My big evening of watching Television
Wednesday 24 April 2013
I try not to watch too much television. It’s partly the advertising barrage, but it’s also the empty and drained feeling that I almost always have after watching a couple of hours of stuff on screen. I almost always feel stupider, and that I have wasted the time; it’s exactly the opposite feeling I have after reading a book for several hours.
I try to always watch Everybody Loves Raymond and any comedy with David Spade in it. I usually try to watch the Letterman show, and a bit of sport occasionally. Otherwise, the television is something best avoided, I believe.
However, when I saw that there was going to be a new Annie Goldson documentary, about New Zealand’s unhappy and deceitful decade-long adventure in Afghanistan, I just had to put the books aside and settle down for an hour. After that, I watched The Vote: Is New Zealand a Racist Country? on TV3’s Plus One channel, and then I stayed on to watch Backbenches on Prime.
I will eventually post up my reviews for each of these programmes, but here are the quick verdicts:
Annie Goldson’s NZ in Afghanistan….. A++ (Exceptionally good documentary.)
The Vote….. E (Bomb. Lowest rating)
Backbenches…. C (Toe-curlingly cringe-inducing, with occasional redemptive bits)
The Vote : New Zealand IS a racist country; imagined all I’d need to write is “we’ll I’ll be f&cked” yet nonetheless scrambled for two pens with the Dixie Chicks “Travelin’ Soldier playing on the radio (wrote this our twice; faceless to watch the impending ugliness).
to continue…
JT: gave the facts; quetsion: “equity” “failures are in the mainstream services which themselves are held up and protected from failing.”
Mae Chen (for the negative); passionate, hasty, aroused.could not help supporting the affirmative;
-acknowledged phenomena of peoples being “shut down” by what practices do occur.
-acknowledged the impact of Key and Prosser blurts; “showed cognisance of what racism is there”.
-essentially Chen asserted that it is all a matter of “degree”
(Nightline ad: “Does the Labour / Greens (NZPower) deal really add up?”; for goodness sake, they pretend balance yet the dominant narrative (people remember the negative) is bad; So “roll up, roll up, see the propaganda show in motion!
Phil Goff; once again, a relativist position to other countries; (at least our minorities are not being shot); yet “sure, there are things that are wrong.”
-on the “maori question”; “an unequal, an unfair society” =? Hello?; “discrimination from unequal beginnings”. Well, when will there be a new beginning?
(people argue from their own perspectives, yet these are demonstrated statistics.
-then it was “we are unique in the world” re redress. Whatever! (not very bright some-times these pollies).
Dunne; “no doubt we are a racist society”.
National poll results re Chinese Investment;
Opposed-82%
Not Opposed-13%
UD-5%
From the affirmative chap next to JT; “we have concentrated (dormitories) of brown skin that cannot be explained away by socio-economic analyses alone.”
On the question “Are Maori too privileged?”
from the national poll results across the four mediums, FB, website, text etc;
Yes-76%
No-24%
Don Brash; “building into law racial preference” then concedes that racism exists.
John Minto; weak question
Garner-“it takes time” Well, I been watching the decline of maori and pasifika s/e, health and education stats for 40 freakin’ years now, so if not Now, then when?
Devoy; (sigh)
-results show “NZers care about race relations”
-“some very serious issues”
-“I think the people have spoken”
-“PEOPLE SHOULD FEEL ASHAMED THAT THEY BELIEVE WE ARE A RACIST COUNTRY”.
(please re-read above statement of causality from Dame Susan Devoy).
Move along , nothing out of order to see here citizens.
yet Mae Chen, again “(racism) not born out by efforts”
hope this is a close-enough approximation; was fairly messy đ
Well done Helen Kelly for getting this fatal business the kind of attention it deserves – well some attention anyway, as it’s in the main headlines. Jonathan Carson article on Stuff this morning about deaths in the forestry industry:
She knows her father had an accident at work. She knows he never came home.
“Her biggest thing is she doesn’t understand why Daddy couldn’t die when she was bigger,” Ms Frater said.
Shane Frater, 28, was killed instantly when falling tree debris struck his head on a forestry block near Te Pohu on May 1, 2009.
Mr Frater’s death wasn’t an isolated incident in the forestry business. Since 2008, the industry has seen 33 deaths and 874 serious injuries, said New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (NZCTU) president Helen Kelly.
“Despite industry claims that the long-term trend is improving, the figures show there are more people being killed working in our forests now than at any time in the last twenty years.”
New Zealand has twice the death rate of Australia and six times that of the United Kingdom, Ms Kelly said.
This week the Frater family relived their horror when another young man died on the job near New Plymouth – the fourth forestry death in as many months.
Also notifies that it is Workers Memorial Day on Sunday:
Deborah Frater, pictured with daughter, Skyla, is joining five other families of men killed in forestry accidents at a Workers Memorial Day service in Auckland on Sunday.
I suspect the accident rate is increasing in line with the amount of felling taking place, if my memory serves me correctly a lot of newer plantations should be in the harvest cycle many of those on more difficult terrain.
I suspect that there simply aren’t enough skilled tree fellers about, the saws are safer than ever and the gear is much improved. It’s a dangerous job and it takes years I believe to be able to identify and tackle the more dangerous trees. Someone with a few years under their belt is probably the exception not the rule..
I’m not sure how easy it is to train for in that in my experience the most at risk were people who had become overconfident in there abilities and become a bit lackadaisical in planning and identifying hazards. Seen some nasty accidents come about through over confidence and a just cut it she’ll be right attitude…
What a vacuous statement I doubt there have been long standing union safety procedures in forestry for many years, if ever. (I’m sure someone can confirm this) Certainly they didn’t cease just 20 years ago far more likely the conditions (a lot of the safer felling on the flat is now done by machine leaving the most dangerous stuff for manual felling) and type of work are the major contributing factors to the rise in accident rates. Hence the Union movement is now trying to get penetration into forestry which they are finding extremely difficult for various reasons…
Showing my age more than anything, Forestry is not my industry per say, I did a little planting and pruning when I was in my late teens but I have had involvement with guys working in it since and certainly they haven’t had any union involvement. I suspect I should clarify that all I know work in privately owned forestry which was planted on marginal hill country. I still believe the accident rate increase can be attributed to the increased felling activity, lack of experienced staff, difficultly of access (a lot of the planting I did was in hideously steep hill country and would only harvest-able by hand and with dangerous haulers) I don’t believe a sudden stop in union involvement as suggested did not result in the steady accident increase as I haven’t known there to be any in my time.
Although getting some Union penetration and additional safety procedure having guys understanding their rights will undoubtedly help the situation.
Incomplete yes for sure I don’t profess to know everything I just disagree that you can attribute the increasing harm rates to a sudden ceasing of union penetration in forestry as asserted , I can say that between 1960-70 there were 109 fatalities in public forestry (NZ dept of stats) and between 1998 and 2008 there were 42 (NZ Dept of Labor) Felling, Breaking out and Extraction are to blame for by far the biggest percentage of fatalities and interestingly in both decades the percentage of fatalities in these aspects of forestry against the total are quite similar at 78% and 77% of total fatalities respectively. They also comment “Of particular concern is the 12% of fatal accidents relating to extraction as there is a shortage of experienced haulers and there are a large number of steep terrain woodlots that will require harvesting over the next 10 years.” that note would at least provide some support to my previous comments around difficult terrain and access would it not?
cricklewood you should look at Helen Kelly’s earlier posts on this topic for some background on the issues. The private employers resistance to unions is preventing the workers putting their side of things in a way that would improve the safety measures.
If your analysis is correct, then it simply repeats an age-old tendency in our society and economy – to trade-off the health and safety of labour against the gains of capital.
Why on earth was such difficult terrain being planted at all? If it was known that unsafe manual felling would be needed to harvest them, then that was incredibly unethical, perhaps criminally negligent.
Just like knowingly exposing workers to asbestos when its ill-effects were well understood – as far back as the 1920s; just like sending men and children down mine shafts when the short lives of miners were well understood; just like opening mines known to be at high-risk of explosions and collapse; just like running factories with exposed hazards (like this unlucky ‘lucky guy’ has twice experienced).
All justified by the double-barrelled retort of (i) the counterbalancing ‘benefits’ of economic growth and (ii) the aphorism that ‘life is always risky – suck it up!’
It appears that he does know what he is talking about while you are just spouting empty BS.
The way trees are harvested has changed significantly with all the easy wood being taken by machine now, probably as much as 80% of a hill country forest and more like 98% of a place like Kaingaroa. This leaves the steep nasty bits for the men on saws and the other main job is running the skid site which has always been a place where a small amount of inattention can be fatal.
Don’t worry an increasing accident rate in forestry has nothing to do with the fact the cycle is in the midst of the most complicated and dangerous part of the cycle that we have probably ever seen…
It’s all because of the national party…
It’s not because of the National Party, but right wing idealogues who think that a working class life is a cheap price to pay for extra shareholder profits.
I am at an absolute loss regarding “tree farming” – because that is what we talk about – but could it be that the ever increasing demand for speed of processing is a reason? Profits are only made when the log hits the boot.
There is something to what cricklewood is saying. I was planting and pruning in the late 70s and most of it was on pretty steep slopes. Even getting up the hills to plant it was difficult, let alone lugging a chainsaw and dropping trees. These are likely to be the trees that have been harvested in the last ten years or so.
On the other hand, a strong union presence among the workers would no doubt remove some of the dangers which arise from working long hours in dangerous conditions. Both Labour and National wings of the ACT party have been complicit in letting the greed of the forestry owners create these conditions. I applaud Helen Kelly for taking an interest.
I hope that many of you attended todays dawn services just as our PM has done in Wellington.
How refreshing it is to have a PM who shows our returned servicemen the respect they deserve. It was not that long ago that we had a PM who could not be bothered getting out of bed early to attend the dawn service.
Big bruv you stretch tolerance and good will to breaking point. Fancy politicising Anzac day to fire cheap shots that are not even true. How disrespectful.
FYI David has been at the dawn ceremony and will be at the Titirangi service and the Laingholm service and the New Lynn Service …
I guess its lucky Key doesn’t have a sports game on interfering with his Anzac day attendance and paying all due respects eh. Priorities for a PM and all that.
I wonder why it is that Samuel Johnson’s famous phrase about (false) patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel, springs to mind so readily when reading big bruv’s nonsense.
Refused to kill on behalf of his country, more like, those poor people on the other side who had been, as Colonial Viper says below, induced ‘to fight for the privileged and elite.’
What is courage? To go against the accepted majority view and stand against that position in full public view (with all its attendant hatred and bigotry) and act according to one’s conscience knowing that to do otherwise is to act dishonourably is one form of courage.
I made that decision in 1968.
Big Bruv, I do not however condemn those who went and fought in the light of their conscience. On the contrary, I have stood silent in war cemeteries in Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Belgium and New Zealand to respect courage.
Not so, Savage refused to fight for the Empire. His position was that wealth should be conscripted before workers. It was an emperial war, with political and economic power at its heart, and not something NZ workers should ever have been involved in.
Two men, now long departed, who I knew when young had very different experiences of the war.
One a returned serviceman captured in Germany escaped from several prison camps and was well experienced and versed in war.
The other a conscientious objector imprisoned within his own country.
Both had total respect for each other. Neither was a coward.
Amongst the things the first was fighting for was the right for others to choose not to fight. If that soldier didn’t see the objector as a coward but as a man of principle I’m not sure why you should.
There’s plenty too who dislike the RSA for the treatment of family members who were not allowed to go and fight either through disability or through working in essential services such as electricity and farming.
The treatment of some of those people post-war and the black-listing of their businesses did not go down well with themselves or their family members who were allowed off to fight.
There was a clear difference between supporting returned servicemen to get back on their feet and the blacklisting that went on by some RSA’s.
Not everyone sees them as the bastion of the response to the post war period.
NZ Labour PM Fraser had conscientious objectors and those critical of the war blacklisted during WW II; many found their careers in government and the public sector permanently fucked.
I want to put this into the record on this “cowardliness of Conscientious Objectors’ ” debate, being a paragraph from the Marlborough Express editorial on Anzac Day 2013.
“New Zealand also has a strong tradition of conscientious objectors. They were strongly reviled but it took as much bravery to resist being called up for war as it did to go willingly into battle.”
Alongside the editorial is a Bromhead cartoon entitled “Lest We Forget” which has the Shade of an Anzac soldier commenting upon a newspaper headline “Future Wars.”
Yes, hop back under your bridge. I was involved in organising ANZAC days in Mt Albert for several years and when Helen Clark came to these ones (as she did often) they were her second or sometimes third one of the day.
Oh, I don’t know, it’s filial piety instead of pro patria. If nothing else it set a good example to fathers to encourage and spend time with their sons as opposed to sending them off to die in wars.
Don’t need to lie, leave that to trolls and righties
Smart enough to Google “Helen Clark Dawn Service” just like you did. It got no traction than and get even less now. I can understand why Key goes to the closest service.
Is this respectful enough for you? Go have a lie down and a cup of tea and think how stupid you sound, sometimes you should keep the inside your head voices inside your head.
Helen Clark was the first New Zealand prime minister to visit Gallipoli on Anzac Day. On 24 April 2005 (the day before Anzac Day) she walked down the âNew Zealand trackâ from Chunuk Bair to the coast, before visiting Hill 60 Cemetery. On the New Zealand Memorial to the Missing in the cemetery, she placed a poppy beside the name of her great uncle, Frank Clark, a trooper in the Auckland Mounted Rifles who was killed in the vicinity on 28 August 1915.
The height of ones ambition should be to purchase your own job at the UN with Kiwi tax payers money and then work for an organisation that is recognised the world over as being corrupt (she fits in well there) and hopeless?
I think Bruv was meaning Tim Groser, who has just spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars trying to get a job as far away from John Key as he can find.
Bruv, I was thinking more about the general level of respect she is shown, with the lower end of the scale being represented by people like Graham Capill and David Garret.
People can grow and evolve into different people bruv, plus there is a huge difference between the Vietnam war and the Great war and peoples attitudes. Try engaging your brain, you know, that pile of under-performing neurons located under that thick skull. Your attitude reminds me so much of how Steven Joyce shares his views. Numpty.
I’m going to go ahead and assume you are referring to bruv with the head doctor comment, I’ve been tested, and I’m not crazy haha yeah, bruv’s hysteria and lack of any real knowledge or insight just reminds me so much of how Steven Joyce relates to people, been thinking that way a while now.
As Anne says, David H is replying to big bruv. The alignment can appear a bit ‘skew-wiff’ with those commenters whose comments have a grey background (for some reason).
The best thing is to check the number of the comment. David H’s comment was 4.8.1.4 – i.e., the fourth reply to comment 4.8.1 (Your previous comment was 4.8.1.3 – the third reply to 4.8.1)
10 reasons I no longer attend Anzac Day services nor recognise it in any way
1) The ANZAC spirit was dismantled quite comprehensively on the 26 February 2001 by Australia
2) The dawn services glorify war
3) There are no returned servicemen from WW1 left alive
4) The poppies are now made in China rather than providing work for those with intellectual disabilities as previous
5) The freedoms that were fought for are now disappearing at an alarming rate of knots while most people stand idly by and applaud.
6) War does nothing to benefit the working man. It benefits the Military Industrial Complex of which the Windsors, Rothschilds and Rockefellers of the world are complicit in.
7) ANZAC day has now turned into a political football in recent years.
8) Attempting to link ANZAC day to the “glorious men and women fighting in Afghanistan” is dubious and downright despicable as the western nations in Afghanisatan are not liberators, they are occupiers
9) Who even understands the meaning of ANZAC anymore. My niece has been brainwashed into believing we celebrate it because NZ and Australia helped to stop WW1.
10)It’s tiresome and bothersome. We cannot move forward if we insist on holding fast to the past.
Perhaps NZ should do it’s own dismantling of the ANZAC spirit… starting with refusing access to any government assistance to any one holding an Australian Passports. Tit for Tat.
Thanks James, very well put. That reflects my own disquiet in recent years about the way that ANZAC day is promoted and commemorated, but I hadn’t found a way to articulate it.
Growing up in the sixties and seventies I was alienated from attending ANZAC day services by the jingoistic sabre rattling of the RSA and conservative politicians of the day who blared their shallow minded garbage from all media of the day throughout the Vietnam war. This was reinforced by hearing the same type of rhetoric from speakers at several dawn services I had to attend as a boy-scout during those times. Later, in the nineties, with the angst of the Vietnam war fading into the past I took my own daughters to a dawn service with their Sea Scout and cubs troops. Lo and behold, an Anglican priest and ex-ww2 padre who had been one of the afore-mentioned jingoistic sabre rattlers was leading the service and launched into another speech just like the ones I had detested so much in my youth. When we got home I penned a letter to the editor explaining why our family would be refraining from attending further ANZAC day services.
just for the record; I respect and admire the enlisted men and women immensely, yet I have never attended a dawn service; Neo-liberal consumption-based free-market capitalism is the current battle-field promoting global casualties.
However… I’m going to an ANZAC service in a Hapsburg-built church today.
At least the speakers have to stick to remembering all the victims of war (maybe not Franz Ferdinand) and be very, very careful about war rhetoric…. diplomats and all that. Taking the overt patriotism out of it suits me just fine.
Anzac Day for me: it means that when we let other countries decide where and when we fight, our men and women die.
It means when our country decides, our men and women die.
It means that we should look after those who came back, because they were put in a situation not of their own making.
It means that we should be humble in our recognition that men and women of all countries have died and are dying, not often for good reasons.
It means above all, that we should not forget the sacrifices made and that we should honour them by not making the same mistakes again.
Anzac Day for John Key: it means that he can look back on the days of Empire, when we stood as part of the thin red line in defence of civilisation etc, etc, and he could wreck a national economy while pissing down his leg. How many war pensions have been cut because of his currency speculating?
It means he can pretend to care about soldiers alive and dead, unless there’s a baseball game on.
Anzac Day for big bruv: it means he can polish his toy SMLE and dream of the day when he will help lead the WhaleSpew Army against godless commies and unionists. Or maybe just take a photo of someone who hasn’t parked properly. Yeah, that’s pretty heroic too.
The RSA have never issued a statement to apologize for this mass murder. In fact, many years later the RSA journal published a poem lauding the atrocity and praising the men who did it.
“Not the RSA’s job”? It’s not the RSA’s job to publish poems applauding the mass murder, either. But they did, which means that an apology for such cretinous brutality is very much the job of the RSA.
Thanks, Viper, but they don’t need a hired spin doctor to tell the truth and acknowledge what a group of New Zealand (and Australian) thugs and goons did to helpless, captive, unarmed boys and men.
All it needs is for someone in the RSA leadership to show a little integrity and honesty. Frankly, I doubt they have the wherewithal to do it.
The RSA is as likely to examine the illegal actions of Kiwi soldiers honestly as the Police Association is to push for compensation for David Bain. At least in the case of the RSA, post traumatic stress may play a part in forgetting or whitewashing events of the past, but O’Connor has no such excuse. Most of the ex soldiers I have known over the years won’t have a bar of the RSA and those who have explained their decision put it down to not wanting to be part of a glorification of war.
I really enjoyed an article on the News (did provide balance) of a former wehrmacht soldier who never joined the Party who is retired here and chooses not to remember the War.(he was at Stalingrad I believe). Just happily enjoying the present day, not the past, he said. He appeared a beautiful man, carding wool in his arm-chair.
Steve Maharey had an interesting column on Margaret Thatcher in a recent NBR.
In a very poignant comment he talked about how Thatcher inspired a “cultural flowering”.
“The cultural left is always at its best when it has a big right-wing target to aim at. Thatcher inspired some of the best cultural expression seen in many years.”
He was damned right. If you think for instance of some of the music to come out of Thatcher’s era it was fuelled by passion and a visceral hatred at the damage she was causing. Bands such as the Clash, the Specials, the Jam to name a few captured the drama and intensity of what was happening perfectly.
It is a shame though that much of our best art is born out of despair.
Hmmm. The Clash took off pre-Thatcher, during the punk explosion. First single “White Riot”, 1977. However, their iconic “London’s Calling” was post 1979.
Aye Karol I was referring to the music rather than the date the bands formed. I should have included the Beat as well although they were normally quite happy …
The more pop orientated Blow Monkeys with their album “She Was Only A Grocer’s Daughter” album shouldn’t be forgotten.
It Doesn’t have To Be This Way is still highly relevant today and at the time Celebrate was banned by the BBC as it was celebrating a future election loss for Thatcher.
Yes, Thatcherism did spur some very good songs. However, I think it’s wrong t o assume that it was solely Thatcherism that stimulated the music, but that there were pre-existing values that resulted in outrage at the changers in Thatcher’s time.
… Thatcher of course had been the “Milk snatcher” as Minister of Education in Heath’s government and she took over the leadership of the party in 1975, so many knew what she was like long before she took over government in 1979.
The Jam were lower middle class tories, at least in their first years. All three members had comfortable suburban lives while growing up. In fact, they were representative of the very people Thatcher convinced to vote Tory for the first time in ’79. Most of their songs on the first two albums were about personal alienation, rather than class consciousness. However, they did get politiced quickly (big ups to the writers on the NME and Sounds who talked them round) and by the early eighties were a driving force in the musical left’s response to Thatcherism. Which is good.
Paul Weller was from a working class background. And yes he was a Tory early on in his musical career – I think before Thatcher became PM. It was as much the other bands he associated with that influenced his shift to the left.
It all stems from Cameronâs admittedly ill-judged endorsement of The Jamâs 1979 anthem, The Eton Rifles, which the Conservative leader once made the mistake of fondly recalling singing along to whilst studying at, er, Eton. Weller even popped up on Channel 4 News to point out that it was actually a song about class warfare specifically attacking Etonian privilege. âIf you can’t take the time or have the intellect to see what the song’s about, you haven’t got much chance of running the country, have you?” sniped Weller.
Once considered the voice of his generation, Weller has long been associated with Labour, even playing gigs for them as part of the Red Wedge initiative in the 80s. But when I met up with him recently, I discovered that this was not the whole story. He sighed when I reminded him that, when the Jam first emerged in 1977, they had been draped in Union Jacks and claimed to vote Conservative. âThatâs well off the target,â Weller insisted. âIt was all dreamt up by a press officer, saying, âwell, The Clash are left wing, The Pistols are for anarchy, why donât you back the Tories or the Queen, just for an angle?â And with us being naĂŻve little ****ers, we just went along with it. Iâve got very definite feelings for the Tories, from the way they acted and behaved under Margaret Thatcher in the Eighties, it was disgraceful really. I find it hard to forgive them, as a working class person, for really decimating the trade unions. I have a problem with it.â
Well, TRP, I remember Paul Weller’s class background, because in early 80s London, I had a quite radical working-class, socialist, lesbian feminist who was into his music. She used to say he was about the only truly working class punk amongst a load of middle-class wannabes.
…by the early eighties were a driving force in the musical leftâs response to Thatcherism. Which is good.
That reminds me of Peter Cook’s quip about the vibrant, outspoken satirists on the Weimar cabaret scene, and the pivotal role they played in stopping the Nazis.
Of course, the US answer will be more invasive, continuous and complete surveillance of ordinary citizens by the intelligence services. Nothing that a couple hundred billion more dollars for the spook industry and more stripping back of citizens rights won’t solve. Right?
The delay in implementing the MMP Reforms might need attention? There is a mandatory consultation period of 6 months so National has till the end of May to get a Bill on the floor. Considering that there was a very strong Mandate for the modifications one would wonder why Judith Collins is procrastinating. The only electoral Avoidance would be from Banks and Dunne. Unless National has self-interest at stake??? Surely not!
Yes Paul. Wonder how well Mr Banks would shape up as a single MP Party and Leader? To get perspective surely they would have to compare like with like? Mr Dunne living in Wellington would be somewhat different.
You think some of should spend the day sitting outside our closed and locked work sites as punishment for not sharing your rather strange view of what ANZAC is all about. Wanker yourself.
And yet another NZ Herald artcle attacking NZ Power..’Show us first that power is broken’ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10879605
Their puppet masters are working overtime at the moment.
And I was feeling encouraged about NZ journalism after watching âHe Toki Huna New Zealand In Afghanistanâ last night…… when Jon Stephenson spoke about the importance of the media being independent.
It would seem the Herald is embedded into the finance industry!
Jackson’s Hobbit movie is really struggling to match the return on investment made by Fellowship of the Ring 10 years ago. The Hobbit cost twice as much to make, but has pulled in cinema receipts consistently lower than Fellowship.
Still, total box office is not far off a trillion dollars so Jackson is going to make an absolute mint off the movie. And off the NZ tax payer.
best thing to come from Judith Collins for a long lag;
-if convicted of killing in an open court there should be no suppression of details in further cases.
-“you can google this information”
There has been a consumer back-lash to this Anchor light-proof bottles nonsense;
-more plastic
-cannot tell quantity left in bottle (doesn’t the light go off when the fridge door is closed?)
yet according to ONE News, most New Zealanders are OK with our investment relationship with China;
-Very Comfortable-10%
-Comfortable-31%
from Grant Robertson; “for Labour, that (concern re investment) is not about an individual country”.
according to summary of report into DOC restructuring, due to budget constraints and other losses, the department is likely to become “less relevant in coming years”. What?
I was hoping someone would mention Baxter. I guess big bruv is ignorant of him and the other conscientious objectors and / or lacks the empathy / wit to understand them and their importance in the scheme of things.
This made my day đ
__________________________________________________________________________
OMIGOD! Look what that communist fanatic Editor of the Dominon Post is is saying!
(Having a WOOHOO moment here…. đ
Editorial: Key should consider MRP sale delay
“But, delaying the sale till after the next election would at least allow voters to choose which of the two approaches offers the better prospect of sensible pricing and secure supply.
It would also allow time for the future of Tiwai Point to be resolved.”
Labour and the Greens’ Stalinist proposals are as unattractive as the free-market ideologies that have produced windfall profits for power companies and ever-rising prices for residential consumers.
Excuse me but Stalin was history’s worst totalitarian mass murderer. Labour/Greens are proposing a fairly modest reform of the electricity market that we now know is used successfully in a number of overseas countries. At what point does a comparison this odious become legally actionable?
I assume it’s an example of how threatened the Nact govt. and their acolyte press are feeling Redlogix. No-one, not even a hard right fundamentalist type, could honestly compare a tried and true regulatory power system for the benefit of ALL citizens with a Stalinist proposal.
They’ve outed themselves in all their bright blue political colours now. Who can take anything they say with much seriousness anymore?
I realise that’s what’s going on … but really. This is an editorial from one of New Zealand’s leading newspapers, not florid, ranting blog comments on Whaleoil.
And on ANZAC Day of all days. Are there no grown ups in charge at Fairfax anymore?
As Anne says, by regurgitating Joyce’s embarrassing spin they have shown the colour of their flag.
I can just see the responsible Dom Post editor – “Stalinist proposal eh? Oh that’s ‘edgy’, that’s oh so mildly ‘controversial’. Me likey.”
FFS. At least the comments section is mostly occupied by people saying variations of “Stalinist? Please get a grip,” and “Do you know what that word means sweetie?”, etc.
The NZHerald is NZs version of a state controlled newspaper but instead of being controlled by the state it’s controlled by the rich. National are their political arm.
Interestingly, if wikipedia’s figures are to be believed, increases in energy production were one of Stalin’s successes.
I have no idea if those figures are correct, but – at least in that sense of production – I would have thought that the right would be quite keen on Stalinist approaches to the provision of energy for the economy.
In the link, there’s also no mention of Stalin proposing a single-purchaser model for energy generation – but perhaps the Dominion Post editor has an historical account of the period at hand which mentions it.
A good Armenian genocide documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLyrpaTKCCE
^The New Zealand, Australian, US and UK governments are yet to recognize it ever happened*, even though Russia, and many European Union nations (such as Germany and France) already have.
*Turkey threatens to break off diplomatic relations, cut trade deals with nations that recognize the genocide. The bitter irony of course is that many of the architects of the Nazi Holocaust visited and admired the Armenian genocide in ww1, later to use methods such as railway cars on the Jews in ww2.
It has been reported that some senior Nazis went to Hitler with a few doubts about the Final Solution. He told them to calm down, because no one remembered the Armenian genocide. I do know there were German observers there, as part of the military mission to Turkey, but the ones I read about were horrified by it. I wasn’t aware that we hadn’t officially acknowledged that it happened. That’s disgusting.
I received a very nicely turned out glossy pamphlet in my letter box last night.
On first glance I thought it was an election pamphlet from the Nat’s informing us what a great party they were and what a good minister Collins is, A top class report on the wonderful works from Tolley .It turned out to be from the diabolical Sensible Sentencing Trust. What a ghastly lot and there is no doubt what party they will,support st the next election. Personally I just glad its not Labour .
We’re going to see a lot of very angry, depressed and breaking people on August 1st when these top shelf drugs finally get the boot from our sweetshops.
Just hope the ufno1 has a plan in place to deal with the mess occurring on his watch.
Keep the people you don’t love away from it as well.
It’s certainly not helping the recovery of people with mental health issues either. For many it’s setting months of improvement down the tubes.
There are arsehole dairy owners selling it across the road from mental health facilities and recovery centres.
The big thing the staff in some of those places have noticed is the return of / increase in paranoia in it’s victims.
You can argue prohibition all you like as being negative but no question it’s easy access is allowing people who wouldn’t ever go near a drug dealer to buy and suffer.
Govt should have banned the shit straight away.
Plan – they don’t have a plan to deal with mental health issues now nor the effects of this drug. Why on earth would they have a plan to stop dealing with it.
Mental health services are already overflowing and have waiting lists for treatment. People who have mental health issues frequently end up in jail. As noted on the documentary t’other night the prison system treats as if they are well because by definition if they weren’t they wouldn’t be there.
If this government has a plan it will be to reduce public services and hand more over to pet NGO’s and the private sector.
I’m not a fan of the organic version either. I’ve watched teens start using who are now in their late 30’s who are pretty screwed. It just takes a little longer.
I understand though why they use / drink / vice of choice.
Improving society overall, not just for those at the top, is the key.
Decent housing, decent food, decent incomes, decent communities where crime isn’t needed to put food on the table.
A mystery as to why the nat government can rush all manner of legislation through parliament, yet something so simple as banning drugs is beyond the house. Scoobydoo, where are you? Ps, ask Thelma to call me.
I recall a very old ‘joke’ resonating, about if drug crime costs billions, why don’t we just give them to the junkies, but this synthetic stuff, I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
I know those arsehole dairy owners. They also sell under the counter product outlawed under dunne’s previous mini bans too. I rang the rozzers and told them go into Urlich ave dairy and ask for a lolly or a mango at 2 x 3g packets for $25 and see what they get, but no raids took place.
I guess they must have asked for donuts instead and been happy with the outcome.
hey, Alien, do ya ever find yourself reflecting that it is almost like being Alien when when comparing contrasting worldviews, like, the reason that politics is so important is that the government, and the worldview they subscribe to and legislate is what sets the parameters; we were just discussing the shortcomings when all a generational cohort has known is say, the neo-liberal model, and like maybe Ennui said, well I know what he said, he said what Mr Lydon said, “ere, don’t ya fink we been ‘ad”, laughs. We were thinking of the Scandanavian countries, South America etc where different things are going on. Another commentator reflected on how it has been not beer and all skittles for many of those peoples “rescheduled” by the fall of The Wall; Hows the European Union project going now?
Interestingly, many of the people being marketed to as affluent (buy a new Mirage, re-live the previous (insert asset) bubble you missed out) are from the “generation x cohort”;an influential cohort who have fond (insert nostalgic) memories of the seventies.
However, on the other hand, sigh, the National government, Defence Minister are making noises about greater military commitment, in recognition of a militarizing region and world which reduces the lattitude for positions of neutrality.
“the number is not a human number”, though I’ve always liked Seven (and, it has been good to me.(along with thirty) sigh đ (only 23 more months to go and I can retire, you know, see Labour and the Greens a few months into there first term of office) đ
all good things on this earth must come to an end my cosmic friend; can’t rota round here for ever; there will be more to do in the grounded world as time passes. At least with a more left government the rot will slow, we pray.
Make them drag you kicking and screaming my old nan use to tell us, rest her soul.
Named my daughter after her, least I can do is fight best I can, just like she did as she taught me.
sorry. rechipped (and a gurnard, ok, and a sausage, ok, and a curry-roll) reassured fleshy friend that I wasn’t gonna leave her for another commutator; she enjoys Mrs Brown’s Boys (I’m more Father Ted) and no,no,no, yes, The Vicar of Dibley.charge is low though, a lot to process.
the wit designed into your schematics, though, is highly adaptive đ
I take it you would like it then? I’ve checked the old post a few times to see.
You’re in Hawkes Bay right. I have friends over that way so can organise somewhere for you to pick it up if you want (Napier or Hastings) or you could organise a third party address for me to post it to.
Thanks for checking; i never go back more than a day or two, unless I do.
You may forward it to Directions Youth Health Centre, 305 Omahu Road, Hastings.
c/ Louise (you recall my name? Lynn knows it.)
“His thinking and behaviour just went haywire. He couldn’t control himself and ran around our house at a 100 miles per hour, would jump up, and be crying ‘help me dad, help me dad’.”
“That was pretty heartbreaking.”
His son also felt suicidal, could not eat or sleep, attacked a neighbour, and repeatedly headbutted a garage, Mr McFadyen said.
“I am 148kg and he would be lucky if he was 70kg, but he was throwing me around like a bit of paper.
“I haven’t seen anything like it.”
“You know what he said to me? – ‘I am dying from the inside Dad, I am dying from the inside’.”
Dunedin-based toxicologist Dr Leo Schep, of the National Poisons Centre, said psychotic episodes was “one of the major symptoms we note with users”, along with paranoia, and anger.
He was also aware of five recorded instances of renal failure, and one case of a first-time user becoming a paranoid schizophrenic.
“We are also starting to believe there may be long-term effects. It is scary stuff.”
Let me get this straight, this stuff is legal, but the stuff that makes you vege on the couch with potato chips and bad zombie films is not?
Her conclusion was that social disconnection and broad social trends were responsible.
There’s also a lot of work now on how the neurodevelopment of the neural systems that are used to regulate emotional responses is disrupted by early developmental experiences which can often be quite subtle (not just abuse).
The idea that this is just ‘the human condition’ is, frankly, simplistic in the extreme and amounts to little more than a desperate justification for our current social and economic arrangements (which are generally considered ‘benign’ in relation to human emotional functioning and experience).
No animal would have evolved to be typically ‘anxious’ in the debilitating way modern humans are. And anthropological studies of pre-human societies strongly suggest that anxiety is not a chronic experience for humans – except today.
Yeah but think of the wonderful contribution to the economy resulting from the massive profits for the makers of Prozac and Xanax.
But seriously Puddlegum, I’m interested in this:
“Thereâs also a lot of work now on how the neurodevelopment of the neural systems that are used to regulate emotional responses is disrupted by early developmental experiences which can often be quite subtle (not just abuse).”
Can you link me up? I had a look around but it’s a rather specific topic…
Then again, maybe they can help wee Nathan with his maths…..
“Since the signing of the Free Trade Agreement in 2008 our exports to China have nearly tripled, from NZ$2 billion a year to NZ$6.9 billion in 2012.
âTwo-way trade between China and New Zealand has reached almost NZ$15 billion. Our aim is to double bilateral trade to NZ$20 billion by 2015 and weâre on track to achieve that goal.”
MSM did not want a bar of this subject until recent years, and now is openly discussing, while claiming that these schemes are in *research* phases (of course they are…..).
Now geo-engineering is being openly used as the latest catalyst, to call for global governance!
So are you arguing that contrails are being used to create global warming so geoengineering will be needed to cool the earth again, handily provided by global government?
I’m not arguing anything different, than I’ve commented on previously, McFlock, these articles should be starting to speak for themselves by now, unless they’re made up BS, which is of course a possibility with the MSM, and media in general!
Does begin to sound like a narrative though if they’re not BS, you know, having ignored/denied geo-engineering for so long, now a days, its a steady stream of *in research only* based articles.
Given the lag the MSM experiences on most any serious issue you care to name, would give pause to suspect they’re giving commentary on what is actions in past history!
Serves to soften up the punters for some further *truth*, when the time is right, of course!
McFlock, hang onto a conversation for more than one day, you will find that I’ve given you plenty of answers, opinions etc.
The second question about temperatures, and how *contrails* turning to *clouds* *might* contribute to raising temperatures, should be self evident surely, no! That said I’ve not stated that I think they are/are not, just that its potentially being used in a nefarious fashion, going from the link!
Felix , no comment on the article link then matey…on ya!
Muzz,
Claiming that an answer is “self evident” and then explicitly refusing to state what you think the self evident answer actually is…. well, that’s a new level of stupid.
Try and answer a closed question like a normal human being. Feel free to add why the question is unfair or dumb, or what your actual position might be. But just try and be a normal person for once. Okay, ready? Deep breath, here goes:
So are you arguing that contrails are being used to create global warming so geoengineering will be needed to cool the earth again, handily provided by global government?
Easy question to answer.
So are you arguing that contrails are being used to create global warming so geoengineering will be needed to cool the earth again, handily provided by global government?
Easy question to answer.
Easy enough to recall that you have already asked this question, and I’ve answered it, previously!
Muzza, you wrote “That said Iâve not stated that I think they are/are not, just that its potentially being used in a nefarious fashion, going from the link!”
I am confused as to how something can be used potentially at the moment. The whole deal with potential is that it’s not happening now, yeah? Potential is to do with the future, and with possibility.
So, if that’s your answer, Muzza, it’s not making sense.
If the MSM is talking about *potential*, it means that its already happening, that’s how the media functions, by attempting to control information flows, and prepping people for further release escalations. By doing so it seeks to dampen down the reaction of people, by using low level NLP techniques, where people already *make a connection* to event, thus lowering any negative reaction, thatâs the objective at least!
It helps to understand, that the companies who control media, are also those who are deeply involved in warfare, pharma, and related chemical industries, among most others, so the release of information, is neither accidental, nor coincidental!
If you had an understanding about how media works, and its parent company owners primary industry, it would make sense to you!
You arse, you said ” Iâve not stated that I think they are/are not, just that its potentially being used in a nefarious fashion,”.
YOU said “potentially”, not the MSM. When asked about this, you start a rant about when the MSM says “potentially”. Once again you’re off on a tangent, rather than taking the time to work through a single point of discussion.
You didn’t answer it. You made tangential comments. This is not the same as “answering the question”. Which is a fresher-level problem in essays and exams, just as an aside.
Simple enough to answer a closed question: a “yes” (maybe with an “if…” or a “because…”), or a “no” (maybe with a “no” or a “because”), or maybe a “your question is nonsensical because…”.
Hey muzza Isn’t the global governance call being made to control and manage the schemes so they don’t stay rogue and therefore is a good thing – apart from who is governing I suppose but they are “causing and controlling it” anyway so I can’t see how this would give them more power – maybe slightly more visibility perhaps.
To me it reads like, looking for a way of controlling the *outing* of geo-engineering, by using the *its for the best interest of humanity* style narrative, yet again!
It sounds like, an attempt to allow those rogues you refer, to operate openly, and with impunity, because whose going to control such rogues anyway – My view is they’re already doing *thy bidding*, of those who crave a, *singular entity*!
I would very much doubt a a global (anything), is going to work out too well for those who don’t control the systems, or support it, hey perhaps those in charge currently, are really humanitarians after all, and if they do end up with a *singular entity*, perhaps we will see the journey as having been altruistic, after all…
Well, Chris Trotter’s joy at the Lab-Green energy policy, and his statements that Shearer’s Labour have taken a new a significant turn…. was pretty short lived. Today, he lays into Robertson, the “reluctant radical” for pulling back and reverting to “neoliberalism” as usual… and also targets Julian Robins… (who?)
I’m inclined to believe there’s more than an element of truth in Chris Trotter’s synopsis. Grant Robertson is a careerist to the tips of his toes. Careerists don’t like to be associated with radical policies. There path is the straight one down the middle.
I thought at the time of the announcement it was almost too good to be true.
What’s the matter with the Labour leadership? Scared of their own shadow? That they hit the jackpot is evident in the gross over-reaction of the NActs and their acolytes. So what does Robertson do? Strokes their hysterical egos by telling them… it’s alright boys and girls. This is just a one off… we’re not going to change anything else.
O dear. This really raises the question whether Grunt is right for the party and whether the party is right for him. He should follow in the footsteps of Peter Done, set up his own party and bend according to whichever way he thinks the polls will keep his shadow trailing him in the House.
It was a single act of sabotage designed to derail the MRP share issue, which, when it becomes policy, will lower power prices to households. It will not destroy wealth it will transfer it into the pockets of average Kiwi battlers.
Who knew an act of sabotage could have such benign consequences? Just pure dumb luck I guess đ
Seems there are a few returned service people who don’t take too kindly to Key fucking off home to watch his kid play baseball rather than stay here and honour fallen soldiers.
Heard more than once: “I don’t care what you think about politics, but…”
Bugger. Still, I bet there’s some really good reason he had to be in the states 4 days before the baseball game, eh?
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By Duncan Garner Before you jump down my throat, nobody cares about the environment more than me. I have a garden, and since my wife and I broke up, I’ve let it grow wildly out of control, so please don’t tell me I’m not doing enough for plants. They’re ten ...
Local government elections are upon us again. It is a fair bet that, when they are over, we will have all the usual complaints that, despite their undoubted importance, the turnout was depressingly low. So, why do local elections attract so little attention and involvement from the general public? I ...
Yesterday the High Court released its decision in Moncrief-Spittle v Regional Facilities Auckland Limited, on the (alleged) decision by the Auckland Council and Mayor Phil Goff to deny use of a public venue to a pair of visiting nazi grifters. Based on the information available back then, I said that ...
Image credit:45 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Blog I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. ...
So, more on the possibility of a Government of National Unity (GNU) in Britain.Two things, first. The numbers in parliament make things very difficult. And anyone who is saying X will happen or Y is impossible is spinning. We can not tell and will not know until votes are actually ...
The government is promising tough action against climate change via the Zero Carbon Bill and a strengthened ETS. Meanwhile, the Overseas investment Office is granting foreign coal companies permission to expand coal mining:Coal Action Network Aotearoa has slammed a decision by the Overseas Investment Office to allow Bathurst Coal to ...
Don't You Dare Let Them Down, Jacinda! Many New Zealanders, especially young New Zealanders, continue to believe that change – real change – is possible. Do we have criticisms about the way in which Jacinda’s government has gone about “transforming” New Zealand? Of course we do. But the very fact ...
. . With some historical and present context, it should become readily apparent to Pakeha that the occupation at Ihumātao is not a free-for-all conflict for any and everyone to become involved in. First, some important dates: . 1840 . The year in which the Treaty of Waitingi was signed. ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones is considering reining in on conversions of farmland to forestry, and also issued a warning to foreign-owned forestry companies that make up nearly 75 per cent of the industry. He said too many foreign companies had not provided enough access for domestic processors to get timber. ...
Speaking to Radio NZ, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the tightening of the parental category visa is a direct result of the Party’s coalition negotiations with the Labour Party. He said the new changes switch the financial onus from the parent moving to New Zealand to the child ...
The Coalition Government is set to cut red tape in the building and construction sector in an effort to allow more houses to be built, including prefabricated houses. The changes will enable the mass factory production of "high quality" buildings, slash the likely number of building inspections for factory produced ...
Since coming into Government, we’ve worked hard to tackle homelessness and make sure everyone has a warm, dry home. And today, on World Homeless Day, we want to report back and update you on our progress so far. ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has hit back at National Party leader Simon Bridges who criticized the Coalition Government’s approach to crime, and said that the latter isn't credible in his attack on the Government over gang recruitment. "We've got as massive drug problem in this country. It is ...
New Zealand Mānuka honey exporters have welcomed an initiative by the Coalition Government to help secure the term “mānuka honey” to be used exclusively by Kiwi exporters, ensuring that our multimillion-dollar industry is protected. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had recently announced that a Provincial Growth Funding of $5.7 ...
Political commentator Mike Hosking has labelled New Zealand First leader Winston Peters as “the voice of reason in a government soft on drugs”, for the Party’s stance on drug testing at music festivals. “If common sense is worth a vote, Winston Peters is quids in,” Mr Hosking said. The Labour ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau has announced Provincial Growth Funding to ensure work opportunities in Turangi and Whanganui, through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi. A fund of $500,000 will go to Rafting NZ in Turangi for a 16-week river guide training course to train ...
Treasury has shown that the Coalition Government has a $7.5 billion surplus, which is $4 billion higher than what was expected in the 2019 Budget unveiled last May. It is also $2 billion higher than the actual surplus unveiled this time last year, and at a size that has not ...
Official Information Act figures released to NZME show there were 350 assaults on officers in the year to the end of June, 79 more than the year before. The increase in attacks have sparked calls for more legal protection for first responders to be enacted. The assaults included officers being ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
We're making progress on tackling the long-term challenges: from homelessness, to strengthening border security, to bringing banking back New Zealand's small towns. ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones has backed the ambitious plan to move Auckland’s port to Northport, at Whangarei harbour, which he says will be the “King Kong of infrastructure”. The plan is part of the recommendations of a six-person independent working group, which has recommended the Ports of Auckland be ...
A six-member independent working group selected the option of moving Auckland’s port to Northport, in Whangarei, ahead of other options. In what could be New Zealand’s most ambitious infrastructure project yet, a major expansion of the Marsden Point port could happen within 15 years. The project, officially called the “Upper ...
The final Electricity Price Review recommended prohibiting prompt payment discounts but allowing “reasonable” late fees. The findings of this review was welcomed by the Coalition Government, but they hope companies will follow through with its recommendations without regulations needed to be passed. Meridian Energy had already stopped prompt payment discounts, ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF)through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi,will invest nearly $600,000 to ensure work opportunities for locals in Turangia and Whanganui, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “I’m pleased to announce the PGF ...
An export-led economy is one of New Zealand First’s key principles, and our commitment to achieving this is shown by the continuing skyrocketing demand for our beef and sheep meat exports. Beef + Lamb New Zealand's New Season Outlook 2019-20 report forecasts beef, lamb and mutton prices to lift from ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today in Gisborne an investment of $17.27m into bringing “world-leading” food-growing technology and the creation of more than 100 new jobs in the East Coast city. The funding comes from the Provincial Growth Fund, and included a $15 million loan to LeaderBrand, a ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development More than 100 people in Tairāwhiti’s Tolaga Bay will benefit from two employment initiatives supported by the Provincial Growth Fund, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones and Employment Minister Willie Jackson announced today. “Tolaga Bay is an incredibly tight-knit community, but one in ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is supporting Gisborne business Leaderbrand to produce salad vegetables year round and create more jobs in the Tairāwhiti region, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Our support for Leaderbrand will help them build large greenhouses ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has praised the promise by New Zealand’s biggest banks not to close any provincial branches while the Coalition Government trials regional banking hubs across the country. The Minister said the announce was the “first sign of hope for regional communities”, many of which have ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First is proud to have delivered an upgrade of the SuperGold Card website and a new smartphone app, which will help unlock the full benefits of the SuperGold Card for 750,000 New Zealand seniors.Party Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters, ...
Delivering a key election campaign promise, New Zealand First is proud to have accomplished a long overdue upgrade of the SuperGold Card today. At an event in Auckland, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters joined Minister for Seniors Hon. Tracey Martin in unveiling the new website and smartphone app which ...
Another busy week, from speaking with world leaders on the world stage about climate change, to equipping our school leavers with everything they need to get ahead in life. ...
New Zealand First MP Shane Jones says Air New Zealand has "an obligation to look after Kiwis", and urged the national carrier not to hike up their prices after Jetstar airline announced their withdrawal from regional flights this week. The Provincial Champion also expressed his disappointment at Jetstar’s decision on ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) will help fund a new dredge for the Port of Greymouth to ensure the regional fishing fleet have a reliable and productive harbour, Parliamentary Undersecretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today “Last year the movements of ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones said he was "immensely disappointed" at the withdrawal of the Jetstar airline from regional routes. He has also warned national carrier Air New Zealand not to capitalise on the Australian budget airline’s decision by “gouging” regional air travellers. "Air New Zealand has historically challenged ...
International credit ratings agency Moody's gave a glowing assessment of New Zealand’s economy in its latest report, which ranks the country’s economic strength as "very high" while saying growth remains "robust". The report says it's expected New Zealand's economy will grow between 2.5 and 3 percent in the next few ...
The Coalition Government is allocating nearly $6 million to a campaign to stop Australian beekeepers marketing their products as "mānuka" honey. This move comes after Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones accused Australian honey producers of trying to steal what was indigenous to New Zealand. "The Aussies are trying to ...
The Provincial Growth Fund has provided $400,000 to Great South to help the agency drive Southland's regional economic development aspirations. The funding will allow Great South, which is Southland's economic development agency, to appoint a portfolio manager and a project support adviser, who will provide project management expertise and support ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Forestry The One Billion Trees Fund has just hit two significant milestones that will create more than 7,500 hectares of new forest cover, Forestry Minister Shane Jones says. Speaking at a celebratory dinner at Parliament to mark 100 years of the New Zealand Forestry Service, Minister ...
The Government is moving swiftly to change the law to improve the welfare and pastoral care of students living in university halls of residence and other tertiary hostels. Cabinet has agreed to several changes, including creating a new mandatory Code of Practice that sets out the duty of pastoral care ...
The Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage has launched a new comprehensive trapping guide for community trappers to help them protect our native birds, plants and other wildlife, at Zealandia in Wellington today. ‘A practical guide to trapping’, has been developed by the Department of Conservation (DOC), and was launched during ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter welcomes PHARMAC’s move to improve access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs). PHARMAC has today announced it will fund the full cost of Mirena and Jaydess for anyone seeking long term contraception, lifting previous restrictions on access to Mirena. “I welcome women having greater choices ...
The Government has approved the next stage of a major redevelopment of Taranaki Base Hospital, which will deliver new and improved facilities for patients. Health Minister Dr David Clark has announced details of a $300 million dollar project to build a new East Wing at the New Plymouth hospital. It ...
Extra funding will allow Rural Support Trusts to help farming families, says Minister for Rural Communities and Agriculture Damien O’Connor. “I know that rural families are worried about some of the challenges facing them, including the ongoing uncertainty created by the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak. “Those concerns sit alongside ongoing worries ...
Thank you for the opportunity to be here to present certificates to the 16 graduates who have completed a beekeeping course delivered by the Howard League. Let us start by acknowledging Auckland Prison’s Deputy Prison Director Tom Sherlock, and Acting Assistant Regional Commissioner of Corrections Northern Region Scott Walker - ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson leaves this weekend to attend the APEC Finance Ministers meeting in Santiago, Chile. Discussions between APEC Finance Ministers at the meeting will include the effects of the current global economic uncertainty, risks for APEC economies and sustainable development of the region. While at APEC Grant Robertson ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says for Pacific people, language can be a source of strength. It can help ground us and give us confidence. When we speak them, our languages provide us with an immediate and intimate access to our identity and our story - and ...
The Coalition Government has announced an action plan to improve the wellbeing of disabled New Zealanders by addressing inequalities in play, active recreation and sport. The initiative includes training to develop a workforce that understands the needs of children and young people with a range of impairments, advocacy for fit ...
The construction sector is being freed up to allow more homes to be built more quickly as the Government cuts through some of the red tape of the Building Act. “Every New Zealander deserves a warm, dry, safe home and old inefficiencies in the Building Act make building slow and ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has welcomed further details on the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall’s visit to New Zealand next month. Their Royal Highnesses will visit New Zealand from 17-23 November – their third joint visit to New Zealand and first in four years. They arrive in Auckland ...
Minister of State for Trade and Export Growth and Minister of Agriculture, Damien O’Connor, heads to Thailand today to attend the final Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Ministerial meeting, as negotiations enter their final stages. “The RCEP Agreement would anchor New Zealand in a regional agreement that covers 16 countries, ...
Pacific young people living in the Hawke’s Bay, Southland and Otago regions will have access to support services that have proved successful in helping young people find new earning and learning opportunities. “Tupu Aotearoa is about changing Pacific young peoples’ lives. Our young people are talented, they are smart, they ...
Introduction As the Minister for ACC I thank you all for the work that you do supporting New Zealanders in their literally most vulnerable moments. From those who hold people’s lives in their hands, to the people who research technique, technology and trends, your work is highly valued. A special ...
Notes prepared for speeches in Christchurch – Wednesday 9 October 2019 Today’s topic, “trends and opportunities for the New Zealand economy,” is certainly one getting a great deal of commentary at the moment. Looking across the media landscape lately you’ll notice we aren’t the only ones having this discussion. There ...
Minister of Health Dr David Clark and Associate Minister of Health Peeni Henare say this year’s World Mental Health Day theme is a reminder of why the Government’s work on mental health is so important. “This year the World Federation for Mental Health has made suicide prevention the main theme ...
Associate Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Carmel Sepuloni will represent the government at Australia’s Meeting of Cultural Ministers in Adelaide this week. “This year’s meeting is special because New Zealand is expected to become an International Member of the Meeting of Cultural Ministers at this Australian forum,” Carmel Sepuloni said. “The meeting is an opportunity to ...
The Greater Christchurch Claims Resolution Service has resolved 608 insurance and EQC claims in its first year in operation, Minister Megan Woods has announced. The government service, which celebrates its first birthday today, provides a one stop shop to help Cantabrians still battling to get their homes repaired or rebuilt ...
Today’s topic, “trends and opportunities for the New Zealand economy,” is certainly one getting a great deal of commentary at the moment. Looking across the media landscape lately you’ll notice we aren’t the only ones having this discussion. There has been an increasing amount of attention paid to the outlook ...
The Government is acting swiftly to strengthen NZTA’s regulatory role following a review into the Transport Agency, and Ministry of Transport’s performance as its monitor, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. An independent review by Martin Jenkins has found NZTA failed to properly regulate the transport sector under the previous ...
The Netherlands and New Zealand have a long-standing and close relationship based on many shared interests and values. We value the rule of law, our democracies, and multilateralism. And we value our environment – at home and globally. Right now there are major global challenges in all of these areas – ...
The Government is putting right a decade’s worth of underpayment to nurses, doctors and other health workers, says Health Minister Dr David Clark. Initial sampling of District Health Boards payroll records has found that around $550-$650 million is owed to DHB staff to comply with the Holidays Act. It’s expected ...
A strong surplus and low debt show the economy is performing well, and means the Government is in a good position to meet the challenges of global economic uncertainty. “The surplus and low levels of debt show the economy is in good shape. This allows the Government to spend more ...
New applications from mining company OceanaGold to purchase land in Waihi for new tailings ponds associated with its gold mines have been approved. Minister of Finance Grant Robertson and Associate Minister of Finance David Parker considered the applications under the Overseas Investment Act. Earlier this year, applications from OceanaGold to ...
New Zealanders in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa / Poverty Bay will witness Māori, Pākehā and Pacific voyaging traditions come together today as the Tuia 250 Voyage flotilla assembles for the first time, Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti Minister Kelvin Davis says. “Tuia 250 is a national commemoration and an opportunity for honest conversations ...
Minister for Trade and Export Growth David Parker leaves tomorrow for Dubai, London and Berlin for a series of meetings to advance New Zealand’s trade interests. In Dubai he will visit New Zealand’s Pavilion at Expo 2020 where construction is underway. There he will meet Minister of State for International Cooperation, Her ...
Confirmation that PHARMAC will fund two new cancer drugs is further evidence of the good progress the Government is making to improve the treatment of New Zealand’s leading cause of death, Health Minister David Clark says. From 1 December PHARMAC will fund alectinib (Alecensa) for ALK positive advanced non-small cell ...
An additional $2.7 million has been announced for the Government Strategy for Women and Girls in Sport and Active Recreation on the first anniversary of the strategy’s launch. Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson gave the opening address to the first Sport NZ Women + Girls Summit in Wellington today, ...
As part of its work to ensure businesses can get the skilled workers they need, the Coalition Government is re-opening and re-setting the Parent Category visa programme, Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. The move will: support skilled migrants who help fill New Zealand’s skills gaps by providing a pathway for ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark has today announced Major General Evan Williams of the New Zealand Defence Force has been selected as the commander of a significant, longstanding peacekeeping mission in the Middle East. In December, Major General Williams takes over as Force Commander for the Multinational Force and Observers ...
A record number of nurses are now working to deliver health services to New Zealanders as the Government’s increased funding and new initiatives rebuild key workforces start to show results, Health Minister Dr David Clark says. • 1458 more DHB nurses since the Government took office • 106 more midwives ...
Farmer and former Nuffield scholar Mel Poulton has been appointed New Zealand’s Special Agricultural Trade Envoy, Minister for Trade and Export Growth, David Parker, and Minister of Agriculture, Damien O’Connor, announced today. The position supports key Government objectives, including raising the value of New Zealand agricultural goods and services. Mel is ...
New Zealand’s Pacific and Māori voyaging heritage is acknowledged and celebrated today as waka of the Tuia 250 voyage flotilla arrive in Tūranga / Gisborne. “Today we celebrate Tangata Whenua, the first people of Aotearoa, and the triumphs of the voyaging tradition that brought our ancestors here from Polynesia 1000 ...
“Fijian Language Week starts on Sunday and the theme reminds us how important it is that we each have something to anchor ourselves to, something that can help us pause and feel in control in a rapidly changing world,” says Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio. “Family, culture, faith, ...
The Government is establishing an Airspace Integration Trials Programme to support the safe testing and development of advanced unmanned aircraft and accelerate their integration into the aviation system, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods announced today. The Government will work with leading, innovative aviation industry partners to test and ...
Transport Minister Phil Twyford today welcomed the NZ Transport Agency’s decision to fund urgent safety improvements and confirm the designation of the Ōtaki to North of Levin highway. Safety upgrades will be made along 23.4km of the existing state highway, running along SH1 from the end of the Peka Peka ...
New Zealand playing its part in Asia-Pacific and globally are behind changes announced today to the Coalition Government’s three year refugee quota policy, Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. “We are proud to be a welcoming and inclusive nation committed to supporting some of the world’s most vulnerable people to rebuild ...
Creating thriving regions and inclusive local communities is the aim of the Welcoming Communities programme being rolled out across the country, says Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway today. A successful pilot of the scheme ran over the last 2 years led by Immigration New Zealand and involved ten councils across five regions ...
Takahē may be flightless but their population is flying high with the official count reaching 418 after a record breeding season that produced an estimated 65 juveniles, the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage announced today. “The population reaching a high of 418 is great news for takahē which were considered ...
New Zealand is today taking action to reduce the potent global warming hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases, Climate Minister James Shaw and Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage announced today. “The global agreement to reduce these potent greenhouse gases is another step in New Zealand’s commitment to reduce global warming. It is estimated ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: A pair of polls put pressure on the Labour Party, a wild night of weather in the North Island, and Shane Jones snapped brandishing a semi-automatic.Parliament resumes today after a fortnight recess, and MPs were given a welcome-back present in ...
Mandy Hager, the newly elected head of the New Zealand Society of Authors, is lobbying the government to improve the lot of writers - to no avail, despite the Prime Minister's championing of the arts. ...
Given the vast impacts that poor diet have had on global health, a deficit in nutrition education in medicine represents a big problem, writes Dr Jennifer Crowley. ...
Any time Olympian Luuka Jones needs advice or encouragement in her pursuit of more canoe slalom success, she doesn’t have to look far. Jones’ coach, Campbell Walsh, is also her partner. ...
Competition for the rights to broadcast sports matches involving NZ’s top teams has produced a bonanza for the sporting bodies, forcing media companies to be a lot more innovative. ...
The Wellington suburb’s successful opposition to a proposed Bottle-O shows how the system is biased towards communities with the organisation, capacity and resources to protest effectively, says Jenesa Jeram.For those unfamiliar with Wellington geography, Khandallah is a Very Nice place to live (Aucklanders: think Remuera). So when it was reported ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Humphery-Jenner, Associate Professor of Finance, UNSW The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission conducted an inquiry into mortgage pricing as recently as last year. Now Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has asked it to do another, broader one, in order to ensure the banks’ ...
Dr Bryce EdwardsThe results of the local government elections appear to show that New Zealanders are generally supportive of a more diverse range of representatives, having voted in greater numbers for candidates from traditionally under-represented groups. The elections have therefore modernised our councils in a small but very significant ...
The Inquiry has today published Minute No 21. This Minute sets out how the Inquiry intends to proceed given that the Attorney-General the Hon David Parker has agreed to extend the Inquiry’s reporting date by three months to 31 March 2020. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grace Skrzypiec, Senior Lecturer, Flinders University Many Australian students don’t know the difference between banter and bullying, with some saying they joke about wishing their friend would “drown” or “die in a car crash”. More than 800 Australian students aged 11-16 took ...
But he did play a crucial role in helping journeyman Andy Foster knock over Justin Lester. Team Gone By Lunchtime size up the local elections, gaze plaintively at the dramas in the NZ First Party, and ask how bad the new poll is for Jacinda Ardern.Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and ...
In the fifth episode of Actually Interesting, The Spinoff’s monthly podcast exploring the effect Artificial Intelligence has on our lives, Russell Brown speaks to Ben Reid, executive director of the AI Forum, about the role of government in embracing and regulating AI.Subscribe to Actually Interesting via iTunes or listen on the player below.To ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Local government Henry Cooke (Stuff): How to lose an election: Over-promise or under-deliver Simon Collins ...
By RNZ Pacific A Solomon Islands province has agreed to lease a large island to a Chinese developer to develop into a special economic zone, weeks after the country opened diplomatic ties with China. But already cracks abound; there has been no official announcement and the provincial premier says the ...
The New Zealand First MP and Minister Shane Jones is still backing the firearms ban, despite being pictured with what appears to be an AR-15 semi-automatic while holidaying in Asia. ...
Everyone needs to be concerned about the draft National Policy Statement on Urban Development that the Ministry for the Environment has released. It is incompatible with the spirit of transparency and inclusiveness. ...
Prodigal Son is a new crime procedural coming hot and fresh to TVNZ 1 on Mondays at 8.30pm.Jean Sergent has a few reasons why you should be watching it. If you like serial killer shows, Michael Sheen, dark drama, Michael Sheen, twisted family dynamics, or Michael Sheen – strap yourself ...
Voters in the 2019 local elections have elected the largest number of new mayors in 30 years, with 26 candidates set to don mayoral chains for the first time later this month. ...
A team of investigators dedicated to stamping out violent extremism online is being set up with the government announcing $17 million in funding over four years. ...
In a major boost to efforts to counter violent extremism on the internet, the Government has promised $17m over four years to the Censorship Compliance Unit. ...
The final dinner party on Married at First Sight NZ brought an ugly misogyny to light. But it was far from the first time sexism reared its head this season, writes Alex Casey.It began with a man being edited out of the show after his domestic violence charges came to ...
The Council of Licenced Firearms Owners (COLFO) is recommending members hold on to potentially illegal shotgun shells containing steel shot until the law banning certain types of ammunition is clarified. ...
New collaborative gifting platform Joyable is looking to shake up how we group-purchase gifts. Co-founders (and sisters) Rochelle Sheldon and Kimberley Crossman explain how their latest venture works. Joyable (not to be confused with the social anxiety-reducing app of the same name) is a somewhat left-field move for co-founder Rochelle ...
The extraordinary battle for the Tron has ended in a way no one quite saw coming, with the city relinquishing its stranglehold on the title of New Zealand’s most embarrassing council. Angela Cuming reports.The Spinoff local election coverage is entirely funded by The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a ...
On the eve of the announcement of the winner of the 2019 Booker prize, Spinoff books editor Catherine Woulfe outs herself as a giant know-nothing. Booker time. Tomorrow morning I will sit there refreshing Twitter like the drinking bird on The Simpsons. A winner will be announced. And I’ll be gripped ...
National's claim that things only went south when Phil Twyford took charge of transport is not supported by us at CEAC and we see that this begun in 2008 as we witnessed the change then while working as a partnership group with NZTA then. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Churchill, Research Fellow in Sociology, University of Melbourne There’s an old maxim: not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. But there are some things we should count, and gender and sexual diversity are ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Pollock, Climatologist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology Northern Australia is likely to see fewer cyclones than usual this season, but hot, dry weather will increase the risk of fire and heatwaves across eastern and southern Australia. The Bureau of Meteorology today released ...
We are in The Good Time for avocados. Alex Casey talked to an expert on how to make the most of it. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. A time when a new avocado headline is published somewhere in New Zealandeverysingleday. A time when it is ...
Sexual harassment and assault are an issue in all walks of life, but addressing the problem is particularly difficult when the perpetrator holds public office. Today campaigner Carrie Buckmaster launches a parliamentary petition calling for more transparency on the issue.The ongoing Labour Party scandal around handling of sexual harassment allegations ...
Dunedin’s new mayor Aaron Hawkins is the first official Green Party mayor in NZ and, arguably, the first to represent the city’s student population as much as its older residents. Josie Adams, who guessed he would win, asked him ten questions about his win.The Spinoff local election ...
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare (F&P) has upgraded its full year guidance again after gaining the right to sell its new full face mask in the United States. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Shadow foreign minister Penny Wong says Australia needs to “define the boundaries” of its engagement with China now the relationship between the two countries is in a new phase. Focusing on China policy in a ...
Canon Rugby in Focus: Ireland awaits an All Blacks team that will be well-rested. Perhaps too well-rested. Rested and ready, or a game short and not match fit. Those are the two scenarios that will have All Blacks fans fretting this week ahead of ...
With the government recently announcing a desire to help our cities grow up and out, leading New Zealand IoT expert Kriv Naicker today questioned whether New Zealand is falling behind in the use of smart city technology to help achieve this goal. ...
You famously said climate change was this generation’s nuclear-free moment. But when Extinction Rebellion uses the tactics of the Nuclear Free movement, you say you aren’t impressed. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Regina Jefferies, Affiliate, Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW In the past five years, more than 95,000 people who arrived by plane have lodged a claim for asylum in Australia, new statistics show. Labor’s Immigration Spokesperson, Senator Kristina ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Waller, PhD candidate, University of Sydney Organs from potential donors once rejected as being unsafe to transplant may not be as risky as once thought, new Australian research shows. Our study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, suggests organs from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Merrilyn Delporte, PhD Candidate, Queensland University of Technology Australia’s refugee policy has led to a two-track education system. Those processed offshore, and deemed refugees by the time they have arrived in Australia, are entitled to fee support for university. But the almost ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marion Terrill, Transport and Cities Program Director, Grattan Institute Congestion charging should be introduced in Australia’s largest cities, as Grattan Institute’s latest report shows. Our analysis also finds that the people who commute to the Melbourne and Sydney CBDs by driving are ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David C. Ribar, Professorial Research Fellow, University of Melbourne Australia, like the United States, makes it hard for people who get benefits to stay on them. It’s not simply a matter of withdrawing benefits as people get jobs and work more hours ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ana Silkatcheva, Doctoral Candidate (Oriental Studies – Islamic Art and Archaeology), University of Oxford; Curatorial Researcher, Nicholson Collection, Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney In 2005, the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) opened Australia’s first permanent galleries of Islamic art. ...
Council's can expected more pressure from their own ranks to tackle climate change with a new crop of young councillors determined to fight it head on. ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Analysis that hits the mark after a big weekend of local elections, new party poll released, and Dunedinites turn out to clean up in honour of killed student.By now, you probably know whether or not you have a new local ...
Would any of the politicians who opposed the marriage equality bill have voted differently if it had passed today? Greta Yeoman asked them.Just over five years ago, New Zealand politicians voted 77-44 to legalise gay marriage, making this country the 13th in the world to do so. Of the 44 ...
We have been on a collision course with freshwater in this country for over a century, writes Dr Jonathan West. Time to make some uncomfortable choices. ...
Spark Sport’s six year deal with New Zealand cricket has dealt another blow to Sky TV. The company’s share price has sunk to an all-time low and as Mark Jennings writes, its future existence depends on winning rugby rights. ...
Teenager Ella Benn has lost part of her left leg, and part of her right lung, to cancer. But with the guidance of a Paralympic legend, she's determined to be a swimming star in her own right. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The ALP has announced an inquiry into the head office of the NSW ALP, after weeks of shocking revelations at the Independent Commission against Corruption about scandals in the handling of donations. The review, announced ...
The new Canterbury Regional Council is set to have a 50-50 gender balance, a younger average age, and people from backgrounds including law, science, farming, insurance and landscape architecture. ...
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LIARS OF OUR TIME
No. 2: Colin Craig
“Oh, I have a GREAT sense of humour.”
TV3 News, 24 April 2013
See also…..
No. 1: Barack Hussein Obama….
My big evening of watching Television
Wednesday 24 April 2013
I try not to watch too much television. It’s partly the advertising barrage, but it’s also the empty and drained feeling that I almost always have after watching a couple of hours of stuff on screen. I almost always feel stupider, and that I have wasted the time; it’s exactly the opposite feeling I have after reading a book for several hours.
I try to always watch Everybody Loves Raymond and any comedy with David Spade in it. I usually try to watch the Letterman show, and a bit of sport occasionally. Otherwise, the television is something best avoided, I believe.
However, when I saw that there was going to be a new Annie Goldson documentary, about New Zealand’s unhappy and deceitful decade-long adventure in Afghanistan, I just had to put the books aside and settle down for an hour. After that, I watched The Vote: Is New Zealand a Racist Country? on TV3’s Plus One channel, and then I stayed on to watch Backbenches on Prime.
I will eventually post up my reviews for each of these programmes, but here are the quick verdicts:
Annie Goldson’s NZ in Afghanistan….. A++ (Exceptionally good documentary.)
The Vote….. E (Bomb. Lowest rating)
Backbenches…. C (Toe-curlingly cringe-inducing, with occasional redemptive bits)
The Vote : New Zealand IS a racist country; imagined all I’d need to write is “we’ll I’ll be f&cked” yet nonetheless scrambled for two pens with the Dixie Chicks “Travelin’ Soldier playing on the radio (wrote this our twice; faceless to watch the impending ugliness).
Advertisement: Mad Season :Slip Away :
to continue…
JT: gave the facts; quetsion: “equity” “failures are in the mainstream services which themselves are held up and protected from failing.”
Mae Chen (for the negative); passionate, hasty, aroused.could not help supporting the affirmative;
-acknowledged phenomena of peoples being “shut down” by what practices do occur.
-acknowledged the impact of Key and Prosser blurts; “showed cognisance of what racism is there”.
-essentially Chen asserted that it is all a matter of “degree”
(Nightline ad: “Does the Labour / Greens (NZPower) deal really add up?”; for goodness sake, they pretend balance yet the dominant narrative (people remember the negative) is bad; So “roll up, roll up, see the propaganda show in motion!
Phil Goff; once again, a relativist position to other countries; (at least our minorities are not being shot); yet “sure, there are things that are wrong.”
-on the “maori question”; “an unequal, an unfair society” =? Hello?; “discrimination from unequal beginnings”. Well, when will there be a new beginning?
(people argue from their own perspectives, yet these are demonstrated statistics.
-then it was “we are unique in the world” re redress. Whatever! (not very bright some-times these pollies).
Dunne; “no doubt we are a racist society”.
National poll results re Chinese Investment;
Opposed-82%
Not Opposed-13%
UD-5%
From the affirmative chap next to JT; “we have concentrated (dormitories) of brown skin that cannot be explained away by socio-economic analyses alone.”
On the question “Are Maori too privileged?”
from the national poll results across the four mediums, FB, website, text etc;
Yes-76%
No-24%
Don Brash; “building into law racial preference” then concedes that racism exists.
John Minto; weak question
Garner-“it takes time” Well, I been watching the decline of maori and pasifika s/e, health and education stats for 40 freakin’ years now, so if not Now, then when?
Devoy; (sigh)
-results show “NZers care about race relations”
-“some very serious issues”
-“I think the people have spoken”
-“PEOPLE SHOULD FEEL ASHAMED THAT THEY BELIEVE WE ARE A RACIST COUNTRY”.
(please re-read above statement of causality from Dame Susan Devoy).
Move along , nothing out of order to see here citizens.
yet Mae Chen, again “(racism) not born out by efforts”
hope this is a close-enough approximation; was fairly messy đ
Well done Helen Kelly for getting this fatal business the kind of attention it deserves – well some attention anyway, as it’s in the main headlines. Jonathan Carson article on Stuff this morning about deaths in the forestry industry:
Also notifies that it is Workers Memorial Day on Sunday:
I suspect the accident rate is increasing in line with the amount of felling taking place, if my memory serves me correctly a lot of newer plantations should be in the harvest cycle many of those on more difficult terrain.
I suspect that there simply aren’t enough skilled tree fellers about, the saws are safer than ever and the gear is much improved. It’s a dangerous job and it takes years I believe to be able to identify and tackle the more dangerous trees. Someone with a few years under their belt is probably the exception not the rule..
I’m not sure how easy it is to train for in that in my experience the most at risk were people who had become overconfident in there abilities and become a bit lackadaisical in planning and identifying hazards. Seen some nasty accidents come about through over confidence and a just cut it she’ll be right attitude…
The accident rate is due to the removal of long-established union safety procedures. Another gift from the ideologues in the National Party.
What a vacuous statement I doubt there have been long standing union safety procedures in forestry for many years, if ever. (I’m sure someone can confirm this) Certainly they didn’t cease just 20 years ago far more likely the conditions (a lot of the safer felling on the flat is now done by machine leaving the most dangerous stuff for manual felling) and type of work are the major contributing factors to the rise in accident rates. Hence the Union movement is now trying to get penetration into forestry which they are finding extremely difficult for various reasons…
You’re showing your extreme ignorance, NZ forests were planted, operated and felled by the public sector for decades before they were privatised.
Learn a bit of your own industry’s history eh?
Showing my age more than anything, Forestry is not my industry per say, I did a little planting and pruning when I was in my late teens but I have had involvement with guys working in it since and certainly they haven’t had any union involvement. I suspect I should clarify that all I know work in privately owned forestry which was planted on marginal hill country. I still believe the accident rate increase can be attributed to the increased felling activity, lack of experienced staff, difficultly of access (a lot of the planting I did was in hideously steep hill country and would only harvest-able by hand and with dangerous haulers) I don’t believe a sudden stop in union involvement as suggested did not result in the steady accident increase as I haven’t known there to be any in my time.
Although getting some Union penetration and additional safety procedure having guys understanding their rights will undoubtedly help the situation.
Your asserted facts are incomplete, and your exposure to the industry both brief and scant.
Incomplete yes for sure I don’t profess to know everything I just disagree that you can attribute the increasing harm rates to a sudden ceasing of union penetration in forestry as asserted , I can say that between 1960-70 there were 109 fatalities in public forestry (NZ dept of stats) and between 1998 and 2008 there were 42 (NZ Dept of Labor) Felling, Breaking out and Extraction are to blame for by far the biggest percentage of fatalities and interestingly in both decades the percentage of fatalities in these aspects of forestry against the total are quite similar at 78% and 77% of total fatalities respectively. They also comment “Of particular concern is the 12% of fatal accidents relating to extraction as there is a shortage of experienced haulers and there are a large number of steep terrain woodlots that will require harvesting over the next 10 years.” that note would at least provide some support to my previous comments around difficult terrain and access would it not?
Dude, you’re just looking bits and pieces up as you go along, you don’t actually have any insight here.
Big call mister stay at home and what has been your forestry working record , for the record.
cricklewood you should look at Helen Kelly’s earlier posts on this topic for some background on the issues. The private employers resistance to unions is preventing the workers putting their side of things in a way that would improve the safety measures.
From 4 March 2013 Kelly’s “The silence is Killing Them”
From 13 March 2013 “Unionists Under the Bed”
Hi cricklewood,
If your analysis is correct, then it simply repeats an age-old tendency in our society and economy – to trade-off the health and safety of labour against the gains of capital.
Why on earth was such difficult terrain being planted at all? If it was known that unsafe manual felling would be needed to harvest them, then that was incredibly unethical, perhaps criminally negligent.
Just like knowingly exposing workers to asbestos when its ill-effects were well understood – as far back as the 1920s; just like sending men and children down mine shafts when the short lives of miners were well understood; just like opening mines known to be at high-risk of explosions and collapse; just like running factories with exposed hazards (like this unlucky ‘lucky guy’ has twice experienced).
All justified by the double-barrelled retort of (i) the counterbalancing ‘benefits’ of economic growth and (ii) the aphorism that ‘life is always risky – suck it up!’
Fool, you have no idea of what you’re talking about.
My turnip has confirmed you are the font of all wisdom Captain Morrissey.
It appears that he does know what he is talking about while you are just spouting empty BS.
The way trees are harvested has changed significantly with all the easy wood being taken by machine now, probably as much as 80% of a hill country forest and more like 98% of a place like Kaingaroa. This leaves the steep nasty bits for the men on saws and the other main job is running the skid site which has always been a place where a small amount of inattention can be fatal.
Logging in inappropriate terrain using inappropriate techniques with inappropriately trained staff.
What do you expect other than fatalities and serious injuries.
What is inappopriate terrain to grow a tree?
Don’t worry an increasing accident rate in forestry has nothing to do with the fact the cycle is in the midst of the most complicated and dangerous part of the cycle that we have probably ever seen…
It’s all because of the national party…
Yes because in a hundred years of organised forestry we’ve never been in this part of the “cycle” before.
No one has said that. Except you.
As above…”Another gift from the ideologues in the National party”
It’s not because of the National Party, but right wing idealogues who think that a working class life is a cheap price to pay for extra shareholder profits.
Nothing, it appears that the inappropriateness is in the cutting it down.
I am at an absolute loss regarding “tree farming” – because that is what we talk about – but could it be that the ever increasing demand for speed of processing is a reason? Profits are only made when the log hits the boot.
It appears that he does know what he is talking about…
Clearly he doesn’t. Neither, clearly, do you.
There is something to what cricklewood is saying. I was planting and pruning in the late 70s and most of it was on pretty steep slopes. Even getting up the hills to plant it was difficult, let alone lugging a chainsaw and dropping trees. These are likely to be the trees that have been harvested in the last ten years or so.
On the other hand, a strong union presence among the workers would no doubt remove some of the dangers which arise from working long hours in dangerous conditions. Both Labour and National wings of the ACT party have been complicit in letting the greed of the forestry owners create these conditions. I applaud Helen Kelly for taking an interest.
I hope that many of you attended todays dawn services just as our PM has done in Wellington.
How refreshing it is to have a PM who shows our returned servicemen the respect they deserve. It was not that long ago that we had a PM who could not be bothered getting out of bed early to attend the dawn service.
Stop lying bruv.
If he had any respect for our servicemen, he would have pulled them out of Afghanistan as soon as he took office.
“I hope that many of you attended todays dawn services ”
Why is that?
Pants on fire big bruv?
What, no baseball game for him today?
No baseball game Viper.
Mind you, at least Key is not in the USA to count his hidden UN bank account as Shearer is.
Did we ever find out how much Shearer has hidden away?, is it two or three million?
And I wonder how that “man of the poor” David (silent t) Cunliffe is spending the day from his Herne Bay mansion?
Big bruv you stretch tolerance and good will to breaking point. Fancy politicising Anzac day to fire cheap shots that are not even true. How disrespectful.
FYI David has been at the dawn ceremony and will be at the Titirangi service and the Laingholm service and the New Lynn Service …
Micky.
http://tvnz.co.nz/content/1078896/411361/article.html
Not true?
Tell me Micky, will silent t be using his “bro” accent today or will he use his Herne Bay accent?
Does he need GPS to find the western suburbs?
I guess its lucky Key doesn’t have a sports game on interfering with his Anzac day attendance and paying all due respects eh. Priorities for a PM and all that.
I wonder why it is that Samuel Johnson’s famous phrase about (false) patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel, springs to mind so readily when reading big bruv’s nonsense.
“When the way is forgotten
Duty and justice appear;
then knowledge and wisdom are born
Along with hypocrisy.
When harmonious relationships dissolve
Then respect and devotion arise;
When a nation falls into chaos
Then loyalty and patriotism are born.
-Chapter 18 : Hypocrisy.
David (silent t) Cunliffe…
Hey, fellas, it looks like this halfwit is trying to be funny!
Well there’s the problem.. he needs the other half to be funny.
The spirit of Anzac Day.
Bruv’s still bumming out that his side lost WWII.
The Generals, bankers and the Economic Elite did just fine from the big wars.
What about grubby little creeps?
Ideally, ordered up and first over the top.
Viper
Speaking of which, you do of course remember how the coward Micky Savage refused to fight for his country don’t you?
There is a current economic battle happening in this country and the real coward refuses to suspend the sale of the people’s asset.
Refused to fight for the privileged and elite? Luck for us you have no such principles.
Refused to kill on behalf of his country, more like, those poor people on the other side who had been, as Colonial Viper says below, induced ‘to fight for the privileged and elite.’
What is courage? To go against the accepted majority view and stand against that position in full public view (with all its attendant hatred and bigotry) and act according to one’s conscience knowing that to do otherwise is to act dishonourably is one form of courage.
I made that decision in 1968.
Big Bruv, I do not however condemn those who went and fought in the light of their conscience. On the contrary, I have stood silent in war cemeteries in Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Belgium and New Zealand to respect courage.
Last time I looked, NZ has never been in a war where it was fighting for itself. We’ve been in wars where we were fighting for Britain.
And the US
“refused to fight for his country”
Not so, Savage refused to fight for the Empire. His position was that wealth should be conscripted before workers. It was an emperial war, with political and economic power at its heart, and not something NZ workers should ever have been involved in.
Blood for butter and beef.
Two men, now long departed, who I knew when young had very different experiences of the war.
One a returned serviceman captured in Germany escaped from several prison camps and was well experienced and versed in war.
The other a conscientious objector imprisoned within his own country.
Both had total respect for each other. Neither was a coward.
Amongst the things the first was fighting for was the right for others to choose not to fight. If that soldier didn’t see the objector as a coward but as a man of principle I’m not sure why you should.
There’s plenty too who dislike the RSA for the treatment of family members who were not allowed to go and fight either through disability or through working in essential services such as electricity and farming.
The treatment of some of those people post-war and the black-listing of their businesses did not go down well with themselves or their family members who were allowed off to fight.
There was a clear difference between supporting returned servicemen to get back on their feet and the blacklisting that went on by some RSA’s.
Not everyone sees them as the bastion of the response to the post war period.
NZ Labour PM Fraser had conscientious objectors and those critical of the war blacklisted during WW II; many found their careers in government and the public sector permanently fucked.
“Last time I looked, NZ has never been in a war where it was fighting for itself. Weâve been in wars where we were fighting for Britain.”
When’s the last time you looked, 1946?
I want to put this into the record on this “cowardliness of Conscientious Objectors’ ” debate, being a paragraph from the Marlborough Express editorial on Anzac Day 2013.
“New Zealand also has a strong tradition of conscientious objectors. They were strongly reviled but it took as much bravery to resist being called up for war as it did to go willingly into battle.”
Alongside the editorial is a Bromhead cartoon entitled “Lest We Forget” which has the Shade of an Anzac soldier commenting upon a newspaper headline “Future Wars.”
“Trouble is, we do forget…”
Ha ha ha, it’s funny because his name sounds slightly like a derogatory term for vagina! đ
Yes, hop back under your bridge. I was involved in organising ANZAC days in Mt Albert for several years and when Helen Clark came to these ones (as she did often) they were her second or sometimes third one of the day.
I note that you did not say she attended dawn service Lindsey. Of course if you were to say that it would mean that you are telling lies.
Fancy that….a lefty caught telling lies.
try and keep up with Key preferring to go to sports games instead of paying respects to fallen soldiers.
Oh, I don’t know, it’s filial piety instead of pro patria. If nothing else it set a good example to fathers to encourage and spend time with their sons as opposed to sending them off to die in wars.
Yeah you would have a point except Key is the one quite willing to send other parents’ sons off to die.
And then not attend their funerals.
Slight difference between trained career soldiers who know what they’re enlisting for and conscripted naive canon fodder
You credited Key with setting a good example, that of not sending sons to die. So you were talking about just his own son.
I was being sarcastic *rolls eyes*
“I note that you did not say she attended dawn service Lindsey. Of course if you were to say that it would mean that you are telling lies.
Fancy thatâŚ.a lefty caught telling lies.”
bruv, you can’t simultaneously accuse Linsdey of lying and of not lying.
Pick one.
Don’t need to lie, leave that to trolls and righties
Smart enough to Google “Helen Clark Dawn Service” just like you did. It got no traction than and get even less now. I can understand why Key goes to the closest service.
Oh look a righty spouting excrement!
You’re using Anzac Day to tell lies, you nasty little troll.
BigBruv is just playing follow the leader
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8596303/PM-defends-spy-boss-breakfast-meeting
”
Asked why he had not been upfront earlier about the date of the breakfast meeting, Key said: “I wasn’t asked about it; I was asked about what meetings I had.” ” Liar Liar Liar
You are a very odd person!!!
Is this respectful enough for you? Go have a lie down and a cup of tea and think how stupid you sound, sometimes you should keep the inside your head voices inside your head.
Helen Clark was the first New Zealand prime minister to visit Gallipoli on Anzac Day. On 24 April 2005 (the day before Anzac Day) she walked down the âNew Zealand trackâ from Chunuk Bair to the coast, before visiting Hill 60 Cemetery. On the New Zealand Memorial to the Missing in the cemetery, she placed a poppy beside the name of her great uncle, Frank Clark, a trooper in the Auckland Mounted Rifles who was killed in the vicinity on 28 August 1915.
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/34146/helen-clark-at-gallipoli
Is that the same Helen Clark (along with Goff) who once spat at returning soldiers?
You should send your fantasies in to Republican Penthouse.
Nah Bruv, it’s the same Helen Clark who’s risen higher than you could ever dream of.
Ha ha ha..
You’re kidding right?
The height of ones ambition should be to purchase your own job at the UN with Kiwi tax payers money and then work for an organisation that is recognised the world over as being corrupt (she fits in well there) and hopeless?
“purchase your own job at the UN with Kiwi tax payers money”
lolz how does that work bruv?
I think Bruv was meaning Tim Groser, who has just spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars trying to get a job as far away from John Key as he can find.
Bruv, I was thinking more about the general level of respect she is shown, with the lower end of the scale being represented by people like Graham Capill and David Garret.
Which PM introduced the Prime Minister’s essay competition when she took office and raised the profile of ANZAC day amongst the children …?
http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/prime-minister-announces-gallipoli-essay-contest-winners
“Graham Capill and David Garret.”
Lordie, wouldn’t be great to have both those kiddyfiddlers double bunked in the same cell?
Probably been there, done that.
Garret is not a paedophile, and calling him such is not fair. He is a criminal who stole a dead babies identity.
Ha, thanks for the correction, andy. I’m sure Garrett consoles himself with the fact that [r0b: yeah that was over the top].
That comment deserves a ban.
How about it LPrent, or do some have special dispensation?
Yes I have a screenshot
Key will rejoin a big bank or central bank within a year of having left the PMship.
People can grow and evolve into different people bruv, plus there is a huge difference between the Vietnam war and the Great war and peoples attitudes. Try engaging your brain, you know, that pile of under-performing neurons located under that thick skull. Your attitude reminds me so much of how Steven Joyce shares his views. Numpty.
You really are a sick individual. Maybe you need to go and see a psychologist/psychiatrist/head doctor to see if there’s anything that can be saved.
I’m going to go ahead and assume you are referring to bruv with the head doctor comment, I’ve been tested, and I’m not crazy haha yeah, bruv’s hysteria and lack of any real knowledge or insight just reminds me so much of how Steven Joyce relates to people, been thinking that way a while now.
Iâm going to go ahead and assume you are referring to bruv.
Yes he is. It’s how the reply function works sometimes. Best to quote what/who you’re referring to…
It is really quite astounding how little insight and intellect he shows. Makes me wonder how he ties his shoelaces in the morning.
Bruv is an intellectual cretin. He’s heading fast towards another permanent ban and the sooner the better.
As Anne says, David H is replying to big bruv. The alignment can appear a bit ‘skew-wiff’ with those commenters whose comments have a grey background (for some reason).
The best thing is to check the number of the comment. David H’s comment was 4.8.1.4 – i.e., the fourth reply to comment 4.8.1 (Your previous comment was 4.8.1.3 – the third reply to 4.8.1)
I thought Helen Clark went in 2000 when she took a bunch of school students who had won a school competition about Gallipoli.
The competition she introduced when coming to office and maintained throughout her Premiership.
big bruv big bullshit
big respect when boy’s baseball
came before soldiers’ funerals
oh yeah so respectful
RIP Lance Corporal Luke Tamatea
10 reasons I no longer attend Anzac Day services nor recognise it in any way
1) The ANZAC spirit was dismantled quite comprehensively on the 26 February 2001 by Australia
2) The dawn services glorify war
3) There are no returned servicemen from WW1 left alive
4) The poppies are now made in China rather than providing work for those with intellectual disabilities as previous
5) The freedoms that were fought for are now disappearing at an alarming rate of knots while most people stand idly by and applaud.
6) War does nothing to benefit the working man. It benefits the Military Industrial Complex of which the Windsors, Rothschilds and Rockefellers of the world are complicit in.
7) ANZAC day has now turned into a political football in recent years.
8) Attempting to link ANZAC day to the “glorious men and women fighting in Afghanistan” is dubious and downright despicable as the western nations in Afghanisatan are not liberators, they are occupiers
9) Who even understands the meaning of ANZAC anymore. My niece has been brainwashed into believing we celebrate it because NZ and Australia helped to stop WW1.
10)It’s tiresome and bothersome. We cannot move forward if we insist on holding fast to the past.
Perhaps NZ should do it’s own dismantling of the ANZAC spirit… starting with refusing access to any government assistance to any one holding an Australian Passports. Tit for Tat.
Thanks James, very well put. That reflects my own disquiet in recent years about the way that ANZAC day is promoted and commemorated, but I hadn’t found a way to articulate it.
Growing up in the sixties and seventies I was alienated from attending ANZAC day services by the jingoistic sabre rattling of the RSA and conservative politicians of the day who blared their shallow minded garbage from all media of the day throughout the Vietnam war. This was reinforced by hearing the same type of rhetoric from speakers at several dawn services I had to attend as a boy-scout during those times. Later, in the nineties, with the angst of the Vietnam war fading into the past I took my own daughters to a dawn service with their Sea Scout and cubs troops. Lo and behold, an Anglican priest and ex-ww2 padre who had been one of the afore-mentioned jingoistic sabre rattlers was leading the service and launched into another speech just like the ones I had detested so much in my youth. When we got home I penned a letter to the editor explaining why our family would be refraining from attending further ANZAC day services.
just for the record; I respect and admire the enlisted men and women immensely, yet I have never attended a dawn service; Neo-liberal consumption-based free-market capitalism is the current battle-field promoting global casualties.
Thanks James for saying what I have thought for years.
Another who can see through all the bullshit.
+1
However… I’m going to an ANZAC service in a Hapsburg-built church today.
At least the speakers have to stick to remembering all the victims of war (maybe not Franz Ferdinand) and be very, very careful about war rhetoric…. diplomats and all that. Taking the overt patriotism out of it suits me just fine.
enjoyed your evocation of human geography the other day rosy; we both did. đ
Anzac Day for me: it means that when we let other countries decide where and when we fight, our men and women die.
It means when our country decides, our men and women die.
It means that we should look after those who came back, because they were put in a situation not of their own making.
It means that we should be humble in our recognition that men and women of all countries have died and are dying, not often for good reasons.
It means above all, that we should not forget the sacrifices made and that we should honour them by not making the same mistakes again.
Anzac Day for John Key: it means that he can look back on the days of Empire, when we stood as part of the thin red line in defence of civilisation etc, etc, and he could wreck a national economy while pissing down his leg. How many war pensions have been cut because of his currency speculating?
It means he can pretend to care about soldiers alive and dead, unless there’s a baseball game on.
Anzac Day for big bruv: it means he can polish his toy SMLE and dream of the day when he will help lead the WhaleSpew Army against godless commies and unionists. Or maybe just take a photo of someone who hasn’t parked properly. Yeah, that’s pretty heroic too.
“A regrettable incident occurred…”
“The Bedouins resented the treatment, and small knots of them made attempts to defend themselves.”
Read this before you praise our “brave” ANZAC troops….
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1366745575.html
Yep, we certainly have our own share of atrocities in the past.
The RSA have never issued a statement to apologize for this mass murder. In fact, many years later the RSA journal published a poem lauding the atrocity and praising the men who did it.
Not the RSA’s job.
“Not the RSA’s job”? It’s not the RSA’s job to publish poems applauding the mass murder, either. But they did, which means that an apology for such cretinous brutality is very much the job of the RSA.
You’re a clever lad, why don’t you write an apology for them and see if they will publish it.
Thanks, Viper, but they don’t need a hired spin doctor to tell the truth and acknowledge what a group of New Zealand (and Australian) thugs and goons did to helpless, captive, unarmed boys and men.
All it needs is for someone in the RSA leadership to show a little integrity and honesty. Frankly, I doubt they have the wherewithal to do it.
The RSA is as likely to examine the illegal actions of Kiwi soldiers honestly as the Police Association is to push for compensation for David Bain. At least in the case of the RSA, post traumatic stress may play a part in forgetting or whitewashing events of the past, but O’Connor has no such excuse. Most of the ex soldiers I have known over the years won’t have a bar of the RSA and those who have explained their decision put it down to not wanting to be part of a glorification of war.
I really enjoyed an article on the News (did provide balance) of a former wehrmacht soldier who never joined the Party who is retired here and chooses not to remember the War.(he was at Stalingrad I believe). Just happily enjoying the present day, not the past, he said. He appeared a beautiful man, carding wool in his arm-chair.
Steve Maharey had an interesting column on Margaret Thatcher in a recent NBR.
In a very poignant comment he talked about how Thatcher inspired a “cultural flowering”.
“The cultural left is always at its best when it has a big right-wing target to aim at. Thatcher inspired some of the best cultural expression seen in many years.”
He was damned right. If you think for instance of some of the music to come out of Thatcher’s era it was fuelled by passion and a visceral hatred at the damage she was causing. Bands such as the Clash, the Specials, the Jam to name a few captured the drama and intensity of what was happening perfectly.
It is a shame though that much of our best art is born out of despair.
The article is at http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/so-whats-your-alternative-ck-138973
Hmmm. The Clash took off pre-Thatcher, during the punk explosion. First single “White Riot”, 1977. However, their iconic “London’s Calling” was post 1979.
The Jam also came out of the 1970s punk scene.
The Specials formed in 1977. However, their 1980s “Ghost Town” was a haunting response to Thatcherism.
Such bands formative years and values were in the 1970s when socialism was seen as a positive thing and as the way to a better future.
The most interesting thing about Maharey’s article is the (kind of) recant on his previous support of the third way.
Aye Karol I was referring to the music rather than the date the bands formed. I should have included the Beat as well although they were normally quite happy …
The more pop orientated Blow Monkeys with their album “She Was Only A Grocer’s Daughter” album shouldn’t be forgotten.
It Doesn’t have To Be This Way is still highly relevant today and at the time Celebrate was banned by the BBC as it was celebrating a future election loss for Thatcher.
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=y_ra8X_8waA&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dy_ra8X_8waA
Not forgetting of course it has one of those classic late 70’s early 80’s sax solos.
“I’ve just about had enough of the sunshine”could easily refer to National’s Brighter Future.
I was under the impression that the Blow Monkeys should be forgotten. So I did!
lol
Some eclecticism in musical taste is allowed. They are still touring and will be in Auckland soon.
http://www.songkick.com/metro_areas/31442-new-zealand-auckland
Did you sulk when Paul Weller left the Jam and formed The Style Council as well?
Not that I’m suggesting that Blow Monkeys are anywhere near the class of The Style Council.
The variety in music in the UK during this period was great there was plenty to enjoy.
Yes, Thatcherism did spur some very good songs. However, I think it’s wrong t o assume that it was solely Thatcherism that stimulated the music, but that there were pre-existing values that resulted in outrage at the changers in Thatcher’s time.
… Thatcher of course had been the “Milk snatcher” as Minister of Education in Heath’s government and she took over the leadership of the party in 1975, so many knew what she was like long before she took over government in 1979.
encouraging to see Maharey write better than he interviews; still no Daryl Le Grew though.
The Jam were lower middle class tories, at least in their first years. All three members had comfortable suburban lives while growing up. In fact, they were representative of the very people Thatcher convinced to vote Tory for the first time in ’79. Most of their songs on the first two albums were about personal alienation, rather than class consciousness. However, they did get politiced quickly (big ups to the writers on the NME and Sounds who talked them round) and by the early eighties were a driving force in the musical left’s response to Thatcherism. Which is good.
Paul Weller was from a working class background. And yes he was a Tory early on in his musical career – I think before Thatcher became PM. It was as much the other bands he associated with that influenced his shift to the left.
Oh, but look, the truth is even more complicated, according to a 2010 Telegraph article:
Cheers, karol, I must have bought the PR spin back in 78!
Well, TRP, I remember Paul Weller’s class background, because in early 80s London, I had a quite radical working-class, socialist, lesbian feminist who was into his music. She used to say he was about the only truly working class punk amongst a load of middle-class wannabes.
Whoops: should be:
I had a quite radical working-class, socialist, lesbian feminist friend who was into his music.
I noticed that, but was too polite to say!
I had a quite radical working-class, socialist, lesbian feminist who was into his music.
I had one of those once too.
What like a pet
…by the early eighties were a driving force in the musical leftâs response to Thatcherism. Which is good.
That reminds me of Peter Cook’s quip about the vibrant, outspoken satirists on the Weimar cabaret scene, and the pivotal role they played in stopping the Nazis.
In no particular order.
Specials – Maggie’s Farm
The The – Heartland
Angelic Upstarts – Brighton Bomb
Robert Wyatt – Shipbuilding
Crass – Sheep Farming In The Falklands
The Mekons – Abernant 1984/1985
The Pop Group – Justice
Thanks.
Few there I had missed at the time.
My favourite band of the era. Skids – Working For The Yankee Dollar.
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=LCiWXktdyTQ&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DLCiWXktdyTQ
…play it again joe
Russia previously contacted US authorities “multiple times” regarding Temerlan Tsarnaev
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/04/23/russia-contacted-fbi-multiple-times-concerns-about-alleged-boston-marathon-bomber/ND0bhUdq1Tp1mRuC8xlb8N/story.html?s_campaign=sm_tw
Of course, the US answer will be more invasive, continuous and complete surveillance of ordinary citizens by the intelligence services. Nothing that a couple hundred billion more dollars for the spook industry and more stripping back of citizens rights won’t solve. Right?
The delay in implementing the MMP Reforms might need attention? There is a mandatory consultation period of 6 months so National has till the end of May to get a Bill on the floor. Considering that there was a very strong Mandate for the modifications one would wonder why Judith Collins is procrastinating. The only electoral Avoidance would be from Banks and Dunne. Unless National has self-interest at stake??? Surely not!
Some Anzac music: Dominion Road
Like. A lot and I haven’t heard it for ages. Thanks.
And, one or two from the other side of the ditch:
Gobetweens (the greatest Queensland song ever):
Triffids, WA in the house:
The New Five, cheesy but always reminds me of DJ Johnny Topper and wet Melbourne days.:
Nick and Kylie, just coz:
Thanks for that. Go-Betweens reminded me a little of The Church with those guitar strums. Particularly From the Skins And Heart album.
More Anzacy though would be:
Under The Milky Way – The Church
Great Oz band.
Droving Woman – Kevin Carmody, Missy Higgins and Paul Kelly:
Spine tingling – if you can listen all the way to the end
Added bonus – live version of Missy Higgins ‘This is How it goes’
yes, The go betweens; Cattle and Cane
I see the Herald trying to do a hatchet job on Harawira. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10879636
Maybe if they had covered Mana’s big breakfast, then their readers would be aware of what he is doing at the moment!
Yes Paul. Wonder how well Mr Banks would shape up as a single MP Party and Leader? To get perspective surely they would have to compare like with like? Mr Dunne living in Wellington would be somewhat different.
He’s doing fuck all as usual or is he still bagging the other “house niggers”.
What do the bouncy giggling heads who sit behind Key actually do in Parliament, dumbarse? Tits on a bull are more useful than anything you contribute.
Well said, I envy you guys with the quick intelligent wit.
And your contribution about ANZAC Day says it all. How dare you take a day off you wanker.
You think some of should spend the day sitting outside our closed and locked work sites as punishment for not sharing your rather strange view of what ANZAC is all about. Wanker yourself.
And yet another NZ Herald artcle attacking NZ Power..’Show us first that power is broken’ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10879605
Their puppet masters are working overtime at the moment.
And I was feeling encouraged about NZ journalism after watching âHe Toki Huna New Zealand In Afghanistanâ last night…… when Jon Stephenson spoke about the importance of the media being independent.
It would seem the Herald is embedded into the finance industry!
Not embedded in it, owned by it.
Peter Jackson trys to rebuild his shitty image using Anzac Day and his dead grandfather: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/last-post-first-light/anzac-day-2013/8594015/Sir-Peter-Jacksons-Anzac-Day-family-ties
Get’s repimped by Farrar: http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2013/04/jackson_and_anzac_day.html
Probably involves the PM’s office as his ministry is also pushing Jackson-related PR agenda today: http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/new-zealand/8596008/Hobbit-stars-reveal-Kiwi-crush
I’ve no doubt all of this has been done today to cash in on ANZAC day patriotism. What a bunch of cynical fuckers.
My Granddad (a good leftie who fought at Cassino) will be turning in his grave.
Jackson is pathetic. He once made interesting movies, then he went to Hollywood.
He is as corrupt and sad an individual as it is possible to find outside of party politics.
Jackson’s Hobbit movie is really struggling to match the return on investment made by Fellowship of the Ring 10 years ago. The Hobbit cost twice as much to make, but has pulled in cinema receipts consistently lower than Fellowship.
Still, total box office is not far off a trillion dollars so Jackson is going to make an absolute mint off the movie. And off the NZ tax payer.
taking it easy soldier?
Mix of work and play today, Mr GR888. Early start, afternoon of work, now some play đ
another unconscious coincidence I just f0und.(it is a strange old world, thanks for pointing it out) đ
RNZ – re Boston; “US Intelligence slipped up”
best thing to come from Judith Collins for a long lag;
-if convicted of killing in an open court there should be no suppression of details in further cases.
-“you can google this information”
There has been a consumer back-lash to this Anchor light-proof bottles nonsense;
-more plastic
-cannot tell quantity left in bottle (doesn’t the light go off when the fridge door is closed?)
yet according to ONE News, most New Zealanders are OK with our investment relationship with China;
-Very Comfortable-10%
-Comfortable-31%
from Grant Robertson; “for Labour, that (concern re investment) is not about an individual country”.
according to summary of report into DOC restructuring, due to budget constraints and other losses, the department is likely to become “less relevant in coming years”. What?
a little ANZAC Day light reading
Let us pray that that day never comes pointlessly
(as a Variation, an article about Archibald Baxter is on RNZ this evening)
I was hoping someone would mention Baxter. I guess big bruv is ignorant of him and the other conscientious objectors and / or lacks the empathy / wit to understand them and their importance in the scheme of things.
at your service đ
Ok folks!
This made my day đ
__________________________________________________________________________
OMIGOD! Look what that communist fanatic Editor of the Dominon Post is is saying!
(Having a WOOHOO moment here…. đ
Editorial: Key should consider MRP sale delay
“But, delaying the sale till after the next election would at least allow voters to choose which of the two approaches offers the better prospect of sensible pricing and secure supply.
It would also allow time for the future of Tiwai Point to be resolved.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/editorials/8587747/Editorial-Key-should-consider-MRP-sale-delay
Penny Bright
‘Anti-corruption / anti-privatisation campaigner’
2013 Auckland Mayoral candidate
http://www.dodgyjohnhasgone.com
đ
Yet lower down in the same article we get:
Excuse me but Stalin was history’s worst totalitarian mass murderer. Labour/Greens are proposing a fairly modest reform of the electricity market that we now know is used successfully in a number of overseas countries. At what point does a comparison this odious become legally actionable?
I assume it’s an example of how threatened the Nact govt. and their acolyte press are feeling Redlogix. No-one, not even a hard right fundamentalist type, could honestly compare a tried and true regulatory power system for the benefit of ALL citizens with a Stalinist proposal.
They’ve outed themselves in all their bright blue political colours now. Who can take anything they say with much seriousness anymore?
I realise that’s what’s going on … but really. This is an editorial from one of New Zealand’s leading newspapers, not florid, ranting blog comments on Whaleoil.
And on ANZAC Day of all days. Are there no grown ups in charge at Fairfax anymore?
Not for a long time, now. And certainly no one who actually understands the history of the Soviet Union.
As Anne says, by regurgitating Joyce’s embarrassing spin they have shown the colour of their flag.
I can just see the responsible Dom Post editor – “Stalinist proposal eh? Oh that’s ‘edgy’, that’s oh so mildly ‘controversial’. Me likey.”
FFS. At least the comments section is mostly occupied by people saying variations of “Stalinist? Please get a grip,” and “Do you know what that word means sweetie?”, etc.
“And on ANZAC Day of all days. Are there no grown ups in charge at Fairfax anymore?”
No
The NZHerald is NZs version of a state controlled newspaper but instead of being controlled by the state it’s controlled by the rich. National are their political arm.
I would frame it as the NZ Herald being the National Party’s PR arm.
Interestingly, if wikipedia’s figures are to be believed, increases in energy production were one of Stalin’s successes.
I have no idea if those figures are correct, but – at least in that sense of production – I would have thought that the right would be quite keen on Stalinist approaches to the provision of energy for the economy.
In the link, there’s also no mention of Stalin proposing a single-purchaser model for energy generation – but perhaps the Dominion Post editor has an historical account of the period at hand which mentions it.
Stalin also liked his eggs lightly poached, but the NZ Herald doesn’t call the menu of every Newmarket cafe “Stalinist”
in stalinist russia, eggs poach you
Oh CV that’s mean. You know you just put a bunch of our right wing friends off poached eggs for life.
Gotta luv the sounds of pig snouts hitting the bottom of the empty trough.
Still is the Dom post running a flyer so that Nact can wind back the sale? They are up to something.
A good Armenian genocide documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLyrpaTKCCE
^The New Zealand, Australian, US and UK governments are yet to recognize it ever happened*, even though Russia, and many European Union nations (such as Germany and France) already have.
*Turkey threatens to break off diplomatic relations, cut trade deals with nations that recognize the genocide. The bitter irony of course is that many of the architects of the Nazi Holocaust visited and admired the Armenian genocide in ww1, later to use methods such as railway cars on the Jews in ww2.
It has been reported that some senior Nazis went to Hitler with a few doubts about the Final Solution. He told them to calm down, because no one remembered the Armenian genocide. I do know there were German observers there, as part of the military mission to Turkey, but the ones I read about were horrified by it. I wasn’t aware that we hadn’t officially acknowledged that it happened. That’s disgusting.
there was an article in The Herald concerning where all the anti-matter went, or didn’t, matter to me.
Here is another Collision Course
I received a very nicely turned out glossy pamphlet in my letter box last night.
On first glance I thought it was an election pamphlet from the Nat’s informing us what a great party they were and what a good minister Collins is, A top class report on the wonderful works from Tolley .It turned out to be from the diabolical Sensible Sentencing Trust. What a ghastly lot and there is no doubt what party they will,support st the next election. Personally I just glad its not Labour .
Keep the people you love away from this crap
We’re going to see a lot of very angry, depressed and breaking people on August 1st when these top shelf drugs finally get the boot from our sweetshops.
Just hope the ufno1 has a plan in place to deal with the mess occurring on his watch.
Keep the people you don’t love away from it as well.
It’s certainly not helping the recovery of people with mental health issues either. For many it’s setting months of improvement down the tubes.
There are arsehole dairy owners selling it across the road from mental health facilities and recovery centres.
The big thing the staff in some of those places have noticed is the return of / increase in paranoia in it’s victims.
You can argue prohibition all you like as being negative but no question it’s easy access is allowing people who wouldn’t ever go near a drug dealer to buy and suffer.
Govt should have banned the shit straight away.
Plan – they don’t have a plan to deal with mental health issues now nor the effects of this drug. Why on earth would they have a plan to stop dealing with it.
Mental health services are already overflowing and have waiting lists for treatment. People who have mental health issues frequently end up in jail. As noted on the documentary t’other night the prison system treats as if they are well because by definition if they weren’t they wouldn’t be there.
If this government has a plan it will be to reduce public services and hand more over to pet NGO’s and the private sector.
Yes, ban this shit, regulate the availability of organic natural versions.
(As an aside I see a lot of fucked up kids on the synthetic crap, memory, concentration, personality, all toast)
I’m not a fan of the organic version either. I’ve watched teens start using who are now in their late 30’s who are pretty screwed. It just takes a little longer.
I understand though why they use / drink / vice of choice.
Improving society overall, not just for those at the top, is the key.
Decent housing, decent food, decent incomes, decent communities where crime isn’t needed to put food on the table.
A mystery as to why the nat government can rush all manner of legislation through parliament, yet something so simple as banning drugs is beyond the house. Scoobydoo, where are you? Ps, ask Thelma to call me.
I recall a very old ‘joke’ resonating, about if drug crime costs billions, why don’t we just give them to the junkies, but this synthetic stuff, I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
I know those arsehole dairy owners. They also sell under the counter product outlawed under dunne’s previous mini bans too. I rang the rozzers and told them go into Urlich ave dairy and ask for a lolly or a mango at 2 x 3g packets for $25 and see what they get, but no raids took place.
I guess they must have asked for donuts instead and been happy with the outcome.
hey, Alien, do ya ever find yourself reflecting that it is almost like being Alien when when comparing contrasting worldviews, like, the reason that politics is so important is that the government, and the worldview they subscribe to and legislate is what sets the parameters; we were just discussing the shortcomings when all a generational cohort has known is say, the neo-liberal model, and like maybe Ennui said, well I know what he said, he said what Mr Lydon said, “ere, don’t ya fink we been ‘ad”, laughs. We were thinking of the Scandanavian countries, South America etc where different things are going on. Another commentator reflected on how it has been not beer and all skittles for many of those peoples “rescheduled” by the fall of The Wall; Hows the European Union project going now?
Interestingly, many of the people being marketed to as affluent (buy a new Mirage, re-live the previous (insert asset) bubble you missed out) are from the “generation x cohort”;an influential cohort who have fond (insert nostalgic) memories of the seventies.
However, on the other hand, sigh, the National government, Defence Minister are making noises about greater military commitment, in recognition of a militarizing region and world which reduces the lattitude for positions of neutrality.
Hey Rogue, is the answer 42?
“the number is not a human number”, though I’ve always liked Seven (and, it has been good to me.(along with thirty) sigh đ (only 23 more months to go and I can retire, you know, see Labour and the Greens a few months into there first term of office) đ
I’ve always liked Seven of nine, but not enough to turn a red eye blue.
Wow! Tertiary Adjunct Unimatrix Zero One, and, you got my number. đ deepest longingful sigh…
Would be better with an instruction manual for my translater chip, but it’s good to talk.
“only 23 more months to go and I can retire, you know”
Logan? “She keeps running out, and she runs like girls run. All arms and legs hanging out, lashing out as she goes.”
all good things on this earth must come to an end my cosmic friend; can’t rota round here for ever; there will be more to do in the grounded world as time passes. At least with a more left government the rot will slow, we pray.
Make them drag you kicking and screaming my old nan use to tell us, rest her soul.
Named my daughter after her, least I can do is fight best I can, just like she did as she taught me.
“running-out” came back with “Sorry, we can’t find that song”: l1nks.
Still way too poo to view, save for the chorus.
I’ll do a clip in a minute.
https://soundcloud.com/theal1en/running-out-chorus
sorry. rechipped (and a gurnard, ok, and a sausage, ok, and a curry-roll) reassured fleshy friend that I wasn’t gonna leave her for another commutator; she enjoys Mrs Brown’s Boys (I’m more Father Ted) and no,no,no, yes, The Vicar of Dibley.charge is low though, a lot to process.
the wit designed into your schematics, though, is highly adaptive đ
Thirty minus twenty three is seven. Spooky!
thanks for the offer of Office 97.
I take it you would like it then? I’ve checked the old post a few times to see.
You’re in Hawkes Bay right. I have friends over that way so can organise somewhere for you to pick it up if you want (Napier or Hastings) or you could organise a third party address for me to post it to.
Keeps things anonymous.
Thanks for checking; i never go back more than a day or two, unless I do.
You may forward it to Directions Youth Health Centre, 305 Omahu Road, Hastings.
c/ Louise (you recall my name? Lynn knows it.)
Nah didn’t know who you were. Just occasionally you reference Hawkes Bay.
If I can get one of the kids to find it I’ll get them to send it off otherwise I’ll do it in a few weeks or so when I’m next home.
Happy to pass it on. I’ve upgraded to 2010,
Wow.
Let me get this straight, this stuff is legal, but the stuff that makes you vege on the couch with potato chips and bad zombie films is not?
The Age of Anxiety?; think that black dog has bolted (depression and anxiety are frequently co-morbid)
No mention in the article of the research by Jean Twenge on the 1SD shift towards a more anxious youth since the 1950s.
Her conclusion was that social disconnection and broad social trends were responsible.
There’s also a lot of work now on how the neurodevelopment of the neural systems that are used to regulate emotional responses is disrupted by early developmental experiences which can often be quite subtle (not just abuse).
The idea that this is just ‘the human condition’ is, frankly, simplistic in the extreme and amounts to little more than a desperate justification for our current social and economic arrangements (which are generally considered ‘benign’ in relation to human emotional functioning and experience).
No animal would have evolved to be typically ‘anxious’ in the debilitating way modern humans are. And anthropological studies of pre-human societies strongly suggest that anxiety is not a chronic experience for humans – except today.
Yeah but think of the wonderful contribution to the economy resulting from the massive profits for the makers of Prozac and Xanax.
But seriously Puddlegum, I’m interested in this:
“Thereâs also a lot of work now on how the neurodevelopment of the neural systems that are used to regulate emotional responses is disrupted by early developmental experiences which can often be quite subtle (not just abuse).”
Can you link me up? I had a look around but it’s a rather specific topic…
Anyone wonder why Evil Communist China wasn’t included in the latest toryfear list?
Damned socialist cockies cuddling up to commos…..
.http://www.interest.co.nz/rural-news/64167/trade-links-deepen-china-rural-sector-building-fta-which-tripled-exports
Then again, maybe they can help wee Nathan with his maths…..
“Since the signing of the Free Trade Agreement in 2008 our exports to China have nearly tripled, from NZ$2 billion a year to NZ$6.9 billion in 2012.
âTwo-way trade between China and New Zealand has reached almost NZ$15 billion. Our aim is to double bilateral trade to NZ$20 billion by 2015 and weâre on track to achieve that goal.”
Excellent links.
US Sequestration
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/31/earth-cooling-schemes-global-signoff
MSM did not want a bar of this subject until recent years, and now is openly discussing, while claiming that these schemes are in *research* phases (of course they are…..).
Now geo-engineering is being openly used as the latest catalyst, to call for global governance!
So are you arguing that contrails are being used to create global warming so geoengineering will be needed to cool the earth again, handily provided by global government?
How do contrails increase global temperatures?
I’m not arguing anything different, than I’ve commented on previously, McFlock, these articles should be starting to speak for themselves by now, unless they’re made up BS, which is of course a possibility with the MSM, and media in general!
Does begin to sound like a narrative though if they’re not BS, you know, having ignored/denied geo-engineering for so long, now a days, its a steady stream of *in research only* based articles.
Given the lag the MSM experiences on most any serious issue you care to name, would give pause to suspect they’re giving commentary on what is actions in past history!
Serves to soften up the punters for some further *truth*, when the time is right, of course!
That didn’t answer either question.
Oh I don’t know. I think it answered a couple.
McFlock, hang onto a conversation for more than one day, you will find that I’ve given you plenty of answers, opinions etc.
The second question about temperatures, and how *contrails* turning to *clouds* *might* contribute to raising temperatures, should be self evident surely, no! That said I’ve not stated that I think they are/are not, just that its potentially being used in a nefarious fashion, going from the link!
Felix , no comment on the article link then matey…on ya!
Muzz,
Claiming that an answer is “self evident” and then explicitly refusing to state what you think the self evident answer actually is…. well, that’s a new level of stupid.
Try and answer a closed question like a normal human being. Feel free to add why the question is unfair or dumb, or what your actual position might be. But just try and be a normal person for once. Okay, ready? Deep breath, here goes:
So are you arguing that contrails are being used to create global warming so geoengineering will be needed to cool the earth again, handily provided by global government?
Easy question to answer.
Easy enough to recall that you have already asked this question, and I’ve answered it, previously!
Get digging perhaps!
Muzza, you wrote “That said Iâve not stated that I think they are/are not, just that its potentially being used in a nefarious fashion, going from the link!”
I am confused as to how something can be used potentially at the moment. The whole deal with potential is that it’s not happening now, yeah? Potential is to do with the future, and with possibility.
So, if that’s your answer, Muzza, it’s not making sense.
Hi Mac,
If the MSM is talking about *potential*, it means that its already happening, that’s how the media functions, by attempting to control information flows, and prepping people for further release escalations. By doing so it seeks to dampen down the reaction of people, by using low level NLP techniques, where people already *make a connection* to event, thus lowering any negative reaction, thatâs the objective at least!
It helps to understand, that the companies who control media, are also those who are deeply involved in warfare, pharma, and related chemical industries, among most others, so the release of information, is neither accidental, nor coincidental!
If you had an understanding about how media works, and its parent company owners primary industry, it would make sense to you!
Good luck!
You arse, you said ” Iâve not stated that I think they are/are not, just that its potentially being used in a nefarious fashion,”.
YOU said “potentially”, not the MSM. When asked about this, you start a rant about when the MSM says “potentially”. Once again you’re off on a tangent, rather than taking the time to work through a single point of discussion.
You didn’t answer it. You made tangential comments. This is not the same as “answering the question”. Which is a fresher-level problem in essays and exams, just as an aside.
Simple enough to answer a closed question: a “yes” (maybe with an “if…” or a “because…”), or a “no” (maybe with a “no” or a “because”), or maybe a “your question is nonsensical because…”.
Go on, you can do eeett!
Hey muzza Isn’t the global governance call being made to control and manage the schemes so they don’t stay rogue and therefore is a good thing – apart from who is governing I suppose but they are “causing and controlling it” anyway so I can’t see how this would give them more power – maybe slightly more visibility perhaps.
Hey Marty, that’s one way to look at it I guess.
To me it reads like, looking for a way of controlling the *outing* of geo-engineering, by using the *its for the best interest of humanity* style narrative, yet again!
It sounds like, an attempt to allow those rogues you refer, to operate openly, and with impunity, because whose going to control such rogues anyway – My view is they’re already doing *thy bidding*, of those who crave a, *singular entity*!
I would very much doubt a a global (anything), is going to work out too well for those who don’t control the systems, or support it, hey perhaps those in charge currently, are really humanitarians after all, and if they do end up with a *singular entity*, perhaps we will see the journey as having been altruistic, after all…
Peace
Well, Chris Trotter’s joy at the Lab-Green energy policy, and his statements that Shearer’s Labour have taken a new a significant turn…. was pretty short lived. Today, he lays into Robertson, the “reluctant radical” for pulling back and reverting to “neoliberalism” as usual… and also targets Julian Robins… (who?)
that is hilarious karol…i was just saying the other day đ
I’m inclined to believe there’s more than an element of truth in Chris Trotter’s synopsis. Grant Robertson is a careerist to the tips of his toes. Careerists don’t like to be associated with radical policies. There path is the straight one down the middle.
I thought at the time of the announcement it was almost too good to be true.
What’s the matter with the Labour leadership? Scared of their own shadow? That they hit the jackpot is evident in the gross over-reaction of the NActs and their acolytes. So what does Robertson do? Strokes their hysterical egos by telling them… it’s alright boys and girls. This is just a one off… we’re not going to change anything else.
What’s more, it’s not even radical policy!
O dear. This really raises the question whether Grunt is right for the party and whether the party is right for him. He should follow in the footsteps of Peter Done, set up his own party and bend according to whichever way he thinks the polls will keep his shadow trailing him in the House.
You are dead right about it not being policy. It was a single act of sabotage designed to derail the MRP share issue. Spare me any other tripe.
gee. that was a quick dump.
It was a single act of sabotage designed to derail the MRP share issue, which, when it becomes policy, will lower power prices to households. It will not destroy wealth it will transfer it into the pockets of average Kiwi battlers.
Who knew an act of sabotage could have such benign consequences? Just pure dumb luck I guess đ
It’s a very small country, karol.
Bit of cursing at the club today.
Seems there are a few returned service people who don’t take too kindly to Key fucking off home to watch his kid play baseball rather than stay here and honour fallen soldiers.
Heard more than once: “I don’t care what you think about politics, but…”
Bugger. Still, I bet there’s some really good reason he had to be in the states 4 days before the baseball game, eh?
that man is AWOL frequently.
They still remember now? Interesting.
Lest we forget.
what do you make of this rhetorical whip-cracking by Chris Trotter; is that just what he writes to make a dollar, like The Truth?
I heard it mentioned on the bus back from the Cenotaph this morning too.
“Still, I bet thereâs some really good reason he had to be in the states 4 days before the baseball game, eh?”
You know very well that he had an excellent reason felix. How else could he get English to sign the GCSB suppresion order that he knew nothing about?
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This Public Address article, PUBLIC ADDRESS article about COLIN CRAIG is hilarious, too, or as well, or along with!
oops http://publicaddress.net/southerly/false-claims-that-colin-craig-and-his-defamation/ ; (horse is slower than motor-cycle.
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Heh! Gone. Still shows in a google search but, alas, no cache.