Open mike 26/01/2021

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, January 26th, 2021 - 18 comments
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18 comments on “Open mike 26/01/2021 ”

  1. Castro 1

    Is that you, Jian Yang?

    [TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]

    [newbie, read the Policy before commenting again, don’t take potshots at authors, don’t flame/troll – weka]

    • Sabine 2.1

      this is how you stop news, fake or not, if you have a whole lot of money to stop the news, fake or not.

      • Snape 2.1.1

        Sabine,
        “…..fake or not, if you have a whole lot of money to stop the news, fake or not.”

        Sadly, I agree –

        ”Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Saturday said he will sue the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, making the announcement during a speech aimed at outlining his plans for the first 100 days of his potential presidency.”

        “Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign, total fabrication. The events never happened, never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over,” Trump said, eliciting cheers from the crowd in Gettysburg, Penn.”

  2. RedLogix 3

    For the COVID obsessives amongst us I give you this remarkable ABC item.

    • Forget now 3.1

      Those are some pretty graphics RL (so long as you don't think too much about the dots represent). I have only skimmed the text so far, but left the tab open in the background for later. It is good to get your Brisbaine based perspective on things, the people I know over in Oz are further south.

      I don't know anyone over in the Northern territories or Western Australia, but it strikes me; from the local to imported infection ratios, that they are nearly as much islands as Aotearoa. Though half of their oceans consist of desert sand waves.

  3. Adrian Thornton 4

    Known warmonger, interventionist and American imperialist Joe Biden……

    Biden will recognize Guaido as Venezuela's leader, top diplomat say

    Blinken told members of the U.S. Senate that Biden would seek to “more effectively target” sanctions on the country, which aim to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

    While in Europe…

    EU states no longer recognise Guaido as Venezuela's interim president

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-eu/eu-states-no-longer-recognise-guaido-as-venezuelas-interim-president-idUSKBN29U1A3

    But as we all know the USA doesn’t give a shit and never has about the rule of international law, if a country has resources that it want’s to plunder, well then you are fucked…man what a relief to have Biden in the White House…some sanity an order back again, yep Biden colours inside the lines thats for sure, you can’t take that away from him, you just better hope that the page he is turning to colour in hasn’t got your countries name on it, because this guy (unlike Trump) is 100% New Century American.

    • Siobhan 4.1

      I'm still wondering how they will frame an 'invasion' of Venezuela, in whatever form that takes…let alone the continuation of sanctions(impacting the economy at more than $11 billion in 2019)during a pandemic ..and yet….not Brazil…

      "The mercurial leader, who scoffed at masks and echoed baseless theories about the virus voiced by former U.S. President Donald Trump, saw his personal backing tumble Friday to 26%,".

      .a disapproval rating of 40%..not to mention his possible investigation by the Hague ..the fact it took Bolsonaro 42 days to recognize Biden’s victory…

    • Tricledrown 4.2

      Maduro is just the latest in a long line of nasty dictators in Venezuela both left and right.Drug Cartels control Venezuela profiteering on the US war on drugs that subsidize's the massive drug trade whose profits corrupt politicians the tax havens where money is laundered and politicians get paid to look the other way.

      We were promised by the worlds leaders after the Panama papers that they were going to shut down tax havens nothing has been done.So until the many different factors are dealt with nothing is going to change taking sides is futile.

  4. Brigid 5

    Any individual who is able to raise [enough money] to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent…whatever moneyed entities are paying for him…. Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fail and there is no redress.

    Gore Vidal – The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, 1992.

  5. joe90 6

    On politics driving fiscal policy.

    Hardly anyone noticed, but shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds made a rather remarkable speech last week. It was big, meaty, intellectually challenging, brimming with ideas, and framed around a devastating pinpoint critique of Tory economic policy since 2010.

    […]

    Dodd’s central criticism of Conservative economic policy over the last ten years is not that it was heartless or cruel – the standard rhetorical fire aimed by Labour during the Jeremy Corbyn era. It is that it responds to political considerations rather than economic ones. Dodds calls it the “time-inconsistency problem”.

    This started with the austerity agenda in 2010. It was too early to start reining in spending after the financial crash, but the programme was adopted anyway, predominantly because of its electoral usefulness. It has been a dismal failure. George Osborne made millions of lives more miserable and poverty stricken than they needed to be and yet debt increased from £1 trillion in May 2010 to £1.8 trillion in February 2020. Consecutive Conservative chancellors have missed every debt and deficit target they set themselves.

    https://www.politics.co.uk/comment/2021/01/21/under-the-radar-labours-progressive-economic-agenda/

  6. Forget now 7

    This is pretty despicable, unless the testing centres are actually running out of swabs. Especially given how much fuzziness (and overlap) there is in the listed times of the infected person's movements. Even if she didn’t use public transport, she would still have walked on public footpaths to these locations :

    Maylene Erihe was at Ruakaka General Store and FreshChoice Ruakaka last Saturday, about 45 minutes after the Northland case.

    While Erihe admitted she had not been using her Covid Tracer App, her bank statements showed her using her Eftpos card at this time.

    But she was surprised to be turned away from testing on Tuesday – after waiting four hours on Monday and two hours on Tuesday – because she was not at the stores at exactly the same time.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300213886/live-locals-discuss-setting-up-checkpoints-in-northland-after-covid19-case-in-community

    • Bream Bay Butchers Ruakaka – January 16 – 11.02am-12.07pm
    • Ruakaka General Store – January 16 – 11.08am-12.10pm
    • FreshChoice Ruakaka – January 16 – 11.10am-12.15pm

  7. KSaysHi 8

    Sunscreen is toxic to the sea. This won't be all sunscreens – there is that betonite clay one. Best to cover up imho.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/300207733/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-your-sunscreen-and-the-sea

  8. Tricledrown 9

    Collins and National claiming vaccine roll out not going fast enough ,then the govt says it could begin as early as next week.

    Then news that vaccines could be updated to protect against newer variants being available later this year.So Collins and National still digging a deeper hole same nagging as bridges was sacked for.

    Former National housing minister now Narionals who managed 12 affordable homes in her time as housing minister after promising 100's.is now wanting to help the govt.They had 9 years 7,000 state house sold under national is that their solution sell more.

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