1. Team New Zealand sounds like a spoilt brat who will take his toys to another sandpit if he doesn’t get his way.
2. For how much longer are New Zealanders going to fall for the lie of trickledown? Mike Hosking and his fellow medi liars would have us believe this. Don’t.
You don’t live in Auckland do you Ed?
You have not witnessed first hand the swarm of activity that occurs for several years prior to and then during the cup.
The marine industry, hospitality, tourism, retail etc. benefit massively from this event.
The problem is Alan that these big accounting firms that cost potential benefits prior to a sporting event almost always over state it. It is enormously difficult to quantify but easy to over state.
Exactly – take for instance the Super V8 race that was initially proposed for Auckland City (Banks was Mayor at the time and all for it!) – and where the residents protested sufficiently, and were able to show that the so called cost benefit analysis of the organisers was just plain hype and were able to shut it down. The race organisers then convinced Hamilton as to its mavellousness, and the race was run there – until the true costs of running it and the meager benefits were so poor that the Council eventually said enough is enough! More fool Hamilton.
The marine industry, hospitality, tourism, retail etc. benefit massively from this event.
It is a pity that the beneficiaries of such activities don’t pay for it eh?
It causes me additional traffic jams, a strong need to avoid the idiots downtown, an inability to get accommodation for people coming here for business, and an effective rise in rates or diminished services before the event to pay for all of the crap that the sailors hold their hand out for.
Perhaps it’d be worth it if the hospitality industry went off and paid an additional tax for discombobulating the entire rest of the residents of Auckland.
But that pack of bastards really don’t like even a minor tax to cover the effects that their freeloading industry cost the rest of us.
Basically you are a fool. One who doesn’t appear to live in Auckland or is one of the freeloading parasites
This so correct – I wonder if the organisers of the resistance to the Super V8 Race are still around? They were able to show the flimsy analysis of the cost-benefits to Auckland were so much hype that the council over-turned Bank’s wish to run the race.
Perhaps it’d be worth it if the hospitality industry went off and paid an additional tax for discombobulating the entire rest of the residents of Auckland.
But that pack of bastards really don’t like even a minor tax to cover the effects that their freeloading industry cost the rest of us.
Yes, for such supporters of user pays they seem rather recalcitrant when being asked to pay for their usage.
Yep – some people will benefit, the majority will see no benefit and some will be harmed. Those harmed would be businesses whose customers (shoppers, diners) are dragged away from other parts of the city down to the waterfront.
So to say it is good for Auckland is a misconception – because (to steal from Margaret Thatcher) there is no such thing as ‘Auckland’.
1. Team New Zealand sounds like a spoilt brat who will take his toys to another sandpit if he doesn’t get his way.
Thats just a bullshit:
“However, Team NZ chief operations officer Kevin Shoebridge told the Herald even though their preferred option would not happen, they would be working with the options available and there would be no moves to take the America’s Cup away from the city”
Don’t worry about it. At the moment Dunedin households are being delivered around 40 tonnes of Christmas junk mail a week into letter boxes. This might actually increase closer to Christmas.
And I suppose that means Auckland is distributing about 500 tonnes of junk mail a week.
Bear in mind the majority of this goes straight into the garbage without even being read for one nanosecond.
You can’t stop the machine, and 40 years of moaning about it since the Club of Rome has done nothing but waste time and emotional effort.
During the last election I delivered a few hundred flyers to letter boxes. I was surprised at the number with NO JUNK MAIL HERE signs. (I put them in anyway.) My estimate is that two thirds of letter boxes rejected junk mail. Seems to be more tucked inside newspapers though.
Hi ianmac. Surprised you weren’t given the heads up on the legal situation here.
The only letter boxes where you can’t – by law – deliver material are those with the instruction ” Addressed Mail Only” on them.
The only letter boxes where you can’t – by law – deliver material are those with the instruction ” Addressed Mail Only” on them.
Mailboxes like mine which are in the apartment lobby which requires a card to get into. The PO has a card to do it, so the ONLY junk mail we get now comes via the mail person. We moved the mailboxes inside after someone broke into most of the 60 mailboxes – presumably looking for checks when they were still a thing – wrecking most of them. The joy of getting rid of 90% of the junk mail was immense.
Similarly a former Labour Party activist mate of mine simplify classifies election flyers as “democracy participation information sheets” not junk mail, and slides them right in 😀
…all letterboxes regardless of whether they have signs asking for no junk mail, circulars or addressed mail only, can receive election material two months before the election until the day before polling day. This aligns with the Electoral Act.
Interesting to learn that ‘addressed mail only’ is no barrier: the times I’ve delivered election material we were told to leave those ones alone.
to DTB at 2.1.1.2.1.1.: Don’t think would lose votes as no complainer would be voting for the party complained about anyway. The complaining is just to involve nuisance waste of time for those delivering or their electorate office.
Interesting to learn that ‘addressed mail only’ is no barrier:
We were told it is unlawful to deliver non-addressed material into an “addressed mail only” letter box. Political parties and other organisations get around it by acquiring addresses from public lists eg. electoral roll, and either posting or delivering on foot. Either way its more expensive and delivering targeted mail is a nightmare.
Unless there’s been a law change in the last few years.
I was prepared to defend my postings should anyone complain, by apologising for not “noticing” the sign. And our local MP had just 2 phone calls complaining, from the whole Electorate.
Actually I have doubts anyway that the flyers help anyone except the employees of printers.
“Very few dissatisfied customers complain, making this a meaningless measure of customer satisfaction.”
Very few customers will complain directly to you, but that does not mean that they won’t complain to other people. In fact in reality it’s quite the opposite! Let’s think back to the restaurant example I gave at the beginning of this article. Realistically, how many people would you tell if you thought a restaurant was offering bad food and service?
My wife (English is her second, third, or fourth language depending on how one categorises dialects) loves the junk mail. It helped her with handy phrases like Blowout Sale! and Discount Days.
That’s one of the very few positives to junk mail.
Hahaha true, reminds me of the junkyard Transformer robot from the old 90s cartoon movie who only talked in TV ad speak because that’s how he learnt his English
Yes! Many years ago when I was teaching immigrant women English, I would use supermarket junk mail. It had pictures and was relevant to their need to shop for food.
Is anyone going to do a proper post on the America’s Cup facilities ?
It’s a classic environment v economic benefit v social utility v public subsidy v filthy rich capitalists v good for Auckland v binge-purge-cycle v did-we-learn-anything-last-time …. kind of debate.
Worth about $200m in capex from us ratepayers and taxpayers.
A good thing about the America Cup development is those building monuments on other peoples’ coin will move their aspirations from a billion dollar waterfront stadium for a year or two.
I guess a successful Cup event and Aucklanders warming to the precinct all over again will see a renewed stadium push. Fortunately most Aucklanders that own their homes freehold are millionaires, they’re loaded.
It seems like the Democratic Party hierarchy has decided once and for all to dump the Clintons and make them politically radioactive.
Obama Cabinet member/HHS Sec Kathleen Sebelius says women who came forward about Bill Clinton were systematically re-victimised by the Clintons
This was in a CNN interview between former Obama chief advisor and campaign manager David Axelrod, and Sebelius.
These Axelrod and Sebelius are well connected Democratic Party insiders and heavy hitters.
“Not only did people look the other way, but they went after the women who came forward and accused him,” Sebelius stunningly detailed. Keep in mind this is a fact that the alternative media has reported on literally hundreds and hundreds of times while being attacked as right-wing conspiracy theorists for doing so.
“And so it doubled down on not only bad behavior but abusive behavior. And then people attacked the victims,” Sebelius continued.
Damn you beat me to posting it. What’s that they said about not more to come on this? Brazile’s intervention was just the start. Now that the Chicago camp is making a move, momentum will continue to build.
It’s actually a really interesting interview. You should listen to it.
I also can’t help thinking that if the republicans hadn’t made up so many stories about bill clinton, the real one would have stood out. Not that it would have changed much in the 1990s.
Having recently been listening to a marathon run of Christopher Hitchens interviews from the C-Span 90s period, I’d have to say you’re right about the second part of that – there really was no alternative for the electorate to seriously consider. I mean, Bob fucking Dole? Even for the Republicans that was dumb.
During the 1990s the repubs were all about the clinton scandals, fixating especially on a relationship that was actually consensual. But there was also whitewater, and Vince Foster’s suicide. Even republican investigations said Foster committed suicide.
I mean, I’d like to say that in the absence of all those lies and in today’s environment Clinton being accused of sexual assault would kick him out of contention in the party primaries, but even post-Weinstein it’s 50/50.
Well you say lies; there was genuine suspicion and grounds for it around the circumstances of Foster’s death – as there would be in any DC insider who knows where the bodies are buried in the President’s political and personal past turning up having committed such an unusually timed and placed suicide.
A more interesting take on it would be, what did the Clintons do to piss the guy off so much that not only did he take his own life, but seemed to have done it in such method and circumstance that conspiracy theories about his erstwhile employers were virtually guaranteed. Of course there are opponents who will continue to flog a dead horse when there’s that kind of innuendo on hand.
Again, think your right about the difficulties of gauging his chances even in times like his own. There’s no denying his charisma with the wider electorate, and he apparently lit a room right up when present, that’s gold dust in politics. And the Clintons do seem to be very serious networkers. I’d say if the opponent was formidable enough, they’d probably pick him even with a dozen sex scandals around his neck. Much like Trump, or Key, Slick Willie seems to have that knack for being really quite scandal-proof in the eyes of someone who’d vote for him.
There were suspicions, few (if any) of those were genuine, and rumours were outright fabricated by republicans wanting to encourage idiot conspiracists. Well, now they’re reaping the whirlwind with trump.
Indeed, an odd choice of place – and an odd choice of time given when he was found, and the appointments he still had to make in the day ahead of him. Like I say, the more interesting ‘conspiracy’ side of it to me is that if he bore the Clintons no ill will, he sure went through with it in a way which seemed designed to embarrass them.
Let’s face it, it’s not just because he worked for a recently appointed president. That kind of beltway suicide (god that’d be a great name for a punk band) will always attract suspicion. Imagine if Eagleson did something like that right after Ponytail-gate, for instance. Or if something like it happened to someone from David Cameron’s office right after Pig-gate. No way there wouldn’t be questions asked or innuendo spread.
Yeah, actually there are choices which are odd even in such extreme circumstances, and Foster’s was a good example. You can be as obtuse as you like about it, it’s simply obvious to most of us that given who he was and who he worked for, how and when he went was indeed definitively odd.
As to the Republicans, I’m quite capable of separating a lack of surprise that they looked closely at it when it happened from the idea that some among them might persist in bringing it up long after it became apparent that doing so would make them look like conspiracy theorists.
Wasn’t a national park though was it? I mean, taking a long drive out into the wilderness to end it in Yellowstone park, or out to the desert to admire Window Rock, or perhaps at the foot of a majestic redwood or something. But I remember the spot where Foster was found from a documentary a way back. It looked like bloody Myers park or something.
Remember, we’re not trying to prove here whether or not it was dodgy. The point is simply that given who he was, who he worked for, and the scandal he had been a part of it’s simply unsurprising that Clinton’s political opponents made hay with the potential innuendo. There was enough not to find it surprising – we’re talking about the 1990s Republicans here…
Meh. Looks ok to me, with trees and streams and other nature shit, but each to their own.
The thing is, he could have died of cancer diagnosed by three different doctors and a pathologist who took samples, and if the documentary you saw was one funded by the repubs the doctors would have been called drunkards and claims made they were paid off by the clintons.
There are reasonable suspicions, and then there are lies. In the late 80s and early 90s, conservative republicans chose to ignore the truth and just say whatever was convenient at the time. So now we have trump as the culmination of that decision.
I’d say Trump is the culmination of all kinds of decisions, some from politicians, others from business & banking, and some of course from the MIC – who continue to do as well out of him as any other president in my lifetime.
Charitable view of the working class you’ve got there, sir. Let’s tell them wrong-thinking herp-a-derps how dumb they are for not believing what we tell them & valuing things that we don’t.
It’s a fact. The same exit polls that gave CV his “ten point majority” showed Trumps popularity was inversely proportionate to the voter’s level of educational attainment, their ethinicity’s population as a proportion of the total population, and even whether they had a vagina. That’s why CV had to restrict it to “white women” rather than “women”. The majority of women voted for Clinton.
A bit like how the majority of electoral votes went to trump, even though the majority of actual votes went to Clinton.
I’m glad you felt the need to remind me of the electoral vote – popular vote ratio in that election. It’s quite probable that there’s someone out there who didn’t know, and to whom this highly obscure piece of information might be news.
As to your deflective rundown of details everyone is perfectly familiar with (you aren’t an avid Vox reader by any chance? Distinct tonal similarity), it changes nothing. You don’t like working class people, it’s clear as day. No need to respond to the accusation by throwing around some excuses to emphasize that it’s a data driven dislike. Just be cool with who you are, my dude: someone morally and intellectually better suited than they to determine who should be in charge.
No amount of Russian facebook memes will go half as far in explaining how Trump won.
I suspect the difference is between talking about things and actually doing things.
Trump was stupid for talking about grabbing women but as far as I know he was never proven of actually sexually assaulting anyone or misusing a position of power.
Clinton on the other hand (and the long list of Hollywood hypocrites) were all about physically committing sexual offending.
Makes me laugh that the Hollywood elite who for years have pontificated about society’s short comings (and excused Clinton’s sins) have been found to be worse offenders than those they have pointed an accusatory finger at.
Morally corrupt, inept, and without a smidge of shame or regret – the fakery they practice in their occupation has become their reality.
This time last year they were all chanting for Hillary and demonizing Trump and it turns out that they (and her) are far worse than Trump was every portrayed as being.
He called students, male and female both, “my dear” and “my child.” Beautiful, brilliant students surrounded him. He was a vortex of power and intellectual charisma. [….] Bloom agreed to meet with me weekly. [….] The others eventually left and—finally!—I thought we could discuss my poetry manuscript. I set it between us. He did not open it. He did not look at it. He leaned toward me and put his face inches from mine. “You have the aura of election upon you,” he breathed. [….] I hoped he was talking about my poetry. I moved back and took the manuscript and turned it around so he could read.
The next thing I knew, his heavy, boneless hand was hot on my thigh. …
“GROPERS” is presented by GroperWatch, a division of Daisycutter Sports Inc.
More gropers. Collect the series!…
No.1 George Herbert Walker Bush; No. 2 Bill O’Reilly; No. 3 Al Franken; No. 4 Robin Brooke; No. 5 Lester Beck; No. 6 Arnold Schwarzenegger; No. 7 Joe Biden; No. 8 Rolf Harris
I heard Todd McClay prattling on earlier on Morning Report about the CPTTP saying it needed to be concluded before Christmas as basically otherwise countries other than the current four holdouts will want to re-negotiate aspects of it. I assume he said this with a straight face.
So this really good “trade” agreement needs to be signed NOW otherwise everyone will want to fix aspects of it they are not happy with or want to improve for themselves.
So maybe it can’t be such a great agreement after all Todd. But I suspect he already knows that.
Glad to hear that Grant Robertson dismissed this sillly man’s notion as it really came from the ultimate villian of all behind the hollow man Mclay eh?
Fascinating article in the Guardian about bullshit management speak, amongst otger things
” At the very point when work seemed to be withering away, we all became obsessed with it. To be a good citizen, you need to be a productive citizen. There is only one problem, of course: there is less than ever that actually needs to be produced. As Graeber pointed out, the answer has come in the form of what he calls “bullshit jobs”. These are jobs in which people experience their work as “utterly meaningless, contributing nothing to the world”. In a YouGov poll conducted in 2015, 37% of respondents in the UK said their job made no meaningful contribution to the world. But people working in bullshit jobs need to do something. And that something is usually the production, distribution and consumption of bullshit. According to a 2014 survey by the polling agency Harris, the average US employee now spends 45% of their workingday doing their real job ”
Bureaucrats and technocrats need to make it look and sound like they know more than everyone else. What better way than impenetrable layers of jargon. As the old saying goes ‘bullshit baffles brains.’
As factories producing goods in the west have been dismantled, and their work outsourced or replaced with automation, large parts of western economies have been left with little to do. In the 1970s, some sociologists worried that this would lead to a world in which people would need to find new ways to fill their time.
I seem to recall an article that said that the politicians and business people were worried to. They were concerned that if all the small people had more time they might get involved in politics and then the politicians and business people would be out of a job telling people what to do.
Moving forward or going forward is usually redundant anyway. What the fuck else would you be doing unless you had the power to make ‘the fullness of time’ stand still.
A very poor effort of journalism by John Sergeant Taranaki Daily News.
“A (sic) Issue of Neglect not always Poverty”
What a poorly researched piece of paid work. Trotting out the usual right wing rubbish for the clickbaiters in their readership.
Apparently, by feeding poor children we teach them it is someone else’s problem that they are hungry, and they will grow up to hold their hand out.
He makes a weak connection that it is neglect by parent/s not poverty which causes hungry children.
Solo parents beneficiaries widows and widowers plus the ill and others struggling to provide for their children will be even more depressed with their struggle reading that mean minded piece.
The usual band waggon “yes yes mob” was in evidence in the stuff comments, though some excellent rebuttals as well.
Editors should wake up. We see through this agenda. Political lies to embarrass a new P.M.
+ 1000 Patrica bremner these people are not intelligent enough to fathom that we can see there dum ass motives for there un logical articles . The state sets the systems up not the people If one has no money and no knowledge on how to make money in one situation than the state is to take the blame this is fact national set the system up for the wealthy and who loses well everyone that’s not wealthy.Kia Kaha
Stuff like this is what makes me wonder whether I’ll regret party voting Labour instead of NZF. This guy, who has never had any real regard for social democratic principle and always seems to simply follow the herd, finally sticks his neck out on something, and it’s just the usual $2 Store Marcusianism:
He couldn’t ever have considered being brave and standing up for NZ in the arena of economic sovereignty perhaps instead of winding up old people about Jesus and the Queen?
The National Party had demanded the Speaker reinstate the old parliamentary prayer and properly consult with MPs before removing mentions of the Queen and Jesus Christ for good.
Typical of authoritarians. They first look to the hierarchy.
Shouldn’t it be up to the people to decide?
The National Party’s issue with the changes is that the monarch of New Zealand “is our constitutional head of state” and the reference to Jesus Christ is an “important part of the our parliament’s history and holds meaning to members”.
But do the people want it to remain so?
National Party leader Bill English is a practising Catholic and a number of MPs chose to swear their allegiance on a bible during the swearing in ceremony earlier this month.
And yet Bill English lies and twists and spins to the people of NZ. It obviously doesn’t what he swears on – he still can’t be trusted.
Possibly, but Trevor Mallard is not the people, and if you’re going to let the people decide, then you’d make those changes once they’ve decided. I can’t stand National, but they’re at least correct to state that Mallard is way out of line. Personally, I look to little things like this as indicators of what’s going on beneath the surface. And it stinks of a government elected to deal with poverty, housing, employment and solid social democratic basics somehow being more interested in $2 Store Marcusian tinkering now that they’re in.
“And yet Bill English lies and twists and spins to the people of NZ. It obviously doesn’t what he swears on – he still can’t be trusted.”
I can’t think of a National leader in my lifetime who that sentence wouldn’t apply to! Feeling a bit shit about party voting Labour instead of NZF =/= ever considering National as an alternative.
And it stinks of a government elected to deal with poverty, housing, employment and solid social democratic basics somehow being more interested in $2 Store Marcusian tinkering now that they’re in.
The big problem with that is that you’re not talking about the actions of the government but the actions of The Speaker.
I have thought for considerable time that use of Christian prayer absolutely not suitable for ethnically and/or of differing religion participants…including viewers/listeners.
How is it not suitable? I’m an atheist and I don’t find traditions inappropriate, or distressing, or unsuitable. It’s just a quaint anachronism which reminds us of the past. Some choose to see only bad things in the past. I see a mixed picture which for better or for worse saw us evolve the best systems of government, which is why people of ethnically and/or differing religions who’ve seen some of the alternatives love living in places with Westminster systems, and will even risk their lives to get there.
We are all encouraged to construct a story of our own (relative) success that leans heavily on our own individual effort and hard work. That is the founding myth of capitalism, work hard and you too can be a success.
The reality is that we all rely on luck, good fortune and being born to the right parents. And there’s also simply the absence of bad luck: illness, an accident or other random events that prevent or limit our economic independence.
You can almost feel the sharp intake of wingnut breath, as they prepare to illustrate MacDonald’s point.
Aussie households have racked up record private debts and aren’t getting the pay rises to help service them. That’s a core concern for the RBA and frequently cited as a deterrent for hiking interest rates. Macquarie Bank has said such debt levels mean any hikes will have triple the impact on consumers than tightening cycles in the mid-1990s. With retail sales looking grim and wage growth near record lows, debt will likely vex policy makers for years.
Yep. Sounds like NZ all too much. Raising interest rates in NZ will put many under water.
It’s a strange article. It headlines with “The party is finally winding down for Australia’s housing market” but nothing in the article actually supports this. If you follow a link, you finally get to the basis for this claim, which is just a nil increase in mean house (sale?) prices from Sep to Oct 2017. Not enough to convince me that the boom has ended…
“Society is constantly branding all men by the actions of the few who do wrong. That kind of attitude comes at a cost and is hurting your grandfathers, your fathers, your brothers, and – most of all – your sons.”
Stop sending these people out to the farm as I will name and shame them and this will ruffle a lot of peoples feathers thanks for the Mana and the escorts ka pai
My truck is running like new after I changed the water pump the viscous fan was stuffed and was making the motor work to hard. I always buy Manual vehicles because the motors last longer they are cheaper to run than a automatic car the motor last longer because a automatic car motor is always under load were as a manual car every time you change gear the load comes off the motor many other good reasons to buy manual’s a back yard mechanic can change a clucth in a manual car if you have a problem with automatics big bucks to fix PS been busy with my Moko .Kia Kaha
The Stupidest People in The World
Exhibit A: TUCKER CARLSON
Carlson is notoriously dumb, even for a Fox News host. Here he is trying to foot it with one of America’s smartest guys. The result is, to say the least, embarrassing. The “highlight” (actually, the nadir) comes at the 6:00 mark, when Carlson says, with deadly earnestness, widening his eyes for full effect: “So stop lecturing me about Rosa Parks, right?”
Global warming is the biggest threat to US humans I think a lot of people dont get it. Sea level rising is not the biggest threat in my view the biggest threat is the warming of our mother earth it’s basic science. The four states of matter 1 solid 2 liquid 3 gas 4 plasma. It won’t take much warning to cause our worlds soils to become disfunctional I.E all the water that our soils hold will turn to gas and with no water in our soils we can’t grow the food to feed all the people of our world.
Sure we could use hydroponic to grow our food but that won’t be enough to feed all OUR people in our world. This phenomenon will create Wars as every one goes to control the higher cooler soils to grow there food. I see how easy our soils dry out in summer and all the plants go to seed. We are also destroying our humus in our soil buy cheating the nutrients cycle by using chemical fertiliser that don’t directly feed the plant they just break down our humus faster so they release there nutrient faster and we destroying our humus which is what holds water in our soils.
So in my view we need to farm our soil and build up the humus so our soils can hold more water when it gets warmer the more humus the more water that’s held in our soils this is fact. At the minute we are doing the exact opposite of what we should be doing to have a long and prosperous future for OUR Moko. Ka pai
The logical thing to do is not to wait and put the ambulance at the bottom of OUR cliff. The logical thing to do is to act now so we don’t need the________ ambulance at all come on people get with it I have been studying global warming on the net for many years and it is easy to see the bullshit artists article as they go against most of OUR scientist Kia kaha
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Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’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. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
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Two things about the America’s CUP.
1. Team New Zealand sounds like a spoilt brat who will take his toys to another sandpit if he doesn’t get his way.
2. For how much longer are New Zealanders going to fall for the lie of trickledown? Mike Hosking and his fellow medi liars would have us believe this. Don’t.
200%
See https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-14112017/#comment-1414082
You don’t live in Auckland do you Ed?
You have not witnessed first hand the swarm of activity that occurs for several years prior to and then during the cup.
The marine industry, hospitality, tourism, retail etc. benefit massively from this event.
The problem is Alan that these big accounting firms that cost potential benefits prior to a sporting event almost always over state it. It is enormously difficult to quantify but easy to over state.
Exactly – take for instance the Super V8 race that was initially proposed for Auckland City (Banks was Mayor at the time and all for it!) – and where the residents protested sufficiently, and were able to show that the so called cost benefit analysis of the organisers was just plain hype and were able to shut it down. The race organisers then convinced Hamilton as to its mavellousness, and the race was run there – until the true costs of running it and the meager benefits were so poor that the Council eventually said enough is enough! More fool Hamilton.
Yup.
Doesn’t Auckland have enough swarming activity already?- see LPrent – on Auckland catching up.
It is a pity that the beneficiaries of such activities don’t pay for it eh?
It causes me additional traffic jams, a strong need to avoid the idiots downtown, an inability to get accommodation for people coming here for business, and an effective rise in rates or diminished services before the event to pay for all of the crap that the sailors hold their hand out for.
Perhaps it’d be worth it if the hospitality industry went off and paid an additional tax for discombobulating the entire rest of the residents of Auckland.
But that pack of bastards really don’t like even a minor tax to cover the effects that their freeloading industry cost the rest of us.
Basically you are a fool. One who doesn’t appear to live in Auckland or is one of the freeloading parasites
This so correct – I wonder if the organisers of the resistance to the Super V8 Race are still around? They were able to show the flimsy analysis of the cost-benefits to Auckland were so much hype that the council over-turned Bank’s wish to run the race.
Yes, for such supporters of user pays they seem rather recalcitrant when being asked to pay for their usage.
@Iprent
“It is a pity that the beneficiaries of such activities don’t pay for it eh?”
exactly!
Yep – some people will benefit, the majority will see no benefit and some will be harmed. Those harmed would be businesses whose customers (shoppers, diners) are dragged away from other parts of the city down to the waterfront.
So to say it is good for Auckland is a misconception – because (to steal from Margaret Thatcher) there is no such thing as ‘Auckland’.
Socialism for the rich, eh?
Trickldown is a lie.
But you knew that……
It is The Hobbit Syndrome
1. Team New Zealand sounds like a spoilt brat who will take his toys to another sandpit if he doesn’t get his way.
Thats just a bullshit:
“However, Team NZ chief operations officer Kevin Shoebridge told the Herald even though their preferred option would not happen, they would be working with the options available and there would be no moves to take the America’s Cup away from the city”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11947323
What about the earlier articles james when they indeed threw in hosting it somewhere else?
I wish that they would.
HC 300% well said Ed,
“Team them selves” more like.
God they want us to stroke their vain arses with gold and glitter eh!!!!!!
Bugger off Team NZ!!!
We cant afford Auckland getting all the ‘infrustructure’ public funding already! but now these rich bitches want our last remaining blood!!!!
Time to call it quits with the rich set games they are playing.j
Consumerism is killing us.
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/22/black-friday-consumption-killing-planet-growth
Yet we continue to burn the planet, egged on by the Herald and the rest of our ghastly corporate media.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11947249
https://adclick.stuff.co.nz/adclick?v=1&c=5905&p=mobileweb&s=/&l=/NZ
Don’t worry about it. At the moment Dunedin households are being delivered around 40 tonnes of Christmas junk mail a week into letter boxes. This might actually increase closer to Christmas.
And I suppose that means Auckland is distributing about 500 tonnes of junk mail a week.
Bear in mind the majority of this goes straight into the garbage without even being read for one nanosecond.
You can’t stop the machine, and 40 years of moaning about it since the Club of Rome has done nothing but waste time and emotional effort.
During the last election I delivered a few hundred flyers to letter boxes. I was surprised at the number with NO JUNK MAIL HERE signs. (I put them in anyway.) My estimate is that two thirds of letter boxes rejected junk mail. Seems to be more tucked inside newspapers though.
Hi ianmac. Surprised you weren’t given the heads up on the legal situation here.
The only letter boxes where you can’t – by law – deliver material are those with the instruction ” Addressed Mail Only” on them.
Mailboxes like mine which are in the apartment lobby which requires a card to get into. The PO has a card to do it, so the ONLY junk mail we get now comes via the mail person. We moved the mailboxes inside after someone broke into most of the 60 mailboxes – presumably looking for checks when they were still a thing – wrecking most of them. The joy of getting rid of 90% of the junk mail was immense.
Similarly a former Labour Party activist mate of mine simplify classifies election flyers as “democracy participation information sheets” not junk mail, and slides them right in 😀
That’s standard practice.
Interesting to learn that ‘addressed mail only’ is no barrier: the times I’ve delivered election material we were told to leave those ones alone.
And I suspect delivering it probably counts against the party so I would suggest that the volunteers don’t do that.
to DTB at 2.1.1.2.1.1.: Don’t think would lose votes as no complainer would be voting for the party complained about anyway. The complaining is just to involve nuisance waste of time for those delivering or their electorate office.
Interesting to learn that ‘addressed mail only’ is no barrier:
We were told it is unlawful to deliver non-addressed material into an “addressed mail only” letter box. Political parties and other organisations get around it by acquiring addresses from public lists eg. electoral roll, and either posting or delivering on foot. Either way its more expensive and delivering targeted mail is a nightmare.
Unless there’s been a law change in the last few years.
Yep, about time we defined the advertising that comes in our mailboxes as spam and ban it. It’s simply a waste of resources for minimal benefit.
I was prepared to defend my postings should anyone complain, by apologising for not “noticing” the sign. And our local MP had just 2 phone calls complaining, from the whole Electorate.
Actually I have doubts anyway that the flyers help anyone except the employees of printers.
http://marketresearchworld.net/content/view/1617/74/
My wife (English is her second, third, or fourth language depending on how one categorises dialects) loves the junk mail. It helped her with handy phrases like Blowout Sale! and Discount Days.
That’s one of the very few positives to junk mail.
Hahaha true, reminds me of the junkyard Transformer robot from the old 90s cartoon movie who only talked in TV ad speak because that’s how he learnt his English
https://youtu.be/XrMbkbTPrPA?t=208
Yes! Many years ago when I was teaching immigrant women English, I would use supermarket junk mail. It had pictures and was relevant to their need to shop for food.
Is anyone going to do a proper post on the America’s Cup facilities ?
It’s a classic environment v economic benefit v social utility v public subsidy v filthy rich capitalists v good for Auckland v binge-purge-cycle v did-we-learn-anything-last-time …. kind of debate.
Worth about $200m in capex from us ratepayers and taxpayers.
A good thing about the America Cup development is those building monuments on other peoples’ coin will move their aspirations from a billion dollar waterfront stadium for a year or two.
I guess a successful Cup event and Aucklanders warming to the precinct all over again will see a renewed stadium push. Fortunately most Aucklanders that own their homes freehold are millionaires, they’re loaded.
It seems like the Democratic Party hierarchy has decided once and for all to dump the Clintons and make them politically radioactive.
Obama Cabinet member/HHS Sec Kathleen Sebelius says women who came forward about Bill Clinton were systematically re-victimised by the Clintons
This was in a CNN interview between former Obama chief advisor and campaign manager David Axelrod, and Sebelius.
These Axelrod and Sebelius are well connected Democratic Party insiders and heavy hitters.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-23/they-went-after-women-who-came-forward-former-obama-hhs-secretary-exposes-clintons
About time.
Damn you beat me to posting it. What’s that they said about not more to come on this? Brazile’s intervention was just the start. Now that the Chicago camp is making a move, momentum will continue to build.
It’s actually a really interesting interview. You should listen to it.
I also can’t help thinking that if the republicans hadn’t made up so many stories about bill clinton, the real one would have stood out. Not that it would have changed much in the 1990s.
Having recently been listening to a marathon run of Christopher Hitchens interviews from the C-Span 90s period, I’d have to say you’re right about the second part of that – there really was no alternative for the electorate to seriously consider. I mean, Bob fucking Dole? Even for the Republicans that was dumb.
During the 1990s the repubs were all about the clinton scandals, fixating especially on a relationship that was actually consensual. But there was also whitewater, and Vince Foster’s suicide. Even republican investigations said Foster committed suicide.
I mean, I’d like to say that in the absence of all those lies and in today’s environment Clinton being accused of sexual assault would kick him out of contention in the party primaries, but even post-Weinstein it’s 50/50.
Well you say lies; there was genuine suspicion and grounds for it around the circumstances of Foster’s death – as there would be in any DC insider who knows where the bodies are buried in the President’s political and personal past turning up having committed such an unusually timed and placed suicide.
A more interesting take on it would be, what did the Clintons do to piss the guy off so much that not only did he take his own life, but seemed to have done it in such method and circumstance that conspiracy theories about his erstwhile employers were virtually guaranteed. Of course there are opponents who will continue to flog a dead horse when there’s that kind of innuendo on hand.
Again, think your right about the difficulties of gauging his chances even in times like his own. There’s no denying his charisma with the wider electorate, and he apparently lit a room right up when present, that’s gold dust in politics. And the Clintons do seem to be very serious networkers. I’d say if the opponent was formidable enough, they’d probably pick him even with a dozen sex scandals around his neck. Much like Trump, or Key, Slick Willie seems to have that knack for being really quite scandal-proof in the eyes of someone who’d vote for him.
The guy shot himself in a park.
There were suspicions, few (if any) of those were genuine, and rumours were outright fabricated by republicans wanting to encourage idiot conspiracists. Well, now they’re reaping the whirlwind with trump.
Indeed, an odd choice of place – and an odd choice of time given when he was found, and the appointments he still had to make in the day ahead of him. Like I say, the more interesting ‘conspiracy’ side of it to me is that if he bore the Clintons no ill will, he sure went through with it in a way which seemed designed to embarrass them.
Let’s face it, it’s not just because he worked for a recently appointed president. That kind of beltway suicide (god that’d be a great name for a punk band) will always attract suspicion. Imagine if Eagleson did something like that right after Ponytail-gate, for instance. Or if something like it happened to someone from David Cameron’s office right after Pig-gate. No way there wouldn’t be questions asked or innuendo spread.
Especially if people really want to think there’s such a thing as an “odd choice” made by someone in extremis.
Do you really want to excuse republicans for paying people to publish lies about the guy’s death?
Yeah, actually there are choices which are odd even in such extreme circumstances, and Foster’s was a good example. You can be as obtuse as you like about it, it’s simply obvious to most of us that given who he was and who he worked for, how and when he went was indeed definitively odd.
As to the Republicans, I’m quite capable of separating a lack of surprise that they looked closely at it when it happened from the idea that some among them might persist in bringing it up long after it became apparent that doing so would make them look like conspiracy theorists.
He wrote a resignation letter, tore it up, drove to a park, and shot himself.
There is even a forest in Japan known for its suicides. A lot of people seem to like a decent view before capping themselves.
Comparing the cultural traditions of suicide in Japan to that of the USA? Surely you jest?
OK, US then: Suicide uptick in US national parks every summer, mostly men, firearm most common method for men.
Foster killed himself in July. Summer.
Wasn’t a national park though was it? I mean, taking a long drive out into the wilderness to end it in Yellowstone park, or out to the desert to admire Window Rock, or perhaps at the foot of a majestic redwood or something. But I remember the spot where Foster was found from a documentary a way back. It looked like bloody Myers park or something.
Remember, we’re not trying to prove here whether or not it was dodgy. The point is simply that given who he was, who he worked for, and the scandal he had been a part of it’s simply unsurprising that Clinton’s political opponents made hay with the potential innuendo. There was enough not to find it surprising – we’re talking about the 1990s Republicans here…
Meh. Looks ok to me, with trees and streams and other nature shit, but each to their own.
The thing is, he could have died of cancer diagnosed by three different doctors and a pathologist who took samples, and if the documentary you saw was one funded by the repubs the doctors would have been called drunkards and claims made they were paid off by the clintons.
There are reasonable suspicions, and then there are lies. In the late 80s and early 90s, conservative republicans chose to ignore the truth and just say whatever was convenient at the time. So now we have trump as the culmination of that decision.
I’d say Trump is the culmination of all kinds of decisions, some from politicians, others from business & banking, and some of course from the MIC – who continue to do as well out of him as any other president in my lifetime.
Most of them are thinking they over-egged it this time.
Hasnt Trump had multiple accusations of sexual impropriety made against him and he still made Pres in 2016
Yes, because somehow hillary was so much worse than him.
That’s what white women decided in the election; they voted for Trump by a clear ten point majority over Hillary.
Yup, the whiter they were and the lower educated they were, the more they voted for trump.
Charitable view of the working class you’ve got there, sir. Let’s tell them wrong-thinking herp-a-derps how dumb they are for not believing what we tell them & valuing things that we don’t.
It’s a fact. The same exit polls that gave CV his “ten point majority” showed Trumps popularity was inversely proportionate to the voter’s level of educational attainment, their ethinicity’s population as a proportion of the total population, and even whether they had a vagina. That’s why CV had to restrict it to “white women” rather than “women”. The majority of women voted for Clinton.
A bit like how the majority of electoral votes went to trump, even though the majority of actual votes went to Clinton.
I’m glad you felt the need to remind me of the electoral vote – popular vote ratio in that election. It’s quite probable that there’s someone out there who didn’t know, and to whom this highly obscure piece of information might be news.
As to your deflective rundown of details everyone is perfectly familiar with (you aren’t an avid Vox reader by any chance? Distinct tonal similarity), it changes nothing. You don’t like working class people, it’s clear as day. No need to respond to the accusation by throwing around some excuses to emphasize that it’s a data driven dislike. Just be cool with who you are, my dude: someone morally and intellectually better suited than they to determine who should be in charge.
No amount of Russian facebook memes will go half as far in explaining how Trump won.
I don’t like morons who vote for nazi sympathisers, that’s for damned sure.
edit: because if they knew who they were voting for, I dislike those individuals even less than if they voted for him just because they were stupid.
I suspect the difference is between talking about things and actually doing things.
Trump was stupid for talking about grabbing women but as far as I know he was never proven of actually sexually assaulting anyone or misusing a position of power.
Clinton on the other hand (and the long list of Hollywood hypocrites) were all about physically committing sexual offending.
Makes me laugh that the Hollywood elite who for years have pontificated about society’s short comings (and excused Clinton’s sins) have been found to be worse offenders than those they have pointed an accusatory finger at.
Morally corrupt, inept, and without a smidge of shame or regret – the fakery they practice in their occupation has become their reality.
This time last year they were all chanting for Hillary and demonizing Trump and it turns out that they (and her) are far worse than Trump was every portrayed as being.
GROPERS
No. 9: Professor Harold Bloom
“GROPERS” is presented by GroperWatch, a division of Daisycutter Sports Inc.
More gropers. Collect the series!…
No.1 George Herbert Walker Bush; No. 2 Bill O’Reilly; No. 3 Al Franken; No. 4 Robin Brooke; No. 5 Lester Beck; No. 6 Arnold Schwarzenegger; No. 7 Joe Biden; No. 8 Rolf Harris
I heard Todd McClay prattling on earlier on Morning Report about the CPTTP saying it needed to be concluded before Christmas as basically otherwise countries other than the current four holdouts will want to re-negotiate aspects of it. I assume he said this with a straight face.
So this really good “trade” agreement needs to be signed NOW otherwise everyone will want to fix aspects of it they are not happy with or want to improve for themselves.
So maybe it can’t be such a great agreement after all Todd. But I suspect he already knows that.
Todd Mclay can go to hell.
Glad to hear that Grant Robertson dismissed this sillly man’s notion as it really came from the ultimate villian of all behind the hollow man Mclay eh?
Phil O’riellly”
http://www.iron-duke.com/people/phil-oreilly/
Fascinating article in the Guardian about bullshit management speak, amongst otger things
” At the very point when work seemed to be withering away, we all became obsessed with it. To be a good citizen, you need to be a productive citizen. There is only one problem, of course: there is less than ever that actually needs to be produced. As Graeber pointed out, the answer has come in the form of what he calls “bullshit jobs”. These are jobs in which people experience their work as “utterly meaningless, contributing nothing to the world”. In a YouGov poll conducted in 2015, 37% of respondents in the UK said their job made no meaningful contribution to the world. But people working in bullshit jobs need to do something. And that something is usually the production, distribution and consumption of bullshit. According to a 2014 survey by the polling agency Harris, the average US employee now spends 45% of their workingday doing their real job ”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/23/from-inboxing-to-thought-showers-how-business-bullshit-took-over?CMP=fb_gu
Bureaucrats and technocrats need to make it look and sound like they know more than everyone else. What better way than impenetrable layers of jargon. As the old saying goes ‘bullshit baffles brains.’
I seem to recall an article that said that the politicians and business people were worried to. They were concerned that if all the small people had more time they might get involved in politics and then the politicians and business people would be out of a job telling people what to do.
Of course
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Moving forward. Why not just say ” in the future”…
Moving forward or going forward is usually redundant anyway. What the fuck else would you be doing unless you had the power to make ‘the fullness of time’ stand still.
A very poor effort of journalism by John Sergeant Taranaki Daily News.
“A (sic) Issue of Neglect not always Poverty”
What a poorly researched piece of paid work. Trotting out the usual right wing rubbish for the clickbaiters in their readership.
Apparently, by feeding poor children we teach them it is someone else’s problem that they are hungry, and they will grow up to hold their hand out.
He makes a weak connection that it is neglect by parent/s not poverty which causes hungry children.
Solo parents beneficiaries widows and widowers plus the ill and others struggling to provide for their children will be even more depressed with their struggle reading that mean minded piece.
The usual band waggon “yes yes mob” was in evidence in the stuff comments, though some excellent rebuttals as well.
Editors should wake up. We see through this agenda. Political lies to embarrass a new P.M.
+ 1000 Patrica bremner these people are not intelligent enough to fathom that we can see there dum ass motives for there un logical articles . The state sets the systems up not the people If one has no money and no knowledge on how to make money in one situation than the state is to take the blame this is fact national set the system up for the wealthy and who loses well everyone that’s not wealthy.Kia Kaha
Stuff like this is what makes me wonder whether I’ll regret party voting Labour instead of NZF. This guy, who has never had any real regard for social democratic principle and always seems to simply follow the herd, finally sticks his neck out on something, and it’s just the usual $2 Store Marcusianism:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/99170336/national-party-up-in-arms-about-changes-to-the-parliamentary-prayer
He couldn’t ever have considered being brave and standing up for NZ in the arena of economic sovereignty perhaps instead of winding up old people about Jesus and the Queen?
Typical of authoritarians. They first look to the hierarchy.
Shouldn’t it be up to the people to decide?
But do the people want it to remain so?
And yet Bill English lies and twists and spins to the people of NZ. It obviously doesn’t what he swears on – he still can’t be trusted.
“Shouldn’t it be up to the people to decide?”
Possibly, but Trevor Mallard is not the people, and if you’re going to let the people decide, then you’d make those changes once they’ve decided. I can’t stand National, but they’re at least correct to state that Mallard is way out of line. Personally, I look to little things like this as indicators of what’s going on beneath the surface. And it stinks of a government elected to deal with poverty, housing, employment and solid social democratic basics somehow being more interested in $2 Store Marcusian tinkering now that they’re in.
“And yet Bill English lies and twists and spins to the people of NZ. It obviously doesn’t what he swears on – he still can’t be trusted.”
I can’t think of a National leader in my lifetime who that sentence wouldn’t apply to! Feeling a bit shit about party voting Labour instead of NZF =/= ever considering National as an alternative.
The big problem with that is that you’re not talking about the actions of the government but the actions of The Speaker.
Beltway AF to assume people think of it that way.
I have thought for considerable time that use of Christian prayer absolutely not suitable for ethnically and/or of differing religion participants…including viewers/listeners.
How is it not suitable? I’m an atheist and I don’t find traditions inappropriate, or distressing, or unsuitable. It’s just a quaint anachronism which reminds us of the past. Some choose to see only bad things in the past. I see a mixed picture which for better or for worse saw us evolve the best systems of government, which is why people of ethnically and/or differing religions who’ve seen some of the alternatives love living in places with Westminster systems, and will even risk their lives to get there.
I bet the comments section will be a doozy.
You can almost feel the sharp intake of wingnut breath, as they prepare to illustrate MacDonald’s point.
Oh my…. oh my oh my.
The party is over for Australia’s %5.6 trillion housing frenzy.
You can almost substitute the name “New Zealand” for the word “Australia” throughout the entire article:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-23/australia-faces-housing-hangover-twice-size-of-u-s-subprime-era
Yep. Sounds like NZ all too much. Raising interest rates in NZ will put many under water.
It’s a strange article. It headlines with “The party is finally winding down for Australia’s housing market” but nothing in the article actually supports this. If you follow a link, you finally get to the basis for this claim, which is just a nil increase in mean house (sale?) prices from Sep to Oct 2017. Not enough to convince me that the boom has ended…
A.
Antoine
This investors page says quite a bit about the comming storm.
https://www.shareinvestor.com/news/news.html?source=sg_btbn&nid=158542
http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/life/98942078/being-a-male-teacher-was-my-dream–until-i-was-falsely-accused
“Society is constantly branding all men by the actions of the few who do wrong. That kind of attitude comes at a cost and is hurting your grandfathers, your fathers, your brothers, and – most of all – your sons.”
I wonder if he is white too, and middle class..
“I wonder if he is white too, and middle class..”
Burn the witch !
Like they do with
Beneficiaries
Disabled
Maori
Etc…
+1
Generalisations happen all the time and almost always have negative consequences.
Yup.
Interesting stats out of UK and Europe about murder from domestic violence and not just women are the victims.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/23/england-wales-police-record-highest-number-violent-sexual-crimes-eu?CMP=fb_gu
Stop sending these people out to the farm as I will name and shame them and this will ruffle a lot of peoples feathers thanks for the Mana and the escorts ka pai
My truck is running like new after I changed the water pump the viscous fan was stuffed and was making the motor work to hard. I always buy Manual vehicles because the motors last longer they are cheaper to run than a automatic car the motor last longer because a automatic car motor is always under load were as a manual car every time you change gear the load comes off the motor many other good reasons to buy manual’s a back yard mechanic can change a clucth in a manual car if you have a problem with automatics big bucks to fix PS been busy with my Moko .Kia Kaha
The Stupidest People in The World
Exhibit A: TUCKER CARLSON
Carlson is notoriously dumb, even for a Fox News host. Here he is trying to foot it with one of America’s smartest guys. The result is, to say the least, embarrassing. The “highlight” (actually, the nadir) comes at the 6:00 mark, when Carlson says, with deadly earnestness, widening his eyes for full effect: “So stop lecturing me about Rosa Parks, right?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbLYTeKtAg4
The Stupidest People in the World is curated by M. Breen, for Daisycutter Sports Inc.
Global warming is the biggest threat to US humans I think a lot of people dont get it. Sea level rising is not the biggest threat in my view the biggest threat is the warming of our mother earth it’s basic science. The four states of matter 1 solid 2 liquid 3 gas 4 plasma. It won’t take much warning to cause our worlds soils to become disfunctional I.E all the water that our soils hold will turn to gas and with no water in our soils we can’t grow the food to feed all the people of our world.
Sure we could use hydroponic to grow our food but that won’t be enough to feed all OUR people in our world. This phenomenon will create Wars as every one goes to control the higher cooler soils to grow there food. I see how easy our soils dry out in summer and all the plants go to seed. We are also destroying our humus in our soil buy cheating the nutrients cycle by using chemical fertiliser that don’t directly feed the plant they just break down our humus faster so they release there nutrient faster and we destroying our humus which is what holds water in our soils.
So in my view we need to farm our soil and build up the humus so our soils can hold more water when it gets warmer the more humus the more water that’s held in our soils this is fact. At the minute we are doing the exact opposite of what we should be doing to have a long and prosperous future for OUR Moko. Ka pai
The logical thing to do is not to wait and put the ambulance at the bottom of OUR cliff. The logical thing to do is to act now so we don’t need the________ ambulance at all come on people get with it I have been studying global warming on the net for many years and it is easy to see the bullshit artists article as they go against most of OUR scientist Kia kaha