
Even so, advising the Regions that you hate them receiving Funds for Major works and Projects – could mean that you dislike Aoteraroa from top to bottom. You will be no Loss.
I am pleased to see that there is consistency in the complaints about racist behaviour. Here we have someone, rightfully, being shamed because he claimed that he wouldn't allow his children to go out with a Maori.
I wonder if the protesters were the same ones who complained about Hone Harawira expressing the view that he wouldn't allow his children to go out with a Pakeha? I hope they were the same people involved in both protests about the bigoted actions.
Immigration New Zealand has created a special visa category for those directly impacted by the shootings at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood mosque, as well as their families…
The government says the Christchurch Response 2019 category has been created to realise the impact of the tragedy and to give people currently on temporary and resident visas some certainty.
Applications can be made from tomorrow by anyone who was present at either mosque during the attacks and their immediate families.
The special circumstances mean the definition of "immediate family" also includes dependent children, someone's partner's parents and grandparents of children under 25.
Immigration NZ, on their website, state they will confirm those present at the mosque attacks by checking police records.
The UN has backed a resolution on combatting rape in conflict but excluded references in the text to sexual and reproductive health, after vehement opposition from the US.
The resolution passed by the security council on Tuesday after a three-hour debate and a weekend of fierce negotiations on the language among member states that threatened to derail the process.
The vote was carried 13 votes in favour. China and Russia abstained. On Monday, the US had threatened to veto the resolution but it is understood that last minute concessions on Tuesday morning got the US on side
We have to CHANGE the way we do everything this is a good idea that the local and central government should be championing a place were you can rent tool & equipment for little cost. All so I had to DUMP a good washing machine and fridge because they couldn’t fit in my pocket as that’s the only storage that was available. I would have had a garage sale as we call it here and sold some items a give some away but the sandflys have scared all the people away . I say local council needs to have a place well advised to drop off good still going fine like whiteware kitchen ware anything that can be used by other.
We need to get away from the USE and toss it culture we need to make things last 20 years or longer paper packaging to.
Aristotle House in Oxford is not as grand as it sounds. A commercial block built by the canal in the 1960s, it is no longer fit for paying tenants, so its owner, Wadham College, allows a group of social enterprises to stay there, like official squatters. And there’s evidence of their enterprise everywhere outside, from the drop-box for returning poetry books, to the compost heaps built from old pallets, and the young Victoria plum tree blossoming in a pot by the door. Inside, for those who know about it, is the Oxfordlibrary of things. It sounds like the setting for a Philip Pullman novel, and represents a vision of humanity that’s nearly as fantastical – an idea so simple and so brilliant that, the first time you hear it, you wonder why it hasn’t conquered the world already. Then you wonder if it’s just about to change. Imagine you have a grimy old picnic table that needs sanding after a winter in the garden. Or you want to host a Eurovision party, but your TV is too small for everyone to see. Commercially renting a belt sander for the weekend costs about £40, and a projector much more, so unless you’re on good terms with a well-equipped neighbour, you either spend money on a device you will hardly use, or you give up. But what if someone volunteered to be that neighbour, as people now have in Frome, Crystal Palace, Stirling, Edinburgh, Totnes, Oxford and in growing numbers around the world? If they could just gather a collection of extremely, but only occasionally, useful items, and find a place to keep them, there would be no need for everyone else to buy their own. Even paying a small fee to cover costs, we would save money, and space in our homes, and the benefits to the environment in waste prevented would be enormous. Indeed, as you browse for Oxford’s belt sander (£8 a week) and projector (£10 a night), you might decide, while you’re at it, to borrow a pressure washer for the patio (£10 a day), and add a disco ball (£5 a week) and chocolate fountain (ditto) for the party. You’ll live a cheaper, cleaner, more enjoyable and more sustainable life Ka kite ano link below. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/24/library-of-things-borrowing-scheme-conquer-world
Here you go Whanau we have people who treat water like a gravy train instead of the respecting WAI water as a life giving and taking source and force it is they need to protect Wai water for our next generation our Mokopuna grandchildren rights to a happy healthy life need to be respected.
The Queensland minister for water, Anthony Lynham, also strongly denied his government had backed EAA’s sale of overland flows, as Joyce claimed.
“What we had supported in 2015 was completely different,” he said. Queensland proposed the Commonwealth buy both of EAA’s farms and all its water, including river water rights, he said.
A desktop review had put the price at $123m, and would have yielded 57,000ML of water including more secure water rights, he said.
Instead Joyce proceeded to buy half the volume of a less reliable type of water entitlement for $80m
Queensland minister for water, Anthony Lynham, also strongly denied his government had backed EAA’s sale of overland flows, as Joyce claimed.
“What we had supported in 2015 was completely different,” he said. Queensland proposed the Commonwealth buy both of EAA’s farms and all its water, including river water rights, he said.
A desktop review had put the price at $123m, and would have yielded 57,000ML of water including more secure water rights, he said.
Instead Joyce proceeded to buy half the volume of a less reliable type of water entitlement for $80m
Meanwhile the Guardian has learned that the energy minister, Angus Taylor, was listed in the annual report of the Australian company as a director of the Caymans parent, Eastern Australia Irrigation, at least until some time in the 2012-13 financial year. He was also a director of a second Caymans company, Agricultural Managers Ltd, which served as the management company for the fund.
Agricultural Managers Ltd, which is separate from Eastern Australian Agriculture and Eastern Australian Irrigation, provided management services to the complex investment structure that included several overseas investorsUsually management companies in these sort of securitised structures undertake the financing, advise on tax, prepare documentation and send investors payments. For that they are paid a management fee and in some cases a fee based on the performance of the fund. This can occur during the life of the fund or when it was wound up.
Eco Maori can see this huge problem unfolding before my EYES The wealthy made most of their money from burning CARBON. The effects of climate change is going to CAUSE huge problems for the common poor people that is WHY the WEALTHY nations need to step up and help the poor Nation it is the correct way to help lesson the damage caused by the climate change on the POOR.
The wealthy have to realise that we are all HUMANS geneticly identical. If they don't help a super bug could develop in the places we're the poor people are living in unhumane places that could effect people that are close to them.
The Great old saying is its better cheaper not to make a MESS that it is to make a big MESS and try to CLEAN IT UP not rocket science just LOGIC Hence helping thy NABOUR the super wealth just have to do more to help mitigate Climate change 9
While the rich world braces for future climate change, the poor world is already being devastated by it
(CNN) — "Upside down" are the only words Manush Albert Alben has to describe life after the powerful Cyclone Idai.
Nearly two weeks since the powerful cyclone destroyed most of the city of Beira, Mozambique, it is a long way from normal. "There's no money, no groceries," Alben, a fisherman, said while sitting in his wooden pirogue on a local beach. "We are suffering but trying to hold on
Known for its busy port and views of the Indian Ocean, the 19th-century city used to be the fourth largest in the country. Now Beira will go down in history as being "90% wiped out" by global warming, said Graça Machel, a former Mozambican freedom fighter, politician and deputy chair of The Elders, who spoke to CNN on the phone after visiting the city
Here is a story of poor country's being badly effected by HUMAN CAUSED CLIMATE CHANGE. We have to help them all.
South Africa floods claim 60 lives after Durban rains
'We couldn't save the children'
One man, who lost eight of his family members when a mudslide swallowed their home, has spoken to Nomsa Maseko about the moments leading up to the tragedy
Thamsanqa Dlamini said that he heard a loud bang first before water came "gushing" into their house through the walls.
"I heard my children screaming from the bedroom," he recalled.
"I tried to rush to help them but the strong water current forcefully pushed me into another room and I was under the collapsed wall.
Ka kite ano P.S don't let all the other stories drown out our fight against climate change deniers
Its cool the Prince is visiting Aotearoa. Those Kiwis cycling around Turkey look a bit worn out ANZAC day has been cool .
The helicopter rescue crew that were on the one that crashed in the Auckland islands were extremely lucky if they were a few km out in Tangaroa they would have been much worse off I no the waters cold there its was snowing at sea when I was last there . The Karapeoro shooting is a sham Iv been in that pie shop a few times over the years .
Britain getting some of Huawei 5G equipment no I don't think NZ have ban Huawei totally from building our 5G network ???????.
Bad luck on the moon landing in 3s there are a lot of Phenomenon that scientists can not explain or give the fact on .
Yes tamariki need to have boundaries on screen time on cellphone tablet use the same as everything. Ka kite ano
There was another police chase in Christchurch this morning, resulting in a crash which killed one person and injured five more. Because someone died, the chase is being investigated by the Independent Police Conduct Authority. And based on previous reports by the IPCA, we know how it will go: the ...
Just a month ago we saw the biggest protest in a generation as people marched to demand stronger action on climate change. A core demand of the protesters was to strengthen the Zero Carbon Bill's target to net-zero by 2040. So what is the government's response? Judging by the ...
Back in 2010, I wrote about the strange tale of the zombie ants, which do the bidding of their fungal overlords. (They’re not an isolated example; a range of parasites change their hosts’ behaviour. See here and here for example – though as you’ll find, the toxoplasmosis story may be ...
Shouldn't That Be: "Wrong White Crowd"? Rather than apportion guilt, would it not have been wiser for the makers of Land Of The Long White Cloud to accept that the Pakeha of 2019 are not – and never will be – “Europeans”? Just as contemporary Maori are not – and ...
One, Two, Many Truths: With the collapse of “actually existing socialism” in 1991, the universities of the West found themselves saddled with a new mission. With their ideological competitors now soundly defeated they were no longer required to demonstrate the superiority of capitalist values. Their job now was to cement ...
by the Council of Disobedient Women We call on the Council of Trade Unions to show some fortitude and take a stand with your sisters. Unionists know that there is a material world, otherwise workers could simply identify out of poverty. They could declare themselves Well Paid. Why stop ...
I spent some time reading the Regulatory Impact Statement and Bill of Rights Act advice for the government's odious control order scheme today. I am not impressed with either of them. Starting with the RIS, it is built on some pretty questionable assumptions. For example:Unless individuals have been convicted of ...
#NoFly: Walking the talk on climate change, by Shaun Hendy. BWB Texts, 2019. Reviewed by Robert McLachlan In June 2018, Swede Maja Rosén founded We stay on the ground with a pledge not to fly in 2019, and a goal of persuading 100,000 other Swedes to join her. In August, ...
We all know that NZ First is a party of and for old people who hate the young. But they've topped their previous pedophobia with a proposal that all young people be forced to do 100 hours community work:NZ First wants all young people to do 100 hours of community ...
A couple days ago the NZ Herald published a story with the headline, “Science says Bella Hadid is world’s most beautiful woman“, and followed up with the ridiculous statement that Supermodel Bella Hadid has been declared as the world’s most beautiful woman following a scientific study into what constitutes as ...
A Sustainable Proposition: With as much as 18 percent of the electorate declaring itself “undecided” about who to vote for, there is obviously plenty of space for a party like former Green Party member, Vernon Tava's, about-to-be-launched "Sustainable NZ Party" to move into. The most hospitable political territory for such ...
Keir Starmer has hinted that Labour might vote in favour of the Johnson government's shoddy deal, with the proviso that a second referendum is attached:Speaking to BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show, he said: “We will see what that looks like but it makes sense to say that by whatever ...
In 1994, I was the editor for an issue of Planet magazine focused on cannabis, its culture and the prospects for the end of its prohibition. Part of that issue was an interview with 'Ringo', an experienced cannabis dealer.I recently posted my essay from that issue, and I figured it ...
Dr Helen Waite, sports sociologist and former elite athlete, on the invasion of women’s sport by men and the anti-scientific and misogynist ideology used to rationalise it. ...
As Brexit comes to a grisly conclusion (perhaps) people on all sides are saying intemperate and uwise things. Some, like the Daly Mail, have been doing it for years.People as normally level headed as Jon Lansman are calling for automatic deselection of MPs who vote against a (likely) Labour three ...
I've got one source saying more Labour MPs than expected are mulling whether to vote for the deal - including names who were not on the letter to Juncker and Tusk— Emilio Casalicchio (@e_casalicchio) 17 October 2019 I've compiled a list of possible reasons why Labour ...
On Wednesday, the government was loudly telling us that it needed to legislate to allow it to impose "control orders" - effectively a parole regime, but imposed without charge, prosecution, conviction or real evidence - on suspected terrorists because they couldn't be prosecuted for their supposed crimes. Today, it turns ...
On Monday, the Hit and Run inquiry heard from NZDF's former director of special operations, who claimed that the defence Minister knew everything about the Operation Burnham raid. Today, the inquiry heard from that (former) Minister - and it turns out that he didn't know nearly as much as NZDF ...
Yoga gurus and cult leaders – I’ve seen a few. Two weeks ago, I unknowingly joined an alleged new-age cult at the Kāpiti coast, together with a giant kraken and some neatly dressed pensioners who would make any book club proud.They were among the two hundred people of all ages ...
The last decade has seen a trend of increasing weapons availability to police. Assault rifles. Tasers on every hip. Guns in cars. And following the march 15 massacre, pistols on every hip, all over the country. At the same time, its also seen an increase in the abuse of force: ...
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been busy preparing for our summer paper on Science Communication. Looking for something amusing about ‘risk’ in science, I came across this neat xkcd.com cartoon about why so many people come knocking on my door (or phoning me, or emailing me) desperately wanting ...
by John Edmundson The International Socialist Organisation (ISO) have recently reposted a February article, by Romany Tasker-Poland, explaining ISO’s position in the “trans rights” debate. It is available on their website and on their Facebook Page. The article sets out to explain why “socialists support trans rights”. It reads more ...
"Auckland City Mission: 10% of Kiwis experiencing food insecurity", RNZ, 16 October 2019:About half a million people are experiencing food insecurity, according to new research from the Auckland City Mission. Food insecurity, or food poverty, is defined as not having enough appropriate food. The City Mission said over the last ...
Media Statement for Immediate Release 16th October 2019 “Fake News” from Auckland City Council CCOs Board Chairs re pay and performance bonuses for top managers Despite comments from Auckland City Council CCOs Board Chairs re pay and performance bonuses for top managers—Herald Newspaper Tuesday Oct 15th–there is very little evidence ...
Would You Buy A Used Propaganda Video From This Man? Bridges and the National Party’s strategists have discovered that the ideas and attitudes considered acceptable by today’s editors and journalists are no longer enforceable. The rise and rise of the Internet and the social media platforms it spawned means that ...
There is plenty of evidence of the way the business mentality has permeated every level of society since the recrudescence of market liberalism 35 years ago. You only need to think of how citizens in need of help from their government, their state, their country, are now routinely described as ...
John MacCormickOver the last 40 years, New Zealanders – and people in other countries – have experienced big changes in the jobs they do and where they live and work. These changes include: a decline in manufacturing jobs an increase in jobs in ‘information-intensive’ industries (which are better paid ...
Nick Wilson, Leah Grout, Mereana Wilson, Anja Mizdrak, Phil Shoemack, Michael BakerProtecting waterways has the benefits of: (1) protecting water from hazardous microbes; (2) minimising cancer risk and other problems from nitrates in water; (3) avoiding algal blooms that are hazardous to health; (4) protecting mahinga kai uses (cultural ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women In a press release today Massey University announced it has decided to rebrand and reorientate after struggling to be a University for grown-ups. For some time the University has wanted to be a safe play space for wee-woke-misogynists who have been really badly triggered ...
After a brief dalliance with 'hard Revoke' it looks like the Lib Dems are changing ground on on Brexit, with leader Jo Swinson reverting to calling for a second referendum on Johnson's deal.The party has tabled an amendment to the Queen’s speech requesting that any deal brought back from Brussels ...
The government has decided that someone has done Something Bad. But despite their belief, there seems to be no evidence that they have actually broken the law. So the government's solution is to pass a retrospective law allowing them to be punished anyway, on a lower standard of proof. If ...
So, Judith Collins has done a Facebook rant about climate change, peddling the same shit National has been shovelling for the past twenty years: the impacts are overstated, there's no need to do anything about it, and its too hard anyway (oh, and its so unfair that people who peddle ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzThere is a lot of discussion on the benefits of ...
I came across this song quite by accident. If it isn't one of Greta Thunberg's favourites - it should be.Video courtesy of YouTube.This post is exclusive to Bowalley Road. ...
Last month, NZDF's shoddy coverup of what it knew about civilian casualties in Operation Burnham began to fall apart, with the revelation that a report on the matter, which NZDF claimed not to have, had been sitting in an NZDF safe for the past nine years. Yesterday, the man responsible ...
While many imagine that countries like the USA and Europe dominate space activities, in fact India is now a major player on this stage. It launches satellites for its own purposes and also commercially, and has constellations orbiting our planet and returning data of vital importance to that nation in ...
Thanks to a report from the Acting Inspector General of Intelligence and Security following a complaint by Nicky Hager, we have come to find out that the SIS illegally spied on Mr. Hager on behalf of the NZDF after publication of Hager’s 2011 book, Other People’s Wars. The NZDF justified ...
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate. FACT: The HadCRUT3 surface temperature index, produced by the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, shows warming to 1878, cooling to 1911, ...
For the past week, Extinction Rebellion has been peacefully protesting in London to demand action on climate change. The British government's response? Ban their protests:Police have banned Extinction Rebellion protests from continuing anywhere in London, as they moved in almost without warning to clear protesters who remained at the movement’s ...
An essay by Judith Collins MP reported on Carbon News yesterday seems to show an alarming shift in attitude within the National Party. Collins argues against the Zero Carbon Bill, the Paris Agreement, and downplays the magnitude of climate impacts. The Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015 and ratified ...
When they were running for election, Labour promised to overhaul the Employment Relations Act and introduce fair pay agreements to set basic pay and conditions on an industry level, preventing bad employers from undercutting good ones. They followed this up by establishing a working group, which reported back in January ...
A list of indicators of bad science – many of these are found in articles promoted by anti-fluoride activists. Anti-fluoride activists have been pouring money into a scaremongering campaign warning pregnant women not to drink fluoridated water. They claim fluoride will lower the IQ of their future child. Fluoride ...
Nothing Left To Say: Labour's pollster, Stephen Mills, remains swaddled-up in the comforting myths of the 1980s. As if the experience of Roger Douglas’s genuinely radical post-Muldoon policy agenda was literally a once-in-a-lifetime thing – as much as the party could possibly absorb for at least the next 50 years.MEMO ...
The Royal Commission on abuse in care is very significant for the disability community. For many decades last century, thousands of disabled children, and adults who managed to survive, were locked away from families and communities. This was not for anything they had done, but for the perceived threat their ...
With an unfair voting system, uneven electorates and an un-elected upper house, the UK's "democracy" is barely worthy of the name. But now the government wants to make it worse:The government has been accused of suppressing voters’ rights with the potential disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of people after plans ...
Back in the 90's and early 2000's, the building industry was building leaky homes which should never have been granted consent. Now it turns out they've been building dodgy office blocks as well:New imaging technology has revealed hundreds of major buildings nationwide have defective or missing concrete or reinforcing steel. ...
Local body election results were released over the weekend, to joy or despair depending on where you live. In Auckland, Phil Goff trounced John Tamihere, who is muttering darkly about running for Parliament again (but which party would want him?) Wellington is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Weta Workshop, except ...
How could government evolve over the next decades? Reports of democracy’s imminent demise are greatly exaggerated. However, satisfaction with political systems in many countries is low, so there is much to do for governments of all political stripes to improve relevance and trust. Digital technologies are seen as one ...
Two years have now gone by since the Friday afternoon when my university-student son and I headed out of our Barcelona flat to a nearby primary school, designated as a polling station for the vote that was to be held the following Sunday: the referendum on Catalonia’s independence from Spain ...
Overruled: The joint decision of Finance Minister, Grant Robertson (Labour) and his Associate Minister, David Parker (Labour) arguably the two most powerful ministers in Jacinda Ardern’s government, to grant OceanaGold the consents which Land Information Minister, Eugenie Sage (Greens) had earlier denied them, offers bitter proof of how hard fighting ...
More than double the number of people who will vote in this year’s local body elections have tried marijuana or urinated somewhere they shouldn’t have. As local elections look set for the lowest turnout in decades, with many regions falling well short of 40%, the Government is exploring a number ...
A Statement on Abortion Law Reform by the Council of Disobedient Women On the eve of bringing an end to antiquated, anti-women abortion laws Green MP Jan Logie intends to write women out of the Bill. With a stroke of the pen, the woke are aiming for total erasure ...
Musings continue apace about “the experienced businessman!” soon to be taking up a National Party MP position. Or to be more accurate, being parachuted into a seat to shut down their former MP Jamie-Lee Ross, who despite his own shortcomings shed at least some more light on the inner workings ...
The Ugandan government wants to murder gay people:Uganda has announced plans to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. The bill, colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda, was nullified five years ago on a technicality, but the government said on Thursday it plans to resurrect it within weeks. The ...
Hassan Vally, La Trobe UniversityWho doesn’t want to know if drinking that second or third cup of coffee a day will improve your memory, or if sleeping too much increases your risk of a heart attack? We’re invested in staying healthy and many of us are interested in reading ...
Freedom Of Speech? The Säuberung (cleansing by fire) was the work of the German Student Union which, on 10 May 1933, under the watchful eye of the Nazi Reichminister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, consigned 25,000 books to the flames in a ritual exorcism of “un-German thought”. According to the logic of the ...
“There can be no such thing as kaupapa Māori political parties or politics in Aotearoa” (Willie Jackson, Labour Party (2017). Māori TV, General/List Election Special) I begin with that claim because at the time, I was confounded at first that it fell out of Willie Jackson’s mouth, and then ...
New Zealand has prided itself for decades with regard to its lack of pollution, and all will be aware that the ‘100% Pure New Zealand‘ meme is under threat through land, water and air pollution of various causes. There is another type of contamination that the country also faces: light ...
New Zealand’s media is doing its part in Japan, reassuring those in the path of the storm that they won’t miss any rugby while away from their flooded homes. New Zealand sports reporters stationed in Japan for the Rugby World Cup have had the rare and heartwarming opportunity to inform ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones is the only Cabinet member in favour of putting it all on green. As Finance Minister Grant Robertson finds himself with an enormous $7.5 billion surplus, the Government has begun intense, at times contentious conversations about whether to put the money on red or black at ...
by Susanne Kemp At the start of September close to 100,000 school teachers went on strike in Jordan. They demanded a 50% pay rise. A pay rise actually agreed to by the regime back in 2014. In early October, however, in the face of government repression and threats, the teachers’ ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzWhy do people still think climate change isn’t real?David ...
Back in 2011, journalist Nicky Hager published Other People's Wars, an expose on NZDF's activities over the previous decade of the "war on terror". NZDF didn't like this, and especially didn't like the fact that it was base don leaks from their own. So, they had the SIS investigate him ...
The Zero Carbon Bill is due back from select committee in two weeks, and will likely pass its final stages in November. So naturally, farmers are planning a hate-march against it. But they're not just demanding lower methane targets so they can keep on destroying the planet; they're also demanding ...
Last year, California burned. This year, to stop it happening again (or rather, to stop themselves from being found liable if it happens again), Pacific Gas and Electric is cutting power to half the state for a week:Schools are closed. Traffic lights down. Tunnels dark. Businesses unopened. Hospitals running on ...
The Best Way: Missing from the on-line voting debate is any reference to the voting system that produces turn-out figures ranging from 77 to 93 percent of registered voters. The voting system used to collect and count the votes cast in our parliamentary elections. The system that involves citizens making ...
Among the great new bunch of political friends we have been making recently is the excellent Australian-based Marxist gender-critical site, Freer Lives. So we asked the comrade who set up that blog to write something for Redline on the blog, himself, his analysis of the rise of gender politics and ...
by Don Franks The Auckland City Mission is struggling with a 40 percent increase in demand for food parcels this year. A total of 23,020 were needed by June. Last month Missioner Chris Farrelly told the Herald the “cupboards are bare” and without an emergency food drive, he can’t see ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women Massey Wellington Student Association had a sit-in today. Imagine a sit-in. On a campus. Against a women’s rights meeting. Did the ’60s really happen or did we fucking dream it? They gathered in the student square, an echo chamber. Sitting on soft pillows ...
For some reasons, my post about the mystery message from inside the Downing Street bunker seemed to catch people's attention. Quite a lot of hits from NZ (unsurprisingly) and the USA (a bit more puzzlingly, but hi there, USAians!!) and 76 views from the Ukraine.I've celebrated my Ukrainian readers in ...
Journalist Andrew Dickens, reporting from the 2019 New Zealand First Conference, states that the Party once again proved “they are more than a sideshow”. In his op-ed article for NewstalkZB, Mr Dickens said he has always been an admirer of the Party, saying they are “a true centrist party”. “[NZ ...
New Zealand First's potential policy of compulsory community service for ages 15-19 years old has been getting support from those in the industry. A policy remit was passed during their recent Conference in Christchurch, gaining the support of a majority of its membership. Party leader Winston Peters has been talking ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says the Party hopes to decide it’s stance pill testing at music festivals "before the season of concern", with festivals generally held during the summer months. Mr Peters' comments come in an interview with TVNZ's Q+A and follow a remit from the party's youth ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says he has been told to be "alert" to potential cost blowouts for the light rail project in Auckland. Mr Peters said no such concerns were raised with him from ministerial colleagues, including Transport Minister Phil Twyford of the Labour Party. He suggested that ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters Leader of New Zealand First The Benefits of having New Zealand First in the Centre: Security, Experience & Balance 2.00pm, 20th October 2019 Ladies and Gentlemen Thank you all for your warm welcome to this, the party’s 26thConvention. Speaking on behalf of caucus colleagues, it’s great to ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Fletcher Tabuteau is travelling to the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu this week to continue toadvance important bilateral relationships in our region consistent with thePacific Reset. Mr Tabuteau will engage in a range of bilateral meetings and visit New Zealand development ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is predicting a hard Brexit for the United Kingdom, as he believes British Prime Minister Boris Johnson won’t be able to negotiate terms before the October 30 deadline. The Minister, who was one of the first to publicly come out and predict British voters would leave ...
Speaking at the Council of Trade Unions' (CTU) biennial conference, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters told unionists that any future attacks on the Government won't work. "Now, we are being attacked by the union movement in this country. You can have your views but I'm here to say standing ...
We want every New Zealander to be happy, safe, and healthy. To do this, we need to support strong, safe communities, and a robust and efficient health system. ...
Defence Minister Ron Mark has used his powers to overrule a noise complaint ruling against Whenuapai airbase on the grounds of "national security". The Environment Court last month released a ruling in favour of a private developer, declaring the Auckland airbase had to comply with noise restrictions when it performs ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has opened fire against "unreconstructed morons" after NZ First MP Shane Jones was photographed on holiday holding an AR-15 rifle. Mr Peters is defending Mr Jones, telling Magic Talk host Peter Williams that his MP was just having fun "like most people do". "The ...
New Zealand First Deputy Leader and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau was in attendance during the morning blessing of the Rotorua Lakefront development project. Around 60 people gathered on the shores of Lake Rotorua, including city mayor Steve Chadwick and deputy Dave Donaldson. The Lakefront development is a ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones is considering reining in on conversions of farmland to forestry, and also issued a warning to foreign-owned forestry companies that make up nearly 75 per cent of the industry. He said too many foreign companies had not provided enough access for domestic processors to get timber. ...
Speaking to Radio NZ, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the tightening of the parental category visa is a direct result of the Party’s coalition negotiations with the Labour Party. He said the new changes switch the financial onus from the parent moving to New Zealand to the child ...
The Coalition Government is set to cut red tape in the building and construction sector in an effort to allow more houses to be built, including prefabricated houses. The changes will enable the mass factory production of "high quality" buildings, slash the likely number of building inspections for factory produced ...
Since coming into Government, we’ve worked hard to tackle homelessness and make sure everyone has a warm, dry home. And today, on World Homeless Day, we want to report back and update you on our progress so far. ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has hit back at National Party leader Simon Bridges who criticized the Coalition Government’s approach to crime, and said that the latter isn't credible in his attack on the Government over gang recruitment. "We've got as massive drug problem in this country. It is ...
New Zealand Mānuka honey exporters have welcomed an initiative by the Coalition Government to help secure the term “mānuka honey” to be used exclusively by Kiwi exporters, ensuring that our multimillion-dollar industry is protected. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had recently announced that a Provincial Growth Funding of $5.7 ...
Political commentator Mike Hosking has labelled New Zealand First leader Winston Peters as “the voice of reason in a government soft on drugs”, for the Party’s stance on drug testing at music festivals. “If common sense is worth a vote, Winston Peters is quids in,” Mr Hosking said. The Labour ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau has announced Provincial Growth Funding to ensure work opportunities in Turangi and Whanganui, through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi. A fund of $500,000 will go to Rafting NZ in Turangi for a 16-week river guide training course to train ...
Treasury has shown that the Coalition Government has a $7.5 billion surplus, which is $4 billion higher than what was expected in the 2019 Budget unveiled last May. It is also $2 billion higher than the actual surplus unveiled this time last year, and at a size that has not ...
Official Information Act figures released to NZME show there were 350 assaults on officers in the year to the end of June, 79 more than the year before. The increase in attacks have sparked calls for more legal protection for first responders to be enacted. The assaults included officers being ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
We're making progress on tackling the long-term challenges: from homelessness, to strengthening border security, to bringing banking back New Zealand's small towns. ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones has backed the ambitious plan to move Auckland’s port to Northport, at Whangarei harbour, which he says will be the “King Kong of infrastructure”. The plan is part of the recommendations of a six-person independent working group, which has recommended the Ports of Auckland be ...
A six-member independent working group selected the option of moving Auckland’s port to Northport, in Whangarei, ahead of other options. In what could be New Zealand’s most ambitious infrastructure project yet, a major expansion of the Marsden Point port could happen within 15 years. The project, officially called the “Upper ...
The final Electricity Price Review recommended prohibiting prompt payment discounts but allowing “reasonable” late fees. The findings of this review was welcomed by the Coalition Government, but they hope companies will follow through with its recommendations without regulations needed to be passed. Meridian Energy had already stopped prompt payment discounts, ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF)through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi,will invest nearly $600,000 to ensure work opportunities for locals in Turangia and Whanganui, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “I’m pleased to announce the PGF ...
An export-led economy is one of New Zealand First’s key principles, and our commitment to achieving this is shown by the continuing skyrocketing demand for our beef and sheep meat exports. Beef + Lamb New Zealand's New Season Outlook 2019-20 report forecasts beef, lamb and mutton prices to lift from ...
Minister for Māori Development, Nanaia Mahuta, has selected Arihia Bennett MNZM, Chief Executive Officer of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, as the Te Puni Kōkiri appointed representative on the New Zealand-China Council. The New Zealand-China Council (the Council) was established in 2012 as a New Zealand led and funded organisation ...
Responsibility for processing the small number of Southern Response claims still to be settled will be transferred to EQC by the end of the year. “As claim numbers reduce, it no longer makes sense for the Crown to have two organisations processing the remaining Canterbury claims,” Grant Robertson says. “Since ...
Health Minister David Clark is encouraging Whanganui residents to take up the opportunity for free bowel screening, which can detect cancer early when it’s easier to treat. Over the next two years 12,000 Whanganui locals, aged 60 to 74 will be invited to participate in the National Bowel Screening ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio, heads to Oslo today to represent New Zealand at the sixth Our Ocean Conference, which is being hosted by the Norwegian Government from the 23-24 October. “The Our Ocean Conference mobilises real action on issues like marine plastic pollution and the impacts of ...
Two secondary-school initiatives are being expanded as part of the Government’s plan to see more young New Zealanders take up a trade to help close the skills gap. This includes the largest single increase in Trades Academy places in recent years. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Education Minister Chris ...
Session 4: Pacific Connectivity – Youth, Media and New Opportunities Kia ora tatou katoa and Warm Pacific greetings to one and all. Representatives of Tainui, the local people of the land, or manawhenua – the indigenous peoples of this area – have welcomed you this morning in accordance with ...
The Government today announced its support for a project that could substantially reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions from cattle. The announcement was made as part of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor’s visit to Nelson’s Cawthron Aquaculture Park. The Cawthron Institute will receive $100,000 from the Government’s ...
Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni has welcomed the first reading of the New Zealand Superannuation and Veteran’s Pension Legislation Amendment Bill. “Every New Zealander has a stake in New Zealand Superannuation and Veteran’s Pension,” says Carmel Sepuloni. “They are our most common form of social assistance – nearly 800,000 New ...
Babies in Auckland aged six months and over can receive a free vaccination and children will all have access to vaccines, Associate Minister of Health Julie Anne Genter announced today at Papatoetoe High School. The move comes as part of Government efforts to step up the fight against measles. ...
***Check against delivery*** Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here, and to have the honour of opening this important conference on behalf of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. Let us take the opportunity to acknowledge all the people who have helped make today possible, including our special ...
Police Minister Stuart Nash says the safety of frontline officers and members of the public will be the focus of a new trial of specialist Police response teams in three of our largest urban centres. Police have this morning released details of an initiative to be trialled in Counties Manukau, ...
The Minister of Fisheries is calling for entries for a new public award to celebrate innovation in our seafood sector. “I have established the Seafood Sustainability Awards to recognise and celebrate those throughout industry, tangata whenua and communities who demonstrate outstanding dedication and innovation towards the sustainability of New Zealand’s ...
Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter welcomes leaders in the private sector taking action on closing their gender pay gaps to ensure a fairer workplace for all New Zealanders. Ms Genter today launched a new report, Addressing the gender pay gap and driving women’s representation in senior leadership, from the Champions for ...
Government Ministers today welcomed the release of a marine environment report highlighting the four key issues affecting our oceans, estuaries and coastlines. The release underlines the importance of government proposals to combat climate pollution, ensure clean freshwater, protect biodiversity, make land use more sustainable, and reduce waste and plastic. Environment ...
The Government has approved funding for a new acute mental health facility for Waikato which will provide better care and support to people with mental health and addiction issues. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Health Minister Dr David Clark announced the $100 million project to replace the aging Henry Rongomau ...
The Government is making progress on its goal to integrate te reo Māori into education by 2025, with over 500 teachers and support staff already graduating from Te Ahu o te Reo Māori, Associate Education Minister Kelvin Davis announced today. Kelvin Davis made the announcement at an awards ceremony in Waikanae today, for ...
Statistics Minister James Shaw has welcomed the first release of 2018 Census data. The first release of data today, 23 September, includes key data on population, regional growth, the number of homes and the size of different ethnic groups in New Zealand. Data from the 2018 Census will support the ...
Minister for Statistics James Shaw today announced a public consultation on a proposed algorithm charter for government agencies. The charter has been developed by the Government Chief Data Steward in response to growing calls for more transparency in government use of data. Computer algorithms – procedures or formulas for solving ...
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor, Climate Change Minister James Shaw and visiting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte co-hosted a business roundtable in Auckland this morning focused on working together to address climate change. “The Netherlands is an important partner for New Zealand. We share a strong agricultural history. Sustainable agribusiness and ...
The Government is taking action to build an inclusive economy where more of us receive our fair share at work and businesses can compete on great products and services, not undercutting wages and conditions, Immigration and Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. Two consultations launched today seek feedback ...
The future for New Zealand’s threatened indigenous freshwater fish looks brighter with the passing of the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill in Parliament today said Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage. “Until now, our freshwater fish legislation has been 20 years out of date. We have lacked effective tools to ...
At 1.30pm tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of Kiwis will join about 65 million people around the globe in ShakeOut, the world’s biggest earthquake drill. The annual drill is to remind people of the right action to take during an earthquake which is to Drop, Cover, Hold, and to practise their ...
Kiwis are benefiting from higher wage growth and low inflation under the Coalition Government. Stats NZ data out today shows the rise in the cost of living remains low, as annual Consumers Price Index (CPI) inflation fell to 1.5% in September from 1.7% in June. “The low inflation comes as ...
New Zealand’s economic strength and resilience has been recognised in a major update on the state of the global economy. The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook released overnight shows a reduced global growth forecast over the next two years as issues like the US-China trade war and Brexit take hold. ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little has today introduced a new Bill to prevent terrorism and support the de-radicalisation of New Zealanders returning from overseas. The Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill gives the New Zealand Police the ability to apply to the High Court to impose control orders on New Zealanders who ...
A Bill that proposes targeted changes to simplify the processes for Māori land owners when engaging with the Māori Land Court has had its First Reading today. “The approach taken by the Government is to ensure that the protection of Māori land remains a priority as we seek to improve ...
Let me first thank all the new unionists and members in the room. There is nothing more important to improving people’s working lives than people making the decision to care, to get on board and help, to take up the reins and get involved. Congratulations to you. You bring the ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark has signed a certificate exempting the activity of engine testing at Whenuapai Airbase from the Resource Management Act 1991. The Act gives the Minister of Defence the power to exempt activities for the purposes of national security. The certificate will mean the recent Environment Court ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced New Zealand will join the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action while attending APEC meetings in Chile. The objective of the 39 member Coalition is to share information and promote action to tackle climate change. It was formed in April this year, in ...
Feedback sought– Lyttelton commercial zone parking The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Poto Williams, is seeking feedback on a proposal to remove on-site car parking requirements for new developments in the Lyttelton commercial zone. The proposal, by Christchurch City Council, asks that powers under section 71 of the Greater ...
Hon Minister Poto Williams Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration MEDIA STATEMENT Tuesday 15 October 2019 Feedback sought – Hagley Oval The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Poto Williams, is seeking feedback on a proposal about Hagley Oval. The proposal was developed by Regenerate Christchurch ...
Ladies and gentlemen, NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff, members of respective unions – thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. This might be preaching to the choir, but the importance of trade unions in New Zealand’s historical arch is difficult to understate. And it is my belief that ...
"Let’s start by acknowledging that it has been a huge year. " Police Association Annual Conference James Cook Grand Chancellor Hotel Wellington Nau mai, haere mai. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, ka nui te mihi, ki a koutou katoa. President of the Police Association, Chris Cahill; Members of the Association and ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters and Minister of Defence Ron Mark have announced the New Zealand Government’s decision to again deploy a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 (P-3) maritime patrol aircraft to support the implementation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions imposing sanctions against North Korea. New ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says New Zealand continues to have serious concerns for peace and stability in north-east Syria. “Recent reports that hundreds of ISIS-affiliated families have fled from a camp are deeply concerning from a humanitarian and security perspective”, Mr Peters says. “While we acknowledge Turkey’s domestic security ...
Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor is warning travelling Kiwis to be vigilant as the high-season for the crop-eating brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) is under way. “We’re on high alert to stop BMSB arriving in NZ. The high season runs until April 30 and we’ve strengthened our measures to stop stink ...
The Government is moving swiftly to change the law to improve the welfare and pastoral care of students living in university halls of residence and other tertiary hostels. Cabinet has agreed to several changes, including creating a new mandatory Code of Practice that sets out the duty of pastoral care ...
The Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage has launched a new comprehensive trapping guide for community trappers to help them protect our native birds, plants and other wildlife, at Zealandia in Wellington today. ‘A practical guide to trapping’, has been developed by the Department of Conservation (DOC), and was launched during ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter welcomes PHARMAC’s move to improve access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs). PHARMAC has today announced it will fund the full cost of Mirena and Jaydess for anyone seeking long term contraception, lifting previous restrictions on access to Mirena. “I welcome women having greater choices ...
The Government has approved the next stage of a major redevelopment of Taranaki Base Hospital, which will deliver new and improved facilities for patients. Health Minister Dr David Clark has announced details of a $300 million dollar project to build a new East Wing at the New Plymouth hospital. It ...
“The Prime Minister must publicly support an immediate ban on Gay Conversion Therapy . If I was Jacinda I would feel morally obligated to give more confidence on where I stand, when I have asked for, and received, support from that community.” ...
New abortion law marks significant and needed progress for reproductive rights in New Zealand Amnesty International has today made its submission to the Abortion Legislation Committee in Wellington. The rights at stake in the legislation include the rights ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Transport Thomas Coughlan (Stuff): NZ Transport Agency to Phil Twyford: We should have done better ...
Crisis of Safety and Confidence in our Engineering, Building and Construction Industries Please find attached a copy of an Open Letter from Professor Maan Alkaisi, Spokesperson CTV Families Group. This was sent a short time ago to the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, ...
Safe speed limits are survivable speed limits and this is what AT has endorsed in its step change decision today. This decision is a landmark that sets the scene for a new focus on road safety in New Zealand. ...
The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) says the inadequate treatment of urology patients in Southern District Health Board is distressing and should serve as a broad reminder to DHB management to listen when specialists raise concerns. ...
Informed via telegram that Netflix has released a full trailer for the new season of The Crown, Tara Ward puts on her best boxhat and white gloves to find out what round three will bring. The good Lorde told us we’ll never be royals, so the first full trailer for the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Dehm, Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie has some sobering reading to do over the coming weeks: an 88-page Senate report into the government-sponsored bill to repeal the medevac law that allow refugees and asylum seekers in Papua ...
Eric Crampton has fun imagining a version of MBIE that worried it could be subject to cartel criminalisation provisions for the anticompetitive regimes it has established. ...
Criminologist Antje Deckert has just completed a two-year study of how women offenders are portrayed in New Zealand newspapers. The results show that journalists are telling very different stories abut Māori and Pākehā. That our criminal justice system is in desperate need of reform and that we need to reduce the ...
China continues its march into the Pacific with a China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum in Samoa this week. Ahead of the forum, Beijing has signed seven new agreements with Samoa covering education, trade, e-commerce, investment, infrastructure and agriculture. China’s Vice-Premier Hu Chunhua heads his delegation in Apia ...
It might be tempting to yell, but there are more effective ways to talk to doubters about the value of vaccines, write Julie Leask and Maryke Steffens.Your neighbour is telling you about his new baby. He feels nervous about vaccinating, and says he’s considering delaying Lucy’s vaccines.Your mother’s group is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Debra Wain, Academic in Professional and Creaive Writing, Deakin University Why do we tell stories, and how are they crafted? In this series, we unpick the work of the writer on both page and screen. Anna Spargo-Ryan’s debut novel, The Paper House ...
The Movies, a documentary series that celebrates movies and their impact on culture, is available on TVNZ OnDemand today. Sam Brooks pulls some of the best quotes from its galaxy of stars.Ever wanted to get a snapshot of cinematic history without leaving the comfort of your couch, or even your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ronald F Pol, Senior researcher NZ, La Trobe University Money laundering rarely gets as literal as the case in Thailand last week, where police raided homes of a ring suspected of laundering a billion baht (about A$48 million) of drug proceeds and ...
The NZTA chair has acknowledged the agency dropped the ball in its early handling of Auckland's light rail project, as the NZ Infra proposal grips ministers. ...
On Friday it was announced that Armed Offenders Squad patrols will be trialled in Counties Manukau, Waikato and Canterbury over the next six months. The data suggests this will increase police violence and unfairly target Māori, writes Emilie Rākete.Police Commissioner Mike Bush announced on Friday that cars of Armed Offender ...
This summary is provided to assist in the understanding of the Court’s judgment. It does not comprise part of the reasons for that judgment. The full judgment with reasons is the only authoritative document. The full text of the judgment and reasons ...
There’s something about the feeling of wind whipping my face that brings me out of my head and into the moment. Once a month we pedal as a group: recreating the feeling of childlike glee riding our bikes together, writes Helen King.The first bike I learned to ride belonged to ...
More than 10,000 school support staff around the country have begun two weeks of paid union meetings to discuss progress on pay equity, and next steps following the Ministry of Education's failure to present a collective agreement offer. ...
Government ministers are adamant New Zealand’s economic fundamentals are solid, unemployment is at a record low, growth is faster than in Australia, and the surplus in the government accounts and low debt present further opportunities to strengthen the economy. Yet, across the road from the Beehive, the view from the ...
Wellington's mayor-elect Andy Foster says talk about a recount is causing a "distraction" for the council at the start of their term, but the incumbent Justin Lester says it's essential for a democratic process. ...
Police Commissioner Mike Bush has today announced an independent review of the systems and processes NZ Police has in place to address complaints of bullying. ...
The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry has formalised an integrated pathway for survivors to seek justice for the abuse they suffered in State care or in the care of faith-based institutions. ...
The small-claims mediation process is meant to give real people a voice, but the financial and emotional sacrifice just isn’t worth it, writes Jai BreitnauerWhen we moved to the semi-rural dreamland of Te Henga (Bethell’s Beach) in 2017, we couldn’t imagine that anything would be able to tarnish the beautiful ...
The New Zealand Bar Association welcomes a Court of Appeal decision which gives detailed guidance on sentencing people convicted of offences related to the importation, manufacture and supply of methamphetamine. ...
Methamphetamine (meth) dealers who can prove their own addiction caused their drug offending could have their sentences cut by 30 per cent, according to a landmark judgement released by the Court of Appeal. The role of an offender in a drug network ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Ananian-Welsh, Senior Lecturer, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland Australians picked up their morning papers yesterday to find heavily blacked-out text instead of front-page headlines. This bold statement was instigated by the “Your Right to Know” campaign, an ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul McGreevy, Professor of Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare Science, University of Sydney The slaughter of horses bred for racing in Australia, as revealed in the ABC’s investigation, highlights the challenge of what to do with racehorses when their careers are over. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carlina Black, PhD candidate, La Trobe University It’s a year since the national apology to victims and survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. While national apologies can acknowledge survivors, sorry is just the beginning. Access to healing is needed. Our research shows ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University Right now, two projects have been proposed to import gas from overseas to supply eastern Australia. This is an absurd prospect. Australia is a resource-rich ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Pitman, Senior Research Fellow, Curtin University In a recent nation-wide survey by online tutoring company Cluey Learning, 75% of Australian senior students said their ATAR score would impact on the rest of their life. And more than 80% said a score ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shih-Wen Sue Chen, Senior Lecturer in Writing and Literature, Deakin University There is a new challenger to Disney’s hold on the global animation industry, and he is a Chinese demon child. [embedded content]Ne Zha: Birth of the Demon Child, from Chengdu Coco ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Wellington’s new mayor faces difficult three years, Zero Carbon bill select committee report comes back, and extremist preacher barred from NZPartly because it was a widely unexpected result, the opening days of Wellington mayor Andy Foster’s tenure have been gripping. He ...
After her own troubled teenage years, Fran McEwen doesn't want to see other girls going through the same challenges. So she's running a race across a Middle Eastern desert to help them. ...
Laurence Fearnley, author of a best-selling novel about perfumes, proposes a radical new scheme in which people of refined noses set out together and establish a sniffing group. ...
A string of failures over the past 25 years has drawn attention to the quality of regulatory practice in NZ. Jeroen van der Heijden looks at what we can do differently. ...
Last night, the two titans of the cannabis referendum came together for their first televised debate on the issue – Paula Bennett and Chlöe Swarbrick.From a distance, Paula Bennett and Chlöe Swarbrick don’t feel like the most likely opponents. What with Paula Bennett recently-ish stating she would not seek re-election ...
Andrew Little’s terrorism suppression bill is facing two very different forms of resistance, from National and from the Greens. What is the legislation, and why is it controversial?What this then? The Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill, introduced to parliament by the justice minister, Andrew Little, last Wednesday, seeks to introduce “a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Given her status as holding two vital Senate crossbench votes Pauline Hanson is at times, in the eyes of senior government figures, She Who Must Be Obeyed. And so it was last week, when Hanson ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says he'll be watching out for potential cost blow-outs for Auckland's light rail project, after warnings from a source within the transport industry. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin University Fully Sikh, directed by Matt Edgerton, Perth’s Studio Underground The foyer is adorned with colourful fabric and bunting. We’re welcomed by the sounds of Indian music while members of the Sikh community offer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin University Fully Sikh, directed by Matt Edgerton, Perth’s Studio Underground The foyer is adorned with colourful fabric and bunting. We’re welcomed by the sounds of Indian music while members of the Sikh community offer ...
New Zealand First leader and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters with Governor General Dame Patsy Reddy and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.Trying to make sense of the New Zealand First party can be difficult at the best of times. Political journalists and commentators attempt to work out where the party ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.TV3 sale Tim Batt (Metro): What if THREE’s problem isn’t TVNZ but… MediaWorks? Alex Braae ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Miller, Professor of Violence Prevention and Addiction Studies, Deakin University Over recent weeks, the alcohol industry has been drumming up mediadiscussion around Australia’s new drinking guidelines. Australia’s guidelines on alcohol consumption are under ongoing review by the National Health and ...
Extremist Baptist pastor Steven Anderson has just been blocked from entering New Zealand, making us the 34th country to reject his hate speech-filled sermons. American pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church has been denied entry to New Zealand on character grounds, putting a stop to his plans to ...
Twenty years ago Stephen Chbosky had a massive hit with coming-of-age novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Now the director/producer/scriptwriter is back with an epic, kid-centric horror. Early on in Stephen Chbosky’s frustrating new horror novel, Imaginary Friend, its seven-year-old protagonist Christopher is sitting down to watch his favourite cartoon, ...
Hold on to your sponge nubbins, New Zealand’s loveliest reality show Great Kiwi Bake Off is back for a second serving. Before the show’s return on November 3, Tara Ward takes a sneak peek at 2019’s contestants. Lay me down on a soft bed of whipped cream and swab my forehead with a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ronald F Pol, Senior researcher NZ, La Trobe University Money laundering rarely gets as literal as the case in Thailand last week, where police raided homes of a ring suspected of laundering a billion baht (about A$48 million) of drug proceeds and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wilfred Wang, Lecturer, Communications & Media Studies, Monash University The Australian society has changed significantly since cemeteries in Victoria were planned and designed 150 years ago. But there haven’t been any major redevelopment or review of the community’s changing requirements for what ...
NZ Post’s failure to maintain an adequate postal voting infrastructure has been the subject of two submissions to Parliamentary Select Committees by the Postal Workers Union since the last Local Authority postal vote in 2016. The union maintained that ...
New Zealand honey growers appear to have so far avoided the heavy hand of the Australian government in their dispute with apiarists across the Tasman. ...
A downturn in Tourism Holdings' (THL) vehicle sales business in the United States is likely to have a material negative affect on its full year results, the company warns. ...
The troubled Auckland Light Rail project is back in the news again, and not for good reasons. So what does it all mean for transport and traffic congestion in New Zealand’s biggest city?What’s all this then?It seemed like such a good plan at the time. Over the course of 10 ...
Since taking office in this Govt, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has applied heft to NZ’s role in the Pacific. Now, 18 months on, he reflects on what has been achieved. Speaking to the NZ Institute of International Affairs, he said NZ is moving away from the donor-recipient dynamics of the ...
A white police officer who shot and killed an African American woman in her home in Fort Worth, Texas, in the presence of her eight-year-old nephew has been charged with murder after resigning from the force. The Fort Worth Police Department said its officers had been responding to a call from a neighbour, ...
Madeleine Chapman took her piano-playing nephew Harper to see the orchestra for the first time. Madeleine: When I was very small, I used to sit in the hallway at home with my closest siblings and we would ask our brother Bernard, a teenager at the time, to play songs on the ...
Otago-grown agricultural technology company Techion has cornered an international market. Its founder, Greg Mirams, explained how the internet of things and fast fibre broadband has transformed the way he does business.In a Dunedin bedroom in 1992, Greg Mirams invented Techion’s founding product: FEKPAKG2. It was developed to help local farmers ...
Botany is an electorate that deserves a representative who is committed to their community which is the reason New Conservative has confirmed Elliot Ikilei as the candidate for the 2020 election. ...
Anyone who would like to submit an account of their experience of state care to the Māori Inquiry into Oranga Tamariki has 10 days left before submissions close. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justine Shaw, Conservation Biologist, The University of Queensland This year, five of the seven Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science were awarded to women. While this is a welcome development, the great majority of awards and prizes for science, technology, engineering and mathematics ...
Open mike 24/04/2019 
There was another police chase in Christchurch this morning, resulting in a crash which killed one person and injured five more. Because someone died, the chase is being investigated by the Independent Police Conduct Authority. And based on previous reports by the IPCA, we know how it will go: the ...3 hours ago
Back in 2010, I wrote about the strange tale of the zombie ants, which do the bidding of their fungal overlords. (They’re not an isolated example; a range of parasites change their hosts’ behaviour. See here and here for example – though as you’ll find, the toxoplasmosis story may be ...7 hours ago
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by the Council of Disobedient Women We call on the Council of Trade Unions to show some fortitude and take a stand with your sisters. Unionists know that there is a material world, otherwise workers could simply identify out of poverty. They could declare themselves Well Paid. Why stop ...23 hours ago
Keir Starmer has hinted that Labour might vote in favour of the Johnson government's shoddy deal, with the proviso that a second referendum is attached:Speaking to BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show, he said: “We will see what that looks like but it makes sense to say that by whatever ...1 day ago
In 1994, I was the editor for an issue of Planet magazine focused on cannabis, its culture and the prospects for the end of its prohibition. Part of that issue was an interview with 'Ringo', an experienced cannabis dealer.I recently posted my essay from that issue, and I figured it ...3 days ago
Dr Helen Waite, sports sociologist and former elite athlete, on the invasion of women’s sport by men and the anti-scientific and misogynist ideology used to rationalise it. ...3 days ago
Media Statement for Immediate Release 16th October 2019 “Fake News” from Auckland City Council CCOs Board Chairs re pay and performance bonuses for top managers Despite comments from Auckland City Council CCOs Board Chairs re pay and performance bonuses for top managers—Herald Newspaper Tuesday Oct 15th–there is very little evidence ...5 days ago
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz There is a lot of discussion on the benefits of ...6 days ago
Thanks to a report from the Acting Inspector General of Intelligence and Security following a complaint by Nicky Hager, we have come to find out that the SIS illegally spied on Mr. Hager on behalf of the NZDF after publication of Hager’s 2011 book, Other People’s Wars. The NZDF justified ...1 week ago
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate. FACT: The HadCRUT3 surface temperature index, produced by the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, shows warming to 1878, cooling to 1911, ...1 week ago
A list of indicators of bad science – many of these are found in articles promoted by anti-fluoride activists. Anti-fluoride activists have been pouring money into a scaremongering campaign warning pregnant women not to drink fluoridated water. They claim fluoride will lower the IQ of their future child. Fluoride ...1 week ago
More than double the number of people who will vote in this year’s local body elections have tried marijuana or urinated somewhere they shouldn’t have. As local elections look set for the lowest turnout in decades, with many regions falling well short of 40%, the Government is exploring a number ...2 weeks ago
Musings continue apace about “the experienced businessman!” soon to be taking up a National Party MP position. Or to be more accurate, being parachuted into a seat to shut down their former MP Jamie-Lee Ross, who despite his own shortcomings shed at least some more light on the inner workings ...2 weeks ago
“There can be no such thing as kaupapa Māori political parties or politics in Aotearoa” (Willie Jackson, Labour Party (2017). Māori TV, General/List Election Special) I begin with that claim because at the time, I was confounded at first that it fell out of Willie Jackson’s mouth, and then ...2 weeks ago
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“What if the culture you grew up in was broken in ways that you didn’t even have words for?”
https://aschoolcalledhome.org/finding-our-way-home/
As cultures break down, alcohol consumption rises, so I've read recently. Saying goodbye to a culture and it's practices will be like farewelling a very, very close friend.
"A culture faces and interprets pain, deviance and death. It endows them with meaning; it illuminates how they are a part of the whole and thereby makes them tolerable … The widespread use of alcohol and other central nervous system anaesthetics is directly linked to a decline in culture. The wider their use, the harder it becomes to preserve, renew and invigorate the wisdom that a culture should hold. This doubles back and escalates. Alcoholism spreads when a culture is dying, just as rickets appears when there is no Vitamin D."
I know it's a quote, but that makes no sense. A declining culture promotes alcoholism, and the decline will reverse if people drink less alcohol? That's like saying it's getting cold and people dress warmer. If only they didn't, the weather would get warmer again. Cause and effect…
I think it's like saying it's getting cold and people drink more alcohol. They feel good for a while but are more likely to suffer death from exposure. Also, a clear mind, rather than one anaesthetised one, is more likely to make a life-saving decision, imo.
It reminded me of ACT welfare policy. Persistent unemployment causes benefit dependency. So if we take away the benefit, there is no unemployment.
Won’t argue re decision making
Danyl dropped down the rabbit hole into the la-la land of Treasury, where the boffins had organised a group of 30 to crowd-source the design of the coalition's well-being budget policy: https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/23-04-2019/peace-rest-and-the-monkey-emoji-moon-playing-heartwork-cards-at-treasury/
Being clever, they had performed the u-turn from exclusive to inclusive, realised the best way to include typical Labour voters was to operate at their mental level of capability, so they used a method suitable for kindergarten children.
"You take a deck of Heartwork cards: these are thin, circular, like coasters in mid-range wine bars, only instead of inspirational quotes or vineyard logos they’re printed with sun feelings, moon feelings and needs. You think about a confrontation you’ve had, or a meeting you’re doing to have, and you pick three cards to represent your needs."
Heartwork is the business consultancy who supplied the method. It "is also a game… in which you learn to talk about your feelings and emotional needs, and this aims to solve the problems of the DEVUCA world by building empathy and psychological safety creating organisational win-win-wins through people-centered product, service and policy design via system leadership."
"Next you pick three cards to represent the needs of the other person. There are 50 to choose from. They might want (random shuffle): Stability, or Understanding, or Sense-of-team, or Clarity. Now that you’ve defined everyone’s needs – “all human behaviour is a strategy to meet our needs,” Rousseau explains – you simply envision a win-win-win scenario in which everyone’s needs are met."
"Treasury is working hard to return New Zealand to a pre-neoliberal, prelapsarian state. Next month the government will release its first “Wellbeing Budget”’ It uses the Treasury’s Living Standards Framework, a world leading concept which, Ross informs us, the department has been working on for 18 years. Instead of focusing purely on economic capital the public service, led by Treasury, will seek to grow the country’s human, social and environmental capital."
Nice curve ball there, Danyl. Prelapsarian is indeed a word. Google defines it thus: characteristic of the time before the Fall of Man; innocent and unspoilt. I'll leave readers to puzzle over whether the definition is sexist or not. Gender equality has gotten ever so complicated after trending non-binary, so I suggest keeping it simple. Would the Fall of Woman be a suitable political topic nowadays, or should we leave as is?
How does it work n praxis franko? Sounds like the kind of management substitute guff you'd have great gnosis of.
So you still haven't figured out the difference between practice & praxis?? Even though I gave you the explanation in a single sentence with no long words? Give some thought to the old adage `if at first you don't succeed, try harder'.
As regards how it works, rebels tend not to get into management so I can't help you from the perspective of operational experience. Best guess: tell them what to do. Always worked perfectly with Labour voters, eh? Anyone else asks why, of course.
How very Prolapsarian of you franko.
"Gaelic's attentiveness to place is reflected in its topographical precision. It has a plentiful vocabulary to describe different forms of hill, peak or slope (beinn, stob, dún, cnoc, sròn), for example, and particular words to describe each of the stages of a river's course from its earliest rising down to its widest point as it enters the sea. Much of the landscape is understood in anthropomorphic terms, so the names of topographical features are often the same as those for parts of the body. It draws a visceral sense of connection between sinew, muscle and bone and the land. Gaelic poetry often attributes character and agency to landforms, so mountains might speak or be praised as if they were a chieftain; the Psalms (held in particular reverence in Gaelic culture) talk of landscape in a similar way, with phrases such as the 'hills run like a deer.' In both, the land is recognized as alive."
Substitute "Maori" for Gaelic.
https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2019/04/a-language-of-land-and-sea.html
Or pretty much anything.
Well, that's pretty damn decisive:
Colmar Brunton (April 2019)
Crusaders name change
Question: “Following the Christchurch terrorist attack, do you think the Crusaders rugby team should change their name?”
Yes …………. 14%
No ………….. 76%
DK …………… 8%
Refused …… 1%
Above Average: No
▪Those living in Otago and Southland (90%)
▪National Party supporters (87%)
▪Those aged 18-29 (85%).
Above Average: Yes
▪Those with annual household income $150,000+ (25%).
▪Labour Party supporters (22%).
.
So … very strong Public support for the Government's Gun Law changes (About Right … 61%, … Not Far Enough … 19% (= 80%), … Goes Too Far … 14%) … but minimal endorsement of Crusaders name change. (Yes, by all means take the necessary practical steps … but Don’t fuck with the Rugby / Don’t fuck with the Culture, basically)
And well done to all those Labour supporters with households pulling in over $150,000.
🙂
You'd be surprised how many there are in that category – a lot of couples with both working in the public sector bring in upwards of $150,000, and plenty of them are Labour or Green voters.
Not surprised at all PM.
The New Middle Class (or Professional and Managerial Class (PMC))
Especially Public Servants (both Labour & Green voters … although I’m guessing the latter swung heavily to Labour 2017)
Not so fast. A $150 household is 1x$70k and 1x$80k.
That's not a new managerial anything.
The managerial class you are thinking of start with households pulling $300k from salaries, before you get to the rentals.
Whoaaaa there, Compardre, Don’t be quite so quick on the draw !
The category is: 150k Plus !!!
That 25% might come entirely from the 300K brigade, nested deep within that particular demographic.
The New Middle Class are precisely the people I'd expect to be most supportive of a name change. Affluent Moral Liberals / Craft Beer Hipsters / People with unusually refined sensibilities who insist on Minimalist Interior Design and the like.
It might.
But I think you're preparing to describe one of the 8 Tribes of New Zealand, that's the Grey Lynner tribe I think.
1st World prollims eh?
Such is the nature of NuZull's 'Left' these days.
It's possible/probable we might all be fucked in the not-too-distant, unless something ‘transformational’ happens [goan forwid]
Of which ours is one, well until this year when retirement will change that a bit. Earning as much as possible – mainly from my husband's hard work, he likes it fortunately and it keeps him fit – has become a must over recent years so that we can genuinely trickle it down to move people forward. Car repairs, dental visits, bonds for rentals were clear to us not easily obtainable to many young hard workers trying to get traction in the world or those who faced unforeseen "hiccups". Being on one end of "it is better to give than receive" too is not something I am unaware of aware of that an element of "sefishness" is normal in wanting to see good outcomes and to sleep peacefully at night.
If anyone needs to see National Party desperation and complete cynicism at work page five of our local paper below a heartfelt obituary for local man Tommy Gear and co-founder of NZ First at the outset is somewhat conveniently placed an electoral advert for the National Party. As a consequence our long term subscription has been cancelled and a full discussion had with the staff member who took the cacellation as to why.
Past experience has me 100% certain, I read the paper daily and these local adverts are now rare, that in no way was the placement "accidental".
It confirmed all the dislike I have for a political party clearly, to me, interested in votes to retain the parliamentary benches and nothing about working for NZ.
I knew there had to be more than could be counted on one hand out there. There's got to be a few of us on this site.
Good luck for falling off the income cliff.
We're pacing it, money is not "god" but it does have it's uses, beyond that you can't take it with you thought some seem to adhere to that thought. Best are the times we have had along the way and long may that continue:)
"Don’t fuck with the Culture" – see comment #2
Also, how about 'The Sythians" as an alternative?
Very sad. But kiwis political choices haven't been up to much lately. 9 years of steady as she goes destruction case in point.
Awww sad for those people – don't wanna keep their stupid made up name for their made up team – I can't say I'm going to be sorry seeing all these people eat the shit sandwich of change.
Warriors and Chiefs next in line right mardymardy?
lol oh dear – one is rugby and one is rugby league gabby – nevermind here is some knowledge to help you out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_football
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rugby_league
Perhaps the respondents had a better understanding of the wider meaning of the words 'crusader' or 'crusade'. Or maybe, just maybe, people can scoff at the stupidity of all the fuss over events that happened almost 1,000 years ago?
I reckon its also a push back on the constant need to please the minority .
Fight the fights worth fighting .
The left damages it self by chaseing every little cause .
Since you’re pretty good at wider meanings…. How about an american sports team called the 9 11ers or the WMD’s?
In 1,000 years, who would care?
I don’t know how closely everyone is following the US elections for next year but I have been following the potential nominees are am really liking that Pete Buttigieg. Do you think the US is ready for an openly gay president?
Also I’m wondering if the Republicans think they’ll lose with Trump will they step-in to remove him (say if his tax returns so him to be a shameless crook)?
2020 could be very interesting
They're not ready for an openly female president. I reckon they’ll go for a pro wrestler next.
That's very democratic approach. Anyone can be President – and so anyone who has the funding to make a name for himself or her, is having a go. That's the spirit. Perhaps the term should be divided up into quarters like they do in business, and at that time they report their activity and their effectiveness and then get voted in or out, with a sort of list of waiting opportunists who want a turn and are ready to step up if called.
Reminds me of Brewsters Millions.
I reckon the states where being openly gay would reduce his vote are states that are currently solid Repug anyway. That opinion is based on working with manufacturing workforces in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (admittedly the more liberal parts of those states) and even a couple of decades ago openly gay staff seemed totally accepted.
So I don't reckon that will directly affect his chances, but the electoral downside in solid red states may be more on tight House and Senate races. If there's a population that leans Dem but are unenthusiastic about the prez candidate, then it's so much harder to deal with the incredible hassle and time-suck involved in voting so it's a whole lot more tempting to just not bother.
As a candidate for prez, seems to me he needs to learn to spend more time considering the downsides to his policies. This HuffPo piece goes into some detail about issues with the housing policies he came up with and implemented as mayor.
The natural successor to the Trump presidency would be a Toon. Daffy Duck has the drive but seems aggressive. Jessica Rabbit might make a decent contender – not bad, but drawn that way.
Also I’m wondering if the Republicans think they’ll lose with Trump will they step-in to remove him (say if his tax returns so him to be a shameless crook)?
Let's look at the numbers. Impeachment in the House should probably work, the Dems have a comfortable majority. But to convict Darth Drumpf in the Senate requires 67 votes, and the Dems only have 47 senators, and up to maybe 4 of those might not have the spine to vote for conviction. So between 20 and 25 Repug senators would need to vote for conviction.
Right now, Mitt Romney probably would vote for conviction, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins are definite maybes. The rest of them would look at their political futures, ponder the examples of Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Mark Sanford and others, and weigh the risk of getting primaried by vengeful Drumpfkins versus the risk of losing to a Democrat in the election.
There's a maximum of 8 Repug Senators at risk of losing to a Dem in 2020 (Collins being one), and 7 in 2022 (Murkowski being one). So even if all 15 Repugs that could conceivably be at risk of losing to a Dem in their next election plus Mitt Romney plus all Dems vote for conviction, that's still only 63.
The only way I see Il Douche out of the Oval Office before the 2020 election is either a medical event, or enough info comes out about his criminal exposure to actually penetrate the Supreme Orange Ego's consciousness and he realises he genuinely needs a legitimate pardon, so he negotiates his exit and pardon with Pence.
Its a funny thing..in this household we don't have a TV, so rely on RNZ to keep us in the loop on NZ news…so I was somewhat relieved to hear this the other morning..
"The New Zealand Disability Support Network says it is thankful to ministers who stepped in to prevent sector-wide funding cuts."..though as we all know, avoiding cuts never actually means that much as costs and demand inevitably rises.
But then I looked into it further..and sure enough..
'Every hour is questioned' – Advocates say Health Ministry quietly reducing funding for disabled after ruling out big cuts….
"Every hour of support is being questioned," said Community Care Trust (CCT) chief executive Mike Brummitt, whose Dunedin-based organisation looked after 280 people. "If someone gets 12 hours, they are saying do you need 10, or eight hours?"
Brummitt said he was recently informed by email that an intellectually disabled man in his 20s would have his funding cut in half – from $415 a day to $210.
"We know nobody has seen him since early 2017. No one spoke to our staff, his parents, advocate, no assessment. I've written back and said this is totally unsustainable."
CCT would continue to provide the same support to him, but at a financial loss.
The man's needs were complex and he required around-the-clock care, Brummitt said. When the organisation first took him on, he would not sleep in a bed, and curled up on the floor in the fetal position.
Anyone who can read that, and feel we are on the right path, has no heart.
"incrementalism" and Budget Responsibility Rules are going to be the death of some of us. Its a shame the disabled don't offer nice photo ops. in the minds of Labour Party spin doctors and publicists.
And if you can judge a society and people by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable citizens..how well are we doing?
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/387502/disability-sector-thankful-planned-funding-cuts-scrapped
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12212304
I was going to suggest copious amounts of alcohol (see @ 2) because our culture is breaking down but then realised that this has been ‘our culture’ for yonks …
That needs to be looked into Siobhan.
it is a disgraceful situation.
keep taking cases like that to the minister.
"keep taking cases like that to the minister.".
She wants it fixed, not ignored. If you send something like this to the Minister it will go straight into the round filing cabinet on the floor by the Minister's desk.
We had a wee chat about this the other day Siobahn…and I have read all the emails the reporter refers to.
I'll add them to the ones I got when I OIA'ed the Misery of Health for details of the work they had done in relation to a 1999 discussion paper called "DSS Advanced Personal Care…" http://www.moh.govt.nz/notebook/nbbooks.nsf/0/ACC68EB427015F0DCC256BF70071DECD/$file/DSS%20advanced%20personal%20care.pdf
Now in 1999 the industry recognised there was a slight problem in that there was a small but significant number of people needing home based disability supports who needed a higher level of care than would normally be provided by unregulated carers. More registered/enrolled nurse level. My partner and I knew that the Miserly had not yet sorted this issue but had not seen anything in writing that actually defined the problem. Until I found that 1999 document…and until I got a dump of emails from the Misery in response to my OIA request. This was 2017.
And the bastards still hadn't sorted the problem. Now these are the super efficient bureaucrats Macro was lauding the other day. /open-mike-21-04-2019/#comment-1609899
I still haven't stopped laughing/crying/beating my fists against the wall.
I wish I could share with you those emails…the file is huge unfortunately…but these are the people on the big salaries getting backslaps from the Commonwealth Fund for their efficiency.
What the problem boils down to is that these Advanced Personal Cares attract 'risk' if performed by unqualified carers. And the funder (the Miserly) would be liable if for adverse events. So providers most often than not refuse to provide this level of care at the rate at which the MOH funds HCSS. And when challenged, the Ministry bureaucrats just say "we don't fund x,y or z." , even if the client would die without these tasks being performed. Hence family care, or incarceration in a residential facility where theoretically there is RN oversight…
ACC, on the other hand, get round this problem (I think) by funding 1/2 hour per week per client of RN oversight. The RN does not have to be there…just be available. And to my knowledge, this works.
But it is a simple solution that is way beyond the ability of those super efficient MOH bureaucrats to accept or implement for those eligible clients that need that level of care.
But this is super-efficient… as many of those needing this level of care have no option but to turn to family…who are paid nothing (as in my case) or a pittance compared to the NZDSN employed carers.
This is my world Siobahn, and those people have no heart.
Someone described them as sociopaths…I tend to agree.
And it is unlikely to change under this government.
Thank you for that Rosemary.
I can well imagine the size of your document file.
And having read of this particular aspect of your life, I really do wish you, and your partner, all the best.
Rosemary – I completely agree with you about the plight of disabled people in this country, and the lack of care that they receive, and the huge load that that places upon family and friends. The NGO's I know are struggling to make ends meet and the continual lack of funding that has been given to the sector over the years just makes things worse.
I think you get the wrong end of the stick when you think that I am not supportive of you, and when I say that despite all the problems you and others face, it may not be the bureaucrats who are completely at fault here. Now I too ,agree that many in the upper echelons of the MoH are in ordinary terms overpaid. But that doesn't mean that they are not doing their job properly within the funding constraints that they are given. They are the managers of the system – the governance of the system falls on the government of the day – and unfortunately over the past couple of decades NZers have elected governments that have failed to place a high priority on funding Health and Disability services in particular.
Looking at this from a macro level there are essentially 3 ways for a country to administer its Health services
The first Labour Govt introduced a health system in the 1935 along the lines of the first model. Over the years that model has been watered down as more affluent individuals have taken out Private Health Insurance. The effect of that has been to reduce pressure on the Government to fully fund Health in this country and over the years the effect has been that Governments fund as minimally as they can, and rely on the Private sector and individuals to pick up the slack. Australia has now a similar system but the difference is that they ensure that all (or most) can afford to back up their Health Insurance so that there is more equity within the system. There is also greater funding available across the Health service.
We certainly do not want devolve into the Health system of the US which has one of the highest costs and poorest outcomes of any health system in the developed world. Even on Faux News the other day – when Bernie proposed a Medicare for all ( a complete anathema to the Trump administration) he was met with resounding applause.
“…it may not be the bureaucrats who are completely at fault here. Now I too ,agree that many in the upper echelons of the MoH are in ordinary terms overpaid. But that doesn’t mean that they are not doing their job properly within the funding constraints that they are given. They are the managers of the system – the governance of the system falls on the government of the day – and unfortunately over the past couple of decades NZers have elected governments that have failed to place a high priority on funding Health and Disability services in particular.”
Hmmm…funny how governments have changed but the culture within the Ministry has largely remained the same?
I too used to blame ‘the Government’, until reading about the estimated cost of paying family carers should we “all come out of the woodwork” and demand to be paid like any other carer providing assessed supports. In 2008…under Labour…the estimated cost (as told to the HRRT) of paying family carers was between $17-593 million dollars.
Now let that sink in a minute…this is the very best the Ministry of Health could do by way of a guesstimate? This was 2006-2008…not exactly the dark ages and even then the NASCs were collecting data on all clients.
Even when all was lost through the Judicial system, (under National now, in 2012) and with the omnipotent Socrates database well established, the Minister was still making dire predictions of fiscal apocalypse should there be unrestrained payment of family members providing assessed care of those with high and very high support needs.
I almost, (but not quite) felt sorry for Ryall as he demonstrated to the media cameras his appalling lack of knowledge of New Zealand’s disability system. ‘Eek, shriek!”, he implied,’..and if you factor in ACC, you’ll see how the costs just go up and up!’..Stupid bugger didn’t even know that ACC had been paying family carers for over a decade…in fact 50% of the paid carers of ACC clients were family. So who was feeding this pile of twaddle to the Government Minister?
Yet it was next door to impossible to even get anything close to an actual number of MOH:DSS clients, over the age of 18 with assessed high and very high support needs who were not receiving any funding for their care because family were providing most or all of their care. It wasn’t that the information wasn’t there…it was that the Ministry wasn’t offering it willingly and the Government seemed unable to ask the right questions of the Ministry.
There was talk of there being 30,000….(the latest count of the total number of DSS clients is 33,000.https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/report-clients-allocated-dss-funding-jul17.pdf) Frustrated, I asked a few specific questions of MOH DSS in late 2012 to try to get a more accurate picture of the situation, and it transpired that the number of very high needs over 18 year old DSS clients with little or no hourly based funding for their care was 1286.
And if you’ve followed this particular case…through the many court hearings and discussions etc you will know that the National Government opted to fund 1600 parent carers.
And if you also followed up you’ll know that the number of DSS clients who chose the option of Funded Family Care was less than 400. One quarter of the number budgeted for…so what happened to the rest of the $$$?
Some of us have kept track over the years, through different governments and different Ministers. There have been two constants…one, the Ministers have been largely ignorant ineffectuals and two, the same old names keep being mentioned in MOH dispatches.
Only a complete purge of MOH bureaucrats will bring about the necessary culture change. The Ministry needs to be staffed by actual Public Servants.
And I do think you do the NZ voter a disservice by implying that we keep voting in Governments that fail to “… to place a high priority on funding Health and Disability services in particular.”
How about we have a referendum..”Would you be willing to pay an extra 1.5-2.5% tax which would be dedicated solely to rehabilitating our health and disability system, in addition to the current Vote Health budget?”
"In talks, I would tell the story of the Natufians. Late in the last Ice Age, in the territory marked on our maps as Israel and Palestine, they lived in year-round villages. They were among the first people anywhere to settle and they lived like this for 1,500 years, fifty generations, long enough for any memory of their ancestors’ wanderings to pass into the dreamtime of gods and culture heroes. Then came the Younger Dryas, the 1,200-year cold snap that turned Europe back to tundra and broke the pattern of the seasons which watered the wooded valleys in which they had made their homes. They knew nothing of the processes by which this climate change had come upon them; it was not a consequence of their actions, only a shift in the weather. Within a short time, they abandoned their settled way of life and became wandering gatherers and hunters, returning to the old villages only to rebury the bones of their dead in the ruins of the houses.
Then I would recall a passage in After the Ice, Stephen Mithen’s history of the prehistoric world, where I first learned about the Natufians. He sends a time-traveller to walk unobserved through the lives of the people he is writing about: coming upon a band of late Natufian nomads, he follows them to a gathering in one of the ruined villages. The interment of bones is accompanied by storytelling, feasting and celebration; the connection between past and present is reaffirmed. In Mithen’s reconstruction, these days of festival offer a respite from the hardships of the present. Yet afterwards, as the people go back out onto the land, they do so gladly: ‘They are all grateful for the return to their transient lifestyle within the arid landscapes of the Mediterranean hills, the Jordan valley and beyond. It is, after all, the only lifestyle they have known and it is the one that they love.’"
https://dark-mountain.net/after-we-stop-pretending/
How did they make their alcohol?
Buried calabashes of fermented fruit, mapped with a story, retrieved when needed.
I got that Mithen book last year, haven't started it yet. "If everyone does X, then all this scary stuff will go away" is typical leftist thought. Proceeds from a false assumption. Since when have humans ever acted in unison?? Anyway, moving on, we could liken the climate-change impact on expectations to oceanic navigation of old.
I'm no sailor, but I know plain sailing only lasts awhile. Adaption to changing weather is essential. Using ocean currents is intelligent. People don't usually do it unless they have a plan, or at least an imagined destination of sorts, so when there's a small tribe in the waka collective intent drives the enterprise.
This is turning into a typical `how to get there' post so I'll just finish by pointing out how suitable the analogy seems to be. Despair isn't part of the scenario!!
The winds of change allowed polynesian colonization during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), A.D. 800–1300,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0031018283900871
https://www.pnas.org/content/111/41/14716
Trump's dementia is getting progressively worse –
Yet more leftist hypocrisy? Only if the prof is a leftist. Mentally-ill folk are now part of the community. We're meant to view them as normal citizens, ever since politically-correct decision-making deemed this stance proper in the nineties. As such, they have citizens' rights, including the right to be a political leader. It's how democracy works.
The prof may get brain police knocking on his door sometime soon, taking him away to a re-education camp, where some kind person will explain the facts of life to him, and he will be required to write this line a thousand times: I must not discriminate against the mentally ill, not even Trump.
"Mentally-ill folk are now part of the community."
They always were dennis you just ignored and pretended they weren't there. You do seem to have some major prejudice against those you deem to have mental health issues and your writing on this subject is woeful. Even here in defending you make snide asides about those trying to protect the many many people with mental health issues. You should be ashamed imo.
Crap, Marty. Everyone knows they were institutionalised until the closing of the mental hospitals. And don't insinuate prejudice where none exists. That's unethical. You know perfectly well that I did not criticise any victim. Any reader can see for themselves that I was criticising the prof!
"We're meant to view them as normal citizens, ever since politically-correct decision-making deemed this stance proper in the nineties."
These type of statements from you indicate a strange attitude imo. You love 'othering' those with mental health issues using language like 'them' and 'they' and you don't even get it – possibly an age thing but whatever – not a good attitude imo
Not strange unless you have no empathy with victims. When that guy was killed with an axe by his flatmate (a mental-health patient released into the community) while in bed (asleep, I presume), a story that made headlines back then, it made the policy seem insane to me. Not to you??
Talking out of your arse is what you were doing. Obviously having the POTUS suffering from dementia is an issue that would need addressing.
In regard to hitting the red button, you have a point. I vaguely recall there's a fail-safe design around that though (chain-of-command operational consensus).
In all other respects, you're wrong. If it were obvious, there would already be high-level discussions on a bipartisan basis, reported in the media. So you're just doing the same jerk-off as the prof. Evidence to the contrary required!
I vaguely recall there's a fail-safe design around that though (chain-of-command operational consensus).
No. There isn't. There really isn't.
When Nixon was showing obvious signs of stress leading those around him to fear a breakdown, Schlesinger committed an act of gross insubordination and instructed those further down the chain of command to check with him or Kissinger before acting on any orders from Nixon. Thank fuck it was never tested what would actually happen if Nixon tried to launch nukes.
There's a good chance Mattis did the same, and I'd guess it would be fairly likely those down the chain of command would actually check with Mattis before launching.
But Mattis is gone, and the acting Secretary of Defense is ex-Boeing swampthing Shanahan. Who almost certainly wouldn't dare do anything that might be construed as standing up to Grand Generalissimo Bonespurs. Nor would he have any standing or respect from those further down the chain, so it would be very unlikely Shanahan would be able to stop a madman launch order even if he wanted to.
Everyone knows “they” were institutionalised’
No. “they” were not.
The vast majority of people with mental health issues led normal functional contributing lives.
DF. You are full of prejudice and misinformation. Otherwise known as full of shit.
Just to change the topic for a break.
some kind person will explain the facts of life to him, and he will be required to write this line a thousand times:
That made me think of Bart Simpson and his frequent interaction with lines written on the blackboard. (Did you know he leapt up in ballet showing amazing talent. You might wait for the same to happen with Trump, but truth is stranger than fiction.)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9mUOKI5Y9Y
Heh. I'm going to be off-line awhile. My laptop has developed sleep problems halfway thro its 6th year, so I got a cheap notebook as insurance policy & now have to get all my useful stuff duplicated onto it in case the laptop decides to die as well. Fortunately my local computer dudes always seem able to solve my problems quickly at reasonable cost…
What a hero!!!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/23/vacant-seat-for-may-as-party-leaders-meet-greta-thunberg
The dreaming continues from the rear guard protecting their world from the inevitable change occuring. They will be remembered all right as will we. What will they say about what you/we did to change?
Why don't you tell us the rest of the story? After talking to the MPs she went straight back to the Airport and caught her next flight to a place where she could spread the word that flying must stop.
You know. Just like James Shaw it is a case of don't do what they do. Do what they tell you to do because they know better.
I'd rather she flew than you and your ilk with your selfish overseas holidays and pretend work functions.
"After talking to the MPs she went straight back to the Airport and caught her next flight to a place where she could spread the word that flying must stop."
Did she? Can you link to this information, because AFAIK she attends meetings by land-based travel.
And also, your criticism – well used by practised diverters, fails to recognise that current society and systems support and encourage individual choices both financially and in convenience, that are detrimental to the environment and community wellbeing.
The premise that the system needs to change stands – separate from individual instances.
She doesn't fly, Alwyn. She only travels by train or someone else's electric car.
After talking to the MPs she went straight back to the Airport and caught her next flight to a place where she could spread the word that flying must stop.
If you actually bother to go and read the article, it includes a graphic: "Greta's train journey through Europe." Electric trains, at that.
She may have arrived in London by train as that diagram shows. However you don't think she was going to remain there did you?
I was assured, by someone who heard her, that she was heading back to Sweden by plane. As I said "After talking to MPs." I'll admit that the statement "went straight back to the airport" rather condenses the time scale.
caught out lying again alwyn to push your climate change denial agenda – what a fail
Do you have any actual evidence or link? Or are you just repeating a hearsay smear?
If there were any factual basis to that claim, it would be astonishing for right-wing media to be silent, they would be much more likely to scream it from the front page as hypocrisy to try to discredit her. But so far … zip.
Was Lardy Williams or the Horeskin that little someone wally?
Māori television showed a documentary on the work of photographer Sebastião Salgado a couple of nights ago. I missed seeing it at the International Film Festival, and was hooked when I found it while channel surfing.
It documents his decades of travelling and immersion into some of the most undeveloped and/or deprived communities. As well as capturing some of the most atrocious human behaviours and crimes. A harrowing but very informative watch, which also records his understandably bleak conclusion of the irredeemable nature of the human race.
The final project is his personal redemption – a trite description – moving into nature photography and planting millions of trees on an inherited drought ridden family farm.
It is on demand for a week or so – if anyone wants to view: The Salt of the Earth
Quite tough to sit through, that.
Yes, did you watch it as well?
Yes, 2nd time for me, it was first shown on the MC about a year or so ago. Well worth the second look to remind me of the importance of his work.
We loved the movie. Most who take (serious) photos would get something out of it.
Another good movie about a photographer is Finding Vivian Maier: http://www.vivianmaier.com/film-finding-vivian-maier/
A very minor observation – disappointed to hear Lisa Owen (RNZ Checkpoint, ~5:24 pm, 23 April 2019) refer to the Government's 'Provincial Growth Fund' as "Shane Jones' regional money bag" (@00:25).
https://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018692048
It would help if Jones stopped giving people excellent reasons for assuming the provincial growth fund is being used as an influence-peddling fund for NZ First in general and Jones in particular.
Dunno if this is really a reality thing. Seems more like perceptions to me. I agree that his style of operating encourages the perception. But he's just doing his job.
If his allocations were unreasonable, evidence of that would be accumulating. I've seen no such compilation in the media, so I'm inclined to think DMK has a valid point. She ought not to be seen as recycling National's spin.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/111976628/shane-jones-called-on-to-resign-over-intervention-in-prosecution-of-a-northland-transport-company
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/the-country/news/article.cfm?c_id=16&objectid=12219902
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/05-04-2019/a-long-list-of-every-shane-jones-snafu/
http://breambaynews.co.nz/pdf/full_10-4-08.pdf
Northland, Tree planting, Logging Companies, The Semenoff Family long long history', Family connections, filipino workers, Sand, DOC, Talleys, political donations…How Things are Done 'up North'….nothing to see here of course
His habit of intervening on behalf of his donors and his spurning conflict-of-interest mitigation measures all by themselves should rule him out of being put in charge of distributing a billion dollars, let alone when an electorate he plans to contest is likely to be a major beneficiary of the funding decisions. In other words, it's a real thing – his demonstrated lack of integrity, not media bias, is prompting the cynicism.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/18-04-2019/how-an-oia-laid-bare-the-pork-barrel-shambles-that-is-shane-jones-provincial-growth-fund/
Not only but also – today's Herald "Barry Soper: Killing capital gains tax the painful part of politics for Jacinda Ardern" no it wasn't, well I bet it wasn't, but fools like Soper can't see or will admit it.
That's pretty much how the Potentate of Provincial Pomposity refers to it.
Jones is and always will be labours Achilles heal.
Lisa Owen is a grubby little number.
Could someone from RNZ unravel her cussed little tidbits ?
Or is that beyond the realms of the highly paid warts posing as unbiased creeps ?
The Nice Lady who gives Lisa Owen the news might lower her voice Pitch. Lower from squeaky high to Baritone. Please.
Hi Psycho Milt
You a bit out of sorts today? Simon getting to be a bit much for you perhaps. He seems to have Psycho problems like yourself.
Even so, advising the Regions that you hate them receiving Funds for Major works and Projects – could mean that you dislike Aoteraroa from top to bottom. You will be no Loss.
If you're going to capitalise nouns, please capitalise all of them (or better yet, just don't capitalise nouns – we're writing English, not German).
Just to clarify: billion-dollar regional growth fund = good, putting an influence-peddler in charge of deciding who gets the funding = bad.
I am pleased to see that there is consistency in the complaints about racist behaviour. Here we have someone, rightfully, being shamed because he claimed that he wouldn't allow his children to go out with a Maori.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/112204312/man-who-wont-let-his-children-date-mori-women-shamed-in-antiracism-campaign
I wonder if the protesters were the same ones who complained about Hone Harawira expressing the view that he wouldn't allow his children to go out with a Pakeha? I hope they were the same people involved in both protests about the bigoted actions.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10665449
Good.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/387611/christchurch-terror-attack-families-offered-option-to-stay-permanently
Immigration New Zealand has created a special visa category for those directly impacted by the shootings at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood mosque, as well as their families…
The government says the Christchurch Response 2019 category has been created to realise the impact of the tragedy and to give people currently on temporary and resident visas some certainty.
Applications can be made from tomorrow by anyone who was present at either mosque during the attacks and their immediate families.
The special circumstances mean the definition of "immediate family" also includes dependent children, someone's partner's parents and grandparents of children under 25.
Immigration NZ, on their website, state they will confirm those present at the mosque attacks by checking police records.
Trump and the USA show themselves as a dysfunctional government with conservative religiosity at its roots.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/23/un-resolution-passes-trump-us-veto-threat-abortion-language-removed
The UN has backed a resolution on combatting rape in conflict but excluded references in the text to sexual and reproductive health, after vehement opposition from the US.
The resolution passed by the security council on Tuesday after a three-hour debate and a weekend of fierce negotiations on the language among member states that threatened to derail the process.
The vote was carried 13 votes in favour. China and Russia abstained. On Monday, the US had threatened to veto the resolution but it is understood that last minute concessions on Tuesday morning got the US on side
Changed the comment editor tool library and style again.
Pretty weird how the size of the control hasn’t changed… aaaaaaaaaaaaa bbbbbbbbbb ccccccccccc dddddddddd
Ok the wrapping works – fine – it just doesn’t have the right border???
Doesn’t do that on the test system.
Hi Lynne
I am only able to write very short sentences like this. Anything longer goes into the spam trap. Or once even directed back to the ‘Policy’.
I can put up links, but only if I make no supporting comment.
I suspect that this is some sort of technical glitch.
Any advice?
Not a few months ago, I was considering rejoining the Labour Parte
Then this struck me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SV85NVP1nc
Could just as easily be Pulla Bent’s Neshnool as Grunt Robitson’s Labia
At the mention of labia, I couldn’t resist:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B4437BxAHB4
I recall it being funny in the ’80s.
hah, so much for that, Hercules Returns was made in 1993.
a funny aussie movie.
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute .
We have to CHANGE the way we do everything this is a good idea that the local and central government should be championing a place were you can rent tool & equipment for little cost. All so I had to DUMP a good washing machine and fridge because they couldn’t fit in my pocket as that’s the only storage that was available. I would have had a garage sale as we call it here and sold some items a give some away but the sandflys have scared all the people away . I say local council needs to have a place well advised to drop off good still going fine like whiteware kitchen ware anything that can be used by other.
We need to get away from the USE and toss it culture we need to make things last 20 years or longer paper packaging to.
Aristotle House in Oxford is not as grand as it sounds. A commercial block built by the canal in the 1960s, it is no longer fit for paying tenants, so its owner, Wadham College, allows a group of social enterprises to stay there, like official squatters. And there’s evidence of their enterprise everywhere outside, from the drop-box for returning poetry books, to the compost heaps built from old pallets, and the young Victoria plum tree blossoming in a pot by the door. Inside, for those who know about it, is the Oxfordlibrary of things. It sounds like the setting for a Philip Pullman novel, and represents a vision of humanity that’s nearly as fantastical – an idea so simple and so brilliant that, the first time you hear it, you wonder why it hasn’t conquered the world already. Then you wonder if it’s just about to change. Imagine you have a grimy old picnic table that needs sanding after a winter in the garden. Or you want to host a Eurovision party, but your TV is too small for everyone to see. Commercially renting a belt sander for the weekend costs about £40, and a projector much more, so unless you’re on good terms with a well-equipped neighbour, you either spend money on a device you will hardly use, or you give up. But what if someone volunteered to be that neighbour, as people now have in Frome, Crystal Palace, Stirling, Edinburgh, Totnes, Oxford and in growing numbers around the world? If they could just gather a collection of extremely, but only occasionally, useful items, and find a place to keep them, there would be no need for everyone else to buy their own. Even paying a small fee to cover costs, we would save money, and space in our homes, and the benefits to the environment in waste prevented would be enormous. Indeed, as you browse for Oxford’s belt sander (£8 a week) and projector (£10 a night), you might decide, while you’re at it, to borrow a pressure washer for the patio (£10 a day), and add a disco ball (£5 a week) and chocolate fountain (ditto) for the party. You’ll live a cheaper, cleaner, more enjoyable and more sustainable life Ka kite ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/24/library-of-things-borrowing-scheme-conquer-world
Here you go Whanau we have people who treat water like a gravy train instead of the respecting WAI water as a life giving and taking source and force it is they need to protect Wai water for our next generation our Mokopuna grandchildren rights to a happy healthy life need to be respected.
The Queensland minister for water, Anthony Lynham, also strongly denied his government had backed EAA’s sale of overland flows, as Joyce claimed.
“What we had supported in 2015 was completely different,” he said. Queensland proposed the Commonwealth buy both of EAA’s farms and all its water, including river water rights, he said.
A desktop review had put the price at $123m, and would have yielded 57,000ML of water including more secure water rights, he said.
Instead Joyce proceeded to buy half the volume of a less reliable type of water entitlement for $80m
Queensland minister for water, Anthony Lynham, also strongly denied his government had backed EAA’s sale of overland flows, as Joyce claimed.
“What we had supported in 2015 was completely different,” he said. Queensland proposed the Commonwealth buy both of EAA’s farms and all its water, including river water rights, he said.
A desktop review had put the price at $123m, and would have yielded 57,000ML of water including more secure water rights, he said.
Instead Joyce proceeded to buy half the volume of a less reliable type of water entitlement for $80m
Meanwhile the Guardian has learned that the energy minister, Angus Taylor, was listed in the annual report of the Australian company as a director of the Caymans parent, Eastern Australia Irrigation, at least until some time in the 2012-13 financial year. He was also a director of a second Caymans company, Agricultural Managers Ltd, which served as the management company for the fund.
Agricultural Managers Ltd, which is separate from Eastern Australian Agriculture and Eastern Australian Irrigation, provided management services to the complex investment structure that included several overseas investorsUsually management companies in these sort of securitised structures undertake the financing, advise on tax, prepare documentation and send investors payments. For that they are paid a management fee and in some cases a fee based on the performance of the fund. This can occur during the life of the fund or when it was wound up.
Ka kite ano links below
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/25/new-questions-raised-over-calculations-behind-80m-water-buyback
Eco Maori can see this huge problem unfolding before my EYES The wealthy made most of their money from burning CARBON. The effects of climate change is going to CAUSE huge problems for the common poor people that is WHY the WEALTHY nations need to step up and help the poor Nation it is the correct way to help lesson the damage caused by the climate change on the POOR.
The wealthy have to realise that we are all HUMANS geneticly identical. If they don't help a super bug could develop in the places we're the poor people are living in unhumane places that could effect people that are close to them.
The Great old saying is its better cheaper not to make a MESS that it is to make a big MESS and try to CLEAN IT UP not rocket science just LOGIC Hence helping thy NABOUR the super wealth just have to do more to help mitigate Climate change 9
While the rich world braces for future climate change, the poor world is already being devastated by it
(CNN) — "Upside down" are the only words Manush Albert Alben has to describe life after the powerful Cyclone Idai.
Nearly two weeks since the powerful cyclone destroyed most of the city of Beira, Mozambique, it is a long way from normal. "There's no money, no groceries," Alben, a fisherman, said while sitting in his wooden pirogue on a local beach. "We are suffering but trying to hold on
Known for its busy port and views of the Indian Ocean, the 19th-century city used to be the fourth largest in the country. Now Beira will go down in history as being "90% wiped out" by global warming, said Graça Machel, a former Mozambican freedom fighter, politician and deputy chair of The Elders, who spoke to CNN on the phone after visiting the city
Link below Ka kite ano
https://edition-m.cnn.com/2019/03/31/africa/poorest-hit-the-hardest-climate-change-mozambique-intl/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fedition.cnn.com%2F
Here is a story of poor country's being badly effected by HUMAN CAUSED CLIMATE CHANGE. We have to help them all.
South Africa floods claim 60 lives after Durban rains
'We couldn't save the children'
One man, who lost eight of his family members when a mudslide swallowed their home, has spoken to Nomsa Maseko about the moments leading up to the tragedy
Thamsanqa Dlamini said that he heard a loud bang first before water came "gushing" into their house through the walls.
"I heard my children screaming from the bedroom," he recalled.
"I tried to rush to help them but the strong water current forcefully pushed me into another room and I was under the collapsed wall.
Ka kite ano P.S don't let all the other stories drown out our fight against climate change deniers
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/387765/south-africa-floods-claim-60-lives-after-durban-rains
Kia ora Newshub .
Its cool the Prince is visiting Aotearoa. Those Kiwis cycling around Turkey look a bit worn out ANZAC day has been cool .
The helicopter rescue crew that were on the one that crashed in the Auckland islands were extremely lucky if they were a few km out in Tangaroa they would have been much worse off I no the waters cold there its was snowing at sea when I was last there . The Karapeoro shooting is a sham Iv been in that pie shop a few times over the years .
Britain getting some of Huawei 5G equipment no I don't think NZ have ban Huawei totally from building our 5G network ???????.
Bad luck on the moon landing in 3s there are a lot of Phenomenon that scientists can not explain or give the fact on .
Yes tamariki need to have boundaries on screen time on cellphone tablet use the same as everything. Ka kite ano
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
Eco Maori viewers are not just Tamariki muppets why are you trying so hard to stop my post????
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
Whanau I go outside a the elictric AVENUE starts up sandflys driving around the block
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute .