She lives near Selkirk where the great Sir Walter Scott author of “Ivanhoe”, “Rob Roy” and the “Waverley” novels. He was Provost of Selkirkshire for a time, and the author Jack Prout and illustrator of “Black Bob” (the Dandy wonder dog) was from Selkirk as well, living in what is now the butchers shop, next to the Court rooms (now museum) where Scott wrote his novels! The town want to erect a statue of Black Bob, But the Dandy, which is published in Dundee, wont give copywrite.
There must be something in the water around Selkirk.
Clearly plenty of profit in road maintenance contracts. Might explain why our roads are littered with cones and diversions for unnecessary work and why efficient public transport seems unlikely any time soon.
Fletcher Building Group’s infrastructure revenue has sustained the company through nearly $1 billion in losses over the last two years.
There was a piece on the new last night, where councils/rate payers are having to spend some millions (in the north?) to strengthen bridges for the ‘double sized’ logging trucks on the roads.
The NZTA are paying a proportion.
It struck me that WHY aren’t the logging companies paying the WHOLE cost of the strengthening?
The article you mentioned also included some HB road bridges also and they are using tractors to cart some of the logs across soe of these brades as the overweight trucks are now allowed to roam every road in the country without restrictions.
NZTA said they warned the local councils about the extra weighted trucks now about to carry much higher weighted loads freely in 2017.
The article said.It is wrecking our roads and bridges that were never designed for 63 tonne trucks so we are in for very heavy increased road repairs ahead now and Labour knows this..
We the other road users and ratepayers are subsidising the road transport industry and this was confirmed in several studies posted on yesterdays ‘open mike’ about public subsidises for road freight.
CEO spokesperson for TRF (The road transport forum) Ken Shirley has even raised a warning recently that road freight raies wil rise again.
So that is why they want rail gone or closed down, so they have complete ‘cartel’ pricing control to allow them to again freely raise freight rates/costs without us all having any other form of ‘land transport’ to offer a cheaper freight services to us and the business community.
Hell yes and it’s virtually a 3-way with Fulton’s and downer Laughing all the way to the bank. They plunder across central and regional funding.
Shoulders and surfaces are a disgrace as a result of nationals double whammy with extra tonnage and RONS siphoning from pre existing maintenance allocations.
We gave up expecting rural and state highways to be back at about 2012 levels years ago.
WDC can’t even keep sewage from raglan harbour and moan about that and only having a single grader for their entire region. So it’s third world shit literally imo.
” nationals double whammy with extra tonnage and RONS siphoning from pre existing maintenance allocations.”
A very good reason for the current coalition to reverse both those changes. That is, get the extra heavy vehicles off our roads which are not equipped to deal with them, and cancel any RoNS that do not provide a significant benefit to their region.
This is what happens when the you lose control of your assets and businesses. You are at the mercy of ownership changes and what have looked like a good deal at the time, becomes worse and worse as time goes on and subsequent new owners, changes in economy, come knocking.
Culture and people becomes controlled by the decisions of asset owners, the legal system and changes in government who control the legal system. Even if someone wins, it becomes about the quality of the lawyers and money is diverted into legal action, stress of that and massive loss in quality of life.
Taharoa tensions: Community fights back amid claims of corporate greed at mine
People in the UK are rejecting globalism via privatisation because their government lost control of their basic needs and costs rise steadily to keep the profits rolling in.
“In 1996, the Ministry of Defence decided to sell off its housing stock. The financier Guy Hands bought it up in a deal that would make his investors billions – and have catastrophic consequences for both the military and the taxpayer”
I was looking at the New Zealand top ten rich lists for the last few years…. checking something out.
One year stuck out ……as 5 in the top 10 NZ cash accumulators …. were people who had made a lot of money through privatizations and their gaining control of former Government / citizens assets.
Specifically they were …
Michael Fay & David Richwhite .. BNZ (wine-box), railways, port of Auckland etc etc
Graeme Hart ..from wiki : “gained a big break when he purchased the Government Printing Office for less than its capital value in 1990.”
And our two Chandler Bro’s … who were in on the Russian Neo Lib, shock doctrine carve up … When their country was leaderless under the useless drunk and western stooge Boris Yelstin…
The chandler brothers make a point of claiming morals and ethics in business … Yet they run their business empires through tax havens … and became the largest foreign owners of Gazprom and other Russian resources / infrastructure … when a looting was taking place in a criminals paradise.
The results for the Russian people from western Neo Lib, crony capitalist shock doctrine were dire … a 40% collapse of their economy …. and almost a 10 year decline in life expectancy for males.
Leaving aside my opinion that a enriched oligarch class .. making millions or billions from privatisation of state assets..is an indication of corruption.
Instead I’m interested in What are The Standard readers and poster opinions…
Regarding New Zealands worst privatisations or asset stripping
Your choice for … the most disastrous …. destructive ….or biggest rip-offs.
There’s a lot to choose from … like …
Telecom … where profit gouging, and abuse of monopoly positions followed its sale.
BNZ … bailouts and tax evasion .. big loans to share-holders / new owners.
The electricity industry and networks … rampant price increases .. for electricty generated by hydro schemes we’ve had for decades…. underinvestment … Auckland blackout ..profit shifting via tax havens ,,,, etc
DOC land give aways …. “The government privatizes a state-owned asset for $265,000. Four years later, a small part of it gets flicked on for $10 million. A tale from some corrupt African nation, or from post-Soviet Russia? No, its from New Zealand ”
Some quotes / info from Joe90’s link /nomination …. showing a huge rip off.
“The chain of custody went like this; the taxpayer gave up its land for an effective rate of $190 per hectare, which was on-sold for $51,800 per hectare, which was on-sold again for $70,000 per hectare.
The capital gain over a decade was roughly 37,000 per cent, none of which was realised by the taxpayer, and has ultimately put a prime piece of land into the private ownership of an America-based billionaire”
” data released under the Official Information Act, shows the taxpayer has paid nearly $65m to privatise land it owned, which in some cases has been on-sold for significant capital gain, pushing up property prices at the taxpayer’s expense.”
“the taxpayer paid $18,000 for one-third of a hectare by the road. It effectively bought back land it had sold for an effective rate of $15 per hectare in 2004 for what amounts to $55,000 per hectare in 2017. The capital gain on that small section of land was 366,000 per cent.”
“In her 2008 book on tenure review, Who Owns the High Country?, Ann Brower described her research topic as “unravelling the puzzle of why a government would behave so strangely”….
The whole thing stinks worse than Todd Barclay …
Foreign ownership rules … a large speculators tax…. stopping the buying of our citizenship … And redressing the original theft of the land from Maori … Are all needed in this instance … imo
Yep +1 Joe, excellent example. But the blame should also go to the people involved in selling the land off in the first place – why don’t people be censored for their actions of clear breaches – at present they are not named and shamed and just get away with it.
Local council reps are also often deep in it, when council land goes super cheap, often offshore buyers and often without even being put out to tender or ratepayers realising what has happened.
Good points all …. but in some instances it’s more than just money involved.
Watching this fascinating documentary I was struck by the dangerous corner cutting in a privately run human drug trial….. a lot of it looked to be about cost cutting.
The powerful love privatisation and deregulation in particular banks and politicians. It’s where they get their money.
How often do ex politicians end up on the board of the companies they privatise, on bank boards, infrastructure companies (now they have COO’s all the better more opportunities to be a corporate trougher) or on the board of new companies entering NZ that want access to the plumb deals of assets sells offs and preferential government deals.
In fact very few large companies don’t have an ex politician on tap to grease the path of those deals.
About time politicians are not allowed to double dip – should be 20 years before an ex political joins a board of directors. They already get generous benefits post their politician career as well as the plumb overseas posts.
In particular John Key should be banned from his ANZ directorship …. for a double conflict of interest.
ANZ has approx 30% of NZs bloated mortgage lending …..
If the cartel of Aussie banks put up Mortgage rates to 10% …. they would crash the housing market … along with our economy …. and the Govt would be gone within 12 months.
John Key would love to bring about the downfall of the Labour led Government … That’s conflict one.
And Key loves making money ….for himself above all else …. a crashed housing market would allow him to buy at depressed prices ….. conflict two.
Personally I’d give him a job as a NZ river water taster ….. make him drink his toxic legacy.
I’d like to see him off the Board of Air NZ too. Quite apart from the crony capitalism effect – in other countries people who use their power & position to assault others are being removed from those positions. here we appoint our pony tail puller to the board of a state owned enterprise – what do you think other people think of us??
Don’t forget Merryl Lynch did the assets sell offs too Mighty River Power, Meridian Energy, Genesis Energy and Air New Zealand, and apparently the sale price is already lower than than it’s income. What a bargain for the buyer. So Key wins, Merryl Lynch wins, the buyer wins, and the public loses.
“Merryl Lynch did the assets sell offs too Mighty River Power, Meridian Energy, Genesis Energy”
And what evidence do you have for this claim?
I trust it is a bit more than you imagination and wild hatred of John Key.
Treasury don’t seem to know anything about it do they? http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1305/S00407/firms-appointed-for-meridian-and-genesis-ipos.htm
Merrill Lynch may have been interested in the work but they were not chosen to have any involvement in the sale.
savenz may have been over reaching through confusion on Merrill Lynch … aka ” The Blundering Herd”.
Easy to do with John Keys old firm and its sordid long history of scandal and scams ..
Known for its Enron involvement and corporate tax base erosion, as described by Irish John himself ….
eventually its boozy greed blinded culture lead to it being the third cab off the rank …. in going bankrupt at the start of the GFC.
Key of course was prime minister at this time,… with the excuse he had got out before Merrill ‘went bad’ …. the truth of how much he had ‘gotten out’ depends on how many Merrill shares he had divested himself of….
Merrill got bailed out…. via a Govt forced take over by Bank of America ….
So Key got bailed out ….. its how he got his bank of America shares …
How many millions did this dud investor receive courtesy of usa taxpayers ???
and why do you think it has never been reported on in our media Alwyn ?…….. Teflon melting? ” … to boring? …. fear ? “, .
Key, regarding his crooked lawyer or something ….; “reporters “you guys were very careful last night, I think, in your coverage of these matters: the reason you were is because you don’t want to get your asses sued off you”. ”
And how come no reporters questioned this bully,,,,, on the administration of his ‘Blind Trust’ … with their wine box / tax haven connections ??
Or the virtual media blackout of his Tax haven work …. ” Quote : “In fact, what is even better news is that this is receiving little publicity in New Zealand – which means there is a higher likelihood the PM will nudge it through without too much meddling from the country’s left wing camp.”
Our dirty little right wing media …. guardians of the Key myth
Additional interesting info ….
Merrill destroyed approx 45 Billion of wealth in eye watering time … poisoned on its own toxic products and bullshit book keeping. Criminal creativity.
As repayment to the USA Govt / taxpayers for their bailout and TARP money …. The Bank of America will increase its numbers of shares from approx 7.5 Billion to 10 Billion odd and use some of the extras as settlement.
All of them share evidence of making things worse for the general population while having made a few individuals very rich which is itself prima facie evidence of corruption.
What we should be doing is asking what we could have done with all those profits that the profiteers have made off with. With Telecom we could have FttH across the country with unlimited bandwidth on all devices. Maybe we could have built up the infrastructure enough that communications bills would be down to $10 per month per household.
It a question that needs to be asked: What could we have done with all the profit?
All of us would have been better off instead of just a few. This is the proof that profit is a dead-weight loss. It causes more harm than benefit.
*** THREAD ***Let me explain how Paul Manafort's #TrumpRussia indictments are rolling rapidly from election inference into a replay of the Jack Abramoff scandal, but on STEROIDS, involving the secretive sale of American foreign policy for dark money.https://t.co/yfIGsub116pic.twitter.com/gGejl1G1zF— Grant Stern (@grantstern) February 23, 2018
*** THREAD ***
Let me explain how Paul Manafort's #TrumpRussia indictments are rolling rapidly from election inference into a replay of the Jack Abramoff scandal, but on STEROIDS, involving the secretive sale of American foreign policy for dark money.https://t.co/yfIGsub116pic.twitter.com/gGejl1G1zF
Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort was hit with new charges on Friday, including an allegation he secretly recruited and funded a group of former European politicians to lobby in the United States on behalf of Ukraine.
[…]
The most significant allegation is that Manafort assembled what he called a “Super VIP” group of highly influential Europeans who could push Ukraine’s agenda “without any visible relationship” with the Ukrainian government, according to an email obtained by Mueller.
Manafort paid the politicians 2 million euros from offshore accounts in 2012 and 2013 to lobby members of Congress and other U.S. officials. It’s illegal for Americans to direct foreigners to lobby the U.S. without informing the Justice Department.
The so-called “Hapsburg Group” was managed by a former European chancellor, who was not named in the indictment.
One thing I’m supportive of here is having similar rules for money in politics here that the US has. Make it illegal for foreign money to be used in NZ politics. Make it illegal for foreigners (including foreign businesses and governments) to have any influence in our country.
“ Make it illegal for foreigners (including foreign businesses and governments) to have any influence in our country.”
You mean like the UN, Greenpeace, Oxfam, various American & Australian born Politicians, etc, etc?
I could live with that.
So if a NZ citizen is operating on behalf of your foreign organisation it is ok then?
And why should we differentiate between a corporate & a charity? They all push their own agenda, and are all potentially as corrupt and self-serving as each other.
In the case of the UN, even more so.
The UN is an international body made up of the governments of the world. The agreements that they come to are, technically, the agreements that we want. And they’re even agreements that we don’t have to implement.
And, after all that, it really doesn’t seem to have as much influence as business does. Now, here’s an interesting question: Can you point to any influence that the UN has in NZ?
Who’s the fool here? “Semantics” means the meaning of words. Charities and commercial organisations have separate names because they have separate meanings, so yes, semantics. The meanings of words are important.
When are charities not a charity as increasingly there are charity trusts from politicians and rich listers and questionable religions which are really lobby groups to keep the deregulation agenda or some pocket of religion going with extra tax benefits.
Even legitimate charities now follow a trend of putting in ‘corporate’ managers who have little interest in the charity itself, more a tick on their CV (ran Red Cross) with massive donations but little being shown for it for the people who are supposed to get the charity.
Then there are charities that seem more like some sort of scam.
Not only that but apparently overseas charities often attract a small percentage of pedophiles and the like. Yikes…
It’s hard to be a charity these days, because so many are taking advantage of the term.
erm – as board member of a trust that’s in the process of getting registered charity status, I have to declare a conflict of interest 🙂
Yes, oversight on political activities including donations needs to be increased.
But small charities funded in part by local grants can demonstrate a need for a service. And then when you’re in the arts and culture field, there’s no reason the Lower Corstophine Community Hippy Cultural Appropriation Society needs to be operated by a government department just to make teepees and those lantern balloon things for one or two events a year.
Now, if it turns into a massive thing and hippy cultural appropriation societies pop up all over the place, maybe they could do with an umbrella body and direct govt funding. But small local projects need some sort of entity to operate under if you want them to last longer than the interest of one person.
That, eliminate anonymous funding and because our political processes are public, require public disclosure of the financial interests of everyone participating.
‘Hapsburger’……..the New Swamp Nothingburger ? Strange (it’s not of course) that Trump surrounded himself with crooks.
Things are gonna get furious when the presidential pardons start. Will it be then that Trump code-calls the MAGA Deplorables and the NRA (not to forget the “very fine” ‘Blood and Soil’ fascists) to deploy vengeful violence on fellow Americans ?
Would not have thought it possible once. Not so sure now.
Hi North … Drumpf cannot pardon any individual on offences charged within individual states which is how most of these against Manafort and Gates have been laid. Mueller is one of the smartest men in USA, and has brilliant attorneys working with him.
Manafort and Gates charges laid in two separate districts in fact. Think they can’t outwit the Carrot ?? My money is 1000 to 1 on Bobby Three Sticks !
Rachel Maddow on MSNBC has the clearest and finely articulate breakdown and interviews if you are interested … http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show . She goes to air each weeknight in US at 9 pm so it is free online at this link each day from about 5pm NZ. (Currently top cable news in USA due to her coverage on these subjects. (So good to see this acuity and intelligence on TV !!)
I reckon Manafort’s a small fish so they’re squeezing him with layer upon layer of charges until he coughs up the big fish.
edit: Abramson has a crack
(THREAD) This thread includes all you need to know—including key context others aren't reporting—about today's breaking news: Rick Gates' guilty plea.
This is the third guilty plea by a major Trump campaign figure—putting Mueller on Trump's doorstep. Hope you'll read and share. pic.twitter.com/0gvwF4OkoI
Having sex with prostitutes when it is legal. Not allowed for aid workers. What is this about? There seems to be some sort of unreasoned moral uprising, purity patrol. It is hard work, sex has always been a relief, a small, fleeting pleasure and it is disgraceful that charities are starting to become inhuman in their regard to their workers. It sounds like an edict from above, from someone who has been an administrator too long, a bit like David Shearer coming back here from UN aid work and finding people not completely helpless in dire distress, objects of disdain.
There was a very good book written by aid workers just behind the firing line which gives the picture you only get fragments of in reports about overseas aid.
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Sex_and_Other_Desperate_Measures
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, by Heidi Postlewait, Kenneth Cain and Doctor Andrew Thomson, is the memoir of three young people who join the United Nations (UN) in Cambodia with a dream of making the world a better place. Set in the 1990s, the book was published in 2004. Thomson is a New …
…every kind of child sexual abuse and exploitation imaginable…
Ms Csaky declined to name the 23 organisations implicated but said they were across the “full spectrum” of aid agencies, NGOs, peacekeeping forces and UN agencies.
Mr Daccord said that it was the recent reports of sexual misconduct from humanitarian agencies that had spurred the Geneva-based ICRC to conduct an internal review.
Its code of conduct has explicitly forbidden the purchase of sexual services since 2006….
I suggest that this is unreasonable as a blanket negative. It treats sex as something bad in itself, and doesn’t differentiate between child and adult partners. It contains its own moral hazard by not differentiating.
Also it is not against human dignity to have sex between consenting adults – this sort of talk is just prudish and irrational. Women who earn their living by being paid for sex are not in an ideal work situation, but it deserves better standing than being a mercenary soldier. Also when women have to get enough money to live, it is something to resort to, though a cleaning job is preferable; both are major female occupations. Seen in an understanding and compassionate mode, it can become a necessity and if a mother, then she is performing a noble action in sacrificing her personal inviolability to get necessities for her family.
The middle class aid salaried workers may never get personally close enough to this sort of poverty and distress to reach an understanding of the world beneath the grassroots. The ones at the top who make their pronouncements may have become saturated in management speak and elite levels of behaviour, seeing people as pawns represented by coloured markers on a map of their area of interest.
I said that aid workers going to prostitutes should be satisfactory. The prostitutes receive money, it is their job. Surely that isn’t hard to understand. The aid workers shouldn’t be blackmailing women for sex so that they can receive aid, they should be paying for what is a personal service.
And Brigid this is not a discussion about equality of the sexes. I don’t know where the female aid workers go for sex. If they can find an outlet for their own desires good on them. This is real, hard reality and people managing the best they can and hopefully fairly and with respect for each other even harsh conditions.
I am suggesting that making a difficult job more unpleasant because of rigid rules which ban any sexual interaction at all, and treats it as an ignoble and immoral action open to disgust and retribution by the employer is irrational and unfair.
The genesis of the issue is the (seven years later!) allegations made against Roland van Hauwermeiren, that while he was working in Haiti for Oxfam he paid for sex.
From there, a broader spotlight has fallen across the aid sector.
And I’d guess there are aid workers perpetrating all manner of abuses.
But I don’t believe for a second that crippling the likes of Oxfam and handing their government funding to outfits like Adam Smith International will make any difference for the better.
Timeline: 2004: Roland van Hauwermeiren is asked to leave his job at Merlin.
2007: Corinna Csaky report (See link at 7.1) criticises a wide ranging group of NGOs.
2011: Roland van Hauwermeiren resigns as head of mission in Haiti.
Then nothing for six years.
2017/18: News media frenzy attacking Oxfam.
I think you’re both right. The original allegations were far wider than consensual transactions, and, I suspect the genesis of the current media interest is far more likely to be the stuff Bill’s talking about: hostility towards advocacy in the developed world.
Original allegations happened in the context of wider historical problems within aid agencies around abuse (it’s not like van Hauwermeiren started this).
van Hauwermeiren’s allegations happened in the context of issues broader than consensual sex.
There’s something else going on with the current media reporting and focus on Oxfam.
I have said that the situation would be clearer if the aid agency did not say that all sex on the job with people from the work area was to be banned.
That is my point, because it clouds the issue. There is a fault in aid workers having sex with youngsters classed as children in the law of the country or against the law of the aid workers’ countries. Then there is also the problem of aid workers apparently trading aid for sex. I
Context is important here and needs to be seen as being so, to adequately discuss your issue as referred to at 11.11am OAB. .
And I started this thread. I was talking about having sex where it is legal. Haiti has been brought into it where it is illegal. That is another country.
And turning it into an abuse of power as a point. It is great for the comfortably off to have an impassioned discussion about this, with final agreement some time later that it would be better to have a no-sex rule so as not to run the risk of this. But even that is an abuse of power. The persons with the resources can afford to have long discussions when they are not in great need of the basics.
In the meantime there are people who could be doing good and being helpful to people in distress who would be happy to be treated with respect as well as aid, and who are not concerned if someone has sex with another adult and pays for it. So your academic discussions can be another barrier to being truly helpful and lack a listening ear to what people on the receiving end of aid want, and not what others say they want.
“And I started this thread. I was talking about having sex where it is legal. Haiti has been brought into it where it is illegal. That is another country.”
Well maybe you could tell us what you are talking about then, because if it’s not in reference to the Oxfam case it’s not apparent what you mean. Who has said that people can’t have sex?
It says in the quote I put up that it is from the ICRC and in the link address it says red cross. I am sorry that I didn’t spell that out for everyone.
This matter of sex on the job is emerging as a problem for all the aid agencies not just for Oxfam and I am pointing that out, and I think Oxfam might have exactly the same rigid rules as the Red Cross but am not sure about that.
I won’t say anything else now as I have made a point that I think is relevant and fair and others can pick it to bits if they wish.
So I still don’t know what you are talking about. You appear to be saying that aid agencies have rules that say their workers aren’t allowed to have sex. I would be highly surprised if that is true, but by all means put up something that shows that.
This is from my second comment. greywarshark 7.1.1
25 February 2018 at 10:29 am
Mr Daccord said that it was the recent reports of sexual misconduct from humanitarian agencies that had spurred the Geneva-based ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] to conduct an internal review. Its code of conduct has explicitly forbidden the purchase of sexual services since 2006….
weka I would like you to have said:-
‘I can’t see any reference in your comment about the Red Cross or Oxfam’. This would have been politer to me seeing that I had said that the information had been in my comment. It would be good as a commenter to receive the sort of respect that is demanded by moderators.
It’s a given that there are young teens and children doing sex work in Haiti, so rather than assuming that there is no rape and exploitation going on, it’s more useful to assume there is and to look at how those people can be protected where there is some choice.
This doesn’t mean that all aid workers paying sex workers is a problem, it means that politically if you argue in such a context that there is nothing wrong you are contributing to the problems by rendering invisible the power dynamics and abuse.
If men need to have sex with other people in order to have functional lives and they are in a country like Haiti, then they need to understand the broader context and the risks associated with paying people to have sex with them. Arguments that men *have to have sex in a situation where children are being raped is highly problematic for what I would have thought were obvious reasons.
I strongly agree when third world poverty and survival are involved … it becomes exploitation and slavery at that point….
But in a sick Irony….. its totally possible the Pimps providing the exploited woman and children is the UN …. They have form doing this … From Bosnia , to all over Africa …. and of course Haiti , where they ran a sex trafficking ring for approx 10 years. … and also brought along Cholera … infecting the water and killing roughly 8000 earthquake survivors.
‘Official agencies’ have long been outed as primary players in the trafficking of human beings, narcotics and weapons…
The ‘unofficial agencies’ will be operating in the same ‘industry’…likely under the watchful eye of the ‘official agencies’….
They should be disbanded as the criminal , moral and ethically defunct operations, they actually are…with long term custodial sentences of the most punitive level applied to those at the top..in the know..
Have Shearer or Clark ever spoken openly of the known and public issues within the UN ?
Because with as close to certainty…they will be ‘in the know’…
Let’s be absolutely clear about this: you’re alleging that David Shearer and Helen Clark are accessories to multiple counts of sexual assault of children, human trafficking, and related to the arms trade, to the extent that they should serve “long term custodial sentences”.
That’s what your innuendo implies. If you meant something else, let’s hear it.
I’d say at least 50% of aid workers are female. Where do they go for ‘relief’?
If you’ve read the book you mention you’ll know that none of the authors used prostitutes for ‘relief’.
This is interesting. Abacus Bank in USA. Tiny Chinese owned bank serving the Chinese community was the only bank to be sued after the GFC! Opened in 1985 by a resident or citizen, successful and have 6 branches. It has 1/20th default rates of USA banks. They found some small fraud, checked and audited and sacked the initial loan officer taking bribes and then found the others, reported to the regulators, and got a DA that wanted scalps.
Loan officers were arrested and brought in chains in front of the media, they were ordinary workers. “The DA announced the indictment and made a real spectacle of it.”
Steve James is best remembered as the director of the award-winning “Hoop Dreams” documentary in 1994, inexplicably snubbed for an Oscar nomination. But on Monday at the 90th Academy Awards he’s in the running, for his documentary “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail”.
It’s the story of what happened to Abacus bank in New York in 2012, in the fallout from the American mortgage crisis of 2008. Abacus, a small Chinese bank in Manhattan founded by Thomas Sung, was targeted by the US District Attorney and taken to court, accused of mortgage fraud. Documentary maker Steve James explains.
I’ve got a low opinion of some of those aid agencies and how they squander money.
Go to a third world country and watch the well dressed white people driving around in their NGO stenciled late model Lexus. It’s a disgusting gravy train for some, a shame for the well meaning hard workers and also the people they are supposed to help.
( yes there’s no third world etc etc)
KCC
Yes, I have heard of them living apart from the areas they are serving – one might think okay what’s wrong with that. But apparently their standard of living will match upper middle class conditions back home. They will have swimming pools and a nice house, probably some sort of air conditioning; I don’t think they would bear to go out amongst the hoi polloi much, probably travel everywhere in an air conditioned vehicle. Aid kings and queens rather than workers.
It would be like disaster tourism for a longer period.
We humans have a capacity for callousness and turning people into grotesque spectacles. Like going down to Bedlam and seeing the mad people or going to a hanging, quite a spectacle and not to be missed. Getting down and dirty right beside the people who are in extremis means that ideas have to be changed, the level of acceptance of previously unacceptable behaviour has to be raised
for them, while keeping to the values of the wealthier society need to be maintained by the workers to control their own behaviour, but not the same in their living conditions.
KCC
I have reworded the last para a bit to try and be clearer about my thinking.
Previously unacceptable behaviour may have to be accepted in those they are helping, while keeping to the values of the wealthier society need to be maintained by the workers themselves to control their own behaviour. But in their living conditions it should be known that these will drop from the normal, and that they will not have money lavished on them.
No KCC it was just end to end of my two posts, not ineptitude. Operating from a small oblong instead of a large screen makes it hard to get the overview.
“Oxfam was trying with some desperation to stem the cholera epidemic, the first outbreak of which was detected in central Haiti in October, from spreading further. By the following month, it had reached Port-au-Prince and Oxfam was trying to provide uncontaminated water to 315,000 people already rendered homeless by the earthquake. ”
“We are currently reaching over 400,000 people with water, sanitation and hygiene programmes, and another 100,000 individuals mostly through our emergency food security and vulnerable livelihoods (EFSVL) programmes.”
None of this is as titillating as the sort of thing we have been reading or watching over the last week about the sexual misconduct of Oxfam employees in Haiti, but these do seem to have kept a lot of people alive who would otherwise have died.”
Surely the discussion should be on how to improve the recruiting systems and field administration systems ,….. combined with accountability of both UN or Oxfam staff.
Not destroy Oxfams funding and aid ,,,,,,,as the english tory tax haven party are doing ,,,, with help and consent generation from corporate media.
It appears they were meant to shut up about the biggest driver of poverty and inequality in the world …. stepped on the wrong toes
The Guardian reports large temperature rises in the Arctic.
“The North Pole and northern Greenland have been 17-22C (30-40F) warmer than historical averages in recent days, adding to fears of rapid polar warming that has huge implications for global climate. The northernmost weather station in the world, Cape Morris Jesup in Greenland, was above freezing nearly all day on 20 February, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute. ”
✅met #Rosneft head IGOR SECHIN's aide👉🏼offered brokerage fee for sale of Rosneft shares in exchange for lifting #sanctions ✅met Divyekin👉🏼offered HRC kompromat & warned of TRUMP kompromat pic.twitter.com/3LTpr8LACs
More money than Key and from an even more dodgy source, if that’s truly possible !!! Blood money from murdering in Iraq, running a mercenary force in the illegal war; received many multi millions paid to him directly by the Pentagon, by his own admission.
This man must never become a major office holder, please.
Looks like Grand Marshal Bonespur is going play CIC.
President Donald Trump’s plans for a White House-backed military parade are beginning to take shape.
The president has directed the Department of Defense to organize a parade that would take place on Nov. 11 – Veterans Day – according to an unclassified Feb. 20 memo written by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.
[…]
Whether the president himself will participate in the event remains unclear. Macron took part in France’s parade, riding in an open-top military vehicle alongside the former chief of the French armed forces and surrounded by hundreds of military men on horseback.
The Fletchers money will be long gone ,,, protected by Limited liability ,,, some ‘legally’ paid into executives different trusts … allowing personally bankrupted people to drive around in rolls royces … or live in multi million dollar homes … ala Wellingtons Renouf ,,,,or Aucklands equiticorp exec Hawkins …. etc
It sounds like Nationals come up with a neo leaky buildings disaster … pass the ball time again…. More bad times for home owners mainly.
Nationals new degraded building mess could be known as ……
The great Christchurch shake down
Rebuild Rortification
Brownless huge Crack syndrome … systemic arse,,,, 80% non compliant, National TM
But….
“EQC has set a deadline to close the Canterbury Home Repair Programme to all new customers and repairs from Monday, 1 June 2015, to ensure it has the right amount of resources necessary to complete the programme.
From 1 June, no further customers will be accepted into CHRP unless they have a prior agreement with EQR or EQC, and previously cash-settled customers will not be able to opt back in to the programme.”
So we the taxpayers are going to pick up the tab AGAIN for shonkey repairs in Christchurch or the homeowners are just going to have to eat shit like National’s Leaky Housing/Building Crisis which is still unresolved to date ?
probably both….some will give up (or have already) and wear the loss….others will continue to fight and will be paid (possibly partial) by the taxpayer.
Conservatives wanted to say they had a black guy, too.
WATCH: At the Ronald Reagan Dinner at CPAC, ACU Communications Director Ian Walters said the RNC hired Michael Steele as chairman in 2009 "because he’s a black guy." pic.twitter.com/g6YcyLET5w— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 24, 2018
WATCH: At the Ronald Reagan Dinner at CPAC, ACU Communications Director Ian Walters said the RNC hired Michael Steele as chairman in 2009 "because he’s a black guy." pic.twitter.com/g6YcyLET5w
The Russell McVeigh story must be causing insomnia for a few lawyers at the moment…
And I feel sorry for the victims and the huge imbalance of power from start to finish in this saga too. Surely it’s not an isolated situation.
Anyone else following this?
Just read the “not threatening” letter Adam Ross QC sent Newsroom.
My initial response to hearing the story was that this behaviour isn’t confined to one law firm. I’m hoping it creates space for others to come forward.
What a shame and the world is a poorer place for the death of this beautiful person.
Emma Chambers died today of natural causes
We will miss you Emma with your wonderful sense of humour that made us all feel very humble and had a good laugh at the same time.
Rest in peace. You will be sorely missed.
Awesome Haka Rotorua boys High. I have to remember that the mokos are there and I did not realise that you mokos had a good vantage point. Its hard keeping my ego in check when I have all those sandflys following me around everywhere and trying harressing me. But I will make sure that I’m a good example for the mokos just didn’t realise that you were there. Be proud of OUR Maori culture and your tepuna like ECO MAORI is Kia kaha. Ka kite ano P.S. Isn’t it peculiar that I had to get that book of my tepuna Ropata WahaWaha from A Australian online library that’s suppression of our Ngati-porou culture and people by the neoliberals they are scared of Ngati-porou Mana
I haven’t quite finished the book yet to busy checking the sandflys and rowing my Waka be good mokos from what I have read from our history one can have the genealogical of great tepuna but it is how you conduct yourself that counts being humble humane and respectful. That is the way my MAMA taught me Kai pai.
Ka kite ano
Being humble doesn’t mean you take a step backwards well I do when my wife challenges me that’s Mana Wahine treat the ladies with respect mokos that’s the way our tepuna did it.
Back to being challenged in life be it sports mahi whatever you don’t take a step backwards but you don’t go around disrespecting anybody or anything to complete your challenges in life.
That’s the way Steven Adams behaves that’s why I’m a fan of his and that’s the way ECO MAORI behaves.
I’m colour blind as well I can see colours just some I get mixed up with green yellow brown red blue purple.
So I treat every one the same no matter what colours they are with respect but with a guard up at all times that’s the way of OUR Papatuanukue at the minute. Kia kaha Ka kite ano
All right I do disrespect the sandflys but the don’t show ECO MAORI any respect they treat me like a idiot.
But you must show them respect that’s is the best way to keep your nose clean Ka pai Kia kaha Ka kite Ano P.S I will have to go back to school to learn more of OUR REO
China will remove the constitutional restriction for the maximum number of terms the president and vice-president can serve, Xinhua reported on Sunday, paving the way for President Xi Jinping to stay on beyond 2023.
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Floating offshore wind turbines offer incredible opportunities to capture powerful winds far out at sea. By unlocking this wind energy potential, they could be a key weapon in our arsenal in the fight against climate change. But how developed are these climate fighting clean energy giants? And why do I ...
Over the past two or three weeks, a procession of Maori iwi and hapu in a series of little-noticed appearances before two Select Committees have been asking for more say for Maori over resource management decisions along the co-governance lines of Three Waters. Their submissions and appearances run counter ...
The decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue war crimes arrest warrants for the Russian President and the Russia Children Ombudsman may have been welcomed by the ideologically committed but otherwise seems to have been greeted with widespread cynicism (see Situation in Ukraine: ICC judges issue arrest warrants ...
Let’s say you’re clasping your drink at a wedding, or a 40th, or a King’s Birthday Weekend family reunion and Drunk Uncle Kevin has just got going.He’s in an expansive frame of mind because we’re finally rid of that silly girl. But he wants to ask an honest question about ...
National Party leader Christopher Luxon may be feeling glum about his poll ratings, but he could be tapping into a rich political vein in describing the current state of education as “alarming”. Luxon said educational achievement has been declining, with a recent NCEA pilot exposing just how far it has ...
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Buzz from the Beehive Auckland was wiped off the map, when Education Minister Jan Tinetti delivered her speech of welcome as host of the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers “here in Tāmaki Makaurau”. But – fair to say – a reference was made later in the speech to a ...
Morning mate, how you going?Well, I was watching the news last night and they announced this scientific report on Climate Change. But before they got to it they had a story about the new All Blacks coach.Sounds like important news. It’s a bit of a worry really.Yeah, they were talking ...
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Wealthy vested interests have an oversized influence on political decisions in New Zealand. Partly that’s due to their use of corporate lobbyists. Fortunately, the influence lobbyists can have on decisions made by politicians is currently under scrutiny in Guyon Espiner’s in-depth series published by RNZ. Two of Espiner’s research exposés ...
Yesterday afternoon it rained and traffic around the region ground to a halt, once again highlighting why it is so important that our city gets on with improving the alternatives to driving. For additional irony, this happened on the same day the IPCC synthesis report landed, putting the focus on ...
The Beginning: Anti-Co-Governance agitator, Julian Batchelor, addresses the Dargaville stop of his travelling roadshow across New Zealand . Fascism almost always starts small. Sadly, it doesn’t always stay that way. Especially when the Left helps it to grow.THERE IS A DREADFUL LOGIC to the growth of fascism. To begin with, it ...
Hi,From an incredibly rainy day in Los Angeles, I just wanted to check in. I guess this is the day Trump may or may not end up in cuffs? I’m attempting a somewhat slower, less frenzied week. I’ve had Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s new record on non-stop, and it’s been a ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
RNZ has been shining their torch into corners where lobbyists lurk and asking such questions as: Do we like the look of this?and Is this as democratic as it could be?These are most certainly questions worth asking, and every bit as valid as, say:Are weshortchanged democratically by the way ...
RNZ has continued its look at the role of lobbyists by taking a closer look at the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff Andrew Kirton. He used to work for liquor companies, opposing (among other things) a container refund scheme which would have required them to take responsibility for their own ...
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has left for Beijing for the first ministerial visit to China since 2019. Mahuta is to meet China’s new foreign minister Qin Gang where she might have to call on all the diplomatic skills at her command. Almost certainly she will face questions on what role ...
TL;DR:The Opportunities Party’s Leader Raf Manji is hopeful the party’s new Teal Card, a type of Gold card for under 30s, will be popular with students, and not just in his Ilam electorate where students make up more than a quarter of the voters and where Manji is confident ...
When I was a kid New Zealand was actually pretty green. We didn’t really have plastic. The fruit and veges came in a cardboard box, the meat was wrapped in paper, milk came in a glass bottle, and even rubbish sacks were made of paper. Today if you sit down ...
Looking back through the names of our Police Ministers down the years, the job has either been done by once or future party Bigfoots – Syd Holland, Richard Prebble, Juduth Collins, Chris Hipkins – or by far lesser lights like Keith Allen, Frank Gill, Ben Couch, Allen McCready, Clem Simich, ...
Chris Trotter writes – The Crown is a fickle friend. Any political movement deemed to be colourful but inconsequential is generally permitted to go about its business unmolested. The Crown’s media, RNZ and TVNZ, may even “celebrate” its existence (presumably as proof of Democracy’s broad-minded acceptance of diversity). ...
Four out of the five people who have held the top role of Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff since 2017 have been lobbyists. That’s a fact that should worry anyone who believes vested interests shouldn’t have a place at the centre of decision making. Chris Hipkins’ newly appointed Chief of ...
Feedback on Auckland Council’s draft 2023/24 budget closes on March 28th. You can read the consultation document here, and provide feedback here. Auckland Council is currently consulting on what is one of its most important ever Annual Plans – the ‘budget’ of what it will spend money on between July ...
by Molten Moira from Motueka If you want to be a woman let me tell you what to do Get a piece of paper and a biro tooWrite down your new identification And boom! You’re now a woman of this nationSpelled W O M A Na real trans woman that isAs opposed ...
Buzz from the Beehive New Zealand Education Minister Jan Tinetti is hosting the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers for three days from today, welcoming Education Ministers and senior officials from 18 Pacific Island countries and territories, and from Australia. Here’s hoping they have brought translators with them – or ...
Let’s say you’ve come all the way from His Majesty’s United Kingdom to share with the folk of Australia and New Zealand your antipathy towards certain other human beings. And let’s say you call yourself a women’s rights activist.And let’s say 99 out of 100 people who listen to you ...
James Shaw gave the Green party's annual "state of the planet" address over the weekend, in which he expressed frustration with Labour for not doing enough on climate change. His solution is to elect more Green MPs, so they have more power within any government arrangement, and can hold Labour ...
RNZ this morning has the first story another investigative series by Guyon Espiner, this time into political lobbying. The first story focuses on lobbying by government agencies, specifically transpower, Pharmac, and assorted universities, and how they use lobbyists to manipulate public opinion and gather intelligence on the Ministers who oversee ...
Nick Matzke writes – Dear NZ Herald, I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland. I teach evolutionary biology, but I also have long experience in science education and (especially) political attempts to insert pseudoscience into science curricula in ...
James Shaw has again said the Greens would be better ‘in the tent’ with Labour than out, despite Labour’s policy bonfire last week torching much of what the Government was doing to reduce emissions. File Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The Green Party has never been more popular than in some ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah Wesseler Poor air quality is a long-standing problem in Los Angeles, where the first major outbreak of smog during World War II was so intense that some residents thought the city had been attacked by chemical weapons. Cars were eventually discovered ...
Yesterday I was reading an excellent newsletter from David Slack, and I started writing a comment “Sounds like some excellent genetic heritage…” and then I stopped.There was something about the phrase genetic heritage that stopped me in tracks. Is that a phrase I want to be saying? It’s kind of ...
Brian Easton writes – Two senior economists challenge some of the foundations of current economics. It is easy to criticise economic science by misrepresenting it, by selective quotations, and by ignoring that it progresses, like all sciences, by improving and abandoning old theories. The critics may go ...
This week marks the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War. While it strongly opposed the US-led invasion, New Zealand’s then Labour-led government led by Prime Minister Helen Clark did deploy military engineers to try to help rebuild Iraq in mid-2003. With violence soaring, their 12-month deployment ended without being renewed ...
After seventy years, Auckland’s motorway network is finally finished. In July 1953 the first section of motorway in Auckland was opened between Ellerslie-Panmure Highway and Mt Wellington Highway. The final stage opens to traffic this week with the completion of the motorway part of the Northern Corridor Improvements project. Aucklanders ...
National’s appointment of Todd McClay as Agriculture spokesperson clearly signals that the party is in trouble with the farming vote. McClay was not an obvious choice, but he does have a record as a political scrapper. The party needs that because sources say it has been shedding farming votes ...
Rays of white light come flooding into my lounge, into my face from over the top of my neighbour’s hedge. I have to look away as the window of the conservatory is awash in light, as if you were driving towards the sun after a rain shower and suddenly blinded. ...
The columnists in Private Eye take pen names, so I have not the least idea who any of them are. But I greatly appreciate their expert insight, especially MD, who writes the medical column, offering informed and often damning critique of the UK health system and the politicians who keep ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Mar 12, 2023 thru Sat, Mar 18, 2023. Story of the Week Guest post: What 13,500 citations reveal about the IPCC’s climate science report IPCC WG1 AR6 SPM Report Cover - Changing ...
Buzz from the Beehive The building of financial capability was brought into our considerations when Social Development and Employment Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced she had dipped into the government’s coffers for $3 million for “providers” to help people and families access community-based Building Financial Capability services. That wording suggests some ...
Do you ever come across something that makes you go Hmmmm?You mean like the song?No, I wasn’t thinking of the song, but I am now - thanks for that. I was thinking of things you read or hear that make you stop and go Hmmmm.Yeah, I know what you mean, ...
By the end of the week, the dramas over Stuart Nash overshadowed Hipkins’ policy bonfire. File photo: Lynn GrieveasonTLDR: This week’s news in geopolitics and the political economy covered on The Kākā included:PM Chris Hipkins’ announcement of the rest of a policy bonfire to save a combined $1.7 billion, but ...
When word went out that Prime Minister Chris Hipkins would be making an announcement about Stuart Nash on the tiles at parliament at 2:45pm yesterday, the assumption was that it was over. That we had reached tipping point for Nash’s time as minister. But by 3pm - when, coincidentally, the ...
Two senior economists challenge some of the foundations of current economics. It is easy to criticise economic science by misrepresenting it, by selective quotations, and by ignoring that it progresses, like all sciences, by improving and abandoning old theories. The critics may go on to attack physics by citing Newton.So ...
Photo by Walker Fenton on UnsplashIt’s that time of the week again when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kaka for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on Riverside (we’ve moved from Zoom) for our chat about the week’s news with ...
In a nice bit of news, my 2550-word deindustrial science-fiction piece, The Dream of Florian Neame, has been accepted for publication at New Maps Magazine (https://www.new-maps.com/). I have published there before, of course, with Of Tin and Tintagel coming out last year. While I still await the ...
And so this is Friday, and what have we learned?It was a week with all the usual luggage: minister brags and then he quits, Hollywood red carpet is full of twits. And all the while, hanging over the trivial stuff: existential dread, and portents of doom.Depending on who you read ...
When I changed the name of this newsletter from The Daily Read to Nick’s Kōrero I was a bit worried whether people would know what Kōrero meant or not. I added a definition when I announced the change and kind of assumed people who weren’t familiar with it would get ...
There was a time when a political party’s publicity people would counsel against promoting a candidate as queer. No matter which of two dictionary meanings the voting public might choose to apply – the old meaning of odd, strange, weird, or aberrant, or the more recent meaning of gay, homosexual ...
Photo by Joakim Honkasalo on UnsplashIt’s that time of the week for an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session for paying subscribers about the week that was for the next hour, including:PM Chris Hipkins announcement of the rest of a policy bonfire to save a combined $1.7 billion, but which blew up ...
Even though concern over the climate change threat is becoming more mainstream, our governments continue to opt out of the difficult decisions at the expense of time, and cost for future generations. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Now we have a climate liability number to measure the potential failure of the ...
Thomas Cranmer writesLike it or not, the culture wars have entered New Zealand politics and look set to broaden and intensify. The culture wars are often viewed as an exclusively American phenomenon, but the reality is that they are becoming increasingly prominent in countries around the world, ...
Here’s an analogy for the Stuart Nash saga. If people are to be forgiven for their sins,Catholic dogma requires two factors to be present. There has to be a sincere act of confession about what has been done, but also a sincere act of contrition, which signals a painful ...
Here’s an analogy for the Stuart Nash saga. If people are to be forgiven for their sins,Catholic dogma requires two factors to be present. There has to be a sincere act of confession about what has been done, but also a sincere act of contrition, which signals a painful ...
Human Destabilisers: Russia now has a new strategic weapon – migratory waves of unwelcome human-beings. Desperate people with different coloured skins and different religious beliefs arriving at, or actually breaching, the national borders of Russia’s enemies can wreak as much havoc, culturally and politically, as a hypersonic missile exploding in the ...
Hi,After Webworm contributor Hayden Donnell wrote his latest piece, ‘RIP to Millennials Killing Everything’, he delivered this exciting and important bonus content.It will make more sense if you’ve read his piece.David. Read more ...
Hi,Before we get to Hayden’s column — RIP to Millennials Killing Everything — a quick observation.There was a day last week where it had suddenly reached 10pm and I hadn’t eaten all day. Hunger had suddenly gripped me with a panicky all-consuming force, so I jumped onto Uber Eats and ...
We add some of the CMIP6 models to the updateable MSU comparisons. After my annual update, I was pointed to some MSU-related diagnostics for many of the CMIP6 models (24 of them at least) from Po-Chedley et al. (2022) courtesy of Ben Santer. These are slightly different to what ...
In a memorable Pulp Fiction scene, Vincent inadvertently shoots their backseat passenger in the head. This leads our heroes Jules and Vincent to express alarm about their predicament.We're on a city street in broad daylight here!says Vincent. We gotta get this car off the roads. You know cops tend to ...
Primary, secondary and kindergarten teachers are all on strike today, demanding higher pay and an end to systematic understaffing. While the former is important - wages should at least keep up with inflation - its the latter which is the real issue. As with the health system, teachers have been ...
So the teachers are on strike, marching across Aotearoa today to press their demands for better pay and working conditions.Children remained in bed this brisk morning, many no doubt quite pleased about a day off school. Parents perhaps taking the day off to look after the kids, or working from ...
After the Cold War the consensus among Western military strategists was that the era of Big Wars, defined as peer conflict between large states with full spectrum military technologies, was at an end, at least for the foreseeable future. The … Continue reading → ...
Dairy giant Fonterra has posted a 50% lift in net profit to $546m, doubled its interim dividend, and is proposing a return of capital of 50c a share, injecting a note of optimism into the nation’s dairy industry. Fonterra’s strong performance is against a backdrop of market volatility. It ...
Buzz from the Beehive The bothersome economic news today is that New Zealand’s GDP fell by 0.6% in the December quarter, weaker than market forecasts of a fall of around 0.2% and much weaker than the Reserve Bank’s assumption of a 0.7% rise. This followed the even-more-bothersome news yesterday that ...
Ouch: Hipkins’ policy bonfire has resulted in an expensive self-administered removal of a Budgetary foot with an explosive device. File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Bonfires can be dangerous things when they get out of control. They also create a lot of smoke and heat and burn the grass. ...
* Dr Bryce Edwards writes – I teach a first-year course at Victoria University of Wellington about government and the political process in New Zealand. In “Introduction to Government and Law”, students learn there are rules preventing senior public servants from getting involved in big political debates – as we ...
I teach a first year course at Victoria University of Wellington about government and the political process in New Zealand. In “Introduction to Government and Law”, students learn there are rules preventing senior public servants from getting involved in big political debates – as we have recently witnessed with Rob ...
An issue of integrity has claimed the first ministerial scalp in Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ premiership. Police Minister Stuart Nash lasted mere weeks in the role after admitting in a radio interview this morning that he had called Police Commissioner Andrew Coster to ask him if police were going to ...
For some time now we’ve known that the cost and completion timeframe for the City Rail Link would increase. Yesterday we finally learned by just how much. Costs City Rail Link Ltd (CRL Ltd) today confirms it has submitted a formal funding request to its Sponsors – the Crown and ...
The Government’s decision to back peddle on lowering speed limits is hitting potholes. At this stage, although it is part of the Government’s reprioritisation efforts to free up money to alleviate cost of living increases, the speed limit change looks unlikely to do that. And it appears that it ...
The University of Otago – the oldest university in New Zealand – towers over my home city of Dunedin. When classes are on, something like a fifth of Dunedin’s population are university students. It is also the largest employer in the South Island. To say that this is a ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised in their State of the Planet speech today. ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party after the election must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised today. ...
You will never truly understand, from the pictures you’ve seen in the newspapers or on the six o-clock news, the sheer scale of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Gabrielle. ...
We’re boosting incomes and helping ease cost of living pressures on Kiwis through a range of bread and butter support measures that will see pensioners, students, families, and those on main benefits better off from the start of next month. ...
The error Labour Ministers made by stopping work on a beverage container return scheme will be reversed by the Greens at the earliest opportunity as part of the next Government. ...
“Cabinet needs to do better - and today has shown exactly why we need Green Ministers in cabinet, so we can prioritise action to cut climate pollution and support people to make ends meet,” says Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson. ...
Biggest increase in food prices for over three decades shows the need for an excess profit tax on corporations to help people put food on the table. ...
The Green Party has today launched a submission guide to help Aucklanders give crucial input and prevent potentially disastrous Auckland Council budget proposals. ...
With calls growing for inquiries and action on bank profits, the Greens say the Government has all the information it needs to act now and put a levy on banks. ...
As large parts of Aotearoa recover from two of the worst climate disasters we have ever experienced, it would be a huge mistake for the Government to deprioritise climate action from future transport investments, the Green Party says. ...
The Green Party is celebrating the signing of a historic United Nations Ocean Treaty, and calls on the new Oceans and Fisheries Minister to urgently step up protection for Aotearoa’s oceans. ...
Transport Minister Michael Wood has today launched the first national EV (electric vehicle) charging strategy, Charging Our Future, which includes plans to provide EV charging stations in almost every town in New Zealand. “Our vision is for Aotearoa New Zealand to have world-class EV charging infrastructure that is accessible, affordable, ...
Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment Priyanca Radhakrishnan has today launched the Love Better campaign in a world-leading approach to family harm prevention. Love Better will initially support young people through their experience of break-ups, developing positive and life-long attitudes to dealing with hurt. “Over 1,200 young kiwis told ...
Hon Rino Tirikatene, Minister for Courts, welcomes the Ministry of Justice’s appointment of Dr Garry Clearwater as New Zealand’s first Chief Clinical Advisor working with the Coroners Court. “This appointment is significant for the Coroners Court and New Zealand’s wider coronial system.” Minister Tirikatene said. Through Budget 2022, the Government ...
The Government via the Cyclone Taskforce is working with local government and insurance companies to build a picture of high-risk areas following Cyclone Gabrielle and January floods. “The Taskforce, led by Sir Brian Roche, has been working with insurance companies to undertake an assessment of high-risk areas so we can ...
E te huia kaimanawa, ko Ngāpuhi e whakahari ana i tau aupikinga ki te tihi o te maunga. Ko te Ao Māori hoki e whakanui ana i a koe te whakaihu waka o te reo Māori i roto i te Ao Ture. (To the prized treasure, it is Ngāpuhi who ...
113,400 exits into work in the year to June 2022 Young people are moving off Benefit faster than after the Global Financial Crisis Two reports released today by the Ministry of Social Development show the Government’s investment in the COVID-19 response helped drive record numbers of people off Benefits and ...
The Government’s priority to keep New Zealand at the cutting edge of food production and lift our sustainability credentials continues by backing the next steps of a hi-tech vertical farming venture that uses up to 95 per cent less water, is climate resilient, and pesticide-free. Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor visited ...
E nga mana, e nga iwi, e nga reo, e nga hau e wha, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou kātoa. Warm Pacific greetings to all. It is an honour to host the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers here in Tāmaki Makaurau. Aotearoa is delighted to be hosting you ...
The new renal unit at Taranaki Base Hospital has been officially opened by the Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall this afternoon. Te Huhi Raupō received around $13 million in government funding as part of Project Maunga Stage 2, the redevelopment of the Taranaki Base Hospital campus. “It’s an honour ...
Defence Minister Andrew Little has marked the arrival of the country’s second P-8A Poseidon aircraft alongside personnel at the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s Base at Ohakea today. “With two of the four P-8A Poseidons now on home soil this marks another significant milestone in the Government’s historic investment in ...
Aotearoa New Zealand will provide further humanitarian support to those seriously affected by last month’s deadly earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria, says Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta. “The 6 February earthquakes have had devastating consequences, with almost 18 million people affected. More than 53,000 people have died and tens of thousands more ...
Migrant communities across New Zealand are represented in the new Migrant Community Reference Group that will help shape immigration policy going forward, Immigration Minister Michael Wood announced today. “Since becoming Minister, a reoccurring message I have heard from migrants is the feeling their voice has often been missing around policy ...
Construction has begun on major works that will deliver significant safety improvements on State Highway 3 from Waitara to Bell Block, Associate Minister of Transport Kiri Allan announced today. “This is an important route for communities, freight and visitors to Taranaki but too many people have lost their lives or ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has today appointed Ginny Andersen as Minister of Police. “Ginny Andersen has a strong and relevant background in this important portfolio,” Chris Hipkins said. “Ginny Andersen worked for the Police as a non-sworn staff member for around 10 years and has more recently been chair of ...
Six further bailey bridge sites confirmed Four additional bridge sites under consideration 91 per cent of damaged state highways reopened Recovery Dashboards for impacted regions released The Government has responded quickly to restore lifeline routes after Cyclone Gabrielle and can today confirm that an additional six bailey bridges will ...
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta departs for China tomorrow, where she will meet with her counterpart, State Councillor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang, in Beijing. This will be the first visit by a New Zealand Minister to China since 2019, and follows the easing of COVID-19 travel restrictions between New Zealand and China. ...
Education Ministers from across the Pacific will gather in Tāmaki Makaurau this week to share their collective knowledge and strategic vision, for the benefit of ākonga across the region. New Zealand Education Minister Jan Tinetti will host the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers (CPEM) for three days from today, ...
A vital transport link for communities and local businesses has been restored following Cyclone Gabrielle with the reopening of State Highway 5 (SH5) between Napier and Taupō, Associate Minister of Transport Kiri Allan says. SH5 reopened to all traffic between 7am and 7pm from today, with closure points at SH2 (Kaimata ...
Internal Affairs Minister Barbara Edmonds has thanked generous New Zealanders who took part in the special Lotto draw for communities affected by Cyclone Gabrielle. Held on Saturday night, the draw raised $11.7 million with half of all ticket sales going towards recovery efforts. “In a time of need, New Zealanders ...
The Government has announced funding of $3 million for providers to help people, and whānau access community-based Building Financial Capability services. “Demand for Financial Capability Services is growing as people face cost of living pressures. Those pressures are increasing further in areas affected by flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle,” Minister for ...
Minister of Education, Hon Jan Tinetti, has announced appointments to the Board of Education New Zealand | Manapou ki te Ao. Tracey Bridges is joining the Board as the new Chair and Dr Therese Arseneau will be a new member. Current members Dr Linda Sissons CNZM and Daniel Wilson have ...
Fifteen ākonga Māori from across Aotearoa have been awarded the prestigious Ngarimu VC and 28th (Māori) Battalion Memorial Scholarships and Awards for 2023, Associate Education Minister and Ngarimu Board Chair, Kelvin Davis announced today. The recipients include doctoral, masters’ and undergraduate students. Three vocational training students and five wharekura students, ...
High Court Judge Jillian Maree Mallon has been appointed a Judge of the Court of Appeal, and District Court Judge Andrew John Becroft QSO has been appointed a Judge of the High Court, Attorney‑General David Parker announced today. Justice Mallon graduated from Otago University in 1988 with an LLB (Hons), and with ...
The economy has continued to show its resilience despite today’s GDP figures showing a modest decline in the December quarter, leaving the Government well positioned to help New Zealanders face cost of living pressures in a challenging global environment. “The economy had grown strongly in the two quarters before this ...
Aucklanders now have more ways to get around as Transport Minister Michael Wood opened the direct State Highway 1 (SH1) to State Highway 18 (SH18) underpass today, marking the completion of the 48-kilometre Western Ring Route (WRR). “The Government is upgrading New Zealand’s transport system to make it safer, more ...
This section contains briefings received by incoming ministers following changes to Cabinet in January. Some information may have been withheld in accordance with the Official Information Act 1982. Where information has been withheld that is indicated within the document. ...
Aotearoa New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta reaffirmed her commitment to working together with the new Government of Fiji on issues of shared importance, including on the prioritisation of climate change and sustainability, at a meeting today, in Nadi. Fiji and Aotearoa New Zealand’s close relationship is underpinned by the Duavata ...
The Government is delivering a coastal shipping lifeline for businesses, residents and the primary sector in the cyclone-stricken regions of Hawkes Bay and Tairāwhiti, Regional Development Minister Kiri Allan announced today. The Rangitata vessel has been chartered for an emergency coastal shipping route between Gisborne and Napier, with potential for ...
The Government will progress to the next stage of the NZ Battery Project, looking at the viability of pumped hydro as well as an alternative, multi-technology approach as part of the Government’s long term-plan to build a resilient, affordable, secure and decarbonised energy system in New Zealand, Energy and Resources ...
This morning I was made aware of a media interview in which Minister Stuart Nash criticised a decision of the Court and said he had contacted the Police Commissioner to suggest the Police appeal the decision. The phone call took place in 2021 when he was not the Police Minister. ...
The Government’s sharp focus on trade continues with Aotearoa New Zealand set to host Trade Ministers and delegations from 10 Asia Pacific economies at a meeting of Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) Commission members in July, Minister for Trade and Export Growth Damien O’Connor announced today. “New Zealand ...
$25 million boost to support more businesses with clean-up in cyclone affected regions, taking total business support to more than $50 million Demand for grants has been strong, with estimates showing applications will exceed the initial $25 million business support package Grants of up to a maximum of $40,000 per ...
80 per cent of 2021 Resident Visas applications have been processed – three months ahead of schedule Residence granted to 160,000 people 84,000 of 85,000 applications have been approved Over 160,000 people have become New Zealand residents now that 80 per cent of 2021 Resident Visa (2021RV) applications have been ...
The Government continues to invest in New Zealand’s burgeoning space industry, today announcing five scholarships for Kiwi Students to undertake internships at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. Economic Development Minister Stuart Nash congratulated Michaela Dobson (University of Auckland), Leah Albrow (University of Canterbury) and Jack Naish, Celine Jane ...
The Lead Coordination Minister for the Government’s Response to the Royal Commission’s Report into the Terrorist Attack on the Christchurch Mosques travels to Melbourne, Australia today to represent New Zealand at the fourth Sub-Regional Meeting on Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Security. “The Government is committed to reducing the threat of terrorism ...
The health and safety practices at our nation’s ports will be improved as part of a new industry-wide action plan, Workplace Relations and Safety, and Transport Minister Michael Wood has announced. “Following the tragic death of two port workers in Auckland and Lyttelton last year, I asked the Port Health ...
Bikes, electric bikes and scooters will be added to the types of transport exempted from fringe benefit tax under changes proposed today. Revenue Minister David Parker said the change would allow bicycles, electric bicycles, scooters, electric scooters, and micro-mobility share services to be exempt from fringe benefit tax where they ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta will hold bilateral meetings with Fiji this week. The visit will be her first to the country since the election of the new coalition Government led by Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sitiveni Rabuka. The visit will be an opportunity to meet kanohi ki ...
The Government is introducing the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill to ensure the recovery and rebuild from Cyclone Gabrielle is streamlined and efficient with unnecessary red tape removed. The legislation is similar to legislation passed following the Christchurch and Kaikōura earthquakes that modifies existing legislation in order to remove constraints ...
Approximately 1.4 million people will benefit from increases to rates and thresholds for social assistance to help with the cost of living Superannuation to increase by over $100 a pay for a couple Main benefits to increase by the rate of inflation, meaning a family on a benefit with children ...
The Free Speech Union welcomes the decision by Immigration New Zealand to not suspend Kellie-Kay Keen-Minshull's NZeTA and to allow her entry into the country, says Jonathan Ayling, Chief Executive of the Free Speech Union. “The Free Speech Union envisions ...
HeartLandNZ represents provincial New Zealand, the heart of the nation, the men and women, workers, contractors, businesses and farmers in the successful primary production sector. For over 30 years these voters have been economically ...
This week, Hera Lindsay Bird ponders whether it’s better to leave a party too early or too late.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to [email protected]Dear Hera,How can you tell when something is over? A recurring theme through my life is sticking around way past the due date. There have been ...
National’s new education policy will focus on the first eight years of education – primary and intermediate – in an effort to prepare students for high school. The opposition will formally unveil their policy later today – coincidentally (or likely not) in the prime minister’s electorate of Upper Hutt. Erica ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yen Ying Lim, Associate Professor, Monash University ShutterstockDementia is an umbrella term to describe a progressive neurological condition that affects people’s cognitive abilities, such as memory, language and reasoning. Alzheimer’s is the most common form, but other common ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Green, Host + Producer, The Conversation A comparison between two views of the same coral reef on Kiritimati, taken by University of Victoria scientists.Danielle Claar, Kristina Tietjen/University of Victoria Earlier this week, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graham Edgar, Senior Marine Ecologist, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania Graham Edgar/Reef Life Survey, Author provided Marine heatwaves are damaging reef ecosystems around Australia, but while the tropical north has received the lion’s share of the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Burch, Lecturer in Accounting, University of Tasmania Shutterstock One of the priorities of the federal government’s sweeping Universities Accord is to improve employment conditions in higher education. This is long overdue. Australia’s university sector once set the standard for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Davies, PhD Candidate, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University Image: David Kelly, Author provided Australia is in the grip of a housing crisis, with low-income households hit hardest by rising rents and falling vacancy rates. Social housing tenants were ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristie Patricia Flannery, Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Francisco V. Coching’s Rendition of Gabriela Silang Charging on a Mount, 1986 (Ayala Museum). It was around this time of year back in 1763 that Filipino rebels ...
The government’s planning to roll out dozens of new electric vehicle charging stations across the country in new “hubs” that would operate similar to existing petrol stations. The “charging our future” strategy has set a target of bringing in new hubs ever 150 to 200 kilometres along the state highways, ...
This morning we bring you an exclusive on The Spinoff from Dylan Cleaver. Wellington rugby stalwart, one-game All Black and former New Zealand First MP Tutekawa Wyllie has had his probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) condition recognised and compensated for by the ACC after a five-year campaign. CTE is a brain ...
New Zealand joins countries around the world by banning TikTok on government-issued devices as the US threatens an outright ban on the popular social media app, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Big building supply companies have fended off competition by wrapping desirable blocks of land in legal constraints on generations of NZers, alarming the Commerce Commission into issuing a far-reaching warning. Jonathan Milne reports. ...
The Green Party is announcing Teall Crossen as their candidate for the Nelson Whakatū electorate. Teall is an environmental barrister and activist with two decades of experience advocating for the rights of people and nature in the Courts in Aotearoa, ...
NZ Rugby wants to triple the number of female rugby referees - starting with the rise of Natarsha Ganley to Super Rugby honours, and handing a whistle to an Aupiki star player in a new scholarship. Suzanne McFadden writes. Natarsha Ganley loves rules. So during the week, she's on the lookout for ...
Exclusive: All Black turned NZ First MP Tutekawa Wyllie and his wife Margaret have won a landmark battle that could open the floodgates for rugby-related head injury claims. Dylan Cleaver reports.Wellington rugby stalwart, one-game All Black and former New Zealand First MP Tutekawa Wyllie has had his probable chronic ...
Do the results in Mt Albert, Wellington Central and Christchurch East amount to thumbing noses at head office, or are they a sign of party strength?Across three Labour selection contests in three high-profile electorates over the last fortnight, candidates have succeeded from local foundations in seeing off rivals considered ...
This week's anti-trans rally is straight out of the right-wing playbook With strange and toxic prescience, a subject from the new study Histories of Hate:The Radical Right in Aotearoa New Zealand has leapt from the pages of the book into a major news story this week. The ...
More than half of Aotearoa may need to be in native ngahere (bush) to merely blunt future worsening storms, but without such revolutionary change, Aotearoa could descend into a spiral of social, ecological, and economic damage Much of our land is without any trees, or is without the right trees, ...
Unlike other countries around the world, New Zealand has no regulations about lobbying. Is change needed to ensure greater transparency about who's influencing our decision-makers? If you want to know who lobbies the Australian government on behalf of Air New Zealand, you simply go to an online register, type ...
Cyclone Gabrielle’s hammering of Hawkes Bay has ignited fears in Southland of bridges failing and farmland flooding through “mismanagement” of accumulated gravel Southland farmer Barry Taylor is frustrated gravel is being allowed to build up beneath a bridge on one of the country’s key tourist routes despite his years of ...
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Opinion - There's plenty of research supporting lowering the voting age to 16. Public debate and the law just need to catch up, Claire Breen writes. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation’s politics team. In this podcast Michelle and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jingdong Yuan, Associate Professor, Asia-Pacific security, University of Sydney Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to Moscow this week has been more about reiterating China and Russia’s shared interests, and less about any concrete pathway towards ending the war in Ukraine. While a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Treena Clark, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Indigenous Research Fellow, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney This May, Wiradjuri woman Denni Francisco and her label Ngali will be the first Indigenous designer to have a solo show at Australian Fashion Week. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Treena Clark, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Indigenous Research Fellow, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney This May, Wiradjuri woman Denni Francisco and her label Ngali will be the first Indigenous designer to have a solo show at Australian Fashion Week. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Robinson, Associate Professor in Housing and Communities, University of Tasmania Shutterstock Thousands of children end up being homeless in Australia without a parent or guardian. In 2021-22, 12,812 children (aged 10-17) were on their own when they sought help ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Robinson, Associate Professor in Housing and Communities, University of Tasmania Shutterstock Thousands of children end up being homeless in Australia without a parent or guardian. In 2021-22, 12,812 children (aged 10-17) were on their own when they sought help ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra There has been a lot of talk about the risk of financial contagion following the collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank. Perhaps too much talk. While the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra There has been a lot of talk about the risk of financial contagion following the collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank. Perhaps too much talk. While the ...
A Pacific elder and former secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum says Pacific leaders need to sit up and pay closer attention to AUKUS and the Indo-Pacific strategy and China’s response to them. Speaking from Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, Dame Meg Taylor said Pacific leaders were being sidelined ...
The government says it should have details on which weather-hit areas are high risk within three weeks, and can then make decisions about rebuilding. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carly Tozer, Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO Dean Lewins/AAPLa Niña and El Niño are well-known terms in Australia these days. Linked to them are certain expectations: we expect wet conditions in La Niña and dry conditions in El Niño. These ...
Promoters say The Game has pulled out of his upcoming appearance at two legs of a new New Zealand hip-hop festival, continuing the Compton rapper’s sketchy attendance record in Aotearoa. In an announcement made on Facebook today, promoters Room Service say The Game, real name Jayceon Taylor, has “last-minute commitments” ...
Counter-protests are planned for this weekend as a controversial anti-trans campaigner speaks in two New Zealand cities. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull will be allowed into the country after Immigration NZ said the threshold to stop her had not been reached. In a tweet, Rainbow Greens, the group that released an open letter ...
We asked workers at some of our favourite food establishments to show us what they eat when the rush is over.This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter The Boil Up. Last week was Work Week on The Spinoff, dedicated to unpacking our relationship with the world ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards. Political Roundup: Who will drain Wellington’s lobbying swamp? Wealthy vested interests have an oversized influence on political decisions in New Zealand. Partly that’s due to their use of corporate lobbyists. Fortunately, the influence lobbyists can have on decisions made by politicians is currently under scrutiny in ...
65 percent of Kiwis surveyed admit they would have no idea what to do if their identity was stolen Norton, a leading consumer Cyber Safety brand of Gen, today announced the New Zealand launch of Norton™ 360 Platinum, which leverages the company's ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Breen, Professor of Law, University of Waikato Getty Images There might have been pragmatic political reasons behind the government throwing voting-age legislation onto its recent policy bonfire, but it remains a sadly wasted opportunity. The announcement reversed former ...
ANALYSIS:By Bevin Veale, Massey University The impending arrival of Kelly-Jean Keen-Minshull — aka Posie Parker — has put the spotlight on the tension between free speech and protecting vulnerable communities in Aotearoa New Zealand. In particular, it raises questions about Immigration New Zealand’s role in limiting who can visit ...
Wairoa has ready-to-go projects that could be accelerated to quickly get people back into homes following Cyclone Gabrielle, Minister Willie Jackson was told on a visit to Wairoa today. Tātau Tātau o Te Wairoa is seeking a Government commitment ...
A new report published by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union exposes the bad decision-making that led to a 61% cost blowout in Auckland’s City Rail Link and shows that the costs of the project now significantly outweigh any benefits. ‘The City Rail Link: ...
Immigration NZ has today confirmed that the controversial anti-trans campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull will be allowed into New Zealand for her speaking events this week. You can read our report here – and the full statement from Immigration NZ’s Richard Owen to the media is below: “I can confirm that ...
Immigration NZ says it knows some people will be unhappy, but ultimately the threshold to bar Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull from New Zealand hasn’t been reached.The British anti-transgender campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, also known as Posie Parker, will be allowed into New Zealand this weekend, Immigration NZ has confirmed.Keen-Minshull’s ability to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Stevens, Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Adelaide Antarctica is an icy place today, but the ice extended even further during past ice ages. The question of how and where life survived on land in the icy continent, through the ages, has ...
Like a Tongan Cool Runnings, with trumpets instead of bobsleds, Red, White & Brass is a feel-good movie based on an incredible true story. First-time film producer Halaifonua Finau tells Sela Jane Hopgood how he got it made.In 2016, promising new Tongan producer Halaifonua Finau was sitting in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Thomas Gleeson, Doctoral Candidate, Australian National University Luz Rovira / Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND In the 19th century, Charles Darwin was one of the first to notice something interesting about domesticated animals: different species often developed similar changes when compared ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katharine Kemp, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney New research reveals serious privacy flaws in fertility apps used by Australian consumers – emphasising the need for urgent reform of the Privacy Act. Fertility apps provide a number ...
The Fiji Times “The University of the South Pacific (USP) has been and continues to be a bedrock for regionalism. A resource owned by the region; for the region and a precious institution that needs to be protected in line with the vision of our forebearers.” This was the message ...
By Claudia Tally in Port Moresby A Papua New Guinean family who have been renting a property from the National Housing Corporation for the past 46 years have been served with a 24-hour eviction notice by a different owner who had obtained an eviction notice from the Port Moresby District ...
Auckland mayor Wayne Brown’s plans to cut back on spending could see the council quit Local Government NZ, the group that represents councils across the country. Stuff’s Todd Niall has reported that $400,000 would be saved by the move, with mayor Brown reportedly wanting to direct that money into other ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frederic Gachon, Associate Professor, Physiology of Circadian Rhythms, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland Gregory Pappas/Unsplash Some of us love to be tucked up in bed by a particular time every night, ensuring a certain number of hours ...
The government has launched campaign to help young people navigate break-ups with the long-term aim of preventing family violence, believed to be the first of its kind. ...
The government has launched campaign to help young people navigate break-ups with the long-term aim of preventing family violence, believed to be the first of its kind. ...
Sports can be hugely beneficial for children but there are still many barriers for trans kids wanting to play, writes researcher Julia de Bres.There’s been a lot of talk recently about trans athletes in high performance sport, much of which derives from a broader anti-trans project rather than a ...
A new documentary follows Amber Clyde, skateboarder and founder of Girls Skate NZ, as she works to rebuild her confidence in the sport while juggling solo motherhood.Amber Clyde remembers being bullied as the only girl at the skate park in Birkenhead – but these days all the same bullies ...
After dedicating years to helping young women find their confidence in skateboarding, Amber Clyde must teach herself how to get back on the board after the birth of her second child. But balancing the realities of being a solo Mum with running her own business means that her time is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arthur Immanuel Crichton, PhD candidate, Flinders University Relative of _Chunia pledgei_ named _Ektopodon serratus_ (top left), with _Wakaleo oldfieldi_.Reconstruction of the early Miocene Kutjumarpu faunal assemblage by Peter Schouten, CC BY-SA Imagine a vast, lush forest dominated by giant flightless birds ...
The Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance is urging its 27,000 members and subscribers to have a say on Auckland Council’s proposed 2022/23 annual budget. Last week, the Ratepayers’ Alliance launched a new website to encourage public feedback. Backtobasics.co.nz ...
New Zealand distance runner Zane Robertson has been banned from all sport for eight years due to doping. Robertson, who is the holder of six national distance running records and a Commonwealth Games bronze medal, was tested at the UK’s Great Manchester Run in May last year. His sample returned ...
Alex Casey asks a psychologist why she was too chicken shit to wear a mask during the flight that probably gave her Covid-19. In the live action replay in my head, I can basically see, frame by frame, the moment that one of those puny little Covid-19 Koosh balls did ...
Social services and health & disability provider Presbyterian Support Northern (PSN) has appointed Joe Waru as its new Kaitohu Matua (General Manager Māori). The appointment will provide PSN with strategic leadership and advice as it seeks to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Veale, Lecturer in Media Studies, part of the Digital Cultures Laboratory in the School of Humanities, Media, and Creative Communication, Massey University Getty Images The impending arrival of Kelly-Jean Keen-Minshull – aka Posie Parker – has put the spotlight ...
Deputy Public Service Commissioner Ms Heather Baggott has today announced the appointment of Mr Andrew Hampton to the position of Director-General of Security and Chief Executive, New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS). The role of the NZSIS is to understand ...
Money isn’t everything. But for most of us, it’s easier to deal with anything else in our lives if we know the bills are getting paid. So when household budgets come under pressure from cost of living increases – especially when that includes the mortgage that keeps a roof over ...
Great synergy, owning a “security company” and a media empire.
Nothing to see here folks.
Another capitalist slimebag going after money.
Bit like this lot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica
Carole Cadwalladr joins the dots:
Go the mighty Scotland!
Slàinte!
Hopefully Flower of Scotland will be ringing out all over the highlands…and everywhere else
The brogue will be thickening by the minute.
She lives near Selkirk where the great Sir Walter Scott author of “Ivanhoe”, “Rob Roy” and the “Waverley” novels. He was Provost of Selkirkshire for a time, and the author Jack Prout and illustrator of “Black Bob” (the Dandy wonder dog) was from Selkirk as well, living in what is now the butchers shop, next to the Court rooms (now museum) where Scott wrote his novels! The town want to erect a statue of Black Bob, But the Dandy, which is published in Dundee, wont give copywrite.
There must be something in the water around Selkirk.
Hah! And lookee here – a woman piper atop the stand to kick off Flower of Scotland!
About 1 mins 30 into the vid.
Clearly plenty of profit in road maintenance contracts. Might explain why our roads are littered with cones and diversions for unnecessary work and why efficient public transport seems unlikely any time soon.
Fletcher Building Group’s infrastructure revenue has sustained the company through nearly $1 billion in losses over the last two years.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/101631029/fletcher-buildings-infrastructure-arm-a-bridge-over-troubled-waters
There was a piece on the new last night, where councils/rate payers are having to spend some millions (in the north?) to strengthen bridges for the ‘double sized’ logging trucks on the roads.
The NZTA are paying a proportion.
It struck me that WHY aren’t the logging companies paying the WHOLE cost of the strengthening?
High street welfare.
Forestry trucks are ripping up Whanganui’s rural and suburban roads – and ratepayers may have to foot the bill.
The district council faces a $20 million shortfall over the next 10 years and has effectively run out of money to complete its roading programme.
And the situation is being blamed on damage caused by logging trucks.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11818894
… and you all thought the National Government was working in the best interests of the people of New Zealand ?
… and guess what we probably don’t even own the trees being carted by these logging trucks ?
dv,
The article you mentioned also included some HB road bridges also and they are using tractors to cart some of the logs across soe of these brades as the overweight trucks are now allowed to roam every road in the country without restrictions.
NZTA said they warned the local councils about the extra weighted trucks now about to carry much higher weighted loads freely in 2017.
The article said.It is wrecking our roads and bridges that were never designed for 63 tonne trucks so we are in for very heavy increased road repairs ahead now and Labour knows this..
We the other road users and ratepayers are subsidising the road transport industry and this was confirmed in several studies posted on yesterdays ‘open mike’ about public subsidises for road freight.
CEO spokesperson for TRF (The road transport forum) Ken Shirley has even raised a warning recently that road freight raies wil rise again.
So that is why they want rail gone or closed down, so they have complete ‘cartel’ pricing control to allow them to again freely raise freight rates/costs without us all having any other form of ‘land transport’ to offer a cheaper freight services to us and the business community.
“It’s all about the money and profits”
Thanks CG.
I couldn’t recall the detail.
Hell yes and it’s virtually a 3-way with Fulton’s and downer Laughing all the way to the bank. They plunder across central and regional funding.
Shoulders and surfaces are a disgrace as a result of nationals double whammy with extra tonnage and RONS siphoning from pre existing maintenance allocations.
We gave up expecting rural and state highways to be back at about 2012 levels years ago.
WDC can’t even keep sewage from raglan harbour and moan about that and only having a single grader for their entire region. So it’s third world shit literally imo.
” nationals double whammy with extra tonnage and RONS siphoning from pre existing maintenance allocations.”
A very good reason for the current coalition to reverse both those changes. That is, get the extra heavy vehicles off our roads which are not equipped to deal with them, and cancel any RoNS that do not provide a significant benefit to their region.
One day we are going to have to bring back the old Ministry of Works.
I see nothing wrong with that happening.
This is what happens when the you lose control of your assets and businesses. You are at the mercy of ownership changes and what have looked like a good deal at the time, becomes worse and worse as time goes on and subsequent new owners, changes in economy, come knocking.
Culture and people becomes controlled by the decisions of asset owners, the legal system and changes in government who control the legal system. Even if someone wins, it becomes about the quality of the lawyers and money is diverted into legal action, stress of that and massive loss in quality of life.
Taharoa tensions: Community fights back amid claims of corporate greed at mine
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/101385931/a-community-fights-back-amid-claims-of-corporate-greed-at-taharoa-mine
People in the UK are rejecting globalism via privatisation because their government lost control of their basic needs and costs rise steadily to keep the profits rolling in.
“In 1996, the Ministry of Defence decided to sell off its housing stock. The financier Guy Hands bought it up in a deal that would make his investors billions – and have catastrophic consequences for both the military and the taxpayer”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/apr/25/mod-privatise-military-housing-disaster-guy-hands
Oligarchs and privitisation
I was looking at the New Zealand top ten rich lists for the last few years…. checking something out.
One year stuck out ……as 5 in the top 10 NZ cash accumulators …. were people who had made a lot of money through privatizations and their gaining control of former Government / citizens assets.
Specifically they were …
Michael Fay & David Richwhite .. BNZ (wine-box), railways, port of Auckland etc etc
Graeme Hart ..from wiki : “gained a big break when he purchased the Government Printing Office for less than its capital value in 1990.”
And our two Chandler Bro’s … who were in on the Russian Neo Lib, shock doctrine carve up … When their country was leaderless under the useless drunk and western stooge Boris Yelstin…
The chandler brothers make a point of claiming morals and ethics in business … Yet they run their business empires through tax havens … and became the largest foreign owners of Gazprom and other Russian resources / infrastructure … when a looting was taking place in a criminals paradise.
The results for the Russian people from western Neo Lib, crony capitalist shock doctrine were dire … a 40% collapse of their economy …. and almost a 10 year decline in life expectancy for males.
Leaving aside my opinion that a enriched oligarch class .. making millions or billions from privatisation of state assets..is an indication of corruption.
Instead I’m interested in What are The Standard readers and poster opinions…
Regarding New Zealands worst privatisations or asset stripping
Your choice for … the most disastrous …. destructive ….or biggest rip-offs.
There’s a lot to choose from … like …
Telecom … where profit gouging, and abuse of monopoly positions followed its sale.
BNZ … bailouts and tax evasion .. big loans to share-holders / new owners.
The electricity industry and networks … rampant price increases .. for electricty generated by hydro schemes we’ve had for decades…. underinvestment … Auckland blackout ..profit shifting via tax havens ,,,, etc
Air NZ … Bust & Bailouts
Serco … corrupt reporting .. coverups.. increased profits from increased crime …..
DOC land give aways …. “The government privatizes a state-owned asset for $265,000. Four years later, a small part of it gets flicked on for $10 million. A tale from some corrupt African nation, or from post-Soviet Russia? No, its from New Zealand ”
https://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/the-corruption-of-high-country-tenure.html
Share your evidence of failure, waste or greed ….. and help bury the private= better myth .
https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/2018/01/half-a-million-hectares-sold/
Some quotes / info from Joe90’s link /nomination …. showing a huge rip off.
“The chain of custody went like this; the taxpayer gave up its land for an effective rate of $190 per hectare, which was on-sold for $51,800 per hectare, which was on-sold again for $70,000 per hectare.
The capital gain over a decade was roughly 37,000 per cent, none of which was realised by the taxpayer, and has ultimately put a prime piece of land into the private ownership of an America-based billionaire”
” data released under the Official Information Act, shows the taxpayer has paid nearly $65m to privatise land it owned, which in some cases has been on-sold for significant capital gain, pushing up property prices at the taxpayer’s expense.”
“the taxpayer paid $18,000 for one-third of a hectare by the road. It effectively bought back land it had sold for an effective rate of $15 per hectare in 2004 for what amounts to $55,000 per hectare in 2017. The capital gain on that small section of land was 366,000 per cent.”
“In her 2008 book on tenure review, Who Owns the High Country?, Ann Brower described her research topic as “unravelling the puzzle of why a government would behave so strangely”….
The whole thing stinks worse than Todd Barclay …
Foreign ownership rules … a large speculators tax…. stopping the buying of our citizenship … And redressing the original theft of the land from Maori … Are all needed in this instance … imo
Good link of an ongoing scandal Joe
Two words: unjust enrichment.
Yep +1 Joe, excellent example. But the blame should also go to the people involved in selling the land off in the first place – why don’t people be censored for their actions of clear breaches – at present they are not named and shamed and just get away with it.
Local council reps are also often deep in it, when council land goes super cheap, often offshore buyers and often without even being put out to tender or ratepayers realising what has happened.
Good points all …. but in some instances it’s more than just money involved.
Watching this fascinating documentary I was struck by the dangerous corner cutting in a privately run human drug trial….. a lot of it looked to be about cost cutting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNB5O-EGbmA
22 things were wrong with the design of the drug trial …. which I seem to remember involved a New Zealander as one of those harmed
There is a Govt white wash at the end …. probably for ideological reasons.
Privitiasation of health is still a national party agenda
The powerful love privatisation and deregulation in particular banks and politicians. It’s where they get their money.
How often do ex politicians end up on the board of the companies they privatise, on bank boards, infrastructure companies (now they have COO’s all the better more opportunities to be a corporate trougher) or on the board of new companies entering NZ that want access to the plumb deals of assets sells offs and preferential government deals.
In fact very few large companies don’t have an ex politician on tap to grease the path of those deals.
About time politicians are not allowed to double dip – should be 20 years before an ex political joins a board of directors. They already get generous benefits post their politician career as well as the plumb overseas posts.
I agree 100% savenz ….
In particular John Key should be banned from his ANZ directorship …. for a double conflict of interest.
ANZ has approx 30% of NZs bloated mortgage lending …..
If the cartel of Aussie banks put up Mortgage rates to 10% …. they would crash the housing market … along with our economy …. and the Govt would be gone within 12 months.
John Key would love to bring about the downfall of the Labour led Government … That’s conflict one.
And Key loves making money ….for himself above all else …. a crashed housing market would allow him to buy at depressed prices ….. conflict two.
Personally I’d give him a job as a NZ river water taster ….. make him drink his toxic legacy.
I’d like to see him off the Board of Air NZ too. Quite apart from the crony capitalism effect – in other countries people who use their power & position to assault others are being removed from those positions. here we appoint our pony tail puller to the board of a state owned enterprise – what do you think other people think of us??
Don’t forget Merryl Lynch did the assets sell offs too Mighty River Power, Meridian Energy, Genesis Energy and Air New Zealand, and apparently the sale price is already lower than than it’s income. What a bargain for the buyer. So Key wins, Merryl Lynch wins, the buyer wins, and the public loses.
“Merryl Lynch did the assets sell offs too Mighty River Power, Meridian Energy, Genesis Energy”
And what evidence do you have for this claim?
I trust it is a bit more than you imagination and wild hatred of John Key.
Treasury don’t seem to know anything about it do they?
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1305/S00407/firms-appointed-for-meridian-and-genesis-ipos.htm
Merrill Lynch may have been interested in the work but they were not chosen to have any involvement in the sale.
savenz may have been over reaching through confusion on Merrill Lynch … aka ” The Blundering Herd”.
Easy to do with John Keys old firm and its sordid long history of scandal and scams ..
Known for its Enron involvement and corporate tax base erosion, as described by Irish John himself ….
eventually its boozy greed blinded culture lead to it being the third cab off the rank …. in going bankrupt at the start of the GFC.
Key of course was prime minister at this time,… with the excuse he had got out before Merrill ‘went bad’ …. the truth of how much he had ‘gotten out’ depends on how many Merrill shares he had divested himself of….
Merrill got bailed out…. via a Govt forced take over by Bank of America ….
So Key got bailed out ….. its how he got his bank of America shares …
How many millions did this dud investor receive courtesy of usa taxpayers ???
and why do you think it has never been reported on in our media Alwyn ?…….. Teflon melting? ” … to boring? …. fear ? “, .
Key, regarding his crooked lawyer or something ….; “reporters “you guys were very careful last night, I think, in your coverage of these matters: the reason you were is because you don’t want to get your asses sued off you”. ”
And how come no reporters questioned this bully,,,,, on the administration of his ‘Blind Trust’ … with their wine box / tax haven connections ??
Or the virtual media blackout of his Tax haven work …. ” Quote : “In fact, what is even better news is that this is receiving little publicity in New Zealand – which means there is a higher likelihood the PM will nudge it through without too much meddling from the country’s left wing camp.”
Our dirty little right wing media …. guardians of the Key myth
Additional interesting info ….
Merrill destroyed approx 45 Billion of wealth in eye watering time … poisoned on its own toxic products and bullshit book keeping. Criminal creativity.
As repayment to the USA Govt / taxpayers for their bailout and TARP money …. The Bank of America will increase its numbers of shares from approx 7.5 Billion to 10 Billion odd and use some of the extras as settlement.
Air NZ is not an SOE. It’s a listed on the share market and the govt has share options.
Listed but NZ govt has majority shareholding
It’s still not an SOE. It’s a private company.
No, it’s a public company.
Sorry quite correct. Still not an SOE.
All of them share evidence of making things worse for the general population while having made a few individuals very rich which is itself prima facie evidence of corruption.
What we should be doing is asking what we could have done with all those profits that the profiteers have made off with. With Telecom we could have FttH across the country with unlimited bandwidth on all devices. Maybe we could have built up the infrastructure enough that communications bills would be down to $10 per month per household.
It a question that needs to be asked: What could we have done with all the profit?
All of us would have been better off instead of just a few. This is the proof that profit is a dead-weight loss. It causes more harm than benefit.
I would simply take back the state’s assets with no compensation.
And appropriate all assets of Fay, Chandler etc in NZ.
Yes Ed
I agree take the assets back from these “carpetbaggers again as they stole from us.
…. most of the sheep here in NZ have rose tinted glasses, also Fletchers who bought the Rural Bank for a song ?
Cheers Tamati Tautuhi … Im pretty sure there was a fletcher on the NZ rich list …. possibly giving NZ 6 privitisation oligarchs.
I think Fletchers also got a Government leg up in their early days …. building state houses.
Filling out the rich list were two Alcohol drug barons / families ……
Myers dynasty and Ercegs lolly waters for kids and females fortune…. pre-mixed and pre-roast busters ….
Polonium tea, anyone?.
(Unrolled https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/967170247202664448.html )
Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort was hit with new charges on Friday, including an allegation he secretly recruited and funded a group of former European politicians to lobby in the United States on behalf of Ukraine.
[…]
The most significant allegation is that Manafort assembled what he called a “Super VIP” group of highly influential Europeans who could push Ukraine’s agenda “without any visible relationship” with the Ukrainian government, according to an email obtained by Mueller.
Manafort paid the politicians 2 million euros from offshore accounts in 2012 and 2013 to lobby members of Congress and other U.S. officials. It’s illegal for Americans to direct foreigners to lobby the U.S. without informing the Justice Department.
The so-called “Hapsburg Group” was managed by a former European chancellor, who was not named in the indictment.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/former-trump-campaign-aide-rick-gates-set-plead-guilty-n849256
One thing I’m supportive of here is having similar rules for money in politics here that the US has. Make it illegal for foreign money to be used in NZ politics. Make it illegal for foreigners (including foreign businesses and governments) to have any influence in our country.
“ Make it illegal for foreigners (including foreign businesses and governments) to have any influence in our country.”
You mean like the UN, Greenpeace, Oxfam, various American & Australian born Politicians, etc, etc?
I could live with that.
Then you’d be very disappointed when New Zealand citizens who are members of Oxfam, Greenpeace etc. continue their activities here.
You’ll probably have to pretend that charities are corporations too.
So if a NZ citizen is operating on behalf of your foreign organisation it is ok then?
And why should we differentiate between a corporate & a charity? They all push their own agenda, and are all potentially as corrupt and self-serving as each other.
In the case of the UN, even more so.
on behalf of your foreign organisation
Charities operate “on behalf of” their charitable aims. By law. Or they get stripped of charitable status.
So we already differentiate between them and commercial organisations.
Semantics, fool.
Answer the question. Why do some get so uptight about foreign organisations influencing our politics yet kneel down before eg the UN?
You kneel down for people? Get off your knees.
We have direct influence on the UN. We were also directly involved in its creation.
The UN is an international body made up of the governments of the world. The agreements that they come to are, technically, the agreements that we want. And they’re even agreements that we don’t have to implement.
And, after all that, it really doesn’t seem to have as much influence as business does. Now, here’s an interesting question: Can you point to any influence that the UN has in NZ?
Semantics, fool.
Who’s the fool here? “Semantics” means the meaning of words. Charities and commercial organisations have separate names because they have separate meanings, so yes, semantics. The meanings of words are important.
When are charities not a charity as increasingly there are charity trusts from politicians and rich listers and questionable religions which are really lobby groups to keep the deregulation agenda or some pocket of religion going with extra tax benefits.
Even legitimate charities now follow a trend of putting in ‘corporate’ managers who have little interest in the charity itself, more a tick on their CV (ran Red Cross) with massive donations but little being shown for it for the people who are supposed to get the charity.
Then there are charities that seem more like some sort of scam.
Not only that but apparently overseas charities often attract a small percentage of pedophiles and the like. Yikes…
It’s hard to be a charity these days, because so many are taking advantage of the term.
Nothing wrong with an increase in oversight of charities, for precisely the reasons you outline.
Personally I’d like to see them all go broke as government takes back its duties of care, rendering them irrelevant.
In the meantime, the Family Firsts and Tamakis need more aggressive scrutiny, preferably before they manage to register at all.
erm – as board member of a trust that’s in the process of getting registered charity status, I have to declare a conflict of interest 🙂
Yes, oversight on political activities including donations needs to be increased.
But small charities funded in part by local grants can demonstrate a need for a service. And then when you’re in the arts and culture field, there’s no reason the Lower Corstophine Community Hippy Cultural Appropriation Society needs to be operated by a government department just to make teepees and those lantern balloon things for one or two events a year.
Now, if it turns into a massive thing and hippy cultural appropriation societies pop up all over the place, maybe they could do with an umbrella body and direct govt funding. But small local projects need some sort of entity to operate under if you want them to last longer than the interest of one person.
Fair enough.
Yes. Maybe.
International NGOs and unions would also be excluded. If they were carved out, they would become bundlers.
That, eliminate anonymous funding and because our political processes are public, require public disclosure of the financial interests of everyone participating.
Just call it like it is – money in politics, is corrupting.
Hapsburg and Chancellor in the same sentence suggests a short list of ex-chancellors from Austria.
and sure enough – Politico has more…
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/23/paul-manafort-mueller-probe-washington-lobbying-ukraine-austria-423439
‘Hapsburger’……..the New Swamp Nothingburger ? Strange (it’s not of course) that Trump surrounded himself with crooks.
Things are gonna get furious when the presidential pardons start. Will it be then that Trump code-calls the MAGA Deplorables and the NRA (not to forget the “very fine” ‘Blood and Soil’ fascists) to deploy vengeful violence on fellow Americans ?
Would not have thought it possible once. Not so sure now.
Hi North … Drumpf cannot pardon any individual on offences charged within individual states which is how most of these against Manafort and Gates have been laid. Mueller is one of the smartest men in USA, and has brilliant attorneys working with him.
Manafort and Gates charges laid in two separate districts in fact. Think they can’t outwit the Carrot ?? My money is 1000 to 1 on Bobby Three Sticks !
Rachel Maddow on MSNBC has the clearest and finely articulate breakdown and interviews if you are interested … http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show . She goes to air each weeknight in US at 9 pm so it is free online at this link each day from about 5pm NZ. (Currently top cable news in USA due to her coverage on these subjects. (So good to see this acuity and intelligence on TV !!)
Joe90 @ 6…….do the new charges signify that Manafort (quid pro quo presidential pardon on his mind?) is provng a hard nut to crack ?
I reckon Manafort’s a small fish so they’re squeezing him with layer upon layer of charges until he coughs up the big fish.
edit: Abramson has a crack
Tx for link. And polonium tea ? Watching closely. More like a plain old bullet in USA isn’t it ?? Or a staged suicide with gun or rope.
Having sex with prostitutes when it is legal. Not allowed for aid workers. What is this about? There seems to be some sort of unreasoned moral uprising, purity patrol. It is hard work, sex has always been a relief, a small, fleeting pleasure and it is disgraceful that charities are starting to become inhuman in their regard to their workers. It sounds like an edict from above, from someone who has been an administrator too long, a bit like David Shearer coming back here from UN aid work and finding people not completely helpless in dire distress, objects of disdain.
There was a very good book written by aid workers just behind the firing line which gives the picture you only get fragments of in reports about overseas aid.
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Sex_and_Other_Desperate_Measures
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, by Heidi Postlewait, Kenneth Cain and Doctor Andrew Thomson, is the memoir of three young people who join the United Nations (UN) in Cambodia with a dream of making the world a better place. Set in the 1990s, the book was published in 2004. Thomson is a New …
Having sex with prostitutes when it is legal. Not allowed for aid workers.
It’s a bit more than that:
Mr Daccord said that it was the recent reports of sexual misconduct from humanitarian agencies that had spurred the Geneva-based ICRC to conduct an internal review.
Its code of conduct has explicitly forbidden the purchase of sexual services since 2006….
“This behaviour is a betrayal of the people and the communities we are there to serve,” Mr Daccord said.
“It is against human dignity and we should have been more vigilant in preventing this.”
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/351184/red-cross-reveals-staff-paid-for-sexual-services
I suggest that this is unreasonable as a blanket negative. It treats sex as something bad in itself, and doesn’t differentiate between child and adult partners. It contains its own moral hazard by not differentiating.
Also it is not against human dignity to have sex between consenting adults – this sort of talk is just prudish and irrational. Women who earn their living by being paid for sex are not in an ideal work situation, but it deserves better standing than being a mercenary soldier. Also when women have to get enough money to live, it is something to resort to, though a cleaning job is preferable; both are major female occupations. Seen in an understanding and compassionate mode, it can become a necessity and if a mother, then she is performing a noble action in sacrificing her personal inviolability to get necessities for her family.
The middle class aid salaried workers may never get personally close enough to this sort of poverty and distress to reach an understanding of the world beneath the grassroots. The ones at the top who make their pronouncements may have become saturated in management speak and elite levels of behaviour, seeing people as pawns represented by coloured markers on a map of their area of interest.
Aid workers offering help in exchange for sex does not constitute a consensual transaction.
I said that aid workers going to prostitutes should be satisfactory. The prostitutes receive money, it is their job. Surely that isn’t hard to understand. The aid workers shouldn’t be blackmailing women for sex so that they can receive aid, they should be paying for what is a personal service.
And Brigid this is not a discussion about equality of the sexes. I don’t know where the female aid workers go for sex. If they can find an outlet for their own desires good on them. This is real, hard reality and people managing the best they can and hopefully fairly and with respect for each other even harsh conditions.
I am suggesting that making a difficult job more unpleasant because of rigid rules which ban any sexual interaction at all, and treats it as an ignoble and immoral action open to disgust and retribution by the employer is irrational and unfair.
The genesis of this issue is not aid workers making consensual transactions with sex workers, as the link I posted makes abundantly clear.
Can you please identify the source of your concern regarding consensual transactions?
The genesis of the issue is the (seven years later!) allegations made against Roland van Hauwermeiren, that while he was working in Haiti for Oxfam he paid for sex.
From there, a broader spotlight has fallen across the aid sector.
And I’d guess there are aid workers perpetrating all manner of abuses.
But I don’t believe for a second that crippling the likes of Oxfam and handing their government funding to outfits like Adam Smith International will make any difference for the better.
The link at 7.1 indicates the problem is far from confined to Oxfam, and I agree it’s suspicious that they’ve been singled out.
I’m not questioning the scope. I was only pointing to the genesis being from reporting on consensual transactions for sex.
As I said previously, aside from aid programmes, some agencies are reasonable critical voices of/for society.
And I can guess some government’s don’t really want them around.
It’s not clear that the sex was consensual in Hauwermeiren’s case, and I’m pretty sure this issue predates whatever he was doing.
I agree that if Oxfam are being targeted for other reasons that’s a big problem.
Timeline: 2004: Roland van Hauwermeiren is asked to leave his job at Merlin.
2007: Corinna Csaky report (See link at 7.1) criticises a wide ranging group of NGOs.
2011: Roland van Hauwermeiren resigns as head of mission in Haiti.
Then nothing for six years.
2017/18: News media frenzy attacking Oxfam.
I think you’re both right. The original allegations were far wider than consensual transactions, and, I suspect the genesis of the current media interest is far more likely to be the stuff Bill’s talking about: hostility towards advocacy in the developed world.
I’d say three strands.
Original allegations happened in the context of wider historical problems within aid agencies around abuse (it’s not like van Hauwermeiren started this).
van Hauwermeiren’s allegations happened in the context of issues broader than consensual sex.
There’s something else going on with the current media reporting and focus on Oxfam.
I have said that the situation would be clearer if the aid agency did not say that all sex on the job with people from the work area was to be banned.
That is my point, because it clouds the issue. There is a fault in aid workers having sex with youngsters classed as children in the law of the country or against the law of the aid workers’ countries. Then there is also the problem of aid workers apparently trading aid for sex. I
Context is important here and needs to be seen as being so, to adequately discuss your issue as referred to at 11.11am OAB. .
And I started this thread. I was talking about having sex where it is legal. Haiti has been brought into it where it is illegal. That is another country.
And turning it into an abuse of power as a point. It is great for the comfortably off to have an impassioned discussion about this, with final agreement some time later that it would be better to have a no-sex rule so as not to run the risk of this. But even that is an abuse of power. The persons with the resources can afford to have long discussions when they are not in great need of the basics.
In the meantime there are people who could be doing good and being helpful to people in distress who would be happy to be treated with respect as well as aid, and who are not concerned if someone has sex with another adult and pays for it. So your academic discussions can be another barrier to being truly helpful and lack a listening ear to what people on the receiving end of aid want, and not what others say they want.
“And I started this thread. I was talking about having sex where it is legal. Haiti has been brought into it where it is illegal. That is another country.”
Well maybe you could tell us what you are talking about then, because if it’s not in reference to the Oxfam case it’s not apparent what you mean. Who has said that people can’t have sex?
It says in the quote I put up that it is from the ICRC and in the link address it says red cross. I am sorry that I didn’t spell that out for everyone.
This matter of sex on the job is emerging as a problem for all the aid agencies not just for Oxfam and I am pointing that out, and I think Oxfam might have exactly the same rigid rules as the Red Cross but am not sure about that.
I won’t say anything else now as I have made a point that I think is relevant and fair and others can pick it to bits if they wish.
There’s nothing in your link about about the Red Cross or Oxfam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Sex_and_Other_Desperate_Measures
So I still don’t know what you are talking about. You appear to be saying that aid agencies have rules that say their workers aren’t allowed to have sex. I would be highly surprised if that is true, but by all means put up something that shows that.
weka at 1.47pm
This is from my second comment.
greywarshark 7.1.1
25 February 2018 at 10:29 am
Mr Daccord said that it was the recent reports of sexual misconduct from humanitarian agencies that had spurred the Geneva-based ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] to conduct an internal review. Its code of conduct has explicitly forbidden the purchase of sexual services since 2006….
“This behaviour is a betrayal of the people and the communities we are there to serve,” Mr Daccord said.
“It is against human dignity and we should have been more vigilant in preventing this.”
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/351184/red-cross-reveals-staff-paid-for-sexual-services
weka I would like you to have said:-
‘I can’t see any reference in your comment about the Red Cross or Oxfam’. This would have been politer to me seeing that I had said that the information had been in my comment. It would be good as a commenter to receive the sort of respect that is demanded by moderators.
Why am I not feeling compassion for the poor sex-starved dears?
What OAB said. The issue is of abuse of power.
Sex work in Haiti is illegal btw.
It’s a given that there are young teens and children doing sex work in Haiti, so rather than assuming that there is no rape and exploitation going on, it’s more useful to assume there is and to look at how those people can be protected where there is some choice.
This doesn’t mean that all aid workers paying sex workers is a problem, it means that politically if you argue in such a context that there is nothing wrong you are contributing to the problems by rendering invisible the power dynamics and abuse.
If men need to have sex with other people in order to have functional lives and they are in a country like Haiti, then they need to understand the broader context and the risks associated with paying people to have sex with them. Arguments that men *have to have sex in a situation where children are being raped is highly problematic for what I would have thought were obvious reasons.
Well said weka. Disturbing that anyone could think otherwise.
I strongly agree when third world poverty and survival are involved … it becomes exploitation and slavery at that point….
But in a sick Irony….. its totally possible the Pimps providing the exploited woman and children is the UN …. They have form doing this … From Bosnia , to all over Africa …. and of course Haiti , where they ran a sex trafficking ring for approx 10 years. … and also brought along Cholera … infecting the water and killing roughly 8000 earthquake survivors.
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/04/12/ap-uncovers-numerous-sexual-abuse-allegations-against-un-peaceke/22037714/ … numbers in the thousands
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse_by_UN_peacekeepers
‘Official agencies’ have long been outed as primary players in the trafficking of human beings, narcotics and weapons…
The ‘unofficial agencies’ will be operating in the same ‘industry’…likely under the watchful eye of the ‘official agencies’….
They should be disbanded as the criminal , moral and ethically defunct operations, they actually are…with long term custodial sentences of the most punitive level applied to those at the top..in the know..
Have Shearer or Clark ever spoken openly of the known and public issues within the UN ?
Because with as close to certainty…they will be ‘in the know’…
Let’s be absolutely clear about this: you’re alleging that David Shearer and Helen Clark are accessories to multiple counts of sexual assault of children, human trafficking, and related to the arms trade, to the extent that they should serve “long term custodial sentences”.
That’s what your innuendo implies. If you meant something else, let’s hear it.
I’d say at least 50% of aid workers are female. Where do they go for ‘relief’?
If you’ve read the book you mention you’ll know that none of the authors used prostitutes for ‘relief’.
There is a thriving sex tourist industry in Africa ,where needy women enlist the services of young studs,the ‘boyfriend experience’.
This is interesting. Abacus Bank in USA. Tiny Chinese owned bank serving the Chinese community was the only bank to be sued after the GFC! Opened in 1985 by a resident or citizen, successful and have 6 branches. It has 1/20th default rates of USA banks. They found some small fraud, checked and audited and sacked the initial loan officer taking bribes and then found the others, reported to the regulators, and got a DA that wanted scalps.
Loan officers were arrested and brought in chains in front of the media, they were ordinary workers. “The DA announced the indictment and made a real spectacle of it.”
Wallace Chapman interview this morning with Steve James Director of doco that is one being shown
https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/wellington/abacus-small-enough-to-jail/
Steve James is best remembered as the director of the award-winning “Hoop Dreams” documentary in 1994, inexplicably snubbed for an Oscar nomination. But on Monday at the 90th Academy Awards he’s in the running, for his documentary “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail”.
It’s the story of what happened to Abacus bank in New York in 2012, in the fallout from the American mortgage crisis of 2008. Abacus, a small Chinese bank in Manhattan founded by Thomas Sung, was targeted by the US District Attorney and taken to court, accused of mortgage fraud. Documentary maker Steve James explains.
I’ve got a low opinion of some of those aid agencies and how they squander money.
Go to a third world country and watch the well dressed white people driving around in their NGO stenciled late model Lexus. It’s a disgusting gravy train for some, a shame for the well meaning hard workers and also the people they are supposed to help.
( yes there’s no third world etc etc)
KCC
Yes, I have heard of them living apart from the areas they are serving – one might think okay what’s wrong with that. But apparently their standard of living will match upper middle class conditions back home. They will have swimming pools and a nice house, probably some sort of air conditioning; I don’t think they would bear to go out amongst the hoi polloi much, probably travel everywhere in an air conditioned vehicle. Aid kings and queens rather than workers.
It would be like disaster tourism for a longer period.
We humans have a capacity for callousness and turning people into grotesque spectacles. Like going down to Bedlam and seeing the mad people or going to a hanging, quite a spectacle and not to be missed. Getting down and dirty right beside the people who are in extremis means that ideas have to be changed, the level of acceptance of previously unacceptable behaviour has to be raised
for them, while keeping to the values of the wealthier society need to be maintained by the workers to control their own behaviour, but not the same in their living conditions.
KCC
I have reworded the last para a bit to try and be clearer about my thinking.
Previously unacceptable behaviour may have to be accepted in those they are helping, while keeping to the values of the wealthier society need to be maintained by the workers themselves to control their own behaviour. But in their living conditions it should be known that these will drop from the normal, and that they will not have money lavished on them.
Cheers, sorry to reply to wrong post too- mobile phone plus ineptitude 🙂
No KCC it was just end to end of my two posts, not ineptitude. Operating from a small oblong instead of a large screen makes it hard to get the overview.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/19/people-care-more-about-the-osfam-scandal-than-the-cholera-epidemic/
“Oxfam was trying with some desperation to stem the cholera epidemic, the first outbreak of which was detected in central Haiti in October, from spreading further. By the following month, it had reached Port-au-Prince and Oxfam was trying to provide uncontaminated water to 315,000 people already rendered homeless by the earthquake. ”
“We are currently reaching over 400,000 people with water, sanitation and hygiene programmes, and another 100,000 individuals mostly through our emergency food security and vulnerable livelihoods (EFSVL) programmes.”
None of this is as titillating as the sort of thing we have been reading or watching over the last week about the sexual misconduct of Oxfam employees in Haiti, but these do seem to have kept a lot of people alive who would otherwise have died.”
Surely the discussion should be on how to improve the recruiting systems and field administration systems ,….. combined with accountability of both UN or Oxfam staff.
Not destroy Oxfams funding and aid ,,,,,,,as the english tory tax haven party are doing ,,,, with help and consent generation from corporate media.
It appears they were meant to shut up about the biggest driver of poverty and inequality in the world …. stepped on the wrong toes
Let Serco tend for it …./
The Guardian reports large temperature rises in the Arctic.
“The North Pole and northern Greenland have been 17-22C (30-40F) warmer than historical averages in recent days, adding to fears of rapid polar warming that has huge implications for global climate. The northernmost weather station in the world, Cape Morris Jesup in Greenland, was above freezing nearly all day on 20 February, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute. ”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/feb/23/uk-faces-significant-snowfall-due-to-freezing-air-from-siberia
Has this happened before or is this a new development ?
The Schiff (Dem) rebuttal to the Nunes (Rep) memo.
http://docs.house.gov/meetings/ig/ig00/20180205/106838/hmtg-115-ig00-20180205-sd002.pdf
Oh dear.
We already have stink bugs arriving in NZ lets hope we don’t get the toads…
Toxic toad invasion puts ecology of Madagascar at risk
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/24/madagascar-toxic-toads-lemurs-ecology-threat
Major Ropata WahaWah
https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-375351692/view?partId=nla.obj-375356889#page/n6/mode/1up
More money than Key and from an even more dodgy source, if that’s truly possible !!! Blood money from murdering in Iraq, running a mercenary force in the illegal war; received many multi millions paid to him directly by the Pentagon, by his own admission.
This man must never become a major office holder, please.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/21-02-2018/why-aspiring-national-leader-mark-mitchells-war-for-profit-past-matters/
Carolyn-Nth .. no way to tag you, sorry !
Thanks, veuto. Very apt analysis. So Mitchell owned the Threat Management group until 2010, when he put himself forward as a National candidate.
And he refuses to answer questions about his involvement in war for profit.
Interesting.
Hi Carloyn-Nth .. glad you found it. Good to know others are watching this. Veuto ?? not this one but it doesn’t matter !!
Sorry, rawsharkyeshe – I followed your link, then read a couple of other related articles, and came back to thank you.
No probs at all !! 🙂 Wonder how Mitchell will fare tomorrow ? His background is so laundered now … ugh.
I suspect Mitchell is trying to get his name known for a leadership bid a couple of years down the track.
Looks like Grand Marshal Bonespur is going play CIC.
President Donald Trump’s plans for a White House-backed military parade are beginning to take shape.
The president has directed the Department of Defense to organize a parade that would take place on Nov. 11 – Veterans Day – according to an unclassified Feb. 20 memo written by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.
[…]
Whether the president himself will participate in the event remains unclear. Macron took part in France’s parade, riding in an open-top military vehicle alongside the former chief of the French armed forces and surrounded by hundreds of military men on horseback.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/23/trump-military-parade-veterans-day-423405?lo=ap_d1
Grand Marshal Bonespur indeed !! lol Wonder if Bobby Three Sticks Mueller will have his cunning way with him before then ? Popcorn ready ….
Just asking who picks up the tab for shonkey Earthquake Repairs in Christchurch, Fletchers or the Taxpayer ?
Surely if their has been fraud involved the Head Contractor should be responsible for the appropriate corrective action ?
The Fletchers money will be long gone ,,, protected by Limited liability ,,, some ‘legally’ paid into executives different trusts … allowing personally bankrupted people to drive around in rolls royces … or live in multi million dollar homes … ala Wellingtons Renouf ,,,,or Aucklands equiticorp exec Hawkins …. etc
It sounds like Nationals come up with a neo leaky buildings disaster … pass the ball time again…. More bad times for home owners mainly.
Nationals new degraded building mess could be known as ……
The great Christchurch shake down
Rebuild Rortification
Brownless huge Crack syndrome … systemic arse,,,, 80% non compliant, National TM
although typical, not necessary in this instance
Curiously….
“However, no KPIs were put in place until the agreement was amended in May 2015.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/79176677/no-performance-targets-for-fletcher-eqr-until-2015
But….
“EQC has set a deadline to close the Canterbury Home Repair Programme to all new customers and repairs from Monday, 1 June 2015, to ensure it has the right amount of resources necessary to complete the programme.
From 1 June, no further customers will be accepted into CHRP unless they have a prior agreement with EQR or EQC, and previously cash-settled customers will not be able to opt back in to the programme.”
https://www.eqc.govt.nz/news/deadline-for-managed-repair-%E2%80%93-1-june-2015
Now theres a coincidence.
Taxpayer(if anyone)…..thanks National
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/71124031/no-responsibility-on-fletcher-eqr-for-shoddy-quake-repairs-contract-suggests
A good little bit of digging …..thanks Pat … I always appreciate learning something.
youre welcome…but no need to dig….is fairly common knowledge in ChCh
So we the taxpayers are going to pick up the tab AGAIN for shonkey repairs in Christchurch or the homeowners are just going to have to eat shit like National’s Leaky Housing/Building Crisis which is still unresolved to date ?
probably both….some will give up (or have already) and wear the loss….others will continue to fight and will be paid (possibly partial) by the taxpayer.
Conservatives wanted to say they had a black guy, too.
The Russell McVeigh story must be causing insomnia for a few lawyers at the moment…
And I feel sorry for the victims and the huge imbalance of power from start to finish in this saga too. Surely it’s not an isolated situation.
Anyone else following this?
Just read the “not threatening” letter Adam Ross QC sent Newsroom.
My initial response to hearing the story was that this behaviour isn’t confined to one law firm. I’m hoping it creates space for others to come forward.
Yeah it’s pretty screwed up.
Fairly toxic environment, by the look of it.
I think this behaviour is common practice in most major Law Firms in NZ it goes with the territory and is one of the perks of the job ?
Norman Finkelstein on Israel’s ramped up targeting of civilians
http://normanfinkelstein.com/2018/02/23/gaza-on-the-brink-norman-finkelstein-on-israeli-forces-targeting-palestinian-civilians/
What a shame and the world is a poorer place for the death of this beautiful person.
Emma Chambers died today of natural causes
We will miss you Emma with your wonderful sense of humour that made us all feel very humble and had a good laugh at the same time.
Rest in peace. You will be sorely missed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/24/vicar-dibleys-emma-chambers-dies-aged-53/
Awesome Haka Rotorua boys High. I have to remember that the mokos are there and I did not realise that you mokos had a good vantage point. Its hard keeping my ego in check when I have all those sandflys following me around everywhere and trying harressing me. But I will make sure that I’m a good example for the mokos just didn’t realise that you were there. Be proud of OUR Maori culture and your tepuna like ECO MAORI is Kia kaha. Ka kite ano P.S. Isn’t it peculiar that I had to get that book of my tepuna Ropata WahaWaha from A Australian online library that’s suppression of our Ngati-porou culture and people by the neoliberals they are scared of Ngati-porou Mana
Funny how a lot of the old family archives and records just disappear, especially if family lawyers have anything to do with things ?
I haven’t quite finished the book yet to busy checking the sandflys and rowing my Waka be good mokos from what I have read from our history one can have the genealogical of great tepuna but it is how you conduct yourself that counts being humble humane and respectful. That is the way my MAMA taught me Kai pai.
Ka kite ano
Question for people who have more knowledge than me on this. Have you heard of this outfit and what they are doing?
https://landinstitute.org/
From what I’ve read and seen I really like, can the smart weka and/or Robert Guyton offer their opinions – I would be very interested?
Is anything like it happening here?
Being humble doesn’t mean you take a step backwards well I do when my wife challenges me that’s Mana Wahine treat the ladies with respect mokos that’s the way our tepuna did it.
Back to being challenged in life be it sports mahi whatever you don’t take a step backwards but you don’t go around disrespecting anybody or anything to complete your challenges in life.
That’s the way Steven Adams behaves that’s why I’m a fan of his and that’s the way ECO MAORI behaves.
I’m colour blind as well I can see colours just some I get mixed up with green yellow brown red blue purple.
So I treat every one the same no matter what colours they are with respect but with a guard up at all times that’s the way of OUR Papatuanukue at the minute. Kia kaha Ka kite ano
All right I do disrespect the sandflys but the don’t show ECO MAORI any respect they treat me like a idiot.
But you must show them respect that’s is the best way to keep your nose clean Ka pai Kia kaha Ka kite Ano P.S I will have to go back to school to learn more of OUR REO
Mao Zedong lives.
China will remove the constitutional restriction for the maximum number of terms the president and vice-president can serve, Xinhua reported on Sunday, paving the way for President Xi Jinping to stay on beyond 2023.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2134624/china-will-scrap-limit-presidents-term-meaning-xi?