Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step right up to the mike…
NSA accused of spying on Merkel’s phone
Merkel made it clear that she found such practices “completely unacceptable”.
But spying on an ordinary Joe Bloggs is acceptable?
Ha ha.
Merkel, formerly of East Germany, has helped run the German partner spying apparatus which works hand in glove with the NSA in mass surveillance. Therefore I have doubts that her surprise or indignation is particularly genuine.
I think she could be genuine. There would have been a “gentleman’s” agreement not to spy on the leaders, and it will be this that the seppos have broken. With Key, they wouldn’t need to. He’s probably microchipped and hooked up via wireless to the American Embassy so he can show them proudly how well he serves their interests.
Can anyone explain why New Zealand Post has to make millions of dollars in profit? Can’t this be an industry where Mr Micawber’s philosophy can be applied?
Another way of putting that is that as an SOE the Government expects it to remove financial surplus from the private sector and from households, and transfer it over as financial surplus to the government sector.
Who expects it? Why is it expected? Are these the economic conventions which serves NZ the best? And if not do they need to change? You don’t seem to be willing to scratch deeper Lanth.
Perhaps NZ Post’s $16B of assets should just be sold off and put into a high yield speculative fund – that would make more electronic credits for the government than the piddly <3% return on assets it is doing now.
I’m answering the question. It doesn’t mean I agree with or support the answer, or even think the answer is ‘correct’.
“Perhaps NZ Post’s $16B of assets should just be sold off and put into a high yield speculative fund – that would make more electronic credits for the government than the piddly <3% return on assets it is doing now."
Think about what this would actually mean, for a minute. If you "sold off the assets", you are literally dismantling and disbanding NZPost. Sure, they might get a higher return on assets, but we wouldn’t have a postal service anymore.
The point is to maximise a return on assets, while also providing a service.
Glad you clarified that Lanth. I imagined for a moment there that you thought I came down in the last rain shower. NZ Post, just like schools, hospitals, police stations, the fire service quite possibly occupy a lot of land/buildings/plant. But who decreed they have to “maximise” their paper values. They could operate on a cost plus basis for decades yet.
It was of course the Business Round Table who were influential in the sale of public assets and setting up the SOE’s. You may recall when this body of leaders (many of inherited wealth) was looking to privatise the Fire Services. The spokesperson was horrified to discover that fire-stations had night shifts that got their heads down for some zzzzz’s. It was anathema to them and they wanted the practice punished. In the meantime, while the knights slept, their considerable investments increased in trading value – without having to do a bit of work.
Anonymous Herald editorial: rural deliveries maintained because those are the areas where Nats rely on votes.
And this gem:
Paper mail is by no means alone these days in its need to adapt to instant digital communications. But mail is handicapped by public ownership. If NZ Post had been in the private sector it would have stopped daily deliveries years ago and looked for services it could provide that more people might use.
Years ago when living in rural Gisborne ours was a Mon Wed Fri mail delivery. It seemed to be quite reasonable especially as the crate of milk bottles, and any other items were also delivered. A bit sorry for the town posties who would lose half their pay.
no thats not quote how it will work, posties will still be working 6 days a week, just halving the amount of work that needs doing, so thats why half the posties will lsoe their jobs. also, we changed to a new pay model where we get paid by volume, which is what the epmu is so pissed off about because they convinced posties to sign up to it believing it would save jobs, but now the govt are having it both ways, pay by volume & 3 day delivery. & typical, the day after the announcements posties have one of their biggest work days, delivering rates, which pretty much go to every householder!
it seems to me these cuts will affect the shop staff the most, with these ‘self serving kiosks’ whatever the hell they are, you can see bryan roache go all dreamy talking about them.
And that bit tells you just what would happen to society if we left it to the private sector – it would collapse fairly quickly as the private sector shut down essential services to increase profit.
Folks, this Firstline interview with John Maynard, President of the Postal Workers Union, Southern Branch, explains more about that private sector influence on the service cuts proposed for mid 2015. One point in particular that John Maynard makes is that at the time NZ Post was in discussion with govt re reducing mail delivery to every second day, the PWU asked NZ Post to discuss repealing section 17 of the 1997 Postal Services Act, which allows for subsidies to be provided to private mail operators.
There is a lot of relevant points made by John Maynard and is well worth a watch. The interview begins with Brian Roche, the C.E of NZ Post.
Everything is ironic these days.
The news this morning.
Len Brown NZ wanting more respect for public figures’ private lives.
Angela Merkel Germany wanting respect for privacy personal and national, from spying by a foreign agency.
On beneficiary bashing and any other ideological or discrim viewpoint
To borrow from a recently awarded author…
his are the kind of beliefs that do not depend on empirical fact, and indeed, were often flatly disproved by it, though no disproof were ever enough to change his mind. E catton…
equally applies the benefit bashers
” he had decided long ago that (insert hated group or ideology) were duplicitous, and so they woukd be, whatever disproof he might encounter.”
Nah, he’s a baby. All babies are like that. It’s not his fault who his parents are… now if he makes “bad choices” about the world owing him a living some time in the future, that’s a different.
miravox
Totally agree. When they are little they are the king and queen. I want that, and I want it now.
It’s as they grow that they have to learn to manage life to get what they want. And often too well.
I have just been reading about bringing up children, education and the ideas of Kurt Hahn on education to grow into people who are capable etc with good qualities. (Interested – look for it in today’s open mike somewhere.)
Bill from Dipton, the Minister of Finance, announcing His National Government’s failure at last nights mid-evening press conference had the demeanor and look of one who has either been on a week long whiskey binge or has been on the losing end of a bitter, vicious fight over who from the Government would carry the can of announcing this flop of this Government’s flagship policy,
Whats a just descriptive for a Prime Minister without the intestinal fortitude to front the media Himself, gutless coward???, quisling carpet-bagger???…
Buried in the Dom Post section of the stuff website is this detail of wealth transfer from the public to the private:-
‘Pet project’ scholarship is under fire
More than $11 million had been spent providing Aspire scholarship students with $16,500 a year in tuition fees and course-related costs. This is more than double the $7217 spent on an average student attending a state school.
I also grew up in Epsom, as did my mother. My grandparents lived there from 1949 having returned from the UK after the war (long waiting lists for passage – grandfather worked on radar, and priority was given to those who were in the armed forces).
The Epsom I grew up in voted National, the Labour party representing the common folk, which was considered right and proper.
The change in Epsom as far as I can tell has been that it used to be predominantly middle class by way of culture, and is now middle class by way of money.
naturesong
Interesting point about class distinctions for political parties. It’s not what is best for NZ – it’s oh Labour are for the workers.
I struck this from passerby when I handed out leaflets about Labour in street. This was after Labour had trickled on to the workers under the leadership of their Right Wing subversives. The idea about Labour was fixed in this man’s head and he was so patronising. Just a dopey thoughtless snob as so many NACTS are that I know of.
I don’t know anyone of my generation (X) that believes this.
Those few remaining souls that cling to this misconception will be gone with the baby boomer generation.
Sounds like Naturesong has to hold it’s nose when differentiating the deserving middle class from the undeserving who have arrived there from god only knows what slum via having gathered together a pile of that filthy lucre,
How dare the ‘uncultured’ pollute the rarified air of the born to the brass spoon culture of those who arrived there by birth…
Vinegar dressing bad 12
You look at bit green and ready to come out phantom fighting to have a joust when someone’s comment about their life doesn’t fit with your world opinion.
I’m describing the culture of my family. This was the class system I was born into, in a country that does not have a class system.
I do not apologise for my upbringing, it is simply my experience.
How dare the ‘uncultured’ pollute the rarified air of the born to the brass spoon culture of those who arrived there by birth…
I did encounter some of this attitude growing up, but it was normally it was articulated by those who were newly middle class.
My family looked down upon those in the middle class that were lawyers and accountants and bankers, those that chose to grub around with money, poor things.
As opposed to those who worked with their minds, academics, architects, mathematicians, chemists physicists, teachers. Also wierdly several generations of postmasters, apparantly a very highly regarded position.
I don’t hold my nose for anyone, I do find those who talk about money, wealth or show it off to be poor company.
Science, learning and discovery for its own sake, maths puzzles and word games we had instead of toys.
At the dinner table we weren’t asked how our day was, but whether we had discovered some thing or learnt something new.
My cultural heritage was also matriarchal, though my late grandmother was the last. It did not survive intact the german invasion in WWII.
Interesting point about class distinctions for political parties. It’s not what is best for NZ – it’s oh Labour are for the workers
This is still how my father votes. Which is strange since two things he despises are wanton polluters and corruption. However he is not able to deal with the cognitive dissonance so he shuts down most of his brain and votes National. And consoles himself with the mantra that “the other lot must be worse”.
My primary reason for voting normally is to counteract his vote, though I am hopeful that in 2014 I may convince him to abstain and be able to have a vote which actually counts.
We all come from somewhere. This is where I started.
I have great concerns about CC and his Conservative Party. From where I am standing, they wish to combine neo-liberal economics with social conservatism, If this party is elected we will see:
Replacement of welfare with faith based charity
Removal (forced) of books about sex from our school libaries,
End of sex education in school
Evolution being thrown out of our schools
Anything to do with evolution being defunded
Withdrawl of any subsidy for contraception in the public health system
Criminalistion of teenagers who have sex
Purge of homosexuals from the teaching profession
Funding cuts for state schools in favour of christian schools
End of no fault divorce
Permanent ban on abortion (Ireland style)
Encouragement of victim blaming for rape
Repeal of SSM law
And a christian version of Sharia law.
millsy
That list shows a definitely unhealthy obssession with sex and taking control of people’s lives. Christianity tends to encourage the individual to freely come to Jesus and make the right moral decisions. And many of the rules are I think meant to be guidelines and have been taken out of context and turned into strictures.
Shame on Colin Craig and all his add-ons. Lift your mindes and eyes from thinking about public (sic) areas and up to higher ideas such as showing kind and intelligent consideration and compassion of people’s travails in this confusing world. Follow Jesus’ teaching and reaching out to all.
That will leave you little time for witch hunting, stoning, punishing, and enforcing people who don’t receive your less than gracious approval. Cleanse your mind of a mental obssession with these practices (see wikipedia): Bondage & Discipline, Domination & Submission, Sadism … Just turn your mind to loving your fellow human being in a Jesus way. And I think Jesus was a good sort. Don’t you Colin and Co?
Now it would seem would be a good time for the New Zealand Herald to re-brand itself so as to reflect the true nature of that shoddy rags political bias and leaning, the National Party NZHerald would seem more appropriate,
Audrey Young would have to win a ‘Golden Turd Award’ along with another for the Herald with today’s analysis of the politics of re-electing a National Government for a third term in 2014,
Centered around what appears to be the certainty of a ‘new’ electorate taking in parts of Auckland’s North Shore Young waxes long and lyrical on the chances of the Conservatives Colin Craig winning such a new electorate seat and thus providing the prop necessary to enable a third term for this National Government,
Recent polls mean nothing to Young as She wanders through the realms of fantasy talking up Craig as the savior of National despite current polling pointing out that for any 1% of support Craig can gather to His Conservatives there will be a corresponding loss of support from one of the Parties of the right, ACT having been bled dry over recent elections only leaves one party from which Craig’s Conservatives can cannibilize any amount of voter support to feature in numbers in the next Parliament, that Party of course is National itself, welcome to the right wing dog chasing it’s own tail,
The best i can add in support of the Heralds hiring practice as far as political journalists goes is to suspect them of hiring dumbies with deliberation and the only comment which saved this particular National Party advertorial from being at best a mediocre disgrace was the comment attributed to NZFirst’s Winston Peters apparently asked to comment on the Conservatives,
”Elephants don’t run round the forest stomping on ants”, unquote Winston Peters…
From Morning Report…..a report out concludes that software will be NZ’s biggest export earner in the next few years….the only thing holding it back is not enough skilled NZ workers!…(imo this should be easily remedied at high school and govt level)
…..pretty optimistic report and all the more reason TPPA should not be signed if it means signing away copyright and NZ’s high tech furture…
Thanks BLiP….very interesting link…..(probably I phrased above wrong ….I meant resisting signing whatever US corporates want NZ to adhere to regards copyright…thereby undermining NZ’s future development re tech industry)
. . . [National Ltd™ MP for Rodney, Mark] Mitchell told Fairfax Media yesterday that he had heard rumours, and they had been widespread within the National Party for two years . . .
nekminnit
. . . Mitchell called Fairfax back today to clarify that the “scuttlebutt” was not neccessarily within the National Party, but was circulating more generally – at events and in passing remarks.
He said he had never talked to a member of Brown’s “camp”. He clarified that Webster was not a member of the Brown camp, but an independent Auckland councillor.
“I have never had any contact with anyone in Len Brown’s campaign team and any comment I made to Penny, whom I have contact with in my role as MP for Rodney, was a very generic throwaway line about politicians and skeletons in the closet” . . .
“was a very generic throwaway line about politicians and skeletons in the closet” . . .”
that’s different from what was reported yseterday. Yesterday the report was that he’d said the whaleoil was going to run astory. That was the rumour.
Read his comments now and he’s trying to gie the impression that he talked obiquely about the affair, which he hardly knew anything about other than what everyone knew.
“Without bashing poverty, ahhhh, you are saying that there is a demographic that is becoming poor because of addiction and alcohol issues…. uh, again, we’re not trying to bash people in poverty, but, uh, is there merit in making people more accountable for the money they make?”
—Jim Mora, The Panel, Radio NZ National, Wednesday 23 October 2013
hogwash, n.1. Worthless, false, or ridiculous speech or writing; nonsense; 2. Garbage fed to hogs; swill hypocrisy, n.1. the practice of professing standards, beliefs, etc., contrary to one’s real character or actual behaviour, esp. the pretence of virtue and piety; 2. an act or instance of this
More hogwash….
No. 4 JIM MORA: “The United States has been a bulwark against totalitarianism, hasn’t it.”
No. 3 JOHN KERRY: “The best way to give these negotiations a chance is to keep them private.” http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Kerry-prolongs-trip-set-to-meet-Abbas-in-Ramallah-320386
No. 2 DAVID CAMERON: “We never support, in countries, the intervention by the military.”
No. 1 BARACK OBAMA: “Madiba’s moral courage…people standing up for what’s right….aaaahhhh, the yearning for justice and dignity…”
A NZ education entity conducting outdoor activities that are either compulsory or very hard to get out of, is fined a little for conducting an activity badly, negligently and ignorantly in dangerous conditions and the most dangerous way it could. Three people died, one a supposedly trained adult who should have been trained to Level 2 instead of Level 1 (though that would only make a difference if he was authorised to cancel if conditions were unsuitable). Two youngsters also died who were in the care of these careless people. The charge should have been manslaughter.
If parents do harm to their children, who they are bound to care for on a 24 hours basis, they are questioned, sanctioned, receive punishment. These education bods, who have the care of children for only a short time – and can choose to continue or to decide on alternative safe activity, or to return the youngsters to their parents and caregivers – receive a slap on the wrist.
The police showed more concern for their members when they did not allow them to go down the Pike mine. Apparently children, in the hands of these outdoor education n.zis, are disposable. And deaths have happened before when parents were forced to allow their children to take part. There was one kayaking case and possibly others. It is a disgrace that outdoor education is elevated to a sacred ritual and children are allowed to be sacrificed to it.
Is this attitude to physical training of children influenced by the Spartan model? The Spartans were famous for the fearsome training regime (agôgê) that they put all of their citizens through from age seven until they were aged about thirty, with the goal of making them ideal citizens and soldiers. The boys slept in a mess hall, on crude straw mats, and were given only a single garment, a cloak, to wear. They were trained to tolerate hunger and endure pain and physical discomfort, including being ritually beaten, and undertook physical exercise and training in the ancient martial arts. http://philosophy-of-cbt.com/2013/05/08/how-spartan-were-the-stoics/
The beliefs expressed in the education of youngsters by Kurt Hahn (from the time that Outward Bound began) are worth reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Hahn Hahn’s values: concern and compassion for others, the willingness to accept responsibility, and concern and tenacity in pursuit of the truth. Punishment of any kind is viewed as a last resort.
Also his Six Declines of modern youth and
Ten Expeditionary principles
richard
What are we talking about? That question is open ended? Rehabilitation for whom after what?
Prevention is best so no necessity for rehabilitation. Punishment is not wrong, it however needs to be appropriate to the fault. It is better to make reparation the main response, rather than make punishment loom large.
Other thoughts. I don’t approve of forgiveness as a satisfactory way to react to a fault though it is a way that people may adopt to lessen the pain and hurt and ensuring it doesn’t turn to hate which is self-destructive.
It is better than living with hate to the wrongdoer, but I think change to prevent the fault recurring and a lifetime of reparation – striving to create good things in the community would be a better aim, then result in forgiveness.
Alan Seay and Willem de Lange ride roughshod over Kathryn Ryan
These radio “interviews” were as hopeless as it gets
National Radio, Wednesday 23 October 2013
Aficionados of crap television may recall a risible late Sunday night Prime TV special from 2008, a totally bogus “debate” about Global Warming. Two meek and exceedingly diffident scientists were on one side, i.e. the side of science, and were “opposed” by a rogue earth-scientist from Waikato University called Willem de Lange and believe it or not…. (you might want to sit down)…. NewstalkZB’s house clown, mad conspiracy theorist and science denier Leighton Smith, the closest thing this country has to Glenn Beck. The “chairman” of this travesty was Eric Young, a sports announcer.
Leighton Smith dominated the show. He did perhaps 70 per cent of the talking—or more precisely, shouting, scoffing and snarling—and continually interrupted whenever one of the two scientists tried to speak. They were obviously unprepared for anything like this; indeed, why should they have had to expect they would be confronted with anyone so deranged? Occasionally Smith’s “team mate” Willem de Lange started to speak, but Smith would almost always cut him off in order to resume ranting at the two shell-shocked scientists. Eric Young, who, remember, was supposed to be the “chairman”, looked baffled and unhappy throughout; possibly he was cursing whatever genius of a producer had landed him this gig.
It was a real low-point in New Zealand television history, right down there with Paul Holmes’s instruction to viewers to “prepare to go ballistic” at Māori [1], Helen Clark’s hopelessly inept hatchet man Brian Edwards going after Lynley Hood [2], and Andy Haden’s malignant “three darkies” allegation on Murray Deaker’s horror show. [3]
Of course, most of those involved on this late Sunday night black comedy deserved condemnation: the producers for even thinking of having Leighton Smith on to talk about something he knew nothing about; the two scientists for being so naïve as to expect Prime TV to have organized something serious; Willem de Lange for not only being a rogue scientist, but for letting himself be upstaged by a complete ignoramus; and of course Eric Young for his Joubertian failure to control a willful and cynical saboteur. Only Leighton Smith is beyond criticism; to chide him for hijacking a TV show and behaving like a halfwit would be like scolding an enraged elephant for going loco. It’s simply what he does.
So anyone who remembered that show will have been interested to learn yesterday that Kathryn Ryan’s producer had lined up Willem de Lange, the scientist who let Leighton Smith do all the talking, to comment on the Greenpeace oil spill report.[4] Before de Lange’s comments on the report, they brought on another “expert”, one Alan Seay, who is none other than the corporate affairs manager for the Texas oil giant Anadarko. Seay’s comments were possibly even more insulting and scurrilous than John Key’s were later in the day. Although de Lange was milder in tone, his mission was obviously to undermine the credibility of Greenpeace; sadly for him, he was about as authoritative and convincing as he was when he acted as understudy to Loopy Leighton five years before.
And that was that. There was no contradiction, or challenge, or demand for clarification. All that National Radio listeners were served up were two highly biased, extreme views by a rogue scientist and a savagely on-message corporate executive, both allowed to say anything they liked by an interviewer who was incapable of testing them. There are any number of credible, non-aligned, rigorous scientific commentators in this country. Instead we were subjected to Alan Seay and Willem de Lange.
The decline in quality and integrity of Radio New Zealand National is now at a critical point.
A backstairs deal has been sewn up to ensure the legislation has the support of both Labour and the Greens. Neither party would reveal any details last night.
Implies it’s a drafting stuff up, which if left as is could result in court cases being lost.
Think of it as being like a software manufacturer spotting a vulnerability before a hacker exploits it, and closing it. I really doubt it’s anything else. Only interest is, what did they stuff up?
So did they arbitrarily think they could do it, or did the commissioner incorrectly believe those powers could be delegated? Why so few over 4 years – when do officers actually take the oath?
It only seems to have affected officers returning to the police force.
So, presumably the police have managed to correctly administer the oath for new officers. Also, they may have accidentally got it right for some returning officers. The 63 fraudulent officers are just the ones sworn wrong.
New officers are sworn in at Police Training School and so were done correctly.
previously the swearing in was done quite liberally. But changes were made.
But it seems something similar had happened before and legislation had to be
introduced to clear it up, so its quite shocking that the problem would arise again.
The problem is that Police central command did not authorize under the act person suitable to carry out the oath and so Police winged it as they thought the old liberal way was still, I mean think about it last year you gave the oath, so why not this year.
Its not the first time or the last time national have waste parliamentary time fixing up their poorly managed legislation.
I agree that is probably exactly how it has happened — local police have just muddled through without being aware that the rules have changed.
And now someone has checked what exactly a particular police role is authorised to do (say a new person in that role?) and thus A Cock Up has been discovered.
No-one is saying what the bill is about but something to do with the Police.
The House will go into urgency immediately after Question Time to pass all stages of the bill over the next 24 hours.
On the up side, this means that the TICS Bill will now not go through its third reading this afternoon and this will now not take place until the House sits in Nov as they are in a one week recess next week.
From RadioNZ National news at Noon, Greenpeace are saying that charges of piracy have been dropped against it’s activists held in Russia, they will now be charged with Hooliganism a lesser but still jail-able crime,
Hooliganism – a Russian word? The Irish should have put a trademark on it. It seems to be used quite a lot these days in the Soviets. How are the pop singers getting on. They are brave to stand up to the state.
The hooliganism charges will bring a 7 year sentence rather than a 10 year sentence. The Dutch will still sue in the international court for wrongful seizure on the high sea.
Bill from Dipton, the Minister of Finance is now said to be challenging Labour/Green/NZFirst/Mana to buy back the part sold assets in what seems a bizaare admission that He will no longer be part of a Government after November 2014,
Fair enough Bill, what we would need tho is one hell of a punitive ‘Bill English Tax’ to raise the necessary capital, hmmm, 70 cents in the dollar for the top 2% of the economy should just about do it, careful what you demand Bill you might just end up providing the steel in the Opposition camp which spurs them into doing it,
Russell Norman talking more sense than most as usual has pointed out to Bill that because of the shonky ‘creative accounting’ being indulged in by Slippery’s Government the Government acounts are going to be an unknown pile of debt until such time as the Opposition take over the Treasury Benches,
My opinion is that Russell is right on the money there, He can bank on the fact that when said books are opened there isn’t going to be any, money that is…
So Treasury thinks it’s a good idea to introduce a Capital Gains Tax and restrictions on foreign buyers as measures to curb rising house prices. They must be counting the days until we get rid of this useless bloody government just like the rest of us. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11145624
Peak in oil means what? Well housing needs to be near employment, as the cost of car use increases it stands to reason that more investment is needed to bring work closer to sprawling suburbs, intensify existing suburbs and build public transport systems. Or turn its over, around, and ask hwy housing? Why did the tenements houses get built? employers wanted employees near factories. In the modern economy we need home owners to move to where the work is. During cheap oil it was necessary to have a much more active housing market, so facilitating moving, buy out of the housing and then buying back in. But with the internet, even with the understanding of local supply of food is actually going to increase, and with the higher cost of transport, and high cost of housing in build warmer, dry homes, etc. The question has to be asked where’s the leadership, because National belief that we about to return to the brighter future of growth is just not, realistic.
Now the treasury wants CGT on homes, that would be far worse on the ability of employees to move to where the work is. Just as introducing a deposit on home buyers has been. Lowering the demand for homes has the negligent effect on the ability of employers to source from a large pool of staff, as the cost of moving home is increased. So WTF is National thinking, and the Treasury? A CGT is required to bring down prices and no CGT on the family homes is required to keep mobility up.
But hey, National and the economic NZ press are stupid, they don’t get why we need savers in NZ, small savers need a deposit guarantee, but National screwed the deposit guarantee by extending it to finance companies. Why is it so hard for our chattering classes to understand why the world has these policies, and why they can so easily be allowed to get away with the idea that we cannot afford it. Its clear that we cannot afford NOT to introduce a deposit guarantee, a basic non-taxable income band, a CGT tax but not on the family home. Its just makes so much sense to be in lock step with other comparable nations, and stop funneling the wealth into the hands of oversea investors.
Auckland Mayor Len Brown will retain his position as honorary president of a family values organisation despite his extra-marital affair with a woman 25 years his junior.
– You couldn’t make this stuff up
Alan Brookbanks – the council’s human resources director – is also the chairman of the board of the organisation.
– Always good to keep on the right side of your boss
“The essence of neoliberalism can be reduced to the following: government should be used exclusively
to help big business and the wealthy with tax cuts, subsidies, privatizations, anti-labor laws, etc., while all government programs that help working and poor people should be eliminated. It’s really that simple. “
Can a new mathematical model predict the endgame of empires? Peter Turchin says his work shows why the US is in crisis, and what will happen next
[…]
The richest continue to become richer: as in many complex systems, whether in nature or in society, existing advantage feeds back positively to create yet more. The rest of the elite fight it out, with rival patronage networks battling ever more fiercely. “There are always ideological differences, but elite overproduction explains why competition becomes so bitter, with no one willing to compromise,” Turchin says. This means the squabbling in Congress that precipitated the current shutdown is a symptom of societal forces at work, rather than the primary problem.
In Turchin’s theory, such political acrimony is paralleled by rising discontent among workers left with less and less, and increasing state bankruptcy as spending by the elite who control the government coffers spirals. Ultimately, the situation gets so bad that order cannot be maintained and the state collapses. A new cycle begins.
Ultimately, the situation gets so bad that order cannot be maintained and the state collapses.
And that’s an excellent reason to have all your own citizens under surveillance, federalise the state national guard, and to operate drones and paramilitary units throughout the country.
It is no coincidence that the life of Communism (from the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989) coincides almost perfectly with the Great Compression era. The Red Scares of, firstly, 1919—21 and then 1947—57 suggest that US elites took the Soviet threat quite seriously. More generally, the Soviet Union, especially in its early years, aggressively promoted an ideology that was highly threatening to the political-economic system favoured by the US elites. Reforms that ensured an equitable distribution of the fruits of economic growth turned out to be a highly effective counter to the lure of Bolshevism.
Nevertheless, when Communism collapsed, its significance was seriously misread. It’s true that the Soviet economy could not compete with a system based on free markets plus policies and norms that promoted equity. Yet the fall of the Soviet Union was interpreted as a vindication of free markets, period. The triumphalist, heady atmosphere of the 1990s was highly conducive to the spread of Ayn Randism and other individualist ideologies. The unwritten social contract that had emerged during the New Deal and braved the challenges of the Second World War had faded from memory.
That’s what I’ve been saying. Now the USA has no moral constraints, and puts up Christian billboards along its Avenues to hide the poverty of mind behind.
Chris Trotter has got his mojo back
But not such good news about a couple of others The Panel, Radio NZ National, Thursday 24 October 2013
Jim Mora, Michael Deaker, Chris Trotter
PART ONE OF TWO
In the lead-up to this show, host Jim Mora said they would be discussing “the ethical question of drones versus poison gas”. No sign of any such discussion in the first half of the program; instead, they talk with Brian Gaynor of Milford Asset Management about the National Government’s catastrophic (for the National Government) failure to flog off the publicly owned Meridian Power for more than the lowest possible price. Michael Deaker has no patience for Bill “Double Dipton” English‘s ridiculous claim that Labour and the Greens have “sabotaged” the flog-off and that the poor will suffer. Deaker slams the hapless Double Dipper’s rhetoric as “crass”.
.….4:30 news…..
After the news and weather, the gorgeous harmonies of Simon and Garfunkel play for twenty seconds or so. This is to introduce the next topic, some study that has found what music is best for soothing hurt feelings. Pop music is best, apparently, then classical (Beatles, Stones), then rock, then “indie”. Best tunes to lift the spirits of the depressed are “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, “Angels” by Robbie Williams and “Easy” by the Commodores. That’s odd, because whenever I hear Robbie Williams, I want to kill myself. Unless Robbie Williams himself were to be in striking distance, of course.
JIM MORA: What would our Panelists like to talk about? Michael Deaker on the program, along with Chris Trotter. Michael, what’s on your mind today?
Michael Deaker has a pleasant chat about how well behaved today’s Otago University students are. Contrary to what Family Fist and the S.S. Trust keep saying, kids are getting better. He scorns the dishonest nostalgia about the policeman in the old days who used to give kids a clip over the ear. “We had a bobby on a bike when I was a kid, but he was an old buffoon who everybody laughed at.”
MORA: Ha ha ha ha ha! Michael Deaker on the Panel! Chris Trotter with him! Chris, what have you been thinking about? CHRIS TROTTER: Yes, well, I’d just like to draw your attention to the sentencing of TOPEC. The judge did not fine them! And even one of the families lamented the actual dealing out of justice. We do seem to give a pass to these sorts of organizations which we wouldn’t give to anyone else. Three young people died there. Then there were the five young people who died in the central North Island a few years before that. The people running these places should have faced the closing of their operation. I just wish New Zealanders were as absolutely keen on building the intellectual ability of their kids as they are on the physical. These outdoor activities like shooting down chasms and abseiling—-I’ve NEVER SEEN what that does for anybody apart from scaring them witless. It’s extreme and dangerous and should be closed. The judge says he wasn’t going to fine them. Well, I think you should have, Judge! There is a price everyone pays. I think we’re too fond of giving a pass to such organizations.
After some recent ethical lapses by Trotter, this was a welcome speech. This was the Chris Trotter we expect to hear: clear, forthright and moral. Obviously, if he was in this frame of mind, he was not going to say anything depraved or idiotic in the Gas versus Drones discussion.
There would, however, be more depravity and moral idiocy on display during the next five minutes than you’d find at an ACT Party fundraiser, a Destiny Church march or a S.S. Trust rally. It came from a couple of people, one of them a professor of legal ethics…..
Matt McCarten Radio Live Today – select 14.45 today – claims Jason Ede is the Nat’s black ops person, who orchestrated the Cam Slater, Brown smear. MMcM alleges that JE ghost writes for KB & WO blogs.
Matthew Hooton hits the roof in response.
Curious, because on Citizen A tonight, Selwyn Manning & Chris Trotter reckoned there was stuff known to the MSM journalists, and stuff SM & CT know also, that the MSM can’t publish because they have no definite proof – also to do with Nat’s machinations over the Len Brown smear.
So, I am curious to know what so many others know, so I can try to judge the truth of it.
… the MSM can’t publish because they have no definite proof – also to do with Nat’s machinations over the Len Brown smear.
@ karol
The most interesting comment to come out of that conversation was Selwyn Manning’s reference to … “the police should look into it” or words to that effect. From my own previous experiences, that suggests to me things like… illegal eavesdropping, searching of personal records without authority, and other variants of spying practices by individuals who may not be lawfully authorised to carry out such activity.
I suspect Mr. Key’s top drawer might be bulging – but no questions would have been asked of course.
OK I’ve just come back from a Labour type meeting where raising the retirement age to 67 was discussed (again), on the basis that it would make our super system “sustainable”.
This remit is, politely put, a load of hogwash. The sustainability justification for it is based on a number of false premises.
I’m going to repeat this ad nauseum between now and Conference in the hope that some people will figure it out.
1) NZ Super is paid out in NZ dollars. NZD are merely highly accepted IOUs which can be traded for goods and services. The NZ Government is the sole creator of NZ dollars in the world. Therefore, the NZ Government need never run out of NZ dollars to pay NZ super with. If it wishes, it is fully capable of paying out NZ Super at age 65 without any fiscal limitations, no matter how big the baby boom bulge is.
2) We are entering an economy where while there is plenty of work to be done, there will be less and less of it structured in paid jobs. Today, workers noticeably out number jobs. And I expect this trend to worsen. The last thing we need is to swell the numbers looking for work with those aged 66, 67 while up to 30% of our young people are unemployed. We need to be giving people the option to move on from the workforce, not try and keep them there (when there aren’t enough jobs around anyway).
3) The real question around “sustainability” is whether or not we will have an economy with the level of real resources and productivity to deliver the standard of living and care which will be required by our retired citizens. No one is asking this question and it is the only relevant question.
Bottom line: raising the retirement age weakens the NZ social security system, and the rationale for doing so (‘financial sustainability’) is underpinned by false assumptions. Labour – do NOT raise the retirement age, if you are going to do anything with the age, REDUCE it.
As a note – if Stephen Joyce says that there is no problem keeping the retirement age at 65 but Labour is keen as mustard to raise it, something is very, very wrong.
“The NZ Government is the sole creator of NZ dollars in the world. Therefore, the NZ Government need never run out of NZ dollars to pay NZ super with. If it wishes, it is fully capable of paying out NZ Super at age 65 without any fiscal limitations, no matter how big the baby boom bulge is.”
Yes and no, this is childlike economics and fiscals, even I as a socialist find this a bit simplistic, no this would not work like this, unless you change the rest of the world to sing from the same song sheet. I am waiting for that, have been for 20 or so years. Learn fiscal and economic realities before you post such naive stuff, please. Printing money is not a solutions, it can be at times, but not like this, stupid!
This is a message to NZ students, to “bad12” and those that like to get at me, as I admittedly express serious frustration and disappointment with the lack of action and activity in New Zealand, and me having called a lot of New Zealanders “cowards”! I stand by my position, and NZ and people here, especially students and workers leave a lot to be desired and better learn, wake up and take bloody action.
We have experiences in Chile and other countries worth studying, and I recommend this following video from Al Jazeera:
If you want a failed education system, and that is what this government is pursuing, under Key and gang, and by one corrupt and lying John Banks and his despiccable ACT Party, look at this.
Viva Chile, viva la revolution Chileno, and that is a lesson of history to learn, and I do not need to be told by Kiwis here, about my rants, my anger, and so forth. I see failure on the left here, a lack of action, a lack of competency and more, and you can disprove me by taking action and do what is needed! I am waiting for your action, not just relying on a new Labour leader, to do the job for you. Get going. I made a point and decision, I am now taking at least 2 and a half hours a week, to go out, to put up a sign, and to take a stand and protest.
I suggest every individual with genuine concern do the same, and society will chance. Sitting at home, in front of a computer, consulting the keyboard may be ok, but it is likely to change fuck all.
Yes well if you call people cowards and stupid i am sure they will be rushing to join you on the barricades, Lolz viva la X revolution,
The little movie script in my head titled ‘In the shadow of Che’ the sun strikes X as he exhorts his mass movement of followers with cries of ‘cowards’ and idiots’ to storm the local WINZ office peacefully in a revolutionary manner overpowering the forces of evil in the form of the lone security guard,
Lolz, have fun on the front line X,don’t forget to get lots of sleep…
Making kiwi saver compulsory and refunding the cullen fund capital gains tax land tax would ensure sustainability.
Their will be less work less jobs
New technology will see to that.
Michael Cullen’s two initiatives showed Hey understood the needs of New Zealands future.
While Key English Joyce do nothing aproach are guaranteeing a future of poverty.
You can make KiwiSaver compulsory, but you need structures which prevent Wall St from using the resulting billions to make bets with. Fund management by the NZ Government is the way ahead.
There should be no Kiwi Saver, as it undermines solidarity and the true social agenda. There should be ONE super scheme and none, else, and in this I even give Winston some credit re what he has thought out.
Kiwi Saver allows people to “individualise” retirement income, and that means division, and it will lead to divison, like “I paid my share”, “you did not”, kind of thing. I fear that is what most want, but it will only add to social division, and not provide for truly collective care and solutions. But then again, I know, Labour do not want a truly “social” scheme anyway, and so they are “Soft Nats” after all, no matter what smart talk. Exposed again!
This is amongst some of the best from Chile, way back and so, but what else can you ask for.
All talk about some deals in NZ government, share sales, this and that, corruption, all that may work to convince the electorate for a change. But the damned “electorate” will not change much in “mindset”, most are ignorant ill informed and indifferent about most, only interested in self promotion.
I am waiting for a RADICAL awakening and change in the mentality in NZ, otherwise we will just continue the every so often change from one to the other, back to the other, kind of bull shit, and that is what Labour are working on again right now. I have NO trust in them and will vote Green or further LEFT.
Best of wishes and luck, THINK, please, if you can bother, please!
But we NEED music and CULTURE to make things work, without that there is NO spirit, not one for change at all anyway. Listen!
Who likes being sneered at? Nobody. Worse yet, when the sneerer has their facts all wrong, and might well be an idiot.The sneer in question is The adults are in charge now, and it is a sneer offered in retort to criticism of this new Government, no matter how well ...
When in government, Labour pushed to extend the Parliamentary term to four years, to reduce accountability and our ability to vote out a bad government. And now, they're trying to do it through the member's ballot, with a Four-Year Parliamentary Term Legislation Bill. The bill at least requires a referendum ...
A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn: Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill (Hūhana Lyndon) The bill would prevent the government from stealing Māori land in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It ...
Simeon Brown, alongside Wayne Brown, is favouring a political figleaf now in exchange for loading up tens of millions in extra interest costs on Auckland ratepayers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s is pushing back hard at suggestions from Local Government Minister Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown ...
Buzz from the Beehive One headline-grabber from the Beehive yesterday was the OECD’s advice that the government must bring the Budget deficit under control or face higher interest rates. Another was the announcement of a $1.9 billion “investment” in Corrections over the next four years. In the best interests of ...
Chris Trotter writes – Had Zheng He’s fleet sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks of the Ming Dynasty, among the largest and most sophisticated sailing vessels ever constructed, would have failed ...
David Farrar writes – Two articles give a useful contrast in balance. Both seek to be neutral explainer articles. This one in the Herald on Social Investment covers the pros and cons nicely. It links to critical pieces and talks about aspects that failed and aspects that are more ...
The tikanga regulations will compel law students to be taught that a system which does not conform with the rule of law is nevertheless law which should be observed and applied…Gary Judd KC writes – I have made a complaint to Parliament’s Regulation ...
The future of Te Huia, the train between Hamilton and Auckland, has been getting a lot of attention recently as current funding for it is only in place till the end of June. The government initially agreed to a five year trial, through to April 2026, but that was subject ...
TL;DR: Hamas has just agreed to Israel’s ceasefire plan. Nelson hospital’s rebuild has been cut back to save money. The OECD suggests New Zealand break up network monopolies, including in electricity. PM Christopher Luxon’s news conference on a prison expansion announcement last night was his messiest yet.Here’s my top six ...
A homicide in Ponsonby, a manhunt with a killer on the run. The nation’s leader stands before a press conference reassuring a frightened nation that he’ll sort it out, he’ll keep them safe, he’ll build some new prison spaces.Sorry what? There’s a scary dude on the run with a gun ...
Hi,I know it’s been awhile since there’s been any Webworm merch — and today that all changes!Over the last four months, I’ve been working with New Zealand artist Jess Johnson to create a series of t-shirts, caps and stickers that are infused with Webworm DNA — and as of right ...
The OECD’s chief economist yesterday laid it on the line for the new Government: bring the deficit under control or face higher Reserve Bank interest rates for longer. And to bring the deficit under control, she meant not borrowing for tax cuts. But there was more. Without policy changes—introducing a ...
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vanita Yadav, Senior Research Fellow, Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University Brett Boardman/Belvoir The complex and grappling issue of violence against women takes centre stage in the soul-stirring solo dance drama Nayika: A Dancing Girl. During a dinner conversation ...
Disruption to patient care from a nationwide junior doctors strike is bordering on unsafe, a senior doctor claims, despite what health officials say. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Diepstraten, Senior Research Officer, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer Division, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute Ground Picture/Shutterstock The anti-cancer drug abemaciclib (also known as Vernezio) has this month been added to the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) to treat certain ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic McAfee, Postdoctoral researcher, marine ecology, University of Adelaide Robbie Porter, OzFish Unlimited Around Australia, hundreds of people are coming together to help a once-prized, but decimated and largely forgotten marine ecosystem. They’re busy restoring Australia’s native oyster and mussel reefs. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Webb, Lecturer, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology Austin Human/Unsplash How does Earth stop meteors from hitting Earth and hurting people? –Asher, 6 years 11 months, New South Wales Alright, let’s embark on a meteor ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rory Mulcahy, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of the Sunshine Coast Professional sports organisations regularly promote and develop initiatives to support diversity, equity and inclusion. While sport has the power to change attitudes by sparking conversations about political issues and social ...
Comment: The weekly Monday post-Cabinet press conference is a useful forum for observing Christopher Luxon and how he is developing into the job of Prime Minister. He attempts to convey the impression of a man of action, speaking fast, delivering memorised National Party strategies in a connect-the-slogans kind of way, ...
Double votes, missing ballot boxes, tired tech and stressed staff: how tick-tallying went astray at last year’s election. Cast your mind back to November 2023, that bleary-eyed post-election period duringwhichwewaited, andwaited, for a coalition deal to be hammered out. A distraction from the hotel-hopping of our ...
International audiences are starting to discover what New Zealand already knew about After the Party.When After the Party aired in New Zealand last year, the response was fast and furious. In his preview for Rec Room, Duncan Greive said it was a “gritty, wrenching and highly confronting” series. By ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shahram Akbarzadeh, Convenor of the Middle East Studies Forum (MESF), and Acting Director the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University Iran’s leadership has been a direct beneficiary of the months-long war in Gaza. With every missile that Israel fires ...
Claire Mabey reviews the haunting and sexy debut novel from Sinéad Gleeson, who is about to touch down in Aotearoa for a string of live events.When Irish writer Sinéad Gleeson was in Aotearoa in 2018 with her spectacular collection of essays, Constellations, she told me she was working on ...
PNG Post-Courier Bougainville Affairs Minister Manasseh Makiba has described the Post-Courier’s front page story yesterday regarding a meeting between Bougainville and national government leaders as “sensationalised” and without substance. The Autonomous Bougainville Government (AGB) had warned it might use “other avenues to gain its independence” should the PNG government “continue ...
Where some saw the worst press conference given by the government to date, Anna Rawhiti-Connell recognised girl maths game.Nicola Willis, recently exasperated by comparisons to Ruth Richardson, said she was “a bit sick of being compared with every female finance minister that’s ever been out there.”Some think that’s ...
The March results are reported against forecasts based on the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update 2023 (HYEFU 2023), published on 20 December 2023 and the results for the same period for the previous year. ...
Jamie Arbuckle, the district councillor who became an MP but decided to keep getting paid for both roles, will instead donate one salary to charity. ...
Adding gender to the Human Rights Act would simply make the implicit explicit. So why is it so controversial? Paul Thistoll explain. At present, Aotearoa’s 1993 Human Rights Act (HRA) includes sex, marital status, religious belief, ethical belief (meaning a lack of religious belief), colour, race, ethnicity or national origin, ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, an 18-year-old who’s studying and working in hospo shares their approach to spending and saving. Want to be part of The Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here.Gender: Transmasc Age: 18 Ethnicity: Pākehā/Māori Role: Student, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Kelsey, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Getty Images Resources Minister Shane Jones has reportedly asked officials for advice on whether oil and gas companies could be offered “bonds” as compensation if drilling rights offered by ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Gleeson, Associate Professor of Law, Macquarie University Shutterstock The Albanese government is weighing up the costs of delivering an election promise to protect religious people from discrimination in Commonwealth law. Such protections were relatively uncontroversial when included in state anti-discrimination ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yen Ying Lim, Associate Professor, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University Pexels/Andrea Piacquadio Dementia is often described as “the long goodbye”. Although the person is still alive, dementia slowly and irreversibly chips away at their memories and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judy Bush, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne Adam Calaitzis/Shutterstock I met with a friend for a walk beside Merri Creek, in inner Melbourne. She had lived in the area for a few years, and as we walked ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Throsby, Distinguished Professor of Economics, Macquarie University Arts companies and individual artists in Australia are supported by government arts agencies, philanthropists, industry bodies, private donors and patrons. However, it is frequently overlooked that a major source of support for the arts ...
Harm Reduction Coalition Aotearoa, a new incorporated society dedicated to ending harmful drug policies, officially launched today, seeks a new fit-for-purpose drug law for Aotearoa New Zealand, rooted in science, experience and evidence. ...
The Corrections Minister admits he "muddied the water" after he and the Prime Minister repeatedly provided incorrect information about a $1.9 billion prison spend-up. ...
It took a post-post-cabinet statement to confirm that 810 new beds will be built at Waikeria, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Lili Tokaduadua was only 15 when she left her family in Fiji to pursue her netball dream in New Zealand. She’d been playing the sport for 10 years and was offered a netball scholarship at Auckland’s Howick College. Now, in her first year out of high school, the 19-year-old defender ...
The beloved local grocers lost a legal challenge to stop a new cycleway outside their store. Joel MacManus reports. In the annals of New Zealand legal history, there are a few brave people who have dared to stand up to the powers that be, no matter how bleak the odds ...
How what we produce and what we eat connects us to the world beyond our shores, visualised. Walking around a supermarket or vege shop, it might be obvious that everything on the shelves came from somewhere. But you might ...
Professor Jemma Geoghegan, of the University of Otago, Otakou Whakaihu Waka, co-leads a Te Niwha project aimed at understanding how and where avian influenza could affect Aotearoa New Zealand, as the highly infectious H5N1 virus spreads globally. The virus has now spread to all continents except Oceania and was recently ...
Thirty years on from Rwanda’s genocide, is guilt over the atrocities is blinding the world to the true nature of its current leadership? The post The repressive underside of Rwanda’s regime appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Opinion: Last week, important recommendations for our criminal justice system were made by the international community. Every five years, each member of the United Nations has its human rights practices reviewed. This rolling event – the Universal Periodic Review – is the culmination of a government reporting on its human ...
Highly pathogenic avian influenza – H5N1, or bird flu – has been flying around the world since the late 1990s. New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands are so far free of it, but now it’s been discovered in mainland Antarctica and scientists say it’s only a matter of time ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Tuesday 7 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
The following interview with auto electrician and former caver Stu Berendt, 68, of Charleston on the West Coast, came about because he was part of the caving team that found the rare and amazing fossil remains of the giant Haast eagle, the subject of one of the year’s best books, ...
A $1.8b funding boost for Pharmac still won’t enable it to buy more drugs, raising questions about the Government’s approach to the agency The post Can Pharmac do more with the same pot of money? appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eric Stokan, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County If you live in one of the most economically deprived neighborhoods in your city, you might think the government is directing a smaller share of public funds to your community. ...
Wansolwara The news media’s crucial role in climate change and environment journalism was the focus of The University of the South Pacific’s Journalism Programme 2024 World Press Freedom Day celebrations. The European Union Ambassador to the Pacific, Barbara Plinkert, and Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Henry Puna were the chief ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Adams, Professor of Corporate Law & Academic Director of UNE Sydney campus, University of New England Last August, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) launched legal proceedings against Qantas. The consumer watchdog accused the airline of selling thousands of tickets ...
This episode of A View From Afar was recorded LIVE on May 6, 2024 (NZST) which is Sunday evening, May 5, 2024 at 8:30pm (USEST). In an analytical essay titled ‘A moment of friction’ political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan wrote how we are living within a decisive moment ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Taylor, Assistant Professor, Bond University Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures At the crux of the critical response to Luca Guadagnino’s new movie Challengers is one word: “sexy”. The film charts a love triangle between three up-and-coming tennis players: Tashi (Zendaya), ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Stewart, Professor of Public Policy, ADFA Canberra, UNSW Sydney For years, First Nations people have been telling governments they want to be listened to. In particular, they want more ownership of the programs and services that are supposed to help them. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Why do trees have bark? Julien, age 6, Melbourne. This is a great question, Julien. We are so familiar with bark on trees, that most of us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Nasser, Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy, University of Technology Sydney PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is an important ligament in the knee. It runs from the thigh bone (femur) to the shin bone (tibia) and helps stabilise ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne I covered the May 2 United Kingdom local government elections for The Poll Bludger. The Blackpool South parliamentary byelection was also held, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deanna Grant-Smith, Professor of Management, University of the Sunshine Coast The federal government has announced a “Commonwealth Prac Payment” to support selected groups of students doing mandatory work placements. Those who are studying to be a teacher, nurse, midwife or social ...
We round up everything coming to streaming services this week, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, ThreeNow, Neon and TVNZ+. If you love a dark comedy: Bodkin (Netflix, May 9)An English podcaster, an Irish podcaster and American podcaster walk into a pub and…make a TV show? ...
By Eleisha Foon, RNZ Pacific senior journalist A Pacific regionalism academic has called out New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS and says the security deal “raises serious questions for the Pacific region”. Auckland University of Technology academic Dr Marco de Jong ...
How worried should we be about the cloud? This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. I currently have a few thousand unread emails languishing in my inbox, mostly old marketing newsletters and piles of unread science journal press releases. I have a similar number ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nuurrianti Jalli, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies College of Arts and Sciences Department of Languages, Literature, and Communication Studies, Northern State University Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Southeast Asian governments not only have to deal with the virus but also with the false ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Murakami Wood, Professor of Critical Surveillance and Securities Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa The skyline of Riyadh, the capital and largest city of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia.(Shutterstock) There is a long history of planned city building by both governments ...
NSA accused of spying on Merkel’s phone
Merkel made it clear that she found such practices “completely unacceptable”.
But spying on an ordinary Joe Bloggs is acceptable?
Ha ha.
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20131023-52547.html
Merkel, formerly of East Germany, has helped run the German partner spying apparatus which works hand in glove with the NSA in mass surveillance. Therefore I have doubts that her surprise or indignation is particularly genuine.
Germany does it’s own spying too – they have two intelligence agencies.
The situation is something like this http://i.imgur.com/GRIHIoX.png
I think she could be genuine. There would have been a “gentleman’s” agreement not to spy on the leaders, and it will be this that the seppos have broken. With Key, they wouldn’t need to. He’s probably microchipped and hooked up via wireless to the American Embassy so he can show them proudly how well he serves their interests.
1% of New Zealanders buy Meridian shares.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11145160
Mum and Dad investors?
Parnell Mums and dads only…
… and overseas investors from as far away as Whitechapel perhaps.
Good one
Can anyone explain why New Zealand Post has to make millions of dollars in profit? Can’t this be an industry where Mr Micawber’s philosophy can be applied?
It’s an SOE so is expected to make a profit and operate without a government subsidy.
Another way of putting that is that as an SOE the Government expects it to remove financial surplus from the private sector and from households, and transfer it over as financial surplus to the government sector.
If it makes a $1.00 profit it doesn’t need a subsidy!!!
It’s expected to make a commercial return on assets. A $1 profit might be acceptable if the asset base was up to $10.
Who expects it? Why is it expected? Are these the economic conventions which serves NZ the best? And if not do they need to change? You don’t seem to be willing to scratch deeper Lanth.
Perhaps NZ Post’s $16B of assets should just be sold off and put into a high yield speculative fund – that would make more electronic credits for the government than the piddly <3% return on assets it is doing now.
I’m answering the question. It doesn’t mean I agree with or support the answer, or even think the answer is ‘correct’.
“Perhaps NZ Post’s $16B of assets should just be sold off and put into a high yield speculative fund – that would make more electronic credits for the government than the piddly <3% return on assets it is doing now."
Think about what this would actually mean, for a minute. If you "sold off the assets", you are literally dismantling and disbanding NZPost. Sure, they might get a higher return on assets, but we wouldn’t have a postal service anymore.
The point is to maximise a return on assets, while also providing a service.
Glad you clarified that Lanth. I imagined for a moment there that you thought I came down in the last rain shower. NZ Post, just like schools, hospitals, police stations, the fire service quite possibly occupy a lot of land/buildings/plant. But who decreed they have to “maximise” their paper values. They could operate on a cost plus basis for decades yet.
It was of course the Business Round Table who were influential in the sale of public assets and setting up the SOE’s. You may recall when this body of leaders (many of inherited wealth) was looking to privatise the Fire Services. The spokesperson was horrified to discover that fire-stations had night shifts that got their heads down for some zzzzz’s. It was anathema to them and they wanted the practice punished. In the meantime, while the knights slept, their considerable investments increased in trading value – without having to do a bit of work.
The point about SOEs as specified by the original privateers who ‘took over’ Labour in the 1980s is that they prove they can compete in the market.
Then to be scavenged by privateers – cronies dressed up as mums and dads.
State assets have to be 100% and under workers control before they can operate at cost as part of socialising production for need and not profits.
How long before we see the Greens and Labour tell English that they will never buy back state assets and reward a bunch of parasites.
Rather they will control prices to cost of production freezing dividends and then take them back when their private owners abandon them.
How long? Just put it to the people and wait for the cheers.
Anonymous Herald editorial: rural deliveries maintained because those are the areas where Nats rely on votes.
And this gem:
Years ago when living in rural Gisborne ours was a Mon Wed Fri mail delivery. It seemed to be quite reasonable especially as the crate of milk bottles, and any other items were also delivered. A bit sorry for the town posties who would lose half their pay.
no thats not quote how it will work, posties will still be working 6 days a week, just halving the amount of work that needs doing, so thats why half the posties will lsoe their jobs. also, we changed to a new pay model where we get paid by volume, which is what the epmu is so pissed off about because they convinced posties to sign up to it believing it would save jobs, but now the govt are having it both ways, pay by volume & 3 day delivery. & typical, the day after the announcements posties have one of their biggest work days, delivering rates, which pretty much go to every householder!
it seems to me these cuts will affect the shop staff the most, with these ‘self serving kiosks’ whatever the hell they are, you can see bryan roache go all dreamy talking about them.
And that bit tells you just what would happen to society if we left it to the private sector – it would collapse fairly quickly as the private sector shut down essential services to increase profit.
Thank you, NZ Herald for finally admitting what everyone already knows. Services reduce under private ownership.
Folks, this Firstline interview with John Maynard, President of the Postal Workers Union, Southern Branch, explains more about that private sector influence on the service cuts proposed for mid 2015. One point in particular that John Maynard makes is that at the time NZ Post was in discussion with govt re reducing mail delivery to every second day, the PWU asked NZ Post to discuss repealing section 17 of the 1997 Postal Services Act, which allows for subsidies to be provided to private mail operators.
There is a lot of relevant points made by John Maynard and is well worth a watch. The interview begins with Brian Roche, the C.E of NZ Post.
http://www.3news.co.nz/Political-agenda-behind-NZ-Post-cuts—union/tabid/369/articleID/318583/Default.aspx
Can you explain to me why Angela should be exempt from being spied upon? Every one else is fair game for the NSA. 😉 haha ha.
Everything is ironic these days.
The news this morning.
Len Brown NZ wanting more respect for public figures’ private lives.
Angela Merkel Germany wanting respect for privacy personal and national, from spying by a foreign agency.
deadpan humour gw
On beneficiary bashing and any other ideological or discrim viewpoint
To borrow from a recently awarded author…
his are the kind of beliefs that do not depend on empirical fact, and indeed, were often flatly disproved by it, though no disproof were ever enough to change his mind. E catton…
equally applies the benefit bashers
” he had decided long ago that (insert hated group or ideology) were duplicitous, and so they woukd be, whatever disproof he might encounter.”
is it just me..?
..or does that royal baby already have the air of an arrogant toff..?
..it’s in his eyes..
..if you don’t believe me..
..check it out..
..phillip ure..
Nah, he’s a baby. All babies are like that. It’s not his fault who his parents are… now if he makes “bad choices” about the world owing him a living some time in the future, that’s a different.
you mean..if he becomes ‘a benificiary’..?
..oh..!..hang on..!
..he already is/will be the biggest bennie-bludger of all..eh..?
..and no..i’ve had babies..
..they don’t all look like a chubby eton prefect looking down their nose..
..like i said..
..it’s all in his eyes..
..and ‘george’..?
..seriously..?
..phillip ure..
“you mean..if he becomes ‘a benificiary’..?
..oh..!..hang on..!”
Exactly
“they don’t all look like a chubby eton prefect looking down their nose”
Maybe not, but when well-fed with clean nappies they usually look pretty comfortable with their lot.
How exactly does a baby look down its nose?
miravox
Totally agree. When they are little they are the king and queen. I want that, and I want it now.
It’s as they grow that they have to learn to manage life to get what they want. And often too well.
I have just been reading about bringing up children, education and the ideas of Kurt Hahn on education to grow into people who are capable etc with good qualities. (Interested – look for it in today’s open mike somewhere.)
“is it just me..?
..or does that royal baby already have the air of an arrogant toff..?”
“..it’s in his eyes..
..if you don’t believe me..”
That’s just a bit sad, Philip. Going to have to go with chip on the shoulder bullsh*t overcoming common sense.
“..and ‘george’..?
.seriously..?”
Curious, but still sad. 😆
Bill from Dipton, the Minister of Finance, announcing His National Government’s failure at last nights mid-evening press conference had the demeanor and look of one who has either been on a week long whiskey binge or has been on the losing end of a bitter, vicious fight over who from the Government would carry the can of announcing this flop of this Government’s flagship policy,
Whats a just descriptive for a Prime Minister without the intestinal fortitude to front the media Himself, gutless coward???, quisling carpet-bagger???…
Buried in the Dom Post section of the stuff website is this detail of wealth transfer from the public to the private:-
‘Pet project’ scholarship is under fire
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/9319255/Pet-project-scholarship-is-under-fire
Gifting Colin Craig a new North Shore seat
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11145147
Also mentions Hooten being asked to stand for Act in Epsom.
“Also mentions Hooten being asked to stand for Act in Epsom.”
That could be fun 😈
@ hooten/epsom..
..why not..?
..his famous catch-cry ‘i have never eaten frozen peas!..only fresh for me..!’..(must be said with a prince george face on..)
..that could become his campaign slogan..eh..?
..he could reach out to/capture – the ‘no frozen peas for me!’-snob-vote..eh..?
..there’s a bit of that around epsom way..
..so i’m told..
..phillip ure..
Does that mean we can shoot peas at him?
The two people I know who grew up in Epsom are anything but Toffs. Has the electorate changed alot (boundaries or socioeconomics)?
with a bit of luck/good management..
..the frozen pea could well become an icon/metaphor of any hooten-campaign..
..seriously denting any ‘i am here for you all!’-message..(shudder..!..)
..and re epsom..?..that intersection of crowded roads..?
..i have always been puzzled by people being snobby about living in epsom..
..to me..it has always been a haven/dormitory-suburb for middle-managers..
..i mean..what has it got..?
..fucken newmarket..?
..spare me..!
..eh..?
..phillip ure..
I also grew up in Epsom, as did my mother. My grandparents lived there from 1949 having returned from the UK after the war (long waiting lists for passage – grandfather worked on radar, and priority was given to those who were in the armed forces).
The Epsom I grew up in voted National, the Labour party representing the common folk, which was considered right and proper.
The change in Epsom as far as I can tell has been that it used to be predominantly middle class by way of culture, and is now middle class by way of money.
naturesong
Interesting point about class distinctions for political parties. It’s not what is best for NZ – it’s oh Labour are for the workers.
I struck this from passerby when I handed out leaflets about Labour in street. This was after Labour had trickled on to the workers under the leadership of their Right Wing subversives. The idea about Labour was fixed in this man’s head and he was so patronising. Just a dopey thoughtless snob as so many NACTS are that I know of.
I don’t know anyone of my generation (X) that believes this.
Those few remaining souls that cling to this misconception will be gone with the baby boomer generation.
Sounds like Naturesong has to hold it’s nose when differentiating the deserving middle class from the undeserving who have arrived there from god only knows what slum via having gathered together a pile of that filthy lucre,
How dare the ‘uncultured’ pollute the rarified air of the born to the brass spoon culture of those who arrived there by birth…
Vinegar dressing bad 12
You look at bit green and ready to come out phantom fighting to have a joust when someone’s comment about their life doesn’t fit with your world opinion.
I’m describing the culture of my family. This was the class system I was born into, in a country that does not have a class system.
I do not apologise for my upbringing, it is simply my experience.
I did encounter some of this attitude growing up, but it was normally it was articulated by those who were newly middle class.
My family looked down upon those in the middle class that were lawyers and accountants and bankers, those that chose to grub around with money, poor things.
As opposed to those who worked with their minds, academics, architects, mathematicians, chemists physicists, teachers. Also wierdly several generations of postmasters, apparantly a very highly regarded position.
I don’t hold my nose for anyone, I do find those who talk about money, wealth or show it off to be poor company.
Science, learning and discovery for its own sake, maths puzzles and word games we had instead of toys.
At the dinner table we weren’t asked how our day was, but whether we had discovered some thing or learnt something new.
My cultural heritage was also matriarchal, though my late grandmother was the last. It did not survive intact the german invasion in WWII.
This is still how my father votes. Which is strange since two things he despises are wanton polluters and corruption. However he is not able to deal with the cognitive dissonance so he shuts down most of his brain and votes National. And consoles himself with the mantra that “the other lot must be worse”.
My primary reason for voting normally is to counteract his vote, though I am hopeful that in 2014 I may convince him to abstain and be able to have a vote which actually counts.
We all come from somewhere. This is where I started.
new beginnings Naturesong
I have great concerns about CC and his Conservative Party. From where I am standing, they wish to combine neo-liberal economics with social conservatism, If this party is elected we will see:
Replacement of welfare with faith based charity
Removal (forced) of books about sex from our school libaries,
End of sex education in school
Evolution being thrown out of our schools
Anything to do with evolution being defunded
Withdrawl of any subsidy for contraception in the public health system
Criminalistion of teenagers who have sex
Purge of homosexuals from the teaching profession
Funding cuts for state schools in favour of christian schools
End of no fault divorce
Permanent ban on abortion (Ireland style)
Encouragement of victim blaming for rape
Repeal of SSM law
And a christian version of Sharia law.
+1
millsy
That list shows a definitely unhealthy obssession with sex and taking control of people’s lives. Christianity tends to encourage the individual to freely come to Jesus and make the right moral decisions. And many of the rules are I think meant to be guidelines and have been taken out of context and turned into strictures.
Shame on Colin Craig and all his add-ons. Lift your mindes and eyes from thinking about public (sic) areas and up to higher ideas such as showing kind and intelligent consideration and compassion of people’s travails in this confusing world. Follow Jesus’ teaching and reaching out to all.
That will leave you little time for witch hunting, stoning, punishing, and enforcing people who don’t receive your less than gracious approval. Cleanse your mind of a mental obssession with these practices (see wikipedia): Bondage & Discipline, Domination & Submission, Sadism … Just turn your mind to loving your fellow human being in a Jesus way. And I think Jesus was a good sort. Don’t you Colin and Co?
strong words and a summary execution g.
I wonder what his stance is on usury?
Both the old and new testament are pretty explicit about it being a no no.
That was mentioned on last weeks Citizen A, The panel was the both of them. Was Interesting and Hooten even made sense.
‘
Trevor Mallard . . . calling Trevor Mallard . . . come in, Trevor Mallard, you’re time is up.
@ mallard..i blame the too-tight lycra cycle-shorts..
..they seem to have constricted something..
..phillip ure..
Now it would seem would be a good time for the New Zealand Herald to re-brand itself so as to reflect the true nature of that shoddy rags political bias and leaning, the National Party NZHerald would seem more appropriate,
Audrey Young would have to win a ‘Golden Turd Award’ along with another for the Herald with today’s analysis of the politics of re-electing a National Government for a third term in 2014,
Centered around what appears to be the certainty of a ‘new’ electorate taking in parts of Auckland’s North Shore Young waxes long and lyrical on the chances of the Conservatives Colin Craig winning such a new electorate seat and thus providing the prop necessary to enable a third term for this National Government,
Recent polls mean nothing to Young as She wanders through the realms of fantasy talking up Craig as the savior of National despite current polling pointing out that for any 1% of support Craig can gather to His Conservatives there will be a corresponding loss of support from one of the Parties of the right, ACT having been bled dry over recent elections only leaves one party from which Craig’s Conservatives can cannibilize any amount of voter support to feature in numbers in the next Parliament, that Party of course is National itself, welcome to the right wing dog chasing it’s own tail,
The best i can add in support of the Heralds hiring practice as far as political journalists goes is to suspect them of hiring dumbies with deliberation and the only comment which saved this particular National Party advertorial from being at best a mediocre disgrace was the comment attributed to NZFirst’s Winston Peters apparently asked to comment on the Conservatives,
”Elephants don’t run round the forest stomping on ants”, unquote Winston Peters…
Who did Heralds work for?
The peasants, or the nobs?
I reckon the Herald has been honest, if subtle, in its branding….
Grime’s Fairy Tales
From Morning Report…..a report out concludes that software will be NZ’s biggest export earner in the next few years….the only thing holding it back is not enough skilled NZ workers!…(imo this should be easily remedied at high school and govt level)
…..pretty optimistic report and all the more reason TPPA should not be signed if it means signing away copyright and NZ’s high tech furture…
‘
Copyright is dead – long live the Pirates
All the arguments she makes there pretty much apply to patents as well. Patents no longer promote innovation but prevent it.
Yo hoe hoe, it’s a pyrite’s life for me.
Rogue Trooper
Is that another sort of exercise regime? It’s a bit of a stretch but I make it.
Thanks BLiP….very interesting link…..(probably I phrased above wrong ….I meant resisting signing whatever US corporates want NZ to adhere to regards copyright…thereby undermining NZ’s future development re tech industry)
‘
Heh! From one of the more on-to-it Failfax reporters, Kirsty Johnston:
nekminnit
. . . the plot thickens.
It wasn’t a DELIBERATE National MP warning to Len Brown and his team!!!
It was simply a casual THROWAWAY LINE to an independent city councillor.
Someone please pass me a Tui.
“was a very generic throwaway line about politicians and skeletons in the closet” . . .”
that’s different from what was reported yseterday. Yesterday the report was that he’d said the whaleoil was going to run astory. That was the rumour.
Read his comments now and he’s trying to gie the impression that he talked obiquely about the affair, which he hardly knew anything about other than what everyone knew.
The Hall of Hogwash
Exhibit No. 5: JIM MORA
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Without bashing poverty, ahhhh, you are saying that there is a demographic that is becoming poor because of addiction and alcohol issues…. uh, again, we’re not trying to bash people in poverty, but, uh, is there merit in making people more accountable for the money they make?”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
—Jim Mora, The Panel, Radio NZ National, Wednesday 23 October 2013
hogwash, n. 1. Worthless, false, or ridiculous speech or writing; nonsense; 2. Garbage fed to hogs; swill
hypocrisy, n. 1. the practice of professing standards, beliefs, etc., contrary to one’s real character or actual behaviour, esp. the pretence of virtue and piety; 2. an act or instance of this
More hogwash….
No. 4 JIM MORA: “The United States has been a bulwark against totalitarianism, hasn’t it.”
No. 3 JOHN KERRY: “The best way to give these negotiations a chance is to keep them private.”
http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Kerry-prolongs-trip-set-to-meet-Abbas-in-Ramallah-320386
No. 2 DAVID CAMERON: “We never support, in countries, the intervention by the military.”
No. 1 BARACK OBAMA: “Madiba’s moral courage…people standing up for what’s right….aaaahhhh, the yearning for justice and dignity…”
A NZ education entity conducting outdoor activities that are either compulsory or very hard to get out of, is fined a little for conducting an activity badly, negligently and ignorantly in dangerous conditions and the most dangerous way it could. Three people died, one a supposedly trained adult who should have been trained to Level 2 instead of Level 1 (though that would only make a difference if he was authorised to cancel if conditions were unsuitable). Two youngsters also died who were in the care of these careless people. The charge should have been manslaughter.
If parents do harm to their children, who they are bound to care for on a 24 hours basis, they are questioned, sanctioned, receive punishment. These education bods, who have the care of children for only a short time – and can choose to continue or to decide on alternative safe activity, or to return the youngsters to their parents and caregivers – receive a slap on the wrist.
The police showed more concern for their members when they did not allow them to go down the Pike mine. Apparently children, in the hands of these outdoor education n.zis, are disposable. And deaths have happened before when parents were forced to allow their children to take part. There was one kayaking case and possibly others. It is a disgrace that outdoor education is elevated to a sacred ritual and children are allowed to be sacrificed to it.
Interesting to read one of the ancients on training of children.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/plutarch-education.asp
Ancient History Sourcebook: Plutarch:
The Training of Children, c. 110 CE
Is this attitude to physical training of children influenced by the Spartan model?
The Spartans were famous for the fearsome training regime (agôgê) that they put all of their citizens through from age seven until they were aged about thirty, with the goal of making them ideal citizens and soldiers. The boys slept in a mess hall, on crude straw mats, and were given only a single garment, a cloak, to wear. They were trained to tolerate hunger and endure pain and physical discomfort, including being ritually beaten, and undertook physical exercise and training in the ancient martial arts.
http://philosophy-of-cbt.com/2013/05/08/how-spartan-were-the-stoics/
The beliefs expressed in the education of youngsters by Kurt Hahn (from the time that Outward Bound began) are worth reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Hahn
Hahn’s values: concern and compassion for others, the willingness to accept responsibility, and concern and tenacity in pursuit of the truth. Punishment of any kind is viewed as a last resort.
Also his Six Declines of modern youth and
Ten Expeditionary principles
Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outdoor_education
gw, do you prefer punishment over rehabilitation?
richard
What are we talking about? That question is open ended? Rehabilitation for whom after what?
Prevention is best so no necessity for rehabilitation. Punishment is not wrong, it however needs to be appropriate to the fault. It is better to make reparation the main response, rather than make punishment loom large.
Other thoughts. I don’t approve of forgiveness as a satisfactory way to react to a fault though it is a way that people may adopt to lessen the pain and hurt and ensuring it doesn’t turn to hate which is self-destructive.
It is better than living with hate to the wrongdoer, but I think change to prevent the fault recurring and a lifetime of reparation – striving to create good things in the community would be a better aim, then result in forgiveness.
Alan Seay and Willem de Lange ride roughshod over Kathryn Ryan
These radio “interviews” were as hopeless as it gets
National Radio, Wednesday 23 October 2013
Aficionados of crap television may recall a risible late Sunday night Prime TV special from 2008, a totally bogus “debate” about Global Warming. Two meek and exceedingly diffident scientists were on one side, i.e. the side of science, and were “opposed” by a rogue earth-scientist from Waikato University called Willem de Lange and believe it or not…. (you might want to sit down)…. NewstalkZB’s house clown, mad conspiracy theorist and science denier Leighton Smith, the closest thing this country has to Glenn Beck. The “chairman” of this travesty was Eric Young, a sports announcer.
Leighton Smith dominated the show. He did perhaps 70 per cent of the talking—or more precisely, shouting, scoffing and snarling—and continually interrupted whenever one of the two scientists tried to speak. They were obviously unprepared for anything like this; indeed, why should they have had to expect they would be confronted with anyone so deranged? Occasionally Smith’s “team mate” Willem de Lange started to speak, but Smith would almost always cut him off in order to resume ranting at the two shell-shocked scientists. Eric Young, who, remember, was supposed to be the “chairman”, looked baffled and unhappy throughout; possibly he was cursing whatever genius of a producer had landed him this gig.
It was a real low-point in New Zealand television history, right down there with Paul Holmes’s instruction to viewers to “prepare to go ballistic” at Māori [1], Helen Clark’s hopelessly inept hatchet man Brian Edwards going after Lynley Hood [2], and Andy Haden’s malignant “three darkies” allegation on Murray Deaker’s horror show. [3]
Of course, most of those involved on this late Sunday night black comedy deserved condemnation: the producers for even thinking of having Leighton Smith on to talk about something he knew nothing about; the two scientists for being so naïve as to expect Prime TV to have organized something serious; Willem de Lange for not only being a rogue scientist, but for letting himself be upstaged by a complete ignoramus; and of course Eric Young for his Joubertian failure to control a willful and cynical saboteur. Only Leighton Smith is beyond criticism; to chide him for hijacking a TV show and behaving like a halfwit would be like scolding an enraged elephant for going loco. It’s simply what he does.
So anyone who remembered that show will have been interested to learn yesterday that Kathryn Ryan’s producer had lined up Willem de Lange, the scientist who let Leighton Smith do all the talking, to comment on the Greenpeace oil spill report.[4] Before de Lange’s comments on the report, they brought on another “expert”, one Alan Seay, who is none other than the corporate affairs manager for the Texas oil giant Anadarko. Seay’s comments were possibly even more insulting and scurrilous than John Key’s were later in the day. Although de Lange was milder in tone, his mission was obviously to undermine the credibility of Greenpeace; sadly for him, he was about as authoritative and convincing as he was when he acted as understudy to Loopy Leighton five years before.
And that was that. There was no contradiction, or challenge, or demand for clarification. All that National Radio listeners were served up were two highly biased, extreme views by a rogue scientist and a savagely on-message corporate executive, both allowed to say anything they liked by an interviewer who was incapable of testing them. There are any number of credible, non-aligned, rigorous scientific commentators in this country. Instead we were subjected to Alan Seay and Willem de Lange.
The decline in quality and integrity of Radio New Zealand National is now at a critical point.
……………..
[1] Holmes’s rant was condemned at the time but was not mentioned by the likes of Brian Edwards in the eulogies for the great man earlier this year ….
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=3006313
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=3526611
[2] http://www.peterellis.org.nz/docs/2003/HoodComplaint/index.htm
[3] http://www.theroar.com.au/2010/05/28/crusaders-slam-hadens-racial-claims/
[4] http://www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/en/reports/New-Zealand-Oil-Spill-Report/
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go (though this be madness, yet there be method in it) 😀
RT
Wot the Great One reincarnated.
Slaine
i sometimes wonder about ryan..
..she is on record confessing she ‘watches far too much fox’…
..that is the only explanation i can come up with..
..osmosis/seepage..?
..and yeah..that uncritical arse-kissing of those two oil-pimps..
..that you refer to..
..was a nadir of sorts for both ryan and nat-rad….
..i’m surprised ryan didn’t finish with a rousing round of:
..’drill baby drill!’..
..phillip ure..
This secret crap has to bloomin well stop by ALL parties
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/9321684/Secret-bill-to-fix-mistake
Hell will we ever have a fully transparent GOVT?
WTF?
Implies it’s a drafting stuff up, which if left as is could result in court cases being lost.
Think of it as being like a software manufacturer spotting a vulnerability before a hacker exploits it, and closing it. I really doubt it’s anything else. Only interest is, what did they stuff up?
Sloppy work. I wonder if the original bill this is amending had the benefit of scrutiny in select committee, or was rammed through under urgency.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/9321684/Police-bill-to-fix-mistake
Seems they were incorrectly sworn in…….
Hope they havent arrested anyone if that is the case…….
[facepalm]
So did they arbitrarily think they could do it, or did the commissioner incorrectly believe those powers could be delegated? Why so few over 4 years – when do officers actually take the oath?
It only seems to have affected officers returning to the police force.
So, presumably the police have managed to correctly administer the oath for new officers. Also, they may have accidentally got it right for some returning officers. The 63 fraudulent officers are just the ones sworn wrong.
New officers are sworn in at Police Training School and so were done correctly.
previously the swearing in was done quite liberally. But changes were made.
But it seems something similar had happened before and legislation had to be
introduced to clear it up, so its quite shocking that the problem would arise again.
The problem is that Police central command did not authorize under the act person suitable to carry out the oath and so Police winged it as they thought the old liberal way was still, I mean think about it last year you gave the oath, so why not this year.
Its not the first time or the last time national have waste parliamentary time fixing up their poorly managed legislation.
I agree that is probably exactly how it has happened — local police have just muddled through without being aware that the rules have changed.
And now someone has checked what exactly a particular police role is authorised to do (say a new person in that role?) and thus A Cock Up has been discovered.
I am waiting to see what the reaction this retrospective validation will be, on the part of certain of the local trolls…
PARLIAMENT TO GO INTO URGENCY TODAY TO PASS A SECRET BILL TO FIX MISTAKE
Sorry for the caps, but this just up on Stuff
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/9321684/Secret-bill-to-fix-mistake
No-one is saying what the bill is about but something to do with the Police.
The House will go into urgency immediately after Question Time to pass all stages of the bill over the next 24 hours.
On the up side, this means that the TICS Bill will now not go through its third reading this afternoon and this will now not take place until the House sits in Nov as they are in a one week recess next week.
Ooops, see it is already up above.
From RadioNZ National news at Noon, Greenpeace are saying that charges of piracy have been dropped against it’s activists held in Russia, they will now be charged with Hooliganism a lesser but still jail-able crime,
GreenPeace will defend the new charges…
Hooliganism – a Russian word? The Irish should have put a trademark on it. It seems to be used quite a lot these days in the Soviets. How are the pop singers getting on. They are brave to stand up to the state.
The hooliganism charges will bring a 7 year sentence rather than a 10 year sentence. The Dutch will still sue in the international court for wrongful seizure on the high sea.
Bill from Dipton, the Minister of Finance is now said to be challenging Labour/Green/NZFirst/Mana to buy back the part sold assets in what seems a bizaare admission that He will no longer be part of a Government after November 2014,
Fair enough Bill, what we would need tho is one hell of a punitive ‘Bill English Tax’ to raise the necessary capital, hmmm, 70 cents in the dollar for the top 2% of the economy should just about do it, careful what you demand Bill you might just end up providing the steel in the Opposition camp which spurs them into doing it,
Russell Norman talking more sense than most as usual has pointed out to Bill that because of the shonky ‘creative accounting’ being indulged in by Slippery’s Government the Government acounts are going to be an unknown pile of debt until such time as the Opposition take over the Treasury Benches,
My opinion is that Russell is right on the money there, He can bank on the fact that when said books are opened there isn’t going to be any, money that is…
Just been perusing the 2013 MP’s (perks) expenses
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1310/S00243/ministers-expenses-1-july-2013-to-30-september-2013.htm
This has to stop
For the 1 July 2013 to 30 September 2013 period
Nearly a million $ from National alone
So Treasury thinks it’s a good idea to introduce a Capital Gains Tax and restrictions on foreign buyers as measures to curb rising house prices. They must be counting the days until we get rid of this useless bloody government just like the rest of us.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11145624
Peak in oil means what? Well housing needs to be near employment, as the cost of car use increases it stands to reason that more investment is needed to bring work closer to sprawling suburbs, intensify existing suburbs and build public transport systems. Or turn its over, around, and ask hwy housing? Why did the tenements houses get built? employers wanted employees near factories. In the modern economy we need home owners to move to where the work is. During cheap oil it was necessary to have a much more active housing market, so facilitating moving, buy out of the housing and then buying back in. But with the internet, even with the understanding of local supply of food is actually going to increase, and with the higher cost of transport, and high cost of housing in build warmer, dry homes, etc. The question has to be asked where’s the leadership, because National belief that we about to return to the brighter future of growth is just not, realistic.
Now the treasury wants CGT on homes, that would be far worse on the ability of employees to move to where the work is. Just as introducing a deposit on home buyers has been. Lowering the demand for homes has the negligent effect on the ability of employers to source from a large pool of staff, as the cost of moving home is increased. So WTF is National thinking, and the Treasury? A CGT is required to bring down prices and no CGT on the family homes is required to keep mobility up.
But hey, National and the economic NZ press are stupid, they don’t get why we need savers in NZ, small savers need a deposit guarantee, but National screwed the deposit guarantee by extending it to finance companies. Why is it so hard for our chattering classes to understand why the world has these policies, and why they can so easily be allowed to get away with the idea that we cannot afford it. Its clear that we cannot afford NOT to introduce a deposit guarantee, a basic non-taxable income band, a CGT tax but not on the family home. Its just makes so much sense to be in lock step with other comparable nations, and stop funneling the wealth into the hands of oversea investors.
Rental housing healthy homes bill drawn from ballot.
Good policy.
Good.
I dont rent but some of the places my friends rent are not @ all IMO suitable to rent out
This is long overdue
This is great news. Let’s hope Twyford can build a majority for the bill across the House.
Auckland Mayor Len Brown will retain his position as honorary president of a family values organisation despite his extra-marital affair with a woman 25 years his junior.
– You couldn’t make this stuff up
Alan Brookbanks – the council’s human resources director – is also the chairman of the board of the organisation.
– Always good to keep on the right side of your boss
“The essence of neoliberalism can be reduced to the following: government should be used exclusively
to help big business and the wealthy with tax cuts, subsidies, privatizations, anti-labor laws, etc., while all government programs that help working and poor people should be eliminated. It’s really that simple. “
The maths that saw the US shutdown coming.
Can a new mathematical model predict the endgame of empires? Peter Turchin says his work shows why the US is in crisis, and what will happen next
[…]
The richest continue to become richer: as in many complex systems, whether in nature or in society, existing advantage feeds back positively to create yet more. The rest of the elite fight it out, with rival patronage networks battling ever more fiercely. “There are always ideological differences, but elite overproduction explains why competition becomes so bitter, with no one willing to compromise,” Turchin says. This means the squabbling in Congress that precipitated the current shutdown is a symptom of societal forces at work, rather than the primary problem.
In Turchin’s theory, such political acrimony is paralleled by rising discontent among workers left with less and less, and increasing state bankruptcy as spending by the elite who control the government coffers spirals. Ultimately, the situation gets so bad that order cannot be maintained and the state collapses. A new cycle begins.
And that’s an excellent reason to have all your own citizens under surveillance, federalise the state national guard, and to operate drones and paramilitary units throughout the country.
Turchin elaborates.
It is no coincidence that the life of Communism (from the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989) coincides almost perfectly with the Great Compression era. The Red Scares of, firstly, 1919—21 and then 1947—57 suggest that US elites took the Soviet threat quite seriously. More generally, the Soviet Union, especially in its early years, aggressively promoted an ideology that was highly threatening to the political-economic system favoured by the US elites. Reforms that ensured an equitable distribution of the fruits of economic growth turned out to be a highly effective counter to the lure of Bolshevism.
Nevertheless, when Communism collapsed, its significance was seriously misread. It’s true that the Soviet economy could not compete with a system based on free markets plus policies and norms that promoted equity. Yet the fall of the Soviet Union was interpreted as a vindication of free markets, period. The triumphalist, heady atmosphere of the 1990s was highly conducive to the spread of Ayn Randism and other individualist ideologies. The unwritten social contract that had emerged during the New Deal and braved the challenges of the Second World War had faded from memory.
http://www.aeonmagazine.com/living-together/peter-turchin-wealth-poverty/
That’s what I’ve been saying. Now the USA has no moral constraints, and puts up Christian billboards along its Avenues to hide the poverty of mind behind.
+1
Mind you considering his past comments I guess its not surprising…
humourous follow-up.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/10/23/1517237/aca-health-exchange-contractors-have-history-of-security-failures
Is this the same Serco that has had massive issues in the UK, and is running our private prisons? I’d wager so
Fiendishly complicated too.
http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/what-kind-problem-aca-rollout-liberalism
Chris Trotter has got his mojo back
But not such good news about a couple of others
The Panel, Radio NZ National, Thursday 24 October 2013
Jim Mora, Michael Deaker, Chris Trotter
PART ONE OF TWO
In the lead-up to this show, host Jim Mora said they would be discussing “the ethical question of drones versus poison gas”. No sign of any such discussion in the first half of the program; instead, they talk with Brian Gaynor of Milford Asset Management about the National Government’s catastrophic (for the National Government) failure to flog off the publicly owned Meridian Power for more than the lowest possible price. Michael Deaker has no patience for Bill “Double Dipton” English‘s ridiculous claim that Labour and the Greens have “sabotaged” the flog-off and that the poor will suffer. Deaker slams the hapless Double Dipper’s rhetoric as “crass”.
.….4:30 news…..
After the news and weather, the gorgeous harmonies of Simon and Garfunkel play for twenty seconds or so. This is to introduce the next topic, some study that has found what music is best for soothing hurt feelings. Pop music is best, apparently, then classical (Beatles, Stones), then rock, then “indie”. Best tunes to lift the spirits of the depressed are “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, “Angels” by Robbie Williams and “Easy” by the Commodores. That’s odd, because whenever I hear Robbie Williams, I want to kill myself. Unless Robbie Williams himself were to be in striking distance, of course.
JIM MORA: What would our Panelists like to talk about? Michael Deaker on the program, along with Chris Trotter. Michael, what’s on your mind today?
Michael Deaker has a pleasant chat about how well behaved today’s Otago University students are. Contrary to what Family Fist and the S.S. Trust keep saying, kids are getting better. He scorns the dishonest nostalgia about the policeman in the old days who used to give kids a clip over the ear. “We had a bobby on a bike when I was a kid, but he was an old buffoon who everybody laughed at.”
MORA: Ha ha ha ha ha! Michael Deaker on the Panel! Chris Trotter with him! Chris, what have you been thinking about?
CHRIS TROTTER: Yes, well, I’d just like to draw your attention to the sentencing of TOPEC. The judge did not fine them! And even one of the families lamented the actual dealing out of justice. We do seem to give a pass to these sorts of organizations which we wouldn’t give to anyone else. Three young people died there. Then there were the five young people who died in the central North Island a few years before that. The people running these places should have faced the closing of their operation. I just wish New Zealanders were as absolutely keen on building the intellectual ability of their kids as they are on the physical. These outdoor activities like shooting down chasms and abseiling—-I’ve NEVER SEEN what that does for anybody apart from scaring them witless. It’s extreme and dangerous and should be closed. The judge says he wasn’t going to fine them. Well, I think you should have, Judge! There is a price everyone pays. I think we’re too fond of giving a pass to such organizations.
After some recent ethical lapses by Trotter, this was a welcome speech. This was the Chris Trotter we expect to hear: clear, forthright and moral. Obviously, if he was in this frame of mind, he was not going to say anything depraved or idiotic in the Gas versus Drones discussion.
There would, however, be more depravity and moral idiocy on display during the next five minutes than you’d find at an ACT Party fundraiser, a Destiny Church march or a S.S. Trust rally. It came from a couple of people, one of them a professor of legal ethics…..
END OF PART ONE.
Matt McCarten Radio Live Today – select 14.45 today – claims Jason Ede is the Nat’s black ops person, who orchestrated the Cam Slater, Brown smear. MMcM alleges that JE ghost writes for KB & WO blogs.
Matthew Hooton hits the roof in response.
Curious, because on Citizen A tonight, Selwyn Manning & Chris Trotter reckoned there was stuff known to the MSM journalists, and stuff SM & CT know also, that the MSM can’t publish because they have no definite proof – also to do with Nat’s machinations over the Len Brown smear.
So, I am curious to know what so many others know, so I can try to judge the truth of it.
Jason Ede? Far fetched?
“Steady Eddy.”
@ karol
The most interesting comment to come out of that conversation was Selwyn Manning’s reference to … “the police should look into it” or words to that effect. From my own previous experiences, that suggests to me things like… illegal eavesdropping, searching of personal records without authority, and other variants of spying practices by individuals who may not be lawfully authorised to carry out such activity.
I suspect Mr. Key’s top drawer might be bulging – but no questions would have been asked of course.
And there’s the mentions of “blackmail” re the Len brown affair.
Bryce Edwards twitter feed is interesting on the Ede issue.
Edit: Ah, I see what the “Steady Eddie” reference above means.
He appeared to be all over the blogs maybe 4 years ago.
OK I’ve just come back from a Labour type meeting where raising the retirement age to 67 was discussed (again), on the basis that it would make our super system “sustainable”.
This remit is, politely put, a load of hogwash. The sustainability justification for it is based on a number of false premises.
I’m going to repeat this ad nauseum between now and Conference in the hope that some people will figure it out.
1) NZ Super is paid out in NZ dollars. NZD are merely highly accepted IOUs which can be traded for goods and services. The NZ Government is the sole creator of NZ dollars in the world. Therefore, the NZ Government need never run out of NZ dollars to pay NZ super with. If it wishes, it is fully capable of paying out NZ Super at age 65 without any fiscal limitations, no matter how big the baby boom bulge is.
2) We are entering an economy where while there is plenty of work to be done, there will be less and less of it structured in paid jobs. Today, workers noticeably out number jobs. And I expect this trend to worsen. The last thing we need is to swell the numbers looking for work with those aged 66, 67 while up to 30% of our young people are unemployed. We need to be giving people the option to move on from the workforce, not try and keep them there (when there aren’t enough jobs around anyway).
3) The real question around “sustainability” is whether or not we will have an economy with the level of real resources and productivity to deliver the standard of living and care which will be required by our retired citizens. No one is asking this question and it is the only relevant question.
Bottom line: raising the retirement age weakens the NZ social security system, and the rationale for doing so (‘financial sustainability’) is underpinned by false assumptions. Labour – do NOT raise the retirement age, if you are going to do anything with the age, REDUCE it.
As a note – if Stephen Joyce says that there is no problem keeping the retirement age at 65 but Labour is keen as mustard to raise it, something is very, very wrong.
“The NZ Government is the sole creator of NZ dollars in the world. Therefore, the NZ Government need never run out of NZ dollars to pay NZ super with. If it wishes, it is fully capable of paying out NZ Super at age 65 without any fiscal limitations, no matter how big the baby boom bulge is.”
Yes and no, this is childlike economics and fiscals, even I as a socialist find this a bit simplistic, no this would not work like this, unless you change the rest of the world to sing from the same song sheet. I am waiting for that, have been for 20 or so years. Learn fiscal and economic realities before you post such naive stuff, please. Printing money is not a solutions, it can be at times, but not like this, stupid!
Waiting for the rest of the world to become sane isn’t really an option.
This is a message to NZ students, to “bad12” and those that like to get at me, as I admittedly express serious frustration and disappointment with the lack of action and activity in New Zealand, and me having called a lot of New Zealanders “cowards”! I stand by my position, and NZ and people here, especially students and workers leave a lot to be desired and better learn, wake up and take bloody action.
We have experiences in Chile and other countries worth studying, and I recommend this following video from Al Jazeera:
“Fault Lines: Chile Rising”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu4tPw5ND7M
If you want a failed education system, and that is what this government is pursuing, under Key and gang, and by one corrupt and lying John Banks and his despiccable ACT Party, look at this.
Viva Chile, viva la revolution Chileno, and that is a lesson of history to learn, and I do not need to be told by Kiwis here, about my rants, my anger, and so forth. I see failure on the left here, a lack of action, a lack of competency and more, and you can disprove me by taking action and do what is needed! I am waiting for your action, not just relying on a new Labour leader, to do the job for you. Get going. I made a point and decision, I am now taking at least 2 and a half hours a week, to go out, to put up a sign, and to take a stand and protest.
I suggest every individual with genuine concern do the same, and society will chance. Sitting at home, in front of a computer, consulting the keyboard may be ok, but it is likely to change fuck all.
Good luck! X
Yes well if you call people cowards and stupid i am sure they will be rushing to join you on the barricades, Lolz viva la X revolution,
The little movie script in my head titled ‘In the shadow of Che’ the sun strikes X as he exhorts his mass movement of followers with cries of ‘cowards’ and idiots’ to storm the local WINZ office peacefully in a revolutionary manner overpowering the forces of evil in the form of the lone security guard,
Lolz, have fun on the front line X,don’t forget to get lots of sleep…
Making kiwi saver compulsory and refunding the cullen fund capital gains tax land tax would ensure sustainability.
Their will be less work less jobs
New technology will see to that.
Michael Cullen’s two initiatives showed Hey understood the needs of New Zealands future.
While Key English Joyce do nothing aproach are guaranteeing a future of poverty.
You can make KiwiSaver compulsory, but you need structures which prevent Wall St from using the resulting billions to make bets with. Fund management by the NZ Government is the way ahead.
There should be no Kiwi Saver, as it undermines solidarity and the true social agenda. There should be ONE super scheme and none, else, and in this I even give Winston some credit re what he has thought out.
Kiwi Saver allows people to “individualise” retirement income, and that means division, and it will lead to divison, like “I paid my share”, “you did not”, kind of thing. I fear that is what most want, but it will only add to social division, and not provide for truly collective care and solutions. But then again, I know, Labour do not want a truly “social” scheme anyway, and so they are “Soft Nats” after all, no matter what smart talk. Exposed again!
/agreed
Fuck yeah.
Also: KiwiSaver isn’t a savings scheme. It’s a forced investment scheme.
No revolution or change will work without cultural inspiration, eg. with sprited popular music:
Ilapu – Vuelvo, home coming, spirited song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8y_0y-cT5g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8ZFi0MvGf0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXRTfOy4EVY
This is amongst some of the best from Chile, way back and so, but what else can you ask for.
All talk about some deals in NZ government, share sales, this and that, corruption, all that may work to convince the electorate for a change. But the damned “electorate” will not change much in “mindset”, most are ignorant ill informed and indifferent about most, only interested in self promotion.
I am waiting for a RADICAL awakening and change in the mentality in NZ, otherwise we will just continue the every so often change from one to the other, back to the other, kind of bull shit, and that is what Labour are working on again right now. I have NO trust in them and will vote Green or further LEFT.
Best of wishes and luck, THINK, please, if you can bother, please!
But we NEED music and CULTURE to make things work, without that there is NO spirit, not one for change at all anyway. Listen!