Intelligence in the USA (yeah, I know most readers will reject the notion):
The first ever National Intelligence Estimate on Climate Change looks at the impact of climate on national security through to 2040… The 27-page assessment is the collective view of all 18 US intelligence agencies. It is their first such look-ahead on what climate means for national security.
Since it's so hard to find, the USA has had to create 18 separate agencies to hunt it down. The story of how they got together around a big table to cohere a report remains untold, but here's their appraisal in time for COP26:
The US intelligence community identifies 11 countries and two regions where energy, food, water and health security are at particular risk. They tend to be poorer and less able to adapt, increasing the risks of instability and internal conflict. Heat waves and droughts could place pressure on services like electricity supply. Five of the 11 countries are in South and East Asia – Afghanistan, Burma, India, Pakistan and North Korea – four countries are in Central America and the Caribbean – Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua. Colombia and Iraq are the others. Central Africa and small states in the Pacific are also at risk.
The report is a sign that climate is now a central part of security thinking and that it will heighten existing problems as well as create new ones.
"Governments increasingly recognise that climate change is shaping the national security landscape like never before," Erin Sikorsky, the director of the Centre for Climate and Security who formerly worked on the National Intelligence Council, told the BBC.
So after a couple of decades of denial, the establishment has finally figured out what's going on. Will suitwearers have to conform to the new world? Can dinosaurs fly?
Maybe America’s Intelligence agencies could go outside and look on their own doorstop for solutions.
Giving back;
The Deliveristas – the new climate friendly delivery business being embraced in US cities, heavily reliant on immigrants. (legal, and undocumented)
All they ask in return is some spending on cycle safety infrastructure.
New Zealand cities could learn something.
“Inside Climate News”
Pulitzer Prize-winning, nonpartisan reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet.
New York’s ‘Deliveristas’ Are at the Forefront of Cities’ Sustainable Transportation Shake-up
As cities and companies push to move people and goods around with cleaner forms of transportation, food delivery workers on bicycles show what laws and infrastructure are needed…..
…….As a member of Los Deliveristas Unidos, Ramírez said he’s ultimately fighting not just for delivery workers, but for the future of his children and the safety of all New Yorkers.
He moved to the United States from Mexico when he was 19 years old. In the years since, New York City has “embraced me,” he said. “It’s given me a family. And I want to give something back to this beautiful city.”
Indeed. I've long framed this combo of free enterprise with Green thinking as bluegreen, but folks here are averse to that meme due to usage by the Nats. However it is likely to remain integral to sustainability as this example suggests…
But for all the change we’ve experienced as a nation and in our own lives since Bruce and I first sat down together, the underlying conditions that animated our conversation haven’t gone away. And in fact, since the podcast was released, both of us have heard from folks from every state and every walk of life who’ve reached out to say that something in what they heard resonated with them, whether it was the imprint our fathers left on us; the awkwardness, sadness, anger and occasional moments of grace that have arisen as we navigate America’s racial divide; or the joy and redemption that our respective families have given us. People told us that listening to us talk made them think about their own childhoods. Their own dads.
I share with these guys the life-path produced by a defective fatherhood role-model, and how willpower & lateral-thinking can be combined to make success happen despite that handicap.
Springsteen:
When President Obama suggested we do a podcast together, my first thought was: “OK, I’m a high school graduate from Freehold, New Jersey, who plays the guitar … What’s wrong with this picture?” My wife Patti said: “Are you insane?! Do it! People would love to hear your conversations!”
Their book release happens in a couple of days. Funny how imprints from childhood resonate down the years, eh?
Bruce is not everyone’s 32 oz. soda, but I have a lot of time for him. “Born to run”, “Darkness on the edge of town” and “The River” were definitely on the Galaxie/Fairlane cassette players in earlier times. He donated to the UK Miners strike in the 80s, played for No Nukes and many other worthy causes. A decent man and hard worker who lives the dream while providing a critique of the dream. Fair bit of online grumbling about him these days for “being political” from blue collars who possibly turned to Trump.
Barrack Obama’s main achievement really was being black and US President. He broke the ice. The US electoral and Govt. system is designed expressly to block people that think they can close down the likes of Guantanamo.
Bruce and Barrack are privileged in various ways, and shaped by dodgy dads, so good on them for exploring it publicly for others to reflect on.
What a shame Springsteen did this….just legitimizing another US war and class criminal, all Obama ever used all his considerable willpower and lateral thinking to do, was dupe the US public and many many others around the world into believing he was something he was not..a good man with a plan for a better world..no, it turns out that just like our own Ardern, he was never anything more than an fundamentalist leader of an extremist death cult known as Free Market Liberalism.
And btw just keep in mind Obama's main legacy to the world was Trump..
Yeah, their leftist coin has two sides. As mainstreamers (compared to me) they represent typical Democrat voters. Yet they use Renegades as their book title – as if to signify that they're really non-establishmentarian. I wonder if anything in the book actually validates the title!
An old dialectic in politics–do certain people go bad or were they always bad?–such ponderings don’t matter much I guess if you are on the nasty end of a drone strike.
No one that attains the position of US President is allowed by the corporates and military and lobbyists or the cumbersome dual house and Federal/State structure to achieve much at all apart from increasing 1%ers wealth.
I just fucking cannot stand the way that pretty much anybody who has achieved political power never have to answer for their policies after they leave their seats of power..infact it is worse than that, they nearly all get rehabilitated by a compliant press..just look at the way Helen Clarke and John Key get to talk about our Covid response, not once being questioned on the fact they both ran our health care system on austerity budgets, thereby are directly responsible for our current shitty public healthcare system that can't cope with this emergency…
Yeah Clark (and her government) should never ever be forgiven for cynically putting Ruth's $20-00 per week back on NZS and not on benefits – which was cheaper to do then NZS and NZS had rocketed well away from benefit rates by then as well (remembering that previously they were the same).
The current government though is worse because they had a pretty clear mandate from both winning the election on doing something about poverty and the WEAG recommendations – fuck how much more support do you need to fix something that is broken!
Oh that is right public servants said not to increase it – the same WINZ and Treasury public servants that thrived under National no doubt.
They, this Labour government, then Judith Collins doubled down by developing a two tier benefit system as a big influx of white people were laid off – people who would go back to work much more quickly than Maori and PI – cau
se clearly they were more deserving to not live in poverty.
Just put the rates back to the same as NZS and pay compensation to every single person who has been on benefit since Clark put the NZS rates up as a way of saying it was wrong. Everyone on benefit would have incurred debt over the years as a way of surviving.
Rent freeze would be useful as well – that should have been done following the Christchurch earthquake – it set a trend for extorting rent money that has run unabated ever since.
And we shouldn't forget that it was under Clark we saw the rise of spin merchants in the public sector. Nurses would have actually been better and ironically cheaper – two nurses for one PR person.
I spent many a holiday at my grandparents farm when a youngster. Mum taking a break from the kids for once type thing, which is all cool.
They had sheep.
The lamb shanks in those days went to the dogs. My mum used to cook them for us as yummy. Now some stupid 20 bucks for 2.
Just looking at Countdown doing an online shop now and thought I might do a rack of lamb. Just as a surprise for my wife. Crumb and herb covered thing. Masterchef style with a jus
A rack of lamb is now $44 a kilo ffs! That is just silly
Sounds lovely Chris T. Remember if you went to out to eat you would pay $200 odd for two lamb meals sweet/cheese board and wine. So it is all relative. Meat is so expensive in every way, climate and purse. I have looked up vegetarian recipes and discovered other delights, and have meat three times a week as a treat and for iron.
you would be paying 200 for at least 4 people plus drinks and a little snackage before eating with the drinkies, you might even squeeze in coffee and tea after dinner. I did just that the other day for a birthday.
Pro's
you would not be cooking
you would not be setting the table
you would not be going to the supermarket to get the ingredients
you don't need an oven a kitchen and electricity to get it all cooked
and you don't need to clean up and do the dishes after the fact
you would be spending 15% of that total on GST for the government
you would be spending a part of that total on wages and paye
you would be spending a part of that total on lease, insurance, rates
and when i combine that, and add it up, it is prolly cheaper to eat lambshanks, mash, peas and a redwine jus in a restaurant then to buy it in a supermarket and cook it at home.
but lets not forget that we can eat all vegetarian, there are lovely recipes around, i hear Kale is a good thing for everything from morning tea to late night snack, just add salt n pepper. Lambshanks are now luxury goods and thus not for the average kiwi.
mmmm … eating lambshanks, mash, peas and a redwine jus in a restaurant … I vaguely remember doing stuff like that in the distant past. I'd like to be allowed to do it again someday …
There needs to be a dribble in need of that food again emoji. Homer Simpson and donuts style lol
Seriously though. Why the f are we paying 44 dollars a kilo now for a rack of lamb?
I get they say they are just matching export prices. But we actually live in the same country the things grew up in. The ones I am buying did not have to travel halfway around the world.
They just announced the trade agreement with no tariffs (202026 I think. But might be wrong) What is going to happen then? Logic alone tells me they will send more decent stuff overseas ans the less lovely stuff we get stuck with.
Might be cheaper, but doubt it given the supermarket duopolly.
I should apologise for being in a tedious to read moany mood today btw 🙂
Completely get I am coming across as just a moaning prick. It was just annoying that my surprise dinner for my wife is probably going to be not what I wanted to do.
I do it twice a year – his bday and mine and that is all the bday festivities we have, and when i do it I usually order stuff like that. Simply because it has become so expensive to buy and it takes a lot of energy and ingredients to cook.
Virgils birthday dinner was for 4 people, 4 different dishes and the total came to 200 and then his plate was deducted cause it was his birthday. So the total was 160 NZD. Drinks, coffee and mains. We brought our own cake.
When i was last in Europe i found NZ lamb leg and rack of lamb in the local Carrefour. It was way cheaper then French lamb, and so much cheaper then here.
And yes, lambshanks used to be cheap, as i used to buy several of them and make one big boil up and freeze in portions. No longer doing that. .
Carrefour is a French multinational retail corporation headquartered in Massy, France. The eighth-largest retailer in the world by revenue, it operates a chain of hypermarkets, groceries and convenience stores, which as of January 2021, comprises its 12,225 stores in over 30 countries
to sad we don't have them here, because our food would be cheaper and that would include cheese.
Carrefour is not as cheap as either lidl or aldi nor as fresh . Carrefour have a huge variety but lack the freshness or the much lower prices of lidl or aldi.
I have lived for over ten years in France and i know Aldi from Germany. Carrefour has the best open cheese, charcuterie, seafood and fresh food aisles i have seen anywhere. Lidl and Aldi are both quite different as they have smaller fresh food section and no open meat, cheese and charcuterie – but both have a good section on quark, kefir, youghurts etc. But equally good.
Sadly, in NZ we are still being charged more for fresh food, cheese and lamb. But then we here don't have competition, and in France, Germany etc they have. And that is why we pay stupid prices like 27.90 per KG for lamb shanks and our leg of lamb is 5 bucks dearer per kg today at Countdown then the ones sold in Carrefour France today.
Matiri I could smell the meat and fish departments through most of the giant carrefour supermarkets its pukeish.
But they weren't as anywhere near as fresh as lidl or aldi because lidl concentrate on fresh local produce and much lower prices.I only went to the bigger supermarkets when I couldn't find a product at aldi lidl or farmers markets cheaper again.Carrefour prices were on par with our supermarket prices except processed food is cheaper.
France has good points and bad our fresh food on the whole tastes better. To find good cuts of meat and nice tasting food you have to pay a premium.
Housing is cheaper in more rural areas much cheaper better insulated .
Travel can be much dearer fuel and then endless toll roads cost a lot of money. Cars are dearer because of stricter pollution controls cars older than 5 yrs are difficult to keep registered.
Public transport is cheap except for high-speed trains.
Taxes that's the killer income taxes are much higher nearly double for an average or above average income earners. Then rates are very high as every little Borough/village has a oversize bearaucracy
With that you get better access to healthcare.
Better funded education system.
Benefits and Public housing is funded better.
But France has a lot of homelessness much of it undocumented as migrants cross borders and are not looked after so a lot of street beggars in the bigger cities.
No need for the amateur dramatics mate. She just comes across as dodge. If you want people to be hesitant to click your links that is cool. I don't give a shit
Mind you, the gap between the usual cuts of meat and the cheapest cuts is getting smaller, too. I blame Jamie Oliver teaching people what slow cookers were good for in rhe 00's.
In the 90's, if you were on the dole and met someone who knew how to cook, you could still have one good meal that was fit for a king. Might have been the only good meal that week, but still felt great.
Nowadays you'd be competing with some lawyer to buy the same cut (shank, tail, whatever).
Lamb flaps. Once dog tucker but now, the best bit's boned, stuffed and sold as rolled breast while the rag-end's pared of a little fat, marinated, and flogged for top dollar as lamb spare ribs.
In breeding season, a mallard drake will sometimes, to get the females’ attention, suddenly bob down in the water and raise himself up again – and whistle. Once I had read this, I saw them doing it everywhere – but it happens so quickly, and at such random times, that it took me several days to actually get one doing it on video.
The problem with logic as a tool is the alarming tendency for it to fail to produce results according to plan. Thus AI expert Marvin Minsky's opinion that `AI has been braindead since the 1970s (Wired, 2003).
Doesn't stop the funding streams, on development, by nations in the Security Council! The deep context of the design difficulty lies in metaphysics: meaning. Robots are even worse at metaphysics than humans.
AI as an intelligence analyst is looking for meaningful correlations, or patterns in data.
One AI found a link between the make of car on driveways and the voting intention of householders. This pattern recognition is just the sort of thing that AI excels at. Or rather, excels up to a point. Finding patterns using its immense capacity for statistical processing and accurate memory is one thing. But finding meaningful patterns is quite another.
So interpretation is the key. Murphy's Law suggests screw-ups defeat seemingly intelligent design often – drone strikes taking out harmless families after identifying them as terrorist targets became the new norm a while back in consequence.
In Thursday’s post, I imagined a world in which conservatives placed equality at the center of their sensibilities. It was fun, though hardly realistic. As one reader said, conservatives never do that. If they did, they’d be liberals. But the goal of the exercise was less practical than imaginative. At the root of the many problems we face are thorny questions difficult to answer. But there’s also a failure of imagination.
I don’t mean to say we need “attitude adjustments.” I mean to say we tend to accept conditions as if they were natural rather than what they are, which is constructed. So today, I want to stretch our imaginations by asking a deceptively simple question.
Why does our democratic republic, founded in opposition to monarchy, tolerate billionaires?
Thom Hartmann article is lazy. Not all conservatives think the same way about issues any more than progressives do. As to Merkel, she considered herself a conservative, she led a conservative political party, but yet managed to walk a line between her conservatism and liberal values. That is the character of good leadership when western nations are increasing splintered.
And his claims are full of inaccuracies. For example:
"In America, conservatives say that if you can’t afford a place to live, you can always live on the streets,"
That's just plain bs. Conservative faith groups are providing emergency and term housing for needy families across the US. He could have found a number of them with a google search.
No he doesn't and not do you. The reality of conservative faith groups working to alleviate homelessness is the opposite of them claiming "if you can’t afford a place to live, you can always live on the streets".
The real world does not run like social media. In order to get anything done ordinary people with a range of moderate views learn how to listen to each other and quietly make the adjustments and compromises necessary for everyone to co-operate.
By contrast on social media a large fraction of people pitch camps on either side of an ideological ravine and throw rocks at each other. Like any play fight it can be fun or even cathartic for a while – but eventually the kids have to be cleaned up, tucked into bed and real life resumes.
Indeed. Merkel successfully bridged the divide between her own natural conservatism and the broader beliefs that exist across her party and her constituency. Unfortunately the US, as an example, is hopelessly divided by an ideological chasm.
Hartmann's article does usefully ask a good question – why among all the developed, liberal democracies is the USA such an outlier on the measures he outlines?
Because while it's possible to quibble with some of his more sweeping generalisations find his political tribalism a tad predictable – the broad points being made do stand scrutiny.
Let's set aside one obvious canard – by temperament Americans are similarly distributed between conservative and progressive instincts as anywhere else. What seems to differ is the cultural narrative around which this is organised. It's my sense that the origins of this are rooted in their unique history and geography. I'm not going to attempt to address the complex historic aspect – aside from noting that more than anything else the modern US is a nation of immigrants many of whom at some point in their family history have a story of individual struggle to achieve success.
Stripping away any moral or political argument however, the reality is that the Americans just happen to live on the most desirable piece of real-estate on the planet.
It has totally secure borders, two oceans their navy controls, two neighbours who are strong allies or trade partners, and no historic threat or memory of invasion.
The Mid-West is the greatest food basket on the face of the earth. It's irrigated by two separate weather systems which feeds not just their own population plentifully, but exports substantially as well.
There is an extensive network of internal transport, ranging from a massive, low cost (if underutilised) network of navigable waterways, through to a rail network designed to move large volumes of freight, through to highways and airports everywhere they could be needed.
The fracking revolution ensures they are now for all practical purposes energy independent
Just these factors alone ensure that the US would be the most economically successful nation on earth – no matter how hard they tried to stuff it up. Throw in a demography that is still relatively young compared to the rest of the developed world – and predictions of their imminent demise a probably pre-mature.
But perhaps the most interesting consequence of this underpins the original question – why is the US so different? One possible answer is that the natural advantages of the land they lived in meant that perhaps more than anywhere else, individuals could work hard and thrive. For many generations the American Dream was real enough even if arguably less so at the present.
But perhaps the more subtle impact has been that the Americans were at the same time never really driven to be all that efficient at anything – they could do well enough without having to bother with collectivism. As a result they never really developed an efficient public sector, health care and education. And while pockets of the nation were always good at innovation, much of it could get along just fine with quite dated systems and technologies. Policing, education, roading and services all remained largely local concerns – Federal agencies always being something to be held at bay.
This simple insight is perhaps the best explanation for why the centre of gravity of US politics – progressive and conservative – has always been placed closer to the individual and the community, than the collective.
The US was founded on a strong sense of individual liberty, and a deep suspicion of a state with an inflated view of itself. Those are part of the core of conservatism. They are also at the heart of a wider set of 'American values' that helped establish the US as one of the greatest, if not the greatest modern democracies. It was this liberty and the opportunities you describe that attracted the 'poor, tired, huddled masses', and still attracts them today. And of course you are right, that dream has faded. Since the 1950's, the US has increasingly inserted itself into the affairs of other nations, fallen into the trap of valuing welfarism over individual effort, and given way to the lure of debt to fund consumerism.
All of that said, Hartmann's article is all too typical of the political tribalism that plagues the US today. The days of 'Reagan democrats' or the type of cross party support enjoyed by JFK seem to be consigned to the past.
Part of my approach at this time is to set aside the moral arguments and look more to the fundamentals of geography, demography and continuity that more than anything else will drive the fate of a nation and it's peoples. I'd suggest these are a more useful platform for understanding and developing a constructive politics than merely yelling at each other.
And while I accept the moral arguments will always drive some degree of political tribalism – and rightfully so in my view – they don't have to occupy centre stage all the time.
You've put me in mind of the first & second (early-mid 20C) phases of the French Annales School of historiography … focussing on the longue durée … in contrast to previous orthodox historiography which emphasised specific events & leading personalities … Annales prioritised long-term, slow-moving historical structures … the importance of the long-term evolution of economy, society & civilisation … starting with the way fundamentals like geographic location profoundly shaped & circumscribed the history of particular countries & regions.
The groundbreaking & relatively recent Guns, Germs, and Steel (which I know you've mentioned here in the past)couldprobably – at least loosely – be placed in this tradition.
Are you saying no conservatives have ever expressed that sentiment?
Sure, it was a generalisation. I'm sure some conservatives work tirelessly for patently inadequate charities while continuing to vote for the system that makes those charities necessary.
But I'd go so far as to say that many don't care about the problems of others, at all.
Conservative faith groups providing emergency and term housing for needy families across the US is inconsistent with a broad claim that conservatives somehow want people living on the streets.
Hypocrisy, by its definition, involves inconsistency.
But the fact that the sum of their individual charitable efforts is minute when compared to the sum of their electoral efforts speaks volumes. We know them by their works.
"But the fact that the sum of their individual charitable efforts is minute when compared to the sum of their electoral efforts speaks volumes. "
You do know that Democrats have been in the White house for close to half of the last 60years? If the US has a housing problem, it can;t only be conservatives who have created it.
"Ah, the progression from "fake news" to "they did it too"."
That's precisely what I'm NOT saying. Whereas you claim somehow that "the sum of their electoral efforts" created the housing problems, I'm pointing out that Republicans and Democrats have pretty much shared power in recent decades. But whereas conservatives are working on solutions, progressives seem to be missing the point once again.
"conservatives say there shouldn’t be any minimum wage and “the market” should determine all wages. "
Again, a claim with no links or references. And again it's shallow, because commentators such as Pedro Gonzales and Oren Levin-Waldman, have put the conservative case for a minimum wage.
Dude left out the bit about how much conservatives like child labour.
Wisconsin moves to let 14-year-olds work till 11 pm
The proposed bill, SB-22, would allow the group to work between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. on workdays before a school day and between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. when there is no school the next day.
[…]
State Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R) and state Rep. Amy Loudenbeck (R) said before the state's Committee on Labor and Regulatory Reform in June that expanding the laws for younger people could benefit smaller businesses during peak seasonal rushes.
(MADISON, WISCONSIN) – The Wisconsin State Legislature passed a bill this week that eliminates requirements that 16-and-17-year-olds get parental permission to work and Republican Governor Scott Walker is expected to sign it into law. Under existing law, a child must pay $10 and provide a parent’s written consent to obtain a work permit.
Grocers and other members of the corporate sector that employ teens have been pushing for the change.
The emptying out of new zealands rural communities killed of lots of clubs, parents worried about injuries, and the rise of football are a huge part of it.
Also the seven day work week has screwed a lot of players being able to turn up to every match. Really difficult finding regular times to suit everyone, even for a meeting.
Not sure how old this archive is and when they turfed the resource but what I looked at for years as official. They seem to not show player numbers on their new site
Tiny game all round the world, Where I come from only ponces down the south of England played it, there was one field that had ruby posts and was only used by the university.
Why, in these enlightened times, are there still "shit parts of town" – is it because they provide sporting talent and cheap labour? No shit-stirring please.
I used to live in Aberdeen, over the river was a place called torrie, it reminded me of 90s kawerau ,murupara , except they where all white over there,
It's just the way its ,some things ill never change,
Aberdeen has the largest divide of rich and poor in the EU
(so I’m told) The remaining 80% consists of 3 storey flats erected circa 1970 with a high density feel, like its residents. https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/aberdeen-2.html [a bit ‘in your face’]
A long time ago as a recent immigrant youngster trying to get my head around different kinds of football, I had it explained as "rugby is a game of gentlemen pretending to be thugs, soccer is a game of thugs pretending to be gentlemen, and rugby league is a game of thugs being thugs".
I'm posting on my phone from Welly Hospital, where I was admitted via ED on Wednesday. Probably gonna be here all this week, undergoing various tests, & perhaps next weekend too. 😖
Curious thing is I can't post on TS using iPad or this phone if I'm using the free inpatient wifi. Safari on iPad & Google Chrome of this smartphone refuse to connect to the TS site because it says SSL security certificates have expired.
Same for RNZ & Herald websites. Stuff's ok. If I want to connect to & post on TS or those other sites I have to turn off wifi & use Mobile Data?
Have the same problem on my dear old and beloved Airmac. Not enough memory left to upgrade the OS and browser. So have to resort to using my wife's Airmac which has updated OS and can run the latest browser version.
All the best for your stay in Hospital. Hope you will soon be back looking after your stream and the wildlife 🙂
Aw … cheers guys. I'm doing ok. Meals here have so far been very tasty. The ward staff are invariably friendly & helpful. I'm not in any acute danger. So far I've been lucky to get a room on my own – with a great view. The consultants are being very thorough tracking down a final diagnosis by a process of elimination. I've decided I might as well treat the experience as a holiday! 😀
Thanks Mary. The stream's always got plenty of mallard drakes & ducks. I tend not to name them all Trevor & only name those that hang around my area after pairing up with a female.
Oh Robert I had a flash of memory with that wee post My Dad had a great home garden, and when we lived in Gisborne before leaving Waihi he would pack a box of fresh goodies. How I loved his beans carrots and the radishes spring onions chives and apple cucumbers. They were all crisp. Great bunches of rhubarb parsley tomatoes and in season fijoas. It was always a joy to make dinner with the fresh produce. He loved the buttered corn on the cob which was grown locally. Memory lane.
Bart: Grampa, Matlock's not real.
Grampa: Neither are my teeth, but I can still eat corn on the cob, if someone cuts it off and smushes it into a fine paste. Now that's good eatin'!
That reads very plausibly to me; it's exactly the kind of unintended cluster-fuck that happens when you start taking a crude regulatory hammer to a complex machine like a supply chain.
I thought Father Christmas was able to visit & leave presents under level 2. It is only under either level 3's that we currently have in operation within NZ (Waikato original 3 and Auckland level 3 step 1) that he was unable to visit and enter indoors to deliver.
Herodotus, you realise there are probably some 1.2 billion household units on the planet and 52 hours for Christmas day in all time zones. Father Christmas therefore has to visit over 23 million houses in an hour, or about 6500 per second. The covid virus couldn't keep up, let alone get past that beard……..
The Baldwin film set accident is beginning to present a lot of details. Looks like an accidental discharge in a sho- "film segment" that didn't even require him to pull the trigger (so why live rounds in the weapon? see below).
There are systemic factors:
Repeated safety failures not being addressed
safety rituals rather than procedures (calling a gun cold without apparently checking it)
[probably] placing loaded and unloaded firearms in the same prop space
rush-hiring locals when the union staff walk off set, rather than fixing the conditions
Live rounds on a film set that doesn't need live bullets is just wrong
[looks like] tight budget leading to rushed schedules, cheaper staff, and accidents.
That is screwed up. I always thought you weren't even allowed live rounds on film sets and those sorts of shots where needed for things like close up impact shots of objects were done at proper shooting ranges.
Remind me to never star in a film in New Mexico which has guns in it.
Guns are a common part of life in the USA. Guns that injure or kill unintentionally?
Every day, 22 children and teens (1-17) are shot in the United States. Among those:
8 children and teens are unintentionally shot in instances of family fire — a shooting involving an improperly stored or misused gun found in the home resulting in injury or death
Every year, 7,957 children and teens are shot in the United States. Among those:
89 are killed unintentionally
2,893 are shot unintentionally and survive
As well every year, 115,551 people are shot. Among those:
34,566 are intentionally shot by someone else and survive
Yesterday, in a press conference, the director of the CDC warned that they may have to “update” the definition of “fully vaccinated”.
The “updated” definition would potentially mean only people who have had the third “booster” shot would be considered “fully vaccinated”, while people who have had the two original shots are no longer “fully vaccinated”.
Whilst the warning might just be a ploy to scare people into getting their “booster” without forcing them to, it should be noted a revised definition of “fully vaccinated” has already been adopted in other countries.
For example, it is already policy in Israel where, in early September they “updated what it means to be vaccinated,”. You now need a third shot, or else you are no longer considered vaccinated.
We already know that, in the US and others, you’re not considered “vaccinated” if you’re only single-jabbed, or double-jabbed for less than two weeks. So any patient infected with “Covid” in that time is considered “unvaccinated”, NOT a “breakthrough infection”.
Even if maintaining protection means a booster every six months, it just doesn't seem like a big deal. Certainly a lot better than getting the disease.
Checking my yellow book, rabies and Hep B were three jabs spread over six months. So it's not like a three jabber would be unprecedented. The first cholera vaccines were developed over a century ago, but last time I checked there still hadn't been developed any that didn't start dropping off protection within six months and really needed boosters well within two years.
That just looks to me like monitoring is being taken seriously and recommendations are getting revised as more data comes in.
The concern is that the "vaxcinated" become "unvacinated" in a constant roll over and may even end up with very compromised immune systems – see further post below that concerns me even more.
Don’t take it from me, I don’t even get to tweet anymore.
Take it from a little place I call the British government. Which admitted today, in its newest vaccine surveillance report, that:
“N antibody levels appear to be lower in people who acquire infection following two doses of vaccination.” (Page 23)
What’s this mean? Several things, all bad. We know the vaccines do not stop infection or transmission of the virus (in fact, the report shows elsewhere that vaccinated adults are now being infected at much HIGHER rates than the unvaccinated).
What the British are saying is they are now finding the vaccine interferes with your body’s innate ability after infection to produce antibodies against not just the spike protein but other pieces of the virus. Specifically, vaccinated people don’t seem to be producing antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein, the shell of the virus, which are a crucial part of the response in unvaccinated people.
This means vaccinated people will be far more vulnerable to mutations in the spike protein EVEN AFTER THEY HAVE BEEN INFECTED AND RECOVERED ONCE (or more than once, probably).
It also means the virus is likely to select for mutations that go in exactly that direction, because those will essentially give it an enormous vulnerable population to infect. And it probably is still more evidence the vaccines may interfere with the development of robust long-term immunity post-infection.
Guessing from the comments, it would appear the author attracts a more than slightly kooky audience. A quick google finds that Alex Berenson has indeed been called "the pandemic's wrongest man".
Moving on to what he's actually written, Berenson notably omits any mention of the way hospitalisation and death rates are much much lower among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. (Tables and charts on pages 12 through 18)
The full context of what he's quoted from is discussing trying to work out actual previous infection rates from the prevalence of different kinds of antibodies, and says
Seropositivity estimates for S antibody in blood donors are likely to be higher than would be expected in the general population and this probably reflects the fact that donors are more likely to be vaccinated. Seropositivity estimates for N antibody will underestimate the proportion of the population previously infected due to (i) blood donors are potentially less likely to be exposed to natural infection than age matched individuals in the general population (ii) waning of the N antibody response over time and (iii) recent observations from UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) surveillance data that N antibody levels appear to be lower in individuals who acquire infection following 2 doses of vaccination.
The report doesn't discuss potential physiological reasons for this, but it would appear quite plausible that if someone is primed to produce S antibodies by being vaccinated and the S antibodies are effective at suppressing the virus, then there is simply much less need to produce N antibodies.
Nevertheless, it would appear Berenson is trying to make some sort of bizarre argument that getting immunity from surviving the full-on disease might result in stronger immunity than vaccination, so don't get vaccinated. Get the disease to get protected from the disease, instead of getting vaccinated to protect from the disease.
Which seems .. at best, slightly odd thinking. But it certainly seems to appeal to somewhat odd-thinking idiots.
Yes, a quick search uncovered this about Berenson.
The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man
In a crowded field of wrongness, one person stands out: Alex Berenson.
Berenson has been serving up COVID-19 hot takes for the past year, blithely predicting that the United States would not reach 500,000 deaths (we’ve surpassed 550,000) and arguing that cloth and surgical masks can’t protect against the coronavirus (yes, theycan).
Emerson Collective is a for-profit corporation focused on education, immigration reform, the environment, media and journalism, and health. Founded by Laurene Powell Jobs,[citation needed] the LLC uses philanthropy, impact investing, advocacy, and community engagement as tools to spur change in the United States and abroad.[7] They are a limited liability company (LLC) and purport to engage in philanthrocapitalism.
Hmmmmmm "for-profit" and engage in strange from of capitalism – just the background for Fonts of Truth ???
The first step is to look at the source info someone is basing their argument from. If someone has clearly omitted relevant parts and taken parts out of context, as Berenson has, then they are trying to mislead the gullible.
That method helps weed out some people to not believe.
That's easy. Did Jacinda utter it while standing behind her pulpit in the theatre in the Beehive or did you read it on the website covid19.govt.nz? If YES then you must believe it as that is the font from which all truth comes. If NO then it is false and is never to be listened to or heeded.
We know this because it was proclaimed by the oracle herself.
My position on marijuana is less informed by dilettante Western dabblings with punk weed, and more by centuries of Middle Eastern and Asian experience with hard-core hash.
Sure, young folk and a goodly proportion of the community should avoid weed like the plague but the downsides pale in insignificance compared to the havoc wrought and damage done by the universal gateway drug, alcohol.
Yes that comparison is a stark and obvious one. Indeed if alcohol was hypothetically discovered tomorrow it would be banned by lunchtime as the very dangerous drug it is.
But like the ME has a long and complex relationship with hash, we have a similarly long and complex relationship with alcohol. Which for both societies has made it very hard for us to disentangle from either.
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
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It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
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.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
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Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
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Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
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Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
Every year, in the Budget, Parliament forks out money to government agencies to do certain things. And every year, as part of the annual review cycle, those agencies are meant to report on whether they have done the things Parliament gave them that money for. Agencies which consistently fail to ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – Recent events in American universities point to an underlying crisis of coherent thinking, an issue that increasingly affects the progressive left across the Western world. This of course is nothing new as anyone who can either remember or has read of the late ...
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Normally when we talk about accessing public transport it’s about improving how easy it is to get to, such as how easy is it to cross roads in a station/stop’s walking catchment, is it possible to cycle to safely, do bus connections work, or even if are there new routes/connections ...
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Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
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This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
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Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
Today marks a tragic milestone for New Zealanders as the Coalition Government side with big tobacco to repeal the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins and Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
This year’s Pacific Language Weeks celebrate regional unity and the contribution of Pacific communities to New Zealand culture, says Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti. Dr Reti announced dates for the 2024 Pacific Language Weeks during a visit to the Pasifika festival in Auckland today and says there’s so ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
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The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII has hosted members of the Green Party Caucus at Tuurangawaewae Marae in Ngaaruawahia. The audience follows the King’s Hui-aa-Motu on 20 January, where more than 10,000 people gathered to discuss national ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Rachael Potter, Research Associate and Lecturer in Work and Organisational Psychology, University of South Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Pregnant women and workers with children are often unfairly treated by their bosses and colleagues, despite laws to protect against workplace discrimination ...
Reacting to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s refusal to rule out introducing new taxes at the budget, Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Connor Molloy, said: “Today’s refusal to rule out new taxes suggests the Government is nothing more ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne Aila Images/Shutterstock Aged-care workers will receive a significant pay increase after the Fair Work Commission ruled they ...
He’s bringing ‘Sophie’ back, yeah. Goodshirt’s ‘Sophie’ music video is one of the most instantly recognisable New Zealand music videos of all time. Featuring a woman listening to the song on headphones while her entire house is burgled behind her, the video won the New Zealand music award for Best ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University A year ago, the AUKUS agreement was formally announced between Australian and UK Prime Ministers Anthony Albanese and Rishi Sunak and US President Joe Biden. The agreement mapped out the “optimal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreas Helwig, Associate Professor, Electro-Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern Queensland SmartS/Shutterstock Steam locomotives clattering along railway tracks. Paddle steamers churning down the Murray. Dreadnought battleships powered by steam engines. Many of us think the age of steam has ended. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carrie Leonetti, Associate Professor of Law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Victims who experience family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand are treated differently, depending on which part of the justice system they turn to for help. But a new member’s bill ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Tesch, Visiting Fellow at the ANU Centre for European Studies, Australian National University In perhaps the least surprising news of the year, Vladimir Putin has triumphed at the Russian ballot box and been enthroned for the fifth time as president. He ...
The Papua New Guinea Supreme Court has stopped a byelection for the Madang Open seat being held until an appeal filed by former MP Bryan Kramer is concluded. Kramer had appealed to the Supreme Court over a National Court decision not to review his application of the Leadership Tribunal decision ...
By Miriam Zarriga in Port Moresby Despite a “historic” ceasefire agreement in Papua New Guinea between Enga authorities and tribal leaders after months of bitter warfare, a young woman has been found brutally killed near Kaekin village, Wapenamanda. Despite the peace agreement and signing concluded in Port Moresby last Thursday ...
The second season of Ryan Murphy’s Feud is a sadder and slower entry into his canon of true story-telling, leaning heavily on a verdict about the cost of a single work of art. Hollywood heavyweight Ryan Murphy has had a bit of “ick” about him in the last few years. ...
Are you deeply passionate about sharing Māori stories? We’re on the hunt for an experienced writer/editor to lead coverage in our Ātea section.Ātea is a deeply valued section of The Spinoff site, offering Māori perspectives and insights across politics, current affairs and culture. We are thrilled to be looking ...
By Aisha Azeemah in Suva With the lights on one of his sneakers blinking as he ran through the gallery, a little boy looked up at several works of art. One of them was a sculpture of his grandfather: the man who changed how we see the Pacific — Epeli ...
WHAT: Uber drivers are holding a rally outside the Court of Appeal in Wellington tomorrow, as the company begins its appeal against 2022’s Employment Court verdict (in a case taken jointly by FIRST Union and E tū) that four drivers were permanent ...
RNZ Pacific The Fiji Meteorological Service has a heavy rain warning still in place for the whole of the country after a weekend of flooding, although some floodwaters have receded. Flood and flash flood warnings and alerts are also in place, including a warning for all flash flood-prone areas, small ...
Responding to Grant Robertson’s recent admission on a Q+A with Jack Tame that his only regret from his time in office was that he didn’t take on more debt, Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson, Alex Murphy, said: “Grant Robertson has now admitted that he ...
Intelligence in the USA (yeah, I know most readers will reject the notion):
Since it's so hard to find, the USA has had to create 18 separate agencies to hunt it down. The story of how they got together around a big table to cohere a report remains untold, but here's their appraisal in time for COP26:
So after a couple of decades of denial, the establishment has finally figured out what's going on. Will suitwearers have to conform to the new world? Can dinosaurs fly?
It is not all bad in America.
Maybe America’s Intelligence agencies could go outside and look on their own doorstop for solutions.
Giving back;
The Deliveristas – the new climate friendly delivery business being embraced in US cities, heavily reliant on immigrants. (legal, and undocumented)
All they ask in return is some spending on cycle safety infrastructure.
New Zealand cities could learn something.
Indeed. I've long framed this combo of free enterprise with Green thinking as bluegreen, but folks here are averse to that meme due to usage by the Nats. However it is likely to remain integral to sustainability as this example suggests…
Obama: "When Bruce and I first sat down in the summer of 2020 to record Renegades: Born in the USA, we didn’t know how our conversations would turn out. What I did know was that Bruce was a great storyteller, a bard of the American experience – and that we both had a lot on our minds, including some fundamental questions about the troubling turn our country had taken." https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/oct/23/bruce-springsteen-and-barack-obama-on-friendship-and-fathers-book-renegades
I share with these guys the life-path produced by a defective fatherhood role-model, and how willpower & lateral-thinking can be combined to make success happen despite that handicap.
Springsteen:
Their book release happens in a couple of days. Funny how imprints from childhood resonate down the years, eh?
Obama: You end up wrestling with ghosts.
Springsteen: I guess that’s what we all do.
and…Codger Sunday is declared open…
Bruce is not everyone’s 32 oz. soda, but I have a lot of time for him. “Born to run”, “Darkness on the edge of town” and “The River” were definitely on the Galaxie/Fairlane cassette players in earlier times. He donated to the UK Miners strike in the 80s, played for No Nukes and many other worthy causes. A decent man and hard worker who lives the dream while providing a critique of the dream. Fair bit of online grumbling about him these days for “being political” from blue collars who possibly turned to Trump.
Barrack Obama’s main achievement really was being black and US President. He broke the ice. The US electoral and Govt. system is designed expressly to block people that think they can close down the likes of Guantanamo.
Bruce and Barrack are privileged in various ways, and shaped by dodgy dads, so good on them for exploring it publicly for others to reflect on.
What a shame Springsteen did this….just legitimizing another US war and class criminal, all Obama ever used all his considerable willpower and lateral thinking to do, was dupe the US public and many many others around the world into believing he was something he was not..a good man with a plan for a better world..no, it turns out that just like our own Ardern, he was never anything more than an fundamentalist leader of an extremist death cult known as Free Market Liberalism.
And btw just keep in mind Obama's main legacy to the world was Trump..
“Can dinosaurs fly?”….no.
Yeah, their leftist coin has two sides. As mainstreamers (compared to me) they represent typical Democrat voters. Yet they use Renegades as their book title – as if to signify that they're really non-establishmentarian. I wonder if anything in the book actually validates the title!
An old dialectic in politics–do certain people go bad or were they always bad?–such ponderings don’t matter much I guess if you are on the nasty end of a drone strike.
No one that attains the position of US President is allowed by the corporates and military and lobbyists or the cumbersome dual house and Federal/State structure to achieve much at all apart from increasing 1%ers wealth.
"…such ponderings don’t matter much I guess if you are on the nasty end of a drone strike."…that is 100% correct.
let's not forget he was also a complete failure for the vast majority of Black Americans as well…
How Obama Destroyed Black Wealth
https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/obama-foreclosure-crisis-wealth-inequality
I just fucking cannot stand the way that pretty much anybody who has achieved political power never have to answer for their policies after they leave their seats of power..infact it is worse than that, they nearly all get rehabilitated by a compliant press..just look at the way Helen Clarke and John Key get to talk about our Covid response, not once being questioned on the fact they both ran our health care system on austerity budgets, thereby are directly responsible for our current shitty public healthcare system that can't cope with this emergency…
Yeah Clark (and her government) should never ever be forgiven for cynically putting Ruth's $20-00 per week back on NZS and not on benefits – which was cheaper to do then NZS and NZS had rocketed well away from benefit rates by then as well (remembering that previously they were the same).
The current government though is worse because they had a pretty clear mandate from both winning the election on doing something about poverty and the WEAG recommendations – fuck how much more support do you need to fix something that is broken!
Oh that is right public servants said not to increase it – the same WINZ and Treasury public servants that thrived under National no doubt.
They, this Labour government, then Judith Collins doubled down by developing a two tier benefit system as a big influx of white people were laid off – people who would go back to work much more quickly than Maori and PI – cau
se clearly they were more deserving to not live in poverty.
Just put the rates back to the same as NZS and pay compensation to every single person who has been on benefit since Clark put the NZS rates up as a way of saying it was wrong. Everyone on benefit would have incurred debt over the years as a way of surviving.
Rent freeze would be useful as well – that should have been done following the Christchurch earthquake – it set a trend for extorting rent money that has run unabated ever since.
And we shouldn't forget that it was under Clark we saw the rise of spin merchants in the public sector. Nurses would have actually been better and ironically cheaper – two nurses for one PR person.
It is kind of funny in a grotesque kind of way.
I spent many a holiday at my grandparents farm when a youngster. Mum taking a break from the kids for once type thing, which is all cool.
They had sheep.
The lamb shanks in those days went to the dogs. My mum used to cook them for us as yummy. Now some stupid 20 bucks for 2.
Just looking at Countdown doing an online shop now and thought I might do a rack of lamb. Just as a surprise for my wife. Crumb and herb covered thing. Masterchef style with a jus
A rack of lamb is now $44 a kilo ffs! That is just silly
Sounds lovely Chris T. Remember if you went to out to eat you would pay $200 odd for two lamb meals sweet/cheese board and wine. So it is all relative. Meat is so expensive in every way, climate and purse. I have looked up vegetarian recipes and discovered other delights, and have meat three times a week as a treat and for iron.
you would be paying 200 for at least 4 people plus drinks and a little snackage before eating with the drinkies, you might even squeeze in coffee and tea after dinner. I did just that the other day for a birthday.
Pro's
you would not be cooking
you would not be setting the table
you would not be going to the supermarket to get the ingredients
you don't need an oven a kitchen and electricity to get it all cooked
and you don't need to clean up and do the dishes after the fact
you would be spending 15% of that total on GST for the government
you would be spending a part of that total on wages and paye
you would be spending a part of that total on lease, insurance, rates
and when i combine that, and add it up, it is prolly cheaper to eat lambshanks, mash, peas and a redwine jus in a restaurant then to buy it in a supermarket and cook it at home.
but lets not forget that we can eat all vegetarian, there are lovely recipes around, i hear Kale is a good thing for everything from morning tea to late night snack, just add salt n pepper. Lambshanks are now luxury goods and thus not for the average kiwi.
mmmm … eating lambshanks, mash, peas and a redwine jus in a restaurant … I vaguely remember doing stuff like that in the distant past. I'd like to be allowed to do it again someday …
There needs to be a dribble in need of that food again emoji. Homer Simpson and donuts style lol
Seriously though. Why the f are we paying 44 dollars a kilo now for a rack of lamb?
I get they say they are just matching export prices. But we actually live in the same country the things grew up in. The ones I am buying did not have to travel halfway around the world.
They just announced the trade agreement with no tariffs (202026 I think. But might be wrong) What is going to happen then? Logic alone tells me they will send more decent stuff overseas ans the less lovely stuff we get stuck with.
Might be cheaper, but doubt it given the supermarket duopolly.
I should apologise for being in a tedious to read moany mood today btw 🙂
Completely get I am coming across as just a moaning prick. It was just annoying that my surprise dinner for my wife is probably going to be not what I wanted to do.
I agree with you totally on hte price of anything lamb. As i said, i found NZ lamb cheaper in Europe then in NZ. Go figure.
I do it twice a year – his bday and mine and that is all the bday festivities we have, and when i do it I usually order stuff like that. Simply because it has become so expensive to buy and it takes a lot of energy and ingredients to cook.
Virgils birthday dinner was for 4 people, 4 different dishes and the total came to 200 and then his plate was deducted cause it was his birthday. So the total was 160 NZD. Drinks, coffee and mains. We brought our own cake.
(Sigh)
Lamb's priced off the market for very many in NZ today. They just can't afford it.
When i was last in Europe i found NZ lamb leg and rack of lamb in the local Carrefour. It was way cheaper then French lamb, and so much cheaper then here.
And yes, lambshanks used to be cheap, as i used to buy several of them and make one big boil up and freeze in portions. No longer doing that. .
I found NZ lamb in French supermarkets the same price as in NZ.But old stock cheaper.
English rack at >$129.26 kg v NZ leg at $15.92 kg.
https://www.carrefour.fr/r/viandes-et-poissons/boucherie/agneau
Sorry mate. Not sure what your point is. causelegs aren’t connected to ribs etc
NZ lamb is cheap compared to it's milder cousins.
So cheap that NZ producers can ship and sell leg internationally for the same price they charge domestically.
Buying power bulk buying.
11% of NZ lamb goes to the EU. One French supermarket chain would buy SFA.
Carrefour is a bit more then just a supermarket chain.
https://www.carrefour.com/en/
to sad we don't have them here, because our food would be cheaper and that would include cheese.
Carrefour is not as cheap as either lidl or aldi nor as fresh . Carrefour have a huge variety but lack the freshness or the much lower prices of lidl or aldi.
I have lived for over ten years in France and i know Aldi from Germany. Carrefour has the best open cheese, charcuterie, seafood and fresh food aisles i have seen anywhere. Lidl and Aldi are both quite different as they have smaller fresh food section and no open meat, cheese and charcuterie – but both have a good section on quark, kefir, youghurts etc. But equally good.
Sadly, in NZ we are still being charged more for fresh food, cheese and lamb. But then we here don't have competition, and in France, Germany etc they have. And that is why we pay stupid prices like 27.90 per KG for lamb shanks and our leg of lamb is 5 bucks dearer per kg today at Countdown then the ones sold in Carrefour France today.
I can smell those open cheese, charcuterie, seafood and fresh food aisles now!! I miss food like that.
"charcuterie"
I have to say when I discovered this thing existed I was literally like a pig in shit.
I think the first time it arrived at my table I was a bit uncommunitive for about 1/2 hour.
Still have dreams about it.
lol 🙂
Can’t get a decent one here though 🙁
Matiri I could smell the meat and fish departments through most of the giant carrefour supermarkets its pukeish.
But they weren't as anywhere near as fresh as lidl or aldi because lidl concentrate on fresh local produce and much lower prices.I only went to the bigger supermarkets when I couldn't find a product at aldi lidl or farmers markets cheaper again.Carrefour prices were on par with our supermarket prices except processed food is cheaper.
Countdown today,
leg of lamb – 2 kg min order – 20.90 NZD – Countdown
so we are literally paying 5 bucks more for the same product without the shipping over seas.
leg of lamb roast – 19.90 Pak n save
lambshanks – 27.90 New World
https://www.newworld.co.nz/shop/category/fresh-foods-and-bakery/butchery/fresh-beef–lamb?pg=1
https://shop.countdown.co.nz/shop/browse/meat-seafood/lamb
https://www.paknsave.co.nz/shop/product/5104657_kgm_000pns?name=nz-lamb-leg-roast
you get nothing for your 15.92 NZD in NZ. Must be good to shop for it in France though.
France has good points and bad our fresh food on the whole tastes better. To find good cuts of meat and nice tasting food you have to pay a premium.
Housing is cheaper in more rural areas much cheaper better insulated .
Travel can be much dearer fuel and then endless toll roads cost a lot of money. Cars are dearer because of stricter pollution controls cars older than 5 yrs are difficult to keep registered.
Public transport is cheap except for high-speed trains.
Taxes that's the killer income taxes are much higher nearly double for an average or above average income earners. Then rates are very high as every little Borough/village has a oversize bearaucracy
With that you get better access to healthcare.
Better funded education system.
Benefits and Public housing is funded better.
But France has a lot of homelessness much of it undocumented as migrants cross borders and are not looked after so a lot of street beggars in the bigger cities.
Your link from the leg thing seems a bit dodge as well by the way. So The mods might want to think of removing it
It's a link to a French supermarket chain.
WTF are you going on about?.
Has dodgy pop up in a language I do not know when you click it. After taking you to a language I do not know.
All cool. If you want people to be hesitant to click your links that is your thing.
Aww….poor boy.. the world is a scary place where scary AF furriners speak scary furrin languages, eh…
/
No need for the amateur dramatics mate. She just comes across as dodge. If you want people to be hesitant to click your links that is cool. I don't give a shit
Perfectly normal French – nothing dodgy at all.
Peut-être qu'il faut que vous cultivez votre jardin un peu plus. Courage, mon vieux, ce n'est pas trop difficile!
D'un autre côté, certaines personnes ne parlent pas français, donc le lien est juste de la merde illisible
Alors, chacun à son gout.
Mes goûts sont très exclusifs et sophistiqués. Bien que le fish and chips soit très bon
i put up some prices in NZ for comparison, spoiler, what we get is more expensive. go figure.
Farmers are getting about $9 to $10 a kg at tis time of year, (an all time record) it will come back to $7 or less at peak season in February.
Getting old, lol
Mind you, the gap between the usual cuts of meat and the cheapest cuts is getting smaller, too. I blame Jamie Oliver teaching people what slow cookers were good for in rhe 00's.
In the 90's, if you were on the dole and met someone who knew how to cook, you could still have one good meal that was fit for a king. Might have been the only good meal that week, but still felt great.
Nowadays you'd be competing with some lawyer to buy the same cut (shank, tail, whatever).
Lol
My heart died when I saw the price of ox-tail and chicken livers go up!
Let's face it. As a country we need to put as much effort we do to Covid, into killing Jamie Oliver.
We can make it a team of 5 million mission thing.
Edit: (That was a joke btw!) before someone rings the cops
Lamb flaps. Once dog tucker but now, the best bit's boned, stuffed and sold as rolled breast while the rag-end's pared of a little fat, marinated, and flogged for top dollar as lamb spare ribs.
In breeding season, a mallard drake will sometimes, to get the females’ attention, suddenly bob down in the water and raise himself up again – and whistle. Once I had read this, I saw them doing it everywhere – but it happens so quickly, and at such random times, that it took me several days to actually get one doing it on video.
https://vimeo.com/268977755
I, Warbot is a riff on the scifi book I read as a kid long ago: I Robot. It's a thoughtful survey of the AI scene and military applications.
https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/i-warbot/
The problem with logic as a tool is the alarming tendency for it to fail to produce results according to plan. Thus AI expert Marvin Minsky's opinion that `AI has been braindead since the 1970s (Wired, 2003).
Doesn't stop the funding streams, on development, by nations in the Security Council! The deep context of the design difficulty lies in metaphysics: meaning. Robots are even worse at metaphysics than humans.
So interpretation is the key. Murphy's Law suggests screw-ups defeat seemingly intelligent design often – drone strikes taking out harmless families after identifying them as terrorist targets became the new norm a while back in consequence.
"Conservative" Angela Merkel.
https://hartmannreport.com/p/angela-merkel-governed-germany-to?r=nl8r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source
"Monarchist" 'Murica.
In Thursday’s post, I imagined a world in which conservatives placed equality at the center of their sensibilities. It was fun, though hardly realistic. As one reader said, conservatives never do that. If they did, they’d be liberals. But the goal of the exercise was less practical than imaginative. At the root of the many problems we face are thorny questions difficult to answer. But there’s also a failure of imagination.
I don’t mean to say we need “attitude adjustments.” I mean to say we tend to accept conditions as if they were natural rather than what they are, which is constructed. So today, I want to stretch our imaginations by asking a deceptively simple question.
Why does our democratic republic, founded in opposition to monarchy, tolerate billionaires?
https://www.editorialboard.com/why-does-a-democratic-republic-founded-in-opposition-to-monarchy-tolerate-billionaires/
Thanks KJT, that's a brilliant summary of American Conservatives. Totally cringe worthy.
Thom Hartmann article is lazy. Not all conservatives think the same way about issues any more than progressives do. As to Merkel, she considered herself a conservative, she led a conservative political party, but yet managed to walk a line between her conservatism and liberal values. That is the character of good leadership when western nations are increasing splintered.
Too accurate for you?
His piece is lazy. A lot of claims about what he thinks conservatives think, but no supporting references or links.
And his claims are full of inaccuracies. For example:
"In America, conservatives say that if you can’t afford a place to live, you can always live on the streets,"
That's just plain bs. Conservative faith groups are providing emergency and term housing for needy families across the US. He could have found a number of them with a google search.
Charity to aviod paying taxes or to take less of “the commons” to really solve poverty.
He has it correct.
Not a fan of the Catholic church, but this Pope hits the nail on the head frequently. https://catholicleader.com.au/news/vatican/selfish-lifestyles-help-fuel-poverty-pope-says-in-world-day-of-the-poor-message/#:~:text=POVERTY%20is%20the%20result%20of%20people%E2%80%99s%20selfishness%3B%20it,the%20fault%20of%20the%20poor%2C%20Pope%20Francis%20says.
"He has it correct."
No he doesn't and not do you. The reality of conservative faith groups working to alleviate homelessness is the opposite of them claiming "if you can’t afford a place to live, you can always live on the streets".
Many of his other claims are equally illogical.
Glad to know that the US doesn't have any homeless, the churches have solved it all.
The reality of faith groups even attempting to fix the problem makes a nonsense of Hartmann's claim.
I'm backing you on this one.
The real world does not run like social media. In order to get anything done ordinary people with a range of moderate views learn how to listen to each other and quietly make the adjustments and compromises necessary for everyone to co-operate.
By contrast on social media a large fraction of people pitch camps on either side of an ideological ravine and throw rocks at each other. Like any play fight it can be fun or even cathartic for a while – but eventually the kids have to be cleaned up, tucked into bed and real life resumes.
Indeed. Merkel successfully bridged the divide between her own natural conservatism and the broader beliefs that exist across her party and her constituency. Unfortunately the US, as an example, is hopelessly divided by an ideological chasm.
Hartmann's article does usefully ask a good question – why among all the developed, liberal democracies is the USA such an outlier on the measures he outlines?
Because while it's possible to quibble with some of his more sweeping generalisations find his political tribalism a tad predictable – the broad points being made do stand scrutiny.
Let's set aside one obvious canard – by temperament Americans are similarly distributed between conservative and progressive instincts as anywhere else. What seems to differ is the cultural narrative around which this is organised. It's my sense that the origins of this are rooted in their unique history and geography. I'm not going to attempt to address the complex historic aspect – aside from noting that more than anything else the modern US is a nation of immigrants many of whom at some point in their family history have a story of individual struggle to achieve success.
Stripping away any moral or political argument however, the reality is that the Americans just happen to live on the most desirable piece of real-estate on the planet.
Just these factors alone ensure that the US would be the most economically successful nation on earth – no matter how hard they tried to stuff it up. Throw in a demography that is still relatively young compared to the rest of the developed world – and predictions of their imminent demise a probably pre-mature.
But perhaps the most interesting consequence of this underpins the original question – why is the US so different? One possible answer is that the natural advantages of the land they lived in meant that perhaps more than anywhere else, individuals could work hard and thrive. For many generations the American Dream was real enough even if arguably less so at the present.
But perhaps the more subtle impact has been that the Americans were at the same time never really driven to be all that efficient at anything – they could do well enough without having to bother with collectivism. As a result they never really developed an efficient public sector, health care and education. And while pockets of the nation were always good at innovation, much of it could get along just fine with quite dated systems and technologies. Policing, education, roading and services all remained largely local concerns – Federal agencies always being something to be held at bay.
This simple insight is perhaps the best explanation for why the centre of gravity of US politics – progressive and conservative – has always been placed closer to the individual and the community, than the collective.
The US was founded on a strong sense of individual liberty, and a deep suspicion of a state with an inflated view of itself. Those are part of the core of conservatism. They are also at the heart of a wider set of 'American values' that helped establish the US as one of the greatest, if not the greatest modern democracies. It was this liberty and the opportunities you describe that attracted the 'poor, tired, huddled masses', and still attracts them today. And of course you are right, that dream has faded. Since the 1950's, the US has increasingly inserted itself into the affairs of other nations, fallen into the trap of valuing welfarism over individual effort, and given way to the lure of debt to fund consumerism.
All of that said, Hartmann's article is all too typical of the political tribalism that plagues the US today. The days of 'Reagan democrats' or the type of cross party support enjoyed by JFK seem to be consigned to the past.
Yes that makes complete sense.
Part of my approach at this time is to set aside the moral arguments and look more to the fundamentals of geography, demography and continuity that more than anything else will drive the fate of a nation and it's peoples. I'd suggest these are a more useful platform for understanding and developing a constructive politics than merely yelling at each other.
And while I accept the moral arguments will always drive some degree of political tribalism – and rightfully so in my view – they don't have to occupy centre stage all the time.
.
You've put me in mind of the first & second (early-mid 20C) phases of the French Annales School of historiography … focussing on the longue durée … in contrast to previous orthodox historiography which emphasised specific events & leading personalities … Annales prioritised long-term, slow-moving historical structures … the importance of the long-term evolution of economy, society & civilisation … starting with the way fundamentals like geographic location profoundly shaped & circumscribed the history of particular countries & regions.
The groundbreaking & relatively recent Guns, Germs, and Steel (which I know you've mentioned here in the past) could probably – at least loosely – be placed in this tradition.
Thanks – I will look that up.
"I'd suggest these are a more useful platform for understanding and developing a constructive politics than merely yelling at each other."
Amen.
Nope.
Are you saying no conservatives have ever expressed that sentiment?
Sure, it was a generalisation. I'm sure some conservatives work tirelessly for patently inadequate charities while continuing to vote for the system that makes those charities necessary.
But I'd go so far as to say that many don't care about the problems of others, at all.
"Are you saying no conservatives have ever expressed that sentiment?"
Nope. I'm saying Hartmann's generalisations and lack of evidential support in the form of references makes a nonsense of his assertions.
Keep telling yourself that.
But doesn't that make your comment at 1:11pm equally as nonsensical?
Conservative faith groups providing emergency and term housing for needy families across the US is inconsistent with a broad claim that conservatives somehow want people living on the streets.
Hypocrisy, by its definition, involves inconsistency.
But the fact that the sum of their individual charitable efforts is minute when compared to the sum of their electoral efforts speaks volumes. We know them by their works.
"But the fact that the sum of their individual charitable efforts is minute when compared to the sum of their electoral efforts speaks volumes. "
You do know that Democrats have been in the White house for close to half of the last 60years? If the US has a housing problem, it can;t only be conservatives who have created it.
Ah, the progression from "fake news" to "they did it too".
Always funny.
Nobody said they didn't.
"Ah, the progression from "fake news" to "they did it too"."
That's precisely what I'm NOT saying. Whereas you claim somehow that "the sum of their electoral efforts" created the housing problems, I'm pointing out that Republicans and Democrats have pretty much shared power in recent decades. But whereas conservatives are working on solutions, progressives seem to be missing the point once again.
Homeless people are 100% more likely to be locked up for vagrancy than people in homes.
But then sure, argue that conservatives are trying to solve homelessness by linking to an article that call people without homes criminals.
"Homeless people are 100% more likely to be locked up for vagrancy than people in homes."
Which has absolutely nothing to do with whether the electoral efforts of conservatives caused homelesness.
So you're blaming me because a relevant response to your link was not related to the rest of the thread?
Ah, I see. Derail achieved. The last refuge of the internet disingenue.
Here's another one:
"conservatives say there shouldn’t be any minimum wage and “the market” should determine all wages. "
Again, a claim with no links or references. And again it's shallow, because commentators such as Pedro Gonzales and Oren Levin-Waldman, have put the conservative case for a minimum wage.
5 recent or current US politicians actively stating they believe the minimum wage should be repealed.
But #notallconservatives, I guess.
Absolutely not all, as my post evidenced. And I applaud you linking to sources, something Hartmann failed to do.
As did you, initially.
But that doesn't mean Hartmann was wrong, or even particularly unfair.
No, I've shown in my other comments how he was wrong.
keep telling yourself that.
Dude left out the bit about how much conservatives like child labour.
Wisconsin moves to let 14-year-olds work till 11 pm
The proposed bill, SB-22, would allow the group to work between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. on workdays before a school day and between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. when there is no school the next day.
[…]
State Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R) and state Rep. Amy Loudenbeck (R) said before the state's Committee on Labor and Regulatory Reform in June that expanding the laws for younger people could benefit smaller businesses during peak seasonal rushes.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/577754-wisconsin-moves-to-let-14-year-olds-work-till-11-pm
(MADISON, WISCONSIN) – The Wisconsin State Legislature passed a bill this week that eliminates requirements that 16-and-17-year-olds get parental permission to work and Republican Governor Scott Walker is expected to sign it into law. Under existing law, a child must pay $10 and provide a parent’s written consent to obtain a work permit.
Grocers and other members of the corporate sector that employ teens have been pushing for the change.
https://www.wnylabortoday.com/news/2017/05/13/national-labor-news/say-didn-t-the-labor-movement-already-fight-to-stop-child-labor-wisconsin-republicans-vote-to-allow-children-to-work-without-parental-consent/
104 to 14 ABs v USA
Know it sounds stupid, but fair play to the US dudes. Tiny game in the US. First two tries ever for them against us I think. May be wrong.
Free drinks for life in their home towns, I would imagine Lol
Number players in USA is abt 125,000
In NZ 146,893 (total) 28,648 (adults)
Sound odd!!
Is that right?
Numbers sound to low. Will look
More surfers than rugby players in NZ.
Greed at the top sold the game and the end of free-to-air coverage has reduced rugby to a minority sport
Itll be more reasons than that imho.
The emptying out of new zealands rural communities killed of lots of clubs, parents worried about injuries, and the rise of football are a huge part of it.
That and a general decrease in toxic masculinity. Young men are realising it is better to avoid pain than seek it out and be stoic.
Howzabout, as consequence of the decline of the local rugby club, masculinity lost yet another avenue of expression, leading to the toxicity?
Toxic masculinity is nurture (so to speak) not nature and is declining.
Also the seven day work week has screwed a lot of players being able to turn up to every match. Really difficult finding regular times to suit everyone, even for a meeting.
1) moving of rugby to pay TV.
2) milking of the All Black brand and the game in general by the fish heads for profit, leading to tests losing all meaning.
3) Disinterest by immigrant communities in the game, they would rather play football/soccer, etc.
4) Growth of the likes of basketball, and other sports.
5) way more stuff to do in general.
It has to be remembered that rugby was never a working class sport. It was always chiefly played by farmers and the middle classes.
Not sure how old this archive is and when they turfed the resource but what I looked at for years as official. They seem to not show player numbers on their new site
https://web.archive.org/web/20120624031635/http://www.irb.com/unions/union=11000008/index.html
Tiny game all round the world, Where I come from only ponces down the south of England played it, there was one field that had ruby posts and was only used by the university.
Sorry mate.
Hate to break it to you, but there are players 1,428,862 just in England.
Rugby is a game played by people with odd shaped balls.
It's a game that suits od shaped fallas, how many 100kgs lads gonna make it in football doya think. ?
Definitely a route out of the shit parts of town for some.
Why, in these enlightened times, are there still "shit parts of town" – is it because they provide sporting talent and cheap labour? No shit-stirring please.
https://gijn.org/2021/09/16/tips-to-reveal-inequality/
I used to live in Aberdeen, over the river was a place called torrie, it reminded me of 90s kawerau ,murupara , except they where all white over there,
It's just the way its ,some things ill never change,
Who benefits from the ‘powerless to change‘ meme?
Ponces from down South there's about seven million in London alone. Up North they play league.
A long time ago as a recent immigrant youngster trying to get my head around different kinds of football, I had it explained as "rugby is a game of gentlemen pretending to be thugs, soccer is a game of thugs pretending to be gentlemen, and rugby league is a game of thugs being thugs".
I'm posting on my phone from Welly Hospital, where I was admitted via ED on Wednesday. Probably gonna be here all this week, undergoing various tests, & perhaps next weekend too. 😖
Curious thing is I can't post on TS using iPad or this phone if I'm using the free inpatient wifi. Safari on iPad & Google Chrome of this smartphone refuse to connect to the TS site because it says SSL security certificates have expired.
Same for RNZ & Herald websites. Stuff's ok. If I want to connect to & post on TS or those other sites I have to turn off wifi & use Mobile Data?
Have the same problem on my dear old and beloved Airmac. Not enough memory left to upgrade the OS and browser. So have to resort to using my wife's Airmac which has updated OS and can run the latest browser version.
All the best for your stay in Hospital. Hope you will soon be back looking after your stream and the wildlife 🙂
Crikey that's terrible Gezza. Hang in there.
It's great to have a post-public-service perspective here.
Aw … cheers guys. I'm doing ok. Meals here have so far been very tasty. The ward staff are invariably friendly & helpful. I'm not in any acute danger. So far I've been lucky to get a room on my own – with a great view. The consultants are being very thorough tracking down a final diagnosis by a process of elimination. I've decided I might as well treat the experience as a holiday! 😀
Good luck mate – it sounds like you’ll likely bounce back, but keep us in the loop.
My father always said the best thing about hospitals is that there is always some poor bastard in there worse off than you.
Here's hoping everything is well with you Gezza (8). Take care.
Enjoyed the video from you earlier today @ (4) about the Mallard male duck. Is his name Trevor by any chance?
Thanks Mary. The stream's always got plenty of mallard drakes & ducks. I tend not to name them all Trevor & only name those that hang around my area after pairing up with a female.
Many ducks n drakes are hybrid mallard/grey ducks
Sorry to hear that Geeza.
Hope all goes well.
Cheers dv. I have the feeling it's gonna all be fine. 👍🏻
Get well Gezza. All the best. Your Pukeko will miss your treats.
Hope everyone's getting ready to make their own Christmas presents this year.
I grow mine.
Oh Robert I had a flash of memory with that wee post My Dad had a great home garden, and when we lived in Gisborne before leaving Waihi he would pack a box of fresh goodies. How I loved his beans carrots and the radishes spring onions chives and apple cucumbers. They were all crisp. Great bunches of rhubarb parsley tomatoes and in season fijoas. It was always a joy to make dinner with the fresh produce. He loved the buttered corn on the cob which was grown locally. Memory lane.
Bart: Grampa, Matlock's not real.
Grampa: Neither are my teeth, but I can still eat corn on the cob, if someone cuts it off and smushes it into a fine paste. Now that's good eatin'!
Mmmmmm….
California based freight forwarding CEO on one of the bottlenecks affecting US supply.
https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1451543776992845834
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1451543776992845834.html
That reads very plausibly to me; it's exactly the kind of unintended cluster-fuck that happens when you start taking a crude regulatory hammer to a complex machine like a supply chain.
Plenty of stuff at charity stores.
I thought Father Christmas was able to visit & leave presents under level 2. It is only under either level 3's that we currently have in operation within NZ (Waikato original 3 and Auckland level 3 step 1) that he was unable to visit and enter indoors to deliver.
Herodotus, you realise there are probably some 1.2 billion household units on the planet and 52 hours for Christmas day in all time zones. Father Christmas therefore has to visit over 23 million houses in an hour, or about 6500 per second. The covid virus couldn't keep up, let alone get past that beard……..
The Baldwin film set accident is beginning to present a lot of details. Looks like an accidental discharge in a
sho-"film segment" that didn't even require him to pull the trigger (so why live rounds in the weapon? see below).There are systemic factors:
That is screwed up. I always thought you weren't even allowed live rounds on film sets and those sorts of shots where needed for things like close up impact shots of objects were done at proper shooting ranges.
Remind me to never star in a film in New Mexico which has guns in it.
Guns are a common part of life in the USA. Guns that injure or kill unintentionally?
Every day, 22 children and teens (1-17) are shot in the United States. Among those:
Every year, 7,957 children and teens are shot in the United States. Among those:
As well every year, 115,551 people are shot. Among those:
https://www.bradyunited.org/key-statistics
Yeah I know, but believe me the filing industry there is powerful as f there
And they have very strict rules with the various Guilds about actor and crew safety.
All true, but this ain't that.
It sounds as if nobody gave a shit.
Too busy or too poorly-trained to do it properly, and tight budgets and a star on set might be a powerful blinker for she'll-be-rightism.
This is a little concerning
Yesterday, in a press conference, the director of the CDC warned that they may have to “update” the definition of “fully vaccinated”.
The “updated” definition would potentially mean only people who have had the third “booster” shot would be considered “fully vaccinated”, while people who have had the two original shots are no longer “fully vaccinated”.
Whilst the warning might just be a ploy to scare people into getting their “booster” without forcing them to, it should be noted a revised definition of “fully vaccinated” has already been adopted in other countries.
For example, it is already policy in Israel where, in early September they “updated what it means to be vaccinated,”. You now need a third shot, or else you are no longer considered vaccinated.
LINK: https://off-guardian.org/2021/10/23/cdc-director-we-may-need-to-update-our-definition-of-fully-vaccinated/
We already know that, in the US and others, you’re not considered “vaccinated” if you’re only single-jabbed, or double-jabbed for less than two weeks. So any patient infected with “Covid” in that time is considered “unvaccinated”, NOT a “breakthrough infection”.
So how is that concerning?
Even if maintaining protection means a booster every six months, it just doesn't seem like a big deal. Certainly a lot better than getting the disease.
Checking my yellow book, rabies and Hep B were three jabs spread over six months. So it's not like a three jabber would be unprecedented. The first cholera vaccines were developed over a century ago, but last time I checked there still hadn't been developed any that didn't start dropping off protection within six months and really needed boosters well within two years.
That just looks to me like monitoring is being taken seriously and recommendations are getting revised as more data comes in.
The concern is that the "vaxcinated" become "unvacinated" in a constant roll over and may even end up with very compromised immune systems – see further post below that concerns me even more.
I missed Q and A this morning so just watching it via the old on demand and chromecast.
Reti is a pretty bloody straight up bloke really in his interview.
Ignores Collin's rhetoric.
Can see him as Nat leader more and more after that.
Andre
Even more concerning:
URGENT: Covid vaccines will keep you from acquiring full immunity EVEN IF YOU ARE INFECTED AND RECOVER
Alex Berenson
Oct 221,642
Don’t take it from me, I don’t even get to tweet anymore.
Take it from a little place I call the British government. Which admitted today, in its newest vaccine surveillance report, that:
“N antibody levels appear to be lower in people who acquire infection following two doses of vaccination.” (Page 23)
What’s this mean? Several things, all bad. We know the vaccines do not stop infection or transmission of the virus (in fact, the report shows elsewhere that vaccinated adults are now being infected at much HIGHER rates than the unvaccinated).
What the British are saying is they are now finding the vaccine interferes with your body’s innate ability after infection to produce antibodies against not just the spike protein but other pieces of the virus. Specifically, vaccinated people don’t seem to be producing antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein, the shell of the virus, which are a crucial part of the response in unvaccinated people.
This means vaccinated people will be far more vulnerable to mutations in the spike protein EVEN AFTER THEY HAVE BEEN INFECTED AND RECOVERED ONCE (or more than once, probably).
It also means the virus is likely to select for mutations that go in exactly that direction, because those will essentially give it an enormous vulnerable population to infect. And it probably is still more evidence the vaccines may interfere with the development of robust long-term immunity post-infection.
Aside from that, everything is fine.
LINK: https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/urgent-covid-vaccines-will-keep-you/comments
Guessing from the comments, it would appear the author attracts a more than slightly kooky audience. A quick google finds that Alex Berenson has indeed been called "the pandemic's wrongest man".
Moving on to what he's actually written, Berenson notably omits any mention of the way hospitalisation and death rates are much much lower among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. (Tables and charts on pages 12 through 18)
The full context of what he's quoted from is discussing trying to work out actual previous infection rates from the prevalence of different kinds of antibodies, and says
The report doesn't discuss potential physiological reasons for this, but it would appear quite plausible that if someone is primed to produce S antibodies by being vaccinated and the S antibodies are effective at suppressing the virus, then there is simply much less need to produce N antibodies.
Nevertheless, it would appear Berenson is trying to make some sort of bizarre argument that getting immunity from surviving the full-on disease might result in stronger immunity than vaccination, so don't get vaccinated. Get the disease to get protected from the disease, instead of getting vaccinated to protect from the disease.
Which seems .. at best, slightly odd thinking. But it certainly seems to appeal to somewhat odd-thinking idiots.
Maurice needs to check his sources.
Please do not spread this disinformation.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/alex-berenson-banned-from-twitter-after-spreading-false-info-on-israeli-vaccines-1.10162481
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/pandemics-wrongest-man/618475/
Best you familiarise yourself with Berenson and his anti-vax lunacy.
Thanks Joe.
Yes, a quick search uncovered this about Berenson.
And there is much more.
Maurice – please check your sources.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/pandemics-wrongest-man/618475/
There lies the great problem – which purveyors of THE TRUTH are we to believe?
Time will surely tell – if ANY of us are here to see it
Berenson is not a purveyor of the truth. Have you read the Atlantic article?
and also had a look at the Atlantic's ownership on Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerson_Collective
Emerson Collective is a for-profit corporation focused on education, immigration reform, the environment, media and journalism, and health. Founded by Laurene Powell Jobs,[citation needed] the LLC uses philanthropy, impact investing, advocacy, and community engagement as tools to spur change in the United States and abroad.[7] They are a limited liability company (LLC) and purport to engage in philanthrocapitalism.
Hmmmmmm "for-profit" and engage in strange from of capitalism – just the background for Fonts of Truth ???
The first step is to look at the source info someone is basing their argument from. If someone has clearly omitted relevant parts and taken parts out of context, as Berenson has, then they are trying to mislead the gullible.
That method helps weed out some people to not believe.
That does not leave many in the to be believed basket!
How would you know? It doesn't appear you've taken a critical look at any of the material you've posted.
I know that I can rely upon this site to do that for me – and put me right!
the dude literally opens by saying he's been kicked from twitter. There's a clue.
"which purveyors of THE TRUTH are we to believe"
That's easy. Did Jacinda utter it while standing behind her pulpit in the theatre in the Beehive or did you read it on the website covid19.govt.nz? If YES then you must believe it as that is the font from which all truth comes. If NO then it is false and is never to be listened to or heeded.
We know this because it was proclaimed by the oracle herself.
EWE EN Truth?
Berenson has form as a purveyor of junk science and lies, not truth.
https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/17/marijuana-book-tell-your-children-alex-berenson?
My position on marijuana is less informed by dilettante Western dabblings with punk weed, and more by centuries of Middle Eastern and Asian experience with hard-core hash.
On that score – nah.
Mine is 50+ years participating and observing.
Sure, young folk and a goodly proportion of the community should avoid weed like the plague but the downsides pale in insignificance compared to the havoc wrought and damage done by the universal gateway drug, alcohol.
[RL: The word ‘plague’ is in pre-mod. Cheers]
Yes that comparison is a stark and obvious one. Indeed if alcohol was hypothetically discovered tomorrow it would be banned by lunchtime as the very dangerous drug it is.
But like the ME has a long and complex relationship with hash, we have a similarly long and complex relationship with alcohol. Which for both societies has made it very hard for us to disentangle from either.
Great to see Colombia's greatest drug lord, "Otonio" Usaga, taken down.
500 Police and 22 helicopters to take out his deep jungle headquarters, that's a pretty focused effort there.
Two cases in Ōtorohanga.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Maniapoto_FM/status/1452129554961616899