Nope. My fault. I did a series of upgrades to the operating systems followed by a cleanup of the disk space. Then after telling the check systems that the site was being rebooted, rebooted at about 2am. But failed to check that the site actually came online.
It had a configuration problem in the apache2 and failed to start up.
A seldom bought up fact is that coal fired and nuclear power does not work in very hot temperatures due to needing cooling as part of their process. In short they are not good in a global warming scenario as when it gets too hot, (and you need power to run air conditioners), it also effects other parts of the network.
That is why solar and diversified power networks are needed in global warming scenarios.
“The heat in Victoria has already cut power to thousands of properties in the state’s central north. More than 2700 AusNet customers were hit with a power outage near Nagambie and an underground cable fault might not be fixed until 5pm. ”
As the heat racks up, Australia becomes more and more suited to become the world’s first hydrogen fuel energy superpower.
High concentrated solar heat can split oxygen and hydrogen at industrial scales through the process of thermolysis far more efficiently than electrolysis, the current most common method.
Thermolytic hydrogen production looks to be at a similar stage to photocatalytic hydrogen production; a bit closer to reality than fusion power but not much.
Sorry but Hydrogen is just not efficient as a source of renewable power. There’s power loss from generation to piping, storing and consuming hydrogen.
The cheapest and most efficient use of solar and wind sources of renewable power is to send the electricity directly to a battery or to point of consumption. The ever improving economics of battery storage will drive the cost down so much that it will become economic to store it overnight for large populations.
That’s an issue for legacy power generation designed for a cooler climate. Unless the power plants are badly engineered, extreme hot temperatures should only force reduced output, not shutdown.
New builds can and should be designed for a warmer climate and much hotter hottest days, with substantially gruntier cooling systems. The gruntier cooling systems should also improve their overall thermal efficiency in less-extreme conditions. Concentrated solar-thermal, geothermal and gas generation also have the cooling issue. Even photovoltaics benefit from kept cool, although it’s rarely if ever cost-effective to actively cool them (there’s a double-benefit from floating photovoltaic arrays on reservoirs, better output from being kept cooler and reduced evaporation).
There’s also the transmission grid – if the cables get hot, they expand lengthwise and sag. Sometimes close enough to something underneath to start fires. One engineering solution for that is using carbon fibre cable for the tension-bearing core, and aluminium for the conductors. Carbon fibre has a very small thermal expansion lengthwise (can be positive or negative depending on the grade) so the heat-sag problem mostly goes away. It just costs a bit more initially.
In 1998 it was the opposite of a wintry storm: it was an El Nino summer. There was a drought and February was hot, fuelling electricity demand from CBD air conditioning.
This had a crippling effect on central Auckland’s ageing power supply. The CBD was fed by four 110 kilo-volt underground main cables – one pair that were gas filled and dated from the 1940s and another pair of oil-filled cables from the 1970s – and a solo 22kV cable from Kingsland.
Hot, dry ground and heat changes in the cables caused movement and instability. Faults in the gas cables put more demand on the oil ones, which overheated and failed.
The first the public knew of the impending crisis was a message from the power supplier (then known as Mercury Energy but now called Vector) advising CBD customers to conserve electricity, otherwise “drastic measures” would be needed.
By that point, February 19, three of the main cables had failed. The first went out in January. The fourth failed on February 20, leaving the Kingsland thread as the power lifeline.
There were two causes. A hot summer shifted the ground causing an actual break in at least one cable causing a leakage. The other one was a bit more insidious. There was insufficient ground moisture to transfer extra heat away from the cables.
I’d just moved into my apartment towards the end of 1997, so had the fun of months of the power outages.
It is kind of freaky to realise that at the time there were only 7000 people living in and around the CBD in 1998. The last time I looked (after the 2013 census) there were more than 70,000. It has gone up since then.
I read recently that City of London has much of its own governance.
Something like 7000 people live there, but 450,000 people work there or are integrated with it. e&oe
There are two Coal power stations in the Latrobe Valley in Victoria’s east couldn’t keep up with demand by 10:30am thence the rolling blackouts aka “brown outs” yesterday and one of the main trunk powerlines in Victoria went tits up as well.
There were also localised power outages as well cause by local transmission lines not handling the increase demand of power or the extreme heat or a combination of the both.
Can find the link but it looks like they have already had to shut down generations in Adelaide due to extreme heat. So just when you need power to cool, you have to shut down your generations. So I guess people could be dead pretty quickly.
Sadly power has become a business rather than a social good, and therefore the discourses are not about the cheapest most effective ways for communities and individuals to get power but more about big business making the most profit of often the poorest people, while subtly delaying/stopping or trying to control other better, cheaper ways they could get power.
Free trade has become about stopping social good and profiting from the effects of climate change, through thousands of pages of ‘rules’ to ensure profit remains to the big multinationals.
“Profit over the planet: WTO’s lawsuit ruling could be a giant blow to the renewable energy movement
WTO tribunal ruled in a lawsuit initiated by the U.S. that India’s national solar energy program violates trade law”
With the same ruling above, even though India had virtually ZERO solar capacity at that time the logic of US solar being damaged at that time could not be true. However the WTO still ruled in US favour.
“The U.S. sued India in the WTO tribunal because India’s subsidized solar energy program required that particular parts be made in the country. Washington claims that, because of this program, its solar exports to India have fallen by 90 percent since 2011, when the program started. As the Sierra Club’s Ben Beachy noted, however, India had almost no solar capacity at this time.”
Free trade has become about stopping social good and profiting from the effects of climate change, through thousands of pages of ‘rules’ to ensure profit remains to the big multinationals.
It’s not about free-trade – it’s about forcing trade.
India didn’t want to trade so as to help develop their economy and so the US through the WTO forced it upon them. They did so so that the US economy could be developed at India’s expense.
If these people were truly after free-trade they’d be dropping all the rules and allowing nations to decide for themselves if they’re going to trade with another nation or not. That, after all, is what free-trade is.
“If these people were truly after free-trade they’d be dropping all the rules and allowing nations to decide for themselves if they’re going to trade with another nation or not. That, after all, is what free-trade is.”
/agreed
Do you think we might see some committed ‘free trade’ advocate (such as a Wayne or an Ollie Hartwich) come along and offer an explanation as to why free trade and FTAs are not actually free trade?
I imagine if they ever do, the explanation will be laced with spin and buzz words going forward.
And you’re absolutely correct re India. I still marvel at how the MFATs, Oz equivalent and others can’t understand why India is one of those ‘hard nuts to crack’ in obtaining an FTA.
Here’s a hint: Despite all the overt corruption, backhanders and promises, there is actually a concern among the Indian political elite for its citizens – whether from the Left, or from the Right. They don’t actually like being treated like shit in the minds of their foreign betters especially with the offshore diaspora.
Do you think we might see some committed ‘free trade’ advocate (such as a Wayne or an Ollie Hartwich) come along and offer an explanation as to why free trade and FTAs are not actually free trade?
I would expect them to come on and explain why these agreements are all about free-trade when, more often than not, they’re used to force trade.
3pm (1500hrs) and its now 2000Hrs.
Waiting waiting waiting. I’d have thought there’d have been a few regulars jumping in by now – seems not.
I guess they’re waiting for instructions
They really don’t like it when the truth is before them.
The fact that these agreements are forced trade rather than free-trade undermines their credibility but they actually can’t deny that these agreements are about forcing trade rather than free-trade.
One of the things I have learnt watching today’s ODI involving India is the meaning of the cartwheel in the Indian flag.
From Wikipedia (therefore it must be true), :
“Gandhi first proposed a flag to the Indian National Congress in 1921. The flag was designed by Pingali Venkayya. In the centre was a traditional spinning wheel, symbolising Gandhi’s goal of making Indians self-reliant by fabricating their own clothing…”
But wait, there’s more:
“Bhagwa or the Saffron denotes renunciation or disinterestedness. Our leaders must be indifferent to material gains and dedicate themselves to their work.”
I would love to include this in the cabinet manual.
You’ve got it @gsays.
Not something a few Wasps in Delhi half a mile from a Railway Museum sucking on a fag and worrying about their future will ever get.
Just as well I ‘spose there’s now a ‘Maori Policy Unit’ in MFAT’ with one or two decent folk leading the charge, even if they do worship at the lower Tory Street Temple
*
there’s NOW a ‘Maori Policy Unit’ ……etc.
Sorry, I had a Leftist’s curmudgeon moment brought on by memories of a Relda and a Marama.
A Kohia cum Martin almost.
Thermal generation relies on the Carnot cycle, and it becomes less efficient as the ambient temperature rises. So does the cooling efficiency, and in many jurisdictions power plants are also restricted from putting too much heat back into rivers/estuaries, as this can have a severe impact on ecosystems. There is just so much legacy coal around that can’t be retrofitted with better cooling that our warming climate will cause more outages of coal fired power generation.
I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion about cooling or temperature being the cause of the power cut. They point out it was an underground cable and the fault could be caused by quite a few things.
A real issue for cooling for me would be transformers dealing with high loads. They are everywhere and are air cooled, the coils immersed in oil. So obviously 50 deg air is less efficient in cooling than 30 deg air. The risk being the insulating coating on the wires fail, they short circuit and explode.
As for the power plants there is two versions. Those that recycle water in cooling towers and those using water from rivers like Huntly. So the water exits the plant as steam at 100 deg plus, condenses and falls back down the tower. In theory less water would be recycled as less water can reach the temp to condense. The actual turbines shouldn’t be effected by a large amount as they operate at temperatures much higher than the air temerature. If anything the may need higher water flows in any component cooling part of the operation.
So water supply is actually the issue. Plants that can’t condense enough water may not have consent to draw enough from waterways to compensate. Plants like Huntly should have no issues as they have the ability to add cooling towers.
The actual figures for the effect of air temperature are small.
Funny how there has been ZERO nuclear power plants built by private practise in the world, instead they use tax payer money for the folly. Even when private practise do make the nuclear power plants it is enough to drive them under, meanwhile the countries and companies that invested in solar early are booming.
“Fossil fuel company TransCanada is already suing the U.S. government, after the Obama administration rejected its proposed Keystone XL Pipeline on environmental grounds. Former NASA environmental scientist and now Columbia University professor James Hansen emphasized that, if the pipeline were built and the vast oil reserves in Alberta, Canada’s tar sands were used, it would mean “game over for the climate,” yet the corporation is demanding $15 billion in compensation from American taxpayers.”
Oh, lets look at what industries are causing climate change, and then getting the free trade deals to compensate them for their destruction of the planet so far! Crazy!
Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says
A relatively small number of fossil fuel producers and their investors could hold the key to tackling climate change
And failed to see a reference to a rift valley less than 50 miles from Auckland which is thought by geologists to pose the risk of a large earthquake. Such a shake would affect the majority of the upper island as the fault runs through the Hauraki Gulf. It why the Firth of Thames is why it is – it is a submerged rift valley.
But not only is Auckland potentially liable to suffer an earthquake it is also liable to volcanic eruption. The hot springs at Miranda don’t just happen to be there for no apparent reason.
Indeed the whole of the upper North Island is formed from volcanic and earthquakes. If you were to do Geology 101 from AUC you would go on a field tip to Matheson Bay by Leigh, half way between Auckland and Whangarei, where the the evidence of Earth quakes, volcanoes, and other geological action is to be plainly seen.
The pay off in reliable power to Auckland for the whole city, including a massive upswing in EV’s and electric public transport would more than pay for itself.
Not only are they designed to run with typically cooler water the waste heat has environmental impacts which will only increase with recalibration and an already warmer cooling source.
“Every day, large reactors like the two at Diablo Canyon, California, individually dump about 1.25 billion gallons of water into the ocean at temperatures up to 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the natural environment. ”
I’ve got tickling in the back of my head that Huntly is (or was) occasionally constrained by its resource consent conditions. IIRC, when the Waikato river is already warm and low flow they’re not allowed to dump much extra heat into it, so that limits the power output.
President Trump agrees to open the US government up for 30 days. After that period if he doesn’t get his wall, he has threatened to either close the government again, or declare a National Emergency.
Even for a President who doesn’t read, the enormity of the second option can’t escape him.
Dunno about that. He knows he just got spanked over his dropping ratings so it’s unlikely he’ll try another shutdown, and his base thinks he just cravenly surrendered.
His way out is to get a bit of extra funding for more technology stuff like remote surveillance and entry port inspections, and call it a “smart wall”. He’s already setting the stage for that switcheroo, and most of his Wallnuts will go along with it.
But Trump’s description of what kind of wall he wants has evolved in a notable concession to his critics. Trump said Friday that natural barriers already provide ample protection in some parts of the border, and that resources for border control should also focus on ports of entry and technology developments beyond a physical barrier.
“The walls that we are building are not medieval walls. They are smart walls designed to meet the needs of front-line border agents and are operationally effective,” Trump said. “We do not need 2,000 miles of concrete wall from sea to shining sea, we never did, we never proposed that.”
Would trump’s wall actually have any effect other than to fulfill his election promises.
Fencing people out is vastly different to fencing them in imho
As a practical matter, a concrete wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean would:
make floods in the Rio Grande much worse by impeding floodwaters
forcibly take a lot of land from a lot of really ornery Texans
really fuck up the ecosystems in the Big Bend area of Texas and kill a lot of the wildlife that depends on access to the Rio Grande for water let alone north-south migration patterns (equivalent ecosystems in the California mountains are already fucked from the fencing that’s already built)
barely noticeably reduce illegal immigration since most arrive legally and overstay, are smuggled through an entry port concealed in a vehicle, or go over or under existing fencing
Start again with what he is proposing.
What’s interesting about Trump is he has is end game and a starting position. Over time has starting position has changed from your comment, to his present policy. He has listened to the experts, who want the steel barrier etc.
His end game hasn’t changed.
Stop ILLEGAL immigration.
So you like law breaking and keep coming up with excuses justifying law breaking. He wants things to be lawful.
Most illegal immigration. But the rest is acceptable to you. Trump wants to stop it therefore Andre must condone it.
So most convicted rapists?
So most MS13?
So most sex trade victims?
Where do they enter the US?
I’m amazed that you condone those things just on your hatred of Trump. You would rather rapists, Gang members, and sex trafficking be unimpeded than let a single Trump policy, sorry Obama policy, sorry Pelosi policy be funded.
He probably should have signed up to the UN pact on immigration then as one of it’s goals was to stop people immigrating illegally by correcting the conditions that make them want to leave.
Of course, that would reduce the power of the US and other developed nations in the world.
Those Hitler digs are clearly stupid.
The socialist MSM is the new Goebbels.
There’s no enormity in building a wall. Not a single American will have a single control placed on them. Not one. No media imprisoned like Venuzuela. No protesters shot or run over like Venuzuela. No corruption like Venuzuela. No high taxes that cause all the youth to flee like Venuzuela.
Nothing. Not one thing Nazi in anything Trump has done. Unlike Ocasio Cortez who is a racist and sexist as well. On record with her hate white men comments.
Aside from your irrational Godwinisms, I agree that the concept of walls is not inherently bad, humans have built them throughout history. Trump’s tantrum shutdown wasn’t really about he wall, it’s about Democrats taking control of Congress, and obstructing the Mueller investigation. Trump has had 2 years to fund his stupid fscken wall but he seemed to forget about it until now.
I think your wrong.
She has a great personality but clearly not that bright.
She refuses to by interviewed by media that may ask non patsy questions so she can’t actually get to that higher level. The day she has to face a real interview rather than patsy questions she will look stupid and scary.
The rich are going WTF she is just nuts. The second she gets any traction or power with her ideas large numbers of the rich will donate to the republicans. She will be like the gift that keeps on giving.
Billionaire @MichaelDell on @AOC's 70% marginal tax rate on millionaires: "Name a country where that's worked — ever." Co-panelist and MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson: "The United States!"#Davos2019https://t.co/fVgrFI73wO
That’s right, they were very perdantic on that one. Unlike Venuzuela who have no paper to take records. Or no media to report on it. There in prison.
We have the same policy here in NZ it’s called CYFS. All you need is you and 2 dodgy mates to independently make false allegations and they will go around and take the children from the parent or parents. They keep paperwork as well but good luck trying to get hold of it. The children are placed with audited, better parents. Sadly often more likely to abuse the kids vs the parents.
Exactly. Everyone else identifies that child, who their parents are, where they were taken into custody (and by whom), whether the child was healthy, and what their destination will be.
The Nazis kept better records on the kids they intentionally murdered than dolt45’s crew do on kids they were supposed to try to keep alive.
“If we don’t get a fair deal from Congress, the government will either shutdown on February 15, again, or I will use the powers afforded to me under the laws and the Constitution of the United States to address this emergency,”
But just imagine what the next Democrat President in 2020 could do with those “emergency powers” tRump is just wanting to set a precedent for!
Action on Climate Change.
Immigration policy.
Voting rights.
Social Justice.
to name a few.
His advisers are cautioning him about taking this approach because it would set up a whole gateway for open slather executive action that potentially violates their constitution. Furthermore, if it should succeed through the myriad of legal objections, such an order would immediately face, it opens the way for any succeeding Democrat to do something to which Republicans are totally opposed. Of course, having essentially cast aside all the adults in the room, and never actually listening to any advice that may be given – unless it is from his mates on Fox news – who knows what he will do. He obviously hasn’t a clue as to what he is doing – so how is anyone else to know?
Macro …
26 January 2019 at 7:32 pm
But just imagine what the next Democrat President in 2020 could do with those “emergency powers”….
What, next Democratic President?
Early reviews of Fahrenheit 11/9 suggest that Moore uses the Flint water crisis to show how civil safeguards are being eroded by Republican freebooters, He claims that Rick Snyder, the Republican governor of Michigan, engineered a virtual coup d’etat by instituting “emergency management” that sidelined elected officials after Flint’s water supply was polluted by an unnecessary but profitable new pipeline.
Moore also suggests that Trump is the figurehead of an attempt to destroy democracy in the US: his speeches are compared to Adolf Hitler’s to argue that the same social passivity that allowed dictators to legally seize power in the 1930s is blunting opposition today.
You fail to understand the importance of the most recent election and the real “Blue Wave” that transformed the country. And yes it did transform the country. There is still more to be done, but the people are not resting on their laurels, they are now seriously working on 2020. Trumpkins who are now the only base for Trump support, are even now, walking away as they realise the reality of life under the Orange one is not what he said it would be. The Republicans don’t have the support, nor the gumption, to remove him, and they are fractionalised as a party, like they have never been before. There has been a huge reaction to the election of Trump. It has energized people, particularly women. There is growing movement for reform.
If Trump was successful to create expanded “Emergency Powers” for his wall, that would create a precedent for any follow on President to do a vast number of things of which current Republicans would never dream of doing. Remember it was the power of the Republicans in Congress that has held up any substantive progress on Climate Action on the world stage for decades. No US President could agree to working towards reducing GHG emissions on a world stage without their consent.
Saturday, 29 September 2001
The meek have inherited the Earth and are now too frightened to go outside their doors. They seek to deny change, change in how they live – change within themselves.
Do not be afraid – change is life, to be masters’ of the change is to be enlightened.
To seek enlightenment is to become unenlightened, seek instead to become masters of self.
This war which looms upon us is not a war against terror as George W. (Dubya) Bush would have us believe – it is a war against a change in the status quo, a war to try and preserve those in power, those who believe that they are the rulers of Earth.
This war will see the end of the American Empire, its final collapse coming in a time when America has no friends – when brother sets against brother.
The end of this war can only come from within America, as those who come to see the tyranny of what is and rise up to bring change. The catalyst has started, the ball is rolling – the end is in doubt. Those of us who sit on the side lines are those who will cry most – none will be unchanged.
Cost will be beyond measure, attainment beyond price.
This is the Final War – the war against capitalism.
1. you need to put in a /sarc tag else no one else will get it. It’s the general problem wit text.
2. You’re a RWNJ so we expect you to be lambasting Nazi Germany as socialist when it actually wasn’t.
On Twitter, Justin Paulson brought this fascinating article from the Journal of Economic Perspectives to my attention. It’s called “The Coining of ‘Privatization’ and Germany’s National Socialist Party.” Apparently, the first use of the word “privatization” (or “reprivatization”) in English occurred in the 1930s, in the context of explaining economic policy in the Third Reich. Indeed, the English word was formulated as a translation of the German word “Reprivatisierung,” which had itself been newly minted under the Third Reich.
Isn’t privatisation what we’ve been doing for the last thirty years?
So, for the last thirty years we’ve been following Nazi Germany’s economic policies.
Chris Trotter on how imperialism has set Britain apart from its European competitors and landed it in the mess it’s in – The Prime Minister, Theresa May, and her supposed alternative, Jeremy Corbyn, epitomise in equal measure the malady that is Brexit.
May has failed utterly to draw into the debate the broad range of parties and interests whose co-operation continues to be essential to the extremely difficult task of making Britain’s departure from the European Union, if not painless, then bearable. Tribal, mistrustful, high-handed and fatally unimaginative, the Conservative Party leader remains politically upright only because her job is now so hard and so thankless that nobody else wants it.
His latest on Bowalley Road is fairly brutal: http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-jacinda-problem-where-she-goes-we-go.html
although I can understand how many aren’t seeing the benefits of a change in government (yet). Let’s hope tho’ that we don’t keep getting a “Rome wasn’t built in a day” response from any criticism – it’s not going to wash for too much longer.
maybe, maybe not
We’ll see whether or not this is Her moment of advocacy for change, or whether it will be seen as just another media moment in time (going forward).
I’m hoping it is the former, although I understand she has a whole lot of shit to push uphill to get to where she’d hope we all want to be.
There are a growing number of the dis-possessed that can’t even afford a concern for the politics of kindness and they’ve given up even being interested in such a hope.
2019 is going to be an interesting year.
It occurs to me that if we don’t get a fairer system the grievances and hate against governmental and elite leaders will build up. There eventually could be a revenge group that pays back to the families of the comfortable privateers. Best to really take things seriously about giving the lower classes some let-up on their downward trend in everything before the obsessed get beyond hope for bread tomorrow; let them eat cake sometimes now please, sitting on their own chairs in their own lockable home, not the romantic outdoors.
I don’t think Singaporeans are going to be satisfied with NZ Defence Forces standing back and pleading laissez faire. I think there are many Singaporean Chinese in this country. They didn’t lift themselves out of poverty by dropping regulations and adopting a she’ll-be-right approach. It wasn’t us gov’ plea or we can’t be questioned, ‘Do you know who we are’ can work to deal with us ordinary NZ citizens but they will be displeased.
That could be put – what less do you expect the NZDF to do? And I could say yeah good idea if they didn’t host such practises; but then how can they withdraw without breaking the working alliance that is thrust upon us by the constant desire to have something that someone else has got. Which is millenials old.
So I don’t know what can NZDF do; be better hosts? Try to make it clear in Singapore news media with adverts that we are very sad that one of their young role models and youth stars has been killed here, and stress that we were not involved?
And I could say yeah good idea if they didn’t host such practises; but then how can they withdraw without breaking the working alliance that is thrust upon us
They may have hosted the exercise but they weren’t part of it.
This means that no investigation by them will result in any meaningful resolution.
The only ones who can investigate the incident is Singapore.
Which is what’s happening with the NZDF assistance.
There is, quite literally, nothing else that the NZDF can do.
So I don’t know what can NZDF do; be better hosts? Try to make it clear in Singapore news media with adverts that we are very sad that one of their young role models and youth stars has been killed here, and stress that we were not involved?
He was a Singaporean defence force personnel operating under their jurisdiction. There is, quote literally, nothing that the NZDF can do except extend NZs condolences which I’m pretty sure that they’ve already done on our behalf.
There is nothing that you can fault our defence forces with as they didn’t have anything to do with it.
There is nothing that you can fault our defence forces with as they didn’t have anything to do with it.
I already indicated that DTB. So don’t go on about it.
As far as I am aware the NZDF provides the venue but not direct control of the exercise. Certainly not the NZDF staff (as your link points out) except probably for exercise bounds.
Just like the exercises that the SAF does in a number of friendly countries where they have some room to do operational training in larger areas than their islands. The SAF does these exercises shipping their own gear into the host country and mainly doing their own exercises. As far as I am aware the use of many of those exercise areas are paid for in millions or billions of dollars deals. I suspect that if they aren’t explicitly doing a multilateral exercise, that any operational training cooperating with host forces would be an afterthought.
The Singapore land area is only about 3/4 that of the Auckland urban area. It severely limits the kind of exercise that they can do inside their own country. For instance at brigade or regimental level, anything to do with jet aircraft, most armour or artillery, hell even the bush warfare areas would be limited. Gods knows what else they’d need to do. In Australia they use thousands of square kilometres at Shoalwater Bay.
But what you don’t seem to grasp is that the SAF are finicky about training injuries or deaths. In Singapore even training deaths caused by dehydration or lightning are prominent in the news media. Everything that I’ve seen over this last year (I spent 5 months of 2018 in Singapore) indicates that they are the best people to do any such inquiry. They have more actual experience than the NZDF.
That is because they cycle so many more people through training. Conscripts through their two years and reserves through their annual training. That is a *lot* of training. It is a far far large force than NZDF. Active personnel are about 70k at any one time. And there are over a million reserves.
With military training, like that of civilian training, there simply isn’t any way to remove all risk. The trick is to make sure that you learn from accidents to make damn sure that they don’t reoccur. I can’t see how getting the NZDF to do it would add much, if anything.
Singapore Armed Forces use Waiouru for live fire artillery training and as your link notes, it’s Singapore’s show so there’s no reason for the NZDF to be involved in any inquiry.
We can express sorrow in a media release that would show up in Singapore. It affects our 100% Pure happy place promotion somewhat. We don’t want any more preventable deaths in this country piling up in statistics!
Seems to me there might be places around NZ where this could be useful in the future, but I also wonder whether we’ll take our traditional short term approach to doing things and go for ‘light rail’ options using a completely different gauge.
The Labour party needs a name change.
Here are a few starters.
New Zealand Pacific
New Zealand Global
Our New Zealand.
True New Zealand.
New Zealand Heart.
Another tailings dam collapse. Hundreds missing. Surrounding farmland destroyed via being covered in toxic sludge.
Shares in Vale drop 10%. The same Vale responsible for the last dam failing in Minas Gerais, the 19 deaths then, and Brasil’s worst ecological disaster.
Bolsonaro to the rescue, concerned for miners welfare.
What I am aware of in the free market is that every disaster is a profit centre if a Corporate can work it right. So one conglomerate screws up – then another supplies a remedy. The governments pay and pay and pay, and the people say what was in that brown paper email?
While we are at it a 21 century name
for New Zealand is way over due.
We are not a Dutch province.
Tasman did not discover New Zealand.
Realistically we should be Rarotonga Hou.
There is a vacuum with NZ demand & supply lobbying, so it tends to go to rorting instead.
To different degrees, some things are natural monopolies, like govt. itself is for example. The strength of that natural monopolistic part of the societal economy, is that despite all the leverage put over it to the contrary, it is a product of dynamic NZ demand & supply.
That is a general guide then, to the direction in enabling NZ lobbying systems for even the bigger natural monopolistic areas of activity to take the place of rorting.
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi on Saturday announced he’ll be asking the public for ideas on how to toughen the law.
Wonder if he’ll like the answers because the first thing that needs to be done is for all natural monopolies that provide essential services (Power, telecommunications, water, hospitals (and health in general)) to be brought in to state ownership as a government service. Some of which (i.e, health) would not carry charges.
In The Reactionary Mind, Robin traces conservatism back to its roots in the reaction against the French Revolution. He argues that the right was inspired, and is still united, by its hostility to emancipating the lower orders. Some conservatives endorse the free market; others oppose it. Some criticize the state; others celebrate it. Underlying these differences is the impulse to defend power and privilege against movements demanding freedom and equality — while simultaneously making populist appeals to the masses. Despite their opposition to these movements, conservatives favor a dynamic conception of politics and society — one that involves self-transformation, violence, and war. They are also highly adaptive to new challenges and circumstances. This partiality to violence and capacity for reinvention have been critical to their success.
I was watching the Philip DeFranco channel playing interviews from LAUSD Teachers and why the went on strike. They were offered better pay but turned it down as what they want is lower class sizes, and full-time nurses and counselors.
Another thing that was mentioned was about a lot of the funding trickery going on with some of the charter schools there. The schools have a headcount at a certain time near the start of the school year that helps set their funding. Right after this time a lot of the charter schools then dump a lot of the lower performing students forcing them back to public schools. Meanwhile, they keep the funding level for the higher number of students while the public schools forced to accept them are left with a funding level for a lower number of students. The charter schools have effectively found a loophole to swipe funding from the public schools while being left with the best of the cherrypicked students. They can also turn down those with physical handicaps putting even more pressure on the public schools who must supply extra funding from their budget for those students.
Some of this seems to resonate with what was happening here under the last National government with charter schools being better funded than public schools and being able to cherrypick students and having no accountability.
Dolan Twins Funeral Controversy & Why The LAUSD Teacher Strike Will Ripple Through The US…
I get so brassed off with commenters who present on this blog using coded language of acronyms. It’s lazy, and irrational when it is about specialist subjects and people ought to know better. How on earth are commenters supposed to know what LAUSD is. I presume on looking it up on google that its’s this; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Unified_School_District
I agree. I keep getting stuck on what IIRC means, and occasionally FWIW.
Besides, those acronyms often often have a different meaning assigned to them through time.
For example, at one time SDLC meant Synchronous Data Link Control until some sage came along with a project management process and it became Systems Development Life Cycle.
Is it possible COVFEFE has some deep meaning in the mind of an orange turd?
The first two are ones people generally know about. They are useful for being short. I can understand them being good for phone texters. That Covfefefe is a doozy. I had some fun finding out about it.
Just watching link to a piece on early languages in the UK. Thet have just mentioned the burghs that would contain a group of traders and businesspeople who had a fairly autonomous sytem, reporting to a noble who reported to a king.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X5zX3yVoiQ
I think we have to revitalise our local areas as the governments appear to have been captured by right wing economists with romantic, sensual dreams supplied by Ayn Rand.
I think we could end up in a Mafia-like community with government providing protection whichever way we lean. So think about semi-autonomous regions, they might choose to be supportive of each other, in exchange for more choice of what to do with their collected taxes. I have been suggesting that say 5% of GST collected in particular areas be returned there to provide and update infrastructure. May be the tax reform group might have looked at that.
Well, the yanks just beat the brits 19-7 in Hamilton – even though the latter played really tight attacking rugby. Amazing how good the USA sevens team has become the last couple of years, after being non-contenders for so long. Obviously we must blame Trump. Anyone sussed out how he did it yet?
Metric tests to a person’s competency to THC levels & a related license to smoke pot perhaps, along with the availability of cheap devices for enthusiasts to purchase & use for application of such an approach.
Individual freedom comes with personable responsibility & self-control after all.
Perhaps such regulations would be a way to help people with high dependencies get to grips with their self-management and organisation better, in essence raising the lowest common denominator to a growing societal problem area in general & to help put a lid on it at a relatively harmless level.
After reading that article it reinforced my opposition to legalisation.
Commodifying by legalising a herb creates all sorts of issues.
Decriminilising is a far better way to go.
Take profit out of the issue, depower gangs, enable folk with pot issues to seek help, keep corporates away from marijuana.
Regulation should continue to include bans for THC levels in a person’s blood for:
– Private car
– Bus driving
– Taxi driving
– Truck driving
– In fact random testing for using any machinery at all
– In fact random testing for any level of THC in the workplace no matter where you are
And of course harder enforcement at school:
– Random testing at school, to ensure the legal age is enforced and young people actually study
And a tax step that’s far higher for using it as cigarette, damaging the lungs, compared to less tax for a pill or liquid form.
If they felt like it they could hypothecate (dedicate) the income from both tobacco and marijuana sales to minimizing their harm.
Now that the “rights” argument is getting closer, let’s talk about actual responsibilities in society.
It would need a good stepped metric testing license system. People are different.
As long as that was sound, the rest of associated approaches and outcomes would gravitate around it effectively to the shape of the market and how it functions.
Yuk. Next thing they will be limiting how many farts is appropriate per day and decide it should be none and then whole classes at school will go into detention when nobody will own up. No one wants to now, it will be worse when it is punishable. /sarc
Lets hope our Prime Minister has the good sense not to be sucked into Nato’s latest attempt to make out seventeen years of pointless killing in Afghanistan is justified and in some way moral. Lets also hope she passes on the, sure to arrive, requests to support regime change in Venezuela too. Trudeau has made it clear he is Trumps bitch. Lets try and keep some self respect.
Kia ora The AM Show The 7,s Rugby in Hamilton was awesome the stands were packed out and OUR 7,s Black Ferns Wahine Rugby team first game on home soil was a great success. Mana Wahine its looks like it will be a yearly event for OUR Black Firns Mana Wahine. The All Blacks 7 team is still in the hunt for the 7 trophy to ka pai. simon we needed the greens party in Government after shonky shorted the system for his wealthy m8 nar you don’t want a capital gains tax that would make life better for the many people and ECO MAORI knows national run government’s for the 00.1%
I put deflated the alt right neo mark his blue m8s were not happy with that move they played up heaps after that kick from ECO Maori. I will observe a bit more before I put my nose in the Auckland Council election. I still say all the anity capital gains principles of NZ Have the teachers union by the noses. Jason I feel sorry for you people in Australia with those scorching temperatures over them. Jason it only takes 1 degree changes for life or death no wonder you and duncan are m8s both human caused climate change deniers. That last comment of yours on social media shaming fools who are disrespectful totally agree with that view social media gives people a conscious. Phil Goff needs to use social media to direct the traffic away from traffic jam’s like Korea does he needs to send someone there and see what they do with DATA & social media to keep one of the highest density and Internet connected population in Papatuanukue running a few tweeks in Auckland would save the country millions of $$$$$ and lower our carbon footprint. I say all road works on high traffic roads should be carried out at night there priorities should be safety first and traffic flowing freely even try Japanese traffic slow down models I see some more heads have been moved out of NZTA may be time for change they could have had links to oil barons.?????.
That is cool having Rob Hewitt on The show education people about Wai water & safety swimming in Tangaroa. Tangaroa was looking after him when he spent 4 days lost in Tangaroa Ka pai.
24 degrees here at the minute.
A true green party is a left humane party one can spout being green and in the same breath party shout lock em up cut social security I see someone who jumped on my coat Tails for a lift cheat. Ka kite ano P.S The controversial water view tunnel in Auckland made life better for people who fly Alot just like national look after the 00.1%, before the 99.9 %
Ki ora Newshub Global warming is hear and now one has to plan for the heat and work smart to avoid heat stress and Fires
Good Wai quality is a must it makes Eco think we have hope when 80 % of people think good water quality is needed to avoid desaster with our water and environment. Road Rage not good is it. 3 topic,s linked climate change traffic jams and obesity it would be nice with the obesity subject that the real culprit is branded for that problem SUGAR.
ECO MAORI knows how strong Tawhirirmate in around Aketio I think that is Cape turnagain Alex been in some big seas there.
Its is awesome that Black panther has picked up a few prizes at the SAG awards . Ka kite ano
National has a problem. And it’s time they said it out loud. It can’t be dismissed as a one-off anymore or excused because ‘everyone does it’. No, it cuts deeper than that. National has an ethics problem. Especially when it comes to privacy and using ordinary people as pawns in ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, July 5 through Sat, July 11, 2020Editor's ChoiceThink Covid-19 Disrupted the Food Chain? Wait and See What Climate Change Will DoThe pandemic has revealed deep flaws in the ...
The Council of Disobedient Women There is a regular segment in the Speak Up For Women podcasts called “Absolutely Blasted Mad Moment of the Week”. Each podcast the speaker and the host discuss a recent event that is the most insane thing they have seen in the gender critical space ...
Todd Muller - Dishonest National Party leaderIt seems that dishonest Todd Muller is, like many right-wing politicians, entirely morally bankrupt. I mean just look at the National Party’s leaking omni-shambles over the last week or so. They’ve imploded in a spectacular display of backfiring dirty politics, the likes of which ...
MONDAY JULY 13Bodyguard (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). It's the final; if you haven't seen this already on Netflix, get ready, the ending is batshit.Unforgotten (Vibe, Sky 006, 8.30pm). I wonder if Sanjeev Bhasksar's character has got rid of that damn backpack in the third season of this cold case drama? Although, come ...
TUESDAY JULY 14Yorkshire Airport (Prime, 7.30pm). Bloomin’ ’eck, behind the scenes at Leeds Bradford Airport. Apparently, there is plenty of “northern charm”, although reaction in the UK ranged from “brilliant” to “patronising”. It is narrated by Hugh Dennis, whose middle name might be “Arch”.WEDNESDAY JULY 15Queen: Live at Wembley (Prime, ...
Simon Bridges must be the unluckiest person in New Zealand politics. When he was elected as leader of the National party, he also became Leader of the Opposition – a position, he was entitled to assume, that would require him to “oppose”. But the government he set out to oppose ...
This is a re-post from The Guardian by Damian Carrington Spreading rock dust on farmland could suck billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air every year, according to the first detailed global analysis of the technique. The chemical reactions that degrade the rock particles lock the greenhouse gas into ...
Check out Speak Up For Women’s new podcasts: Episode 3 In this episode Speak Up For Women spokeswoman Ani O’Brien (@aniobrien) is joined by Beth Johnson (@beth_nosnhoj) to discuss the proposal from Statistics NZ to change standard data collection policy to “gender by default” rather than sex. They discuss why the ...
During a recent public consultation on the future of Archives New Zealand, a key report was suppressed. The Ombudsman has ruled that the refusal was unjustified. Sadly, the consultation was over by the time of the the decision has been made. However, the law on the use of the ...
National MP - Michael WoodhouseUnbelievable! Michelle Boag also sent National’s Michael Woodhouse confidential emails about COVD-19 patients, and he continued to publicly attack the Government over these very same breaches of privacy.This is the biggest political self-own since the Act Party’s David Garrett admitted in Parliament that he used a ...
Transcript: National Party policy announcement on roads – 8 July, 2020 Muller: Good afternoon everybody. Thank you for coming. Reporter 1: Is Hamish Walker a racist? Muller: Hang on… you haven’t even said good afternoon to me yet. Reporter 1: Good afternoon Mr Muller. Is Hamish Walker a racist? ...
Back in April, I wrote about trials in Iran of a fixed-dose combination of two existing anti-viral drugs used to treat hepatitis C – sofosbuvir and daclatasvir – that could point to an effective treatment for Covid-19 symptoms.At the time, data from those trials was not available outside the hospitals ...
Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Anja Mizdrak, Dr Jennifer Summers, Prof Michael BakerThe pandemic-related lockdown is possibly the most dramatic public health intervention in NZ history. It helped achieve the elimination of community transmission of the COVID-19 virus in NZ. But it was also associated with 548 fewer total ...
Reprehensible: There is much that could be said about Michael Woodhouse, but what would be the point? Any man who willingly involves himself in a situation as reprehensible as the one depicted in the above photograph has already vouchsafed all that decent people need to know about his character. That there have ...
As the debate over assisted dying rages in the run-up to the referendum at the election on September 19, a persistent problem continues to dog the discussions. That is to say, a prominent spokesperson for a particular group takes a strong public stand in opposition without acknowledging that they don’t ...
No Other Suspects? The mainstream news media was willing to print and broadcast harsh Opposition criticism of the Government, even though they knew that the source of the leaked information was a National Party MP. Even though, by pushing the story up towards the top of every news bulletin they were ...
Sacrificial Lamb: If the stories about Mr Taogaga and the unauthorised release of confidential medical data had been deliberately orchestrated by Labour’s political opponents, their deflection of the news media’s attention away from the Prime Minister’s address to the Labour Party Congress could hardly have been more successful.THE LABOUR PARTY ...
The East is Rent: The consequences of unleashing the young against the old; of elevating ideological rigor above reasoned debate; and of setting the present against the past; was a decade of unprecedented social stress and tension, interspersed with explosions of murderous mob violence and tragic material destruction. More than ...
The Green Party of Aotearoa-New Zealand could go from helping Jacinda Ardern run the country, to being turfed out of Parliament altogether in ten weeks. And that could see the end of Labour in government. Without them, Labour would likely have to do what no party has done since the ...
Remember the government's tyrannicalTerrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill? Remember how it was rammed through Parliament, with a four-day submission period and a select committee process that was a democratic fraud? At the time, the government gave the impression that there was an urgent need for this legislation, that a ...
Attack journalist - Tova O'BrienWe all know that much of the mainstream media in New Zealand is terribly biased. They are in effect another branch of the National Party, and can often be even more prejudiced than their right wing bosses.In fact many right wing politicians moonlight as journalists and ...
Former National Party President - Michelle BoagAfter the complete botch job Hamish Walker made of leaking the private details of COVID-19 patients to the mainstream media last week, the best-case scenario for Todd Muller and the National Party would be if the news cycle went quiet about their involvement.But unfortunately ...
One of the challenges of working on illegal wildlife markets, is you don’t really have scope to talk about your research into illegal wildlife markets. There is some stuff though that willbe coming out on Asiatic black bears in China, and before Covid19, I was delving more into rhinos. Which ...
Some are surprised at this sudden brain implosion on the part of both Michelle Boag, former National Party President, and the National Party in general, in exposing the private, confidential details of COVID patients. Others…? Let’s be blunt: not so much. Too many of that Party have long operated with ...
Michelle Boag - Former National Party PresidentWhen Todd Muller decided not to discipline Hamish Walker for his horribly racist press release last week, you had to wonder if his lack of proper leadership had something to do with a shared belief system? After all, the whiteness of the blue “team” ...
On Twitter today, lawyer Felix Geiringer asked a good question: why are MP's exempt from the Privacy Act? The Act imposes its obligations on "agencies", and s8 of the 2020 Act states that this term does not include... a member of Parliament in their official capacity The 1993 Act, ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzWhat was the climate and sea level like at times ...
So now we know, beyond all doubt. The National party has no interest in joining the “team of five million” in our fight against the pandemic but its priority is to take every opportunity it can to damage the government. The cynicism is breathtaking. It was prepared to leak the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters The massive dust storm that formed over the Sahara Desert in mid-June invaded the southeastern U.S. June 25-28, bringing dangerous levels of air pollution, low visibility, and colorful sunsets. The air pollution event over parts of Texas and the Gulf ...
In 1987, as a British Labour MP, I was elected to the Shadow Cabinet by my colleagues and was asked by the party leader to direct Labour’s campaign in the general election of that year. The election was to take place at the height of Mrs Thatcher’s dominance and we ...
National MP Nicola WillisHousing, which I would argue is a fundamental human right, has long been a problem in New Zealand. Not only do we have some of the most overpriced houses in the entire world, much of the housing stock is substandard and therefore affects not just people’s health ...
If the government has not lined up behind a "Yes" vote in this year's cannabis referendum the way some reformers would have liked, one entirely laudable thing it did do was commission some science around the public's choice.That science landed today, in the form of the report from an expert ...
Associate Professor Sara WaltonAt the heart of the discussion on opening up our borders is the dichotomy of health and the economy – both of which are actually intertwined, like many things with our economy, as this epidemic has shown.If we think about our country as a system, ...
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Josh Gabbatiss This year will see the largest ever drop globally in both investment and consumer spending on energy as the coronavirus pandemic hits every major sector, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The crisis is accelerating the shutdown of older fossil-fuelled ...
A short opinion piece – Friday 26th June 2020 Whilst our Government has treated many financial victims of the current Covid-19 virus with appropriate generosity, the same cannot be said for those of the two earlier “epidemics” in NZ. The “Covid-84” virus (also called “Rogernomics”) spread systemic greed, with the ...
Everyone deserves a a decent life. We know this is possible with a fairer approach to income support and tax Read the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Poverty Action Plan here ...
After a long break, the government is back inserting secrecy clauses in legislation. This time its the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3), which in its clause allowing Ministers to exempt purchasers of farm land from the usual rules also allows them to exempt an exemption from the publication requirement: ...
Over the past two years the government has repeatedly delayed a scheme to put cameras on boats to monitor Mew Zealand's pervasively criminal fishing industry. But it turns out that the industry actually wants cameras: Three of the country's biggest seafood companies have broken ranks with the rest of the ...
Louise Delany (public health lawyer)Health and emergency laws have played a critical role in this country’s successful elimination of community transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic. This blog details key aspects of the legislation and comments on issues around testing, payments by incoming travellers for quarantine costs, and mask use. ...
I like Andrew Curry’s succinct and insightful futures blog The Next Wave. His most recent post is about social change. In particular, the decadal-long periods usually required for changes in values. He highlights a 2016 paper by Inglehart and Norris, who examined whether economic insecurity or a “cultural backlash” ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Stop making sense: why it's time to get emotional about climate changeThe science has been settled to the highest degree, so now ...
MONDAY JULY 6Washington (History, Sky 073, 7.30pm). The brilliant Doris Kearns Goodwin is the executive producer of this six-part series about America's first president. It combines interviews with live action and is narrated by Jeff Daniels. It's engaging, said Salon.TUESDAY JULY 7The ABC Murders (Prime, 8.30pm). Sarah Phelps has done incredible things with ...
I think we can all agree that the mainstream media in New Zealand has a very different set of rules for the right wing compared to the left. While Labour and Green Party politicians don’t seem to be able to fart without it becoming a sackable offence, National and Act ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, June 28 through Sat, July 4, 2020Editor's Choice'2040': A funny, entertaining, upbeat climate documentaryA timely Australian documentary takes a 'solutions' approach, with the filmmaker inspired by visions of ...
Racist National MP Hamish WalkerEven before Todd Muller's coup ousted Simon Bridges by a single vote, it was patently obvious that the National Party promotes and stands for white privilege. In fact they’ve always worked to ensure the discriminatory status quo in New Zealand doesn’t change.So it’s no surprise that ...
Dave HeatleyZero community transmission. Just a handful of active cases, all in quarantine. New Zealand is in an attractive situation, at least compared to much of the world. The situation could be robust and enduring – or it might be fragile, just one border incursion away from a “second ...
Is the consequence of the Simpson Report proposals for restructuring the health system poorer accountability to people? When in doubt, centralise‘ has been a persistent theme in New Zealand public policy throughout our history. The current government is no exception. Here are some examples. - The regional polytechs have been ...
I wrote earlier in the week about the Scientology front organisations Drug Free World and Drug Free Ambassadors and their quite prominent role in anti-cannabis reform "coalition" assembled by Family First and a newloca branch of the American prohibitionist organisation SAM.It turns out Family First aren't the only ones helping ...
Nik GreenMuch of the public debate about the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has focused on the extent to which government regulations have restricted personal and business activity.Oxford University Blavatnik School of Government Here in New Zealand, the question of when to change Alert Levels dominated the ...
James Higham, University of OtagoUnprecedented border closures and the domestic lockdown have paralysed New Zealand’s $40.9 billion a year tourism industry. In the process, the vulnerability of the sector to external shocks and the tenuous nature of tourism employment have been exposed. While New Zealand’s handling of the pandemic ...
Raising The Bar: Would that the Prime Minister and her colleagues would listen as intently to what the people – as opposed to the power elites – are saying as the Greens. Were they so disposed, the popular clamour for a transformational post-Covid reset would be loud in their ears. ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzDo you think the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown will slow or ...
A bit like a letter home. I have now been full-time at the University of Melbourne since 2019. Before that, I was 20 years at the University of Otago, Wellington. Indeed, I set up this very Public Health Expert Blog with Nick Wilson ten years ago. Now I am your ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections House Democrats have released a comprehensive report showing how – if they control the White House and both the Senate and the House of Representatives – they might move forward on climate change. Their “Climate Crisis Action Plan,” released June 30 by the ...
A ballot for three Member's Bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn: Electoral (Integrity Repeal) Amendment Bill (David Carter) Harmful Digital Communications (Unauthorised Posting of Intimate Visual Recording) Amendment Bill (Louisa wall) Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Bill (Judith ...
Not Ready: Todd Muller’s lack-lustre and self-contradictory performances offer conclusive proof that a political leader cannot be managed into competence. National’s new boss has Janet Wilson handling his media and Matthew Hooton writing his speeches. Both are highly professional political and public relations specialists, and Muller is lucky to have ...
Unfortunately, due to a medical emergency, I have landed in hospital so am not able to do a current update on the NZ blog statistics. Let’s hope I can get back to this in good time. ...
It started as a family story, about a step-father who went out one night to break into an embassy in Wadestown, Wellington. John Daniell wanted to understand what his family had been part of when his mother and then step-father work for New Zealand’s Security Intelligence. He wanted to know ...
The Greens have shaken up the election campaign with the announcement of their radical poverty and action plan to reform welfare provision and introduce a new wealth tax for millionaires. It’s a big-thinking, controversial policy and has generated a lot of disagreement over how radical it is, whether it could ...
The Green Party is today unveiling part one of its plan for a fossil-fuel free Aotearoa, including an immediate ban on new industrial coal boilers. ...
Mark Patterson MP, Spokesperson for Primary Industry New Zealand First is supporting calls by hunters and the New Zealand Tahr Foundation (NZTF) to halt a large scale cull of Himalayan Tahr by the Department of Conservation in National Parks. The calls are supported by a 40,000 strong petition and the ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand First leader Winston Peters today scoffed at suggestions that a team of six political operatives have been dispatched to New Zealand to assist his campaign. ‘As President Ronald Reagan once said, ‘there they go again.’ ‘The clickbait journos can’t ...
New Zealand First is pleased to announce Jenny Marcroft as the party’s election 2020 candidate for the Auckland Central electorate. Jenny spent years working in Auckland Central, having spent a vast proportion of her broadcasting career there. She says she, "knows the place and knows the people." Ms Marcroft says ...
New Zealanders deserve healthy rivers and lakes that are safe to swim in - but they have been getting worse for decades. That's why, with our latest announcement, we're investing in projects that will help clean up our rivers and lakes and restore them to health, within a generation. ...
This week we moved into the second half of 2020 - and our Government delivered another week of big changes and major progress for New Zealanders. Read below for a wrap of the key things moments from the week - from extending paid parental leave, to making major investments in ...
The Green Party has opposed the COVID-19 Recovery Fast-track Consenting Bill which shortcuts normal consenting processes under the Resource Management Act (RMA), reduces public participation and narrows environmental considerations. ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Regional Economic Development A regional freight hub for the lower North Island will be built just northeast of Palmerston North, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. The Government is investing $40 million through the Provincial Growth Fund to designate and buy land and design ...
Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson is calling for the introduction of a Guaranteed Minimum Income to lift hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty and prevent more families entering into further debt with the Ministry of Social Development. ...
There has been renewed focus on New Zealand First acting as a handbrake on the Government after our decision to not support Auckland light rail. We are a handbrake for bad ideas, that istrue, but our track record since 2017 has seen New Zealand First constructively also serve as an ...
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP New Zealand First’s Fair Residency for Superannuation Bill passed its First Reading in Parliament today. The Bill makes a significant change to NZ Super by raising the minimum residency requirement from 10 to 20 years, after age 20. “Currently, a migrant of ...
Darroch Ball MP, Spokesperson for Law and Order A New Zealand First member’s bill in the name of Darroch Ball introducing a six-month minimum prison sentence for assaults on first responders has passed its second reading in Parliament. The new offence of "injuring a first responder or corrections officer with ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Deputy Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand First welcomes the launch of the new Criminal Cases Review Commission, gifted with the name from Waikato-Tainui - Te Kāhui Tātari Ture, announced in Hamilton today by Justice Minister Andrew Little. “New Zealand First has long believed in and ...
The Green Party is celebrating over $800m in new funding for green projects, which will get people into jobs while solving New Zealand’s long-term challenges. ...
Mark Patterson MP, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First is appalled that Meridian seems to have been unnecessarily spilling water from its dams to drive up its profits."While New Zealanders have been coming together in some of our darkest hours, we don’t expect power gentailers to waste water and ...
We wrapped up the first half of 2020 with a busy month, taking additional steps to support New Zealanders as we continue with our economic recovery. We rolled out targeted packages to support key industries like tourism and construction, helped create jobs in the environmental and agriculture sectors, and set ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Infrastructure Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has welcomed the appointment of Maurice Davis and his deep infrastructure and construction experience to the board of the Infrastructure Commission. Mr Davis (Ngāti Maniapoto), is the seventh and final appointment to the board led by former Reserve Bank Governor ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand’s click bait journalism is taking a turn for the worse, with yet another example of sensationalist, wilful-misrepresentation of the facts. “New Zealand First has worked constructively with its Coalition partner on hundreds of pieces of legislation and policy, and ...
The Green Party is today unveiling its Poverty Action Plan, which includes a Guaranteed Minimum Income to ensure people have enough to live with dignity. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Rotorua Museum redevelopment and Whakarewarewa and Tokorangi Forest projects will be accelerated thanks to a $2.09 million Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) boost, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher ...
This week, we rolled out the next steps of our recovery plan, with new infrastructure investment, extra support for tourism operators, and a new programme to get Kiwis into agriculture careers. The global economic consequences of COVID-19 will continue to be a challenge, but we have a detailed plan to ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First welcomes the passage of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill through its final reading in Parliament today fulfilling a coalition agreement commitment. “This is an important step in saving the lives of New Zealanders and delivers a key coalition commitment ...
Whakatāne has been given a $2.5 million boost to speed up previously funded projects and create more than 450 jobs in the next decade. Of those, the equivalent of 160 full-time jobs could be delivered in the next six weeks. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is in town to make ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing $2.5 million to accelerate three infrastructure projects in Whakatāne, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “This package is about ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones is throwing his weight behind a bid by the Auckland Council to fast-track the more than doubling of the city's water allowance from the Waikato River. And he's coming out strongly against anyone who plans on getting in the way of this campaign. "It is my ...
The Green Party is thrilled to see changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that mean consents for large projects can be declined if they will have significant climate change implications that are inconsistent with the Zero Carbon Act and Aotearoa New Zealand’s Paris Agreement obligations. ...
Hon Ron Mark, Minister of Defence The Royal New Zealand Navy’s new ship, Aotearoa, set sail for New Zealand on 10 June from the Republic of Korea, and is due to arrive in Auckland tomorrow, announced Minister of Defence Ron Mark. “Aotearoa is the Royal New Zealand Navy’s new fleet ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Racing Racing Minister Winston Peters has today welcomed the Racing Industry Bill passing its third reading, creating the legislative framework for revitalising the racing industry while limiting the need for future government intervention. “For too long our domestic racing industry has ...
The Green Party has today put forward an amendment to the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill to ensure all people in prisons can vote in general elections. ...
The Green Party welcomes the decision to not proceed with Public Public Investment (PPI) delivery of Auckland’s light rail project and to instead run the process through the public service. ...
Hon Ron Mark, New Zealand First List MP based in the Wairarapa New Zealand First List MP Hon Ron Mark welcomes the announcement of Provincial Growth Funding investment of $1.4 million to help secure the Wairarapa’s water supply. The funding boost will allow the Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC), and ...
New Zealand First list MP Mark Patterson has been selected to represent the party in the newly formed Taieri electorate at the upcoming election. Mr Patterson, his wife Jude and two daughters farm sheep and beef at Lawrence and Waitahuna. He previously stood in the Clutha-Southland electorate however boundary changes ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito William Sio is pleased to announce the inaugural launch of Kiribati Language Week as part of the 2020 Pacific language Weeks programme. “I am so pleased that this year we are able to provide resourcing support to the Kiribati community in Aotearoa which will ...
Wildlife institutions affected by a loss of visitor revenue during the COVID-19 lockdown are set to receive government support with nearly $15 million of funding available announced Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage. “Eco-sanctuaries, zoos, aquariums, wildlife parks, and wildlife rescue, hospital and rehabilitation facilities provide crucial support for the recovery ...
The Government is expanding and accelerating frontline mental health and wellbeing services at tertiary education institutes (TEI) to help students manage ongoing stresses related to COVID-19. “The lockdown has been hugely disruptive for students. Many of them have had to relocate and move to online learning, isolating them from their ...
The Minister of Police says a major operation against the Mongrel Mob in Waikato will make a big dent in drug harm and violent offending linked to organised crime networks. “Senior leadership of the Waikato Mongrel Mob has been taken out as a result of Operation Kingsville, which resulted in ...
The Government is extending the border exception criteria to enable some offshore victims and support people of the Christchurch mosque attacks to attend the sentencing of the accused beginning on 24 August2020, says Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway. “We want to support our valued Muslim brothers and sisters who were directly ...
A project to support volunteer efforts to look after streams and rivers is getting a boost thanks to support from DOC’s Community Conservation Fund announced Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage today. “The government is backing efforts to look after waterways with $199,400 for the Mountains to Sea Conservation Trust from ...
Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter today announced that funding for the COVID-19 Community Fund for women and girls will be doubled, as the first successful funding applications for the initial $1million were revealed. “Women and girls across the country have suffered because of the effects of COVID-19, and I ...
The Government’s books were better than forecast with a higher GST take as the economy got moving again after lockdown, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Crown Accounts for the 11 months to the end of May indicate the year end results for tax revenue will be stronger than forecast. ...
A plan to revitalise New Zealand’s strong wool sector and set it on a new, more sustainable and profitable path was unveiled today by Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor. The newly-released report - Vision and Action for New Zealand’s Wool Sector - was developed by the Wool Industry Project Action Group ...
Community efforts to create a Predator Free Whangārei will receive a $6 million boost, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones and Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage announced today. The new funding, through Government company Predator Free 2050 Ltd, will create around 12 jobs while enabling the complete removal of possums over ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced that the New Zealand Government is reviewing the settings of its relationship with Hong Kong. “China’s decision to pass a new national security law for Hong Kong has fundamentally changed the environment for international engagement there,” Mr Peters said. “New Zealand remains deeply ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced details of a multimillion-dollar investment in Whangārei for infrastructure projects that will help it recover from the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 200 jobs are expected to be created through the $26 million investment from the Government’s rejuvenation package ...
Following a second incident in which a person escaped from a managed isolation facility, security is being enhanced, including more police presence onsite, Minister Megan Woods said. “The actions of some individuals who choose to break the very clear rules to stay within the facilities means that more resourcing is ...
Waste reduction and recycling programmes in Kaipara are set to get a boost with Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage today announcing a $361,447 grant from the Ministry for the Environment’s Waste Minimisation Fund (WMF) Sustainable Kaipara. “The new funding will allow Sustainable Kaipara to partner with local schools, kura, community ...
The Government will support the Southland economy in the wake of multinational mining company Rio Tinto’s decision to follow through with its long signalled closure of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter. “This day has unfortunately been on the cards for some time now, but nevertheless the final decision is a ...
New tools being developed to help boost Aotearoa’s Predator Free 2050 effort were unveiled today by Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage and Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau. A new rat poison, a camera with predator recognition software to detect and report predators, a new predator lure and a ...
The Coalition Government has approved the purchase of a fleet of Bushmaster vehicles to replace the New Zealand Army’s armoured Pinzgauers, Defence Minister Ron Mark has announced today. The new fleet of 43 Australian-designed and built Bushmaster NZ5.5 will provide better protection for personnel and improved carrying capacity. “The age ...
The Government’s three prevention frameworks to reduce family violence in Aotearoa were launched this week by Associate Minister for Social Development Poto Williams. The frameworks were developed in partnership with communities around New Zealand, and build on the work the Government has already begun with its new family violence prevention ...
The Government is pleased to confirm funding for improvements to radiology and surgical services at Hawke's Bay DHB, Health Minister Chris Hipkins says. "The Minister of Finance the Hon Grant Robertson and former Health Minister Dr David Clark approved funding for Hawke's Bay DHB’s redevelopment of their radiology facilities ...
• New funding for four beds at Napier’s Springhill Residential Addiction Centre • A new managed withdrawal home and community service, and peer support before and after residential care at Tairāwhiti DHB • A co-ordinated network of withdrawal management services throughout the South Island • Peer support in Rotorua and ...
Introduction, seafarers and POAL Good morning everyone, I am delighted to be online with you all today. Before I begin, I have to acknowledge that COVID-19 has disrupted the maritime sector on an unprecedented scale. The work of seafarers and the maritime industry is keeping many economies around the world ...
A $13 million investment from Government will create jobs and improve the resilience of the rail connection between Christchurch and the West Coast, Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones and Regional Economic Development Under-Secretary Fletcher Tabuteau say. The funding comes from the tagged contingency set aside in Budget 2020 for infrastructure projects ...
The Government is investing $761 million to assist local government upgrade under-pressure water services across the country, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta announced today. The announcement was made at the site of the water bore that was found to be the source of the fatal ...
Recognised Seasonal Employers and migrant seasonal workers stranded in New Zealand will be able to continue working and supporting themselves with more flexible hours and roles, says Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway. The time-limited visa changes are: Stranded RSE workers will be able to work part-time (a minimum of 15 hours ...
The Government is making immediate short-term changes to visa settings to support temporary migrants already onshore in New Zealand and their employers, while also ensuring New Zealanders needing work are prioritised, Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. We are: Extending temporary work visas due to expire by the end of 2020 ...
Professor Peter Skelton CNZM has been appointed as Chief Freshwater Commissioner and Alternate Environment Court Judge Craig James Thompson as Deputy Chief Freshwater Commissioner for the newly established Freshwater Planning Process (FPP). Environment Minister David Parker today also announced the appointment of Chief Environment Court Judge Laurie Newhook as the ...
Auckland Queen’s Counsel Neil Campbell has been appointed a Judge of the High Court, Attorney‑General David Parker announced today. Justice Campbell graduated with a BCom and LLB (Hons) from the University of Auckland in 1992. He spent two years with Bell Gully Buddle Weir in Auckland before travelling to the United ...
The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Poto Williams, is seeking feedback on a proposal to better enable the development and operation of commercial film and video facilities in Christchurch. The Proposal, developed by Regenerate Christchurch in response to a request from Christchurch City Council, asks that powers under section ...
The Government has launched a bold plan to boost primary sector export earnings by $44 billion over the next decade, while protecting the environment and growing jobs. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern today released Fit for a Better World – Accelerating our Economic Potential, a 10-year roadmap to unlock greater value ...
A new approach to prevent family harm that encourages greater collaboration across government and community groups is being celebrated at the opening of a new facility in Auckland. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern today opened the Multi-Disciplinary Family Harm Prevention Hub Te Taanga Manawa in Lambie Road in Manukau. The facility ...
The Government has released a major new report on the options for relocating the Port of Auckland’s freight operations while deferring any decision on the issue. “That decision needs to be informed by policy analysis that is still to be completed. As a result it will be up to a ...
The history of Rāpaki is being restored through the inclusion of te reo in thirteen official place names on Te Pātaka-o-Rākaihautū / Banks Peninsula and around Lyttelton Harbour/Whakaraupō, the Minister for Land Information, Eugenie Sage, announced today. “I am pleased to approve the proposals from Te Hapū o Ngāti ...
Bookings for seats on Air New Zealand flights into New Zealand will be managed in the short term to ensure the Government is able to safely place New Zealanders arriving home into a managed isolation or quarantine facility, says Housing Minister Megan Woods. “Last week Air Commodore Darryn Webb and I ...
Grant Robertson has today announced the first major release of funding from the $265 million Sport Recovery Package announced at Budget 2020. “Today we’re setting out how $80 million will be invested, with $54 million of that over the 2020/2021 financial year for organisations from community level through to elite ...
The Government is maintaining current levy rates for the next 2 years, as part of a set of changes to help ease the financial pressures of COVID-19 providing certainty for businesses and New Zealanders, ACC Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. “New Zealanders and businesses are facing unprecedented financial pressures as a ...
Small businesses are getting greater certainty about access to finance with an extension to the interest-free cashflow loan scheme to the end of the year. The Small Business Cashflow Loan Scheme has already been extended once, to 24 July. Revenue and Small Business Minister Stuart Nash says it will be ...
A package of 23 projects across the country will clean up waterways and deliver over 2000 jobs Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Environment Minister David Parker announced today. The $162 million dollar package will see 22 water clean-up projects put forward by local councils receiving $62 million and the Kaipara ...
Tena koutou katoa Nga tangata whenua o tenei rohe o Pōneke, tena koutou Nau mai, haere mai ki te hui a tau mo te roopu reipa Ko tatou! Ko to tatou mana! Ko to tatou kaupapa kei te kokiri whakamua Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena tatou katoa Welcome. I ...
The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing $1.5 million to ensure QE Health in Rotorua can proceed with its world class health service and save 75 existing jobs, Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development, Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. The PGF funding announced today is in addition to the $8 million ...
A new programme, which sets a firm course for the Building and Construction sector to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, has been announced by the Minister for Building and Construction Jenny Salesa. “A significant amount of New Zealand’s carbon emissions come from the building and construction sector. If we’re serious ...
From RNZ Mediawatch New Zealand children use a lot less Kiwi media than they used to. New research shows its Netflix, YouTube and TikTok engaging their eyeballs big time these days. If our kids screen out our local media, what does the future hold for them? The news media seized ...
The Tahr Foundation has released a short video that shows just what Himalayan tahr mean to Kiwis and why so many people are fighting so hard to maintain them in New Zealand. The video is a powerful reminder of the extent that tahr are now woven into ...
Introduction Thank you very much. Elections in New Zealand – like everywhere - are a very special tradition, because they are driven by you. They’re an opportunity to change your future. If you think about it, the Government doesn’t do much. It ...
“This election and Covid-19 present New Zealanders with an opportunity to change their future and create a fair, modern employment insurance scheme,” says ACT’s Employment Spokesperson, and third-ranked candidate, Nicole McKee. “Covid-19 has ...
“A new approach to mental health and addiction will reduce bureaucracy, improve patient choice, and empower New Zealanders,” says ACT’s Deputy Leader and Health Spokesperson Brooke van Velden. “Each year, the government spends about $2 billion ...
"Working people have signaled their commitment to do more to address the most pressing issue of our time; climate change. The energy policies that the Green Party have launched today provide a meaningful contribution to addressing climate change," ...
Climate justice organisation 350 Aotearoa welcomes the Greens' plan to transform Aotearoa’s energy system and set Aotearoa on course towards a fossil-fuel free future in which workers are supported into new jobs, and communities have the power ...
The Old Guard, new to Netflix, is a resounding success because it doesn’t focus on what makes these heroes great, it focuses on what makes them human, writes Sam Brooks.The climax of Netflix’s new movie The Old Guard shouldn’t be anything new, but it feels exhilarating. The titular old guard, ...
A new Green Party announcement heralds a fast-exit out of fossil fuels through a massive state housing solar panel installation programme, a ban on new coal boilers, and the shifting of a target for renewable energy Solar panels and batteries would be installed in 30,000 State homes to create a "virtual power plant" if ...
As yet more male-led festival lineups are announced, Shaquille Wasasala, aka halfqueen, writes an open letter to the industry.To those whose career it is booking talent for music festivals, punters, and people who listen to music.As a DJ and artist who exists at many intersections that directly inform my lens ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level one – read about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. To support this ...
Dunedin writer Victor Billot pens topical verse every Sunday. This week: disgraced MP Hamish Walker.Showing promise The MP for Clutha-Southland did, it is true, post on Facebook that he had been door knocking in Mataura when he hadn’t. He lied. The MP for Clutha-Southland did, it is ...
It’s one of the most commonly used weedkillers in the world, but pressure to phase out use of the herbicide glyphosate could force us to come up with alternatives quickly. Listen to the full episode of Two Cents Worth below. Subscribe to Two Cents' Worth for free on Apple ...
The Covid-19 crisis has exposed gaps in the funding of early education that we should be bold in responding to, writes Sue Cherrington of Victoria University of Wellington Early childhood education has been in the media a great deal over recent weeks, initially with positive but increasingly with negative news reports. ...
It’s an economic theory that advocates tout as a solution to governments’ debt crises, but critics warn is a recipe for hyperinflation. Either way, modern monetary theory is getting a lot more attention in the era of Covid-19.Two big economic ideas have captured the popular imagination during the Covid-19 pandemic: ...
For one hour a week the supermarket lights are dimmed and the music stops. And it’s a kind of triumph, writes Michelle Langstone.I thought there’d been a power cut. The lights were out at the entrance, so you arrived into a kind of gloom. There was no music, and no ...
It’s no secret that New Zealand’s Covid-19 response was one of the world’s most effective. But to get an idea of how eagerly parts of our economy have rebounded post lockdown, take a look at our electricity demand data.Despite an impending wave of unemployment and looming fiscal challenges down the ...
In the second in the Spnioff’s Last on the list series, Dave King explains what inspired him to stand for the Act Party in Manurewa. At 20th spot on the list, if David Seymour’s party can win around 16% of the party vote, King is parliament bound.It wasn’t that long ...
Basketball is growing massively in popularity around the country, led by thousands of youngsters picking up the game every day. To The Line looks at what it’s like for New Zealand high school kids with hoop dreams.If there’s been a narrative rumbling away in the sports pages, it’s that of ...
Unbelievable. A first-rank world leader picks a needless fight with blameless allies, thus imperiling their unity. But that’s General de Gaulle for you.Impressive work, even by his standards. In 1967, Canada was to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge (their Gallipoli – except that they ...
From RNZ Saturday Morning Described by a Guardian reviewer as “superb hate-reading”, writer and columnist Anand Giridharadas‘s latest book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World investigates the hypocrisy of billionaire “do-gooders”. He questions how and why we have become reliant on the philanthropy of the super-rich ...
The Professional Hunting Guides Association is welcoming the High Court decision on DoC’s controversial tahr campaign. The High Court in Wellington was asked on Wednesday by the Tahr Foundation for a judicial review of DoC’s plan to kill thousands ...
With the 2020 general election nearly three months away, a new campaign is asking voters to vote in line with the future. Vote Climate 2020 aims to highlight the opportunity to build momentum behind climate change, ensuring climate justice is a key election ...
“ACT will target the gangs by hitting them where it hurts – their pockets,” according to ACT Leader David Seymour and Firearms Spokesperson Nicole McKee. “New Zealanders deserve to be safe and secure, but violent gangs are a scourge on our ...
Waffles don’t need to be sweet – these cheese and onion numbers make an excellent savoury breakfast with an egg, or an equally tasty dinner with leftover mince.It’s easy to default to sweet breakfasts without thinking. At least that’s the case in our household, as porridge or bircher muesli is ...
The government is revitalising the wool sector, splashing out on freshwater restoration projects, relieving student stress and showing kindness to Muslims by extending the border exception criteria. It is also increasing its support (in announcements from two separate Green Party Ministers) for women and for wildlife institutions. And it is ...
People have called it for it be pulled from the service, but the escapist fantasy of 365 Days is nothing new, writes Alie Benge.To every generation, a bullish alpha-male psychopath is born, and is for someone reason considered a romantic hero. We’ve been through a lot this year, and instead ...
As Aucklanders reluctantly adjust to the inconvenient practice of water conservation, a drought-savvy Northlander shares the tips and temperament needed to get through the dry times.Auckland’s water shortage was recently reported on The Project, and viewers were earnestly exhorted to fill their dishwashers completely before turning them on. My husband ...
Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk A request by the Philippines’ biggest radio and TV network for a new franchise has been rejected by a congressional committee in a vote that will go down in history as a flagrant violation of the country’s constitution, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The Paris-based media ...
Hamish Walker's privacy leak debacle dominated the news this week, but it's not the first time a southern MP has hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, writes Daisy Hudson. ...
Let’s not allow the focus on big-budget infrastructure projects to detract from the vital role public transport will play in revitalising our cities in a post-Covid world, says Greg Pollock.The recent match between the Blues and the Hurricanes was one of the world’s first major post-lockdown sporting fixtures. It was ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level one – read about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. To support this ...
In the heart of Christchurch is a Designated Character high school. What makes it unique? And should there be more like it? Frank Film visits Hagley College Paddy Grant was a 27-year-old truck driver when he rocked up to Christchurch’s Hagley High School, as it was then known. It was ...
"After he calms down we share the pie and talk about how hard the years since the show have been for him": a short story by Wellington writer Jordan Hamel. Every morning it’s the same. Cling wrap on the toilet seat, a pop up snake in my can of breakfast ...
Childcare centre closures have left families and staff out in the cold. In some cases, they were given just three days’ notice, Laura Walters reports Staff and families of Auckland’s Discoveries Educare branches feel blindsided by the sudden closure of the early childhood education centres. The Ministry of Education has ...
Controversy and the America's Cup go hand-in-hand and the latest edition is no different with Emirates Team New Zealand at the centre of financial mismanagement allegations. Extra Time unpicks the debate and ponders what does the latest Cup drama mean? And should we care? A study has revealed racial bias ...
Over the decades, Mike Fox has witnessed the housing market progressively tilt towards larger, more expensive homes. Without a major overhaul of the current regulatory processes, he says, things will never change.It’s one of the biggest problems our country faces – we cannot produce the affordable housing that’s so desperately ...
So-called dirty deals have been roundly denounced over the years. Hayden Donnell argues that they need to be normalised, and even embraced, in September’s election.Just before the 2011 general election, Patrick Gower was confronted with a political act so stomach-churning, it forced him to abandon his trademark reserve. John Key ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics, University of South Australia Victoria has recorded 288 new COVID-19 cases since yesterday, the largest daily increase we’ve seen so far. This big jump must have the Victorian government and health authorities very concerned, especially since nearly ...
The controversial 101 East episode Locked Up in Malaysia’s Lockdown on 3 July 2020. Video: Al JazeeraPacific Media Watch Newsdesk Malaysian police summoned six Al Jazeera media workers today for questioning relating to an investigation for defamation and violation of Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Act (CMA), reports IFJ Asia-Pacific. ...
Analysis - A National MP destroys his career, the government explains how someone with Covid-19 could walk around a supermarket and the closure of Tiwai Point aluminium smelter is announced. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abrar Ahmad Chughtai, Epidemiologist, UNSW Australia’s chief medical officer Paul Kelly today recommended people in Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire wear masks when leaving the house: […] If people have symptoms and they need to go for a test, for example, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rochelle Wynne, Director, Western Sydney Nursing & Midwifery Research Centre, Western Sydney University Over the past week, we’ve seen a spike in the number of COVID-19 infections among health-care workers in Victoria. This includes a doctor at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, one ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Paddy Nixon and Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan discuss the week in politics including the return to lockdown in Victoria, National Cabinet setting to slow the flow of Australian’s ...
We prefer our heroes untarnished. And few match the heroism of Winston Churchill. But a recent report in the Times reminds us of the inevitability of human frailty and the consequences of keeping it under wraps.During the second world war, Britain’s greatest single loss of life at sea was the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ou Yang, Research Fellow, University of Melbourne Donald Trump has ordered US federal agencies to bypass environmental protection laws and fast-track pipeline, highway and other infrastructure projects. Signing the executive order last month, the US president declared regulatory delays would hinder “our ...
SAFE CEO Debra Ashton says "The NZDIA has done the right thing, and we’re glad to see Bertram has been held to account over his actions. He should take this as an opportunity to right his wrongs and show that he takes animal welfare seriously." ...
Takuta Ferris, Te Tai Tonga candidate for the Māori Party, is urging government to place whānau first in the wake of announcements around Tiwai Point. “The declaration that one of the region's major employers the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter is closing ...
Dietary Requirements is The Spinoff’s monthly podcast in which we eat, drink and talk about it too, with special thanks to Freedom Farms. This month, we’re joined by The Spinoff’s managing editor, mall rat and self-confessed food philistine Duncan Greive.On this month’s Dietary Requirements, the gang’s back in the studio, and ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Chart 1: United States and Australia rising. Chart by Keith Rankin. These charts look at Covid19 incidence in China (the most important first-wave country, with a limited second wave), Italy (the lead second-wave country), and USA and Australia (second-wave countries – drawing their caseload from Europe ...
The Government must listen to the Muslim community to rectify its failure to act in the past, says the Human Rights Commission. The Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand (IWCNZ) submission to the Royal Commission of Inquiry was released this week. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, President, Australian Association for Professional & Applied Ethics. Senior Research Fellow, Moral philosophy, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Law Futures Centre., Griffith University Earlier this week, 150 high-profile authors, commentators and scholars signed an open letter in Harper’s magazine ...
You can’t keep a good woman down and Helen Clark is no exception. Her new appointment, as co-chair of a review of how the World Health Organisation handled the coronavirus pandemic, will test her formidable political skills. Sitting with her is Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former Liberian president, who handled the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Connor, Lecturer, James Cook University While many people may enjoy a game of backyard cricket, only a few go on to become elite professional batsmen in Australia. Cricket batting is example of what human skills can achieve. The fastest bowling delivery ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee Baumgartner, Professor of Fisheries and River Management, Institute for Land, Water, and Society, Charles Sturt University This article is a preview of Flora, Fauna, Fire, a multimedia project launching on Monday July 13. The project tracks the recovery of Australia’s native ...
CEAC review of pre-election National’s “outline plan” just sent to us by Todd Muller 9/7/20 was actually his speech about his plan and was described as ‘an outline’. So in our review of National Party response to A Greener, Smarter Future; climate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Podger, Honorary Professor of Public Policy, Australian National University In Hidden Hand, China scholars Clive Hamilton and Marieke Ohlberg examine the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in Europe and North America in a similar way to how Hamilton dissected the CCP’s influence ...
“I can see why people are fed up, many are wondering how to clothe and feed their kids, or how they are going to pay their rent next week and still others are wondering what has happened to our beautiful Kiwi Way of Life. Well no party in parliament ...
Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk Sixty press freedom groups and civil society organisations, journalism institutions, filmmakers, and other supporters have formed a coalition in support of Maria Ressa and independent media in the Philippines, united around the call to #HoldTheLine. Today the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the International Center for ...
National MP Michael Woodhouse also received Covid-19 patient emails from Michelle Boag, and deleted them when he realised she was implicated in a separate email scandal. National Party leader Todd Muller says no further MPs in his party received confidential information from Michelle Boag, after revelations today that Michael Woodhouse also ...
The government is extending border exceptions to allow overseas victims of the Christchurch mosque attacks and their support people to attend the shooter's sentencing. ...
Ever wanted to be Iron Man? Sam Brooks prefers Pepper Potts, but he had a great time stepping into the iron suit anyway.The first few moments of Iron Man VR are where it plays its hand, confidently and assuredly. You hold your palms out in front of you, and Iron ...
SAP has released to the public a policy paper, “Helping Kiwis get back to work: How data and technology can drive a bigger, better, faster economic recovery.” ...
A new poem by Jordan Hamel.Mermaids When you lose grip and start to drift.The first thing you’re supposed to do issteer into it or steer away? Not all mermaids are royaltysomeone needs to audit the oceanprovide cashflow projectionssome mermaids are actuallymiddle-aged accountants named Stephendreaming of a land-view holiday home. I saw a ...
Want to work for The Spinoff? We’re looking for someone to fill an exciting new role based in our Auckland office. We’re looking for a video and podcast content manager: an experienced writer or sub-editor with a strong understanding of social media to manage our video and podcast content across various channels. ...
National Party leader Todd Muller says no further MPs in his party received confidential information from Michelle Boag, after revelations today that Michael Woodhouse also received four unsolicited emails. ...
By RNZ News Opposition National list MP Dr Jian Yang has announced his retirement from New Zealand politics and says he will not stand in the 2020 general election after three terms in the party caucus. He said politics was “demanding” and he wanted to spend more time with his ...
Open Mike 26/01/2019 
National has a problem. And it’s time they said it out loud. It can’t be dismissed as a one-off anymore or excused because ‘everyone does it’. No, it cuts deeper than that. National has an ethics problem. Especially when it comes to privacy and using ordinary people as pawns in ...11 hours ago
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, July 5 through Sat, July 11, 2020 Editor's Choice Think Covid-19 Disrupted the Food Chain? Wait and See What Climate Change Will Do The pandemic has revealed deep flaws in the ...19 hours ago
The Council of Disobedient Women There is a regular segment in the Speak Up For Women podcasts called “Absolutely Blasted Mad Moment of the Week”. Each podcast the speaker and the host discuss a recent event that is the most insane thing they have seen in the gender critical space ...1 day ago
Todd Muller - Dishonest National Party leaderIt seems that dishonest Todd Muller is, like many right-wing politicians, entirely morally bankrupt. I mean just look at the National Party’s leaking omni-shambles over the last week or so. They’ve imploded in a spectacular display of backfiring dirty politics, the likes of which ...2 days ago
MONDAY JULY 13Bodyguard (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). It's the final; if you haven't seen this already on Netflix, get ready, the ending is batshit.Unforgotten (Vibe, Sky 006, 8.30pm). I wonder if Sanjeev Bhasksar's character has got rid of that damn backpack in the third season of this cold case drama? Although, come ...2 days ago
Simon Bridges must be the unluckiest person in New Zealand politics. When he was elected as leader of the National party, he also became Leader of the Opposition – a position, he was entitled to assume, that would require him to “oppose”. But the government he set out to oppose ...2 days ago
Check out Speak Up For Women’s new podcasts: Episode 3 In this episode Speak Up For Women spokeswoman Ani O’Brien (@aniobrien) is joined by Beth Johnson (@beth_nosnhoj) to discuss the proposal from Statistics NZ to change standard data collection policy to “gender by default” rather than sex. They discuss why the ...2 days ago
Everyone is paying attention today to the Supreme Court ruling that the President is not above the law and that Trump's tax returns can be given to a New York grand jury investigating him. But the Supreme Court decided another, far more important case yesterday, and effectively restored Native American ...3 days ago
Transcript: National Party policy announcement on roads – 8 July, 2020 Muller: Good afternoon everybody. Thank you for coming. Reporter 1: Is Hamish Walker a racist? Muller: Hang on… you haven’t even said good afternoon to me yet. Reporter 1: Good afternoon Mr Muller. Is Hamish Walker a racist? ...3 days ago
Today’s content Tiwai Point to close Hamish Rutherford (Herald): Government subsidising practically everything plays hardball with Rio Tinto (paywalled) Tom Pullar-Strecker (Stuff): Sudden closure of aluminium smelter worst outcome for jobs, consumers and the environment Brian Fallow (Herald): Tiwai closure sad news – and an opportunity for the environment (paywalled) Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk ZB): Rio ...3 days ago
Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Anja Mizdrak, Dr Jennifer Summers, Prof Michael Baker The pandemic-related lockdown is possibly the most dramatic public health intervention in NZ history. It helped achieve the elimination of community transmission of the COVID-19 virus in NZ. But it was also associated with 548 fewer total ...3 days ago
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Welcome back.
Heh, I had visions of Lprents kitten playfully chewing through an important cable…
Nope. My fault. I did a series of upgrades to the operating systems followed by a cleanup of the disk space. Then after telling the check systems that the site was being rebooted, rebooted at about 2am. But failed to check that the site actually came online.
It had a configuration problem in the apache2 and failed to start up.
Mort was innocent (this time)
A seldom bought up fact is that coal fired and nuclear power does not work in very hot temperatures due to needing cooling as part of their process. In short they are not good in a global warming scenario as when it gets too hot, (and you need power to run air conditioners), it also effects other parts of the network.
That is why solar and diversified power networks are needed in global warming scenarios.
“The heat in Victoria has already cut power to thousands of properties in the state’s central north. More than 2700 AusNet customers were hit with a power outage near Nagambie and an underground cable fault might not be fixed until 5pm. ”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12195786
Good point savenz. I’m copying this to How to get there tomorrow unless someone else does so.
As the heat racks up, Australia becomes more and more suited to become the world’s first hydrogen fuel energy superpower.
High concentrated solar heat can split oxygen and hydrogen at industrial scales through the process of thermolysis far more efficiently than electrolysis, the current most common method.
Bring it on.
Thermolytic hydrogen production looks to be at a similar stage to photocatalytic hydrogen production; a bit closer to reality than fusion power but not much.
Sorry but Hydrogen is just not efficient as a source of renewable power. There’s power loss from generation to piping, storing and consuming hydrogen.
The cheapest and most efficient use of solar and wind sources of renewable power is to send the electricity directly to a battery or to point of consumption. The ever improving economics of battery storage will drive the cost down so much that it will become economic to store it overnight for large populations.
That’s an issue for legacy power generation designed for a cooler climate. Unless the power plants are badly engineered, extreme hot temperatures should only force reduced output, not shutdown.
New builds can and should be designed for a warmer climate and much hotter hottest days, with substantially gruntier cooling systems. The gruntier cooling systems should also improve their overall thermal efficiency in less-extreme conditions. Concentrated solar-thermal, geothermal and gas generation also have the cooling issue. Even photovoltaics benefit from kept cool, although it’s rarely if ever cost-effective to actively cool them (there’s a double-benefit from floating photovoltaic arrays on reservoirs, better output from being kept cooler and reduced evaporation).
There’s also the transmission grid – if the cables get hot, they expand lengthwise and sag. Sometimes close enough to something underneath to start fires. One engineering solution for that is using carbon fibre cable for the tension-bearing core, and aluminium for the conductors. Carbon fibre has a very small thermal expansion lengthwise (can be positive or negative depending on the grade) so the heat-sag problem mostly goes away. It just costs a bit more initially.
That’s helpful information Andre. More good infor like this will be welcome.
It seems it was an underground grid failure that caused the outage. No other information on what went wrong.
I suspect that the power stations themselves weren’t badly affected if at all.
Probably the same problem as we had in Auckland
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12033654
There were two causes. A hot summer shifted the ground causing an actual break in at least one cable causing a leakage. The other one was a bit more insidious. There was insufficient ground moisture to transfer extra heat away from the cables.
I’d just moved into my apartment towards the end of 1997, so had the fun of months of the power outages.
It is kind of freaky to realise that at the time there were only 7000 people living in and around the CBD in 1998. The last time I looked (after the 2013 census) there were more than 70,000. It has gone up since then.
I read recently that City of London has much of its own governance.
Something like 7000 people live there, but 450,000 people work there or are integrated with it. e&oe
There are two Coal power stations in the Latrobe Valley in Victoria’s east couldn’t keep up with demand by 10:30am thence the rolling blackouts aka “brown outs” yesterday and one of the main trunk powerlines in Victoria went tits up as well.
There were also localised power outages as well cause by local transmission lines not handling the increase demand of power or the extreme heat or a combination of the both.
Just found this on Railpage Australia, worth the reading the rants and has some useful links as well.
https://www.railpage.com.au/f-p2132792.htm#2132792
Can find the link but it looks like they have already had to shut down generations in Adelaide due to extreme heat. So just when you need power to cool, you have to shut down your generations. So I guess people could be dead pretty quickly.
Sadly power has become a business rather than a social good, and therefore the discourses are not about the cheapest most effective ways for communities and individuals to get power but more about big business making the most profit of often the poorest people, while subtly delaying/stopping or trying to control other better, cheaper ways they could get power.
Free trade has become about stopping social good and profiting from the effects of climate change, through thousands of pages of ‘rules’ to ensure profit remains to the big multinationals.
“Profit over the planet: WTO’s lawsuit ruling could be a giant blow to the renewable energy movement
WTO tribunal ruled in a lawsuit initiated by the U.S. that India’s national solar energy program violates trade law”
https://www.salon.com/2016/02/24/profit_over_the_planet_wtos_lawsuit_ruling_could_be_a_giant_blow_to_the_renewable_energy_movement/
With the same ruling above, even though India had virtually ZERO solar capacity at that time the logic of US solar being damaged at that time could not be true. However the WTO still ruled in US favour.
“The U.S. sued India in the WTO tribunal because India’s subsidized solar energy program required that particular parts be made in the country. Washington claims that, because of this program, its solar exports to India have fallen by 90 percent since 2011, when the program started. As the Sierra Club’s Ben Beachy noted, however, India had almost no solar capacity at this time.”
It’s not about free-trade – it’s about forcing trade.
India didn’t want to trade so as to help develop their economy and so the US through the WTO forced it upon them. They did so so that the US economy could be developed at India’s expense.
If these people were truly after free-trade they’d be dropping all the rules and allowing nations to decide for themselves if they’re going to trade with another nation or not. That, after all, is what free-trade is.
“If these people were truly after free-trade they’d be dropping all the rules and allowing nations to decide for themselves if they’re going to trade with another nation or not. That, after all, is what free-trade is.”
/agreed
Do you think we might see some committed ‘free trade’ advocate (such as a Wayne or an Ollie Hartwich) come along and offer an explanation as to why free trade and FTAs are not actually free trade?
I imagine if they ever do, the explanation will be laced with spin and buzz words going forward.
And you’re absolutely correct re India. I still marvel at how the MFATs, Oz equivalent and others can’t understand why India is one of those ‘hard nuts to crack’ in obtaining an FTA.
Here’s a hint: Despite all the overt corruption, backhanders and promises, there is actually a concern among the Indian political elite for its citizens – whether from the Left, or from the Right. They don’t actually like being treated like shit in the minds of their foreign betters especially with the offshore diaspora.
I would expect them to come on and explain why these agreements are all about free-trade when, more often than not, they’re used to force trade.
/yep
Don’t hold your breath if you’re expecting anything meaningful
3pm (1500hrs) and its now 2000Hrs.
Waiting waiting waiting. I’d have thought there’d have been a few regulars jumping in by now – seems not.
I guess they’re waiting for instructions
They really don’t like it when the truth is before them.
The fact that these agreements are forced trade rather than free-trade undermines their credibility but they actually can’t deny that these agreements are about forcing trade rather than free-trade.
The results speak for themselves.
One of the things I have learnt watching today’s ODI involving India is the meaning of the cartwheel in the Indian flag.
From Wikipedia (therefore it must be true), :
“Gandhi first proposed a flag to the Indian National Congress in 1921. The flag was designed by Pingali Venkayya. In the centre was a traditional spinning wheel, symbolising Gandhi’s goal of making Indians self-reliant by fabricating their own clothing…”
But wait, there’s more:
“Bhagwa or the Saffron denotes renunciation or disinterestedness. Our leaders must be indifferent to material gains and dedicate themselves to their work.”
I would love to include this in the cabinet manual.
You’ve got it @gsays.
Not something a few Wasps in Delhi half a mile from a Railway Museum sucking on a fag and worrying about their future will ever get.
Just as well I ‘spose there’s now a ‘Maori Policy Unit’ in MFAT’ with one or two decent folk leading the charge, even if they do worship at the lower Tory Street Temple
*
there’s NOW a ‘Maori Policy Unit’ ……etc.
Sorry, I had a Leftist’s curmudgeon moment brought on by memories of a Relda and a Marama.
A Kohia cum Martin almost.
While I am at it, the stream of the match I am watching is from espn, locals there are able to get a new BIG suv with 72 months to pay, 0% interest.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/worldwide-auto-sales-decline-010059853.html
You would be dead right there. Excuse the horrible pun.
But the fact is that in Australia more people die from heat waves than from bush fires.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-18/heatwaves-australias-deadliest-hazard-why-you-need-plan/9338918
Thermal generation relies on the Carnot cycle, and it becomes less efficient as the ambient temperature rises. So does the cooling efficiency, and in many jurisdictions power plants are also restricted from putting too much heat back into rivers/estuaries, as this can have a severe impact on ecosystems. There is just so much legacy coal around that can’t be retrofitted with better cooling that our warming climate will cause more outages of coal fired power generation.
I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion about cooling or temperature being the cause of the power cut. They point out it was an underground cable and the fault could be caused by quite a few things.
A real issue for cooling for me would be transformers dealing with high loads. They are everywhere and are air cooled, the coils immersed in oil. So obviously 50 deg air is less efficient in cooling than 30 deg air. The risk being the insulating coating on the wires fail, they short circuit and explode.
As for the power plants there is two versions. Those that recycle water in cooling towers and those using water from rivers like Huntly. So the water exits the plant as steam at 100 deg plus, condenses and falls back down the tower. In theory less water would be recycled as less water can reach the temp to condense. The actual turbines shouldn’t be effected by a large amount as they operate at temperatures much higher than the air temerature. If anything the may need higher water flows in any component cooling part of the operation.
So water supply is actually the issue. Plants that can’t condense enough water may not have consent to draw enough from waterways to compensate. Plants like Huntly should have no issues as they have the ability to add cooling towers.
The actual figures for the effect of air temperature are small.
https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/handle/10161/6895
Tbf
One nuclear power plant in a non earthquake area up north would solve a lot of problems.
Try and put one up here and you will get problems like you wouldn’t believe.
Funny how there has been ZERO nuclear power plants built by private practise in the world, instead they use tax payer money for the folly. Even when private practise do make the nuclear power plants it is enough to drive them under, meanwhile the countries and companies that invested in solar early are booming.
From the above link
“Fossil fuel company TransCanada is already suing the U.S. government, after the Obama administration rejected its proposed Keystone XL Pipeline on environmental grounds. Former NASA environmental scientist and now Columbia University professor James Hansen emphasized that, if the pipeline were built and the vast oil reserves in Alberta, Canada’s tar sands were used, it would mean “game over for the climate,” yet the corporation is demanding $15 billion in compensation from American taxpayers.”
Oh, lets look at what industries are causing climate change, and then getting the free trade deals to compensate them for their destruction of the planet so far! Crazy!
Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says
A relatively small number of fossil fuel producers and their investors could hold the key to tackling climate change
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change
🙄
Never heard of the Firth of Thames as a rift valley?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/79903971/waikatos-earthquake-waiting-game
Then there is the Auckland Volcanic field
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/9219092/Auckland-the-most-unprepared-for-disaster
I never realised in the entirety of the North Island there is only Auckland
I never realised you failed Comprehension 101.
I think I can comprehend they were talking about volcanoes in Auckland
And failed to see a reference to a rift valley less than 50 miles from Auckland which is thought by geologists to pose the risk of a large earthquake. Such a shake would affect the majority of the upper island as the fault runs through the Hauraki Gulf. It why the Firth of Thames is why it is – it is a submerged rift valley.
But not only is Auckland potentially liable to suffer an earthquake it is also liable to volcanic eruption. The hot springs at Miranda don’t just happen to be there for no apparent reason.
Indeed the whole of the upper North Island is formed from volcanic and earthquakes. If you were to do Geology 101 from AUC you would go on a field tip to Matheson Bay by Leigh, half way between Auckland and Whangarei, where the the evidence of Earth quakes, volcanoes, and other geological action is to be plainly seen.
Northland is probably the only place in the entirety of the North Island with an acceptably low level of seismic activity.
But good luck finding a site in Northland with the attributes and infrastructure necessary to building a nuclear reactor.
https://screenshots.firefox.com/DfnKaH8UGzHvCd7y/quakesearch.geonet.org.nz
I was thinking it might provide a few jobs and revive a few towns and force a govt to finally put a decent road in.
Hence my “solve a lot of problems.”
Apologies though.
I wasn’t exactly mr clear
I think you’ll need a little more than a decent road.
For starters, a deep water port.
All good
Add that
The pay off in reliable power to Auckland for the whole city, including a massive upswing in EV’s and electric public transport would more than pay for itself.
Not only are they designed to run with typically cooler water the waste heat has environmental impacts which will only increase with recalibration and an already warmer cooling source.
“Every day, large reactors like the two at Diablo Canyon, California, individually dump about 1.25 billion gallons of water into the ocean at temperatures up to 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the natural environment. ”
https://progressive.org/dispatches/nuclear-power-causes-global-warming/
http://www.analys.se/engelska/publications/nuclear-power-high-sea-water-temperatures/
I’ve got tickling in the back of my head that Huntly is (or was) occasionally constrained by its resource consent conditions. IIRC, when the Waikato river is already warm and low flow they’re not allowed to dump much extra heat into it, so that limits the power output.
Imagine if that energy was able to be diverted to tunnel houses.
The tomatoes would be going gangbusters!
This is definitely an issue due to high intake temperatures or restricted outflow temperatures e.g.
https://nuclear-news.net/2018/08/24/hot-weather-continues-to-cause-lower-nuclear-power-production-in-france/
https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-power-takes-a-hit-as-european-heatwave-rolls-on-87477/
https://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/heat-and-drought-pose-risks-for-nuclear-power-plants
and also system vulnerabilities in transmission networks that trip the network and take large coal and nuclear plants off line e.g.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/power-stations-fail-as-victorians-brace-for-hottest-day-since-black-saturday/news-story/b404770015b841f39e348b19e5eec3a7
The US Reichstag moment comes closer.
President Trump agrees to open the US government up for 30 days. After that period if he doesn’t get his wall, he has threatened to either close the government again, or declare a National Emergency.
Even for a President who doesn’t read, the enormity of the second option can’t escape him.
I found a tongue in cheek piece on what advantages the Wall might enable.
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/97746/greg-ninness-details-wide-ranging-economic-opportunities-offered-us-president-donald
Greg Ninness details the wide ranging economic opportunities offered by US President Donald Trump’s proposed Mexican border wall
Also on the Wall and USA-Mexico long hostile relationship.
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/97607/journey-aztlan-chris-trotter-why-democrats-should-let-trump-build-his-wall
Journey To Aztlan: Chris Trotter on why the Democrats should let Trump build his wall
Dunno about that. He knows he just got spanked over his dropping ratings so it’s unlikely he’ll try another shutdown, and his base thinks he just cravenly surrendered.
His way out is to get a bit of extra funding for more technology stuff like remote surveillance and entry port inspections, and call it a “smart wall”. He’s already setting the stage for that switcheroo, and most of his Wallnuts will go along with it.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/25/government-shutdown-over-border-wall-1127564
Would trump’s wall actually have any effect other than to fulfill his election promises.
Fencing people out is vastly different to fencing them in imho
As a practical matter, a concrete wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean would:
make floods in the Rio Grande much worse by impeding floodwaters
forcibly take a lot of land from a lot of really ornery Texans
really fuck up the ecosystems in the Big Bend area of Texas and kill a lot of the wildlife that depends on access to the Rio Grande for water let alone north-south migration patterns (equivalent ecosystems in the California mountains are already fucked from the fencing that’s already built)
barely noticeably reduce illegal immigration since most arrive legally and overstay, are smuggled through an entry port concealed in a vehicle, or go over or under existing fencing
He is not proposing what you stated.
Start again with what he is proposing.
What’s interesting about Trump is he has is end game and a starting position. Over time has starting position has changed from your comment, to his present policy. He has listened to the experts, who want the steel barrier etc.
His end game hasn’t changed.
Stop ILLEGAL immigration.
So you like law breaking and keep coming up with excuses justifying law breaking. He wants things to be lawful.
Most illegal immigration. But the rest is acceptable to you. Trump wants to stop it therefore Andre must condone it.
So most convicted rapists?
So most MS13?
So most sex trade victims?
Where do they enter the US?
I’m amazed that you condone those things just on your hatred of Trump. You would rather rapists, Gang members, and sex trafficking be unimpeded than let a single Trump policy, sorry Obama policy, sorry Pelosi policy be funded.
He probably should have signed up to the UN pact on immigration then as one of it’s goals was to stop people immigrating illegally by correcting the conditions that make them want to leave.
Of course, that would reduce the power of the US and other developed nations in the world.
What the Tantrump has actually achieved for national security.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/trump-shut-down-the-government-to-protect-national-security-he-hurt-it-instead/
It will make some steel and construction company owners wealthier.
Reckon as soon as they got the contract they’d find some way to be based in Mexico, use Mexican labour and tariff-free Chinese steel?
Whatever President Pence allows.
They’re probably already based in the one or other of the tax havens.
That’s how mexico will pay for it.
The North American Venuzuela is one step closer.
https://goo.gl/images/MgTRJ2
Those Hitler digs are clearly stupid.
The socialist MSM is the new Goebbels.
There’s no enormity in building a wall. Not a single American will have a single control placed on them. Not one. No media imprisoned like Venuzuela. No protesters shot or run over like Venuzuela. No corruption like Venuzuela. No high taxes that cause all the youth to flee like Venuzuela.
Nothing. Not one thing Nazi in anything Trump has done. Unlike Ocasio Cortez who is a racist and sexist as well. On record with her hate white men comments.
After all Nazis are socialists. It’s in the name.
“After all Nazis are socialists. It’s in the name.”
Don’t be intellectually lazy. You’ve clearly got the smarts to be better than that. Get educated and get real man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program
Aside from your irrational Godwinisms, I agree that the concept of walls is not inherently bad, humans have built them throughout history. Trump’s
tantrumshutdown wasn’t really about he wall, it’s about Democrats taking control of Congress, and obstructing the Mueller investigation. Trump has had 2 years to fund his stupid fscken wall but he seemed to forget about it until now.The RWNJ’s are dead scared of Ocasio Cortez and co.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-young-lefts-anti-capitalist-manifesto/
I think your wrong.
She has a great personality but clearly not that bright.
She refuses to by interviewed by media that may ask non patsy questions so she can’t actually get to that higher level. The day she has to face a real interview rather than patsy questions she will look stupid and scary.
The rich are going WTF she is just nuts. The second she gets any traction or power with her ideas large numbers of the rich will donate to the republicans. She will be like the gift that keeps on giving.
Talking about not that bright…
/exactly.
In fact, we actually need maximum incomes. Not just high interest rates but actually saying that amounts over X amount will be taxed at 100%.
We need to stop fucking around and realise that the economy really is a Zero Sum Game.
She won’t go anywhere a fox wanker if she has any sense warty.
As she’s socialist she’s so obviously far brighter than you.
No, the rich are panicking as they realise that their end is nigh.
But, you’re a good RWNJ and you’re here to defend their unearned wealth.
When the Nazis kidnapped children from their parents and adopted them out to ‘better’ people, at least they kept proper paperwork.
That’s right, they were very perdantic on that one. Unlike Venuzuela who have no paper to take records. Or no media to report on it. There in prison.
We have the same policy here in NZ it’s called CYFS. All you need is you and 2 dodgy mates to independently make false allegations and they will go around and take the children from the parent or parents. They keep paperwork as well but good luck trying to get hold of it. The children are placed with audited, better parents. Sadly often more likely to abuse the kids vs the parents.
Exactly. Everyone else identifies that child, who their parents are, where they were taken into custody (and by whom), whether the child was healthy, and what their destination will be.
The Nazis kept better records on the kids they intentionally murdered than dolt45’s crew do on kids they were supposed to try to keep alive.
After all Nazis are socialists. It’s in the name.
The fact that right-wingers bring this level of analysis to historical, social and political questions explains a great deal about their comments.
They’re a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. They’re too ignorant to understand that they have NFI WTF they’re talking about.
I was taking the piss and the comment deserved it.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock….
Trump Threatens to Use Emergency Power to Build Wall If Congress Does Not Approve It by February 15
But just imagine what the next Democrat President in 2020 could do with those “emergency powers” tRump is just wanting to set a precedent for!
Action on Climate Change.
Immigration policy.
Voting rights.
Social Justice.
to name a few.
His advisers are cautioning him about taking this approach because it would set up a whole gateway for open slather executive action that potentially violates their constitution. Furthermore, if it should succeed through the myriad of legal objections, such an order would immediately face, it opens the way for any succeeding Democrat to do something to which Republicans are totally opposed. Of course, having essentially cast aside all the adults in the room, and never actually listening to any advice that may be given – unless it is from his mates on Fox news – who knows what he will do. He obviously hasn’t a clue as to what he is doing – so how is anyone else to know?
What, next Democratic President?
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/sep/07/michael-moore-fahrenheit-119-trump
Ladies and Gentlemen the last President of the United States.
You fail to understand the importance of the most recent election and the real “Blue Wave” that transformed the country. And yes it did transform the country. There is still more to be done, but the people are not resting on their laurels, they are now seriously working on 2020. Trumpkins who are now the only base for Trump support, are even now, walking away as they realise the reality of life under the Orange one is not what he said it would be. The Republicans don’t have the support, nor the gumption, to remove him, and they are fractionalised as a party, like they have never been before. There has been a huge reaction to the election of Trump. It has energized people, particularly women. There is growing movement for reform.
If Trump was successful to create expanded “Emergency Powers” for his wall, that would create a precedent for any follow on President to do a vast number of things of which current Republicans would never dream of doing. Remember it was the power of the Republicans in Congress that has held up any substantive progress on Climate Action on the world stage for decades. No US President could agree to working towards reducing GHG emissions on a world stage without their consent.
The problem, of course, is that what’s happening is the problem.
How can anyone address the problem if no one recognises it? If their whole being is about maintaining the status quo?
Here’s an excerpt from my Book of Shadows 29/11/2001:
This is the Final War – the war against capitalism.
Your piss has blood in it! Better get a health check.
yeah, not helping.
By the way I was talking to DJW at 335111.
1. you need to put in a /sarc tag else no one else will get it. It’s the general problem wit text.
2. You’re a RWNJ so we expect you to be lambasting Nazi Germany as socialist when it actually wasn’t.
Nope. They were all capitalists:
Isn’t privatisation what we’ve been doing for the last thirty years?
So, for the last thirty years we’ve been following Nazi Germany’s economic policies.
I believe he’ll do that. He is unable to negotiate
Chris Trotter gives the UK an Eagle’s-eye view and perceives the cracks.
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/97655/chris-trotter-how-imperialism-has-set-britain-apart-its-european-competitors-and
Chris Trotter on how imperialism has set Britain apart from its European competitors and landed it in the mess it’s in –
The Prime Minister, Theresa May, and her supposed alternative, Jeremy Corbyn, epitomise in equal measure the malady that is Brexit.
May has failed utterly to draw into the debate the broad range of parties and interests whose co-operation continues to be essential to the extremely difficult task of making Britain’s departure from the European Union, if not painless, then bearable. Tribal, mistrustful, high-handed and fatally unimaginative, the Conservative Party leader remains politically upright only because her job is now so hard and so thankless that nobody else wants it.
His latest on Bowalley Road is fairly brutal:
http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-jacinda-problem-where-she-goes-we-go.html
although I can understand how many aren’t seeing the benefits of a change in government (yet). Let’s hope tho’ that we don’t keep getting a “Rome wasn’t built in a day” response from any criticism – it’s not going to wash for too much longer.
Davos attendance was a poor decision
maybe, maybe not
We’ll see whether or not this is Her moment of advocacy for change, or whether it will be seen as just another media moment in time (going forward).
I’m hoping it is the former, although I understand she has a whole lot of shit to push uphill to get to where she’d hope we all want to be.
There are a growing number of the dis-possessed that can’t even afford a concern for the politics of kindness and they’ve given up even being interested in such a hope.
2019 is going to be an interesting year.
It occurs to me that if we don’t get a fairer system the grievances and hate against governmental and elite leaders will build up. There eventually could be a revenge group that pays back to the families of the comfortable privateers. Best to really take things seriously about giving the lower classes some let-up on their downward trend in everything before the obsessed get beyond hope for bread tomorrow; let them eat cake sometimes now please, sitting on their own chairs in their own lockable home, not the romantic outdoors.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/380978/defence-force-won-t-investigate-death-of-singaporean-aloysius-pang
I don’t think Singaporeans are going to be satisfied with NZ Defence Forces standing back and pleading laissez faire. I think there are many Singaporean Chinese in this country. They didn’t lift themselves out of poverty by dropping regulations and adopting a she’ll-be-right approach. It wasn’t us gov’ plea or we can’t be questioned, ‘Do you know who we are’ can work to deal with us ordinary NZ citizens but they will be displeased.
So, what more do you expect the NZDF to do?
That could be put – what less do you expect the NZDF to do? And I could say yeah good idea if they didn’t host such practises; but then how can they withdraw without breaking the working alliance that is thrust upon us by the constant desire to have something that someone else has got. Which is millenials old.
So I don’t know what can NZDF do; be better hosts? Try to make it clear in Singapore news media with adverts that we are very sad that one of their young role models and youth stars has been killed here, and stress that we were not involved?
They may have hosted the exercise but they weren’t part of it.
This means that no investigation by them will result in any meaningful resolution.
The only ones who can investigate the incident is Singapore.
Which is what’s happening with the NZDF assistance.
There is, quite literally, nothing else that the NZDF can do.
He was a Singaporean defence force personnel operating under their jurisdiction. There is, quote literally, nothing that the NZDF can do except extend NZs condolences which I’m pretty sure that they’ve already done on our behalf.
There is nothing that you can fault our defence forces with as they didn’t have anything to do with it.
There is nothing that you can fault our defence forces with as they didn’t have anything to do with it.
I already indicated that DTB. So don’t go on about it.
Huh?
As far as I am aware the NZDF provides the venue but not direct control of the exercise. Certainly not the NZDF staff (as your link points out) except probably for exercise bounds.
Just like the exercises that the SAF does in a number of friendly countries where they have some room to do operational training in larger areas than their islands. The SAF does these exercises shipping their own gear into the host country and mainly doing their own exercises. As far as I am aware the use of many of those exercise areas are paid for in millions or billions of dollars deals. I suspect that if they aren’t explicitly doing a multilateral exercise, that any operational training cooperating with host forces would be an afterthought.
The Singapore land area is only about 3/4 that of the Auckland urban area. It severely limits the kind of exercise that they can do inside their own country. For instance at brigade or regimental level, anything to do with jet aircraft, most armour or artillery, hell even the bush warfare areas would be limited. Gods knows what else they’d need to do. In Australia they use thousands of square kilometres at Shoalwater Bay.
But what you don’t seem to grasp is that the SAF are finicky about training injuries or deaths. In Singapore even training deaths caused by dehydration or lightning are prominent in the news media. Everything that I’ve seen over this last year (I spent 5 months of 2018 in Singapore) indicates that they are the best people to do any such inquiry. They have more actual experience than the NZDF.
That is because they cycle so many more people through training. Conscripts through their two years and reserves through their annual training. That is a *lot* of training. It is a far far large force than NZDF. Active personnel are about 70k at any one time. And there are over a million reserves.
With military training, like that of civilian training, there simply isn’t any way to remove all risk. The trick is to make sure that you learn from accidents to make damn sure that they don’t reoccur. I can’t see how getting the NZDF to do it would add much, if anything.
Singapore Armed Forces use Waiouru for live fire artillery training and as your link notes, it’s Singapore’s show so there’s no reason for the NZDF to be involved in any inquiry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiouru_Military_Camp#Singapore_connection
We can express sorrow in a media release that would show up in Singapore. It affects our 100% Pure happy place promotion somewhat. We don’t want any more preventable deaths in this country piling up in statistics!
Something @ Cleangreen and possibly others might be interested in:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/25/manchester-tram-train-network
Seems to me there might be places around NZ where this could be useful in the future, but I also wonder whether we’ll take our traditional short term approach to doing things and go for ‘light rail’ options using a completely different gauge.
The Labour party needs a name change.
Here are a few starters.
New Zealand Pacific
New Zealand Global
Our New Zealand.
True New Zealand.
New Zealand Heart.
I wish they would hurry up and do something positive party?
True National.
Another tailings dam collapse. Hundreds missing. Surrounding farmland destroyed via being covered in toxic sludge.
Shares in Vale drop 10%. The same Vale responsible for the last dam failing in Minas Gerais, the 19 deaths then, and Brasil’s worst ecological disaster.
Bolsonaro to the rescue, concerned for miners welfare.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/hundreds-missing-after-brazilian-dam-collapse/news-story/3cd78c609dd8e01ae5c1e3089bac3c24
What I am aware of in the free market is that every disaster is a profit centre if a Corporate can work it right. So one conglomerate screws up – then another supplies a remedy. The governments pay and pay and pay, and the people say what was in that brown paper email?
While we are at it a 21 century name
for New Zealand is way over due.
We are not a Dutch province.
Tasman did not discover New Zealand.
Realistically we should be Rarotonga Hou.
Mate, NZ has a name, try Aotearoa.
Holy heck.
During the government shutdown 200+ US government websites had their SSL certificates expire. Bad, very bad.
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/the-mother-of-all-government-data-breaches-is-happening-right-now-24461/
Sort of bizarre.
We gotta have a wall to protect the security of our country!!!!!
What do you mean the shut down has comprimised our digital security!!
Ooooooopps.
Even his ex CoS Gen Kelly has been telling him that the shutdown was doing more harm to their security than any f**king wall would save.
https://www.axios.com/government-shutdown-kelly-department-homeland-security-e6e456bc-6d8d-4180-b4d6-7490942bb995.html
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/01/powerful-firms-in-the-government-s-sights.html
There is a vacuum with NZ demand & supply lobbying, so it tends to go to rorting instead.
To different degrees, some things are natural monopolies, like govt. itself is for example. The strength of that natural monopolistic part of the societal economy, is that despite all the leverage put over it to the contrary, it is a product of dynamic NZ demand & supply.
That is a general guide then, to the direction in enabling NZ lobbying systems for even the bigger natural monopolistic areas of activity to take the place of rorting.
NZ1st!
Quoting article:
Wonder if he’ll like the answers because the first thing that needs to be done is for all natural monopolies that provide essential services (Power, telecommunications, water, hospitals (and health in general)) to be brought in to state ownership as a government service. Some of which (i.e, health) would not carry charges.
The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump
My bold.
This one just got on to my Must Read list.
I was watching the Philip DeFranco channel playing interviews from LAUSD Teachers and why the went on strike. They were offered better pay but turned it down as what they want is lower class sizes, and full-time nurses and counselors.
Another thing that was mentioned was about a lot of the funding trickery going on with some of the charter schools there. The schools have a headcount at a certain time near the start of the school year that helps set their funding. Right after this time a lot of the charter schools then dump a lot of the lower performing students forcing them back to public schools. Meanwhile, they keep the funding level for the higher number of students while the public schools forced to accept them are left with a funding level for a lower number of students. The charter schools have effectively found a loophole to swipe funding from the public schools while being left with the best of the cherrypicked students. They can also turn down those with physical handicaps putting even more pressure on the public schools who must supply extra funding from their budget for those students.
Some of this seems to resonate with what was happening here under the last National government with charter schools being better funded than public schools and being able to cherrypick students and having no accountability.
Dolan Twins Funeral Controversy & Why The LAUSD Teacher Strike Will Ripple Through The US…
I get so brassed off with commenters who present on this blog using coded language of acronyms. It’s lazy, and irrational when it is about specialist subjects and people ought to know better. How on earth are commenters supposed to know what LAUSD is. I presume on looking it up on google that its’s this;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Unified_School_District
I agree. I keep getting stuck on what IIRC means, and occasionally FWIW.
Besides, those acronyms often often have a different meaning assigned to them through time.
For example, at one time SDLC meant Synchronous Data Link Control until some sage came along with a project management process and it became Systems Development Life Cycle.
Is it possible COVFEFE has some deep meaning in the mind of an orange turd?
The first two are ones people generally know about. They are useful for being short. I can understand them being good for phone texters. That Covfefefe is a doozy. I had some fun finding out about it.
Just watching link to a piece on early languages in the UK. Thet have just mentioned the burghs that would contain a group of traders and businesspeople who had a fairly autonomous sytem, reporting to a noble who reported to a king.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X5zX3yVoiQ
I think we have to revitalise our local areas as the governments appear to have been captured by right wing economists with romantic, sensual dreams supplied by Ayn Rand.
I think we could end up in a Mafia-like community with government providing protection whichever way we lean. So think about semi-autonomous regions, they might choose to be supportive of each other, in exchange for more choice of what to do with their collected taxes. I have been suggesting that say 5% of GST collected in particular areas be returned there to provide and update infrastructure. May be the tax reform group might have looked at that.
Something to brighten up Labour? Eddie Izzard is a Labour Party official and wantsto stand for Parliament.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/world/europe/uk-eddie-izzard-labour-jeremy-corbyn.html
On Brexit –
Coming to Auckland nZ 1 March
http://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/articles/events/2019/03/eddie-izzard-wunderbar-world-tour/
(April Berlin July San Fransisco so he gets around.)
Is there truth in this satirical piece on why the EEC and Britain et al from Yes Minister?
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvYuoWyk8iUV
Well, the yanks just beat the brits 19-7 in Hamilton – even though the latter played really tight attacking rugby. Amazing how good the USA sevens team has become the last couple of years, after being non-contenders for so long. Obviously we must blame Trump. Anyone sussed out how he did it yet?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12195856
Metric tests to a person’s competency to THC levels & a related license to smoke pot perhaps, along with the availability of cheap devices for enthusiasts to purchase & use for application of such an approach.
Individual freedom comes with personable responsibility & self-control after all.
Perhaps such regulations would be a way to help people with high dependencies get to grips with their self-management and organisation better, in essence raising the lowest common denominator to a growing societal problem area in general & to help put a lid on it at a relatively harmless level.
NZ1st!
After reading that article it reinforced my opposition to legalisation.
Commodifying by legalising a herb creates all sorts of issues.
Decriminilising is a far better way to go.
Take profit out of the issue, depower gangs, enable folk with pot issues to seek help, keep corporates away from marijuana.
Regulation should continue to include bans for THC levels in a person’s blood for:
– Private car
– Bus driving
– Taxi driving
– Truck driving
– In fact random testing for using any machinery at all
– In fact random testing for any level of THC in the workplace no matter where you are
And of course harder enforcement at school:
– Random testing at school, to ensure the legal age is enforced and young people actually study
And a tax step that’s far higher for using it as cigarette, damaging the lungs, compared to less tax for a pill or liquid form.
If they felt like it they could hypothecate (dedicate) the income from both tobacco and marijuana sales to minimizing their harm.
Now that the “rights” argument is getting closer, let’s talk about actual responsibilities in society.
It would need a good stepped metric testing license system. People are different.
As long as that was sound, the rest of associated approaches and outcomes would gravitate around it effectively to the shape of the market and how it functions.
You’re advocating for people, including minors to hand over their DNA…randomly…
Consistently, you expose a weak minded authoritarian streak in your comments, Ad…
Keep pondering until you come up with a more nuanced process that doesn’t begin with presumed guilt…something that doesn’t resemble a sledge hammer…
So called leftist thinking at its most confused…
Have some freedom of choice…now subject yourself to random testing…
Yuk. Next thing they will be limiting how many farts is appropriate per day and decide it should be none and then whole classes at school will go into detention when nobody will own up. No one wants to now, it will be worse when it is punishable. /sarc
Lets hope our Prime Minister has the good sense not to be sucked into Nato’s latest attempt to make out seventeen years of pointless killing in Afghanistan is justified and in some way moral. Lets also hope she passes on the, sure to arrive, requests to support regime change in Venezuela too. Trudeau has made it clear he is Trumps bitch. Lets try and keep some self respect.
Not as good as it could have been but it highlights some of the issues.
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2019/01/growing-pains-ecological-cost-insatiable-economy-190121045037084.html
Kia ora The AM Show The 7,s Rugby in Hamilton was awesome the stands were packed out and OUR 7,s Black Ferns Wahine Rugby team first game on home soil was a great success. Mana Wahine its looks like it will be a yearly event for OUR Black Firns Mana Wahine. The All Blacks 7 team is still in the hunt for the 7 trophy to ka pai. simon we needed the greens party in Government after shonky shorted the system for his wealthy m8 nar you don’t want a capital gains tax that would make life better for the many people and ECO MAORI knows national run government’s for the 00.1%
I put deflated the alt right neo mark his blue m8s were not happy with that move they played up heaps after that kick from ECO Maori. I will observe a bit more before I put my nose in the Auckland Council election. I still say all the anity capital gains principles of NZ Have the teachers union by the noses. Jason I feel sorry for you people in Australia with those scorching temperatures over them. Jason it only takes 1 degree changes for life or death no wonder you and duncan are m8s both human caused climate change deniers. That last comment of yours on social media shaming fools who are disrespectful totally agree with that view social media gives people a conscious. Phil Goff needs to use social media to direct the traffic away from traffic jam’s like Korea does he needs to send someone there and see what they do with DATA & social media to keep one of the highest density and Internet connected population in Papatuanukue running a few tweeks in Auckland would save the country millions of $$$$$ and lower our carbon footprint. I say all road works on high traffic roads should be carried out at night there priorities should be safety first and traffic flowing freely even try Japanese traffic slow down models I see some more heads have been moved out of NZTA may be time for change they could have had links to oil barons.?????.
That is cool having Rob Hewitt on The show education people about Wai water & safety swimming in Tangaroa. Tangaroa was looking after him when he spent 4 days lost in Tangaroa Ka pai.
24 degrees here at the minute.
A true green party is a left humane party one can spout being green and in the same breath party shout lock em up cut social security I see someone who jumped on my coat Tails for a lift cheat. Ka kite ano P.S The controversial water view tunnel in Auckland made life better for people who fly Alot just like national look after the 00.1%, before the 99.9 %
Got to remember to edit my work there you go the Australian krypton busting laws are crap the kumara never tells how sweet it is
Ki ora Newshub Global warming is hear and now one has to plan for the heat and work smart to avoid heat stress and Fires
Good Wai quality is a must it makes Eco think we have hope when 80 % of people think good water quality is needed to avoid desaster with our water and environment. Road Rage not good is it. 3 topic,s linked climate change traffic jams and obesity it would be nice with the obesity subject that the real culprit is branded for that problem SUGAR.
ECO MAORI knows how strong Tawhirirmate in around Aketio I think that is Cape turnagain Alex been in some big seas there.
Its is awesome that Black panther has picked up a few prizes at the SAG awards . Ka kite ano
I posted this 20 minutes ago????????????