For our four volunteers, the personality profiles differed considerably between their psychometric test results and the Facebook-likes analysis. Much of the other personal information inferred from their Facebook profiles was also wildly inaccurate…
The problem with their logic is that the vast majority of people click ‘like’ on things their friends post and share, not because they actually like those things, but because they want to be seen not to be ignoring what their friends post on Facebook. I used to write articles and post them on Facebook before I deleted my Facebook account. Some of those articles would take up to 10 minutes for an average reader to read. Without fail, every single time I posted one, at least four or five of my ‘friends’ would click ‘like’ within 60 seconds of the post going live and hitting their newsfeed, meaning they ‘liked’ it without reading it. Facebook is only an accurate gauge of what people *want you to see* and of how they *want to be seen*, but in my experience it will never be an accurate gauge of who or what they actually are. This personality testing crap appears to me to be just another way for Facebook to appeal to potential advertisers, but I doubt it would pass the snake oil test on close inspection. Last time I looked, there were seven billion or so independent psychological realities populating this planet. I find it extremely difficult to believe that you can break those down to six, nine, or twelve different types. If only life were that simple.
@ Truth will out
Good points. I am looking at facebook as I have some very FB oriented relations who want to be on it every day and promote things I’m not interested in. Now it seems to have increased as there is mention that I should know that someone is ‘tagging’ something from someone who is connected with one of my relatives or their friends blah blah.. I’m sick of it.
It has ocasional uses for me but another of the trials of it is that they don’t have a complete profile on me or my image and I don’t want them to have it. But I get reminded (harrassed) that they still don’t know what toilet paper I use and if I fold it or crush it into a ball. Haha. Not going to tell them. (That actually was a funny episode in one of the tv series, possibly The IT crowd.)
By the way TruthWO, I split my comment as it’s easier to read if you would do that. A split anywhere or divide into paras separating your thinking, good.
The interesting — and somewhat alarming — fact about the MBTI is that, despite its popularity, it has been subject to sustained criticism by professional psychologists for over three decades. One problem is that it displays what statisticians call low “test-retest reliability.” So if you retake the test after only a five-week gap, there’s around a 50% chance that you will fall into a different personality category compared to the first time you took the test.
It’s kinda amazing the personality tests still exist. I suspect that it’s part of some peoples desire to fit other people into categories that they understand.
@DTB
Some interesting things from a link on that Fortune page relating to generic drug falsifications that mean that drugs relied on and officially packaged may be nearly useless.
This about a whistleblower who exposed an Indian ‘faker’. http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/dirty-medicine/ Under federal whistleblower law, Thakur will receive more than $48 million as part of the resolution of the case…
On May 13 [2013?] Ranbaxy pleaded guilty to seven federal criminal counts of selling adulterated drugs with intent to defraud, failing to report that its drugs didn’t meet specifications, and making intentionally false statements to the government. Ranbaxy agreed to pay $500 million in fines, forfeitures, and penalties — the most ever levied against a generic-drug company. (No current or former Ranbaxy executives were charged with crimes.)Thakur’s confidential whistleblower complaint, which he filed in 2007 and which describes how the company fabricated and falsified data to win FDA approvals, was also unsealed.
This item goes on to examine the generics boom, which is a large part of the pharma market in the USA and the global market is said to be $242 billion. But the question is, can it be monitored properly. The gaming of the FDA is shown by this one case to be likely, and if not, there is always the possibility of capture of screening officials as in the case of the Federal Reserve in USA.
I saw a graph showing the popularity of different three-word combinations in Buzzfeed headlines (through likes and shares on Facebook). “Things you didn’t” and “You’ll never guess” were predictably very high on the list, but “character are you” was in the top 5.
People *love* being able to sort themselves and their friends and family into easily-understood categories.
1. Quality of metadata is vital. You’d think that some metadata would be better than no metadata, but inaccurate metadata is worse than none at all because it gives you misplaced confidence in the crap results you’ll get.
2. Metadata of the type that lets you say “more likely to be X than Y” for a large population sample isn’t necessarily going to say anything useful about any particular individual. (Which is what’s disturbing about wild statements like “knows you better than a close friend.”)
1. Pretty much what I was thinking. Further, that there’ll be a race to be the first to use metadata to make a major error of judgement in a criminal investigation. Come to think of it, that probably happened already.
When both major parties are determined to create a rentier society then ownership is guaranteed to drop. Of course, we should actually question the value of owning a home anyway as that in itself also creates a rentier society – just with the banks and their shareholders as the rentiers.
This morning on radonz a commentator on Greece said there problem had been that two parties had alternated for 40 years both running scams, with corruption and spending unwisely – increasing government employees by four times etc. That resonates with DtB “When both major parties are determined to create a rentier society”.
In Greece people have had so many years of austerity and not been able to climb out of it, their best and brightest have survived by going to other countries, and of those remaining 15% have voted for Golden Dawn which sounds similar to H…s Brown Shirts in Germany. The GD abuse brown coloured people in the street [Jews} and are corrupt and criminal, and at present half of their reps are in prison for something.
So societies are degraded by this mad austerity. Our long=standing financial system is now not standing up to scrutiny and hard times that it has created itself. The system is shown to be not practical for a good, healthy economy and society. And the people at the bottom rage but hard work is required to understand the coils of its serpentine ways.
By the way when the ECB talks about the necessity for Greeks to “reform” their economy before they get any more bail out money (which isn’t a bail out it’s just more odious debt), they are actually talking about Greeks allowing foreign corporations and hedge funds to come in and pick up critical Greek infrastructure for cents on the dollar.
@ CR
I keep seeing in the machinations of the neo libs a giant version with countries being raided and their goodies bought up by predaotrs, of the process of coporate raiders buying individual businesses. This was practised by businesses in western countries in the 1980s. We had Brierley and others getting hold of businesses and gutting them regaining their original investment many times eventually.
And of course the leveraging. This was where they bought businesses really cheap on borrowed money raised on the actual business’s assets. So in order to gain ownership it was bought laden with debt that would be recovered by stripping its assets and reducing its outgoings, ie wages to the minimum. Corporate raiders I think they are called. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_raid
I thought I would look up some references to these raiders.
It’s interesting looking at Cedenco which ended up in Brierley hands. Once busy here in NZ it ended up with major production shifted to Australia.
Company Information for 1990
Employees: 51-100
Turnover: $49,641,000 NZD (2012)
Export Sales Information: 45% of turnover
Established: 1986 http://directory.foodandbeverage.govt.nz/entries/199007-cedenco-foods-new-zealand-ltd
But good news in 2013 –
The Gisborne Herald | Gisborne’s …
Aug 8, 2013 … We are grateful to see the likes of Cedenco relocate back to Gisborne and council wisdom has established infrastructure to facilitate future …www.gisborneherald.co.nz/article/?id=33507
I throw in a Treasury report on post-privatisation of entities in NZ for no extra charge. http://www.treasury.govt.nz/commercial/resources/pdfs/mixed-ownership-model/mom-shppnz-wilson-dec10.pdf
(Methodology … Removing the capacity of the businesses to seek government aid in bad times, thus both …. Ron Brierley, at that time executive chair of. Brierley …)
Note : from the summary under the link address – that businesses are going to have the capacity to seek government aid in bad times removed.
The lives of people in poor countries will improve faster in the next 15 years than at any other time in history. And their lives will improve more than anyone else’s.
But we think the next 15 years will see major breakthroughs for most people in poor countries. They will be living longer and in better health. They will have unprecedented opportunities to get an education, eat nutritious food, and benefit from mobile banking. These breakthroughs will be driven by innovation in technology — ranging from new vaccines and hardier crops to much cheaper smartphones and tablets — and by innovations that help deliver those things to more people.
The rich world will keep getting exciting new advances too, but the improvements in the lives of the poor will be far more fundamental — the basics of a healthy, productive life. It’s great that more people in rich countries will be able to watch movies on super hi-resolution screens. It’s even better that more parents in poor countries will know their children aren’t going to die.
Fifteen years, just enough time to get more dependent on oil then find there isn’t much left. We certainly won’t be letting poor countries have the last of the easy to get at oil, will we. What will they do then?
Mobile banking 🙄
Does Gates say anything about CC and PO? If not, his opinions are at best redundant, at worst contributing to the problem.
What we should really be doing is offering poorer countries resiliency tech that enables them to keep their current resiliency strategies while increasing their quality of life. But that would mean getting over our own denial.
Petty cuts and pastes something someone else wrote, with a beige nothing appended, and when a debate ensues, he cuts and pastes the result straight to Yawns.
Yeah I knew his comments tended to be edited versions of his blogposts, and that he periodically posts there on his Prentice obsession. Didn’t know he was wholesaling from the comments here though.
Unfortunately I just went and had a look and saw that awful misognistic post about the nannies at Ratana 🙁
A 50% increase in ‘wealth’ for most rich people will have far less effect on their lives than a 50% increase for all poor people.
True this.
Just like a 50% increase in wealth for the bottom 9/10 of NZers will have far more effect on their lives, than a 50% increase in wealth for the top 1/10 of NZers.
“..Could Psychedelics Be An Effective Suicide Prevention Measure?..
..The new wave of research on the medical applications of psychedelic drugs has suggested that these substances may hold considerable promise as therapeutic interventions –
– for a number of mental health conditions.
And according to another new study –
– use of ‘classic’ psychedelics – psilocybin (magic mushrooms) – LSD a- nd mescaline –
– may also be an effective suicide prevention measure..”
A week is a long time in politics. Never underestimate or forget how fickle the public is when the truth hurts them in their pockets. Key is only as good as their next pay cheque. Why else do you think he has borrowed almost $100 billion to keep the middle class wrapped in cotton wool?
@Ad:
Key is only as good as the average voter’s last or next pay cheque. Personally I think the man is a liar and a criminal and I can”t wait to see him exposed. The object of your desire is the object of my contempt. History will prove who was right no matter how hard you try to shape it. Your opinion is no more or less valid than mine in this equation.
how we are going to change the future of politics via the use of ‘attack lines’ which consistently get zero traction.
People don’t believe that Labour is ready to lead a true alternative to Key and English. I think that’s the basics of it.
Would better attack lines help? Sure. And if Labour could sound like it was in touch with the culture and attitudes of the electorate, that would be of assistance.
If you want to look at Labour’s mediocre performance and lack of true vision over the last 8 years you only need to look at caucus and their senior advisors.
Agreed. This is why the question ‘how to defeat National” should be argued through as the year starts, not after Key has set the agenda. And all the more reason to refine which remaining tools do work.
This really isn’t the place to do that though Ad. It’s a largely pseudonymous, and more importantly, public space.
Discussing rhetorical strategies, and the like, can’t be done in a public space; and is only really relevant to a few dozen people within political organisations anyway.
Spaces like this are places for citizens to talk about stuff. Party strategies will be yarned about, sure, but they can’t be planned in such spaces.
If Labour, or anyone else, is actually looking for clues on what to do strategically from spaces like this, then they are beyond fucked. That’s not to say that there aren’t insights here, but they limited to the context of what goes on in here. They cannot develop a rhetorical strategy in a public space. You cannot get a ‘good attack line’ from a public discussion of what a ‘good attack line’ might be.
Such things might emerge from a discussion about an event, or about National, but they will not emerge from a discussion about developing attack lines. Such a discussion ‘poisons the well’ for anything it comes up.
ie: “Haha, Labour are using lines discussed in this {link} Standard comment thread! Fuck they are hopeless” -Every RW blogger
Next day: John Armstrong, Vernon Small, Fran O’s: “The problems in Labour remain apparent as the party remains in the thrall of far left base who supported Cunliffe. Despite public shows at unity, and claims to have ‘learned the lessons that they need to listen to mainstream New Zealanders’ the party is still beholden to the partisans in the often abusive comment threads of….”
We are not confused with caucus. But TS has a leadership position and is doing a better job of defining a future for an alternative government than most.
Most parties look here for clues – it’s a signal of the success of the site. Just as they do on other sites.
Don’t be so afraid of the echo. And you’re worrying far too hard about what is discussed “inside” or “outside”. That’s precisely the purpose of being a part of the media, which we are. This is public.
And don’t be pathetic about Cunliffe. Everyone else has got over it just fine.
We form thoughts that are repeated, added to, seen, reified, considered. And have done so for years now. Accept the agency this kind of site has.
There is no need for TS or any other site to respond to the narrative. We can form it. I’ve simply put the question more baldly than most. And we can and should help answer it.
Speak for yourself, and don’t claim to speak for others.
I’ve not been commenting here much lately, but there are very few who have been here longer. I remember, for example, when CV showed up.
This ‘leadership position’ what the hell are you even talking about?
It’s a blog, with otherwise largely unconnected people discussing things in public. That’s a useful and good thing, but nope, it is not a place where a party or political movement can strategise effectively.
In any case, if you want to get on with it, get on with it. Asking other people to have that conversation is pointless, coz as is happening now, the conversation becomes about the conversation.
They idea that a party or movement can have discussions in public about what their public rhetoric should be is completely bonkers, sorry. it just is.
Either get on with trying lines or whatever, or not.
But saying ‘maybe we should try this line”xxxx” or maybe this one “yyyy” just slits the throat of the line.
The line cannot be accepted as sincere when you have publicly said ‘maybe this might work’ about it.
I’ve missed your input, PB. I think you could do a media / PR advisor role for a party and be good at it. One of the few posters here whose comments I always read.
No it’s not. This is the silly season. People not only act stupid, they think stupid. Anyone who thinks that the average Kiwi is an intelligent and rational thinker is living in cloud cuckoo land. Most are downright stupid or excessively greedy – or both. That’s why I don’t give a damm about them anymore.
I haven’t withdrawn – far from it. I simply bear in mind most are politically stupid. Then when they go and prove it – as they do time and time again – I’m not surprised or disappointed. 🙂
Funny you should say that because – political stupidity aside – that is exactly what I was initially thinking. You see their arrogant, self absorbed behaviour around you all the time.
“Another year,
another pint of beer.”
Billy Bragg.
When will the reality sink in?
Seven years and support for LW still dropping.
As you say AD, time to think this through hard….
So here’s a few practical thoughts on the essential elements of change.
Nothing is going to change by just sitting and waiting for the current strategy to suceed. It’s been 7 years and that hasn’t worked yet. It will not work in the future.
If the Left does want any hope of change, the Left must actively change it’s strategy.
Those who are constantly finding reasons why nothing will work ‘because everything is stacked against us’, should go and sulk in the corner with the other defeatists, and stop getting in the way of those with positivity and determination to succeed.
There is actually a very simple goal that can be identified. It is by far and away the one thing that will produce the maximum effect…
9% of voters who currently support the Right must be converted to vote Left.
If you hope to convert those voters, you must listen carefully to their views and concerns. As Orwell said ” propaganda only works when it is largely what the populace was inclined to do anyway”.
This will involve short term compromise right throughout the Left.
No single LW party can hope to gain power on it’s own.
The LW must align forces and they must present a coherent and credible alternative Govt. that ‘the 9%’ can strongly identify with.
This will involve compromise throughout the Left.
It needs to be understood and agreed why this is necessary, and why the constant ideological conflict that has characterised LW politics is simply counter productive for everyone.
This all must happen very soon. By the end of the year at latest. To have any chance of convincing ‘the 9%’ to swing Left, you will need to show them at least 2 years of a rock solid, unified, and credible alternative Govt.
Get off your arses and act for change.
Or it’ll be ‘three more years’ ringing in your ears, rather than Billy Bragg.
No concrete suggestions other than “why can’t we all just get along”? Are you trying for a beige star?
PS: My concrete suggestion is that we repeal neoliberalism in its entirety. Public utilities, free education, free healthcare, strong unions, human rights and the rule of law (and that includes Te Tiriti).
After that, advance only policies for which there are evidential bases.
Fundamental changes in policy direction have been achieved many times before in many countries, using democratic means. All it really takes is for enough people to notice that right wing parties turn everything to shit.
So, for example, your disgusting support for the destruction of collective bargaining deserves a brutal response, and it will just end up being repealed by Parliament instead.
Seven years of RW Govt., their level of support is going UP, but you still believe the above, and your strategy is to wait for ‘enough people to notice’?
Denial OAB, and I’m not singling you out, because you are expressing a (far too) common LW meme.
The flaw in this meme, (and it’s a biggie), is the presumption that your world view is ‘correct’, other world views are ‘wrong’, and inevitably future events will clearly demonstrate this and lead people to see the world as you do.
They will not. Other peoples world views are just as firmly grounded as yours, and are about as likely to change significantly and rapidly as yours are. (Bugger all chance in other words.)
Reality. The majority of NZ’ers do not believe everything is going to shit.
So a strategy based on attempting to convince the 55% that it is, will fail over the next 3 years, just like it has for the last seven.
So if my suggested strategy is rubbish, what are the realistic and achievable alternatives?
Either Dr. Mike Joy is right, or the corrupt Prime Minister. Either The Lancet is right, or the Health Minister. Either the New Zealand Law Society is right, or the National Party.
It’s nice of you to imagine I formed my low opinion of you and your leaders on my own, and really, I had help, and not from self-made self-worshippers, either.
Oh, and you are confusing an observation with a strategy. Oh, and an anonymous bloke who isn’t even a member of a political party, with political parties.
The majority of the electorate (70%+) either didn’t vote, or didn’t vote for three more years. Your fatuous conceit that everyone thinks like you isn’t borne out by the facts.
@ OAB
“All it really takes is for enough people to notice that right wing parties turn everything to shit.”
The lost sheep has made some relevant points. And one is about your sentence above. It is obvious to us, that even when the facts are obvious, the voters will slide away from the bad prognostications and vote for the status quo while the water is still calm. Later they may realise they should have acted differently, but the boat will be going down then and losses will mount.
We can’t wait for reality to strike the voters, we must be aware ourselves and find some unifying other message with positive outcomes to get them to brace themselves for change. It’s getting them to climb that change barrier! Change of thought, expectation, and change of government and change of apathetic negativity that seems to have settled over the country like a low pressure weather trough.
We have gone so far away from 1984’s lies about pain before gain, that we haven’t much that’s concrete to hold onto, to use as a base, a reference point for a reasoned way forward. We want a way that achieves a good basic living standard for all, and useful jobs to go to, and skills to acquire that will pay for improvements in living standard. The economy will rise as that happens. The change will be carried up not trickled down. Think of a seedling, quite soft but strong enough for its task, and it pushes up through the soil and then opens its leaves and gets stuck into being the plant it is. We can do that.
So, no idea what Pascal’s Bookie is talking about then?
Don’t flatter yourself: you aren’t positive, constructive, or anything approaching either of these things. Treacherous and insincere is a far better description.
Assumptions will only make an ass out of you. I am not a Labour supporter or voter. In fact, I voted for Key in 2008, but by 2011 I had seen enough evidence to know he is an out and out crook, and the only reason he keeps getting away with it is the questionable judgement and values of people like you, combined with your incredibly low standards in terms of what we expect in the form of clean, corruption free government. Key falls so far short on those standards, it is only your extreme moral selectivity and wilful ignorance on the part of idiots like you that keeps him propped up. If a Labour MP had resorted to insider trading to profit from the Kiwi Rail restructure, for instance, you would have been all over them like a rash. But instead, you resort to blind trust, much like the object of your desire did. And you both still rely on it. No matter what way you look at it, our economy is propped up by $100 billion of debt. In anyone’s language, that is a house of cards, dependent on luck as much as skill to see us get out of it safely. So far, I have seen bugger all skill, and an over-dependence on luck by Key and his cronies. What I have also seen, is more corruption, cronyism and conflicts of interest on their part than any other government in New Zealand history. Like I said, it is your willingness to turn a blind eye to that in return for your next pay cheque that proves me right, beyond any doubt.
I is astounding how everybody is just pointing the finger at each other instead of offering solutions. I am no party member nor do I follow every share market or bank analysis. What I do see is the ordinary kiwi working or wanting to work, trying to succeed and get a better life. This seem to be almost impossible as education has failed many (they should be held accountable big time!), jobs are getting scarcer and upwards movement is reserved for those in the know 😉 wink wink. This is the report from the bottom of the heap, how is the air up there where reality is as far away as the moon?
There’s a number of solutions that have been put forward but they’re usually lambasted as being too radical. The problem that a lot of people seem to have with them is that they’ll change the underlying structure that they’re used to, i.e, they’ll fix the actual problems rather than the perceived problems.
Poverty is seen as a problem and people look for ways solve poverty. But poverty isn’t actually the problem but the symptom of the problem. The problem is capitalism in that it creates poverty.
If all we have is to wait for John Key’s luck to run out, the taxpayer funding that props up Parliamentary Services keeping Labour and Greens alive should be stopped immediately because they can affect nothing.
I’d like to ascribe them a modicum of skill that enables them to be a functioning opposition.
Searching around for the good news, at least the Greens didn’t get their heads caved in. And with Labour this weak, there’s a better chance that Labour and the Greens will actually have to talk.
Yes that’s fair comment. Should’ve been doing that since day dot, but as you know there is this pride within Labour that it is the ‘rightful’ party of the Left.
@ James
Who are ‘you guys’? Because one person says something here doesn’t mean it’s an idea of more than one person. It may not be a general policy of the left or something that the Labour Party has done, is considering or will do. Be more specific as to whom you are directing your thoughts.
All I know is we are not going to rise to overcome our challenges as a nation by resorting to dirty politics, divisive politics, self interest, cronyism, corruption, abuse(s) of political power, or anything which stems from the lust and greed for money and power that drives those behaviours.
Tolerance of them must become intolerable if we are to have any hope of progressing and evolving as a society and a nation.
Clean, corruption free, efficient and wise governance MUST become our overarching priority or we are buggered.
Watching trolls keep entering this forum and defending the opposite just angers me to the core.
These people offend the memories of those who have sacrificed their lives for all of us to live in a better society.
We need to start demanding a better standard from ourselves and from those who seek the privilege, the power and the money to run this country.
There is no place for the kind of cynicism which accepts dirty politics as a given if you ever hope to live in a healthy economy and a civilised society.
Tolerance of such corruption and abuse of power and privilege is as disgraceful as those activities such tolerance seeks to exonerate.
Truth will out
Don’t feel so deeply about everything. You will wear yourself out. There are huge problems and putting up with the RW troles to some extent is the least of our worries. You list such a lot which which seem valid.
Just have a rant and a hissy fit about the annoying mosquitoes every now and then and have a slap at them. You might draw some blood, but remember when its a mosquito it will be your own blood you see. That’s my advice. I find them really space wasting and malicious in their determined obtuseness. But some of the earnest defenders of the left like weka and tracey will answer them and try to educate – like trying to sculpt stone with a straw! I’m not suggesting ignoring them, but just checking out what little schemes they are running daily is how to manage them in a manageable way.
Just rips my nightie watching my tax dollars get flushed down the toilet we used to think of as government, and then have to endure a parade of f*ckwits making excuses for it.
“Not too sure what the left/Labour/Greens can do here. Best to just wait it out.”
That’s the worst thing they can do. It’s why I think, despite what others say, polling is good. It shows us trends. National are still around 50% after 7 years. Labour can’t just wait it out, they can’t just wait for the “natural order” to give them power because it’s their turn.
Labour and the Greens have a lot of work to do, and they need to start doing it.
But they should be blaming him for the rising poverty, inequality, the ongoing destruction of our rivers and the outright corruption of his government.
I think housing, house prices, and rental prices, remain one of the best attack lines. Smith has rolled his dice and failed. They have exposed a major weakness. Can it be better exploited?
EU joins rest of global economy in a QE induced coma…
“QE has failed in the last four years to get the major capitalist economies going; fiscal deficit spending has not worked in Japan either; so the strategists of capital look to the ‘third arrow’ of weakening labour and extending the ‘free’ movement of capital as the answer. But another slump that destroys capital values and raises average profitability is more likely to be the way out for capital.”
Pretty sure John Key will be reported soon as telling the EU leaders they are loonies for their QE. So far just his “innocent til proven guilty” support of Prince Andrew.
Prince Andrew is only “innocent until he is proven guilty” because Key wants a knighthood. Pity he hasn’t extended the same courtesy to certain citizens of New Zealand, who were destroyed by media trials of his making while being denied any access to a court room. Key is a hypocritical disgrace who makes my skin crawl. But let me tell you how I REALLY feel…
NZ’s ‘terrorist’ list includes movements which are clearly progressive/liberation movements. Anti-imperialist and democratic rights activist Cam Walker has a piece on “Ramping up state powers: the Terrorism Suppression Act since 2007” which starts:
The Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, brought in by Helen Clark’s Labour government, contains a number of wide provisions potentially criminalising support for legitimate national liberation movements and activism.
The Act was discredited in the eyes of many of its initial supporters in 2007 when the Solicitor General described it as ‘unnecessarily complex and incoherent’, following his refusal to allow the Police to proceed with charges under the Act against the defendants in Operation 8 (the so-called ‘Urewera raids’).
Yet the Act was never repealed. The legal ability of the state to apply the sections of the Act to those supporting international solidarity causes has increased over the past five years. John Key has used his power under s 22 of the Act to designate groups as ‘terrorist entities’ 19 times since 2010!
I’m not traditionally a Labour or left wing voter, but I’m really hoping Andrew Little can do something really different and find a way to build and agenda and support for a Universal Basic income in NZ.
It would get my vote for a few reasons that are best outlined in two excellent posts on Gareth Morgan’s site:
No party has it in their platform, , how do you get it in the labour party platform? No use if its greens only. There are many aspects to a ubi that have broad appeal to non left voters i think.
The Anderson’s Bay Peninsula Branch of the Labour Party (Dunedin South) is likely to put forward something on the UBI, and an associated programme, to Conference this year.
It could also wipe out overheads associated with the current welfare system, ie the MSD bureaucracy.
You would be able to shrink the whole thing down to one or two floors on an office building, plus a server room. People would only need to go into a post shop, local bank or even online and apply.
Plus they could choose to have it paid out weekly, monthly or even yearly 🙂
The superannuation system would be a good starting point for a UBI, I would work on refining that (ie taking pensions from WINZ and handing it another entity, simplifiing elegbility criteria, and streamining administration, then use that as a UBI blueprint.
UPDATE: NZ Spends $27 billion per year on welfare. if you took that money and spend it on a UBI it would come out at $6750 per year, for every man, woman and child in this country, or, $130 per week.
A family of four would get $520 per week.
To get a decent UBI would be pretty expensive, so it will need to have some work done on a proposal.
But UBI doesn’t work like that. If you are in work you don’t get it. It should mean more money flowing through the population as WINZ plans down. That could go into Housing NZ which should plan up so it does the job of keeping the housing stream of lower priced housing to needed level each year, so we don’t get huge backlogs and the rentier investment approach as now.
As a rough benchmark, it might be interesting to see what resources are currently used to administer pensions.
Even for a universal system, “one or two floors on an office building, plus a server room” seems overly optimistic to me.
The big problem the any radical transfers/tax refrom is that they invariably create large categories of winners and losers, from a net take home income level. And we humans being pretty selfish this is a very difficult problem to deal with politically. So any reforms tend to be only those that create more “winners” than losers and it needs to be by quite a margin.
Jepenesque: absolutely. I think major reform of our economy is necessary (not just in terms of tax and transfers) but to be politically saleable they need to be very cleverly designed.
And we humans being pretty selfish this is a very difficult problem to deal with politically.
IMO, human’s aren’t inherently selfish. They are inherently defensive of their present wealth and fearful of change especially when their present wealth is already close to, if not below, subsistence level as a lot of people’s is.
So any reforms tend to be only those that create more “winners” than losers and it needs to be by quite a margin.
Almost all the reforms over the last thirty years have done the exact opposite in that they’ve created lots of losers and a very few very big winners. The problem seems to be that the political parties now only listen to the very big winners and ignore the losers that they’ve created.
I agree. According to research by Daniel Kahneman and others people are intrinsically loss-averse. The issue is that in order to do something about societal problems the status quo has to be broken and National & friends are controlling the narrative. They have convinced many law-abiding tax-paying rule-obeying decent people in NZ that breaking the status quo means a “loss” to them and the whole country for that matter. Somehow, National’s spin doctors have convinced many people that combatting inequality or poverty, for example, can only come at their personal expense. People buy into this [no pun] and vote, think, talk, blog, and generally behave accordingly. So, the status quo prevails. Mission accomplished.
The danger imposed by National is that they no longer read people’s minds but they actually effectively manipulate them. They use their lessons and experiences from the free market. That is, don’t respond to the market, don’t follow the market, don’t wait for the market to catch on but influence and manipulate the market or create your own one. It works on consumers and it works on voters; it is the same psychology applied to the exact same people.
Slick advertising, branding, and marketing sell more and National is applying these to politics; it is vote buying in a figurative sense, sometimes assisted with blatant election bribes. This is where and why the left will always be on the back foot except in ‘niche markets’ such as the environment but even these are under constant threat from the RW propaganda.
In my view, this is why National and John Key are so “good” at what they’re doing; they treat our democracy as a free market. Politics is turning into economics, which is another reason why the Economy is always one of the most important issues in the elections; it is framed that way. Altruism and friendship are replaced by profit motives and competition; collegiality and community feeling are replaced by corporate values; corporatism is creeping into our public institutions; the free market becomes the answer, the only answer, to everything.
National’s WMD is their slick and powerful PR-machine. How do you fight this? With an even bigger PR-machine? I think the most effective response is counter-intuitive.
I’ll be interesting what kind of reception this will receive here on TS.
Interest in just the big winners not the small guys and girls seems to be a regular theme. Too big to fail and too small to bother about seems the motto these days and it’s negative for advancing the country’s wellbeing.
I have heard that government only wants to deal with one provider rather than a grouping of small ones or lots of individuals. But that would spread the work around. But no it’s more efficient to go to one.
Fishing quotas – formatted so that small ones sold out to big ones.
‘
Air NZ has just stopped getting a variety of wines from different vintners, it’s all from Maria now.
Some airports decide to deal with only one taxi company and make it hard for small ones to get work.
I think the Japanese built themselves up by dealing with small suppliers who were closely integrated into the production line and supplied as needed in the ‘just in time’ scheduled system.
OAB, interesting that you should bring up the topic of behaviour. An increasing number of people are calling you on your behaviour and that your behaviour is the main problem. Unless the aim is to portray this as a place of intolerant obnoxiousness. You may not care that it’s a poor look for you but it’s obvious that others care that it keeps tainting the whole forum.
It’s difficult to see what you’re trying to achieve. It’s easy to get you to keep repeating your stupidity.
Haven’t you seen it? It’s been happening more often here, and his type of behaviour is frequently criticised elsewhere in social media and is often said to reflect poorly on Labour (and yes, I know this isn’t a Labour blog as such but that’s how many see it, especially media).
It should be fairly obvious that behaviour like OAB’s is often seen as toxic. Don’t you see that?
[Stephanie: weka raises a very valid point. Don’t try to use weasel words like “but that’s how many see it” when you’re parrotting trollish crap which you know perfectly well is against our policy.]
So the thingthat obviously has no instances springing to mind (otherwise the request for detail wouldn’t have been made) is happening more often here. I’m shocked, shocked!
The thing has also been criticised elsewhere. big deal
The thing looks bad for Labour. go tell Labour, then
The thing is often seen as toxic. sounds shocking
Don’t you see that the thing is toxic?
Right. Now give us an examppe of what the hell you’re talking about.
You seem to watch things here a lot, I’m surprised you haven’t seen it happening. And it’s not new.
From one thread. First Mary
It’s this kind of communication, from OAB, for example, that feeds the “astonishing lack of ability to see the advantage of working harmoniously together to get rid of this rotten government”, a criticism of yours I agree with. It’s this sort of communication that for many just shuts dialogue down. Who’d want to engage in such vileness?
Whereas I consider you a bombastic bully. To my mind you have an aggressive and unpleasant style of engagement (and a propensity to over-italicise, which tends to detract rather than add to what you’re trying to say).
You expect everyone else to swallow it and shut up, then resort to personal abuse to support your line of argument. Man your tactics are so like Joyce it funny/ironic/sad.
Now perhaps you’re with OAB on driving people away he disagrees with but you are spend enough time I find it hard to believe you’re not aware of it happening.
BTW I googled and that’s the first thread I came up with. It’s not hard.
Still not getting it eh Petey? To me that just looks like the regular, garden variety level of complaints about behaviour that happen on ts in the middle of long arguments when things get heated. It’s not unusual for the ad hominems to come out at that point, across the board.
For the most part I get on well enough with OAB, but there are times when we disgree when I find their style tiresome and sometimes we spat. Often I just avoid getting to that point with people unless I feel like having a fight. But there are lots of people here who that would be true of, myself included. Does it matter? You know that thing about how polite isn’t a requirement here?
I think the key point is that it’s on an entirely different level from what you do. Which would be why sometimes the community devotes whole threads to talking about the PG tips problem, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one on OAB. They also don’t get bans afaik.
“BTW I googled and that’s the first thread I came up with. It’s not hard.”
What key words did you use?
(lolz, I’ve just seen the date on that linked thread. I didn’t comment in it, and it’s likely I didn’t even read it, which would explain why I hadn’t seen this terrible pattern of behaviour. That, or the fact that I don’t read every comment or thread on the site 🙄 )
See the difference between what I just said and what you jsut said, is that I can point to some actual evidence (see your response to my comment). Whereas your assertions that I am well aware of it is just shit you made up.
Because despite 10 states in the US, Canada, Israel, and the Netherlands instituting specific regimes for medicinal cannabis use, and despite neighbouring Australia moving towards allowing its use there, in New Zealand there is no such momentum.
There’s a lot of support for medical marijuana (~85% IIRC) and even majority support for full legalisation. The problem is the we know best, anti-democratic politicians and political parties that do only what the corporates and business people want.
Thanks, I was happy to post here, but got no reply when I emailed, I’ve never followed blogs until now, and I’m all about the issue, which shouldn’t be left or right. what are your thoughts on Bomber’s blog?
not sure what Bomber is like to deal with. Some people manage it, others don’t.
If you get some posts under your belt, host blogs will take you more seriously. Also, remember that people have still largely been in holiday mode and these blogs are run by volunteers.
It’s good you’ve started your own blog, because if you get good at it, Lynn might put you in the blog roll at the side. That’ll up your readership.
A couple of other suggestions. Just avoid the PG thing here completely. You’ve seen what’s happened above right? So now the serious responses to you are getting lost way below your original post. Just link to your own blog and don’t mention PG at all. It’s not worth it and it’s unlikely to benefit you.
I’d leave out the “it’s neither left nor right” thing here. It doesn’t matter, but if you focus on it, you might put off people who don’t support the centrist theory. From what I can tell it’s not relevant to what you are writing about (I read your comment about Paula Gray being conservative, but I don’t get that from the article, so it just confuses things if you highlight something that isn’t relevant or necessarily true).
The time has come the walrus said to speak of many things:
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To speak of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”
The reason is global warming – Brought about by the emission of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. It is recognised by governments around the world and the international scientific community, that climate change has dangerously raised the temperature of the oceans, (as well as the rest of the biosphere).
But, as to the second question:
Do pigs have wings?
This is the question I want to address with this essay.
Winged pigs are a common metaphor, or adynaton for something impossible, unlikely, or improbable.
Recently we have had a tour of this country by eminent climate change expert Guy McPhearson, who tells us (rightly in my opinion) that humanity have passed the point of no return, that irreversible climate breakdown, (a catastrophe on a global scale, ushering in widescale extinctions, even possible human extinction, within a matter of decades), has begun. To describe this process Guy McPhearson has coined the phrase “Near Term Human Extinction” (NTHE)
Guy McPhearson admits to the reality of (NTHE) with acceptance and even mourning.
‘It is no one’s fault’, says McPhearson, ‘most of the damage was done before many of us were even born.’
Guy McPhearson is not the only one to have reached this conclusion, Paul Kingsnorth founder of the Dark Mountain Project has a similar ethos. Paul Kingsnorth goes even further, actively condemning those trying to organise a fightback against climate change, naming people like Naomi Klein and Bill McKibbon of 350.org, and accusing them of peddling (false) “Hopium”, even of “Lying to people”.
So can pigs fly?
Can we humanity get out of the impossible situation that it finds itself in?
Or like in the horror movie franchise Saw, are we collectively caught in a horrific sadistic trap, partly of our own devising, impossible to escape from?
Should we even try? Or should we, like some have suggested, accept our collective fate and go into a period of individual and collective mourning?
When it comes to climate change there is an extreme wide range of views; From denial: – ‘It is not happening’. To acceptance: – ‘It is happening, but if we act now, we can prevent it getting any worse’. To despair: – ‘It has already happened, and there is nothing we can do about it’.
There has been no real rational debate between the different factions. All seem to have a deep emotive hatred of the others.
And why not? NTHE is an emotive issue. How could it not be?
This has resulted in lot of misunderstanding, heated accusations, emotive name calling, denial, and talking past each other. Egotism, (on all sides), hasn’t helped.
An example; the debate between well known activist George Monbiot. And Paul Kingsnorth of Dark Mountain, degenerated into personal abuse and accusations of condoning genocide on one side, to lying on the other.
The central contentious issue of debate, from all sides is whether, we should do anything about climate change, and will it make any difference if we don’t?
Springing from this first question, (and related to it), is a secondary question,
If we do decide to do something about climate change, what should it be?
1/ Is there any point in doing something?
2/ If there is any point in doing something, what should that something be?
I would like to address the second question first.
This may seem like a back to front way of doing things, but I want to leave the main question of whether we should do anything at all, until the last.
Disclaimer: The following are my views and my views only, I invite others to critique them and tear them to bits and in so doing offer up better solutions and stratagems and pathways forward.
Preamble:
(I) The Blame Game
I remember when I first became aware of the issue of climate change. The issue of climate change was first raised in the 1990s mass media, news paper editorials and TV news as a world problem, at that time the problem was couched in the language of “its all your fault”. You as an individual are responsible. You drive a car, you use air travel, you use disposable products, you use electricity. “Its all your fault” was drummed into us. Obviously this sort of language is pretty diss-empowering, and most people just shrugged and feeling disempowered carried on with their lives. But when enough people did take the message seriously and tried to make personal changes, and found they couldn’t, or it was making zero difference, they eventually began to ask other questions. Why when I cut down my CO2 emissions, do huge factories and industries continue pouring out hydrocarbons that make my individual efforts pointless? Why is there no decent public transportation so that I am forced to use a private car? Why am I forced to use disposable plastic products?
What people came to realise is that climate change is a public policy issue not a matter of personal choice at all.
(II) How Does Change Happen?
I am 56 years young. I remember the first time I ever saw plastic waste on a beach. I was about ten years old, sitting on the sand above the tide line at Mission Bay, Auckland. Pushing my hand into the sand, looking more closely, I marveled at the unusual small plastic oblate sphericals about a quarter inch in diameter (2mm) mixed in amongst the golden yellow sand grains which was mostly made up of tiny shell fragments. What were these smooth little plastic balls, and how did they get there?
I learnt later that they were the feedstock for New Zealand’s growing plastics industry, and were being imported in mass in the holds of ships, where they were being spilled into the harbour on unloading. (In the days before containerisation, I imagine that this was a much more messy business.)
When I was a kid, plastic was still a novel product. I remember the first big plastic doll I ever saw which had come from America as gift for a neighboring girl. We all marveled as she showed us how it closed its eyes when you laid it down and cried when you pulled the cord in its back. Most other toys then were made of wood, or metal. Balls were made of leather, or rubber. Raincoats were called mackintoshes after the material they were made of. Goods still came wrapped in brown paper and string, even things like tooth paste tubes were made of metal not plastic.
Rubbish tins were heavy metal bins with metal lids, you could hear the clatter of lids and bins made by the approaching dustmen, which gave you a warning if you had forgotten to get your rubbish out. The teams of dustmen were very fit, but there really was a lot less rubbish for them to pick up, I imagine that landfills were a lot more compact as well.
Shampoo and dishwashing liquid was unknown, my mother used to get me to wash the dishes with a piece of sunlight soap trapped in a little metal cage that you shook in the water until it became frothy. (Nowadays we use disposable, one use, plastic containers and plastic one use dishwashing and shampoo bottles. And this disposable plastic waste can be found washed up on even the most remotest beaches on earth)
Back in the day, drinks and liquids came in recyclable glass bottles – pints, quarts and flagons, you could even get half pints. (For bigger amounts, metal containers. In those days even canned drinks were unknown in New Zealand) The glass bottle was ubiquitous. For us kids though there was greater chance of getting your feet cut, but it was great, because there was a mandatory refund on every intact bottle. For the plastics industry to really get a hold in this country the refund had to be got rid of. I was about 12 when the legislation requiring mandatory refunds on glass bottles was abolished after fierce industry lobbying.
After that glass bottles became uneconomic in comparison, to one use, plastic containers.
Another example:
When I was a teenager my father worked for the education department in the Halsey Street warehouse in Freemans Bay which was a distribution point for educational supplies around the country. From my father I learnt that all government contracts over a certain distance (between cities) had to go by rail.
Again after intense lobbying by the roading and trucking interests this legislation was repealed.
After that highways became busier trunk lines were closed, tracks were lifted, thousands of rail workers were laid off.
I am sure there are many other examples of this. But the take-away message is this; laws and bylaws had to be passed, or repealed, to make the throwaway, polluting society, we know today. The same with the demolition of the public tram system and the beginning of the construction of the motorway system.
Law that can be made, can be unmade.
(II) The World Is A Big Place
Of course the changes happening in New Zealand society to make us a more polluting and wasteful place were not just happening here, they were happening world wide.
But it wasn’t like the a committee of world leaders got together and decided, this is how the world should be.
A few people somewhere decided these technologies were a good idea, (and they were at the time), and they just spread.
This is how the change will come as well.
So forget about international conferences on climate change.
A lot of people are disappointed that forum, after forum, meeting, after meeting, international conference, after international conference. All the governments of the world can still not agree on how to tackle the problem of climate change.
But this is the way it has always been.
This is how it will always be.
The latest failed international conference on climate, convened in Lima last year, was just the latest of a long line of failed meetings of the world’s nation states to come to any agreement on climate change.
You can put money on the fact that the huge penultimate international conference on climate change to be convened in Paris later this year will also fail to come to any binding agreement to cut Green House Gas emissions.
A solution will never come from these international treaty negotiations, it never has, and it never will. Even the current head of the UN Ban Ki Moon senses it.
In the 1930s the precurser to the United Nations, the League of Nations, could not get international agreement on how to confront the rise of fascism, and this failure broke them. Just as the UN will fail to get international agreement on how to confront the rise of climate change, and that failure will probably break them as well.
In the 1930s human civilisation was in a global contest between totalitarianism and democracy.
Humanity are now in global contest with the physics of the climate.
In human affairs, big or small, what often makes the difference between resolute action and indecision and confusion, is leadership.
Just as the UN has failed to address this crisis, so did the League of Nations fail to address the big crisis of their time.
What turned the tide was when one (relatively) small plucky island nation decided to put up a fight regardless of the League of Nations, regardless of the other major powers inaction and capitulation, regardless that (at that time) defeat looked almost certain.
Just as the use of plastics and automobiles spread around the world around the world from one centre. Concerted action against climate will also spread from one centre.
Forget any hope of concerted global action arising out of international bodies like the UN, every country is on its own. The competition will be to see, which country by its resolute actions against climate change, becomes that world leader that sets an example which by its moral power the rest of the world will have to follow.
It is up to each citizen, political activist, community leader, and politician convinced of the danger, in whichever country we are from, to push for our country to become that world leader.
For us here in New Zealand we are better placed than many to take that role.
70% of our power is generated by renewables, we need to make that 100%.
Coal plays a very small part of our economy, we need to make that nil by the end of the decade.
We could be that country that by our actions makes that necessary statement to the world that it is possible to move away from fossil fuels.
Winston Churchill once said, “Grab onto one big idea and never let go of it.”
James Hansen has said, “If we can’t get rid of coal it is all over for the climate.”
New Zealand which once had huge asbestos industry has completely eliminated asbestos from our economy, we could easily do the same for coal, to become the world’s first coal free nation.
This could be our big statement to the world.
(III) So how could we go about it?
On a per capita basis New Zealand is the worlds biggest subsidiser of the the fossil fuel industry, we could cancel all the fossil fuel subsidies immediately and pour the money instead into subsidising renewables.
We could mobilise the workforces of the coal mines, and Huntly and Tiwai into building and operating wind and solar energy stations, and other renewable energy technologies.
We could forget about aspiring to become fast followers.
New Zealand could become the global leader on tackling climate change.
Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter, Australia has, per capita the highest level of green house emissions.
Undeniably, Australia our closest physical and cultural neighbor, is one of the worst polluters in the world. But because of the nearness of the two nations, both cultural and geographic, resolute action taken in New Zealand, would have political ramifications in Australia.
Why?
Because as well as being, one of the worst polluters, Australia is one of the worst effected countries by climate change, and many Australians are worried (even frightened). Latest polls show that 6 out of 10 Australians don’t think their government is doing enough about climate change. All these concerned Australians need is lead from across the Tasman to turn their disquiet into a demand that could not be ignored by Australia’s policy makers and business leaders.
From Australia the fight back will spread to the world.
This is how the war will be won.
(IV) So where should we start?
Both the New Zealand Green Party and the Mana Movement policy is “No new coal mines”.
Just as the campaign against nuclear ships was won on the ground first.
Activists from the Greens and Mana, and others, have been putting the agreed policy of No new coalmines into practice on the ground.
After an epic two year battle, these activists have fought Fonterra to a standstill over Fonterra’s plan to develop a new coal mine at Mangatangi, just south of Auckland.
But despite being beaten at Mangatangi, Fonterra have not given up on coal, and have decided to source coal from Solid Energy, the technically insolvent government coal company.
To meet Fonterra’s demand, Solid Energy have decided to reopen an abandoned coal mine at Maramarua 5k down the road from Mangatangi.
If the activists can stop the Maramarua coal mine on top of stopping the Mangatangi coal mine; Make no mistake, this will be a stake through the heart of the coal mining industry in this country, representing a major milestone on the way to making New Zealand completely coal free.
Nothing succeeds like success. Just as the successful protest campaign against nuclear ship visits, used the victory on the ground to leverage this into government policy. We again have the ability of achieve legislation which will have wide ranging international implications.
There are a number of other contenders to be this signature victory against climate change in this country, but in my opinion they do not have the same potential for achieving a signature game-changing-knockout victory on climate change that the proposed Maramarua coal mine has.
The other New Zealand contenders for a signature victory against climate change are:
– The Denniston Coal Mine in the South Island.
– The campaign against deep sea oil drilling.
Both these above campaigns have been handicapped by the tyranny of distance.
Just like applied in gorilla warfare, climate change activists need to concentrate our forces where our opponents are weakest and where we are strongest, that has always been near the main population centres. Maramarua fits this bill.
The other thing about Maramarua, is that it can only be fought on climate change grounds, there are no environmental issues, the climate change message cannot be confused, or adulterated by being mixed with environmental concerns.
If this epic battle against climate change in this country, is not fought and won at Maramarua, it can not be fought and won anywhere.
(IV) (And so for the question I have left til last). Should we even bother?
Both the Deniers and the Doomers have one thing in common, both believe (albeit for different reasons) that there is nothing to be done about about climate change.
Are they wrong? Are they right?
In my opinion if something can be done, it should be done.
Some of my closest friends and advisers tell me that the doomers are right. “There is nothing that any of us can do that will make a difference.”
The time has come, for us to find out!
Pat O’Dea is the Mana Movement spokesperson for climate change.
Pat, quote selectively and link. Taking up a huge space like that anti-social (Penny is about the only one that gets away with it), and may attract the attention of the moderators. Me, it just made me scroll through.
Luckily, I have not as yet succumbed to Paula Bennett syndrome. So, Pat O’Dea (I don’t know why, but I pay much more notice to those who choose not to use nom de plumes) keep it up…
Paula Bennett syndrome? The one where she outs the details of beneficiaries to the media as a high level bullying tactic, including a fuck you to the Privacy Commissioner?
Do you realise you are talking to a beneficiary who uses a nom de plume in part for safety reasons?
“Paula Bennett Syndrome “as in the article written shortly after her ascendancy to higher office. She implored anyone trying to communicate with her to keep it to one A4 page…or less.
I too am a beneficiary, by virtue of the fact my partner( pre- ACC high tetraplegic) requires full time care. You of course will be aware of the Government’s response to the Human Rights Review Tribunal’s declaration that I should be paid for providing this care. This was supported by the UN Monitoring Committee on The UNCORPD. My partner and I decided long ago that speaking openly and transparently about this and other important disability issues was vital.
And yes, there has been a cost.
As beneficiaries we know that retribution can result from agitating, complaining or even making an inquiry.
As a client of MOH; Disability Support Services, my partner is more than aware that complaints an inquiries can lead to reduction of supports and threats of institutionalization.
“Safe”…from the government departments charged with supporting those in our situation?
Oh, weka, have no doubt that I am well aware that we are not “safe”.
Also, we have no ‘public profile’ to protect.
I enjoy reading long posts/comments. When someone has the passion and commitment to construct such a document, my personal feeling is it would be rude not to read it. If it turns out to be twaddle…ignore the next post by that person. Pat O’ Dea took the time to give his thoughts and feelings on this issue, and while I might not be perfectly simpatico with all of his politics, on this particular issue I’m in full agreement. I would love to go and join the roadside protest on Monday…but wheelchairs and the side of the road at long weekend rush hour are not simpatico!
Rosemary, there are some people who have to use non de plumes. It can be for a variety of valid reasons. It may be they are in an area of employment where acknowledging their left leaning political alignment could see them lose their jobs. It could be they are in public office of some sort including local bodies. It could be that their circumstances (whatever they may be) causes them to fear reprisal action against them or members of their families should their identities become known.
If you think that is absurd, NZ history is riddled with individuals who were targeted because of their perceived left leaning persuasions. I had precisely that experience as a public servant years ago. I was targeted by the management (and others) and eventually had to leave. The fear and the rising stress levels proved too much in the end. Yet a former colleague who was a National Party activist was left alone because he was considered to be on the “right” side of the fence.
So, you would be wise not to judge a commentator based on whether they use a pseudonym or not. You’re missing out on some excellent commentary if you do. A good example (but by no means the only one) is Pascals bookie.
@ Rosemary McDonald
People use pseudonyms because they don’t trust malicious or punitive people or entities from harming them, harrassing them somehow if they can target the writer.
Your name here is Rosemary McDonald. But I don’t know if that isn’t a pseudonym.
Why should you respect a name above a pseudonym? You don’t know the person writing it, you still have to judge what they have said for clarity and correctness.
So don’t start on about pseudonyms.
If you want to come here accept the way it is run. You soon get to know what to expect from people using pseudonyms. We are encouraged to use the same ones all the time. They are our names on this blog.
The short take home message for you guys, is this;
If you are serious about wanting to do something about climate change, and you want to get involved with something with a halfway chance of success – then attend the protest against the Second* attempted New Coal Mine planned for the South of Auckland this holiday Monday at Mangatawhiri, Details HERE
Or come along to the Auckland Coal Action AGM to discuss strategies for making New Zealand Newcoal Free. All welcome.
The annual general meeting of ACA will be held Feb.7th 2015 at the Friends Meeting House 113 Mt Eden Rd Auckland at 1pm
Agree with weka…if it takes someone 13 presses of the page down button to get past your comment, you are doing something wrong.
To the substance of your post – you only have to observe dozens of failed human civilisations in history who could not alter their trajectory even when it was become clear that they were on the precipice and had to change, somehow, to know what is going to happen next.
On the other hand, I don’t believe that humans are going to go extinct any time soon, but this global civilisation we have built will be on its last legs in the next 30 years, and 100 years from now it’ll be gone.
My opinion is that things are bad, but we can make changes. If we don’t, they will become catastrophic. I don’t agree with MacPherson that they are catastrophic already. I think that if we don’t start cutting back very soon and get a government that realises there is a problem, it will be too late before we know it.
Basically. There are lots of things the NZ government could do, but everyone is in a game of pretend and extend promising the middle classes that the value of their Auckland rental isn’t going to be diminished and of course dairy will bounce back.
And meanwhile we have individual MP’s/PM’s on the look out for what’s best for their post parliamentary careers, stuff the country and its people.
In my opinion, both Murray Rawshark @ 15.3, and Colonial Rawshark @ 15.3.1, are making a fundamental error. In that they are waiting on a government to act.
It ain’t gonna happen.
At least, not without the sort of massive pressure from below that saw New Zealand become Nuclear Free.
This is what informs the strategy of Auckland Coal Action.
I’m not waiting for the government. My position is similar to yours. Governments only act in the interests of anyone other than the 1% when they are forced to. We will get a government that truly realises there is a problem and does something by the pressure from below that you mention.
And let’s hope that when a government does take some worthwhile climate measures, it’s not a smokescreen to sneak round the back and roger us in another way like in 1984.
Can anyone please point me toward any blogs/websites which are informative/on to it in terms of current events etc?
Not interested in anything with a specific left or right wing bias, more after well informed impartial insights & opinions.
Recently discovered Dmitry Orlov’s blog which I find extremely interesting, so looking for more blogs and websites like that, which stimulate thought and analysis.
Wikipedia is pretty good for ongoing issues – generally gets updated pretty quickly, and it’s easy to find background and sources. And bias gets flagged and disputed/resolved pretty quickly.
YouTube – Keiser Report
Max and Stacey are great on all the latest financial and economic hypocrisy and malfaesence. There are now hundreds of episodes they have done.
Keiser is damn good and so’s the Archdruid. I don’t think we are heading for the apocalypse (but I used to in my Pentecostal days)…
Prof. Steve Keen, Matt Taibbi, and Ross Ashcroft (the renegade economist) are high on my list of economic pundits. I’ve also been watching quite a bit of Abby Martin on RT as antidote to the cosy Five Eyes media conglomerates.
Ok, I have done some changes to the caching to use more uncached fragments.
If there is a problem after this, from those changes, it should show up in the Replies tab, in the names and emails in the comment replies. It will show the wrong ones or won’t show the ones you usually use.
Ok. Probably just old caches? Ok lets see if we get repeats. If you see it again, try the Ctrl + F5/refresh first. It should clear up straight away then. Tell me if it does.
Ummm. It has been a bit tricky in figuring out how to test it.
Essentially the whole of the page is meant to be statically stored as objects except for the sections that are marked as being required to calculated each time.
The bit that I did today was the name stuff on the replies. I should have another look at how I did the the replies tab bearing in mind whatI learnt today about this arcane magick
Ok, I have put in the change that I think should do the trick.
Could people tell me if they see something odd in the Replies tab (or entering a comment for names, emails etc). Check if it goes away if you refresh the page or refresh it with a Ctrl + F5/Refresh.
The caching change significantly improves the performance at the server, but it relies on those two specific area to be generated per commenter. If the latter doesn’t work under load, then I need to know about it so that I can revert the changes.
It passes my testing, so any errors will only show up under real loadings.
Yeah, but most farmers I know aren’t like that, and many are trying to do the right thing. Better to add an adjective. Call them FF farmers (especially as it appears that many farmers don’t join FF, so don’t have control over what FF does or says). Or polluting farmers.
I think lumping them in all togethers makes the good ones and the ones about to do good things invisible just at the point that we need them to be visible.
b waghorn didn’t apologise for anything and I really don’t expect him or other farmers to do so. And the muslims of good conscience are saying the same thing but the Western Leaders and the MSM don’t appear to be listening.
Does anybody here have any experience with the MBIE investigating an employer?
Scuttlebutt has it that someone rang them and made an anonymous complaint about an employer a week or two before Christmas, and nothing appears to have happened. What we’re trying to work out is whether an investigation is under way and just taking time to get going, or whether the (influential) employer had a word in the right ear and made the complaint just go away.
This short blog post and the linked PDF document is the result of a collaborative effort by Anne-Marie Blackburn, Dana Nuccitelli, Bärbel Winkler, Ken Rice and John Cook. When the climate change (mis)information briefs pushed by David Legates and others started to make the rounds in January 2021 we wondered whether ...
A part of this morning's transport announcement which hasn't got a lot of attention yet: biofuels are back: “Our Government has agreed in principle to mandate a lower emitting biofuel blend across the transport sector. Over time this will prevent hundreds of thousands of tonnes of emissions from cars, ...
After almost twenty years of ignoring the Māori vote, National may run in the Māori seats again: A former National MP is excited the party could stand a candidate in the Māori electorate seats for the first time since 2002. One News reported last night that National's leader Judith ...
If one stubbornly clings to the Elimination strategy (I don’t support it, but that will have to wait for another occasion) then try to get it right. You need secure borders. We have attempted this with a very large measure of success. It has not been perfect as the Covid-19 Response ...
Diaspora: perception departs from reality In this collection of articles are two papers currently captivating the attention of people following the science and emergence of climate change, especially the rapid variety we've accidentally unleashed and which is now unfolding around us. The synthesis and review article Earth's Ice Imbalance by Slater ...
The ultra-rich have done very, very well out of the pandemic. Globally, the wealth of the ten richest people rose by US$540 billion last year, enough money to pay for the pandemic in its entirity. And in New Zealand, local billionaire Graeme Hart saw his wealth increase by almost NZ$3.5 ...
Postmodernism has long been looked upon as an indecipherable ideology and a source of amusement. In 1996 Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University, had a hoax article published in ‘Social Text’ an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. In ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Anew study in Nature Sustainability incorporates the damages that climate change does to healthy ecosystems into standard climate-economics models. The key finding in the study by Bernardo Bastien-Olvera and Frances Moore from the University of California at Davis: The models have been underestimating the ...
In a recent interview with RNZ (14th of January), NZ Council of Civil Liberties Chair Thomas Beagle, in response to Simon Bridges condemnation of the post-Trump Twitter purge of local far Right and other accounts, said the following: “Cos the thing about freedom of expression is that it’s not just ...
Let’s be clear: if Trump is not politically killed off once and for all, he will become a MAGA Dracula, rising from the dead to haunt US politics for years to come and giving inspiration to his wretched family of grifters and thousands of deplorables well into the next decade. ...
Since its demise as an imperial power, and especially its deindustrialisation under Thatcher, the UK's primary economic engine has been its role as a money laundry, using its network of overseas territories as tax havens to enable rich people around the world to steal from the societies they live in. ...
Last month OMV quit the Great South Basin and surrendered its offshore exploration permits outside of Taranaki. This month, Australian-owned Beach Energy has done the same: Beach Energy Resources New Zealand has decided to abandon all of its oil and gas exploration permits off the South Island coast, including ...
The new Northland case has been linked to the South African strain of Covid-19, one of a number of new, more contagious Covid variants. Here’s how they emerge and why. Let’s start with the basics. The genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for Covid-19 is a strand of RNA ...
MARVIN HUBBARD, US citizen by birth, New Zealand citizen by choice, Quaker and left-wing activist, has been broadcasting his show, "Community or Chaos", on Otago Access Radio for the best part of 30 years. On 24 November last year, I spoke with him about the outcome of the 2020 General ...
This is a guest blog post by Daniel Tamberg, Potsdam, co-founder and director of SCIARA GmbH. The non-profit organisation SCIARA is developing and operating a flexible software platform for scientific simulation games that allows thousands of players to explore, design and understand possible climate futures together. Decision-makers in politics, business, ...
Yesterday's Gone: Cold shivers are running up and down the spines of conservatives everywhere. Donald Trump may have gone, but all the signs point to there being something much more momentous in the wind-shift than a simple return to the status quo ante. A change is gonna come. ONE COULD ...
Is it possible to live and let live in the post-Trump era? The online campaign to vilify Christopher Liddell, ex-White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant to Trump, makes for an interesting case study. Liddell is a New Zealander whose illustrious career in corporate America once earned him plaudits ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 17, 2021 through Sat, Jan 23, 2021Editor's Choice12 new books explore fresh approaches to act on climate changeAuthors explore scientific, economic, and political avenues for climate action ...
This discussion is from a Twitter thread by Martin Kulldorff on 20 December 2020. He is a Professor at Harvard Medical School specialising in disease surveillance methods, infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety. His Twitter handle is @MartinKulldorff #1 Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single ...
The Treasury forecasts suggest the economy is doing better than expected after the Covid Shock. John Kenneth Galbraith was wont to say that economic forecasting was designed to make astrology look good. Unfair, but it raises the question of the purpose of economic forecasts. Certainly the public may treat them ...
Q: Will the COVID-19 vaccines prevent the transmission of the coronavirus and bring about community immunity (aka herd immunity)? A: Jury not in yet but vaccines do not have to be perfect to thwart the spread of infection. While vaccines induce protection against illness, they do not always stop actual ...
Joe Biden seems to be everything that Donald Trump was not – decent, straightforward, considerate of others, mindful of his responsibilities – but none of that means that he has an easy path ahead of him. The pandemic still rages, American standing in the world is grievously low, and the ...
Keana VirmaniFrom healthcare robots to data privacy, to sea level rise and Antarctica under the ice: in the four years since its establishment, the Aotearoa New Zealand Science Journalism Fund has supported over 30 projects.Rebecca Priestley, receiving the PM Science Communication Prize (Photo by Mark Tantrum) Associate Professor ...
Nothing more from me today - I'm off to Wellington, to participate in the city's annual roleplaying convention (which has also eaten my time for the whole week, limiting blogging despite there being interesting things happening). Normal bloggage will resume Tuesday. ...
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weaponscame into force today, making the development, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons illegal in international law. Every nuclear-armed state is now a criminal regime. The corporations and scientists who design, build and maintain their illegal weapons are now ...
"Come The Revolution!" The key objective of Bernard Hickey’s revolutionary solution to the housing crisis is a 50 percent reduction in the price of the average family home. This will be achieved by the introduction of Capital Gains, Land, and Wealth taxes, and by the opening up of currently RMA-protected ...
by Daphna Whitmore Twitter and Facebook shutting down Trump’s accounts after his supporters stormed Capitol Hill is old news now but the debates continue over whether the actions against Trump are a good thing or not. Those in favour of banning Trump say Twitter and Facebook are private companies and ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Democrats now control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives for the first time in a decade, albeit with razor thin Congressional majorities. The last time, in the 111th Congress (2009-2011), House Democrats passed a carbon cap and trade bill, but it died ...
Session thirty-three was highly abbreviated, via having to move house in a short space of time. Oh well. The party decided to ignore the tree-monster and continue the attack on the Giant Troll. Tarsin – flying on a giant summoned bat – dumped some high-grade oil over the ...
Last night I stayed up till 3am just to see then-President Donald Trump leave the White House, get on a plane, and fly off to Florida, hopefully never to return. And when I woke up this morning, America was different. Not perfect, because it never was. Probably not even good, ...
Watching today’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the United States’ 46th president, there’s not a lot in common with the inauguration of Donald Trump just four destructive years ago. Where Trump warned of carnage, Biden dared to hope for unity and decency. But the one place they converge is that ...
Dan FalkBritons who switched on their TVs to “Good Morning Britain” on the morning of Sept. 15, 2020, were greeted by news not from our own troubled world, but from neighboring Venus. Piers Morgan, one of the hosts, was talking about a major science story that had surfaced the ...
Sara LutermanGrowing up autistic in a non-autistic world can be very isolating. We are often strange and out of sync with peers, despite our best efforts. Autistic adults have, until very recently, been largely absent from media and the public sphere. Finding role models is difficult. Finding useful advice ...
Doug JohnsonThe alien-like blooms and putrid stench of Amorphophallus titanum, better known as the corpse flower, draw big crowds and media coverage to botanical gardens each year. In 2015, for instance, around 75,000 people visited the Chicago Botanic Garden to see one of their corpse flowers bloom. More than ...
Getting to Browser Tab Zero so I can reboot the computer is awfully hard when the one open tab is a Table of Contents for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and every issue has more stuff I want to read. A few highlights: Gugler et al demonstrating ...
Michael Cowling, CQUniversity AustraliaWe’ve probably all been there. We buy some new smart gadget and when we plug it in for the first time it requires an update to work. So we end up spending hours downloading and updating before we can even play with our new toy. But ...
Timothy Ford, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Charles M. Schweik, University of Massachusetts AmherstTo mitigate health inequities and promote social justice, coronavirus vaccines need to get to underserved populations and hard-to-reach communities. There are few places in the U.S. that are unreachable by road, but other factors – many ...
Israel chose to pay a bit over the odds for the Pfizer vaccine to get earlier access. Here’s The Times of Israel from 16 November. American government will be charged $39 for each two-shot dose, and the European bloc even less, but Jerusalem said to agree to pay $56. Israel ...
Orla is a gender critical Marxist in Ireland. She gave a presentation on 15 January 2021 on the connection between postmodern/transgender identity politics and the current attacks on democratic and free speech rights. Orla has been active previously in the Irish Socialist Workers Party and the People Before Profit electoral ...
. . America: The Empire Strikes Back (at itself) Further to my comments in the first part of 2020: The History That Was, the following should be considered regarding the current state of the US. They most likely will be by future historians pondering the critical decades of ...
Nathaniel ScharpingIn March, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to shut down major cities in the U.S., researchers were thinking about blood. In particular, they were worried about the U.S. blood supply — the millions of donations every year that help keep hospital patients alive when they need a transfusion. ...
Sarah L Caddy, University of CambridgeVaccines are a marvel of medicine. Few interventions can claim to have saved as many lives. But it may surprise you to know that not all vaccines provide the same level of protection. Some vaccines stop you getting symptomatic disease, but others stop you ...
Back in 2016, the Portuguese government announced plans to stop burning coal by 2030. But progress has come much quicker, and they're now scheduled to close their last coal plant by the end of this year: The Sines coal plant in Portugal went offline at midnight yesterday evening (14 ...
The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: As anybody with the intestinal fortitude to brave the commentary threads of local news-sites, large and small, will attest, the number of Trump-supporting New Zealanders is really quite astounding. IT’S SO DIFFICULT to resist the temptation to be smug. From the distant perspective of New Zealand, ...
RNZ reports on continued arbitrariness on decisions at the border. British comedian Russell Howard is about to tour New Zealand and other acts allowed in through managed isolation this summer include drag queen RuPaul and musicians at Northern Bass in Mangawhai and the Bay Dreams festival. The vice-president of the ...
As families around the world mourn more than two million people dead from Covid-19, the Plan B academics and their PR industry collaborator continue to argue that the New Zealand government should stop focusing on our managed isolation and quarantine system and instead protect the elderly so that they can ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 10, 2021 through Sat, Jan 16, 2021Editor's ChoiceNASA says 2020 tied for hottest year on record — here’s what you can do to helpPhoto by Michael Held on Unsplash ...
Health authorities in Norway are reporting some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine. Is this causally related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are the things to consider. According to the news there have been 23 deaths in Norway shortly after vaccine administration and ...
Happy New Year! No, experts are not concerned that “…one of New Zealand’s COIVD-1( vaccines will fail to protect the country” Here is why. But first I wish to issue an expletive about this journalism (First in Australia and then in NZ). It exhibits utter failure to actually truly consult ...
All nations have shadows; some acknowledge them. For others they shape their image in uncomfortable ways.The staunch Labour supporter was in despair at what her Rogernomics Government was doing. But she finished ‘at least, we got rid of Muldoon’, a response which tells us that then, and today, one’s views ...
Grigori GuitchountsIn November, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, made an attention-grabbing announcement: More than 30 of its most prestigious journals, including the flagship Nature, will now allow authors to pay a fee of US$11,390 to make their papers freely available for anyone to read ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, and Benjamin Santer Imagine a major climate change law passing the U.S. Congress unanimously? Don’t bother. It turns out that you don’t need to imagine it. Get this: The Global Change Research Act of 1990 was passed ...
“They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”WHO CAN FORGET the penultimate scene of the 1956 movie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The wild-eyed doctor, stumbling down the highway, trying desperately to warn his fellow citizens: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”Ostensibly science-fiction, the movie ...
TheOneRing.Net has got its paws on the official synopsis of the upcoming Amazon Tolkien TV series. It’s a development that brings to mind the line about Sauron deliberately releasing Gollum from the dungeons of Barad-dûr. Amazon knew exactly what they were doing here, in terms of drumming up publicity: ...
Since Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953, US presidents have joined an informal club intended to provide support - and occasionally rivalry - between those few who have been ‘leaders of the free world’. Donald Trump, elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and a constant mocker of his predecessors, ...
For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Zero emission buses, cleaner cars and environmentally-friendly biofuels will soon be hitting New Zealand’s roads, as the Government delivers on its election promise to make our transport network more sustainable. ...
The Green Party is already delivering on its commitment for cleaner, climate-friendly transport through our Cooperation Agreement with the Government. ...
A growing public housing waiting list and continued increase of house prices must be urgently addressed by Government, Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson said today. ...
Prudence Steven QC, barrister of Christchurch has been appointed as an Environment Judge and District Court Judge to serve in Christchurch, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. Ms Steven has been a barrister sole since 2008, practising in resource management and local government / public law. She was appointed a Queen’s ...
The Government is delivering on its first tranche of election promises to take action on climate change with a raft of measures that will help meet New Zealand’s 2050 carbon neutral target, create new jobs and boost innovation. “This will be an ongoing area of action but we are moving ...
The Government is investing up to $10 million to support 30 of the country’s top early-career researchers to develop their research skills. “The pandemic has had widespread impacts across the science system, including the research workforce. After completing their PhD, researchers often travel overseas to gain experience but in the ...
A Waitomo-based Jobs for Nature project will keep up to ten people employed in the village as the tourism sector recovers post Covid-19 Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “This $500,000 project will save ten local jobs by deploying workers from Discover Waitomo into nature-based jobs. They will be undertaking local ...
Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw spoke yesterday with President Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. “I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak with Mr. Kerry this morning about the urgency with which our governments must confront the climate emergency. I am grateful to him and ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Hon Nanaia Mahuta today announced three diplomatic appointments: Alana Hudson as Ambassador to Poland John Riley as Consul-General to Hong Kong Stephen Wong as Consul-General to Shanghai Poland “New Zealand’s relationship with Poland is built on enduring personal, economic and historical connections. Poland is also an important ...
Work begins today at Wainuiomata High School to ensure buildings and teaching spaces are fit for purpose, Education Minister Chris Hipkins says. The Minister joined principal Janette Melrose and board chair Lynda Koia to kick off demolition for the project, which is worth close to $40 million, as the site ...
A skilled and experienced group of people have been named as the newly established Oranga Tamariki Ministerial Advisory Board by Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis today. The Board will provide independent advice and assurance to the Minister for Children across three key areas of Oranga Tamariki: relationships with families, whānau, and ...
The green light for New Zealand’s first COVID-19 vaccine could be granted in just over a week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today. “We’re making swift progress towards vaccinating New Zealanders against the virus, but we’re also absolutely committed to ensuring the vaccines are safe and effective,” Jacinda Ardern said. ...
The Minister for ACC is pleased to announce the appointment of three new members to join the Board of ACC on 1 February 2021. “All three bring diverse skills and experience to provide strong governance oversight to lead the direction of ACC” said Hon Carmel Sepuloni. Bella Takiari-Brame from Hamilton ...
The Government is investing $9 million to upgrade a significant community facility in Invercargill, creating economic stimulus and jobs, Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson and Te Tai Tonga MP Rino Tirikatene have announced. The grant for Waihōpai Rūnaka Inc to make improvements to Murihiku Marae comes from the $3 billion set ...
[Opening comments, welcome and thank you to Auckland University etc] It is a great pleasure to be here this afternoon to celebrate such an historic occasion - the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This is a moment many feared would never come, but ...
The Government is providing $3 million in one-off seed funding to help disabled people around New Zealand stay connected and access support in their communities, Minister for Disability Issues, Carmel Sepuloni announced today. The funding will allow disability service providers to develop digital and community-based solutions over the next two ...
Border workers in quarantine facilities will be offered voluntary daily COVID-19 saliva tests in addition to their regular weekly testing, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. This additional option will be rolled out at the Jet Park Quarantine facility in Auckland starting on Monday 25 January, and then to ...
The next steps in the Government’s ambitious firearms reform programme to include a three-month buy-back have been announced by Police Minister Poto Williams today. “The last buy-back and amnesty was unprecedented for New Zealand and was successful in collecting 60,297 firearms, modifying a further 5,630 firearms, and collecting 299,837 prohibited ...
Upscaling work already underway to restore two iconic ecosystems will deliver jobs and a lasting legacy, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “The Jobs for Nature programme provides $1.25 billion over four years to offer employment opportunities for people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the COVID-19 recession. “Two new projects ...
The Government has released its Public Housing Plan 2021-2024 which outlines the intention of where 8,000 additional public and transitional housing places announced in Budget 2020, will go. “The Government is committed to continuing its public house build programme at pace and scale. The extra 8,000 homes – 6000 public ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has congratulated President Joe Biden on his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States of America. “I look forward to building a close relationship with President Biden and working with him on issues that matter to both our countries,” Jacinda Ardern said. “New Zealand ...
A major investment to tackle wilding pines in Mt Richmond will create jobs and help protect the area’s unique ecosystems, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor says. The Mt Richmond Forest Park has unique ecosystems developed on mineral-rich geology, including taonga plant species found nowhere else in the country. “These special plant ...
To further protect New Zealand from COVID-19, the Government is extending pre-departure testing to all passengers to New Zealand except from Australia, Antarctica and most Pacific Islands, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “The change will come into force for all flights arriving in New Zealand after 11:59pm (NZT) on Monday ...
Bay Conservation Cadets launched with first intake Supported with $3.5 million grant Part of $1.245b Jobs for Nature programme to accelerate recover from Covid Cadets will learn skills to protect and enhance environment Environment Minister David Parker today welcomed the first intake of cadets at the launch of the Bay ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
By Adi Briantika in Jakarta A group of Papuan students in front of the House of Representatives (DPR) building in Jakarta, who were planning to hold a protest action opposing the extension of Papuan Special Autonomy (Otsus), have been arrested and taken to the Metro Jaya regional police headquarters. “Around ...
By RNZ News The two new cases of covid-19 confirmed yesterday in New Zealand are the South African variant and initial results show they are connected to the Northland case at the Pullman Hotel. This morning the Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, confirmed to Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Overhype can be a dead giveaway of under-confidence. When Anthony Albanese on Thursday compared his situation to that of Joe Biden, it sounded rather desperate. Some journalists, he said, had predicted a certain Trump win. ...
The New Zealand public sector and judiciary has again been ranked the least corrupt in the world. The 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released today by global anti-corruption organization Transparency International ranks New Zealand first equal ...
New Zealand is again ranked first equal with Denmark in the Transparency International annual index of perceived levels of public sector corruption. Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier has welcomed New Zealand’s position in the 2020 index. He says New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Kaufman, Research Fellow, Vaccine Uptake Group, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute The federal government’s A$23.9 million COVID-19 vaccination information campaign, launchedyesterday, aims to reassure the public about vaccine safety and effectiveness. It will also provide information about the vaccine rollout. We’ve ...
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he’s joined by Hongi Luo, brand director at TikTok.In terms of cultural reach and impact, the ...
After Covid devastated its 2020, Basement Theatre comes roaring into 2021 with its Summer Season. Here’s the rundown of shows in-store, with some comments from programmer Nisha Madhan.Pre-FringeLust IslandWhen’s it on: February 2-6, 8pmWho’s involved: The women of improv troupe Hearthrobs (McKenzie’s Daughters, Salem Bitch Trials), including Brynley Stent, Alice ...
The whānau of Te Ahikaiata Turei supported by Māori and non-Māori staff at Unitec will take back a portrait of the Tūhoe leader who led the establishment of Te Noho Kotahitanga Marae and the values that brought the institute back from the brink of ...
A poll across the Early Childhood Education community found 93% in favour of pausing the ‘lunchbox rules’, or the Ministry of Education’s new Food Safety/choking changes to the Licensing Criteria, which came into effect on 25 January. “The message ...
Cycling advocates are calling for the transformation of urban transport, as New Zealand races to cut carbon. The Climate Change Commission will release its initial advice on Sunday 31 January. “Bikes and e-bikes are perfect for many local trips, ...
Three Ministers, led by the PM, joined in chorus today to warble about a bunch of measures aimed at helping to meet New Zealand’s 2050 carbon neutral target, create new jobs and boost innovation. Mind you, the measures mentioned seem to be more matters of decisions yet to be made ...
Michelle Kidd defines her role at Auckland’s specialist family violence court as te kaiwhakatere – the navigator. It’s a one-of-a-kind job, helping guide defendants through the court system. And there’s no one better suited to it than Whaea Michelle.First published November 24, 2020.Whaea Michelle is part of Frame, a series of short ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sallie Yea, Associate professor & Principal Research Fellow, La Trobe University Each year, thousands of men and boys labour under extremely exploitative conditions on commercial fishing vessels owned by Taiwanese, Chinese and South Korean companies. The Taiwanese fleet, which operates in all ...
Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis believes the Crown should maintain responsibility for the care and protection of at-risk and vulnerable children, regardless of their race. Moreover, he is confident his all-Maori team of advisers will not be taking race into account as they help to improve Oranga Tamariki’s care and protection of ...
It’s easy to sacrifice John Banks. It’s a lot harder for brands, sports organisations and government to truly stop funding racism. Are they willing to try?Yesterday John Banks, the former Auckland mayor and MP, became subject to one of the fastest firings in media history when audio covering his approving ...
A community is outraged after Auckland Council granted consent for a row of trees planted by local kids to be removed along a revitalised waterway in South Auckland, reports Justin Latif. An Auckland Council decision to give contractors the all-clear to chop down 12 mānuka and kānuka trees shading Māngere’s Tararata ...
Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu hopes that the recent changes to Oranga Tamariki leadership present an opportunity for a long overdue paradigm shift that will place whānau at the heart of the child welfare sector. Pouārahi Helen Leahy says that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rice, Professor of Management, University of New England Elon Musk is now the world’s richest person, edging out previous title holder Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. His rocketing fortune is due to the booming share price of Tesla, the maker of electric vehicles ...
There are now three returnees who contracted the virus in the Auckland isolation facility then left into the community while positive. These are some of the questions that need to be resolved. At 10.20pm last night the Ministry of Health confirmed that the two cases they’d been treating as probable ...
Having a hard time remembering to scan in on the NZ Covid Tracer app when you’re out and about? Get this song stuck in your head and you’ll never forget again.Learn the lyrics:Aotearoa, it’s time to get scanning!I mean if you think about it, it never really wasn’t time we ...
We conclude our week-long examination of New Zealand writer Roderick Finlayson with a review of his stories by John Newton Roger Hickin’s Cold Hub Press is one of the small miracles of contemporary New Zealand publishing. Over the last decade, on what can only be a shoe-string budget, the ...
Thursday 28th January, AUCKLAND: Drive Electric, the not-for-profit with one mission – making electric vehicle uptake in New Zealand mainstream, welcomes the announcement by the Government today as a sign of what’s to come through 2021, and we are confident ...
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Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 28, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur members make The Spinoff happen! Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us ...
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Facebook knows all about you, and gets it wrong.
What does this say about the value of metadata?
FB engages in and funds real life research to keep improving those algorithms.
The problem with their logic is that the vast majority of people click ‘like’ on things their friends post and share, not because they actually like those things, but because they want to be seen not to be ignoring what their friends post on Facebook. I used to write articles and post them on Facebook before I deleted my Facebook account. Some of those articles would take up to 10 minutes for an average reader to read. Without fail, every single time I posted one, at least four or five of my ‘friends’ would click ‘like’ within 60 seconds of the post going live and hitting their newsfeed, meaning they ‘liked’ it without reading it. Facebook is only an accurate gauge of what people *want you to see* and of how they *want to be seen*, but in my experience it will never be an accurate gauge of who or what they actually are. This personality testing crap appears to me to be just another way for Facebook to appeal to potential advertisers, but I doubt it would pass the snake oil test on close inspection. Last time I looked, there were seven billion or so independent psychological realities populating this planet. I find it extremely difficult to believe that you can break those down to six, nine, or twelve different types. If only life were that simple.
@ Truth will out
Good points. I am looking at facebook as I have some very FB oriented relations who want to be on it every day and promote things I’m not interested in. Now it seems to have increased as there is mention that I should know that someone is ‘tagging’ something from someone who is connected with one of my relatives or their friends blah blah.. I’m sick of it.
It has ocasional uses for me but another of the trials of it is that they don’t have a complete profile on me or my image and I don’t want them to have it. But I get reminded (harrassed) that they still don’t know what toilet paper I use and if I fold it or crush it into a ball. Haha. Not going to tell them. (That actually was a funny episode in one of the tv series, possibly The IT crowd.)
By the way TruthWO, I split my comment as it’s easier to read if you would do that. A split anywhere or divide into paras separating your thinking, good.
Have we all been duped by the Myers-Briggs test?
It’s kinda amazing the personality tests still exist. I suspect that it’s part of some peoples desire to fit other people into categories that they understand.
@DTB
Some interesting things from a link on that Fortune page relating to generic drug falsifications that mean that drugs relied on and officially packaged may be nearly useless.
This about a whistleblower who exposed an Indian ‘faker’.
http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/dirty-medicine/
Under federal whistleblower law, Thakur will receive more than $48 million as part of the resolution of the case…
On May 13 [2013?] Ranbaxy pleaded guilty to seven federal criminal counts of selling adulterated drugs with intent to defraud, failing to report that its drugs didn’t meet specifications, and making intentionally false statements to the government. Ranbaxy agreed to pay $500 million in fines, forfeitures, and penalties — the most ever levied against a generic-drug company. (No current or former Ranbaxy executives were charged with crimes.)Thakur’s confidential whistleblower complaint, which he filed in 2007 and which describes how the company fabricated and falsified data to win FDA approvals, was also unsealed.
This item goes on to examine the generics boom, which is a large part of the pharma market in the USA and the global market is said to be $242 billion. But the question is, can it be monitored properly. The gaming of the FDA is shown by this one case to be likely, and if not, there is always the possibility of capture of screening officials as in the case of the Federal Reserve in USA.
I saw a graph showing the popularity of different three-word combinations in Buzzfeed headlines (through likes and shares on Facebook). “Things you didn’t” and “You’ll never guess” were predictably very high on the list, but “character are you” was in the top 5.
People *love* being able to sort themselves and their friends and family into easily-understood categories.
DtB +1
I suspect MBTI returns similar quality results to Facebook algorithms.
What does this say about the value of metadata?
Two things, I believe:
1. Quality of metadata is vital. You’d think that some metadata would be better than no metadata, but inaccurate metadata is worse than none at all because it gives you misplaced confidence in the crap results you’ll get.
2. Metadata of the type that lets you say “more likely to be X than Y” for a large population sample isn’t necessarily going to say anything useful about any particular individual. (Which is what’s disturbing about wild statements like “knows you better than a close friend.”)
1. Pretty much what I was thinking. Further, that there’ll be a race to be the first to use metadata to make a major error of judgement in a criminal investigation. Come to think of it, that probably happened already.
” a brighter future for Kiwi families”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11391028
yeah…right
cue Tui add
When both major parties are determined to create a rentier society then ownership is guaranteed to drop. Of course, we should actually question the value of owning a home anyway as that in itself also creates a rentier society – just with the banks and their shareholders as the rentiers.
This morning on radonz a commentator on Greece said there problem had been that two parties had alternated for 40 years both running scams, with corruption and spending unwisely – increasing government employees by four times etc. That resonates with DtB “When both major parties are determined to create a rentier society”.
In Greece people have had so many years of austerity and not been able to climb out of it, their best and brightest have survived by going to other countries, and of those remaining 15% have voted for Golden Dawn which sounds similar to H…s Brown Shirts in Germany. The GD abuse brown coloured people in the street [Jews} and are corrupt and criminal, and at present half of their reps are in prison for something.
So societies are degraded by this mad austerity. Our long=standing financial system is now not standing up to scrutiny and hard times that it has created itself. The system is shown to be not practical for a good, healthy economy and society. And the people at the bottom rage but hard work is required to understand the coils of its serpentine ways.
By the way when the ECB talks about the necessity for Greeks to “reform” their economy before they get any more bail out money (which isn’t a bail out it’s just more odious debt), they are actually talking about Greeks allowing foreign corporations and hedge funds to come in and pick up critical Greek infrastructure for cents on the dollar.
+ 1..
..’reform’ means ‘fire-sale’..
@ CR
I keep seeing in the machinations of the neo libs a giant version with countries being raided and their goodies bought up by predaotrs, of the process of coporate raiders buying individual businesses. This was practised by businesses in western countries in the 1980s. We had Brierley and others getting hold of businesses and gutting them regaining their original investment many times eventually.
And of course the leveraging. This was where they bought businesses really cheap on borrowed money raised on the actual business’s assets. So in order to gain ownership it was bought laden with debt that would be recovered by stripping its assets and reducing its outgoings, ie wages to the minimum. Corporate raiders I think they are called.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_raid
I thought I would look up some references to these raiders.
It’s interesting looking at Cedenco which ended up in Brierley hands. Once busy here in NZ it ended up with major production shifted to Australia.
Company Information for 1990
Employees: 51-100
Turnover: $49,641,000 NZD (2012)
Export Sales Information: 45% of turnover
Established: 1986
http://directory.foodandbeverage.govt.nz/entries/199007-cedenco-foods-new-zealand-ltd
A 1999 regional report on employment in Gisborne refers to Cedenco amongst other businesses and says that they have largely shifted their operations to Australia.
http://www.regional.org.au/articles/development/ceg1999.htm
But good news in 2013 –
The Gisborne Herald | Gisborne’s …
Aug 8, 2013 … We are grateful to see the likes of Cedenco relocate back to Gisborne and council wisdom has established infrastructure to facilitate future …www.gisborneherald.co.nz/article/?id=33507
What happened by 1999.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=5992
On opinions about Brierley’s outcomes
http://milfordasset.com/guinness-peat-saga-turns-into-soap-opera/
Interesting connections that Brierley makes.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_sociopol_opalfile.htm
.
How the Russians did it.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/hostile-takeovers-russian-style/
Wikipedia has this to say on takeovers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeover
A detailed coverage of the maneouvres since 1984 and what pain and what gain? they have brought to us.
http://homepages.caverock.net.nz/~bj/Economy.htm
I throw in a Treasury report on post-privatisation of entities in NZ for no extra charge.
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/commercial/resources/pdfs/mixed-ownership-model/mom-shppnz-wilson-dec10.pdf
(Methodology … Removing the capacity of the businesses to seek government aid in bad times, thus both …. Ron Brierley, at that time executive chair of. Brierley …)
Note : from the summary under the link address – that businesses are going to have the capacity to seek government aid in bad times removed.
Coverage of foreign holdings in nz and businesses that were shifted out by Bill Rosenberg. Views and comments on FDI – Foreign Direct Investment.
http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Backgrounders/Chapter1.pdf
And for pudding – Monty Python skit on sailing the wide Accountan-sea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YUiBBltOg4 (Turn up sound)
edited
re golden dawn..
this is from june ’14 archives..
“..Supporters of the far-right party gave Hitler salutes – and sang the Horst Wessel song –
– outside parliament last week..”
From Bill Gates’ annual letter
A 50% increase in ‘wealth’ for most rich people will have far less effect on their lives than a 50% increase for all poor people.
No shit Sherlock.
Fifteen years, just enough time to get more dependent on oil then find there isn’t much left. We certainly won’t be letting poor countries have the last of the easy to get at oil, will we. What will they do then?
Mobile banking 🙄
Does Gates say anything about CC and PO? If not, his opinions are at best redundant, at worst contributing to the problem.
What we should really be doing is offering poorer countries resiliency tech that enables them to keep their current resiliency strategies while increasing their quality of life. But that would mean getting over our own denial.
Here’s how this works.
Petty cuts and pastes something someone else wrote, with a beige nothing appended, and when a debate ensues, he cuts and pastes the result straight to Yawns.
Sad and true.
Yeah I knew his comments tended to be edited versions of his blogposts, and that he periodically posts there on his Prentice obsession. Didn’t know he was wholesaling from the comments here though.
Unfortunately I just went and had a look and saw that awful misognistic post about the nannies at Ratana 🙁
True this.
Just like a 50% increase in wealth for the bottom 9/10 of NZers will have far more effect on their lives, than a 50% increase in wealth for the top 1/10 of NZers.
“..Could Psychedelics Be An Effective Suicide Prevention Measure?..
..The new wave of research on the medical applications of psychedelic drugs has suggested that these substances may hold considerable promise as therapeutic interventions –
– for a number of mental health conditions.
And according to another new study –
– use of ‘classic’ psychedelics – psilocybin (magic mushrooms) – LSD a- nd mescaline –
– may also be an effective suicide prevention measure..”
(cont..)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/22/psychedelic-research_n_6515268.html
complete opposite from my experience…LSD,…micro dots,clearlight,purple barrels ,blow your mind and more!
*unless medically prescribed exact dosages in safe conditions, results may vary.
That’s a mere detail, OAB. Blow your mind!! Free yourself from the shackles of punctuation!!
heh..!
Latest RoyMorgan; Nats creaming everyone, housing crisis and drought no impact.
What are Labour’s best attack lines, or is National simply impervious?
Confidence in the future was way up. With the sort of summer we are having who would ever want to change?
A week is a long time in politics. Never underestimate or forget how fickle the public is when the truth hurts them in their pockets. Key is only as good as their next pay cheque. Why else do you think he has borrowed almost $100 billion to keep the middle class wrapped in cotton wool?
7 years is not a week.
Time to think this through hard.
@Ad:
Key is only as good as the average voter’s last or next pay cheque. Personally I think the man is a liar and a criminal and I can”t wait to see him exposed. The object of your desire is the object of my contempt. History will prove who was right no matter how hard you try to shape it. Your opinion is no more or less valid than mine in this equation.
We are seeking to change the future of politics so how history is written is quite irrelevant.
Actual citizens are entirely entitled to vote and support for those who benefit them through their pay cheques.
As per the original question, what if any attack lines are there into this government?
how we are going to change the future of politics via the use of ‘attack lines’ which consistently get zero traction.
People don’t believe that Labour is ready to lead a true alternative to Key and English. I think that’s the basics of it.
Would better attack lines help? Sure. And if Labour could sound like it was in touch with the culture and attitudes of the electorate, that would be of assistance.
And so we get to think through the steps towards “true alternative”.
Far too early for that concept.
Well, we’re just getting on with it down here in Dunedin, we’re not waiting on approval from anyone.
If you want to look at Labour’s mediocre performance and lack of true vision over the last 8 years you only need to look at caucus and their senior advisors.
And yet it remains the task of the left to defeat the right.
Sorry mate too many of the tools are not up to the task.
Agreed. This is why the question ‘how to defeat National” should be argued through as the year starts, not after Key has set the agenda. And all the more reason to refine which remaining tools do work.
This really isn’t the place to do that though Ad. It’s a largely pseudonymous, and more importantly, public space.
Discussing rhetorical strategies, and the like, can’t be done in a public space; and is only really relevant to a few dozen people within political organisations anyway.
Spaces like this are places for citizens to talk about stuff. Party strategies will be yarned about, sure, but they can’t be planned in such spaces.
If Labour, or anyone else, is actually looking for clues on what to do strategically from spaces like this, then they are beyond fucked. That’s not to say that there aren’t insights here, but they limited to the context of what goes on in here. They cannot develop a rhetorical strategy in a public space. You cannot get a ‘good attack line’ from a public discussion of what a ‘good attack line’ might be.
Such things might emerge from a discussion about an event, or about National, but they will not emerge from a discussion about developing attack lines. Such a discussion ‘poisons the well’ for anything it comes up.
ie: “Haha, Labour are using lines discussed in this {link} Standard comment thread! Fuck they are hopeless” -Every RW blogger
Next day: John Armstrong, Vernon Small, Fran O’s: “The problems in Labour remain apparent as the party remains in the thrall of far left base who supported Cunliffe. Despite public shows at unity, and claims to have ‘learned the lessons that they need to listen to mainstream New Zealanders’ the party is still beholden to the partisans in the often abusive comment threads of….”
+1
You have a great future in journalism, CR.
We are not confused with caucus. But TS has a leadership position and is doing a better job of defining a future for an alternative government than most.
Most parties look here for clues – it’s a signal of the success of the site. Just as they do on other sites.
Don’t be so afraid of the echo. And you’re worrying far too hard about what is discussed “inside” or “outside”. That’s precisely the purpose of being a part of the media, which we are. This is public.
And don’t be pathetic about Cunliffe. Everyone else has got over it just fine.
We form thoughts that are repeated, added to, seen, reified, considered. And have done so for years now. Accept the agency this kind of site has.
There is no need for TS or any other site to respond to the narrative. We can form it. I’ve simply put the question more baldly than most. And we can and should help answer it.
Who is this “we” that isn’t confused with caucus?
Speak for yourself, and don’t claim to speak for others.
I’ve not been commenting here much lately, but there are very few who have been here longer. I remember, for example, when CV showed up.
This ‘leadership position’ what the hell are you even talking about?
It’s a blog, with otherwise largely unconnected people discussing things in public. That’s a useful and good thing, but nope, it is not a place where a party or political movement can strategise effectively.
In any case, if you want to get on with it, get on with it. Asking other people to have that conversation is pointless, coz as is happening now, the conversation becomes about the conversation.
They idea that a party or movement can have discussions in public about what their public rhetoric should be is completely bonkers, sorry. it just is.
Either get on with trying lines or whatever, or not.
But saying ‘maybe we should try this line”xxxx” or maybe this one “yyyy” just slits the throat of the line.
The line cannot be accepted as sincere when you have publicly said ‘maybe this might work’ about it.
I’ve missed your input, PB. I think you could do a media / PR advisor role for a party and be good at it. One of the few posters here whose comments I always read.
Crikey Lanthanide. You are an extremely fine and rigorous sage.
Well that withdrawal mode will work.
Works for everyone else as well.
And so they win again.
I haven’t withdrawn – far from it. I simply bear in mind most are politically stupid. Then when they go and prove it – as they do time and time again – I’m not surprised or disappointed. 🙂
that is reflected on the auckland roads
Funny you should say that because – political stupidity aside – that is exactly what I was initially thinking. You see their arrogant, self absorbed behaviour around you all the time.
“Another year,
another pint of beer.”
Billy Bragg.
When will the reality sink in?
Seven years and support for LW still dropping.
As you say AD, time to think this through hard….
So here’s a few practical thoughts on the essential elements of change.
Nothing is going to change by just sitting and waiting for the current strategy to suceed. It’s been 7 years and that hasn’t worked yet. It will not work in the future.
If the Left does want any hope of change, the Left must actively change it’s strategy.
Those who are constantly finding reasons why nothing will work ‘because everything is stacked against us’, should go and sulk in the corner with the other defeatists, and stop getting in the way of those with positivity and determination to succeed.
There is actually a very simple goal that can be identified. It is by far and away the one thing that will produce the maximum effect…
9% of voters who currently support the Right must be converted to vote Left.
If you hope to convert those voters, you must listen carefully to their views and concerns. As Orwell said ” propaganda only works when it is largely what the populace was inclined to do anyway”.
This will involve short term compromise right throughout the Left.
No single LW party can hope to gain power on it’s own.
The LW must align forces and they must present a coherent and credible alternative Govt. that ‘the 9%’ can strongly identify with.
This will involve compromise throughout the Left.
It needs to be understood and agreed why this is necessary, and why the constant ideological conflict that has characterised LW politics is simply counter productive for everyone.
This all must happen very soon. By the end of the year at latest. To have any chance of convincing ‘the 9%’ to swing Left, you will need to show them at least 2 years of a rock solid, unified, and credible alternative Govt.
Get off your arses and act for change.
Or it’ll be ‘three more years’ ringing in your ears, rather than Billy Bragg.
😆 @ Billy Bragg.
No concrete suggestions other than “why can’t we all just get along”? Are you trying for a beige star?
PS: My concrete suggestion is that we repeal neoliberalism in its entirety. Public utilities, free education, free healthcare, strong unions, human rights and the rule of law (and that includes Te Tiriti).
After that, advance only policies for which there are evidential bases.
I appreciate that is what you want OAB, but seriously, is there the slightest hope it is achievable?
Yes, significant hope.
Fundamental changes in policy direction have been achieved many times before in many countries, using democratic means. All it really takes is for enough people to notice that right wing parties turn everything to shit.
So, for example, your disgusting support for the destruction of collective bargaining deserves a brutal response, and it will just end up being repealed by Parliament instead.
Reading some of these new people I can’t help thinking they sound like concern troles.
Why shouldn’t people hoping for a Labour rebuild be concerned over the last six years?
“All it really takes is for enough people to notice that right wing parties turn everything to shit.”
Seven years of RW Govt., their level of support is going UP, but you still believe the above, and your strategy is to wait for ‘enough people to notice’?
Denial OAB, and I’m not singling you out, because you are expressing a (far too) common LW meme.
The flaw in this meme, (and it’s a biggie), is the presumption that your world view is ‘correct’, other world views are ‘wrong’, and inevitably future events will clearly demonstrate this and lead people to see the world as you do.
They will not. Other peoples world views are just as firmly grounded as yours, and are about as likely to change significantly and rapidly as yours are. (Bugger all chance in other words.)
Reality. The majority of NZ’ers do not believe everything is going to shit.
So a strategy based on attempting to convince the 55% that it is, will fail over the next 3 years, just like it has for the last seven.
So if my suggested strategy is rubbish, what are the realistic and achievable alternatives?
Either Dr. Mike Joy is right, or the corrupt Prime Minister. Either The Lancet is right, or the Health Minister. Either the New Zealand Law Society is right, or the National Party.
It’s nice of you to imagine I formed my low opinion of you and your leaders on my own, and really, I had help, and not from self-made self-worshippers, either.
Oh, and you are confusing an observation with a strategy. Oh, and an anonymous bloke who isn’t even a member of a political party, with political parties.
The majority of the electorate (70%+) either didn’t vote, or didn’t vote for three more years. Your fatuous conceit that everyone thinks like you isn’t borne out by the facts.
@ OAB
“All it really takes is for enough people to notice that right wing parties turn everything to shit.”
The lost sheep has made some relevant points. And one is about your sentence above. It is obvious to us, that even when the facts are obvious, the voters will slide away from the bad prognostications and vote for the status quo while the water is still calm. Later they may realise they should have acted differently, but the boat will be going down then and losses will mount.
We can’t wait for reality to strike the voters, we must be aware ourselves and find some unifying other message with positive outcomes to get them to brace themselves for change. It’s getting them to climb that change barrier! Change of thought, expectation, and change of government and change of apathetic negativity that seems to have settled over the country like a low pressure weather trough.
We have gone so far away from 1984’s lies about pain before gain, that we haven’t much that’s concrete to hold onto, to use as a base, a reference point for a reasoned way forward. We want a way that achieves a good basic living standard for all, and useful jobs to go to, and skills to acquire that will pay for improvements in living standard. The economy will rise as that happens. The change will be carried up not trickled down. Think of a seedling, quite soft but strong enough for its task, and it pushes up through the soil and then opens its leaves and gets stuck into being the plant it is. We can do that.
Except that you’re arguing with a Sheep’s delusional idea that an observation is a strategy. Plus what Pascal’s Bookie has been saying.
I might have missed it OAB, but what is YOUR realistic and achievable ‘strategy’ to change the current situation that you hate so much?
I might have missed it Sheep – the part where you comprehended what Pascal’s Bookie has been saying to Ad on this very point.
No, wait, sorry, I’m being too charitable – you probably can’t grasp it at all, eh.
This site is full of endless discussions about every kind of shit….
But we can’t talk about the potential political strategies of the Left?
FFS.
Anything to avoid having to engage with something positive and constructive….
So, no idea what Pascal’s Bookie is talking about then?
Don’t flatter yourself: you aren’t positive, constructive, or anything approaching either of these things. Treacherous and insincere is a far better description.
Nonsense OAB.
Yet again, when faced with a straightforward question you lay down a smokescreen and run.
In fact, we were discussing my reasonable observation that “that right wing parties turn everything to shit.”
You challenged that, so I provided some examples, and now you’re moving the goalposts to try and make the conversation all about me.
I think Pascal’s Bookie is right. I note you are unwilling to address the points they raised. Or unable. Unable seems more likely.
I don’t play by your rules? Cry, baby.
Care to point out any week that has had labour polling well in the last four leaders?
Yes a week is a long time – but relying on sayings like that as opposed to some real thinking is why you guys continue to border on insignificant.
Assumptions will only make an ass out of you. I am not a Labour supporter or voter. In fact, I voted for Key in 2008, but by 2011 I had seen enough evidence to know he is an out and out crook, and the only reason he keeps getting away with it is the questionable judgement and values of people like you, combined with your incredibly low standards in terms of what we expect in the form of clean, corruption free government. Key falls so far short on those standards, it is only your extreme moral selectivity and wilful ignorance on the part of idiots like you that keeps him propped up. If a Labour MP had resorted to insider trading to profit from the Kiwi Rail restructure, for instance, you would have been all over them like a rash. But instead, you resort to blind trust, much like the object of your desire did. And you both still rely on it. No matter what way you look at it, our economy is propped up by $100 billion of debt. In anyone’s language, that is a house of cards, dependent on luck as much as skill to see us get out of it safely. So far, I have seen bugger all skill, and an over-dependence on luck by Key and his cronies. What I have also seen, is more corruption, cronyism and conflicts of interest on their part than any other government in New Zealand history. Like I said, it is your willingness to turn a blind eye to that in return for your next pay cheque that proves me right, beyond any doubt.
Well said! I agree.
+1
Key and English has propped our economy up on $100B of government debt.
Clark and Cullen propped our economy up on $100B of private sector and household debt.
Who are you to say which is the bigger house of cards?
I is astounding how everybody is just pointing the finger at each other instead of offering solutions. I am no party member nor do I follow every share market or bank analysis. What I do see is the ordinary kiwi working or wanting to work, trying to succeed and get a better life. This seem to be almost impossible as education has failed many (they should be held accountable big time!), jobs are getting scarcer and upwards movement is reserved for those in the know 😉 wink wink. This is the report from the bottom of the heap, how is the air up there where reality is as far away as the moon?
There’s a number of solutions that have been put forward but they’re usually lambasted as being too radical. The problem that a lot of people seem to have with them is that they’ll change the underlying structure that they’re used to, i.e, they’ll fix the actual problems rather than the perceived problems.
Poverty is seen as a problem and people look for ways solve poverty. But poverty isn’t actually the problem but the symptom of the problem. The problem is capitalism in that it creates poverty.
+1
They are both the same house of cards because, in both cases, the money was created via private banks with no restriction.
+1
The Authoritarian followers protects their leaders – no matter how much cronyism and corruption they get up to.
If all we have is to wait for John Key’s luck to run out, the taxpayer funding that props up Parliamentary Services keeping Labour and Greens alive should be stopped immediately because they can affect nothing.
I’d like to ascribe them a modicum of skill that enables them to be a functioning opposition.
Drawing $5M in salaries per year, you would be hoping for a bit more than a “modicum.”
And given that, what KPIs have been successfully delivered upon for the Left voter?
Searching around for the good news, at least the Greens didn’t get their heads caved in. And with Labour this weak, there’s a better chance that Labour and the Greens will actually have to talk.
Yes that’s fair comment. Should’ve been doing that since day dot, but as you know there is this pride within Labour that it is the ‘rightful’ party of the Left.
@ James
Who are ‘you guys’? Because one person says something here doesn’t mean it’s an idea of more than one person. It may not be a general policy of the left or something that the Labour Party has done, is considering or will do. Be more specific as to whom you are directing your thoughts.
All I know is we are not going to rise to overcome our challenges as a nation by resorting to dirty politics, divisive politics, self interest, cronyism, corruption, abuse(s) of political power, or anything which stems from the lust and greed for money and power that drives those behaviours.
Tolerance of them must become intolerable if we are to have any hope of progressing and evolving as a society and a nation.
Clean, corruption free, efficient and wise governance MUST become our overarching priority or we are buggered.
Watching trolls keep entering this forum and defending the opposite just angers me to the core.
These people offend the memories of those who have sacrificed their lives for all of us to live in a better society.
We need to start demanding a better standard from ourselves and from those who seek the privilege, the power and the money to run this country.
There is no place for the kind of cynicism which accepts dirty politics as a given if you ever hope to live in a healthy economy and a civilised society.
Tolerance of such corruption and abuse of power and privilege is as disgraceful as those activities such tolerance seeks to exonerate.
Truth will out
Don’t feel so deeply about everything. You will wear yourself out. There are huge problems and putting up with the RW troles to some extent is the least of our worries. You list such a lot which which seem valid.
Just have a rant and a hissy fit about the annoying mosquitoes every now and then and have a slap at them. You might draw some blood, but remember when its a mosquito it will be your own blood you see. That’s my advice. I find them really space wasting and malicious in their determined obtuseness. But some of the earnest defenders of the left like weka and tracey will answer them and try to educate – like trying to sculpt stone with a straw! I’m not suggesting ignoring them, but just checking out what little schemes they are running daily is how to manage them in a manageable way.
Just rips my nightie watching my tax dollars get flushed down the toilet we used to think of as government, and then have to endure a parade of f*ckwits making excuses for it.
Low inflation, low fuel prices, blazing summer heat, a lot of people feel good. No real need for then to switch their vote.
Meanwhile, there a lot of problems with this country, but they are overlooked or denied.
We are seeing 2 New Zealand’s at the moment. Social stratification in this country is at an all time high.
Not too sure what the left/Labour/Greens can do here. Best to just wait it out.
“Not too sure what the left/Labour/Greens can do here. Best to just wait it out.”
That’s the worst thing they can do. It’s why I think, despite what others say, polling is good. It shows us trends. National are still around 50% after 7 years. Labour can’t just wait it out, they can’t just wait for the “natural order” to give them power because it’s their turn.
Labour and the Greens have a lot of work to do, and they need to start doing it.
Nothing seems to be working though. The poll levels have been frozen in time since 2006/07. `
“Latest RoyMorgan; Nats creaming everyone, housing crisis and drought no impact.”
Shock horror, the average kiwi doesn’t blame JK for the drought.
But they should be blaming him for the rising poverty, inequality, the ongoing destruction of our rivers and the outright corruption of his government.
I think housing, house prices, and rental prices, remain one of the best attack lines. Smith has rolled his dice and failed. They have exposed a major weakness. Can it be better exploited?
EU joins rest of global economy in a QE induced coma…
“QE has failed in the last four years to get the major capitalist economies going; fiscal deficit spending has not worked in Japan either; so the strategists of capital look to the ‘third arrow’ of weakening labour and extending the ‘free’ movement of capital as the answer. But another slump that destroys capital values and raises average profitability is more likely to be the way out for capital.”
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/the-ecb-qe-and-escaping-stagnation/
Pretty sure John Key will be reported soon as telling the EU leaders they are loonies for their QE. So far just his “innocent til proven guilty” support of Prince Andrew.
Only fiscal policy will sort out the world economy and of course, the last thing that TPTB want to do is spend on real people in the real economy.
More liquidity to the banks and financial markets ASAP!
The Times…They are a-changin’ – in Southern Europe
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/23/change-is-in-the-air-across-southern-europe/
Prince Andrew is only “innocent until he is proven guilty” because Key wants a knighthood. Pity he hasn’t extended the same courtesy to certain citizens of New Zealand, who were destroyed by media trials of his making while being denied any access to a court room. Key is a hypocritical disgrace who makes my skin crawl. But let me tell you how I REALLY feel…
I have no idea why FJK even needs to comment on Randy Andy. I couldn’t give a stuff about it.
Enjoyed this today in the ODT; Dunedin’s existential angst worked through in local government bureaucratic non-speak: http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/330945/one-too-hard-basket
NZ’s ‘terrorist’ list includes movements which are clearly progressive/liberation movements. Anti-imperialist and democratic rights activist Cam Walker has a piece on “Ramping up state powers: the Terrorism Suppression Act since 2007” which starts:
The Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, brought in by Helen Clark’s Labour government, contains a number of wide provisions potentially criminalising support for legitimate national liberation movements and activism.
The Act was discredited in the eyes of many of its initial supporters in 2007 when the Solicitor General described it as ‘unnecessarily complex and incoherent’, following his refusal to allow the Police to proceed with charges under the Act against the defendants in Operation 8 (the so-called ‘Urewera raids’).
Yet the Act was never repealed. The legal ability of the state to apply the sections of the Act to those supporting international solidarity causes has increased over the past five years. John Key has used his power under s 22 of the Act to designate groups as ‘terrorist entities’ 19 times since 2010!
Full article at: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/the-terrorism-suppression-act-since-2007/
Meanwhile, veteran activist Don Franks looks at Key’s exclusive club and the notion that involvement in Syria/Iraq is the price to be paid for membership in this special club: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/looking-inside-john-keys-club/
Phil
greece is the place to watch this wknd…
http://whoar.co.nz/?s=greece
The fall in prices of raw materials/resources such as oil is a key factor in deflation. What does deflation mean for economies? Marxist economist Mike Roberts looks at what is going on:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/01/24/what-does-deflation-mean-for-economies/
Phil
I’m not traditionally a Labour or left wing voter, but I’m really hoping Andrew Little can do something really different and find a way to build and agenda and support for a Universal Basic income in NZ.
It would get my vote for a few reasons that are best outlined in two excellent posts on Gareth Morgan’s site:
http://garethsworld.com/blog/tax-and-welfare/ten-reasons-scrap-benefit-system/
http://garethsworld.com/blog/tax-and-welfare/ten-types-people-better-off-unconditional-basic-income/
How could a UBI be done politically in NZ?
Discuss 🙂
There’s been lots of discussion here on a UBI, not just Morgan’s ideas but work other people have done too.
http://thestandard.org.nz/?s=UBI&isopen=block&search_posts=true&search_sortby=date
http://thestandard.org.nz/?s=UBI&isopen=none&search_posts=true&search_comments=true&search_sortby=date
http://thestandard.org.nz/tag/ubi/
afaik Little is supportive of a UBI in principle, but I don’t know if Labour have this on the agenda at all currently.
thanks will have a read
By changing the government.
No party has it in their platform, , how do you get it in the labour party platform? No use if its greens only. There are many aspects to a ubi that have broad appeal to non left voters i think.
I suppose you could try and buy the policy from National, and I doubt they stay bought.
If you want Parliament to take the idea seriously you need a serious Parliament, not this shower of shills and cronies.
So is your question really how can the right be convinced of the value of the UBI? I think you are asking on the wrong forum.
Getting the right on side involves answering two basic questions for them.
1. Who’s the enemy?
2. How do we smash them?
The Anderson’s Bay Peninsula Branch of the Labour Party (Dunedin South) is likely to put forward something on the UBI, and an associated programme, to Conference this year.
Excellent. Well done the ABPBs
It could also wipe out overheads associated with the current welfare system, ie the MSD bureaucracy.
You would be able to shrink the whole thing down to one or two floors on an office building, plus a server room. People would only need to go into a post shop, local bank or even online and apply.
Plus they could choose to have it paid out weekly, monthly or even yearly 🙂
The superannuation system would be a good starting point for a UBI, I would work on refining that (ie taking pensions from WINZ and handing it another entity, simplifiing elegbility criteria, and streamining administration, then use that as a UBI blueprint.
UPDATE: NZ Spends $27 billion per year on welfare. if you took that money and spend it on a UBI it would come out at $6750 per year, for every man, woman and child in this country, or, $130 per week.
A family of four would get $520 per week.
To get a decent UBI would be pretty expensive, so it will need to have some work done on a proposal.
But UBI doesn’t work like that. If you are in work you don’t get it. It should mean more money flowing through the population as WINZ plans down. That could go into Housing NZ which should plan up so it does the job of keeping the housing stream of lower priced housing to needed level each year, so we don’t get huge backlogs and the rentier investment approach as now.
Actually, that’s pretty much exactly how a UBI works and you do still get it when you work.
As a rough benchmark, it might be interesting to see what resources are currently used to administer pensions.
Even for a universal system, “one or two floors on an office building, plus a server room” seems overly optimistic to me.
The big problem the any radical transfers/tax refrom is that they invariably create large categories of winners and losers, from a net take home income level. And we humans being pretty selfish this is a very difficult problem to deal with politically. So any reforms tend to be only those that create more “winners” than losers and it needs to be by quite a margin.
😆
Like the Max Bradford power ‘reforms’ or the abolition of collective bargaining, you mean? Come on.
Jepenesque: absolutely. I think major reform of our economy is necessary (not just in terms of tax and transfers) but to be politically saleable they need to be very cleverly designed.
IMO, human’s aren’t inherently selfish. They are inherently defensive of their present wealth and fearful of change especially when their present wealth is already close to, if not below, subsistence level as a lot of people’s is.
Almost all the reforms over the last thirty years have done the exact opposite in that they’ve created lots of losers and a very few very big winners. The problem seems to be that the political parties now only listen to the very big winners and ignore the losers that they’ve created.
I agree. According to research by Daniel Kahneman and others people are intrinsically loss-averse. The issue is that in order to do something about societal problems the status quo has to be broken and National & friends are controlling the narrative. They have convinced many law-abiding tax-paying rule-obeying decent people in NZ that breaking the status quo means a “loss” to them and the whole country for that matter. Somehow, National’s spin doctors have convinced many people that combatting inequality or poverty, for example, can only come at their personal expense. People buy into this [no pun] and vote, think, talk, blog, and generally behave accordingly. So, the status quo prevails. Mission accomplished.
The danger imposed by National is that they no longer read people’s minds but they actually effectively manipulate them. They use their lessons and experiences from the free market. That is, don’t respond to the market, don’t follow the market, don’t wait for the market to catch on but influence and manipulate the market or create your own one. It works on consumers and it works on voters; it is the same psychology applied to the exact same people.
Slick advertising, branding, and marketing sell more and National is applying these to politics; it is vote buying in a figurative sense, sometimes assisted with blatant election bribes. This is where and why the left will always be on the back foot except in ‘niche markets’ such as the environment but even these are under constant threat from the RW propaganda.
In my view, this is why National and John Key are so “good” at what they’re doing; they treat our democracy as a free market. Politics is turning into economics, which is another reason why the Economy is always one of the most important issues in the elections; it is framed that way. Altruism and friendship are replaced by profit motives and competition; collegiality and community feeling are replaced by corporate values; corporatism is creeping into our public institutions; the free market becomes the answer, the only answer, to everything.
National’s WMD is their slick and powerful PR-machine. How do you fight this? With an even bigger PR-machine? I think the most effective response is counter-intuitive.
I’ll be interesting what kind of reception this will receive here on TS.
Good analysis. I would also add that National understands and speaks to the culture and the mood of the general public better than Labour does.
In too many ways, Labour is no longer a party of the people, by the people, for the people.
Interest in just the big winners not the small guys and girls seems to be a regular theme. Too big to fail and too small to bother about seems the motto these days and it’s negative for advancing the country’s wellbeing.
I have heard that government only wants to deal with one provider rather than a grouping of small ones or lots of individuals. But that would spread the work around. But no it’s more efficient to go to one.
Fishing quotas – formatted so that small ones sold out to big ones.
‘
Air NZ has just stopped getting a variety of wines from different vintners, it’s all from Maria now.
Some airports decide to deal with only one taxi company and make it hard for small ones to get work.
I think the Japanese built themselves up by dealing with small suppliers who were closely integrated into the production line and supplied as needed in the ‘just in time’ scheduled system.
A brave woman from a conservative background in the Naki made the newspaper on Medical pot today,
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/65375931/taranaki-woman-sparks-debate-on-medical-marijuana
I have posted a public rebuttal in two places, seeing as you guys are not huge fans of PG,
http://yournz.org/2015/01/24/amy-adams-does-she-even-science/
or my own one
https://mmj4chronicpain.wordpress.com/2015/01/24/amy-adams-does-she-even-science/
Please at least try and make the distinction between PG and PG’s behaviour: the behaviour is the problem.
You got a read from me. One of the interesting things about prejudice is that it’s very hard to shake using facts. Good luck.
OAB, interesting that you should bring up the topic of behaviour. An increasing number of people are calling you on your behaviour and that your behaviour is the main problem. Unless the aim is to portray this as a place of intolerant obnoxiousness. You may not care that it’s a poor look for you but it’s obvious that others care that it keeps tainting the whole forum.
It’s difficult to see what you’re trying to achieve. It’s easy to get you to keep repeating your stupidity.
Where is OAB being called on their behaviour?
Haven’t you seen it? It’s been happening more often here, and his type of behaviour is frequently criticised elsewhere in social media and is often said to reflect poorly on Labour (and yes, I know this isn’t a Labour blog as such but that’s how many see it, especially media).
It should be fairly obvious that behaviour like OAB’s is often seen as toxic. Don’t you see that?
[Stephanie: weka raises a very valid point. Don’t try to use weasel words like “but that’s how many see it” when you’re parrotting trollish crap which you know perfectly well is against our policy.]
So the thing that obviously has no instances springing to mind (otherwise the request for detail wouldn’t have been made) is happening more often here. I’m shocked, shocked!
The thing has also been criticised elsewhere. big deal
The thing looks bad for Labour. go tell Labour, then
The thing is often seen as toxic. sounds shocking
Don’t you see that the thing is toxic?
Right. Now give us an examppe of what the hell you’re talking about.
“Haven’t you seen it?”
That’s right Pete, that’s why I’m asking you where it is. Can you please link to 3 examples?
I hope you get a big fat slap down for the Labour thing.
You seem to watch things here a lot, I’m surprised you haven’t seen it happening. And it’s not new.
From one thread. First Mary
Ergo Robertina:
Then adam:
Now perhaps you’re with OAB on driving people away he disagrees with but you are spend enough time I find it hard to believe you’re not aware of it happening.
BTW I googled and that’s the first thread I came up with. It’s not hard.
Still not getting it eh Petey? To me that just looks like the regular, garden variety level of complaints about behaviour that happen on ts in the middle of long arguments when things get heated. It’s not unusual for the ad hominems to come out at that point, across the board.
For the most part I get on well enough with OAB, but there are times when we disgree when I find their style tiresome and sometimes we spat. Often I just avoid getting to that point with people unless I feel like having a fight. But there are lots of people here who that would be true of, myself included. Does it matter? You know that thing about how polite isn’t a requirement here?
I think the key point is that it’s on an entirely different level from what you do. Which would be why sometimes the community devotes whole threads to talking about the PG tips problem, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one on OAB. They also don’t get bans afaik.
“BTW I googled and that’s the first thread I came up with. It’s not hard.”
What key words did you use?
(lolz, I’ve just seen the date on that linked thread. I didn’t comment in it, and it’s likely I didn’t even read it, which would explain why I hadn’t seen this terrible pattern of behaviour. That, or the fact that I don’t read every comment or thread on the site 🙄 )
Trying to deny the undeniable. You’re well aware of it. You’re a part of it. Funny coincidence seeing marty mars join in isn’t it.
Still can’t address the actual points 🙄
See the difference between what I just said and what you jsut said, is that I can point to some actual evidence (see your response to my comment). Whereas your assertions that I am well aware of it is just shit you made up.
I’ve just said what i think pete – tough if you don’t like it but it is my truth.
a blog where people join in, what’s the world coming to?
No it is not toxic at all imo – you, pete are actually toxic – you’d turn us all into gray goo if you had your way.
The beige invertebrate is on the march it seems, like a Petty Borg made of airbags and [citations needed].
resistance is futile 🙂
Might as well …. yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D_81DcOSPE
Always good for a laugh that crew – never could get over the plungers (not coffee) sticking out of their bodies – voices pretty creepy
Those plungers had me hiding behind the sofa.
There’s a lot of support for medical marijuana (~85% IIRC) and even majority support for full legalisation. The problem is the we know best, anti-democratic politicians and political parties that do only what the corporates and business people want.
EDIT: 98% support for medical marijuana
Thanks for the links Shane.
“Whether you believe Gray is genuine or not”
Wtf? Taranaki Daily, get your shit together.
Thanks, I was happy to post here, but got no reply when I emailed, I’ve never followed blogs until now, and I’m all about the issue, which shouldn’t be left or right. what are your thoughts on Bomber’s blog?
If you want to connect to an audience, it’s OK. Bomber seems to have a fairly large readership.
+1
not sure what Bomber is like to deal with. Some people manage it, others don’t.
If you get some posts under your belt, host blogs will take you more seriously. Also, remember that people have still largely been in holiday mode and these blogs are run by volunteers.
It’s good you’ve started your own blog, because if you get good at it, Lynn might put you in the blog roll at the side. That’ll up your readership.
A couple of other suggestions. Just avoid the PG thing here completely. You’ve seen what’s happened above right? So now the serious responses to you are getting lost way below your original post. Just link to your own blog and don’t mention PG at all. It’s not worth it and it’s unlikely to benefit you.
I’d leave out the “it’s neither left nor right” thing here. It doesn’t matter, but if you focus on it, you might put off people who don’t support the centrist theory. From what I can tell it’s not relevant to what you are writing about (I read your comment about Paula Gray being conservative, but I don’t get that from the article, so it just confuses things if you highlight something that isn’t relevant or necessarily true).
thanks for the constructive feedback, your a legend
Do pigs have wings?
The time has come the walrus said to speak of many things:
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To speak of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”
The Jabberwocky
Lewis Carrol’s famous children’s poem asks two specific questions – One; Why is the sea boiling hot? And Two; Whether pigs have wings?
(While it may not be boiling), We know that sea temperatures have been the highest in recorded history.
We also know the reason:
The reason is global warming – Brought about by the emission of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. It is recognised by governments around the world and the international scientific community, that climate change has dangerously raised the temperature of the oceans, (as well as the rest of the biosphere).
But, as to the second question:
Do pigs have wings?
This is the question I want to address with this essay.
Winged pigs are a common metaphor, or adynaton for something impossible, unlikely, or improbable.
Recently we have had a tour of this country by eminent climate change expert Guy McPhearson, who tells us (rightly in my opinion) that humanity have passed the point of no return, that irreversible climate breakdown, (a catastrophe on a global scale, ushering in widescale extinctions, even possible human extinction, within a matter of decades), has begun. To describe this process Guy McPhearson has coined the phrase “Near Term Human Extinction” (NTHE)
Guy McPhearson admits to the reality of (NTHE) with acceptance and even mourning.
‘It is no one’s fault’, says McPhearson, ‘most of the damage was done before many of us were even born.’
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Guy-McPherson/200473870003415
Guy McPhearson is not the only one to have reached this conclusion, Paul Kingsnorth founder of the Dark Mountain Project has a similar ethos. Paul Kingsnorth goes even further, actively condemning those trying to organise a fightback against climate change, naming people like Naomi Klein and Bill McKibbon of 350.org, and accusing them of peddling (false) “Hopium”, even of “Lying to people”.
So can pigs fly?
Can we humanity get out of the impossible situation that it finds itself in?
Or like in the horror movie franchise Saw, are we collectively caught in a horrific sadistic trap, partly of our own devising, impossible to escape from?
Should we even try? Or should we, like some have suggested, accept our collective fate and go into a period of individual and collective mourning?
When it comes to climate change there is an extreme wide range of views; From denial: – ‘It is not happening’. To acceptance: – ‘It is happening, but if we act now, we can prevent it getting any worse’. To despair: – ‘It has already happened, and there is nothing we can do about it’.
There has been no real rational debate between the different factions. All seem to have a deep emotive hatred of the others.
And why not? NTHE is an emotive issue. How could it not be?
This has resulted in lot of misunderstanding, heated accusations, emotive name calling, denial, and talking past each other. Egotism, (on all sides), hasn’t helped.
An example; the debate between well known activist George Monbiot. And Paul Kingsnorth of Dark Mountain, degenerated into personal abuse and accusations of condoning genocide on one side, to lying on the other.
Kingsnorth/Monbiot Debate
The central contentious issue of debate, from all sides is whether, we should do anything about climate change, and will it make any difference if we don’t?
Springing from this first question, (and related to it), is a secondary question,
If we do decide to do something about climate change, what should it be?
1/ Is there any point in doing something?
2/ If there is any point in doing something, what should that something be?
I would like to address the second question first.
This may seem like a back to front way of doing things, but I want to leave the main question of whether we should do anything at all, until the last.
Disclaimer: The following are my views and my views only, I invite others to critique them and tear them to bits and in so doing offer up better solutions and stratagems and pathways forward.
Preamble:
(I) The Blame Game
I remember when I first became aware of the issue of climate change. The issue of climate change was first raised in the 1990s mass media, news paper editorials and TV news as a world problem, at that time the problem was couched in the language of “its all your fault”. You as an individual are responsible. You drive a car, you use air travel, you use disposable products, you use electricity. “Its all your fault” was drummed into us. Obviously this sort of language is pretty diss-empowering, and most people just shrugged and feeling disempowered carried on with their lives. But when enough people did take the message seriously and tried to make personal changes, and found they couldn’t, or it was making zero difference, they eventually began to ask other questions. Why when I cut down my CO2 emissions, do huge factories and industries continue pouring out hydrocarbons that make my individual efforts pointless? Why is there no decent public transportation so that I am forced to use a private car? Why am I forced to use disposable plastic products?
What people came to realise is that climate change is a public policy issue not a matter of personal choice at all.
(II) How Does Change Happen?
I am 56 years young. I remember the first time I ever saw plastic waste on a beach. I was about ten years old, sitting on the sand above the tide line at Mission Bay, Auckland. Pushing my hand into the sand, looking more closely, I marveled at the unusual small plastic oblate sphericals about a quarter inch in diameter (2mm) mixed in amongst the golden yellow sand grains which was mostly made up of tiny shell fragments. What were these smooth little plastic balls, and how did they get there?
I learnt later that they were the feedstock for New Zealand’s growing plastics industry, and were being imported in mass in the holds of ships, where they were being spilled into the harbour on unloading. (In the days before containerisation, I imagine that this was a much more messy business.)
When I was a kid, plastic was still a novel product. I remember the first big plastic doll I ever saw which had come from America as gift for a neighboring girl. We all marveled as she showed us how it closed its eyes when you laid it down and cried when you pulled the cord in its back. Most other toys then were made of wood, or metal. Balls were made of leather, or rubber. Raincoats were called mackintoshes after the material they were made of. Goods still came wrapped in brown paper and string, even things like tooth paste tubes were made of metal not plastic.
Rubbish tins were heavy metal bins with metal lids, you could hear the clatter of lids and bins made by the approaching dustmen, which gave you a warning if you had forgotten to get your rubbish out. The teams of dustmen were very fit, but there really was a lot less rubbish for them to pick up, I imagine that landfills were a lot more compact as well.
Shampoo and dishwashing liquid was unknown, my mother used to get me to wash the dishes with a piece of sunlight soap trapped in a little metal cage that you shook in the water until it became frothy. (Nowadays we use disposable, one use, plastic containers and plastic one use dishwashing and shampoo bottles. And this disposable plastic waste can be found washed up on even the most remotest beaches on earth)
Back in the day, drinks and liquids came in recyclable glass bottles – pints, quarts and flagons, you could even get half pints. (For bigger amounts, metal containers. In those days even canned drinks were unknown in New Zealand) The glass bottle was ubiquitous. For us kids though there was greater chance of getting your feet cut, but it was great, because there was a mandatory refund on every intact bottle. For the plastics industry to really get a hold in this country the refund had to be got rid of. I was about 12 when the legislation requiring mandatory refunds on glass bottles was abolished after fierce industry lobbying.
After that glass bottles became uneconomic in comparison, to one use, plastic containers.
Another example:
When I was a teenager my father worked for the education department in the Halsey Street warehouse in Freemans Bay which was a distribution point for educational supplies around the country. From my father I learnt that all government contracts over a certain distance (between cities) had to go by rail.
Again after intense lobbying by the roading and trucking interests this legislation was repealed.
After that highways became busier trunk lines were closed, tracks were lifted, thousands of rail workers were laid off.
I am sure there are many other examples of this. But the take-away message is this; laws and bylaws had to be passed, or repealed, to make the throwaway, polluting society, we know today. The same with the demolition of the public tram system and the beginning of the construction of the motorway system.
Law that can be made, can be unmade.
(II) The World Is A Big Place
Of course the changes happening in New Zealand society to make us a more polluting and wasteful place were not just happening here, they were happening world wide.
But it wasn’t like the a committee of world leaders got together and decided, this is how the world should be.
A few people somewhere decided these technologies were a good idea, (and they were at the time), and they just spread.
This is how the change will come as well.
So forget about international conferences on climate change.
A lot of people are disappointed that forum, after forum, meeting, after meeting, international conference, after international conference. All the governments of the world can still not agree on how to tackle the problem of climate change.
But this is the way it has always been.
This is how it will always be.
The latest failed international conference on climate, convened in Lima last year, was just the latest of a long line of failed meetings of the world’s nation states to come to any agreement on climate change.
You can put money on the fact that the huge penultimate international conference on climate change to be convened in Paris later this year will also fail to come to any binding agreement to cut Green House Gas emissions.
A solution will never come from these international treaty negotiations, it never has, and it never will. Even the current head of the UN Ban Ki Moon senses it.
In the 1930s the precurser to the United Nations, the League of Nations, could not get international agreement on how to confront the rise of fascism, and this failure broke them. Just as the UN will fail to get international agreement on how to confront the rise of climate change, and that failure will probably break them as well.
In the 1930s human civilisation was in a global contest between totalitarianism and democracy.
Humanity are now in global contest with the physics of the climate.
In human affairs, big or small, what often makes the difference between resolute action and indecision and confusion, is leadership.
Just as the UN has failed to address this crisis, so did the League of Nations fail to address the big crisis of their time.
What turned the tide was when one (relatively) small plucky island nation decided to put up a fight regardless of the League of Nations, regardless of the other major powers inaction and capitulation, regardless that (at that time) defeat looked almost certain.
Just as the use of plastics and automobiles spread around the world around the world from one centre. Concerted action against climate will also spread from one centre.
Forget any hope of concerted global action arising out of international bodies like the UN, every country is on its own. The competition will be to see, which country by its resolute actions against climate change, becomes that world leader that sets an example which by its moral power the rest of the world will have to follow.
It is up to each citizen, political activist, community leader, and politician convinced of the danger, in whichever country we are from, to push for our country to become that world leader.
For us here in New Zealand we are better placed than many to take that role.
70% of our power is generated by renewables, we need to make that 100%.
Coal plays a very small part of our economy, we need to make that nil by the end of the decade.
We could be that country that by our actions makes that necessary statement to the world that it is possible to move away from fossil fuels.
Winston Churchill once said, “Grab onto one big idea and never let go of it.”
James Hansen has said, “If we can’t get rid of coal it is all over for the climate.”
New Zealand which once had huge asbestos industry has completely eliminated asbestos from our economy, we could easily do the same for coal, to become the world’s first coal free nation.
This could be our big statement to the world.
(III) So how could we go about it?
On a per capita basis New Zealand is the worlds biggest subsidiser of the the fossil fuel industry, we could cancel all the fossil fuel subsidies immediately and pour the money instead into subsidising renewables.
We could mobilise the workforces of the coal mines, and Huntly and Tiwai into building and operating wind and solar energy stations, and other renewable energy technologies.
We could forget about aspiring to become fast followers.
New Zealand could become the global leader on tackling climate change.
Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter, Australia has, per capita the highest level of green house emissions.
Undeniably, Australia our closest physical and cultural neighbor, is one of the worst polluters in the world. But because of the nearness of the two nations, both cultural and geographic, resolute action taken in New Zealand, would have political ramifications in Australia.
Why?
Because as well as being, one of the worst polluters, Australia is one of the worst effected countries by climate change, and many Australians are worried (even frightened). Latest polls show that 6 out of 10 Australians don’t think their government is doing enough about climate change. All these concerned Australians need is lead from across the Tasman to turn their disquiet into a demand that could not be ignored by Australia’s policy makers and business leaders.
From Australia the fight back will spread to the world.
This is how the war will be won.
(IV) So where should we start?
Both the New Zealand Green Party and the Mana Movement policy is “No new coal mines”.
Just as the campaign against nuclear ships was won on the ground first.
Activists from the Greens and Mana, and others, have been putting the agreed policy of No new coalmines into practice on the ground.
After an epic two year battle, these activists have fought Fonterra to a standstill over Fonterra’s plan to develop a new coal mine at Mangatangi, just south of Auckland.
But despite being beaten at Mangatangi, Fonterra have not given up on coal, and have decided to source coal from Solid Energy, the technically insolvent government coal company.
To meet Fonterra’s demand, Solid Energy have decided to reopen an abandoned coal mine at Maramarua 5k down the road from Mangatangi.
If the activists can stop the Maramarua coal mine on top of stopping the Mangatangi coal mine; Make no mistake, this will be a stake through the heart of the coal mining industry in this country, representing a major milestone on the way to making New Zealand completely coal free.
Nothing succeeds like success. Just as the successful protest campaign against nuclear ship visits, used the victory on the ground to leverage this into government policy. We again have the ability of achieve legislation which will have wide ranging international implications.
There are a number of other contenders to be this signature victory against climate change in this country, but in my opinion they do not have the same potential for achieving a signature game-changing-knockout victory on climate change that the proposed Maramarua coal mine has.
The other New Zealand contenders for a signature victory against climate change are:
– The Denniston Coal Mine in the South Island.
– The campaign against deep sea oil drilling.
Both these above campaigns have been handicapped by the tyranny of distance.
Just like applied in gorilla warfare, climate change activists need to concentrate our forces where our opponents are weakest and where we are strongest, that has always been near the main population centres. Maramarua fits this bill.
The other thing about Maramarua, is that it can only be fought on climate change grounds, there are no environmental issues, the climate change message cannot be confused, or adulterated by being mixed with environmental concerns.
If this epic battle against climate change in this country, is not fought and won at Maramarua, it can not be fought and won anywhere.
(IV) (And so for the question I have left til last). Should we even bother?
Both the Deniers and the Doomers have one thing in common, both believe (albeit for different reasons) that there is nothing to be done about about climate change.
Are they wrong? Are they right?
In my opinion if something can be done, it should be done.
Some of my closest friends and advisers tell me that the doomers are right. “There is nothing that any of us can do that will make a difference.”
The time has come, for us to find out!
Pat O’Dea is the Mana Movement spokesperson for climate change.
Pat, quote selectively and link. Taking up a huge space like that anti-social (Penny is about the only one that gets away with it), and may attract the attention of the moderators. Me, it just made me scroll through.
Luckily, I have not as yet succumbed to Paula Bennett syndrome. So, Pat O’Dea (I don’t know why, but I pay much more notice to those who choose not to use nom de plumes) keep it up…
Paula Bennett syndrome? The one where she outs the details of beneficiaries to the media as a high level bullying tactic, including a fuck you to the Privacy Commissioner?
Do you realise you are talking to a beneficiary who uses a nom de plume in part for safety reasons?
“Paula Bennett Syndrome “as in the article written shortly after her ascendancy to higher office. She implored anyone trying to communicate with her to keep it to one A4 page…or less.
I too am a beneficiary, by virtue of the fact my partner( pre- ACC high tetraplegic) requires full time care. You of course will be aware of the Government’s response to the Human Rights Review Tribunal’s declaration that I should be paid for providing this care. This was supported by the UN Monitoring Committee on The UNCORPD. My partner and I decided long ago that speaking openly and transparently about this and other important disability issues was vital.
And yes, there has been a cost.
As beneficiaries we know that retribution can result from agitating, complaining or even making an inquiry.
As a client of MOH; Disability Support Services, my partner is more than aware that complaints an inquiries can lead to reduction of supports and threats of institutionalization.
“Safe”…from the government departments charged with supporting those in our situation?
Oh, weka, have no doubt that I am well aware that we are not “safe”.
Also, we have no ‘public profile’ to protect.
I enjoy reading long posts/comments. When someone has the passion and commitment to construct such a document, my personal feeling is it would be rude not to read it. If it turns out to be twaddle…ignore the next post by that person. Pat O’ Dea took the time to give his thoughts and feelings on this issue, and while I might not be perfectly simpatico with all of his politics, on this particular issue I’m in full agreement. I would love to go and join the roadside protest on Monday…but wheelchairs and the side of the road at long weekend rush hour are not simpatico!
Rosemary, there are some people who have to use non de plumes. It can be for a variety of valid reasons. It may be they are in an area of employment where acknowledging their left leaning political alignment could see them lose their jobs. It could be they are in public office of some sort including local bodies. It could be that their circumstances (whatever they may be) causes them to fear reprisal action against them or members of their families should their identities become known.
If you think that is absurd, NZ history is riddled with individuals who were targeted because of their perceived left leaning persuasions. I had precisely that experience as a public servant years ago. I was targeted by the management (and others) and eventually had to leave. The fear and the rising stress levels proved too much in the end. Yet a former colleague who was a National Party activist was left alone because he was considered to be on the “right” side of the fence.
So, you would be wise not to judge a commentator based on whether they use a pseudonym or not. You’re missing out on some excellent commentary if you do. A good example (but by no means the only one) is Pascals bookie.
@ Rosemary McDonald
People use pseudonyms because they don’t trust malicious or punitive people or entities from harming them, harrassing them somehow if they can target the writer.
Your name here is Rosemary McDonald. But I don’t know if that isn’t a pseudonym.
Why should you respect a name above a pseudonym? You don’t know the person writing it, you still have to judge what they have said for clarity and correctness.
So don’t start on about pseudonyms.
If you want to come here accept the way it is run. You soon get to know what to expect from people using pseudonyms. We are encouraged to use the same ones all the time. They are our names on this blog.
@weka/Colonial Rawshark
The short take home message for you guys, is this;
If you are serious about wanting to do something about climate change, and you want to get involved with something with a halfway chance of success – then attend the protest against the Second* attempted New Coal Mine planned for the South of Auckland this holiday Monday at Mangatawhiri, Details HERE
Or come along to the Auckland Coal Action AGM to discuss strategies for making New Zealand Newcoal Free. All welcome.
The annual general meeting of ACA will be held Feb.7th 2015 at the Friends Meeting House 113 Mt Eden Rd Auckland at 1pm
*(We stopped the First one).
https://aucklandcoalaction.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/2013-08-26-0435.jpg
I live in the SI.
Good luck with the actions.
Kia ora weka,
Is this better?
Agree with weka…if it takes someone 13 presses of the page down button to get past your comment, you are doing something wrong.
To the substance of your post – you only have to observe dozens of failed human civilisations in history who could not alter their trajectory even when it was become clear that they were on the precipice and had to change, somehow, to know what is going to happen next.
On the other hand, I don’t believe that humans are going to go extinct any time soon, but this global civilisation we have built will be on its last legs in the next 30 years, and 100 years from now it’ll be gone.
My opinion is that things are bad, but we can make changes. If we don’t, they will become catastrophic. I don’t agree with MacPherson that they are catastrophic already. I think that if we don’t start cutting back very soon and get a government that realises there is a problem, it will be too late before we know it.
Basically. There are lots of things the NZ government could do, but everyone is in a game of pretend and extend promising the middle classes that the value of their Auckland rental isn’t going to be diminished and of course dairy will bounce back.
And meanwhile we have individual MP’s/PM’s on the look out for what’s best for their post parliamentary careers, stuff the country and its people.
In my opinion, both Murray Rawshark @ 15.3, and Colonial Rawshark @ 15.3.1, are making a fundamental error. In that they are waiting on a government to act.
It ain’t gonna happen.
At least, not without the sort of massive pressure from below that saw New Zealand become Nuclear Free.
This is what informs the strategy of Auckland Coal Action.
It’s up to us, guys.
If we did it once we can do it again.
I’m not waiting for the government. My position is similar to yours. Governments only act in the interests of anyone other than the 1% when they are forced to. We will get a government that truly realises there is a problem and does something by the pressure from below that you mention.
And let’s hope that when a government does take some worthwhile climate measures, it’s not a smokescreen to sneak round the back and roger us in another way like in 1984.
I’m a doomer.
But I still act.
Great. Bring all your friends.
Get the cool T shirt.
https://aucklandcoalaction.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/aca-t-shirt-name.jpg
https://aucklandcoalaction.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/acat-shirt-emblem-may23_page_1.jpeg
Can anyone please point me toward any blogs/websites which are informative/on to it in terms of current events etc?
Not interested in anything with a specific left or right wing bias, more after well informed impartial insights & opinions.
Recently discovered Dmitry Orlov’s blog which I find extremely interesting, so looking for more blogs and websites like that, which stimulate thought and analysis.
Any ideas?
Wikipedia is pretty good for ongoing issues – generally gets updated pretty quickly, and it’s easy to find background and sources. And bias gets flagged and disputed/resolved pretty quickly.
edit: oh, and Gwynne Dyer is pretty good
Try and see what suits:
The Archdruid Report (outstanding, if you like his last few posts it’s worth looking back through the archives)
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.nz/
Zero Hedge (financial and economic – bear in mind that the quality and view of the articles varies widely)
http://www.zerohedge.com/
James Kunstler (current events, civilisation depletion)
http://kunstler.com/
the ibanker (insightful, humorous look at investment and wealth banking)
http://www.theibanker.com/
Informed comment (US foreign affairs and the middle east)
http://www.juancole.com/
YouTube – if you want to understand mass surveillance
Jacob Appelbaum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYrxmKTD4B0&x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534
Bill Binney
YouTube – Keiser Report
Max and Stacey are great on all the latest financial and economic hypocrisy and malfaesence. There are now hundreds of episodes they have done.
Keiser is damn good and so’s the Archdruid. I don’t think we are heading for the apocalypse (but I used to in my Pentecostal days)…
Prof. Steve Keen, Matt Taibbi, and Ross Ashcroft (the renegade economist) are high on my list of economic pundits. I’ve also been watching quite a bit of Abby Martin on RT as antidote to the cosy Five Eyes media conglomerates.
Abby Martin is definitely a moral voice.
Also the content on http://www.truthdig.com/ is great. Chris Hedges is a regular contributor there as well.
Try the The Archdruid Report. There’s several years worth of stuff there that’s worth reading.
I personally like ForeignPolicy.com for my daily dose of commentary from close to or inside the US Pentagon.
Then Salon.com, TheAtlantic.com, BBCWorld, HuffingtonPost, then it’s time to start work.
Ok, I have done some changes to the caching to use more uncached fragments.
If there is a problem after this, from those changes, it should show up in the Replies tab, in the names and emails in the comment replies. It will show the wrong ones or won’t show the ones you usually use.
Let me know if you see any.
My replies tab is presently filled up with replies to Anne.
EDIT:
A log out and log back in seems to have fixed it.
Oh… how delightful for you. 😛
I just got all lprent’s 😈
Refreshing cleared it.
Ok. Probably just old caches? Ok lets see if we get repeats. If you see it again, try the Ctrl + F5/refresh first. It should clear up straight away then. Tell me if it does.
Ummm. It has been a bit tricky in figuring out how to test it.
Essentially the whole of the page is meant to be statically stored as objects except for the sections that are marked as being required to calculated each time.
The bit that I did today was the name stuff on the replies. I should have another look at how I did the the replies tab bearing in mind whatI learnt today about this arcane magick
I just got the bug for the first time and refresh cleared it.
Just got it again (different commenter) after posting a comment, and refresh cleared it again.
Just in the replies tab?
I think that the code in there isn’t dropping low enough to find out who you are.
Yes, just the replies tab. Looks alright now. I dumped Firefox’s cache just before.
Ok, I have put in the change that I think should do the trick.
Could people tell me if they see something odd in the Replies tab (or entering a comment for names, emails etc). Check if it goes away if you refresh the page or refresh it with a Ctrl + F5/Refresh.
The caching change significantly improves the performance at the server, but it relies on those two specific area to be generated per commenter. If the latter doesn’t work under load, then I need to know about it so that I can revert the changes.
It passes my testing, so any errors will only show up under real loadings.
This time I got Replies to Pete George on my replies tab. A ctrl-f5 fixed that.
I was on the Standard’s homepage so I went to Open Mike.
When I got there I had Replies to OAB in my replies tab. Again, a ctrl-f5 fixed it.
I’m running Chrome on Win8.1
EDIT:
Presently my Replies Tab looks like the Comments Tabs from some time back.
Umm it sounds like it is getting cached somehow. That isn’t meant to be happening…
I will have a look at it after the heat drops.
Taranaki journalist threatened with violence
Ah, farmers – such lovely fucken arseholes.
Here’s her original article
http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/opinion/65176962/Farmers-not-exempt-from-countrys-laws
Plus another media report on the harassment,
http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/65378670/Police-investigate-threat-to-columnist-Rachel-Stewart
Ex Fed Farmer’s regional president, she looks worth following on twitter.
If my employer found me making rape threats on Facebook from work computers I’d be sacked, not defended. Fed Farmers are morally diseased.
Actually it’s about ethics in corporate farming.
/gamergate reference.
‘Ah, farmers – such lovely fucken arseholes.’
Grow up, Draco. Don’t polarise an unpleasant situation with your ill informed generalisation – most farmers would never behave in this way,
As I said to Waghorn the other day.
Yeah, but most farmers I know aren’t like that, and many are trying to do the right thing. Better to add an adjective. Call them FF farmers (especially as it appears that many farmers don’t join FF, so don’t have control over what FF does or says). Or polluting farmers.
I think lumping them in all togethers makes the good ones and the ones about to do good things invisible just at the point that we need them to be visible.
+1
They’ll be easy to catch because they’ll skite about it on Whalespew. On the other hand, Taranaki police are unlikely to do anything about it.
As my “name” has been mentioned I feel I have to say I in NO WAY condone threatening reporters.
Good. Now all we need is all the rest of the farmers of good conscience to stand up and say the same thing.
Why? Do you agree that all Muslims of good conscience need to apologise for the Charlie Hebdo attack?
b waghorn didn’t apologise for anything and I really don’t expect him or other farmers to do so. And the muslims of good conscience are saying the same thing but the Western Leaders and the MSM don’t appear to be listening.
Does anybody here have any experience with the MBIE investigating an employer?
Scuttlebutt has it that someone rang them and made an anonymous complaint about an employer a week or two before Christmas, and nothing appears to have happened. What we’re trying to work out is whether an investigation is under way and just taking time to get going, or whether the (influential) employer had a word in the right ear and made the complaint just go away.
The cynic in me suspects the latter.
Any thoughts?
Marvellous us.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/ebola-virus-has-killed-a-third-of-the-worlds-gorillas-and-chimpanzees–and-could-pose-greatest-threat-to-their-survival-conservationists-warn-9998386.html