Think of all the fertiliser needed(increasingly made from natural gas) for the frankenfoods -'plant based' is just a euphemism for GE plants and industrial level manufacture.
We already have plant based foods – they are called grains, vegetables and fruits
And displaced by dairy. In NZ (a dominant player in sheep until the mid 80s), it was the SMP (supplementary minimum price) scheme that ultimately flooded the market with a colossal oversupply of sheep, and once the SMP was removed, the supply crashed. and all about the same time as good quality synthetic wool substitutes arrived on the scene.
"Wool has been a less important export earner for New Zealand since the 1990s. As a percentage of total exports, wool fell from 26 percent in 1920 to 1.6 percent in 2011. Sheep farmers have switched their focus from wool to sheepmeat as meat prices have risen, relative to total export prices, and wool prices have fallen."
Dairy may well survive just like wool has….but as a substantially reduced importance (and with a shedload of stranded assets) and whats going to purchase all this new high tech thats going to save us all?
Or perhaps people will get serious about learning the GHG footprint of the products they buy, learn that producing 1 kg of wool means emitting about 1kg of sheep-burp methane, and decide that plastic microfibre pollution is the lesser evil.
As with almost everything to do with human activity, there are no good answers, just more or less crap answers. And when it comes to textiles, the least crap answer is to consume less, use what you have until it's genuinely worn out, and dispose of the remains responsibly.
The difference is a sheep burp is part of a cycle. Where as your plastic is dragged up from the deep and released as totally new atmospheric gases and pollutants that will last for ever.
You went on a week or two ago about how the little bit of micro plastic you release isnt a big deal . And It wouldn't be if there wasn't 7 billion others doing it to.
The fact that we hoomans have caused massive amounts of forest land to be changed to grassland grazed by burping ruminants has overwhelmed the cycle that used to exist.
The increased methane in the atmosphere right now (1866 ppb) over pre-industrial times (722 ppb) is all on us, and the vast numbers of burping sheep and cows we have added to our planet is a big part of it. And somewhere around a quarter to a third of the warming we are experiencing is due to increased methane.
Manufacturing plastics releases very little greenhouse gases. The numbers I've seen are of the order of 0.009kg CO2eq to produce 1 kg of plastic fibre for textiles, compared to 25kg CO2 (100yr) or 86kg CO2eq (20yr) for producing 1kg of wool. There's no real way to avoid or mitigate the methane release problem from growing wool.
The problem with plastic is that it's very very slow to properly break down, and that it's harmful to critters that mistake bits of plastic for food. It's possible to minimise this pollution problem by responsible disposal, or even recycling.
That the plastic is made from the same raw material (crude oil) that we use for fossil fuels (that get burned and the hazardous waste dumped in the atmosphere) could easily lead to the mistaken idea that plastics are also a major greenhouse gas problem. But they're not, the carbon that came out of the ground to make the plastic is still locked away out of the atmosphere in the solid plastic.
Chances are eventually some microbes will evolve the ability to metabolise plastics. Indeed, some have already been shown to exist for a few different kinds of plastic. If we're lucky, those microbes will aerobically digest the plastic and emit the carbon as CO2, and each kg of plastic will become roughly 3kg of CO2. If we're unlucky, it'll be anaerobic microbes, and we'll get that plastic back as methane.
"There's no real way to avoid or mitigate the methane release problem from growing wool."
Why not? Natural cycles have methane sinks, we can breed sheep to produce less methane, and we can sequester carbon to reduce GHG effects.
All of that depends on a rapid transition to near zero carbon, but that's necessary anyway (and doesn't include using carbon offsets for non-essential things).
It's true there is a lot of potential from microbes in dealing with all sorts of pollution, (and fungi), but that still happens within the limits of nature. There are still upper limits that nature can manage and given we are in overshoot in so many ways, relying on nature to suck up our excesses is daft.
(I'd like to see a cradle to grave analysis of synthetics fibres, GHG and eco).
All that aside, we waste enormous amounts of all sorts of fibres, looking at that is probably prudent.
a sustainability response to that (rather than a reductionist one).
Limit the amount of wool produced to essentials, and stop being profligate with the resource.
Make full use of each sheep over its lifetime (they're the epitome of sustainability if you do this, including zero waste if managed well)
Use regenerative farming and landcare to mitigate the methane issues. Regenag also makes sheep into contributors to the system beyond the wool and meat produced.
Synthetic fibres create multiple pollutions not just microfibre ones, there's no way we can keep doing this and maintain healthy ecosystems.
The problem isn't that farm animals exist, it's the humans are stupid and greedy and have too many of them and have them in grossly polluting systems. My back of the envelope calculations suggest that NZ could be using 15% of land we currently use for dairy farming, with lower stocking rates, to produce enough dairy for NZers.
The greed/stupid systems issues are solvable, we don't have to choose the lesser of evils.
There's also the ancient history circumstance that the animals we happened to domesticate and genetically modify by selective breeding happened to be ruminants which necessarily produce massive amounts of methane as a part of their digestion.
For instance, if our ancient ancestors had happened to modify equines or camelids into becoming our meat-and-milk animals, we'd now be facing much less of a methane emissions problem now.
Given the the situation we have now, though, what could still change is meat-eaters shifting more towards pork and chicken (or horse) away from beef and lamb.
I don't recall seeing numbers on what would be needed in terms of land, water use etc to stop plastic fibre production and replace that with various plant or animal grown alternatives. Have you? Given the horrible eco-footprint of cotton, I suspect the answer is probably quite unpleasant.
Maybe that will become another synthetic biology application, producing biodegradable synthetic fibres similar to wool. Synthetic spider silk has had a lot of research for quite a long time, it's got quite remarkable properties that would be extremely useful if it could be produced in commercial quantities.
sidetracked reading about camelids now. Was thinking alpacas etc for fibre, but haven’t found any comparison figures yet for methane (only that it’s lower).
Pork and chicken, rabbits too. Feral deer, goats, pigs. Possum when we get desperate 😉
Do you know if NZ’s ag animal emissions are based on burping or do they include manure as well?
“Given the horrible eco-footprint of cotton, I suspect the answer is probably quite unpleasant.”
From a systems view, I’d look first a reducing waste across all fibre uses. Then look at what NZ can grow for itself (hemp, harakeke flax, linen flax, nettle, cotton, wool (sheep, alpaca etc), leather, as well as what we can harvest (possum fur). All of those done regeneratively changes the picture immensely. R and D on new natural fibres. Then we can look at import/export, and synthetics.
In regenag, animals are an integral part of the system. They’re not just end products that use resources. Animals can be used to build soil, which lowers the need for water (also, don’t grow anything in a climate it’s not adapted for). They provide on site manure for free, so no need for expensive artificial fertilisers. They have multiple outputs and benefits so we need to start measuring this rather than linearly.
Can't see that happening. With Sheep, synthetics offered an often far superior product (harder wearing, easier to clean etc). With dairy, synthetics just will not replace the natural food in peoples food preference. In most developed countries, there is a swing away from processed foods in general, so whilst synthetics may well have a place, it wont be a replacement.
Just take a look at any supermarket near where Chinese tourists gather. Their supermarket trolleys are piled high with milk powder, animal based cosmetics, health products, and so on. All to take back to China as a far more healthy alternative than what is on offer at home. The increasingly affluent in the newly growing economies of China and parts of Africa are tired of processed and synthetics. They want natural and healthy. One in twenty people in the world live in mainland China. Huge populations in countries like Angola and other African countries. No shortage of ready consumers to keep the dairy industry alive.
People in China are mainly seeking food that is reliable. Once synthetic diary can offer that, then other factors like climate impact, price, and provenance come into play.
If we're talking about industrial milk powder that is merely an ingredient of some processed food or other product, 'naturalness' is even less significant. As soon as climate impact is priced in, NZ's current focus on exporting powder is a losing bet.
yep…the wool industry analogy a good one. Couple of things to consider…around 50% of our FX is derived from dairy exports and international tourism….IF, and thats a big if the world begins to address CC, what then?
long-answer – we will have to become more inward looking – we have to transition to a self-sustaining (in food) economy..(that much is a given..)
currently much of our fruit/veg is imported – this will change..as transport/climate- costs will become too high/will be unable to be still relied upon..
and of course this is all do-able..
i have no answers to the economic storms from the inevitable shrinking of those two pillars of the nz economy..
"i have no answers to the economic storms from the inevitable shrinking of those two pillars of the nz economy.."
And in that you are not alone, including those charged with such things. Concerningly the dairy industry precariousness remains even without CC mitigation…it took around 15 years of grief to begin to recover from the halving of rural property values last time…and that was in a world still able to 'grow' (whether it was wise to do so is another argument)
I strongly suspect that if you take all the costs into account, including pollution, interest and profit going offshore, job loses in industries we have killed to help "free trade" and all the other costs of agriculture commodity exports, most of our farming is a net cost to New Zealand's real balance of payments.
Whether you think its compelling will likely depend on your life expectations…Id suggest that what I would prioritise (at my stage of life) would be totally unacceptable to wide segments of society and that would apply to everyone….so how are priorities to be determined, and by who?
There is a multitude of items we cannot provide or provide at a cost that can be paid by all the most wealthy among us….the recent outcry about cancer treatments is a case in point….we could survive without exports or with greatly reduced exports but we may need to close the borders to emigration (not to mention capital flight)
I'm sure that is true about expectations, but climate change will change that sooner or later. Having the conversations now may make transition easier for some.
I wasn't think it was about imposing priorities but rather that we convince ourselves to change. It's not like we can't change.
Is the basic idea here that we need exports to great a certain degree of wealth so that we can afford to import things we can't make ourselves? My question was more about what if we produced much of what we need ourselves, is there a reason that this is insufficient to provide the country with a certain standard of living?
Looking at Icebreaker, is there a reason that they *had to go global? Why could they not have stayed as a company selling locally?
(NZ selling merino clothing is probably a good thing, shipping wool to china then the clothes back to NZ is an idiocy).
Yes we could produce far more here (especially if we are prepared to accept the likely increased cost….are we?) and I agree we will be forced to at some point in any case but my concern is to attempt to avoid the grief another hard transition would produce and to achieve that we need more than conversations…we need a detailed plan and that plan needs to be accepted by a broad section of society…and thats the hard part.
Plan + 'conversations' = broad social acceptance. Conversations aren't an only, they're a prerequisite for change.
I think there are plenty of plans, or people wiling and able to step up and create them relatively quickly. I just listened to Marilyn Waring's Chch TED talk, I'm betting she knows exactly what we need to do. Professional people and academics have been talking and writing about steady state economies or powering down or the limits of growth for 50 years. There's issues there (thinking about the problems with Kiwibuild, or fixing the messes that National has made), but I'm not so worried about the planning and implementation even knowing that mistakes will get made.
More of an issue for me are the powermongers at large (eg people like Shane Jones in charge of tree planting, who just don't get it). That's a tough one to solve.
And the public. Who I think will hit a tipping point at some point and we need to be ready with ways of having the conversation fast and probably under difficult circumstances.
My question here, to the people with a better understanding of economics than me, is whether there is a compelling reason to believe that only growth economics can give us a decent standard of living.
Matt suggested to me the other day that moving to a steady state economy would mean the end to investments so I guess the middle classes might experience that as a decline, but the sustainability and resiliency leaders have been saying for a while now to put investment money into land and resiliency, not for a financial return but to provide other kinds of as the world changes. For that to be taken seriously we need to talk about it, a lot. Debate it until the fearful living in a mud hut isn't the only future that people can conceive of without civ.
I agree about the huge value in avoiding a hard transition. Maybe there are lessons to be learned from the 80s about the necessity of kindness and valuing people.
Yes 'conversations' are required to achieve a plan that has wide social acceptance, how much time can we spend now on that?…Id suggest sadly weve wasted the time for that so where to from here? Do we waste more time negotiating wider acceptance or do we outline whats needed and enforce?…time is of the essence but without acceptance it will unwind any plan before it starts……and all of that assumes there is indeed a solution which isnt certain.
And it isnt only the 'middle classes' that will kick back if we are honest
I agree, lots of people will resist, but the value in getting the middle classes on board is immeasurable (assuming they're on board ethically and aren't just going to shit on other people). They also hold a lot of power in various parts of society (management, politics, academia, industry, MSM).
Also agree that so much time has been wasted. I can't see a way yet that NZ could use force. I think once enough people are on board, then restrictions like we've had in wartime would be doable. Ditto legislative changes eg solar on every new build, no more building in low lying areas. I don't think we are too far off law changes like that tbh. Attitudes are changing fast.
More broadly, there's an issue of using force at a time when fascism is on the rise. Force under National would be a terrible thing.
Given what's happening in Brazil, I have been wondering about political and economic sanctions and at what point that becomes a global survival necessity even where it harms local populations. I think we have other choices but are going to be hard up against international agreements and conventions that were designed for a different age.
I suspect we are talking of different things…NZ is a currently a developed economy and all that provides (IMO hanging on by the skin of its teeth) and maintaining that requires a plan to that end..we can do or not do any number of things but most of them will not maintain the benefits of being a developed economy …especially force.
we might be talking about different things. I'm asking if we need t base our economy primarily on exports. Not sure there's been a clear answer yet. Do you think that maintaining a developed economy depends on that?
"'m asking if we need t base our economy primarily on exports. Not sure there's been a clear answer yet. Do you think that maintaining a developed economy depends on that?"
Quite simply yes…the only question is at what level that import/export ratio needs to be and how we determine what those imports/exports are.
Full on autarky wouldnt mean we will all perish but it certainly would provide massive problems, especially as time passed and would IMO require 'force' and be incompatible with democracy…all doable but is that a society we would desire for our children?
I'm not suggesting autarky though. I'm suggesting that for environmental, sustainability, resiliency, and climate mitigation and prep, we look at not being dependent on exporting to maintain a decent standard of living. This doesn't mean we never import or export anything, it means our economy is relatively stable within NZ irrespective of what happens in the rest of the world.
And yes, after that, what do we need to import, and what do we need to export?
I haven't seen a compelling argument for why we have to have an export driven economy (as opposed to having exports/imports for our needs).
If you desire the latter you must have the former…so it becomes a question of requirements and as I find myself repeating ad nauseam that requires a plan…and our plan since the eighties has been to (largely) leave that to market forces…or BAU. That needs to change and fast.
Personally, I'd limit air freight to perishable items, and figure out a way to make cruise ships more attractive to be run as liners (while cracking down on working conditions and waste). But trade in itself isn't the issue, so much as plastic shit and our own shit internal transport systems.
Another thing – why aren't cigarette butts biodegradable? They're literally attached to a single-use something that is useless if it comes into contact with water, and yet these bloody things are indestructible?
So theoretically at least, if we manufactured more here, we could import less and still have a decent standard of living?
I can't see any reason to stop all exporting/importing, I just think the reliance on it, and the excess nature of it, is creating huge problems. Loss of fossil fuels will reduce that eventually anyway. Books by sea rather than flown in. I'm old enough to remember when that was true so it doesn't seem a hardship to me, but we were still hugely reliant on exports then and I still don't understand why exactly. I get what happened in the 80s, where we swapped jobs for cheap goods manufactured off shore, so I guess if that were reversed we wouldn't exactly collapse from deprivation.
A high level of international trade enables economies and efficiencies of mega-scale production. From a global perspective, transport included, that might actually be better for the environment than lots of merely large scale facilities each with their own tooling, buildings, and emissions.
I think the toxic bit is the encouraged demand for essentially disposable items or items with designed obsolescence, and the outsourcing of worker exploitation and abuse..
so a high level of international trade brings some benefits (globally and to NZ), but how it's done causes serious problems. Is there a way to prevent the drive for designed obsolescence and worker exploitation and still maintain high level international trade?
My original question is still whether there is any inherent reason that the NZ economy needs to be based on high exporting (as opposed to lower level, more targeted export/import).
Well, there's no inherent reason why trade needs to be at any particular level, from one point of view. But if we're looking at overall efficiency of the supply system, then I suspect with our mid-range population and comparative resource wealth, we'd have a better standard of living and lower environmental impact with wider trade relationships than if we were primarily self sufficient in most things we need.
As for a way to deal with the capitalist mechanisms of encouraging demand and exploitation, maybe regulating advertising in some way? There's not much point in putting up trade barriers to be largely self sufficient if we still purchase massive amounts of crap, regardless of where it's made.
right, but isn't the point that global free market prevents nations from making those kinds of laws.
I'd see a process of encouragement and education for a number of years, eventually backed by legislation that mandates repairable electronics for instance. I can't see how that can be done when we import so much. I guess if enough nation states had domestic laws then pressure could be applied collectively.
I'm not convinced there is any way to make the global economy in any way sustainable from a CC or eco point of view. Less damaging isn't enough in both instances. It's not that importing is bad, it's that sustainable systems design just wouldn't start there, it would start local and then work outwards. So we grow our meat, veg and beans close to where they are eaten, and we get to import coffee and chocolate if that's where we prioritise our carbon budget (I suspect it will be more like we get to import meds and precious metals because we left things too late).
From what I gather, most FTAs prohibit preferential regulation, but allow universal regulation. So maybe something about supply chain pay equity, regardless of source? But even if that were allowed, those nations that currently profit from exploitation would push back.
As for starting locally, how far do you want to go? Local meat, processed at a local abattoir, distributed to local butcheries? Fine for Timaru or Dannevirke I guess, but Counties Manakau or central Auckland? Much of the bread in Dunedin is made (or travels through) ChCh, because of efficiencies of scale. We almost ran out after the quakes. But I don't see many wheatfields around Mosgiel, and I'm not sure there's a good reason for that to change.
working from the local means you design for the local. Solutions for Dndn will be different than for Auckland or Westport.
Lots of meat could be killed on farm and sold locally. Needs good management practice, but can be done. (multiple benefits here, eco, jobs, local economy, low food miles, and better consumer engagement with al of that). Cities can grow a lot of food within the city (probably wouldn’t hurt city folk to see city farms and animals that will be killed for their table), but Auckland really should be preserving its fertile food growing land. What probably shouldn’t be happening is Southland lamb being sold in Auckland suburbs. There’s a kind of craziness in NZ supply lines (lots of back and forth) for all sorts of things, and electric vehicles, while necessary aren’t the main solution to that.
Wheat, sure, grow it in Canterbury and train it along the main trunk like. But better to quake proof that supply line by growing locally too. Plenty of grain growing done in Otago, not sure what the issues with wheat are (probably dairy conversions). CC makes relying on monocropping dodgy, so we should probably look at how to eat other things as staples (variety, including but not so dependent on wheat).
Dunno about the advantages of local killing vs abattoirs, sure there will be more jobs but again jobs aren't a problem if capitalism isn't given free rein. Every onsite facility would require oversight, water, power, waste disposal, etc etc etc. Concentrating all of that in one larger facility might be better from most if not all aspects.
As for FTAs, nothing is forcing people to buy imported stuff. But legislating a restriction in imports in favour of local producers is the antithesis of an FTA.
There are legal, mobile home-kill operations already in NZ. We don’t need a massive freezing works in every area, small scale abbatoirs will work too. There’s a problem in NZ with how abbatoirs tie up and dictate meat supply chains. Talk to organic growers about how hard it is to get their products back to sell, or to keep all the parts of the animal. Efficiencies from size might support aspects of a growth economy, but they’re often failing with regards to local economies and the environment.
There are also issues around miles. A farmer in a rural area wanting to sell her sheep locally, has to live truck the sheep to a freezing works, often many miles, and then freight the meat back. That’s just daft. Trucks on roads, carbon, time, lots of inefficiencies. There’s an animal welfare issue there too.
We're almost three quarters urban. If some niche farmer wants small-scale slaughtering for whatever reason, they can do that. But the objective is to feed cities, and trucking meat to the urban centres after centralised processing has got to be less environmentally damaging and resource-consuming than people from the cities driving out to visit your farmer's gate.
saying we swapped jobs for cheap goods is a little misleading…we swapped loss of control over our currency (and therefore standard of living) for the 'support 'of international traders..we could have done it better but we still had to play the game according to the rules
Nah. Two different subjects entirely. Currency value is like the OCR – adds a certain elasticity to the effects of change within some boundaries, but there's no real "control".
Removing tarriffs and other barriers is fine for peer-relationships. Maybe german companies make better widgets than we ever could, and for cheaper (either tech or established process efficiencies, or they have a better supply of widget ore). But if the comparative advantage is because they pay their children 50c a day to make widgets, then we're outsourcing worker exploitation.
excuse me?….may pay to think a little further. Start thinking capital fight and dearth of investment and then tell me how we have no influence over our currency…..you may also wish to consider what the end result of that looks like and a pathway back and then advise places like zimbabwe or venezuela or even argentina
One is a steering wheel, the other is the person in the passenger seat suggesting "next left".
Sure, a quick scream or blatant misdirection might lead to a wrong turn or a crash, but if the driver expects it there's little effect because the driver has already planned a response.
How are Zimbabwe and Venezuela doing at controlling the value of their currencies? Avoiding inflation on imported goods okay? Stable enough that street traders won't prefer USD?
good grief..quite obviously zimbabwe and venezuela (and argentina, and there are others) lost control ( not influence) of their currencies, unless you wish to suggest they desired the result?….you might now want to consider how that occurred
too binary…when operating within parameters they have influence….outside those parameters they lose control…..as NZ was approaching in the early eighties.
Currency (money)is a confidence trick…remove all confidence and you have no currency.
A government can't control the currency if it can't control the confidence people have in it. And it can't. It can reassure, try to avoid surprises, gently adjust regulations and conditions, but speculative markets are like murmurations of starlings – if they take wing, who knows where they'll end up. And "what can I buy with this intrinsically-valueless piece of paper or this chip card or this app" is pretty much the most speculative market there can be.
WE also fairly easily dropped our border tariffs that prevented cheap things from getting in undercutting our markets, and when the local prices were too high, NZ micro businesses fell.
yep we did all that and tossed the best part of a generation on the scrap heap, the consequences of we are increasingly struggling with and we sold or abandoned a history of institutional knowledge (capacity) which plagues us to this day….all this is known and still we appear incapable of constructing a remedy, or even the attempt.
Hi Phil, perhaps the analogy of 'synthetic wool' is not so flash an example for the demise of traditional vs new food industries.
We are now hearing about these plastic micro fibres ending up in the stomachs of small fish. Fossil fuel based gunk that removes plenty of humans from its manufacture.
Wool products have lots of different skill sets involved in their production.
I sincerely hope to see the demise of theses textiles in my lifetime.
Wool is warm. It's water, rot and fire resistant. Many uses including insulation.
I am in contrast to you in respect floor coverings. We have lived in a 1906 villa without carpet for 20 years. There is now wool carpet and thick underlay in the lounge and a bedroom.
I think carpet should refer only to a wool product and synthetic stuff should have to be named something else. I feel this as strongly as you seem to shun them. (he said on the floor doing snow angels)
I’m curious, do you have any vegany opposition to sheep (wool) farming?
Fanciful thinking. There's no chance everyone will be on a plant based diet to combat climate change, and there's no real reason to try and enforce that.
Supplying only local markets will cut down on emissions in many ways – Smaller herds, less intensive farming methods, freight and shipping costs off shore. That alone negates the need for your constant attempts at shaming of meat eaters into an unnatural human diet.
If, under the current export structure it's seen to been a help to reduce consumption, then so be it, I'm sure people do that already, but using climate change fear mongering as the latest meme to promote veganism is as see through as crisp mountain air. Clearly the meat is murder angle has failed, so let's try your burger and steak are killing the planet. 🙄
Plenty of big atmospheric polluters that can be mitigated or eradicated before we have to tackle with forced veganism.
i don't see 'forced veganism' as being good for anyone…
and those thinking change like this is impossible – could cast their minds back to when everyone smoked cigarettes..
and think how much that has changed – in such a short time..
and really – nobody is being asked to give up anything – you will still have bacon that tastes/smells/chews the same..
the only difference will be that no animal has suffered in the making of etc etc
Killing and eating the animal doesn't bother me, so not really relevant to the discussion from my perspective. And ciggies, that’s a silly analogy, especially when there are still a hard core number of partakers.
As there will be no need to stop all animal husbandry to combat climate change if the biggest contributors are addressed first, it doesn't matter if frankenfoods and fake meat are also on the shelves as alternatives because, as you say, we won't actually have to give up anything.
Just loved the comments from Bill English in the article, way back in 2005. 'Pushed beyond her ability', believed her own bs and media hype and so on. He was bang on the money long before most Kiwis even knew who she was!
I will not be swayed by weak men afraid of strong women so I'm already getting a supply of hand cream in, to keep my hands and fingers nice and supple whilst I turn the pages, and tissues to wipe away the joys of joy I expect to be shedding while reading this tome that will, without doubt, became required reading for anyone wanting to do politics the right way
my attitudes to collins are nothing to do with gender..
it is more for lying tory-ratbag reasons..
and my qualifications around clark are more from my raising a child on a dpb at the time she was having her 'deserving'(read 'working') and 'undeserving families' war-on-the-poor..
as a sole-parent on a dpb – i was in the latter camp..and thus one of her targets..and winz was fucken brutal..bare-knuckled animosity..the hideous fucken freaks i had to deal with there..)
hard to forget all that – and from a(n ostensibly) labour leader/p.m…(!) .(gender irrelevant..)
and i view clark as having just prepared the ground for key – and his works..
and i am a long way from the worship so many left-thinking people have for her..
(and as a reality check – how much did the minimum wage go up under clark..?
to my mind she was a caretaker to/for our high-cost/low-wage economy..and that is not what i see a labour leader being tasked with..)
thatcher..?…need i go on..?..she was reagan in drag…
Robert I wouldn't dream of telling women what a strong women should be, its that kind of unthinking, patriarchal point of view that keep women from reaching their full potential which in turn hurts all of us
You wouldn't be telling "women", Pucky, you'd be telling me and Phillip are; come on, put up! Us "insecure" men need your help here; don't let us down.
You really are a holier-than-thou foreskin of the double standard eh Mr Puck. If you work your way through the above, surely even you can see that it is ye that's pulled the gender card.
Besides which your idol is perfectly capable of sticking up for herself – as if being a current member of the gNat party isn't evidence enough of that. But I guess it's kind of sweet (as well as pathetic) seeing someone (apparently an adult) desperately in lerv with an idol. I'll give you that she's truly iconic – in a desperate sort of way
The good thing is that her rivals a even more ‘desperater’ than She
Ms Collins, along with every other National MP and Party apparatchik are presently engaged in a Trumpesque campaign to win next year’s election. Whether this involves half-truths or shonky data, or outright spread of lies – National will do whatever it takes to win.
QFT. Every day a misrepresentation or blatant lie is fed to the MSM and is rarely challenged by them even though they know the claim(s) to be false and potentially damaging. Rarely too, does the PM or any of her ministers do much to counter these lies and half truths as if by ignoring them they think they will go away.
This is a mistake as we have seen time and again in the past. People will subconsciously assimilate the falsehoods and eventually come to perceive them as the truth.
Judith Collins will thrive in such a political climate. She comes across to me as an updated, female version of Rob Muldoon. Anyone who lived at least part of their adult life through the Muldoon years would know what I mean.
It might make politics interesting but… be scared!
Edit: Oh and btw, Muldoon also wrote a book in the lead up to the 1975 election (I think it was).
more grist for the mill for the left – although crasher has a record of doing nothing, bluster, and hollow words and actions – I suppose on her way out of parliament she may tell some truths – but not about herself I bet.
HENRICO, Va. (CN) – Congressman Devin Nunes resisted an attempt to throw out his defamation case against Twitter, arguing through his lawyer Friday that pervasive parody accounts about Nunes are like a fire next door that is seeping smoke into your house and choking a newborn baby.
Nunes, who did not attend the hearing in Henrico County Circuit Court in person, brought the lawsuit against Twitter this past March. Taking aim at the accounts “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow,” as well as political strategist Liz Mair, the California Republican said the insults against him, in 280 characters or less, caused broad damage to his character and also led him to win re-election by a smaller percentage than usual.
age in terms of electoral behavior and what the American electorate can and will tolerate, esp the middle of it, (it tolerated Trump in '16, but won't be doing that twice no matter what).
But honestly, I think a lot of opinion elites sit outside of the normal income lines of
America, which even at 100K a year, leave people struggling to fix their cars or AC, pay for a dentist, and send their kids to college. At 50K & below, where 80% of the country lives, its a day to day battle trying to keep the lights on, food on the table, and housing.
This economic insecurity certainly lays conditions for racism/cultural resentment, and sexism to flourish, and the GOP will be able to capitalize on that with their crafty messaging that will redirect some people's insecurity to their neighbors, but for 50% of the country,
conditions are actually pretty good for a populist campaign against the ultra-rich to flourish, ESP if the country goes into recession. And @ewarren has always been shrewd about positioning herself as a capitalist that supports more democratic socialism. That's an imp distinction
The eventual Dem nominee, whoever she may be, will need to deal with the same kinds of false equivalences painted and sniping that Clinton got from the same bunch of hard-core convergence moonbats, second-option-bias fantasists, purity progressives, Jimmy Dore cultists, Bernie bros and other perpetual malcontents.
If it's Warren, it'll be about her genetic heritage and embrace of capitalism, if it's Harris it'll be about her past as a prosecutor and her waffling on healthcare plans.
The question will be, will those smears get the same traction and turnout disengagement this time around that they did against Hillary?
Why is he even entering the political debate on 'anything'. Key and English and others have moved on and dont seem to want to revisit these issues.
Why is Joyce , who was Minister of Transport up to 2011 , even being listened too.
The 'raods' he talks about are very expensive 4 lane state highways, both in Auckland and elsewhere, new builds.
The money has been moved to state highway improvements which improve safety, alignment and pavements but in smaller chunks , so that unsafe surfaces, bottle necks and blackspots can see fairly quick changes.
That budget has seen the money taken away for the RONS. We could see the result where the 2010 Manawatu Gorge deviation was shelved after repeated closures and instead expensive and eventually futile remediation was done in the gorge road itself. Joyce was the Minister responsible for that flip flop.
Second article I've read demanding more road construction projects that I have seen recently .We should remember well that road construction companies are/were MAJOR DONORS to the NATIONAL PARTY.
Glasgow University is to pay £20m in reparations to atone for its historical links to the transatlantic slave trade in what the University of West Indies has described as a “bold, historic” move.
It signed an agreement with the University of the West Indies to fund a joint centre for development research, at a ceremony in Glasgow on Friday morning.
Glasgow University discovered last year it had benefited financially from Scottish slave traders in the 18th and 19th centuries by between £16.7m and £198m in today’s money.
In what is thought to be the first attempt by a British university to set up a programme of restorative justice, it has pledged to raise £20m for the centre, chiefly in research grants and gifts.
National MP Matt King denies man-made climate change in a Facebook article he plagiarised from a US right-wing group.
"King defended his point of view in the comments, saying his views and beliefs are being falsely labelled as alt-right, racist and facist".
"A common techniques of the loopy left. I'm very comfortable with where I sit," he wrote.
"It's a common left wing tactic to link things like the Christchurch massacre, Nazis, racism and terms such as alt-right with people that question the leftie doctrine."
He’s a fine example of a paranoid and deluded National Party nutter.
Very deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?” So begins the prelude of Thomas Mann’s “Joseph and his Brothers”, a set of four novels that details the life of Jacob and his son Joseph described in the Book of Genesis. The prelude is pointedly titled “Descent into Hell”.
I have recently started reading the 1,400-page work and the first lines remind me how over the past four years since Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president of the United States we have noted each passing depth in the plunge of ignorance, bigotry and megalomania and wondered if surely we have reached the bottom.
And yet if we are honest we can truly only say that so very deep is the well of his ignorance and bigotry that should we not say it is bottomless?
…This of course came after his obligatory suggestion that “I am the least racist person ever to serve in office, OK? I am the least racist person” – a statement so dully idiotic that it now just breezes past the listener with barely a recognition that were any human being to say such a thing they would have lost all credibility.
…The realpolitik of dealing with Trump is to hold your nose and flatter him and get as good a deal that he can be suckered into giving because somewhat unusual for a con artist he is unable to distinguish false flattery from true deference.
But surely at some point we need to take a stand and say no more.
We won’t of course. Scott Morrison will angle for a dinner at the White House, and given their shared lack of care about climate change Morrison is likely to use chances of Trump’s re-election as an excuse to do as little as possible to reduce emissions.
Some uncomfortable truths – and a simplistic answer – or maybe the start of an answer.
While the wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest may constitute an "international crisis," they are hardly an accident.
The vast majority of the fires have been set by loggers and ranchers to clear land for cattle. The practice is on the rise, encouraged by Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's populist pro-business president, who is backed by the country's so-called "beef caucus."
While this may be business as usual for Brazil's beef farmers, the rest of the world is looking on in horror.
So, for those wondering how they could help save the rainforest, known as "the planet's lungs" for producing about 20% of the world's oxygen, the answer may be simple. Eat less meat.
It's an idea that Finland has already floated. On Friday, the Nordic country's finance minister called for the European Union to "urgently review the possibility of banning Brazilian beef imports" over the Amazon fires.
Brazil is the world's largest exporter of beef, providing close to 20% of the total global exports, according the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) — a figure that could rise in the coming years.
Sounds like the "middleman" needs to be cut out of supplying services if they are not sound, the news this morning said it had been conducted by "an external provider" that did not have the normal protections that are provided(?) The fine is a maximum of $10k the news report also said so it is a crime.
Once again, betcha there was no "hacking" involved – someone will have just published the private info to the world by mistake. That someone will remain forever anonymous and the person with responsibility will not suffer any consequences.
Jacinda will do a frowny face though, which is Labour for "transparency and accountability".
People leaving Gloriavale should probably be treated like refugees and similar supports put in place. These are often people that have been born and raised there and have never lived outside of the cult.
Imagine having to learn how to use a phone or make decisions about what clothes to wear because you've always been told by someone in authority. One escapee said it took him 7 years to adjust to life outside.
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
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Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
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With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
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Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
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Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
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The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
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an interesting quiz – ranking the most effective ways to tackle climate-change..
(using the numbers of cars taken off the road as the marker..)
example being: if everyone composts = 16 million cars taken off road..
everyone on plant-based diet = over 400 million cars taken off road..
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/04/specials/climate-change-solutions-quiz/
Gee we could cut out the middle man and just take the cars off the the road!!!
But think of all the manure.
Think of all the fertiliser needed(increasingly made from natural gas) for the frankenfoods -'plant based' is just a euphemism for GE plants and industrial level manufacture.
We already have plant based foods – they are called grains, vegetables and fruits
I'm betting that if each and every human to committed to tackling climate change, we'd do it.
are there any radio new zealand listeners on here..?
did you hear the insight doco on the dairy industry..?
yr thoughts..?
i found the comparisons with the once omnipotent wool industry (also killed by the rise of synthetics..)….particularly telling..
Link: https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/insight/audio/2018709853/milk-shake-why-the-future-of-dairy-looks-scary
Ummm, the wool industry was never "killed". Bashed badly maybe.
i thought it was still doing thru its' death-rattle/paroxysms..
a very pale shadow of its' former self..?
And displaced by dairy. In NZ (a dominant player in sheep until the mid 80s), it was the SMP (supplementary minimum price) scheme that ultimately flooded the market with a colossal oversupply of sheep, and once the SMP was removed, the supply crashed. and all about the same time as good quality synthetic wool substitutes arrived on the scene.
Synthetics in clothing have replaced wool and Cotton for some time.
A major market for the type of crossbreed wool grown in NZ was carpets.
A major shift in tastes in home decoration moved away from all carpets to a wood or laminates /carpet mix.
Very badly bashed
"Wool has been a less important export earner for New Zealand since the 1990s. As a percentage of total exports, wool fell from 26 percent in 1920 to 1.6 percent in 2011. Sheep farmers have switched their focus from wool to sheepmeat as meat prices have risen, relative to total export prices, and wool prices have fallen."
http://archive.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/economic_indicators/prices_indexes/historical-wool-export-prices-volumes-2011.aspx
Dairy may well survive just like wool has….but as a substantially reduced importance (and with a shedload of stranded assets) and whats going to purchase all this new high tech thats going to save us all?
As people get on board with plastic and microfibre pollution, wool may become a core material again. Hemp too, lots of NZ farms could be growing that.
Id suggest that with the deflationary pressures occurring around the world NZ is struggling with price competitiveness for commodity exports a it is.
Are companies like Icebreaker still going strong? i.e. is it a commodity vs useful product issue?
Marine wool is booming . $20 plus a kg . It's a shame they only suit the harsh high country farms
Or perhaps people will get serious about learning the GHG footprint of the products they buy, learn that producing 1 kg of wool means emitting about 1kg of sheep-burp methane, and decide that plastic microfibre pollution is the lesser evil.
As with almost everything to do with human activity, there are no good answers, just more or less crap answers. And when it comes to textiles, the least crap answer is to consume less, use what you have until it's genuinely worn out, and dispose of the remains responsibly.
The difference is a sheep burp is part of a cycle. Where as your plastic is dragged up from the deep and released as totally new atmospheric gases and pollutants that will last for ever.
You went on a week or two ago about how the little bit of micro plastic you release isnt a big deal . And It wouldn't be if there wasn't 7 billion others doing it to.
The fact that we hoomans have caused massive amounts of forest land to be changed to grassland grazed by burping ruminants has overwhelmed the cycle that used to exist.
The increased methane in the atmosphere right now (1866 ppb) over pre-industrial times (722 ppb) is all on us, and the vast numbers of burping sheep and cows we have added to our planet is a big part of it. And somewhere around a quarter to a third of the warming we are experiencing is due to increased methane.
I'll agree to a point but making it worse by adding carbon that was and is truly locked away safely is just plane dumb.
Btw nzs sheep flock has halved since 91 . Some but not all has been replaced by farting cows . But alot have been replaced by trees.
Manufacturing plastics releases very little greenhouse gases. The numbers I've seen are of the order of 0.009kg CO2eq to produce 1 kg of plastic fibre for textiles, compared to 25kg CO2 (100yr) or 86kg CO2eq (20yr) for producing 1kg of wool. There's no real way to avoid or mitigate the methane release problem from growing wool.
The problem with plastic is that it's very very slow to properly break down, and that it's harmful to critters that mistake bits of plastic for food. It's possible to minimise this pollution problem by responsible disposal, or even recycling.
That the plastic is made from the same raw material (crude oil) that we use for fossil fuels (that get burned and the hazardous waste dumped in the atmosphere) could easily lead to the mistaken idea that plastics are also a major greenhouse gas problem. But they're not, the carbon that came out of the ground to make the plastic is still locked away out of the atmosphere in the solid plastic.
Chances are eventually some microbes will evolve the ability to metabolise plastics. Indeed, some have already been shown to exist for a few different kinds of plastic. If we're lucky, those microbes will aerobically digest the plastic and emit the carbon as CO2, and each kg of plastic will become roughly 3kg of CO2. If we're unlucky, it'll be anaerobic microbes, and we'll get that plastic back as methane.
"There's no real way to avoid or mitigate the methane release problem from growing wool."
Why not? Natural cycles have methane sinks, we can breed sheep to produce less methane, and we can sequester carbon to reduce GHG effects.
All of that depends on a rapid transition to near zero carbon, but that's necessary anyway (and doesn't include using carbon offsets for non-essential things).
It's true there is a lot of potential from microbes in dealing with all sorts of pollution, (and fungi), but that still happens within the limits of nature. There are still upper limits that nature can manage and given we are in overshoot in so many ways, relying on nature to suck up our excesses is daft.
(I'd like to see a cradle to grave analysis of synthetics fibres, GHG and eco).
All that aside, we waste enormous amounts of all sorts of fibres, looking at that is probably prudent.
a sustainability response to that (rather than a reductionist one).
Limit the amount of wool produced to essentials, and stop being profligate with the resource.
Make full use of each sheep over its lifetime (they're the epitome of sustainability if you do this, including zero waste if managed well)
Use regenerative farming and landcare to mitigate the methane issues. Regenag also makes sheep into contributors to the system beyond the wool and meat produced.
Synthetic fibres create multiple pollutions not just microfibre ones, there's no way we can keep doing this and maintain healthy ecosystems.
The problem isn't that farm animals exist, it's the humans are stupid and greedy and have too many of them and have them in grossly polluting systems. My back of the envelope calculations suggest that NZ could be using 15% of land we currently use for dairy farming, with lower stocking rates, to produce enough dairy for NZers.
The greed/stupid systems issues are solvable, we don't have to choose the lesser of evils.
There's also the ancient history circumstance that the animals we happened to domesticate and genetically modify by selective breeding happened to be ruminants which necessarily produce massive amounts of methane as a part of their digestion.
For instance, if our ancient ancestors had happened to modify equines or camelids into becoming our meat-and-milk animals, we'd now be facing much less of a methane emissions problem now.
Given the the situation we have now, though, what could still change is meat-eaters shifting more towards pork and chicken (or horse) away from beef and lamb.
I don't recall seeing numbers on what would be needed in terms of land, water use etc to stop plastic fibre production and replace that with various plant or animal grown alternatives. Have you? Given the horrible eco-footprint of cotton, I suspect the answer is probably quite unpleasant.
Maybe that will become another synthetic biology application, producing biodegradable synthetic fibres similar to wool. Synthetic spider silk has had a lot of research for quite a long time, it's got quite remarkable properties that would be extremely useful if it could be produced in commercial quantities.
sidetracked reading about camelids now. Was thinking alpacas etc for fibre, but haven’t found any comparison figures yet for methane (only that it’s lower).
Pork and chicken, rabbits too. Feral deer, goats, pigs. Possum when we get desperate 😉
Do you know if NZ’s ag animal emissions are based on burping or do they include manure as well?
“Given the horrible eco-footprint of cotton, I suspect the answer is probably quite unpleasant.”
From a systems view, I’d look first a reducing waste across all fibre uses. Then look at what NZ can grow for itself (hemp, harakeke flax, linen flax, nettle, cotton, wool (sheep, alpaca etc), leather, as well as what we can harvest (possum fur). All of those done regeneratively changes the picture immensely. R and D on new natural fibres. Then we can look at import/export, and synthetics.
In regenag, animals are an integral part of the system. They’re not just end products that use resources. Animals can be used to build soil, which lowers the need for water (also, don’t grow anything in a climate it’s not adapted for). They provide on site manure for free, so no need for expensive artificial fertilisers. They have multiple outputs and benefits so we need to start measuring this rather than linearly.
If you're reading up about camelids, definitely check out info about vicuna. It's a fascinating intersection of culture, conservation etc.
Can't see that happening. With Sheep, synthetics offered an often far superior product (harder wearing, easier to clean etc). With dairy, synthetics just will not replace the natural food in peoples food preference. In most developed countries, there is a swing away from processed foods in general, so whilst synthetics may well have a place, it wont be a replacement.
Just take a look at any supermarket near where Chinese tourists gather. Their supermarket trolleys are piled high with milk powder, animal based cosmetics, health products, and so on. All to take back to China as a far more healthy alternative than what is on offer at home. The increasingly affluent in the newly growing economies of China and parts of Africa are tired of processed and synthetics. They want natural and healthy. One in twenty people in the world live in mainland China. Huge populations in countries like Angola and other African countries. No shortage of ready consumers to keep the dairy industry alive.
did you listen to the doco peter..?
'cos much of what you raise is addressed/answered in it..
No, did read RNZ article though. Disagree with there views. But will listen to doco!
People in China are mainly seeking food that is reliable. Once synthetic diary can offer that, then other factors like climate impact, price, and provenance come into play.
If we're talking about industrial milk powder that is merely an ingredient of some processed food or other product, 'naturalness' is even less significant. As soon as climate impact is priced in, NZ's current focus on exporting powder is a losing bet.
yep…the wool industry analogy a good one. Couple of things to consider…around 50% of our FX is derived from dairy exports and international tourism….IF, and thats a big if the world begins to address CC, what then?
@ pat..
short-answer – we're fucked..
long-answer – we will have to become more inward looking – we have to transition to a self-sustaining (in food) economy..(that much is a given..)
currently much of our fruit/veg is imported – this will change..as transport/climate- costs will become too high/will be unable to be still relied upon..
and of course this is all do-able..
i have no answers to the economic storms from the inevitable shrinking of those two pillars of the nz economy..
"i have no answers to the economic storms from the inevitable shrinking of those two pillars of the nz economy.."
And in that you are not alone, including those charged with such things. Concerningly the dairy industry precariousness remains even without CC mitigation…it took around 15 years of grief to begin to recover from the halving of rural property values last time…and that was in a world still able to 'grow' (whether it was wise to do so is another argument)
Knowledge economy for exporting?
Beyond that, is there a compelling reason we need to be exporting so much?
I strongly suspect that if you take all the costs into account, including pollution, interest and profit going offshore, job loses in industries we have killed to help "free trade" and all the other costs of agriculture commodity exports, most of our farming is a net cost to New Zealand's real balance of payments.
That's probably true of other industries too. Maybe our economy is a pyramid scheme waiting to fall over.
yep..!..continuing on our current path/certainties – it's hard not to see it as that…
The GFC showed how that description applies to the whole financialised world economy – and that was only a partial correction.
Whether you think its compelling will likely depend on your life expectations…Id suggest that what I would prioritise (at my stage of life) would be totally unacceptable to wide segments of society and that would apply to everyone….so how are priorities to be determined, and by who?
There is a multitude of items we cannot provide or provide at a cost that can be paid by all the most wealthy among us….the recent outcry about cancer treatments is a case in point….we could survive without exports or with greatly reduced exports but we may need to close the borders to emigration (not to mention capital flight)
I'm sure that is true about expectations, but climate change will change that sooner or later. Having the conversations now may make transition easier for some.
I wasn't think it was about imposing priorities but rather that we convince ourselves to change. It's not like we can't change.
Is the basic idea here that we need exports to great a certain degree of wealth so that we can afford to import things we can't make ourselves? My question was more about what if we produced much of what we need ourselves, is there a reason that this is insufficient to provide the country with a certain standard of living?
Looking at Icebreaker, is there a reason that they *had to go global? Why could they not have stayed as a company selling locally?
(NZ selling merino clothing is probably a good thing, shipping wool to china then the clothes back to NZ is an idiocy).
Yes we could produce far more here (especially if we are prepared to accept the likely increased cost….are we?) and I agree we will be forced to at some point in any case but my concern is to attempt to avoid the grief another hard transition would produce and to achieve that we need more than conversations…we need a detailed plan and that plan needs to be accepted by a broad section of society…and thats the hard part.
Without such we will continue BAU until we cannot
Plan + 'conversations' = broad social acceptance. Conversations aren't an only, they're a prerequisite for change.
I think there are plenty of plans, or people wiling and able to step up and create them relatively quickly. I just listened to Marilyn Waring's Chch TED talk, I'm betting she knows exactly what we need to do. Professional people and academics have been talking and writing about steady state economies or powering down or the limits of growth for 50 years. There's issues there (thinking about the problems with Kiwibuild, or fixing the messes that National has made), but I'm not so worried about the planning and implementation even knowing that mistakes will get made.
More of an issue for me are the powermongers at large (eg people like Shane Jones in charge of tree planting, who just don't get it). That's a tough one to solve.
And the public. Who I think will hit a tipping point at some point and we need to be ready with ways of having the conversation fast and probably under difficult circumstances.
My question here, to the people with a better understanding of economics than me, is whether there is a compelling reason to believe that only growth economics can give us a decent standard of living.
Matt suggested to me the other day that moving to a steady state economy would mean the end to investments so I guess the middle classes might experience that as a decline, but the sustainability and resiliency leaders have been saying for a while now to put investment money into land and resiliency, not for a financial return but to provide other kinds of as the world changes. For that to be taken seriously we need to talk about it, a lot. Debate it until the fearful living in a mud hut isn't the only future that people can conceive of without civ.
I agree about the huge value in avoiding a hard transition. Maybe there are lessons to be learned from the 80s about the necessity of kindness and valuing people.
Yes 'conversations' are required to achieve a plan that has wide social acceptance, how much time can we spend now on that?…Id suggest sadly weve wasted the time for that so where to from here? Do we waste more time negotiating wider acceptance or do we outline whats needed and enforce?…time is of the essence but without acceptance it will unwind any plan before it starts……and all of that assumes there is indeed a solution which isnt certain.
And it isnt only the 'middle classes' that will kick back if we are honest
I agree, lots of people will resist, but the value in getting the middle classes on board is immeasurable (assuming they're on board ethically and aren't just going to shit on other people). They also hold a lot of power in various parts of society (management, politics, academia, industry, MSM).
Also agree that so much time has been wasted. I can't see a way yet that NZ could use force. I think once enough people are on board, then restrictions like we've had in wartime would be doable. Ditto legislative changes eg solar on every new build, no more building in low lying areas. I don't think we are too far off law changes like that tbh. Attitudes are changing fast.
More broadly, there's an issue of using force at a time when fascism is on the rise. Force under National would be a terrible thing.
Given what's happening in Brazil, I have been wondering about political and economic sanctions and at what point that becomes a global survival necessity even where it harms local populations. I think we have other choices but are going to be hard up against international agreements and conventions that were designed for a different age.
I suspect we are talking of different things…NZ is a currently a developed economy and all that provides (IMO hanging on by the skin of its teeth) and maintaining that requires a plan to that end..we can do or not do any number of things but most of them will not maintain the benefits of being a developed economy …especially force.
we might be talking about different things. I'm asking if we need t base our economy primarily on exports. Not sure there's been a clear answer yet. Do you think that maintaining a developed economy depends on that?
"'m asking if we need t base our economy primarily on exports. Not sure there's been a clear answer yet. Do you think that maintaining a developed economy depends on that?"
Quite simply yes…the only question is at what level that import/export ratio needs to be and how we determine what those imports/exports are.
Full on autarky wouldnt mean we will all perish but it certainly would provide massive problems, especially as time passed and would IMO require 'force' and be incompatible with democracy…all doable but is that a society we would desire for our children?
I'm not suggesting autarky though. I'm suggesting that for environmental, sustainability, resiliency, and climate mitigation and prep, we look at not being dependent on exporting to maintain a decent standard of living. This doesn't mean we never import or export anything, it means our economy is relatively stable within NZ irrespective of what happens in the rest of the world.
And yes, after that, what do we need to import, and what do we need to export?
I haven't seen a compelling argument for why we have to have an export driven economy (as opposed to having exports/imports for our needs).
If you desire the latter you must have the former…so it becomes a question of requirements and as I find myself repeating ad nauseam that requires a plan…and our plan since the eighties has been to (largely) leave that to market forces…or BAU. That needs to change and fast.
Where is the alternative plan?
To pay off what we import.
Personally, I'd limit air freight to perishable items, and figure out a way to make cruise ships more attractive to be run as liners (while cracking down on working conditions and waste). But trade in itself isn't the issue, so much as plastic shit and our own shit internal transport systems.
Another thing – why aren't cigarette butts biodegradable? They're literally attached to a single-use something that is useless if it comes into contact with water, and yet these bloody things are indestructible?
"To pay off what we import."
So theoretically at least, if we manufactured more here, we could import less and still have a decent standard of living?
I can't see any reason to stop all exporting/importing, I just think the reliance on it, and the excess nature of it, is creating huge problems. Loss of fossil fuels will reduce that eventually anyway. Books by sea rather than flown in. I'm old enough to remember when that was true so it doesn't seem a hardship to me, but we were still hugely reliant on exports then and I still don't understand why exactly. I get what happened in the 80s, where we swapped jobs for cheap goods manufactured off shore, so I guess if that were reversed we wouldn't exactly collapse from deprivation.
A high level of international trade enables economies and efficiencies of mega-scale production. From a global perspective, transport included, that might actually be better for the environment than lots of merely large scale facilities each with their own tooling, buildings, and emissions.
I think the toxic bit is the encouraged demand for essentially disposable items or items with designed obsolescence, and the outsourcing of worker exploitation and abuse..
so a high level of international trade brings some benefits (globally and to NZ), but how it's done causes serious problems. Is there a way to prevent the drive for designed obsolescence and worker exploitation and still maintain high level international trade?
My original question is still whether there is any inherent reason that the NZ economy needs to be based on high exporting (as opposed to lower level, more targeted export/import).
Well, there's no inherent reason why trade needs to be at any particular level, from one point of view. But if we're looking at overall efficiency of the supply system, then I suspect with our mid-range population and comparative resource wealth, we'd have a better standard of living and lower environmental impact with wider trade relationships than if we were primarily self sufficient in most things we need.
As for a way to deal with the capitalist mechanisms of encouraging demand and exploitation, maybe regulating advertising in some way? There's not much point in putting up trade barriers to be largely self sufficient if we still purchase massive amounts of crap, regardless of where it's made.
right, but isn't the point that global free market prevents nations from making those kinds of laws.
I'd see a process of encouragement and education for a number of years, eventually backed by legislation that mandates repairable electronics for instance. I can't see how that can be done when we import so much. I guess if enough nation states had domestic laws then pressure could be applied collectively.
I'm not convinced there is any way to make the global economy in any way sustainable from a CC or eco point of view. Less damaging isn't enough in both instances. It's not that importing is bad, it's that sustainable systems design just wouldn't start there, it would start local and then work outwards. So we grow our meat, veg and beans close to where they are eaten, and we get to import coffee and chocolate if that's where we prioritise our carbon budget (I suspect it will be more like we get to import meds and precious metals because we left things too late).
From what I gather, most FTAs prohibit preferential regulation, but allow universal regulation. So maybe something about supply chain pay equity, regardless of source? But even if that were allowed, those nations that currently profit from exploitation would push back.
As for starting locally, how far do you want to go? Local meat, processed at a local abattoir, distributed to local butcheries? Fine for Timaru or Dannevirke I guess, but Counties Manakau or central Auckland? Much of the bread in Dunedin is made (or travels through) ChCh, because of efficiencies of scale. We almost ran out after the quakes. But I don't see many wheatfields around Mosgiel, and I'm not sure there's a good reason for that to change.
working from the local means you design for the local. Solutions for Dndn will be different than for Auckland or Westport.
Lots of meat could be killed on farm and sold locally. Needs good management practice, but can be done. (multiple benefits here, eco, jobs, local economy, low food miles, and better consumer engagement with al of that). Cities can grow a lot of food within the city (probably wouldn’t hurt city folk to see city farms and animals that will be killed for their table), but Auckland really should be preserving its fertile food growing land. What probably shouldn’t be happening is Southland lamb being sold in Auckland suburbs. There’s a kind of craziness in NZ supply lines (lots of back and forth) for all sorts of things, and electric vehicles, while necessary aren’t the main solution to that.
Wheat, sure, grow it in Canterbury and train it along the main trunk like. But better to quake proof that supply line by growing locally too. Plenty of grain growing done in Otago, not sure what the issues with wheat are (probably dairy conversions). CC makes relying on monocropping dodgy, so we should probably look at how to eat other things as staples (variety, including but not so dependent on wheat).
Re the FTAs, is there anything there stopping NZ from not exporting/importing so much?
Dunno about the advantages of local killing vs abattoirs, sure there will be more jobs but again jobs aren't a problem if capitalism isn't given free rein. Every onsite facility would require oversight, water, power, waste disposal, etc etc etc. Concentrating all of that in one larger facility might be better from most if not all aspects.
As for FTAs, nothing is forcing people to buy imported stuff. But legislating a restriction in imports in favour of local producers is the antithesis of an FTA.
There are legal, mobile home-kill operations already in NZ. We don’t need a massive freezing works in every area, small scale abbatoirs will work too. There’s a problem in NZ with how abbatoirs tie up and dictate meat supply chains. Talk to organic growers about how hard it is to get their products back to sell, or to keep all the parts of the animal. Efficiencies from size might support aspects of a growth economy, but they’re often failing with regards to local economies and the environment.
There are also issues around miles. A farmer in a rural area wanting to sell her sheep locally, has to live truck the sheep to a freezing works, often many miles, and then freight the meat back. That’s just daft. Trucks on roads, carbon, time, lots of inefficiencies. There’s an animal welfare issue there too.
We're almost three quarters urban. If some niche farmer wants small-scale slaughtering for whatever reason, they can do that. But the objective is to feed cities, and trucking meat to the urban centres after centralised processing has got to be less environmentally damaging and resource-consuming than people from the cities driving out to visit your farmer's gate.
saying we swapped jobs for cheap goods is a little misleading…we swapped loss of control over our currency (and therefore standard of living) for the 'support 'of international traders..we could have done it better but we still had to play the game according to the rules
Nah. Two different subjects entirely. Currency value is like the OCR – adds a certain elasticity to the effects of change within some boundaries, but there's no real "control".
Removing tarriffs and other barriers is fine for peer-relationships. Maybe german companies make better widgets than we ever could, and for cheaper (either tech or established process efficiencies, or they have a better supply of widget ore). But if the comparative advantage is because they pay their children 50c a day to make widgets, then we're outsourcing worker exploitation.
excuse me?….may pay to think a little further. Start thinking capital fight and dearth of investment and then tell me how we have no influence over our currency…..you may also wish to consider what the end result of that looks like and a pathway back and then advise places like zimbabwe or venezuela or even argentina
control vs influence.
One is a steering wheel, the other is the person in the passenger seat suggesting "next left".
Sure, a quick scream or blatant misdirection might lead to a wrong turn or a crash, but if the driver expects it there's little effect because the driver has already planned a response.
How are Zimbabwe and Venezuela doing at controlling the value of their currencies? Avoiding inflation on imported goods okay? Stable enough that street traders won't prefer USD?
good grief..quite obviously zimbabwe and venezuela (and argentina, and there are others) lost control ( not influence) of their currencies, unless you wish to suggest they desired the result?….you might now want to consider how that occurred
lol
So when things are going well countries control their currency values, but when the currencies tank they've lost control.
Or maybe the "control" was largely an illusion all along…
too binary…when operating within parameters they have influence….outside those parameters they lose control…..as NZ was approaching in the early eighties.
Currency (money)is a confidence trick…remove all confidence and you have no currency.
Calling it a confidence trick isn't doing the cause of "control" any favours.
I didnt make the rules…calling it a confidence trick is my disparaging opinion and it dosnt change the reality
It's an accurate enough portrayal of reality.
A government can't control the currency if it can't control the confidence people have in it. And it can't. It can reassure, try to avoid surprises, gently adjust regulations and conditions, but speculative markets are like murmurations of starlings – if they take wing, who knows where they'll end up. And "what can I buy with this intrinsically-valueless piece of paper or this chip card or this app" is pretty much the most speculative market there can be.
WE also fairly easily dropped our border tariffs that prevented cheap things from getting in undercutting our markets, and when the local prices were too high, NZ micro businesses fell.
yep we did all that and tossed the best part of a generation on the scrap heap, the consequences of we are increasingly struggling with and we sold or abandoned a history of institutional knowledge (capacity) which plagues us to this day….all this is known and still we appear incapable of constructing a remedy, or even the attempt.
And then theres CC.
Hi Phil, perhaps the analogy of 'synthetic wool' is not so flash an example for the demise of traditional vs new food industries.
We are now hearing about these plastic micro fibres ending up in the stomachs of small fish. Fossil fuel based gunk that removes plenty of humans from its manufacture.
Wool products have lots of different skill sets involved in their production.
I sincerely hope to see the demise of theses textiles in my lifetime.
Wool is warm. It's water, rot and fire resistant. Many uses including insulation.
hi gsays…
i think the comparison was more with something else that was once huge here..
(and equally unthinkable as being able to be so disrupted..)
and my comparison was in no way an endorsement of synthetic carpets..
i'm a minimalist – me…see carpet as too busy/fussy…wool or synthetic..
a pox on all of them..(it may even tip over into carpet-claustrophobia – i dislike it so much..heh..!..)
bare floors with rugs'll do just fine…
and yes – wool has those qualities..maybe it will come back into fashion – as a reaction against plastic pollution..
(that could be a good angle for the wool-peddlers to take..)
Chur phil.
I get ya point now.
I am in contrast to you in respect floor coverings. We have lived in a 1906 villa without carpet for 20 years. There is now wool carpet and thick underlay in the lounge and a bedroom.
I think carpet should refer only to a wool product and synthetic stuff should have to be named something else. I feel this as strongly as you seem to shun them. (he said on the floor doing snow angels)
I’m curious, do you have any vegany opposition to sheep (wool) farming?
'(he said on the floor doing snow angels)' – heh..!
re 'vegany opposition' –
a pet sheep – living its' natural life-span – and the wool used for whatever – fine..
but as wool is almost worthless – sheep-farming is done now for the meat..
so..yeah…then there are the lambs – with the same slaughterhouse destination..
and the chopping off of those lambs' tails – that's pretty gruesome…
Fanciful thinking. There's no chance everyone will be on a plant based diet to combat climate change, and there's no real reason to try and enforce that.
Supplying only local markets will cut down on emissions in many ways – Smaller herds, less intensive farming methods, freight and shipping costs off shore. That alone negates the need for your constant attempts at shaming of meat eaters into an unnatural human diet.
If, under the current export structure it's seen to been a help to reduce consumption, then so be it, I'm sure people do that already, but using climate change fear mongering as the latest meme to promote veganism is as see through as crisp mountain air. Clearly the meat is murder angle has failed, so let's try your burger and steak are killing the planet. 🙄
Plenty of big atmospheric polluters that can be mitigated or eradicated before we have to tackle with forced veganism.
'forced veganism' – heh..!..that's funny..!
So you don't want to force meat eaters to switch to a total 100% plant based diet?
That's alright then.
changes like that will be of their own accord..
people will make up their own minds…
i don't see 'forced veganism' as being good for anyone…
and those thinking change like this is impossible – could cast their minds back to when everyone smoked cigarettes..
and think how much that has changed – in such a short time..
and really – nobody is being asked to give up anything – you will still have bacon that tastes/smells/chews the same..
the only difference will be that no animal has suffered in the making of etc etc
Killing and eating the animal doesn't bother me, so not really relevant to the discussion from my perspective. And ciggies, that’s a silly analogy, especially when there are still a hard core number of partakers.
As there will be no need to stop all animal husbandry to combat climate change if the biggest contributors are addressed first, it doesn't matter if frankenfoods and fake meat are also on the shelves as alternatives because, as you say, we won't actually have to give up anything.
Andrea Vance previews the likely nastiness of Judith Collins' forthcoming book: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/115236521/jucos-revenge-book-why-some-big-names-should-be-worried
Just loved the comments from Bill English in the article, way back in 2005. 'Pushed beyond her ability', believed her own bs and media hype and so on. He was bang on the money long before most Kiwis even knew who she was!
She really did not like having her ex-boss Chauvel in parliament with her some years back either. Someone who already knew her bullshittery.
Frank Macskasy does a number on her as well:
https://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2019/08/24/judith-collins-foot-in-mouth-award-or-something-more-sinister/
I will not be swayed by weak men afraid of strong women so I'm already getting a supply of hand cream in, to keep my hands and fingers nice and supple whilst I turn the pages, and tissues to wipe away the joys of joy I expect to be shedding while reading this tome that will, without doubt, became required reading for anyone wanting to do politics the right way![smiley smiley](https://cdn.ckeditor.com/4.11.3/full-all/plugins/smiley/images/regular_smile.png)
Hand cream and tissues – ewww!
Mind out of the gutter please
Genuinely strong women don't need to be nasty. Way more attractive than fragile bullies.
Genuinely strong women always seem to have the most venom directed towards them, Helen Clark, Margret Thatcher, Judith Collins etc etc
Its sad how many insecure men are out there
my attitudes to collins are nothing to do with gender..
it is more for lying tory-ratbag reasons..
and my qualifications around clark are more from my raising a child on a dpb at the time she was having her 'deserving'(read 'working') and 'undeserving families' war-on-the-poor..
as a sole-parent on a dpb – i was in the latter camp..and thus one of her targets..and winz was fucken brutal..bare-knuckled animosity..the hideous fucken freaks i had to deal with there..)
hard to forget all that – and from a(n ostensibly) labour leader/p.m…(!) .(gender irrelevant..)
and i view clark as having just prepared the ground for key – and his works..
and i am a long way from the worship so many left-thinking people have for her..
(and as a reality check – how much did the minimum wage go up under clark..?
to my mind she was a caretaker to/for our high-cost/low-wage economy..and that is not what i see a labour leader being tasked with..)
thatcher..?…need i go on..?..she was reagan in drag…
So what you're saying is if a female politicians makes the hard decisions then she deserves to be vilified
if by 'hard decisions' you mean fucking over the poorest/weakest – as collins is jonesing to do – and clark/thatcher did….
well..yes…they do deserve having that pointed out..(once again – gender irrelevant..)
So basically you don't like strong women unless they conform to your out-dated notions of what a strong woman should be
Come on, Pucky; tell us what your up-to-date notion of a strong woman is and we'll see if that matches what we know of Judith Collins.
@ p.r..
whew..!..that's a groin-stretcher..!
you ok..?
Robert I wouldn't dream of telling women what a strong women should be, its that kind of unthinking, patriarchal point of view that keep women from reaching their full potential which in turn hurts all of us![angel angel](https://cdn.ckeditor.com/4.11.3/full-all/plugins/smiley/images/angel_smile.png)
You wouldn't be telling "women", Pucky, you'd be telling me and Phillip are; come on, put up! Us "insecure" men need your help here; don't let us down.
Just for you Robert:
So you won't up-date Phil's "outdated notions" of strong women for us, despite alluding to having that knowledge, Pucky?
Are you afraid there'll be a mismatch between your definition…and Jude?
Or that your version of a "strong woman" will be revealed as something quite different altogether from what the rest of the world thinks?
You really are a holier-than-thou foreskin of the double standard eh Mr Puck. If you work your way through the above, surely even you can see that it is ye that's pulled the gender card.
Besides which your idol is perfectly capable of sticking up for herself – as if being a current member of the gNat party isn't evidence enough of that. But I guess it's kind of sweet (as well as pathetic) seeing someone (apparently an adult) desperately in lerv with an idol. I'll give you that she's truly iconic – in a desperate sort of way
The good thing is that her rivals a even more ‘desperater’ than She
Excerpt from Frank Macskasy post:
QFT. Every day a misrepresentation or blatant lie is fed to the MSM and is rarely challenged by them even though they know the claim(s) to be false and potentially damaging. Rarely too, does the PM or any of her ministers do much to counter these lies and half truths as if by ignoring them they think they will go away.
This is a mistake as we have seen time and again in the past. People will subconsciously assimilate the falsehoods and eventually come to perceive them as the truth.
Judith Collins will thrive in such a political climate. She comes across to me as an updated, female version of Rob Muldoon. Anyone who lived at least part of their adult life through the Muldoon years would know what I mean.
It might make politics interesting but… be scared!
Edit: Oh and btw, Muldoon also wrote a book in the lead up to the 1975 election (I think it was).
more grist for the mill for the left – although crasher has a record of doing nothing, bluster, and hollow words and actions – I suppose on her way out of parliament she may tell some truths – but not about herself I bet.
That's what has surprised me – does publishing this mean she is resigning?
hard to say – she's not the brightest brain that's for sure. edited
Well, it's certainly the long awaited declaration of civil war within the National Party.
Or a managed departure to set up a sock puppet party. We'll see how that goes, she's not Winston Peters
There certainly is a baby involved.
HENRICO, Va. (CN) – Congressman Devin Nunes resisted an attempt to throw out his defamation case against Twitter, arguing through his lawyer Friday that pervasive parody accounts about Nunes are like a fire next door that is seeping smoke into your house and choking a newborn baby.
Nunes, who did not attend the hearing in Henrico County Circuit Court in person, brought the lawsuit against Twitter this past March. Taking aim at the accounts “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow,” as well as political strategist Liz Mair, the California Republican said the insults against him, in 280 characters or less, caused broad damage to his character and also led him to win re-election by a smaller percentage than usual.
https://www.courthousenews.com/twitter-defends-nunes-parody-accounts-from-defamation-suit/
Ms Bitecofer has form.
https://twitter.com/RachelBitecofer/status/1165211906275254273
age in terms of electoral behavior and what the American electorate can and will tolerate, esp the middle of it, (it tolerated Trump in '16, but won't be doing that twice no matter what).
But honestly, I think a lot of opinion elites sit outside of the normal income lines of
America, which even at 100K a year, leave people struggling to fix their cars or AC, pay for a dentist, and send their kids to college. At 50K & below, where 80% of the country lives, its a day to day battle trying to keep the lights on, food on the table, and housing.
This economic insecurity certainly lays conditions for racism/cultural resentment, and sexism to flourish, and the GOP will be able to capitalize on that with their crafty messaging that will redirect some people's insecurity to their neighbors, but for 50% of the country,
conditions are actually pretty good for a populist campaign against the ultra-rich to flourish, ESP if the country goes into recession. And @ewarren has always been shrewd about positioning herself as a capitalist that supports more democratic socialism. That's an imp distinction
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1165211906275254273.html?
https://www.salon.com/2019/08/17/this-political-scientist-completely-nailed-the-2018-blue-wave-heres-her-2020-forecast/
The eventual Dem nominee, whoever she may be, will need to deal with the same kinds of false equivalences painted and sniping that Clinton got from the same bunch of hard-core convergence moonbats, second-option-bias fantasists, purity progressives, Jimmy Dore cultists, Bernie bros and other perpetual malcontents.
If it's Warren, it'll be about her genetic heritage and embrace of capitalism, if it's Harris it'll be about her past as a prosecutor and her waffling on healthcare plans.
The question will be, will those smears get the same traction and turnout disengagement this time around that they did against Hillary?
oh dear
https://archive.li/YJR20/73525ed00b2905ba24a89253240564549ce979af/scr.png
Yesty I treated myself to a coupla tickets to the Film Festival.
Films about two of my heroes: Helen Kelly doco and a film made while PJ Harvey recorded her album Hope six demolition project.
Govt should build moar highways says ex-Minister of them (while misrepresenting the amount still budgeted for roads, naturally): https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/115253220/steven-joyce-heres-why-the-government-needs-to-spend-more-now
The chump is still ignorant about climate change.
As well as a failure in primary school arithmetic.
Why is he even entering the political debate on 'anything'. Key and English and others have moved on and dont seem to want to revisit these issues.
Why is Joyce , who was Minister of Transport up to 2011 , even being listened too.
The 'raods' he talks about are very expensive 4 lane state highways, both in Auckland and elsewhere, new builds.
The money has been moved to state highway improvements which improve safety, alignment and pavements but in smaller chunks , so that unsafe surfaces, bottle necks and blackspots can see fairly quick changes.
That budget has seen the money taken away for the RONS. We could see the result where the 2010 Manawatu Gorge deviation was shelved after repeated closures and instead expensive and eventually futile remediation was done in the gorge road itself. Joyce was the Minister responsible for that flip flop.
Second article I've read demanding more road construction projects that I have seen recently .We should remember well that road construction companies are/were MAJOR DONORS to the NATIONAL PARTY.
Almost expecting news that Joyce has been appointed to one of their boards or something. He has certainly done the yards for them, as it were.
Nice – not enough, but a nice gesture. onya
cool..!..more of it..!
National MP Matt King denies man-made climate change in a Facebook article he plagiarised from a US right-wing group.
"King defended his point of view in the comments, saying his views and beliefs are being falsely labelled as alt-right, racist and facist".
"A common techniques of the loopy left. I'm very comfortable with where I sit," he wrote.
"It's a common left wing tactic to link things like the Christchurch massacre, Nazis, racism and terms such as alt-right with people that question the leftie doctrine."
He’s a fine example of a paranoid and deluded National Party nutter.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/08/national-mp-argues-climate-change-is-natural-in-facebook-rant-taken-from-us-right-wing-source.html
+ 1 yep a total knob – well suited to the gnats – leadership potential there
Funny article and prescience abundant
Bullshit.
https://www.twitter.com/NZNationalParty/status/1165469888095244290
Some uncomfortable truths – and a simplistic answer – or maybe the start of an answer.
Certainly don't buy Brazilian beef.
how would you know?
The way it shimmies on the grill. 🙂
Char char char!
seems to be mainly going to Asia but 20% of world exports is pretty big bikkies
apparently the US banned beef from Brazil in 2017, due to food safety issues. And Trump tried to reinstate it but failed.
Illegal logging is an issue too, but I haven't dug deep enough yet to see how much of an issue and where the logs are going.
Can’t wait to see who isn’t held responsible for this latest government IT fiasco
Probably the National Party again. Simon Bridges said this kind of thing is "entirely appropriate."
Sounds like the "middleman" needs to be cut out of supplying services if they are not sound, the news this morning said it had been conducted by "an external provider" that did not have the normal protections that are provided(?) The fine is a maximum of $10k the news report also said so it is a crime.
Reality is kicking in now that all these electronic digital cmmunication systems are so prone to hackinng now.
What does this mean for the next election?
If we go fully digital will our election results and false voting change in those counting results then also will be hacked?
Once again, betcha there was no "hacking" involved – someone will have just published the private info to the world by mistake. That someone will remain forever anonymous and the person with responsibility will not suffer any consequences.
Jacinda will do a frowny face though, which is Labour for "transparency and accountability".
People leaving Gloriavale should probably be treated like refugees and similar supports put in place. These are often people that have been born and raised there and have never lived outside of the cult.
Imagine having to learn how to use a phone or make decisions about what clothes to wear because you've always been told by someone in authority. One escapee said it took him 7 years to adjust to life outside.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/397474/family-who-fled-gloriavale-desperate-for-work-and-place-to-live