In Protest, Climate Activists Board Coal Ship Off Great Barrier Reef
Absent action by political leaders, activists call on public citizens to fight climate change by physically preventing fossil fuel expansion through peaceful civil disobedience
Jon Queally staff writer Common Dreams, Wednesday April 24
Bring your surfboards, bring your kayaks, bring your dinghies, bring your small yachts, bring your fishing boats and tinnies. Bring your life jackets and wet suits. Bring your signs banners and flags. Bring your courage and your joy.
New Zealand is a maritime nation, we need to take to the sea. We need to defy the anti-marine protest laws. We need to stop coal exports here and in Australia.
“Join the “Resistance”
John Key and the National Party are firmly in the corner of big oil and big coal.
Despite the terrible danger we are all in they will not lift a finger to stop it.
In fact they are doing the opposite, passing anti-democratic laws that make it easier for the climate wreckers to operate.
NASA scientist James, Hansen the world’s leading climate change expert, has determined that; “If we can’t stop coal. It is game over for the climate.”
We can play a role in stopping the immoral profiteering in coal that is killing our world.
Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter in the world, and as such is a major contributor to climate change on a global scale. To save the planet the Australians must stop this trade.
New Zealand’s coal exports, are big. In fact most of the coal mined in this country is for the export trade. But in comparison with Australia, our trade in coal is dwarfed. The significance of our coal trade, is that Australia will never stop exporting coal, unless New Zealand has done it first.
It is up to us.
Our history shows that of all countries, we are most up to the task.
For the safe future of our world, for our children, and for our children’s children’s sake…..
We must act!
If the spirit of ANZAC is still worth something. We must!
The halting of all coal exports from this country will be a huge and unmissable moral lead for our closest international neighbour and long time friend and ally, Australia. As an example of the sacrifice that must be demanded of them too. That is, If we are to preserve the global climate, fit to hand onto to our children.
Sacrifice, Mateship, Fighting to make the world fit for future generations. This is what the ANZACs fought for, for us. Can we do any less?
If you have nothing constructive to say, wouldn’t it be better to say nothing?
Jenny is inspired by the actions of the climate activists off Australia and wants to share that with us, while encouraging us to be active in our defence of the climate too.
Rather than insulting people, why don’t you make your own suggestions for how we can improve the world?
Or are your contributions to this site merely intended to be destructive?
Jenny is a complete flake.
She wants people to get up and rally against what provides us with the current lifestyle we enjoy today.
Without oil and coal the worlds economy collapses, unless you’re a complete masochist who the hell wants that.
It should be about managing these resources and trying to minimize the impacts not banning them.
Until something else comes along it’s coal and oil for the foreseeable future, except that.
Funnily enough, although I might disagree with Jenny on stuff, I actually get the impression that she behaves in a genuine and earnest manner, with little or no dissembling or misdirection.
From what I’ve read nature cleaned up he spill pretty well.
The research done on it came to the conclusion that it would have been better just to let nature clean up the area and that the efforts made to control the spill actually hindered the process not helped.
yeah mate, and calling any policy that’s left of centre: communism by stealth, polish shipyard stuff, north korea and so on is just totally non hysterical and well reasoned.
You cretin BM! If you want the sound of hysterical shit. Then go to the Beehive there’s heaps of it from the National Party over the Labour/Greens Power profits redistribution from the greedies to the needies.
Some people just come onto this site to disrupt intelligent discussion.
Aren’t there right wing sites for them to carp on and on about their pet topics?
What are you talking about, fool? You’ve repeatedly claimed that the conversation was “one-sided and hysterical” but you evidently lack the wherewithal to provide any evidence to back up your assertion.
Wow, just wow. That’s vile. But you’ll be pleased to know that Mugabe ran out of colonials to “liberate” land from quite some time ago and now is reduced to inflicting misery on and stealing from black Zimbabweans. He’s an equal opportunity kleptocrat.
I can imagine better collective global effort about climate change if petrol costs more. But not if there’s an easier transition to other forms of oil than has been envisaged.
Insurance companies have a market interest to keep disasters (and so pay outs down). Or do they?
As we have found, market churn means fees. Why would any industry cut its growth, and so its immediate share price since its based on its future potential?
So to answer your question, should carbon energy never run out, the market would never deal with the consequences until its too late (look at any polluted industrial areas for how little and too late the market is).
Second, carbon energy is stored sunlight over millions of years, there will always become a point where the ‘new’ sources run out like oil has, and so the old adage of never say never must be employed.
Jenny’s point that governments really do respond to the force of crowds – as per the ANZAC/Lange protests – is understood. I still love Canetti’s Crowds and Power.
My point is less about the supply of oil and more a pessimism that without the force of price and spectacular scarcity that effective global movements would be hard to generate. I can see it at a neighbourhood scale, even at a City scale, because in different ways I have done it. So to be clear I support the effort. But if even the entire EU can’t sustain a carbon market, it’s hard to see governments successfully contesting the market about climate change generally.
Helen Clark called for a groundswell from below to force government’s and political parties to act on climate change.
If you are concerned about climate change you must ask ourself this question:
I am I happy to just protest against climate change, or do I want to stop climate change?
If your answer is, I want to stop climate change.
You should listen to Helen Clark.
Helen Clark knows the mechanics of how to stop climate change.
She should.
As a senior Labour Party MP during the Muldoon and Lange years. Helen Clark was an eye witness on the inside into how a mass movement can change governments and influence political parties and parliaments.
From her vantage point inside the parliamentary Labour Party Helen Clark saw that; No matter whether they were National Party government MPs, or Labour Party opposition MPs. The mass public campaign that blockaded our Nation’s harbour’s against nuclear ships, put every politician on notice.
This became especially true when the issue came up for a vote in the house when Richard Prebble’s (of all people) private member’s bill to ban nuclear warship visits was drawn from ballot.
Due to the huge pressure from below, two National MPs, Mike Minogue and Marilyn Waring, were moved to cross the floor and vote with the opposition.
If Richard Prebble’s private members bill had been put to the vote, New Zealand would have become Nuclear Free in 1984.
To prevent the vote, the Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon closed parliament down, called a snap election.
Everyone knew, including Muldoon, that his National Party had no chance of continuing in government with the issue of nuclear ship visits unresolved. Conservative pundits including Muldoon, hoped that under the pressure of what has cynically been called “pragmatism” or “Real Politic” (Which is all the secret, and not so secret conservative pressures that influences governments and parliamentary parties), that a new Labour administration would, on gaining office, be able to back-track on the issue in a way that the unpopular Muldoon could not. Which as predictably the new Labour government did. To break the ban David Lange himself, tried to bring in the nuclear armed warship the USS Buchanon into New Zealand waters.
However a high level meeting in his Beehive office held with the, (then), unofficial head of the anti-nuclear movement, Nicky Hagar, convinced Lange that if the Buchanon was brought into any New Zealand harbour that the protests against his government would dwarf anything that had gone down against the Muldoon administration.
Although the USS Buchanon was already on route to New Zealand and was more than half way here. Facing up to the inevitable disgrace that threatened to befall him, and his government if he allowed the Buchanon to dock. Lange had to call up Washington and ordered the Americans to turn their ship around.
The next day in an interview that was published in the the Listener, Lange was reported to have said that the peace movement was his most “feared lobby”.
After the debacle of the Buchanon defeat, the Lange administration still continued to drag the chain as much as they could.
Whereas, the Muldoon administration in 1984, could not have held the line for even one more day, putting off the vote to make New Zealand “Nuclear Weapons Free”. The Lange administration was able to hold the line until the dying months of 1987. And was only finally forced by the approaching deadline of an upcoming general election to put the long promised legislation. Lange feared that if the universally unpopular and controversial Rogernomic policies of his government was followed by a reversal on the “Nuclear Weapons Free” legislation, then the Labour Party if not being turfed out of office completely, would at the very least taken a very serious hit in voter support. (Not to mention the personal odium that would have been attached to his name forever.)
As it turned out. Despite the harsh economic policies forced on the New Zealand people by the Lange/Douglas administration, surfing the wave of the wildly popular support for the New Zealand’s newly minted “Nuclear Free” status – the 1987 election results saw David Lange’s Labour Party triumphantly returned as the government in a massive victory landslide of voter support.
Jenny I respect your passion, just to be clear on that.
Few things though.
1: Climate change can’t be stopped
2: Helen Clark is NOT to be listened to – Getting the to the #3 spot at the UN, means she delivered what was wanted by those who control the UN, hence her position there now. That would imply, she delivered what was requested, during her 9 years in as PM. Question, is, what was it that she did which earned her that position…
3: Helen Clark knows the mechanics of political corruption – She knows NOTHING about about how to stop climate change, however she might well know the planned role for the UN as defacto global government, which will fit perfectly with her own ideological beliefs!
4: You’re still focusing on too narrow a set of parameters, you should widen too include geo-engineering. Just like GM foods, which will have environmental consequences and people are happy to have that discussion, so should it be true of geo-engineering….
Just echoing what muzza said. Climate change is a lot more complicated than the solitary effect of increasing CO2 emissions, the green movement was hijacked a long time ago.
…not continuing to pump ancient carbon stores into the atmosphere; like the pain in your thumb is a lot more complicated than not hitting it with the bloody hammer any more.
CC is a very, very simple thing. The effects are not. Reversing that which has already been done is not. Avoiding unforeseeable consequences is not. But still…at root, climate change and the action required to stop contributing to it is devastatingly simple and uncomplicated.
Is there any evidence that the USS Buchanan was nuclear armed? The way I remember things, it quite obviously wouldn’t have been, with the problem being that the yanks refused to confirm this.
Also, I’d say it was a pity that Helen Clark didn’t let the groundswell against Rogernomics sway her from it.
Is there any evidence that the USS Buchanan was nuclear armed? The way I remember things, it quite obviously wouldn’t have been….
Murray Olsen
Indeed, the Buchanon had been intentionally chosen so that David Lange would have the political cover of “plausible deniability” that it was carrying any nuclear weapons.
Mr Lange dispatched his Chief of Defence Force, Air Marshal Sir Ewan Jamieson, to Honolulu to discuss the actual ship with the US Pacific Command. New Zealand was given a choice of ships and Air Marshal Jamieson settled on USS Buchanan, an almost obsolete destroyer which, while capable of carrying nuclear weapons, almost certainly would not have been…..
Gerald Hensley David Lange’s chief adviser
However this was not enough for the powerful New Zealand anti-nuclear movement. (Though Audrey Young doesn’t credit him, in particular, anti-nuclear activist Nicky Hagar who met with Lange in his Beehive office in the lead up to the Buchanon visit).
“To the surprise of his hearers from both delegations, [Schultz] added that New Zealand had to accept that from time to time there would inevitably be nuclear weapons aboard the occasional visiting ship.”
It was seized upon by activists later as confirmation that even if a compromise had been reached, the US would have disregarded the policy.
So basically a no then? As I remember from the time, the issue was that American ships would be allowed in if the yanks confirmed they had no nuclear weapons on board. They were not prepared to deviate from their neither confirm nor deny policy.
My position on this is that not letting it in was the right thing to do. I don’t even want windsurfers from nuclear navies in our waters. I don’t want a GI Joe toy from a country that tortures people in our shops.
One good thing about Tory governments – they provide many opportunities for healthy outdoor exercise and catching up with old friends. See you all on the march tomorrow!
I see America is beating the war drums over Syria again, claiming that the Syrian government is using sarin against rebels. Now where did we hear stories of weapons of mass destruction before…?
And surprise, surprise..there appears to be no serious questioning of the claims by the corporate media.
Mr Hagel said “our intelligence community does assess, with varying degrees of confidence, that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically, the chemical agent sarin”.
“It violates every convention of warfare,”
“Its the same script writers, that should be plainly obvious, to all but the weakest of minds!”
So when the proof comes with footage of innocent children, women, old men and women, faces disfigured and contorted by fear and pain, what page of the wank manual will your weak mind get it’s next throw away nugget from?
Does Mr Hagel have a history of providing relevant intelligence information?
Sibel Edmonds: “I provided three possible US objectives associated with the Boston Terror incident. I emphasized the first possible scenario as the most likely: Removing Russia as the obstacle in invading Syria.”
If only I did have a weak mind TA – Sadly you are very much mistaking me for someone else, or more likely you are projecting!
When you say *proof*, what is it exactly that twists your emotive sub-set, when it comes to *proof*, and are you prepared to accept the worlds most war mongered (USA) nation, as the holders/providers of said, *proof*.
Who will be selling those pictures, of contorted faces, or more accurately, who will have manufactured them..
I suggest you read about some of the historical *gotcha* moments around the Lybian escapades, of the likes of the BBC/CNN/FOX news et al!
I’m sure, with so many vigilants like yourself on their case, the us will never make the same mistake twice, but you, in not even considering the reports may actually be true, and innocents are being gassed, prejudice most, if not all of your personal warmongery against the americans as pure fucktardery.
I consider them alright, I consider as many angles as I have time to absorb, and then I look at the players, their history and the motives.
Nah the Anglo-French administrations will continue to ensure, through their agendas, that many more innocent people continue to die, every minute of every day..
With the support of those who share your , limited view of the ME situation!
You mean well, but you’re playing down the wrong line.
Please go and do some further reading, the Syrian situation, same as Libya, is manufactured by the US/UK/France primarily, or more accurately, those who pull the strings of those administraive entities!
“You mean well, but you’re playing down the wrong line.”
Offside. I always wait til the team sheet is released before I slag off the opposing players, anything else would be stupid and leave me open to ridicule, which I wouldn’t like.
“Please go and do some further reading”
You need to chose the right battles, Rambo.
By throwing mud at everything, you make it an easy decision to walk on the other footpath of life.
And a bit patronising, especially considering only one of us has jumped to a conclusion without knowing any fact other than same day news reports.
That’s basic, that’s clare curran like stuff. :tut tut: 😉
Seen the footage of chemical victims, yet?
Got a ‘put on job’ or ‘set up’ reply waiting in the wings?
Shame on you for so easily dismissing human suffering to score a point against the ‘enemy’.
Are you deliberately obtuse, or is that you are not paying attention!
Ill try make this as simple as possible, one final time:
1: Libya, and now Syria, were/are being, taken down by the same forces.
2: Innocent people have been/are being killed on the manufactured conflict, on all sides
3: Innocent people dying/being f*cked over, for any reason what-so-ever, is unacceptable, be it war, famine, poverty, inequality, political lies, police lies doesn’t matter – That’s always my default position!
You’re aiming your ill-informed opinions, at the wrong person matey, I’d suggest you speak to the people in Langley Virginia, and Washington DC, aim your vitriol in that direction , as a start!
Perhaps thats because I have spent more time in those parts of the world Murray, and speaking with people who are working/from ME countries, and to people who have served in the actions/wars in that region!
News of a terror plot to attack a Via Rail train, just one week after the Boston Marathon bombings, has pushed public security to the front burner just as the Harper government seeks Parliament’s authority to curb civil liberties in the name of keeping Canadians safe.
Recent months have been trying for the Tories as they drifted from one controversy to another – from aboriginal anger to foreign workers – with few high-profile items left on its agenda.
Monday’s arrests “demonstrate that terrorism continues to be a real threat to Canada,” Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said a short while after Mounties began explaining the arrests. “Preventing, countering, and prosecuting terrorism is a priority for our government.”
Yup, off to the camps you go! – Never let a manufactured terror event go to waste!
When asked about the nature of her work by the MC, Dame Susan responded with the line “same s…, different day”, Ms Tyrrell said.
Another disgruntled guest said Dame Susan had described her Wellington staff as “difficult”, before making an off-colour joke about men with sausages in their pockets.
!??!! Fuck that is funny. Love the quote from Sir Peter Leitch, “policially driven”. Halarious.
I’m telling you the way to bring this country to a stand still isn’t to attack policitally, or with arms…just wipe out all the stadiums and sports broadcasts and we would submit to anything to have them back.
No discernable talent? He built a business empire from a humble base, and has put time, effort and heaps of financial support into league and other sports and charities. I may not like his current sucking up to Key etc. but I’d never be so foolish as to deny his obvious abilities.
I have to admit he does a good comic impression of a beer-sodden boor.
He built a business empire from a humble base, and has put time, effort and heaps of financial support into league and other sports and charities. I may not like his current sucking up to Key etc. but I’d never be so foolish as to deny his obvious abilities.
His “obvious abilities”? He has none, other than crude self-publicity.
Have to agree with Voice here Mozza – PL, while not everyones cup of tea, has done much with the fund raising, and charity work, resulting not only from his empire built on rotten meat products, but also because he loved Rugby League, and appreciated that it was a *working class game*
While not a fan of PL at all, I think in this instance your evaluation might be a little out of alignment.
I think of the Mad Butcher as the guy who brought Warehouse/Walmart approaches to meat. He wiped out a lot of small butchers and replaced them with high turn over service centres selling crap meat. He identified the League community as one which would be exceedingly loyal, and had enough income to buy his sausages. He is a successful businessman whose major success was passing himself off as a working class battler, which possibly explains why he can so easily be mates with Key. In terms of successful capitalism, he has talent and can see opportunities, but I always preferred the personal touch of a neighbourhood butcher.
Anyone who, just weeks into their new job, regards it as “same shit, different day” and doesn’t like their staff has made a serious error taking the job and will probably ditch it soon for something else.
There’s always the possibility of tory conceit, but it might also be that she slipped into “celebrity speaker” mode (rather than “government representative”) at a dinner that possibly cost a couple of hundred dollars a head (they raised $46k). And that’s without the fine dinner+vino factor (which is doubtful, given that it was unlikely to be her first keynote speaker role).
But either way, it shows that she isn’t enthusiastic about the bauble thrown her way, and she doesn’t have the right qualities for the job.
The office will be fun on Monday when she gets to work. This seige mentality of devoys was her typical squash tactic – she admitted that she worked with the british/uk/whatever the fuck it’s called media against her. This tactic is boorish when used with important and demanding work like trying to make race relations better in this country.
I think she’d only ditch it if she was offered something that paid more. She’ll find it in herself to put up with her staff because she’ll have Tory racists and Ansell/Brash one nation types fawning all over her. Key will come out soon and try to paint anyone attacking her as a woman hater, just like Lange did with the unions at Kawerau. She’s doing exactly what she was appointed to do.
On this site, it was suggested by rocky in about 2009 that if I was going to put up the anzac poppy each year, that I should also add the white poppy as well. So we did.
Notice that Judith Collins considers it disrespectful (apparently sending our people to die at war is a better idea than attempting peace). All the more reason to use it as often as possible.
Judith Collins really is that kind of armchair general cum politician that any soldier hates. They’re the idiots who get us killed for their vanity, and yet never do anything substantive to prevent the problems. Irresponsible producers of hot-air and bombast – useless on the actual action.
It is no wonder that Cameron Slater identifies with her.
Judith Collins really is that kind of armchair general cum politician that any soldier hates.
Judith “Rosa Klebb” Collins has been voted “Most Likely To Be Accidentally Shot By Own Troops” if she ever finds herself commanding a platoon in South Vietnam.
So, in the context of WW2 say, you would be advocating to attempt piece with Hitler? I believe Anthony Eden tried that and it didn’t work out so well. Sometimes there is no alternative and no amount of hand-wringing will change that. You can’t reason with psychotic imperialists – corporate or state.
So, in the context of WW2 say, you would be advocating to attempt piece [sic] with Hitler? I believe Anthony Eden tried that and it didn’t work out so well.
Did you mean to write Neville Chamberlain? I think you did.
Sometimes there is no alternative…
There is certainly an alternative in this case.
…and no amount of hand-wringing will change that.
How typical, and predictable, that you should seek to demean principled objection to state violence as “hand-wringing”.
You can’t reason with psychotic imperialists – corporate or state.
Indeed. The people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Occupied West Bank, and the besieged enclave of Gaza know that only too well.
Yes, I make deliberate spelling mistakes just to set you off, and yes, you are right, Chamberlain, not Eden – a brain hiccough which I apologise for.
“Principled” objection to state violence only ever seems to be possible in societies protected by the possibility of state violence – how strange. Pehraps less hand-wringing than hand washing. And while I have never supported the invasion of Iraq and unilateral US actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I do happen to believe Al Qaida is a threat to otherwise innocent people and must be broken – though of course I would prefer it if the US could find more creative means that don’t involve harm to innocent women and children. Curiously, one wonders at your lack of “principled objection to state [or its equivalent] violence” when Hamas fires off one of its squibs into Israel in deliberate provocation of a massive retaliation and loss of innocent life in Gaza?
There you go again, seriously trying to suggest that Hamas is the problem, and absolving the aggressor. You admit that the rockets that come out of the imprisoned enclave are little more than squibs, and you recognize that the devastation wrought by Israel is massive, but you carefully and dishonestly portray this aggression as “retaliation”.
To portray Hamas as the aggressor and Israel as the retaliator is the exact inversion of the truth. I don’t know if it’s massive ignorance on your part or brutal, heartless dishonesty. Whatever the case, you will be called on it whenever you attempt it.
Mozza – Pop is a US, and by default, Israeli sympathizer, who knows that Arabs are the problem! His bias is no naked, and his position so wrong, he can’t wrap his head around even the most simple *terror frauds*
POP
I do happen to believe Al Qaida is a threat to otherwise innocent people and must be broken
Again McFlock, you have shown a complete lack of ability to understand when to use the B word!
Pop has played his cards openly many times!
You’re still having memory issues by the sounds of bro, you need to exercise that skull a bit more!
Ill leave your piss poor, over eager use of the B word, for you to ponder, appropriate use!
Shalom!
Edit – Helpful hint, don’t even contemplate coming back with what your instinct will encourage you to, just take the helpful advice, and leave it at that!
actually, rereading that one it seems to meant to say something along the lines of “Pop is a US sympathizer, and therefore by default an Israeli sympathizer” rather than “Pop is a US, [i.e. short for “yank”] and by default [because he is a yank], Israeli sympathizer”.
So yeah, I clocked off early on that one. Fair call. But at least I can answer a simple question.
What, pray, is a “US”? I’m a fifth generation New Zealander, and you couldn’t be further wrong. I am disgusted by Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people and the illegal colonisation of their land, and the Muslim world has been very hard one by in this “war on terror”, but that doesn’t really change the fact that there is a militant Muslim minority who do carry out organised terror attacks quite successfully. Pretending it’s a conspiracy won’t make it go away – it certainly won’t bring back the victims, you dick.
Um, no, you delusional, tiny-minded cretin, I am noting that if Hamas didn’t conveniently provide Israel with a slight excuse to carry on with what amounts to a war of extermination, the US wouldn’t have much of a fig leaf to hide behind, and the left wing of the Knesset might be able to get some traction over the insanity. Jeez, what is wrong with you people?
Yeah Hamas is going to carry out a war of extermination using, what exactly? AK47’s? WWII era Katyusha rockets? IEDs made in garages? RPGs?
Shall we examine what the IDF uses to compete with these Hamas ‘weapons of extermination’?
– Abrams main battle tanks
– F15’s and F16’s
– Apache attack helicopters
– Modern guided munitions, including bunker buster munitions
– Arsenal of nuclear warheads held outside the NPT.
– etc
Sorry mate when you create a ghetto you can expect people to fight back; what is your expectation: that they should roll over and play nice in the hope that they will get better treatment?
I’m sorry, can you actually read? Or is your confirmation bias on too tight.
“provide Israel with a slight excuse to carry on with what amounts to a war of extermination” Israel, dick, Israel, not Palestine – Hamas does, however, provide just enough of an excuse for Likkud and a whole Zionist lobby in the US to get on with it. FFS!
Is throwing rocks at military police sufficient justification for a hellfire missile strike on an apartment block. How about hand gun fire at military personnel?
to Populuxe – Is this before or after the water wells where taken and Palestinians left to literally die without a bullet being spent? Or when their land is being “taken” – just like that and there was no agreement on that – ever. Yes, 2 wrongs do not make 1 right.
P1 views the Palestinians and the Israelis as near equals in this ongoing conflict. And if only the Palestinians would start behaving, things would be much better for them. That says all it needs to.
No, I’m saying that we should value our soldiers lives over political ego. They are precious and should only be used as a last resort. We have lost several in the last year and it’s a time of peace.
Appeasement of Hitler was not, as is popularly portrayed, a kind of early incarnation of ‘peacenikery’. The elites of Europe no doubt supported Hitler’s reformation of the German economy, especially the re-privatisation of the banking sector and the privatisation of many publicly owned assets, including the railways, the biggest public sector operation in the world.
As this paper outlines, the privatisation pursued by the Nazis went against the trend of western governments of the time who, in response to the depression, had tended to (have to) nationalise firms and even industries – it was the big bail out, as followed today.
Remember that the German republic was, under Bismarck, one of the most advanced state apparatuses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The public sector was large. The Nazi privatisation represented windfalls for selected crony capitalists (as well as franchised arms of the Nazi Party). The term ‘reprivatisation’ used post-WWII was, in fact, adopted from 1930s Germany.
From the link above:
“The Nazi government may have used privatization as a tool to improve its relationship with big industrialists and to increase support among this group for its policies. Privatization was also likely used to foster more widespread political support [i.e., financial backing] for the party. Finally, financial motivations played a central role in Nazi privatization. The proceeds from privatization in 1934-37 had relevant fiscal significance: No less than 1.37 per cent of total fiscal revenues were obtained from selling shares in public firms. Moreover, the government avoided including a huge expenditure in the budget by using outside-of-the-budget tools to finance the public services franchised to Nazi organizations.
Nazi economic policy in the mid-thirties went against the mainstream in several dimensions. The huge increase in public expenditure programs was unique, as was the increase in the armament programs, and together they heavily constrained the budget. Exceptional policies were put in place to finance this exceptional expenditure, and privatization was just one among them. Nazi Germany privatized systematically, and was the only country to do so at the time. This drove Nazi policy against the mainstream, which flowed against privatization of state ownership or public services until the last quarter of the twentieth century.”
It’s worth remembering that the ‘appeasers’ were, generally, very wealthy men – leading Tories (including Eden who was an appeaser, despite his resignation over how to respond to Mussolini breaching an agreement) with international business and financial interests and connections. It’s also worth remembering that the greater threat was always considered to be the Soviet Union – and the UK elite knew that Hitler was keen to invade Russia.
I’m sure that was a great consolation to Germany’s Jewish industrialists- oh wait, no, they were on to the nazi’s fairly early on for good reasons. How about the wealthy and influential Czech and Polish industrialists… Oh, no, wait…. I think more than a few French businessmen were probably inconvenienced too…
No it was the Anglo Saxon Elite that saw the advantage whereas the socialist left in France and elsewhere expected the political scenery to change to their advantage. In the end, it all came down to money. Europe at the time has lost its royal houses through revolts and civil was followed as a void needed to be filled. The general population was to a certain extend naive. But one should not forget that there wasn’t the media as it is today and the radio was easily controlled.
To put it in perspective, Manapouri produces enough power to supply about 630,000 houses each year. It could run five Large Hadron Colliders. It could run two times Google’s data storage network.
Bertram says power companies have been gouging the consumer for too long. With a simple write down of their assets Tiwai could give all New Zealanders 300kW hours free, each month, for ever. At current average power prices that’s about $80 a month off your power bill, permanently.
$80 a month. Just from Manapouri hydro. Kinda puts the Labour/Greens $300 saving per year in perspective.
If you add this potential saving to the potential saving associated with writing down the asset values of the other generators what would the cents per kWh price be?
I’d love to see an article from Geoff Bertram which states what the price of electricity should be.
So he spent a quarter mil on travel, ok, he no doubt has a great collection of pens and plenty of spare headphones. It would be a lot more interesting though and certainly more revealing to see what his total expenses were, especially regarding the gravy train dinners, lunches, lunches that become dinners etc. I imagine the wine bill alone is mighty impressive. I also expect sundries will not be itemized.
Yes, but you can say the same about just about any New Zealand politician, regardless of party. That sort of point scoring is ultimately not a game worth playing.
Not really, there is a distinct culture of entiltlement amongst ‘the deal makers’ that only gets worse the closer to trade deals that you get. Every country (and every wannabe) do their damndest to show it is the richest flashiest most succesful etc. Much like any bunch of friday night fools showing off in the newest downtown bar. In my humble opinion, the taxpayer much like the cleaner the next day, is thoroughly sick of it.
imagine if this was promised by a party:
No more parliamentary pensions/benefits/discounts etc. Do your time in service. You get well paid, then that is it.
The trough is closed. There’s a (?) 20-30 million a year saved just like that.
A few facts. Germany was locked out of global colonial ambitions. WWI. Germany is a patchwork of protestant and catholicism (and pre-WWII jews). So the WWII was not about Christianity, since Christians were on both sides, if anything there were more non-Christians on the allies side in both great wars. As France and Britain brought in non-European armies from their colonies. Independence of these colonies was won in part because of those who had given up their lives in those wars. Also Israel existence is a form of restitution, etc.
So when Moro’s guest said we remember them, God and Country, etc, that every creed, faith, etc was a afterthought, a modernism. I can’t help be struck how much has been forgotten.
Our forefathers did not go to the world wars for Christianity.
As far as Zionism is concerned, the founder of Zionism and apostate, Theodor Herzl, sought to intensify hatred of the Jew in order to enhance the cause of political Zionism. Here are some of his “pearls:
“It is essential that the sufferings of Jews. . . become worse. . . this will assist in realization of our plans. . .I have an excellent idea. . . I shall induce anti-semites to liquidate Jewish wealth. . . The anti-semites will assist us thereby in that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews. The anti-semites shall be our best friends. (From his Diary, Part I, pp. 16)
Karl Marx never suggested theft. expropriation
I think you’ll find the first definition correct. It is repossession of that which was stolen in the first place.
You say po-tay-to, I say take your mendacious little word games and go fuck yourself. Shifting the goal posts around doesn’t change what it is. “Expropriation”, as opposed to paying tax, is theft. Lenin’s “expropriation” wasn’t very different from Hitler’s “expropriation” from the Jews.
Or Gerry’s threatened expropriation of landowners’ property in Christchurch?
One of the saddest things about modern economies is that they are built upon private property.We all wish to defend our, generally, minuscule amounts of private property, thus allowing those with massive amounts to dominate our world. We accept the sacrifice of our freedom (i.e., the relative influence of our voice in collective decision making) to protect very little that is our ‘own’, in most cases. Not a wise – or rational – trade-off.
Populuxe1, is the accumulation of property (via legal means) never theft in liberal democracies? (I’m assuming that we agree that legality is not the arbiter of whether or not something is ‘theft’ – theft is the acquisition of something that does not rightfully belong to you; a judgment that depends upon moral and ethical principles, not the current state of the law.).
On Lenin’s expropriations – the economic system of the Tsar (Nicholas II) in Russia was mainly feudal (though industrialisation had flourished under his father, Alexander III). Was the property accumulated by the Russian aristocracy legitimately obtained? Remember, the Tsar was an absolute/divine monarch and tens of millions of serfs lived and died under harsh conditions for generations prior to the 1917 revolutions (and the one in 1905).
Similarly, were the holdings of the British Crown in the American Colonies legitimate, given that they were quite decisively expropriated by the Colonial elite? (Should today’s Americans be paying compensation to the British Crown?)
Again, was Maori land in New Zealand expropriated (i.e., in your eyes, stolen)?
And what happened to the Jews in the 1930s in Germany was not ‘expropriation’ – it was ethnic cleansing and brutal terrorising and oppression. Get your terms right. Property had very little to do with it. That was a ‘bonus’.
Dismount your high horse. It’s just a broomstick with a pretend horse’s head on top.
History is not something to huff and puff about, especially over ‘theft’. It’s about power – who has it and who doesn’t. Those with the power get the property. Those without power and property seek to gain it.
And those with the power always get to decide what is and isn’t theft.
Your incoherent rambling is utterly unconvincing. Perhaps the stupidest sentence is your extraordinary claim that Israel’s existence is a “form of restitution, etc.”
I’m not going to ask you to explain—you are clearly not up to it.
The position of RRC pays over 200k a year, or has Devoy refused the salary?
I cannot find anything saying she has, so is this article just another type and print, forget the fact-check, straight to market lie?
also imagine The mad butcher’s definition of lewd is pretty colourful and likely very different from say, Colin Craig’s 🙂
Policy on the Hoof? And envy of colleagues’ exposure?
Grant Robertson is trying to limit the Party’s Policy Options and put down his colleagues.
Shearer and Parker were leading the NZPower story. But Robertson has to put his oar in! Wow has the boy an inferiority complex!
“Labour makes no apology for stepping in to fix problems in the electricity sector. But this is not a signal that Labour is going to intervene elsewhere in the economy.
“As we said on the day we launched NZ Power, we have no plans to intervene in any other markets.”
WTF? We have just seen the consensus around the Neo-Liberal hegemony of the past thirty years finally get dented: and Grant Robertson is trying to stop it!
Robertson will lead Labour to the same position it is in Wellington Central. Third position behind National and the Greens!
“I’ll just bring in my expert witness here: Ron Mark”
The Vote: Is New Zealand a Racist Country?
TV3, Wednesday 24 April 2013, 8:30 p.m.
After watching the superb Annie Goldson documentary about NZ in Afghanistan, my big night of television continued with this horror show. I watched this insult to the intelligence, this D-grade comedy, this dog’s breakfast on the TV3 Plus One channel.
The producers had assembled what looked like a lecture-theatre full of people, many of them well known in their own right. At first glance it looked like this might be a return to the serious live studio spectaculars that Gordon Dryden, Brian Edwards and Ian Fraser used to front in the 1970s and ’80s. But TV3 obviously doesn’t trust the idea of boring old discussions. Some genius has come up with the idea that a program about racism can be treated like one of those ghastly music talent quests, where celebrity judges gather a team of “talents” and spend half of the show verbally sniping at each other. Presiding over all of this is a “moderator”, played by Linda Clark. Her brief: Keep it light. It’s supposed to be amusing.
On The Vote, the equivalents of the celeb judges on the pop star talent quests are Guyon Espiner and Duncan Garner, who have obviously been instructed to dish out the repartee against one another; someone in management evidently thinks these two are the equivalent of Abbott and Costello.
Tonight, Guyon Espiner heads the “Yes” team, with Damon Salesa and John Tamihere. Duncan Garner is the captain of the “No” team, backed up by May Chen and Phil Goff. The default mood for the evening is comical truculence….
Clearly, what was actually said during this show was not important to the producers. What they wanted was manufactured conflict, plenty of personality clashes—and lots of laughs. Of the “talent”, however, only John Tamihere seemed to be in on this; the other three seemed to take it seriously. So we saw the demeaning sight of Professor Damon Salesa trying to make a serious argument in the face of a barrage of heckling and infantile negative comments by Duncan Garner.
So the mood of frivolity and forced competitiveness had been established. But it only got worse….
DUNCAN GARNER: Okay, I’ll just bring in my expert witness here: Ron Mark!
Instead of eliciting gales of laughter, this announcement was treated seriously, and Winston Peters’ loyal soldier was wheeled on to deliver banalities for a long, long minute in his usual manner. Then the “expert witness” returned to the crowd, with nobody any the wiser. It was like he was back in parliament.
Now, rack my brains as I might, I could think of only one political featherweight shallower than Ron Mark—and sure enough, not long after, this happened….
GUYON ESPINER: All right, now to argue that New Zealand IS a racist country, we have the Member of Parliament for Khandallah, Peter Dunne!
This ineffective fop, this repellent poseur, this National Party stooge embarked on one of his trademark wandery homilies, focused entirely on the notion that we are racist against CHINESE people. This pitiable, bow-tied, bouffanted fool probably doesn’t even know that there are Māori people in New Zealand.
As Dunne droned on, I could make out in the audience several prominent people, including John Minto, Don “Brethren Cash” Brash (nodding gravely to show he took it all very seriously) and the controversial new Race Relations commissioner Dame Susan Devoy.
Finally, mercifully, Dunne’s monologue came to an end and he sat down, to the relief of all. It was back to the comedians….
DUNCAN GARNER: Calling us racist is plain NUTS and simply offensive! LINDA CLARK: I have here the result of our audience poll. Eighty-two per cent think that YES, New Zealand is a racist country. GUYON ESPINER: Eighty-two per cent! It’s hard to argue we’re not a racist country with those sorts of numbers!
Then it’s time for a commercial break, but before that, viewers are taken into the middle of each team as they huddle together and strategize, just like a sports team talk. What is obvious immediately is that Espiner does all the talking, while Tamihere and Salesa listen intently. Same with the other team: Garner urgently strategizes, while Goff and Chen listen. The “stars” have to be seen to be in charge.
DUNCAN GARNER: Right, next up, the big question: Are Māori TOO PRIVILEGED? This of course is the question Don Brash asked back in 2004.
John Tamihere says something disparaging about the old racist, and is warming to his task before the moderator steps in…
LINDA CLARK:[giggling] Tamihere, be QUIET!
AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
LINDA CLARK: Forty-eight per cent of our audience says YES, Māori are too privileged, and 42 per cent say no they are not. So it’s almost TOO CLOSE TO CALL!
The old race-baiter, Don “Brethren Cash” Brash is then trundled on to the stage and asked if he STILL thinks Māori are a privileged and indulged elite group…
DON “BRETHREN CASH” BRASH: Ehhhhhhhhhhhmmmmm. Yes they are. Ehhhhhhhhhhhmmmm.
AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!…What?… You silly old fool!… Ha!… Somebody shoot him!
As disgusting and ridiculous as the old race-baiter and Brethren stooge is, he is almost immediately upstaged….
MAY CHEN:[slowly, with gravitas] As Ron Mark said, we are sorting out our racial problems in the bedrooms of the nation.
That crass and insulting statement comes courtesy of the fertile brain of Dr. Ranginui Walker. It was one of his enduring tropes during his long tenure as a Listener columnist, and he repeated it again recently when he was interviewed on radio.
LINDA CLARK: After the break, we will sum up. And we will talk to the new Race Relations Commissioner, Dame Susan Devoy.
This proved to be the only pleasant surprise of the night. Dame Susan handled her brief interview impressively. She was balanced, generous and well spoken.
As for the rest of those involved in this dud: shame on you all.
Sounds truly awful viewing, Moz. Thanks for taking one for the team!
It was awful, all right, but it was compellingly awful. I even felt positive at the end of it, seeing Dame Susan give such a good account of herself.
Mai Chen, btw.
I KNEW it! Just before I pushed the “Submit Comment” button, I had this nagging feeling that I had made a mistake somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn’t track it down. Thanks for that.
From the Herald “Trade Minister Tim Groser’s bid to head the World Trade Organisation has failed……”The New Zealand Government has spent a lot of money supporting Mr Groser’s bid.” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10879907
How much is ‘a lot of money’? Will the corporate media bother to find out?
And will they ask if that money could have been spent on other stuff…like tackling child poverty, save DOC jobs, raising the minimum wage more etc etc
Don’t hold your breath.
Well . . . the MSM has pointed out the bill is around about $3000 per day, and that’s just for travel. You can add in his salary since lobbying for the job is all he’s done.
The Government are NOT going to get a ‘good price’ for Mighty River Power, according the opinion expressed in the Dominion Post Editorial dated 24 April 2013:
OPINION: An unholy mess. There is no other way to describe the Government’s partial asset sales programme.
With just days to go before the public offering of shares in Mighty River Power closes, the float is shrouded in uncertainty. Is the country’s single biggest consumer of electricity about to shut its doors? Will Labour and the Green Party be part of the next government and, if so, will they make good on their promises to renationalise the electricity industry by stealth?
Potential investors have no way of knowing whether Rio Tinto is serious about closing the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter unless it can wring further concessions from the Government and Meridian Energy. Likewise, they have no way of knowing whether Labour and the Greens will be in a position to implement their policies after the next election.
But, amid all the uncertainty, there is one certainty: the price the Government and, ultimately the public, will receive for shares sold in Mighty River Power will be lower because of the uncertainty. ….
However, political considerations should not determine the fate of an asset worth billions of dollars that has been built up by generations of taxpayers. The Government’s overriding concerns should be ensuring that taxpayers get fair value for the business and that as many New Zealanders as possible take advantage of the opportunity to become shareholders in it.
Neither of those goals are likely to be achieved while there is a possibility of the country being flooded with cheap electricity and the next government telling generators how much they can charge for electricity and how they should operate their power stations.
……………………
But, delaying the sale till after the next election would at least allow voters to choose which of the two approaches offers the better prospect of sensible pricing and secure supply. It would also allow time for the future of Tiwai Point to be resolved.”
______________________________________________________________________________
SO! CALL OFF THE SALE OF MIGHTY RIVER POWER!
Is NZ Prime Minister John Key, (a shareholder in the Bank of America), going to continue to put his mouth where his money is, and look after investors – or is he going to look after the public majority of taxpayers?
(Remembering that arguably the majority of taxpayers are not investors?)
“Rt Hon John KEY (National, Helensville)
……..
Bank of America – banking ”
How appropriate is it for the four people responsible for setting the ‘final price’ of Mighty River Power shares are those who seem ‘hell bent’ on selling off Mighty River Power at any price, seemingly regardless of the cost to taxpayers?
“.. I can advise that Cabinet has delegated authority to a group of Ministers to set the final price for shares in the Mighty River Power share offer. the group of Ministers is the Prime Minister (John Key) Minister of Finance (Bill English) , Minister for Economic Development and Associate Minister of Finance Steven Joyce, and Minister of State-Owned Enterprises (Tony Ryall).”
Prime Minister John Key, Minister of Finance Bill English, Minister for Economic Development and Associate Minister of Finance Steven Joyce, and Minister of State-Owned Enterprises Tony Ryall, must act in a fiscally responsible, and financially prudent way and look after the interests of taxpayers by calling of the sale of Mighty River Power – NOW.
The other risk the NZ Government faces is that thousands of new ‘Mum and Dad’ investors, not to mention larger investors, both national and international, may lose confidence in the NZ sharemarket, because of the uncertainty over this ‘unholy mess’ which is currently the Mighty River Power share launch.
Tomorrow – Saturday 27 April 2013 will be actions all over New Zealand opposing asset sales – which today’s protest outside Mighty River Power, will help to advertise:
sounds pretty good to me why should they pay the workers when there not working and out on the street having a fucking whine
[r0b: farmboy, filling your comments with fucking swearing doesn’t impress anyone, and it (unfortunately) promotes comments in kind, and the whole thread gets derailed. Please calm down all, DNFTT.]
[lprent: Banned one week for what appears to have been a deliberate attempt to start a flame war. Banned a further week for wasting my time moving the thread to OpenMike and away from diverting from the post topic. ]
The sensible answer to your stupid question is to point out that “fucking whining” is a feeble mis-characterisation of the right to strike, you fucking child.
Get a horse. And a haircut. And a pickaxe handle. Ride into town to cleanse the streets. You can call yourself Key’s Cossacks.
And please, if you fall off the horse like that AWB idiot in South Africa, put the video on youtube.
might be hard to record myself while smashing heads with my pickaxe that sounds like a 2hander maybe they should just get the sack and someone more concerned about doing a decent days work for decent money as in affco should be hired that would sound pretty weird to you but alot of people actully work without havn a cry
If Rambo can handle an M60 with one hand, but you need two for a pickaxe handle, what sort of righty are you? Bloody soft, that’s what I say. Now stop crying and look for a full stop, some commas, and a clue.
The New Lynn LEC is hosting the Whau Ward Selection Meeting tomorrow at 4.00.
It will be held in 3071 Great North Road, New Lynn, opposite the Police Station!
The Whau seat on the Council and the seven Whau Local Board seats will be contested by the Labour Party, with full Labour Party branding. All candidates will be members of the Labour Party.
Labour will present a full slate.
The Whau Ward is predominantly in the New Lynn Parliamentary electorate, with parts in the Mt Albert and the Mt Roskill electorates.
All Whau area LabourParty paid-up members are welcome to attend.
Every self respecting Auckland lefty and liberal will be at the weekend march against the sale of our assetsthis Saturday. Kicks off at 2 pm from Britomart.
Any self respecting New Zealander should be there. You may have voted for National. Show the government this is not the reason you voted for them.
Selling assets is a sale of our sovereignty. If should affect all New Zealanders.
from RNZ, apparently the Christchurch rebuild is to cost up to 30% /10B more than the government had until now calculated, coming to possibly 40B in total.
The governments reason for the conservative estimates include
-inflationary pressure
-impact upon total $NZ spend.
-impact on stake-holders costs; (insurers want to cap their debt), taxpayers and ratepayers
“Throw off your hat kick off your shoes
Throw down your gun you might shoot yourself
Or is that what you’re trying to do?”
So Grosers bid to be the next bigwig of the WTO has crashed and burned. So will he pay the obscene amount of money he has wasted on his pipe dream, back to the taxpayer? Will he fuck. What a waste of time and space he is. And he’s been collecting his taxpayer salary too, what a bludger.\
“The trade minister hit headlines last week when it emerged that he racked up travel expenses of almost $260,000 in the first three months of the year – nearly $3000 a day – as he lobbied for the WTO top job.”
Not one cent of the millions of dollars worth of assets seized from criminals has been funnelled into drug treatment or resources to fight organised crime as promised when the enabling law came into force.
Nearly $150 million worth of homes, cars, boats, cash, jewellery and other valuables has been restrained since the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was passed in December 2009, of which $27 million has been forfeited to the Crown
Forfeited to The Crown – WTF does that even mean, and who has that cash!
Where is the rest of the seized assets/cash ending up?
Seems to be a slide in terminology in the article: $150mil “restrained” (i.e. my guess is frozen), but $27mil “forfeited” (my guess is completed the seizure process and handed over). However, once that is converted into cash and other creditors settled (article mentioned the banks of course, and spouses) a little over a third of that actually gets to the government (shit valuation of the property?), and of that ABSOLUTELY NONE goes to rehabilitation or addressing the causes of crime. All has disappeared into the consolidated fund, which the nats piss away like export gold (i.e. tip directly down the drain without involving the kidneys as middleman).
Police involved in the Urewera dawn raids had still not fully co-operated with the agency investigating their actions five years after the controversial operation.
With full support through the blue structure, is the only way this *lack of cooperation* could happen!
The Averch–Johnson effect is the tendency of companies to engage in excessive amounts of capital accumulation in order to expand the volume of their profits. If companies profits to capital ratio is regulated at a certain percentage then there is a strong incentive for companies to over-invest in order to increase profits overall. This goes against any optimal efficiency point for capital that the company may have calculated as higher profit is almost always desired over and above efficiency.
As far as I can tell, this effect describes the main reason our electricity prices are so high.
But it’s not really going to happen! Otherwise we’d be taking to the streets instead of sitting on the internet calling each other names or arguing about politics and shit.
It’s not really them that we have to worry about though. It’s us and all the people we know that know that CC is real but still aren’t doing much about it.
The Allen: That is the way I have lived here since I arrived! I NEVER saved and got anywhere, really, as just working honestly and hardly leaves you nowhere but down at the bottom. NZ has NOT improved or changed substantially since the 1980s, apart for a few. That is the sad reality, especially for ordinary, low paid workers, and certainly for benficiaries. Fuck National AND Labour for that!
I have not taken a “knife” to WINZ, which I thought of doing so, but North cautioned me. I was not really decided and ready to let off my anger about welfare reforms and to be expected harassments in that manner. But given the most intimidating steps to be expected soon, I will not make any promise or take any commitments to what I can, can restrain myself from, or what may otherwise happen. I have been treated with utter contempt before and was near suicide, due to WINZ and MSD agendas and treatments.
This present Nat dominated government is pushing many of us to the brink, and if I need to take action, I will do so, even if I need to take the last step to take my life.
I HATE New Zealand for what this country has been turned into, it is now a disgustingly unfair, divided, racist and hateful place, I wish I had never come back to. It is up to YOU to make a difference and take a stand.
Much is happening behind the scenes, but few understand and will be prepared to listen.
Good luck, if you believe that freedom, democracy and rights will be preserved by sitting at home, blogging, chatting and otherwise just minding your own selective interests, you will soon see another thing coming. Iit is too much cowardice that rules this country.
For FUCKS sake, wake up, take a stand, and go on the Day of Action Today!!!
I respect and see my ideal in Che Guevara, as I identify very much with this man!
Oh dear, oh dear, a few hundred marching and “holding up traffic” in Queen Street on the “Day of Action Against Asset Sales”, a supposed one hundred marching in Wellington, and was there any few others that bothered? Seems that to most the horse has bolted long ago, and it is more of “roll over Kiwis” all over the land. Yawn, sigh, what a mess!
That is how much people care, division is the rule now, self interest and self pre-occupation the prime ambition, so next election will likely show another term for this semi dictotorial lot running the show.
Import more slaves to do the dirty jobs at service stations in supermarkets, as cleaners in your offices, in fast food and restaurant outlets, in bars and what else need done to keep the show running.
F*** the rest, that seems to be the motto of most.
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We need to fundamentally reframe our systems settings to address the drivers causing and underpinning inequality; structural change in systems especially financial. The Equality Network Hui was held in Wellington on 27 June 2019. The hui covered important topics such as child poverty; a living wage; taxation; public health; mental ...
The views-per-page for some of my recent postings:Depressing, isn't it? Provide thoughtful and wise commentary on the mainstream of British politics and no-one notices. Make a passing reference to Tommy DICKHEAD Robinson in a thread title and you get hundreds of views. Write something about anti-Semitism and you get another ...
The government has announced plans to move the Treaty of Waitangi and other taonga to a new site. Great news! So where are they going? Right next to the old one:The new plan will see a new 22,000-square-metre archive built on the former site of Defence House - the former ...
Back in June, StatsNZ went public about a project to track population data on an hourly level by using people's cellphones. It wasn't as bad as it initially looked - they were receiving no individual data, only counts by suburb - but there was still a huge consent problem, so ...
Most economists agree that a currently slowing economy could do with some stimulus – and they would also agree that there is no shortage of infrastructure projects which could be brought to productive fruition with help from that stimulus. In view of the current practice of sub-contracting economic policy decisions ...
I did an interview on the TVNZ Breakfast Show about the situation in Hong Kong. I tried to frame the issue as a collective action problem between two sides with very different end games. The video is here. Because of time constraints we could not discuss the fact that the ...
Image Credit: Wild Rose College A new study reporting the ranges of values for kidney and liver parameters in a healthy population is being actively misrepresented by anti-fluoride campaigners. The Fluoride Action Network’s (FAN) latest ...
Image Credit: Wild Rose College A new study reporting the ranges of values for kidney and liver parameters in a healthy population is being actively misrepresented by anti-fluoride campaigners. The Fluoride Action Network’s (FAN) latest ...
AN OPEN LETTER FOR SIGN ON BY ORGANISATIONS AND MOVEMENTS ACROSS THE WORLD, ALLIED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST INEQUALITY. This letter was released at the UN Political Forum on 9 July, where the Sustainable Development Goal on inequality was reviewed. The purpose of the letter is to call out the ...
We asked a young gay science student and critic of trans ideology and the trans activists’ assault on women’s and gay rights to outline his views on Redline. Thanks to him for his article. by Cian Ó Catháin Gender identity ideology (Gender ID) is ripping through western society at full ...
The Environment Committee is currently hearing submissions on the Zero Carbon Bill, and Stuff is reporting on the submissions. Today, they're covering yesterday they heard from "NZ" Steel:NZ Steel has told MPs it may be forced to close with the loss of thousands of jobs if changes aren't made to ...
Students are striking against climate change on September 27. And this time, they're asking everyone to join them:Students are taking to the streets, beaches and parks on 27 September, and we're inviting everyone to join us. That's right, this is an intergenerational issue, and you're all invited to put pressure ...
Peter McKenzie has a piece on Newsroom this morning about how local body politics is awash with property developer cash. 70% of all the donations in the 2016 Wellington mayoral election came from property developers. And its pretty obvious what they want in exchange:That’s particularly important in local government, according ...
Source: Unknown, twitter user Recently, I wrote a (relatively) short paper titled as above, to explore what self-determination could like in a practical sense. Maybe I’m a bit of an international trade truther or something, but I absolutely believe trade is at the heart of achieving peace and self-determination. Since ...
In the 1960s, after I had graduated with a first-class Oxford postgraduate law degree, I joined the British Foreign Office as the top entrant of my year. There, I worked for a couple of years on European affairs and was eventually posted to the Embassy in Brussels. After this exposure ...
Alone, Alone. All, All Alone: Will it be a good or a bad thing, when humanity’s bright blue spacecraft is stricken by the civilisation-destroying problem of Climate Change, that no Huston Control will be standing-by to rescue the crew?“WE HAVE A PROBLEM, HUSTON.” These were the words used by the ...
I heard a 45 minute interview with Monica Lewinsky talking to TED’s Chris Anderson on BBC Radio 4 over the weekend, and have listened to it another two times out walking. I recommend it. Highly. Man, I am so impressed with how this woman has integrated her life experiences and ...
Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure, London, Penguin, 2019, 352pp; reviewed by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s book The Coddling of the American Mind is a timely book, whose ...
When the Justice Committee reported back on the Administration of Justice (Reform of Contempt of Court) Bill, free speech advocates breathed a sigh of relief. As originally introduced, the Bill reitered the ancient offence of "scandalising the court" - basicly, a special sedition law protecting judges from criticism. The select ...
Eighteen months ago, the government promised to strengthen the Bill of Rights Act, by explicitly affirming the power of the courts to issue declarations of inconsistency and requiring Parliament to formally respond to them. Since then - crickets. Which raises the obvious question: are they actually going to do this, ...
Back in March, the Ministry of Justice conducted a public consultation exercise on whether to hold a review of the Official Information Act. 285 people submitted on it. Now, Stuff has trawled through those submissions, and the case for reform is strong:The Justice Ministry asked Kiwis what they thought was ...
National's prisoner voting ban has gone down as one of the worst laws in New Zealand history. Passed after a farcical debate (including this farcial speech from ACT MP Hilary Calvert), it has subsequently been found to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act by the High Court, Court ...
Divided Loyalties: Can the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, be relied upon? That’s what the boys and girls at Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon needed to be reassured about. Because, from the perspective of Washington, it’s looking more and more like Jacinda Ardern and her Labour Party comrades are getting ready ...
This handy Queer Theory Glossary is from thetranswidow.com In case you’ve had trouble keeping up with the spate of new queer theory terms, here’s a handy glossary for your reference. Queer – A straight person with an interesting haircut. Non-binary/genderqueer – A chubby young female, typically 16-28, who has ...
by Daphna Whitmore US social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt spoke on 1 August in Auckland to a crowd of around one thousand people. He is best known for his bookThe Coddling of the American Mind which examines the new climate of trigger warnings and acute sensitivity of Gen Z. ...
What an extraordinarily depressing experience it is to be compelled to watch, at 12,000 miles distance, the contortions and machinations of the British political class as they set about their determined attempt to overturn the decision taken by the British people that they wish to leave the European Union. The ...
The winter grazing issue is becoming a highly sensitised one that I hope will not become so politicised that it delays solutions and results in the suicides of some very stressed farmers.Winter grazing has hit the headlines after a determined campaign, including the release of a video of some very ...
by Don Franks Way back when British guitar virtuoso Joe Brown was a beginning session guy he got to back a visiting American artist. Young Joe was an able technician but had yet to learn some points of professionalism. Part way through “Five foot high and rising” Joe tired of ...
Since scientists started studying climate change, they have warned that it will reduce food production. And now, its happening:The climate crisis is damaging the ability of the land to sustain humanity, with cascading risks becoming increasingly severe as global temperatures rise, according to a landmark UN report compiled by some ...
The Abortion Legislation Bill just passed its first reading, 94-23. Its a far bigger margin than I expected, even allowing for the Winston factor, and it reflects the overwhelming support there is in this country for reform. but that support isn't a new thing - it has existed for literally ...
The Justice Committee has called for submissions on the Referendums Framework Bill. The Bill does what it says on the label - establishes a framework for referenda. Things you may want to address in your submission: Whether the bill should apply only at the 2020 election, or whether it should ...
The Thompson and Clark / MBIE spying scandal continues to result in fallout, this time in the form of a report on the implementation of MBIE's "Operation Exploration", its internal operation to enforce the infamous Anadarko Amendment which criminalised protests against the oil industry. MBIE's enforcement operation was tainted by ...
So, Winston Peters is defending his last-minute demand for a referendum on abortion by claiming he was "blindsided" by the bill. Really? The bill is a government bill. It has been working through the cabinet approval process since December last year. As part of that process, NZ First was consulted, ...
The Green Part has been accused of lack of transparency in two recent situations. The first was the claimed media lockdown during Green's annual conference and the second was Julie Ann Genter's refusal to release a letter she had sent to Phil Twyford.I do get frustrated when journalist's succumb to ...
The Green Part has been accused of lack of transparency in two recent situations. The first was the claimed media lockdown during Green's annual conference and the second was Julie Ann Genter's refusal to release a letter she had sent to Phil Twyford.I do get frustrated when journalist's succumb to ...
Opportunities to dodge tax are shrinking with the completion of a new tax agreement with Switzerland, Revenue Minister Stuart Nash announced today. Mr Nash and the Swiss Ambassador David Vogelsanger have today signed documents to update the double tax agreement (DTA). The previous DTA was signed in 1980. “Double tax ...
‘Original Sin’ of Land Confiscation at Ihumātao is a wrong that can be put right by Government says Justice & Peace Commission of Catholic Diocese of Auckland ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told a press conference on August 19 that her government is likely to impose new restrictions on prisoners’ rights to send letters. She said the law could be changed in “weeks.” ...
Heart-warming images of House Speaker Trevor Mallard cradling a baby in Parliament have been welcomed around New Zealand, but the Public Service Association warns most families can only dream of such support in the workplace. ...
Applying New Zealand’s international human rights commitments, particularly those in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, can help in resolving the situation at Ihumātao, Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt says. ...
Climate campaigners impersonating bank staff have taken to the streets this week to expose ANZ Bank’s sponsorship of the fossil fuel industry. In the series of satirical actions in Wellington, Dunedin, and Auckland, the ‘bank staff’ promoted ...
Auckland Action Against Poverty joins the Children’s Commissioner , The Green Party , The New Zealand Drugs Foundation , Child Poverty Action Group and other organisations in the calls for an immediate end to the drug testing benefit sanctions. ...
Negotiations between Port Otago workers represented by the Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU) and the Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ) and management failed today and the unions have issued notice of an overtime ban from Saturday 7th September. ...
Queenstown Lakes District Council’s comments that it has applied for a consent to pollute waterways to avoid 'prosecutions by the Otago Regional Council' are unacceptable,’ Fish & Game New Zealand Chief Executive Martin Taylor says. ...
On March 15, the real world impact of online hate became abundantly, horrifically clear. As a shooter opened fire at two Christchurch mosques, the online image board 8chan anticipated, celebrated and amplified his killing spree. ...
Friday, 23 August: Government delegates from around the world, including New Zealand, are meeting in New York for the third of four meetings at the United Nations to agree a Global Oceans Treaty that could help to protect 30% of our oceans by 2030. Greenpeace ...
The excuses about a reportedly unwanted $57,000 payrise for Dunedin City Council CEO Sue Bidrose are laughable, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. ...
The Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance has launched the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” committing to no more than 2% annual rate hikes over the next Council term, and has written to all Mayoral and Council candidates asking them to sign. The pledge will ...
This Saturday, Pakuranga Hunt Day at the Ellerslie Racecourse will see anti-horse racing protesters demonstrating at the corner of Ascot Avenue and Greenlane East. ...
Mayoral candidate John Tamihere will meet with Pacific Island leaders and community elders today at Puhunui Reserve in South Auckland to commit to a Pasefika Cultural Centre. ...
Cruel and invalid Forced Swim Tests carried out at Victoria University of Wellington, will be exposed at the University Open Day today, so prospective students can be warned about the flawed and unethical research being conducted at the institute. ...
The organiser of the annual YWCA Equal Pay Awards has expressed her disappointment with the latest Gender Pay Gap figure for New Zealand workers. The figure rose slightly from 9.2% in 2018 to 9.3% for the quarter ended 30 June 2019. ...
The Council of Licenced Firearm Owners (COLFO) is urging firearms owners to pass on information to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Attack on Christchurch Mosques now that the period for submissions has been extended to 27 September. ...
An application was filed in the Employment Relations Authority in Wellington today, seeking an injunction to prevent the Board of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation from removing the President from office. ...
The Government’s commitment to support literacy and numeracy training in the workplace is a strong signal from Government on recognising the importance of upskilling, reskilling and increasing productivity alongside their commitment to address the challenges ...
“The infrastructure sector sees a major role for the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission/Te Waihanga in lifting the nation’s sagging infrastructure performance,” says Paul Blair, incoming CEO of Infrastructure NZ. ...
The AA is calling on the Government to bring forward critical highway projects while time is spent properly developing the plans for a rapid transit system in Auckland. ...
Between 2015/16 and 2017/18, DHBs spent $280 million treating patients due to adverse drug reactions, reveals the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union in its latest briefing paper on health productivity . ...
The Pay Equity Coalition Auckland (PECA) is pleased the gender pay gap has decreased slightly. Statistics released today show the gap is now 11.9%, nearly 2 percent less than last year. ...
The Council of Licenced Firearm Owners (COLFO) is urging firearms owners to make sure they pass on any information they have to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Attack on Christchurch Mosques before submissions close tomorrow (Friday). ...
The big electricity companies consider solar energy “disruptive” and want pricing to suppress it. In contrast, advocates of local energy say that solar, energy efficiency, and other local energy solutions are the cheapest ways to reduce carbon emissions. ...
The Earthquake Commission and Shine Lawyers are delighted to announce that EQC has reached an agreement with the Gibling family, agreeing to cover the cost of repairs of remaining earthquake damage on their property. ...
Four months into the inquiry, the Royal Commission is gathering significant information and continues to receive valuable submissions from the public, from current and former State servants, experts and community groups. ...
While Fish & Game New Zealand is pleased to see Federated Farmers Environment Spokesperson Chris Allen say that 'we all want good, fresh water', he conveniently overlooks some key facts. ...
What: Wellington demo “Save the Amazon Forest/Salve a Amazônia!” When: Friday, 6 September 2019 from 12:30-13:30 Where: Embassy of Brazil in Wellingtona ...
Rt Hon Trevor Mallard, Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives, welcomes the visit of His Excellency Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, President of the Assembly of the Republic of Portugal. ...
A cross political Mental Health and Addictions Wellbeing group will be launched on Wednesday 28 August hosted by Sir John Kirwan and Moe Milne (ONZM) who have both been at the forefront of our country’s often difficult conversations about mental ...
Confirmation that the government will be progressing an independent Parliamentary Budget Office is great news for democracy and transparency, Federated Farmers says. ...
At first glance, Simon Bridges’ strident opposition to the government’s proposal to establish an independent office to cost political parties’ election spending plans looks childish and petty. ...
Euthanasia-Free NZ is appalled that Parliament spent so little time debating Part 2 of the End of Life Choice Bill and voted to leave it full of holes. ...
Jordan Williams, a spokesman for the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance and its nationwide sister group the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is slamming Auckland Mayor Phil Goff for his comments today that John Tamihere would need the Government’s support to ...
A ‘one size fits all’, inflexible and punitive regulatory regime for water quality just gets backs - and costs - up and most importantly will not work, Federated Farmers says. ...
Mediation yesterday between secondary principals and the government has resulted in a deal that the principals' negotiating team is recommending to its members. ...
Clubs New Zealand welcomes the decision of Justice Minister Andrew Little to put forward a bill amending the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act to allow all licensed premises to remain open for Rugby World Cup matches. ...
The Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation has ordered a review looking at labelling of added sugars in food and drinks. An option under investigation is ‘a pictorial approach applied to sugary beverages / sugar-sweetened beverages’ ...
Labour market data released by Statistics New Zealand today indicates that a gender pay gap persists in New Zealand, despite improvement in some areas. ...
In the midst of the 6th Great Extinction Event the coalition, STOP Trashing Our Planet is urging voters to take full responsibility for the legacy we are leaving our children. ...
LGNZ will carefully consider the proposed National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) to assess if it meets the Government’s aim of enabling urban development or simply adds more red tape to the planning process. ...
Statistics out today from the Government show that the gender wage imbalance, or gap, in the average wage is 11.9%, a strong 2 percentage point improvement from 13.9% last year. The gender pay imbalance in the median wage is 9.3%. ...
Newstalk ZB Drive host and Herald on Sunday columnist Heather du Plessis-Allan is taking on the challenge of keeping 2019 Auckland Mayoral contenders Phil Goff and John Tamihere in line and on point in tonight’s live NZ Herald Newstalk ZB debate. ...
On Monday the government announced its new five-year strategy to reduce the Māori prison population. Emilie Rākete looks at another ‘kaupapa Māori’ prison initiative that degrades prisoners and asks if Corrections are capable of seeing it through.On August 19th, the Department of Corrections announced Hōkai Rangi, its new strategy intended ...
By Michael Andrew The Indonesian media is contributing to resentment and racism toward Papuans, according to a human rights researcher and former journalist. Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch Jakarta told Pacific Media Watch many Indonesian journalists either view Papuans as enemy “separatists” or deviants and their reporting tends to convey these ...
Analysis - The prime minister puts a stake in the ground over petrol prices, National balks at having its election promises costed and the government puts millions into helping the homeless. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danilo Ignacio de Urzedo, PhD candidate, University of Sydney Record fires are raging in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, with more than 2,500 fires currently burning. They are collectively emitting huge amounts of carbon, with smoke plumes visible thousands of kilometres away. Fires in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sean Docking, Post-doctoral researcher, La Trobe University Basketball fans around the world were recently sickened by the footage of NBA star Kevin Durant’s Achilles tendon rupturing during a game. But while many think it’s only elite athletes who suffer from Achilles tendon ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Mountain, Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University The possibility of blackouts affecting half of Victoria has attracted plenty of attention to a document once read only by industry insiders and policy wonks: the Electricity Statement of Opportunities. The Statement, updated ...
George Clooney sold his tequila company for a billion dollars – but is the stuff any good? The Spinoff finds out. Imagine being so stupidly sexy you sneeze and sell a billion-dollar booze company. That’s what George Clooney did last year, flicking off the tequila business he started accidentally with an ...
The departure of "two Pākehā men" from the government's justice reform group will not hurt the quality of its final report, another member of the team says. ...
Combatting internet-related harm is being stymied by inter-industry disagreement and a lack of information about the extent and nature of the problem, a new report says. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Harcourt, J.W. Nevile Fellow in Economics and host of The Airport Economist, UNSW Amid the tributes to former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer and the stories of his authenticity, courage and quirky interests – like trains and military history – what ...
Current leader of the National Party, Simon Bridges.Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Is Simon Bridges really trying to channel Donald Trump? Or is he taking his cue from Scott Morrison? Or is he looking to emulate Boris Johnson? Whatever the inspiration, there’s been a clear change in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra [embedded content]Michelle Grattan talks about the sad news of the passing of former Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer with University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Professor Deep Saini. They also discuss Scott Morrison’s recent announcement about joining ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabriel Crowley, Adjunct Principal Research Fellow, James Cook University In February, about 600,000 cattle were killed by catastrophic flooding across north Queensland’s Carpentaria Gulf plains. The flood waters rose suddenly, forming a wall of water up to 70km wide. Record depths were ...
Simon Day dined alone at Monique Fiso’s Wellington restaurant Hiakai, and discovered it was the perfect way to appreciate the meaning of this special food. “Would you like a few more minutes with your phone?” the waitress at Hiakai asked sympathetically as I mashed a final goodbye text to my wife ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Willamson, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Monash University Australia’s gender pay gap is diminishing, says a new report, but some contributors to it seem harder to overcome than others. For me, the finding hit close to home. The report, by KPMG for ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Treaty of Waitangi by Toby Morris with Ross Calman, Mark Derby, and ...
Honey producer Comvita has confirmed a full year net loss of $27.7m with China market access restrictions and tougher regulations locally affecting the company's sales. ...
James Elliott realises John Tamihere's uncosted bridge proposal wasn't actually a metaphor, but a fine example of 'folks is mighty generous with money what they ain’t got'. ...
A new poem by Oamaru-born poet Nick Ascroft.SupermanHalfway up the ascent zigzagging from Royal Terrace to upper Stuart Street carrying four too-heavy grocery bags I begin to understand that I will not make it. My huffing personage – from the fingers, white with the strain, to a face the colour of rhubarb – will ooze into the pavement and roll slowly ...
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s.Sound the alarm, because it’s time for another absolute chaos pod. We’re talking haunted dolls in Waipu, we’re talking giant hands taking over Wellington, we’re talking soft serve cones dipped in powdered Milo. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Press, Adjunct Professor, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania This week, the ABC revealed that the Australian Defence Force wants to roll out military technology in Antarctica. The article raises the issue of what is, or is not, ...
New Zealand teacher aides say their pay reflects an outdated idea of what they do. Elizabeth McLeod hears from four TAs, and one parent, about the classroom realities they face every dayCleaning up poo, defusing violent situations, copping physical and verbal abuse: these are the realities of a teacher aide’s ...
The lanky sidekick from Jono and Ben journeys around New Zealand trying to solve small town problems. Does he succeed?Guy Williams, hardly a shy, retiring type, has been screaming out for his own vehicle for years. A loud, lanky, fearless comic, he’s spent nearly a decade in MediaWorks purgatory, sat ...
Ballot Box.Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – The nature of New Zealand general election campaigns could be significantly changed with the proposed establishment of an “umpire” to adjudicate over political party manifesto policies. A suggestion has been put forward by the Government for the establishment of a parliamentary watchdog ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Ihumātao Delphine Herbert and Dan Satherley (Newshub): Tainui to buy Ihumātao land – sources Danielle ...
Extinction Rebellion takes a tour of downtown Wellington to point out the coal industry stalwarts and ask why they’re still there in the face of a climate emergency. “There are coal companies in Wellington??”That’s the incredulous response every single time we mention taking the public on a tour of the biggest ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel A. Ankeny, Professor of History and Philosophy, and Deputy Dean Research (Faculty of Arts), University of Adelaide The South Australian government recently announced its intention to lift the long-standing statewide moratorium on genetically modified (GM) crops, following a statutory six-week consultation ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vicki Sentas, Senior Lecturer, UNSW Law, UNSW Being strip searched by the police can be intrusive, humiliating and harmful. Typically, strip searches involve being required to strip naked in front of police officers, who often give the direction to “squat and cough”, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louise Remond, Clinical Psychologist, University of Technology Sydney Hi, I was just wondering if something’s wrong with me because I’m never happy and never want to do anything and I’m getting really lazy and I really hate school. Thanks – Anonymous ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Zaphir, Researcher for the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project; and Online Teacher at Education Queensland’s IMPACT Centre, The University of Queensland From as early as Grade 3 teachers start teaching children how to put across their own points of view. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW It’s four years since then Prime Minister Tony Abbott warned Australia had been heading to “a Greek-style economic future”. He was referring to what he said had been happening under the previous Labor government. When Labor ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samia Khatun, Senior Lecturer, SOAS, University of London Some 1,000 kilometres inland from Sydney, over the Blue Mountains, past the trees that drink the tributaries of the Darling River, there stands a little, red mosque. It marks where the desert begins. The ...
Online gambling is growing fast in New Zealand, but critics say new government ideas for regulating websites focus on what's good for the industry, rather than protecting people from harm. ...
An "extreme pro-Beijing" writer has caused controversy in the Chinese community and awkwardness for the Labour Party by standing for political office in Auckland. ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Concern about slow progress for major transport projects, smoking researcher under pressure over funding, and hikoi marches from Ihumātao to Ardern’s office.NZTA is struggling to get spending out the door, so the money isn’t flowing through the economy, reports Thomas Coughlan ...
Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard will look at whether people making submissions on proposed law changes should be forced to disclose conflicts of interest. ...
Rugby and league legend Honey Hireme has put all her careers on hold - including her Warriors debut - to take care of her mum, who has terminal cancer. ...
Open mike 26/04/2013 
Speaker Trevor Mallard was left to look after Jones, while his usual caretaker, Winston Peters, underwent surgery. A truly adorable scene from Parliament yesterday has gone viral, after Speaker Trevor Mallard cradled an extremely drunk Shane Jones in his arms while the House was in session. Loud “awwww”s could be ...12 hours ago
Western media have defended their decision not to cover the fires so as not to give them any oxygen. Social media outrage continues to grow around the sentiment that mainstream western media is devoting too little coverage to an ongoing series of fires in the Amazon rainforest, and in doing ...13 hours ago
A Long Time Ago, In A Parallel Universe Far, Far Away: The political journalist scratched his head in confusion. Only then did he notice the name of the building: ‘The Jacinda Ardern Presidential Library and Public Resource Centre’. Making his way inside to the information desk, he asked the librarian ...18 hours ago
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Nothing from me tody - I'm off to Christchurch to pretend to be other people for a weekend. Normal bloggage should resume on Tuesday. ...20 hours ago
Spark is bracing for a customer backlash as rugby fans all across the country struggle to get a picture on their wireless router. With the Rugby World Cup fast approaching, an elderly Taranaki couple are furious after being told that they still won’t be able to watch the tournament, even ...1 day ago
Several explosions have been reported across Auckland, as well-meaning environmentalists have already begun purchasing too much petrol Starting from next week, customers will no longer need a car to purchase petrol directly from the pump, a development that two major fuel providers are billing as an opportunity to help fight ...1 day ago
A new study claims to find that a mother’s exposure to fluoridated water during pregnancy may decrease the IQ of male children – but is it correct? (Photo: Getty Images) Anti-fluoride campaigners are promoting ... 1 day ago
Television advertising has a huge impact on our lives. Even if we don’t recognise that, we know it has to be true, since otherwise why would advertisers spend so much on it? Its significance, however, is greater than simply the influence it has on what we purchase and consume. It ...3 days ago
by Jan Rivers More than 30 years ago a Commission of Inquiry was held in New Zealand to investigate, amongst other things, whether women with cervical cancer were aware that they had been part of a research project and whether they were properly informed of the treatment options ...4 days ago
Everyone Wants To Be Fuhrer: When fascist groups are discussed, the image conjured-up in the minds of most New Zealanders is one of pathetic misfits. This negative impression is reinforced by the latter’s idiotic embrace of the swastika. Even in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the baleful legacy ...4 days ago
In the previous two posts, I laid out the context and set the theoretical framework to answer a question: whether indigenous economies should take the LEAP. This final part outlines ways to conceive of practicing mana motuhake within the existing legal system by carving out special jurisdictions that enable Indigenous ...6 days ago
Fully Informed? Labour’s 2017 promises raised expectations that were little short of revolutionary. Unfortunately, they were never adequately shaken through the fiscal sieve. The hard economic work was not done – and it shows. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s critics have long complained that her grasp of the way the New ...6 days ago
You cannot expect to pound communities into the ground day after day, year after year, decade after decade and just expect them to take it lying down. There’s a point at which the place will explode. And we’re faced with some very big ructions on both sides of the Atlantic ...1 week ago
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Going Down? Once truth and propaganda become fused in the minds of one’s followers, debate and discussion become redundant. If one’s opponents are all outrageous liars, then engaging with them in any way is pointless. Rather than waste its time, a political party should, instead, target all its messages at ...1 week ago
We need to fundamentally reframe our systems settings to address the drivers causing and underpinning inequality; structural change in systems especially financial. The Equality Network Hui was held in Wellington on 27 June 2019. The hui covered important topics such as child poverty; a living wage; taxation; public health; mental ...1 week ago
The views-per-page for some of my recent postings:Depressing, isn't it? Provide thoughtful and wise commentary on the mainstream of British politics and no-one notices. Make a passing reference to Tommy DICKHEAD Robinson in a thread title and you get hundreds of views. Write something about anti-Semitism and you get another ...1 week ago
The government has announced plans to move the Treaty of Waitangi and other taonga to a new site. Great news! So where are they going? Right next to the old one:The new plan will see a new 22,000-square-metre archive built on the former site of Defence House - the former ...1 week ago
Back in June, StatsNZ went public about a project to track population data on an hourly level by using people's cellphones. It wasn't as bad as it initially looked - they were receiving no individual data, only counts by suburb - but there was still a huge consent problem, so ...1 week ago
I did an interview on the TVNZ Breakfast Show about the situation in Hong Kong. I tried to frame the issue as a collective action problem between two sides with very different end games. The video is here. Because of time constraints we could not discuss the fact that the ...1 week ago
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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/24-0
We need to do this here.
Bring your surfboards, bring your kayaks, bring your dinghies, bring your small yachts, bring your fishing boats and tinnies. Bring your life jackets and wet suits. Bring your signs banners and flags. Bring your courage and your joy.
New Zealand is a maritime nation, we need to take to the sea. We need to defy the anti-marine protest laws. We need to stop coal exports here and in Australia.
“Join the “Resistance”
John Key and the National Party are firmly in the corner of big oil and big coal.
Despite the terrible danger we are all in they will not lift a finger to stop it.
In fact they are doing the opposite, passing anti-democratic laws that make it easier for the climate wreckers to operate.
NASA scientist James, Hansen the world’s leading climate change expert, has determined that; “If we can’t stop coal. It is game over for the climate.”
We can play a role in stopping the immoral profiteering in coal that is killing our world.
Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter in the world, and as such is a major contributor to climate change on a global scale. To save the planet the Australians must stop this trade.
New Zealand’s coal exports, are big. In fact most of the coal mined in this country is for the export trade. But in comparison with Australia, our trade in coal is dwarfed. The significance of our coal trade, is that Australia will never stop exporting coal, unless New Zealand has done it first.
It is up to us.
Our history shows that of all countries, we are most up to the task.
For the safe future of our world, for our children, and for our children’s children’s sake…..
We must act!
If the spirit of ANZAC is still worth something. We must!
The halting of all coal exports from this country will be a huge and unmissable moral lead for our closest international neighbour and long time friend and ally, Australia. As an example of the sacrifice that must be demanded of them too. That is, If we are to preserve the global climate, fit to hand onto to our children.
Sacrifice, Mateship, Fighting to make the world fit for future generations. This is what the ANZACs fought for, for us. Can we do any less?
What a load of hysterical shit.
You moron. Just because you don’t care about anything or know about anything, how dare you use such language about people who do?
If you have nothing constructive to say, wouldn’t it be better to say nothing?
Jenny is inspired by the actions of the climate activists off Australia and wants to share that with us, while encouraging us to be active in our defence of the climate too.
Rather than insulting people, why don’t you make your own suggestions for how we can improve the world?
Or are your contributions to this site merely intended to be destructive?
Jenny is a complete flake.
She wants people to get up and rally against what provides us with the current lifestyle we enjoy today.
Without oil and coal the worlds economy collapses, unless you’re a complete masochist who the hell wants that.
It should be about managing these resources and trying to minimize the impacts not banning them.
Until something else comes along it’s coal and oil for the foreseeable future, except that.
Yeah that’s right, we can just forget about that pesky thing called extreme climate change eh?
Funnily enough, although I might disagree with Jenny on stuff, I actually get the impression that she behaves in a genuine and earnest manner, with little or no dissembling or misdirection.
BM?
Not so much…
If it happens it happens.
We’ll deal with it then, if it starts to become an issue.
How would you have “minimized” the impact of the Gulf oil spill?
From what I’ve read nature cleaned up he spill pretty well.
The research done on it came to the conclusion that it would have been better just to let nature clean up the area and that the efforts made to control the spill actually hindered the process not helped.
yeah mate, and calling any policy that’s left of centre: communism by stealth, polish shipyard stuff, north korea and so on is just totally non hysterical and well reasoned.
You cretin BM! If you want the sound of hysterical shit. Then go to the Beehive there’s heaps of it from the National Party over the Labour/Greens Power profits redistribution from the greedies to the needies.
You do know that “profit redistribution” is what Mugabe called it at the beginning.
What a clever comment. Not.
Some people just come onto this site to disrupt intelligent discussion.
Aren’t there right wing sites for them to carp on and on about their pet topics?
How was this conversation intelligent? One sided and hysterical maybe but that doesn’t automatically qualify it as intelligent.
What are you talking about, fool? You’ve repeatedly claimed that the conversation was “one-sided and hysterical” but you evidently lack the wherewithal to provide any evidence to back up your assertion.
You are a waste of space.
Why are you here?
My Bad. I should have said, If you want the sound hysterical shit, just wait, and the Trolls will provide.
Edit: How come I am in Moderation? Or is more about what I said?
[r0b: I think the keyword troll causes moderation]
It’s also what the partners at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs do.
What’s your point?
Please tell us more about Mugabe. Are you a whenwe? Were you allowed to shoot blacks in Rhodesia, or did you have to cross into Mozambique?
Wow, just wow. That’s vile. But you’ll be pleased to know that Mugabe ran out of colonials to “liberate” land from quite some time ago and now is reduced to inflicting misery on and stealing from black Zimbabweans. He’s an equal opportunity kleptocrat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Zimbabwe
A provocation for you:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/what-if-we-never-run-out-of-oil/309294/
I can imagine better collective global effort about climate change if petrol costs more. But not if there’s an easier transition to other forms of oil than has been envisaged.
Insurance companies have a market interest to keep disasters (and so pay outs down). Or do they?
As we have found, market churn means fees. Why would any industry cut its growth, and so its immediate share price since its based on its future potential?
So to answer your question, should carbon energy never run out, the market would never deal with the consequences until its too late (look at any polluted industrial areas for how little and too late the market is).
Second, carbon energy is stored sunlight over millions of years, there will always become a point where the ‘new’ sources run out like oil has, and so the old adage of never say never must be employed.
Jenny’s point that governments really do respond to the force of crowds – as per the ANZAC/Lange protests – is understood. I still love Canetti’s Crowds and Power.
My point is less about the supply of oil and more a pessimism that without the force of price and spectacular scarcity that effective global movements would be hard to generate. I can see it at a neighbourhood scale, even at a City scale, because in different ways I have done it. So to be clear I support the effort. But if even the entire EU can’t sustain a carbon market, it’s hard to see governments successfully contesting the market about climate change generally.
the Canetti is a timeless reference.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/7513890/Helen-Clark-urges-action-on-environment
Helen Clark called for a groundswell from below to force government’s and political parties to act on climate change.
If you are concerned about climate change you must ask ourself this question:
I am I happy to just protest against climate change, or do I want to stop climate change?
If your answer is, I want to stop climate change.
You should listen to Helen Clark.
Helen Clark knows the mechanics of how to stop climate change.
She should.
As a senior Labour Party MP during the Muldoon and Lange years. Helen Clark was an eye witness on the inside into how a mass movement can change governments and influence political parties and parliaments.
From her vantage point inside the parliamentary Labour Party Helen Clark saw that; No matter whether they were National Party government MPs, or Labour Party opposition MPs. The mass public campaign that blockaded our Nation’s harbour’s against nuclear ships, put every politician on notice.
This became especially true when the issue came up for a vote in the house when Richard Prebble’s (of all people) private member’s bill to ban nuclear warship visits was drawn from ballot.
Due to the huge pressure from below, two National MPs, Mike Minogue and Marilyn Waring, were moved to cross the floor and vote with the opposition.
If Richard Prebble’s private members bill had been put to the vote, New Zealand would have become Nuclear Free in 1984.
To prevent the vote, the Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon closed parliament down, called a snap election.
Everyone knew, including Muldoon, that his National Party had no chance of continuing in government with the issue of nuclear ship visits unresolved. Conservative pundits including Muldoon, hoped that under the pressure of what has cynically been called “pragmatism” or “Real Politic” (Which is all the secret, and not so secret conservative pressures that influences governments and parliamentary parties), that a new Labour administration would, on gaining office, be able to back-track on the issue in a way that the unpopular Muldoon could not. Which as predictably the new Labour government did. To break the ban David Lange himself, tried to bring in the nuclear armed warship the USS Buchanon into New Zealand waters.
However a high level meeting in his Beehive office held with the, (then), unofficial head of the anti-nuclear movement, Nicky Hagar, convinced Lange that if the Buchanon was brought into any New Zealand harbour that the protests against his government would dwarf anything that had gone down against the Muldoon administration.
Although the USS Buchanon was already on route to New Zealand and was more than half way here. Facing up to the inevitable disgrace that threatened to befall him, and his government if he allowed the Buchanon to dock. Lange had to call up Washington and ordered the Americans to turn their ship around.
The next day in an interview that was published in the the Listener, Lange was reported to have said that the peace movement was his most “feared lobby”.
After the debacle of the Buchanon defeat, the Lange administration still continued to drag the chain as much as they could.
Whereas, the Muldoon administration in 1984, could not have held the line for even one more day, putting off the vote to make New Zealand “Nuclear Weapons Free”. The Lange administration was able to hold the line until the dying months of 1987. And was only finally forced by the approaching deadline of an upcoming general election to put the long promised legislation. Lange feared that if the universally unpopular and controversial Rogernomic policies of his government was followed by a reversal on the “Nuclear Weapons Free” legislation, then the Labour Party if not being turfed out of office completely, would at the very least taken a very serious hit in voter support. (Not to mention the personal odium that would have been attached to his name forever.)
As it turned out. Despite the harsh economic policies forced on the New Zealand people by the Lange/Douglas administration, surfing the wave of the wildly popular support for the New Zealand’s newly minted “Nuclear Free” status – the 1987 election results saw David Lange’s Labour Party triumphantly returned as the government in a massive victory landslide of voter support.
Jenny I respect your passion, just to be clear on that.
Few things though.
1: Climate change can’t be stopped
2: Helen Clark is NOT to be listened to – Getting the to the #3 spot at the UN, means she delivered what was wanted by those who control the UN, hence her position there now. That would imply, she delivered what was requested, during her 9 years in as PM. Question, is, what was it that she did which earned her that position…
3: Helen Clark knows the mechanics of political corruption – She knows NOTHING about about how to stop climate change, however she might well know the planned role for the UN as defacto global government, which will fit perfectly with her own ideological beliefs!
4: You’re still focusing on too narrow a set of parameters, you should widen too include geo-engineering. Just like GM foods, which will have environmental consequences and people are happy to have that discussion, so should it be true of geo-engineering….
In case you missed my link yesterday
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/31/earth-cooling-schemes-global-signoff
Just echoing what muzza said. Climate change is a lot more complicated than the solitary effect of increasing CO2 emissions, the green movement was hijacked a long time ago.
…not continuing to pump ancient carbon stores into the atmosphere; like the pain in your thumb is a lot more complicated than not hitting it with the bloody hammer any more.
CC is a very, very simple thing. The effects are not. Reversing that which has already been done is not. Avoiding unforeseeable consequences is not. But still…at root, climate change and the action required to stop contributing to it is devastatingly simple and uncomplicated.
Is there any evidence that the USS Buchanan was nuclear armed? The way I remember things, it quite obviously wouldn’t have been, with the problem being that the yanks refused to confirm this.
Also, I’d say it was a pity that Helen Clark didn’t let the groundswell against Rogernomics sway her from it.
Indeed, the Buchanon had been intentionally chosen so that David Lange would have the political cover of “plausible deniability” that it was carrying any nuclear weapons.
However this was not enough for the powerful New Zealand anti-nuclear movement. (Though Audrey Young doesn’t credit him, in particular, anti-nuclear activist Nicky Hagar who met with Lange in his Beehive office in the lead up to the Buchanon visit).
Sources:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10879810
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10879996
So basically a no then? As I remember from the time, the issue was that American ships would be allowed in if the yanks confirmed they had no nuclear weapons on board. They were not prepared to deviate from their neither confirm nor deny policy.
My position on this is that not letting it in was the right thing to do. I don’t even want windsurfers from nuclear navies in our waters. I don’t want a GI Joe toy from a country that tortures people in our shops.
One good thing about Tory governments – they provide many opportunities for healthy outdoor exercise and catching up with old friends. See you all on the march tomorrow!
haha!
I see America is beating the war drums over Syria again, claiming that the Syrian government is using sarin against rebels. Now where did we hear stories of weapons of mass destruction before…?
And surprise, surprise..there appears to be no serious questioning of the claims by the corporate media.
Good luck Американцыs.
http://www.majalla.com/eng/2013/01/article55237794
Its rather like after 911, there was an, anthrax *attack*, then after Boston, a repeat using another sunstance, but almost identical story line…
Its the same script writers, that should be plainly obvious, to all but the weakest of minds!
Mr Hagel said “our intelligence community does assess, with varying degrees of confidence, that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically, the chemical agent sarin”.
“It violates every convention of warfare,”
“Its the same script writers, that should be plainly obvious, to all but the weakest of minds!”
So when the proof comes with footage of innocent children, women, old men and women, faces disfigured and contorted by fear and pain, what page of the wank manual will your weak mind get it’s next throw away nugget from?
Does Mr Hagel have a history of providing relevant intelligence information?
Sibel Edmonds: “I provided three possible US objectives associated with the Boston Terror incident. I emphasized the first possible scenario as the most likely: Removing Russia as the obstacle in invading Syria.”
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/04/25/boston-terror-update-2-april-25-the-syria-objective-is-nearly-accomplished/
Russian Economy
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/04/26/uk-russia-detentions-idUKBRE93P15320130426
Russia detains 140 in sweep at Muslim prayer room
Yup!
If only I did have a weak mind TA – Sadly you are very much mistaking me for someone else, or more likely you are projecting!
When you say *proof*, what is it exactly that twists your emotive sub-set, when it comes to *proof*, and are you prepared to accept the worlds most war mongered (USA) nation, as the holders/providers of said, *proof*.
Who will be selling those pictures, of contorted faces, or more accurately, who will have manufactured them..
I suggest you read about some of the historical *gotcha* moments around the Lybian escapades, of the likes of the BBC/CNN/FOX news et al!
I’m sure, with so many vigilants like yourself on their case, the us will never make the same mistake twice, but you, in not even considering the reports may actually be true, and innocents are being gassed, prejudice most, if not all of your personal warmongery against the americans as pure fucktardery.
You’re dismissed, nut wank.
What is with the insults, sheesh!
I consider them alright, I consider as many angles as I have time to absorb, and then I look at the players, their history and the motives.
Nah the Anglo-French administrations will continue to ensure, through their agendas, that many more innocent people continue to die, every minute of every day..
With the support of those who share your , limited view of the ME situation!
You mean well, but you’re playing down the wrong line.
Please go and do some further reading, the Syrian situation, same as Libya, is manufactured by the US/UK/France primarily, or more accurately, those who pull the strings of those administraive entities!
“I consider them alright,”
Yeah, it’s all over your *work*
“You mean well, but you’re playing down the wrong line.”
Offside. I always wait til the team sheet is released before I slag off the opposing players, anything else would be stupid and leave me open to ridicule, which I wouldn’t like.
“Please go and do some further reading”
You need to chose the right battles, Rambo.
By throwing mud at everything, you make it an easy decision to walk on the other footpath of life.
And a bit patronising, especially considering only one of us has jumped to a conclusion without knowing any fact other than same day news reports.
That’s basic, that’s clare curran like stuff. :tut tut: 😉
Quality control is slipping, M.
Patronizing – Is that how you read my response to your insults, TA,
Well done lad!
Seen the footage of chemical victims, yet?
Got a ‘put on job’ or ‘set up’ reply waiting in the wings?
Shame on you for so easily dismissing human suffering to score a point against the ‘enemy’.
Are you deliberately obtuse, or is that you are not paying attention!
Ill try make this as simple as possible, one final time:
You’re aiming your ill-informed opinions, at the wrong person matey, I’d suggest you speak to the people in Langley Virginia, and Washington DC, aim your vitriol in that direction , as a start!
“Are you deliberately obtuse, or is that you are not paying attention!”
It would appear neither, seeing as I’ve correctly called you for being a plank.
“You’re aiming your ill-informed opinions,”
I seriously dispute ill informed, and as stated, nothing wrong with my aim.
“I’d suggest you speak to the people in Langley Virginia, and Washington DC, aim your vitriol in that direction , as a start!”
Why? Because you dismiss rightful condemnation over the use of chemical weapons in Syria as a plot for world domination.
Don’t be a dick head.
Anyway, I gave you the benefit of the doubt, ’cause you’re a ‘name’ here, but I really shouldn’t have.
Keep your right of reply for the secret dossiers, comrade. 😉
Well muzza, it does seem plainly obvious to your mind. Hmmmm.
Perhaps thats because I have spent more time in those parts of the world Murray, and speaking with people who are working/from ME countries, and to people who have served in the actions/wars in that region!
Thats before I even do my own reading etc!
Hows the geo-engineering research coming along?
What geo-engineering research? Go and look on youtube, I wouldn’t have a clue.
Cui bono?
http://revoltoftheplebs.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/by-deception-thou-shalt-do-boston/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-use-boston-bombing-to-speed-up-vote-on-counter-terrorism-bill/article11464897/
Yup, off to the camps you go! – Never let a manufactured terror event go to waste!
Honestly this reads like something that would be on The Onion or The Civilian:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8599493/Susan-Devoy-makes-train-crash-speech
!??!! Fuck that is funny. Love the quote from Sir Peter Leitch, “policially driven”. Halarious.
I’m telling you the way to bring this country to a stand still isn’t to attack policitally, or with arms…just wipe out all the stadiums and sports broadcasts and we would submit to anything to have them back.
Peter Leitch is a halfwit, with no discernible talent.
No discernable talent? He built a business empire from a humble base, and has put time, effort and heaps of financial support into league and other sports and charities. I may not like his current sucking up to Key etc. but I’d never be so foolish as to deny his obvious abilities.
No discernable [sic] talent?
I have to admit he does a good comic impression of a beer-sodden boor.
He built a business empire from a humble base, and has put time, effort and heaps of financial support into league and other sports and charities. I may not like his current sucking up to Key etc. but I’d never be so foolish as to deny his obvious abilities.
His “obvious abilities”? He has none, other than crude self-publicity.
“You just can’t beat the Mad Butchers meat”
Having worked in advertising for a number of years, I am pretty sure some creative came up with that line as a laugh, but bugger me, he went with it.
I always tell my boyfriend after that ad has been on: “the Mad Butcher won’t let you beat his meat”.
Have to agree with Voice here Mozza – PL, while not everyones cup of tea, has done much with the fund raising, and charity work, resulting not only from his empire built on rotten meat products, but also because he loved Rugby League, and appreciated that it was a *working class game*
While not a fan of PL at all, I think in this instance your evaluation might be a little out of alignment.
You’re both right—he DOES know how to make a dollar.
I think of the Mad Butcher as the guy who brought Warehouse/Walmart approaches to meat. He wiped out a lot of small butchers and replaced them with high turn over service centres selling crap meat. He identified the League community as one which would be exceedingly loyal, and had enough income to buy his sausages. He is a successful businessman whose major success was passing himself off as a working class battler, which possibly explains why he can so easily be mates with Key. In terms of successful capitalism, he has talent and can see opportunities, but I always preferred the personal touch of a neighbourhood butcher.
How nice. I assume you can afford to pay the prices of a neighbourhood butcher as well. I know I can’t.
Anyone who, just weeks into their new job, regards it as “same shit, different day” and doesn’t like their staff has made a serious error taking the job and will probably ditch it soon for something else.
+1 Indeed. I agree and I think this must be deliberate because it not as if she doesn’t know people are watching what she says.
Agree Marty, it must be deliberate, question is, why…so openly, brazenly!
There’s always the possibility of tory conceit, but it might also be that she slipped into “celebrity speaker” mode (rather than “government representative”) at a dinner that possibly cost a couple of hundred dollars a head (they raised $46k). And that’s without the fine dinner+vino factor (which is doubtful, given that it was unlikely to be her first keynote speaker role).
But either way, it shows that she isn’t enthusiastic about the bauble thrown her way, and she doesn’t have the right qualities for the job.
The office will be fun on Monday when she gets to work. This seige mentality of devoys was her typical squash tactic – she admitted that she worked with the british/uk/whatever the fuck it’s called media against her. This tactic is boorish when used with important and demanding work like trying to make race relations better in this country.
I think she’d only ditch it if she was offered something that paid more. She’ll find it in herself to put up with her staff because she’ll have Tory racists and Ansell/Brash one nation types fawning all over her. Key will come out soon and try to paint anyone attacking her as a woman hater, just like Lange did with the unions at Kawerau. She’s doing exactly what she was appointed to do.
Susan Devoy on The Vote; (just to recap the most telling statement):
“…PEOPLE SHOULD FEEL ASHAMED THAT THEY BELIEVE WE ARE A RACIST COUNTRY!”
(SORRY, caps got stuck on).
if ya missed it, there is a summary on y’days OM.
Can anyone tell me what the significance is of the other white flower next to the poppy at the top of the page?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_poppy_(symbol)
Reminds me – time to change the header back
On this site, it was suggested by rocky in about 2009 that if I was going to put up the anzac poppy each year, that I should also add the white poppy as well. So we did.
Ahh, thankyou. I googled “white daisy”.
Notice that Judith Collins considers it disrespectful (apparently sending our people to die at war is a better idea than attempting peace). All the more reason to use it as often as possible.
Judith Collins really is that kind of armchair general cum politician that any soldier hates. They’re the idiots who get us killed for their vanity, and yet never do anything substantive to prevent the problems. Irresponsible producers of hot-air and bombast – useless on the actual action.
It is no wonder that Cameron Slater identifies with her.
Judith Collins really is that kind of armchair general cum politician that any soldier hates.
Judith “Rosa Klebb” Collins has been voted “Most Likely To Be Accidentally Shot By Own Troops” if she ever finds herself commanding a platoon in South Vietnam.
So, in the context of WW2 say, you would be advocating to attempt piece with Hitler? I believe Anthony Eden tried that and it didn’t work out so well. Sometimes there is no alternative and no amount of hand-wringing will change that. You can’t reason with psychotic imperialists – corporate or state.
So, in the context of WW2 say, you would be advocating to attempt piece [sic] with Hitler? I believe Anthony Eden tried that and it didn’t work out so well.
Did you mean to write Neville Chamberlain? I think you did.
Sometimes there is no alternative…
There is certainly an alternative in this case.
…and no amount of hand-wringing will change that.
How typical, and predictable, that you should seek to demean principled objection to state violence as “hand-wringing”.
You can’t reason with psychotic imperialists – corporate or state.
Indeed. The people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Occupied West Bank, and the besieged enclave of Gaza know that only too well.
Yes, I make deliberate spelling mistakes just to set you off, and yes, you are right, Chamberlain, not Eden – a brain hiccough which I apologise for.
“Principled” objection to state violence only ever seems to be possible in societies protected by the possibility of state violence – how strange. Pehraps less hand-wringing than hand washing. And while I have never supported the invasion of Iraq and unilateral US actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I do happen to believe Al Qaida is a threat to otherwise innocent people and must be broken – though of course I would prefer it if the US could find more creative means that don’t involve harm to innocent women and children. Curiously, one wonders at your lack of “principled objection to state [or its equivalent] violence” when Hamas fires off one of its squibs into Israel in deliberate provocation of a massive retaliation and loss of innocent life in Gaza?
There you go again, seriously trying to suggest that Hamas is the problem, and absolving the aggressor. You admit that the rockets that come out of the imprisoned enclave are little more than squibs, and you recognize that the devastation wrought by Israel is massive, but you carefully and dishonestly portray this aggression as “retaliation”.
To portray Hamas as the aggressor and Israel as the retaliator is the exact inversion of the truth. I don’t know if it’s massive ignorance on your part or brutal, heartless dishonesty. Whatever the case, you will be called on it whenever you attempt it.
Mozza – Pop is a US, and by default, Israeli sympathizer, who knows that Arabs are the problem! His bias is no naked, and his position so wrong, he can’t wrap his head around even the most simple *terror frauds*
POP
Um, yeah, ok then Pop…..
wow
Bigot much?
“By default” my arse.
Again McFlock, you have shown a complete lack of ability to understand when to use the B word!
Pop has played his cards openly many times!
You’re still having memory issues by the sounds of bro, you need to exercise that skull a bit more!
Ill leave your piss poor, over eager use of the B word, for you to ponder, appropriate use!
Shalom!
Edit – Helpful hint, don’t even contemplate coming back with what your instinct will encourage you to, just take the helpful advice, and leave it at that!
actually, rereading that one it seems to meant to say something along the lines of “Pop is a US sympathizer, and therefore by default an Israeli sympathizer” rather than “Pop is a US, [i.e. short for “yank”] and by default [because he is a yank], Israeli sympathizer”.
So yeah, I clocked off early on that one. Fair call. But at least I can answer a simple question.
What, pray, is a “US”? I’m a fifth generation New Zealander, and you couldn’t be further wrong. I am disgusted by Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people and the illegal colonisation of their land, and the Muslim world has been very hard one by in this “war on terror”, but that doesn’t really change the fact that there is a militant Muslim minority who do carry out organised terror attacks quite successfully. Pretending it’s a conspiracy won’t make it go away – it certainly won’t bring back the victims, you dick.
Yeah, if you use the language of those in the military, financial and political position of power. Nice.
Thats nice Pop.
It goes against written bias, of a pro US nature, but perhaps thats just down to writing syle…
You were going along quite well until the 5th and 6th lines, where you managed to throw in the *conspiracy* word, and an insult!
Pretending there is not a conspiracy, won’t get those
*militant mulsims*neocon/zionists, to go away!It is the symptom of a particularly simple mind that can only think in binary. It’s quite clear there’s blame on both sides.
Um, no, you delusional, tiny-minded cretin, I am noting that if Hamas didn’t conveniently provide Israel with a slight excuse to carry on with what amounts to a war of extermination, the US wouldn’t have much of a fig leaf to hide behind, and the left wing of the Knesset might be able to get some traction over the insanity. Jeez, what is wrong with you people?
Yeah Hamas is going to carry out a war of extermination using, what exactly? AK47’s? WWII era Katyusha rockets? IEDs made in garages? RPGs?
Shall we examine what the IDF uses to compete with these Hamas ‘weapons of extermination’?
– Abrams main battle tanks
– F15’s and F16’s
– Apache attack helicopters
– Modern guided munitions, including bunker buster munitions
– Arsenal of nuclear warheads held outside the NPT.
– etc
Sorry mate when you create a ghetto you can expect people to fight back; what is your expectation: that they should roll over and play nice in the hope that they will get better treatment?
The Israelis have their own design of main battle tank – Merkava.
I’m sorry, can you actually read? Or is your confirmation bias on too tight.
“provide Israel with a slight excuse to carry on with what amounts to a war of extermination” Israel, dick, Israel, not Palestine – Hamas does, however, provide just enough of an excuse for Likkud and a whole Zionist lobby in the US to get on with it. FFS!
Is throwing rocks at military police sufficient justification for a hellfire missile strike on an apartment block. How about hand gun fire at military personnel?
to Populuxe – Is this before or after the water wells where taken and Palestinians left to literally die without a bullet being spent? Or when their land is being “taken” – just like that and there was no agreement on that – ever. Yes, 2 wrongs do not make 1 right.
P1 views the Palestinians and the Israelis as near equals in this ongoing conflict. And if only the Palestinians would start behaving, things would be much better for them. That says all it needs to.
No, I’m saying that we should value our soldiers lives over political ego. They are precious and should only be used as a last resort. We have lost several in the last year and it’s a time of peace.
It’s an international world and we exist in a variety of groups and have various obligations as a good international citizen, but I’ll save my breath.
Hi Populuxe1,
Appeasement of Hitler was not, as is popularly portrayed, a kind of early incarnation of ‘peacenikery’. The elites of Europe no doubt supported Hitler’s reformation of the German economy, especially the re-privatisation of the banking sector and the privatisation of many publicly owned assets, including the railways, the biggest public sector operation in the world.
As this paper outlines, the privatisation pursued by the Nazis went against the trend of western governments of the time who, in response to the depression, had tended to (have to) nationalise firms and even industries – it was the big bail out, as followed today.
Remember that the German republic was, under Bismarck, one of the most advanced state apparatuses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The public sector was large. The Nazi privatisation represented windfalls for selected crony capitalists (as well as franchised arms of the Nazi Party). The term ‘reprivatisation’ used post-WWII was, in fact, adopted from 1930s Germany.
From the link above:
“The Nazi government may have used privatization as a tool to improve its relationship with big industrialists and to increase support among this group for its policies. Privatization was also likely used to foster more widespread political support [i.e., financial backing] for the party. Finally, financial motivations played a central role in Nazi privatization. The proceeds from privatization in 1934-37 had relevant fiscal significance: No less than 1.37 per cent of total fiscal revenues were obtained from selling shares in public firms. Moreover, the government avoided including a huge expenditure in the budget by using outside-of-the-budget tools to finance the public services franchised to Nazi organizations.
Nazi economic policy in the mid-thirties went against the mainstream in several dimensions. The huge increase in public expenditure programs was unique, as was the increase in the armament programs, and together they heavily constrained the budget. Exceptional policies were put in place to finance this exceptional expenditure, and privatization was just one among them. Nazi Germany privatized systematically, and was the only country to do so at the time. This drove Nazi policy against the mainstream, which flowed against privatization of state ownership or public services until the last quarter of the twentieth century.”
It’s worth remembering that the ‘appeasers’ were, generally, very wealthy men – leading Tories (including Eden who was an appeaser, despite his resignation over how to respond to Mussolini breaching an agreement) with international business and financial interests and connections. It’s also worth remembering that the greater threat was always considered to be the Soviet Union – and the UK elite knew that Hitler was keen to invade Russia.
I’m sure that was a great consolation to Germany’s Jewish industrialists- oh wait, no, they were on to the nazi’s fairly early on for good reasons. How about the wealthy and influential Czech and Polish industrialists… Oh, no, wait…. I think more than a few French businessmen were probably inconvenienced too…
No it was the Anglo Saxon Elite that saw the advantage whereas the socialist left in France and elsewhere expected the political scenery to change to their advantage. In the end, it all came down to money. Europe at the time has lost its royal houses through revolts and civil was followed as a void needed to be filled. The general population was to a certain extend naive. But one should not forget that there wasn’t the media as it is today and the radio was easily controlled.
Found this article from early April. Includes commentary from the man-of-the-moment, Energy economist Geoff Bertram:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/8518742/Tracing-the-history-of-Tiwai-Pt
From the article…
To put it in perspective, Manapouri produces enough power to supply about 630,000 houses each year. It could run five Large Hadron Colliders. It could run two times Google’s data storage network.
Bertram says power companies have been gouging the consumer for too long. With a simple write down of their assets Tiwai could give all New Zealanders 300kW hours free, each month, for ever. At current average power prices that’s about $80 a month off your power bill, permanently.
$80 a month. Just from Manapouri hydro. Kinda puts the Labour/Greens $300 saving per year in perspective.
If you add this potential saving to the potential saving associated with writing down the asset values of the other generators what would the cents per kWh price be?
I’d love to see an article from Geoff Bertram which states what the price of electricity should be.
posted this the other day, it has lots of really interesting reading
http://www.geoffbertram.com/publications/
Thanks!
from the ‘that was money well spent’ file
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8599819/Grosers-WTO-bid-hits-the-rocks
So he spent a quarter mil on travel, ok, he no doubt has a great collection of pens and plenty of spare headphones. It would be a lot more interesting though and certainly more revealing to see what his total expenses were, especially regarding the gravy train dinners, lunches, lunches that become dinners etc. I imagine the wine bill alone is mighty impressive. I also expect sundries will not be itemized.
Yes, but you can say the same about just about any New Zealand politician, regardless of party. That sort of point scoring is ultimately not a game worth playing.
Not really, there is a distinct culture of entiltlement amongst ‘the deal makers’ that only gets worse the closer to trade deals that you get. Every country (and every wannabe) do their damndest to show it is the richest flashiest most succesful etc. Much like any bunch of friday night fools showing off in the newest downtown bar. In my humble opinion, the taxpayer much like the cleaner the next day, is thoroughly sick of it.
imagine if this was promised by a party:
No more parliamentary pensions/benefits/discounts etc. Do your time in service. You get well paid, then that is it.
The trough is closed. There’s a (?) 20-30 million a year saved just like that.
*cough cough* Helen Clark, Mike Moore etc. *cough*
A few facts. Germany was locked out of global colonial ambitions. WWI. Germany is a patchwork of protestant and catholicism (and pre-WWII jews). So the WWII was not about Christianity, since Christians were on both sides, if anything there were more non-Christians on the allies side in both great wars. As France and Britain brought in non-European armies from their colonies. Independence of these colonies was won in part because of those who had given up their lives in those wars. Also Israel existence is a form of restitution, etc.
So when Moro’s guest said we remember them, God and Country, etc, that every creed, faith, etc was a afterthought, a modernism. I can’t help be struck how much has been forgotten.
Our forefathers did not go to the world wars for Christianity.
As far as Zionism is concerned, the founder of Zionism and apostate, Theodor Herzl, sought to intensify hatred of the Jew in order to enhance the cause of political Zionism. Here are some of his “pearls:
“It is essential that the sufferings of Jews. . . become worse. . . this will assist in realization of our plans. . .I have an excellent idea. . . I shall induce anti-semites to liquidate Jewish wealth. . . The anti-semites will assist us thereby in that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews. The anti-semites shall be our best friends. (From his Diary, Part I, pp. 16)
Source: Jews Against Zionism
And it actually worked – some of the most ardent German Zionists were in the SS.
yep, well initially anyway.
Theft can never be restitution.
Tell that to Karl Marx.
So what were Marx’s views on Israel, pray tell?
Karl Marx never suggested theft. expropriation
I think you’ll find the first definition correct. It is repossession of that which was stolen in the first place.
You say po-tay-to, I say take your mendacious little word games and go fuck yourself. Shifting the goal posts around doesn’t change what it is. “Expropriation”, as opposed to paying tax, is theft. Lenin’s “expropriation” wasn’t very different from Hitler’s “expropriation” from the Jews.
Or Gerry’s threatened expropriation of landowners’ property in Christchurch?
One of the saddest things about modern economies is that they are built upon private property.We all wish to defend our, generally, minuscule amounts of private property, thus allowing those with massive amounts to dominate our world. We accept the sacrifice of our freedom (i.e., the relative influence of our voice in collective decision making) to protect very little that is our ‘own’, in most cases. Not a wise – or rational – trade-off.
Populuxe1, is the accumulation of property (via legal means) never theft in liberal democracies? (I’m assuming that we agree that legality is not the arbiter of whether or not something is ‘theft’ – theft is the acquisition of something that does not rightfully belong to you; a judgment that depends upon moral and ethical principles, not the current state of the law.).
On Lenin’s expropriations – the economic system of the Tsar (Nicholas II) in Russia was mainly feudal (though industrialisation had flourished under his father, Alexander III). Was the property accumulated by the Russian aristocracy legitimately obtained? Remember, the Tsar was an absolute/divine monarch and tens of millions of serfs lived and died under harsh conditions for generations prior to the 1917 revolutions (and the one in 1905).
Similarly, were the holdings of the British Crown in the American Colonies legitimate, given that they were quite decisively expropriated by the Colonial elite? (Should today’s Americans be paying compensation to the British Crown?)
Again, was Maori land in New Zealand expropriated (i.e., in your eyes, stolen)?
And what happened to the Jews in the 1930s in Germany was not ‘expropriation’ – it was ethnic cleansing and brutal terrorising and oppression. Get your terms right. Property had very little to do with it. That was a ‘bonus’.
Dismount your high horse. It’s just a broomstick with a pretend horse’s head on top.
History is not something to huff and puff about, especially over ‘theft’. It’s about power – who has it and who doesn’t. Those with the power get the property. Those without power and property seek to gain it.
And those with the power always get to decide what is and isn’t theft.
Just as they decide which version of history gets published.
A few facts….
Your incoherent rambling is utterly unconvincing. Perhaps the stupidest sentence is your extraordinary claim that Israel’s existence is a “form of restitution, etc.”
I’m not going to ask you to explain—you are clearly not up to it.
For God’s sake, do some serious reading.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8599493/Susan-Devoy-makes-train-crash-speech
The position of RRC pays over 200k a year, or has Devoy refused the salary?
I cannot find anything saying she has, so is this article just another type and print, forget the fact-check, straight to market lie?
also imagine The mad butcher’s definition of lewd is pretty colourful and likely very different from say, Colin Craig’s 🙂
oops, need a rewind button today
thought i posted the above in reply to lanth 😕
Policy on the Hoof? And envy of colleagues’ exposure?
Grant Robertson is trying to limit the Party’s Policy Options and put down his colleagues.
Shearer and Parker were leading the NZPower story. But Robertson has to put his oar in! Wow has the boy an inferiority complex!
“Labour makes no apology for stepping in to fix problems in the electricity sector. But this is not a signal that Labour is going to intervene elsewhere in the economy.
“As we said on the day we launched NZ Power, we have no plans to intervene in any other markets.”
WTF? We have just seen the consensus around the Neo-Liberal hegemony of the past thirty years finally get dented: and Grant Robertson is trying to stop it!
Robertson will lead Labour to the same position it is in Wellington Central. Third position behind National and the Greens!
“I’ll just bring in my expert witness here: Ron Mark”
The Vote: Is New Zealand a Racist Country?
TV3, Wednesday 24 April 2013, 8:30 p.m.
After watching the superb Annie Goldson documentary about NZ in Afghanistan, my big night of television continued with this horror show. I watched this insult to the intelligence, this D-grade comedy, this dog’s breakfast on the TV3 Plus One channel.
The producers had assembled what looked like a lecture-theatre full of people, many of them well known in their own right. At first glance it looked like this might be a return to the serious live studio spectaculars that Gordon Dryden, Brian Edwards and Ian Fraser used to front in the 1970s and ’80s. But TV3 obviously doesn’t trust the idea of boring old discussions. Some genius has come up with the idea that a program about racism can be treated like one of those ghastly music talent quests, where celebrity judges gather a team of “talents” and spend half of the show verbally sniping at each other. Presiding over all of this is a “moderator”, played by Linda Clark. Her brief: Keep it light. It’s supposed to be amusing.
On The Vote, the equivalents of the celeb judges on the pop star talent quests are Guyon Espiner and Duncan Garner, who have obviously been instructed to dish out the repartee against one another; someone in management evidently thinks these two are the equivalent of Abbott and Costello.
Tonight, Guyon Espiner heads the “Yes” team, with Damon Salesa and John Tamihere. Duncan Garner is the captain of the “No” team, backed up by May Chen and Phil Goff. The default mood for the evening is comical truculence….
Clearly, what was actually said during this show was not important to the producers. What they wanted was manufactured conflict, plenty of personality clashes—and lots of laughs. Of the “talent”, however, only John Tamihere seemed to be in on this; the other three seemed to take it seriously. So we saw the demeaning sight of Professor Damon Salesa trying to make a serious argument in the face of a barrage of heckling and infantile negative comments by Duncan Garner.
So the mood of frivolity and forced competitiveness had been established. But it only got worse….
DUNCAN GARNER: Okay, I’ll just bring in my expert witness here: Ron Mark!
Instead of eliciting gales of laughter, this announcement was treated seriously, and Winston Peters’ loyal soldier was wheeled on to deliver banalities for a long, long minute in his usual manner. Then the “expert witness” returned to the crowd, with nobody any the wiser. It was like he was back in parliament.
Now, rack my brains as I might, I could think of only one political featherweight shallower than Ron Mark—and sure enough, not long after, this happened….
GUYON ESPINER: All right, now to argue that New Zealand IS a racist country, we have the Member of Parliament for Khandallah, Peter Dunne!
This ineffective fop, this repellent poseur, this National Party stooge embarked on one of his trademark wandery homilies, focused entirely on the notion that we are racist against CHINESE people. This pitiable, bow-tied, bouffanted fool probably doesn’t even know that there are Māori people in New Zealand.
As Dunne droned on, I could make out in the audience several prominent people, including John Minto, Don “Brethren Cash” Brash (nodding gravely to show he took it all very seriously) and the controversial new Race Relations commissioner Dame Susan Devoy.
Finally, mercifully, Dunne’s monologue came to an end and he sat down, to the relief of all. It was back to the comedians….
DUNCAN GARNER: Calling us racist is plain NUTS and simply offensive!
LINDA CLARK: I have here the result of our audience poll. Eighty-two per cent think that YES, New Zealand is a racist country.
GUYON ESPINER: Eighty-two per cent! It’s hard to argue we’re not a racist country with those sorts of numbers!
Then it’s time for a commercial break, but before that, viewers are taken into the middle of each team as they huddle together and strategize, just like a sports team talk. What is obvious immediately is that Espiner does all the talking, while Tamihere and Salesa listen intently. Same with the other team: Garner urgently strategizes, while Goff and Chen listen. The “stars” have to be seen to be in charge.
DUNCAN GARNER: Right, next up, the big question: Are Māori TOO PRIVILEGED? This of course is the question Don Brash asked back in 2004.
John Tamihere says something disparaging about the old racist, and is warming to his task before the moderator steps in…
LINDA CLARK: [giggling] Tamihere, be QUIET!
AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
LINDA CLARK: Forty-eight per cent of our audience says YES, Māori are too privileged, and 42 per cent say no they are not. So it’s almost TOO CLOSE TO CALL!
The old race-baiter, Don “Brethren Cash” Brash is then trundled on to the stage and asked if he STILL thinks Māori are a privileged and indulged elite group…
DON “BRETHREN CASH” BRASH: Ehhhhhhhhhhhmmmmm. Yes they are. Ehhhhhhhhhhhmmmm.
AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!…What?… You silly old fool!… Ha!… Somebody shoot him!
As disgusting and ridiculous as the old race-baiter and Brethren stooge is, he is almost immediately upstaged….
MAY CHEN: [slowly, with gravitas] As Ron Mark said, we are sorting out our racial problems in the bedrooms of the nation.
That crass and insulting statement comes courtesy of the fertile brain of Dr. Ranginui Walker. It was one of his enduring tropes during his long tenure as a Listener columnist, and he repeated it again recently when he was interviewed on radio.
LINDA CLARK: After the break, we will sum up. And we will talk to the new Race Relations Commissioner, Dame Susan Devoy.
This proved to be the only pleasant surprise of the night. Dame Susan handled her brief interview impressively. She was balanced, generous and well spoken.
As for the rest of those involved in this dud: shame on you all.
Sounds truly awful viewing, Moz. Thanks for taking one for the team!
Mai Chen, btw.
Sounds truly awful viewing, Moz. Thanks for taking one for the team!
It was awful, all right, but it was compellingly awful. I even felt positive at the end of it, seeing Dame Susan give such a good account of herself.
Mai Chen, btw.
I KNEW it! Just before I pushed the “Submit Comment” button, I had this nagging feeling that I had made a mistake somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn’t track it down. Thanks for that.
It was getting up this morning. Don’t do it again.
It was getting up this morning. Don’t do it again.
Ouch! THAT told me!
I’ll say, go get some aloe vera for that burn.
Aloe vera won’t salve the pain of Populuxe1’s searing wit, I’m afraid.
I watched the doco on New Zealand in Afghanistan. Thanks for the summary and saving the rest of us the pain.
Morrissey, you’re kind of like The Standard’s version of Diana Wichtel. That’s a compliment btw.
From the Herald “Trade Minister Tim Groser’s bid to head the World Trade Organisation has failed……”The New Zealand Government has spent a lot of money supporting Mr Groser’s bid.” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10879907
How much is ‘a lot of money’? Will the corporate media bother to find out?
And will they ask if that money could have been spent on other stuff…like tackling child poverty, save DOC jobs, raising the minimum wage more etc etc
Don’t hold your breath.
‘
Well . . . the MSM has pointed out the bill is around about $3000 per day, and that’s just for travel. You can add in his salary since lobbying for the job is all he’s done.
that satire link went quick
update on the satire of Colin Craig
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10879836
****
****
Yes….Fuck up Judith Collins…..you Judith are the REAL Noddy.
Hole in the furnace fender?
Blood boils when I hear via radio that J. Collins calls 3 Labour MP’s “noddys”.
Decided to allocate “fuck off Judith Collins” to your **** comment.
But I’m sure you had some deeper meaning in mind, something private between Rouge Trooper and ghostrider888 perhaps.
only in a parallel universe.(typed in wrong un and got stuck in moderation; mundane i know)
26 April 2013
PROTEST: “The Government is NOT going to get a ‘good price’ for Mighty River Power – call off the sale!”
Friday 26 April 3 – 5.30pm
Outside the Head Office of Mighty River Power
ANZ building 23- 29 Albert St, Auckland City
MAP : https://maps.google.co.nz/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=Map+Mighty+River&fb=1&gl=nz&hq=Mighty+River&hnear=0x6d0d47fb5a9ce6fb:0x500ef6143a29917,Auckland&cid=0,0,14661661492653781907&ei=-rx5UZzZM6WaiAfF1IHYCw&sqi=2&ved=0CLABEPwSMAE
(Protest organised by the Switch Off Mercury Energy group).
______________________________________________________________________________
SOE Minister Tony Ryall said the Government wouldn’t sell Mighty River Power unless they could get a ‘good price’.
(Official Information Act reply from Minister of State Owned Enterprises, Tony Ryall, dated 17 March 2013)
“Let me make it quite clear. If the Government doesn’t get a good price the Government isn’t going to sell.”
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ung4048v4cgtul7/Slevel6.3-c13031716040.pdf
The Government are NOT going to get a ‘good price’ for Mighty River Power, according the opinion expressed in the Dominion Post Editorial dated 24 April 2013:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/editorials/8587747/Editorial-Key-should-consider-MRP-sale-delay
“Editorial: Key should consider MRP sale delay
OPINION: An unholy mess. There is no other way to describe the Government’s partial asset sales programme.
With just days to go before the public offering of shares in Mighty River Power closes, the float is shrouded in uncertainty. Is the country’s single biggest consumer of electricity about to shut its doors? Will Labour and the Green Party be part of the next government and, if so, will they make good on their promises to renationalise the electricity industry by stealth?
Potential investors have no way of knowing whether Rio Tinto is serious about closing the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter unless it can wring further concessions from the Government and Meridian Energy. Likewise, they have no way of knowing whether Labour and the Greens will be in a position to implement their policies after the next election.
But, amid all the uncertainty, there is one certainty: the price the Government and, ultimately the public, will receive for shares sold in Mighty River Power will be lower because of the uncertainty. ….
However, political considerations should not determine the fate of an asset worth billions of dollars that has been built up by generations of taxpayers. The Government’s overriding concerns should be ensuring that taxpayers get fair value for the business and that as many New Zealanders as possible take advantage of the opportunity to become shareholders in it.
Neither of those goals are likely to be achieved while there is a possibility of the country being flooded with cheap electricity and the next government telling generators how much they can charge for electricity and how they should operate their power stations.
……………………
But, delaying the sale till after the next election would at least allow voters to choose which of the two approaches offers the better prospect of sensible pricing and secure supply. It would also allow time for the future of Tiwai Point to be resolved.”
______________________________________________________________________________
SO! CALL OFF THE SALE OF MIGHTY RIVER POWER!
Is NZ Prime Minister John Key, (a shareholder in the Bank of America), going to continue to put his mouth where his money is, and look after investors – or is he going to look after the public majority of taxpayers?
(Remembering that arguably the majority of taxpayers are not investors?)
http://www.parliament.nz/NR/rdonlyres/DFA6C21E-69A8-433F-8BA9-956431281F7F/222223/register2012_3.pdf (Pg 33)
“Rt Hon John KEY (National, Helensville)
……..
Bank of America – banking ”
How appropriate is it for the four people responsible for setting the ‘final price’ of Mighty River Power shares are those who seem ‘hell bent’ on selling off Mighty River Power at any price, seemingly regardless of the cost to taxpayers?
“.. I can advise that Cabinet has delegated authority to a group of Ministers to set the final price for shares in the Mighty River Power share offer. the group of Ministers is the Prime Minister (John Key) Minister of Finance (Bill English) , Minister for Economic Development and Associate Minister of Finance Steven Joyce, and Minister of State-Owned Enterprises (Tony Ryall).”
(Above-mentioned Official Information Act reply from Minister of State Owned Enterprises, Tony Ryall, dated 17 March 2013).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ung4048v4cgtul7/Slevel6.3-c13031716040.pdf
How many taxpayers (or investors) know this?
Prime Minister John Key, Minister of Finance Bill English, Minister for Economic Development and Associate Minister of Finance Steven Joyce, and Minister of State-Owned Enterprises Tony Ryall, must act in a fiscally responsible, and financially prudent way and look after the interests of taxpayers by calling of the sale of Mighty River Power – NOW.
The other risk the NZ Government faces is that thousands of new ‘Mum and Dad’ investors, not to mention larger investors, both national and international, may lose confidence in the NZ sharemarket, because of the uncertainty over this ‘unholy mess’ which is currently the Mighty River Power share launch.
Tomorrow – Saturday 27 April 2013 will be actions all over New Zealand opposing asset sales – which today’s protest outside Mighty River Power, will help to advertise:
More details here:
Auckland – http://www.fb.com/events/151078145052593/
Wellington – http://www.fb.com/events/549656878400623/
Chirstchurch – http://www.fb.com/events/498770806846579/
Hamilton – 1: http://www.fb.com/events/226408490833717/
2: http://www.fb.com/events/150556321785316/
Tauranga – http://www.fb.com/events/165947043558739/
Napier – http://www.fb.com/events/101180450070550/
Palmerston North – http://www.fb.com/events/428833110546101/
Nelson – http://www.fb.com/events/178199345664434/
Dunedin – http://www.fb.com/events/228130223991407/
Hanmer Springs (Sunday 28 April) -www.fb.com/events/571065112918062/
Greymouth (Sunday 28 April) – http://www.fb.com/pages/Greymouth-Sunday-Markets/334434963322711
Penny Bright
A Spokesperson for the Switch Off Mercury Energy group
https://www.facebook.com/SwitchOffMercuryEnergy?fref=ts
Well sand my nipples !
Have you paid your rates yet dear lady ?
“Have you paid your rates yet dear lady ?”
Nope.
And I won’t until Auckland Council ‘opens the books’ and tells us EXACTLY where our rates monies are being spent.
Penny Bright
‘Anti-privatisation / anti-corruption’ campaigner.
2013 Auckland Mayoral candidate
sounds pretty good to me why should they pay the workers when there not working and out on the street having a fucking whine
[r0b: farmboy, filling your comments with fucking swearing doesn’t impress anyone, and it (unfortunately) promotes comments in kind, and the whole thread gets derailed. Please calm down all, DNFTT.]
[lprent: Banned one week for what appears to have been a deliberate attempt to start a flame war. Banned a further week for wasting my time moving the thread to OpenMike and away from diverting from the post topic. ]
I dunno, why are we listening to you having a fucking whine?
i’m not whining there chapie as i said sounds pretty good, tis you that is now whining about my percieved whine
The sensible answer to your stupid question is to point out that “fucking whining” is a feeble mis-characterisation of the right to strike, you fucking child.
no i think it sums it up perfectly you whining fucking pussy harden up or fuck off
Yap yap little scab.
yap yap your fired
My fired what, you illiterate scab?
Wow, thats quite some rebuttle!
The lowering of the bar continues on the trool front though, you must be the mid afternoon shift !
Go away scab.
Get a horse. And a haircut. And a pickaxe handle. Ride into town to cleanse the streets. You can call yourself Key’s Cossacks.
And please, if you fall off the horse like that AWB idiot in South Africa, put the video on youtube.
might be hard to record myself while smashing heads with my pickaxe that sounds like a 2hander maybe they should just get the sack and someone more concerned about doing a decent days work for decent money as in affco should be hired that would sound pretty weird to you but alot of people actully work without havn a cry
Fuck off you lazy ignorant little cunt.
thats not a very nice way to talk about your mother
What’s your point, scab?
If Rambo can handle an M60 with one hand, but you need two for a pickaxe handle, what sort of righty are you? Bloody soft, that’s what I say. Now stop crying and look for a full stop, some commas, and a clue.
yea haha rambo now theres a guy who wouldnt have a cry while getting decent pay
Piss off scab.
Are we in the movie “Deliverance’?
Get used to our ‘whining’ Farm Boy (it is going to be a lot louder than the farmers who whinge because they can’t plan for a few weeks of sunshine)
You are going to hear us ‘whining’ up and down this country like you have never heard it before.
We will fight this bullshit in every way imaginable and bring this country to a stop if our ‘whines’ are ignored.
The workers of this country are not going to put with this.
Your stupidity is arousing… no pressure…. aha ha
Flippin heck, no-one told me we were having a swearathon today. And now the cunt’s been banned.
jolly gosh, and I jolly well jolly missed out again.
The New Lynn LEC is hosting the Whau Ward Selection Meeting tomorrow at 4.00.
It will be held in 3071 Great North Road, New Lynn, opposite the Police Station!
The Whau seat on the Council and the seven Whau Local Board seats will be contested by the Labour Party, with full Labour Party branding. All candidates will be members of the Labour Party.
Labour will present a full slate.
The Whau Ward is predominantly in the New Lynn Parliamentary electorate, with parts in the Mt Albert and the Mt Roskill electorates.
All Whau area LabourParty paid-up members are welcome to attend.
Damn – on the afternoon of an important day of action.
I’m glad to see that Labour will be putting up candidates for the Whau Board.
Livingweek to week waitin’ around to die
REpent
Every self respecting Auckland lefty and liberal will be at the weekend march against the sale of our assetsthis Saturday. Kicks off at 2 pm from Britomart.
Facebook notification is at http://www.facebook.com/events/151078145052593/
Any self respecting New Zealander should be there. You may have voted for National. Show the government this is not the reason you voted for them.
Selling assets is a sale of our sovereignty. If should affect all New Zealanders.
I regret nothing !
Persons without a conscience don’t.
from RNZ, apparently the Christchurch rebuild is to cost up to 30% /10B more than the government had until now calculated, coming to possibly 40B in total.
The governments reason for the conservative estimates include
-inflationary pressure
-impact upon total $NZ spend.
-impact on stake-holders costs; (insurers want to cap their debt), taxpayers and ratepayers
“Throw off your hat kick off your shoes
Throw down your gun you might shoot yourself
Or is that what you’re trying to do?”
“love in a peaceful world, yeah.”
So Grosers bid to be the next bigwig of the WTO has crashed and burned. So will he pay the obscene amount of money he has wasted on his pipe dream, back to the taxpayer? Will he fuck. What a waste of time and space he is. And he’s been collecting his taxpayer salary too, what a bludger.\
“The trade minister hit headlines last week when it emerged that he racked up travel expenses of almost $260,000 in the first three months of the year – nearly $3000 a day – as he lobbied for the WTO top job.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8599819/Grosers-WTO-bid-hits-the-rocks
How much does Groser’s lack of success reflect on NZ’s standing worldwide? How much did Key kill his chances?
Or Mike Moore.
well-played
And this little Gem caught my eye too.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/8598030/Call-for-NZ-to-be-tax-haven-for-retirees
Just what we need, a bunch of old, fat, loud, opinionated, rich Yanks coming here, and building gated communities to keep out the riff raff.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10879805
Forfeited to The Crown – WTF does that even mean, and who has that cash!
Where is the rest of the seized assets/cash ending up?
“Restrained” I presume that means frozen or otherwise encumbered.
It could possibly do with more information, yes.
Seems to be a slide in terminology in the article: $150mil “restrained” (i.e. my guess is frozen), but $27mil “forfeited” (my guess is completed the seizure process and handed over). However, once that is converted into cash and other creditors settled (article mentioned the banks of course, and spouses) a little over a third of that actually gets to the government (shit valuation of the property?), and of that ABSOLUTELY NONE goes to rehabilitation or addressing the causes of crime. All has disappeared into the consolidated fund, which the nats piss away like export gold (i.e. tip directly down the drain without involving the kidneys as middleman).
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10879823
With full support through the blue structure, is the only way this *lack of cooperation* could happen!
This is a bloody disgrace!
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/04/25/hey-julian-we-are-not-pleased-grant-robertson-calls-off-labours-assault-on-neoliberalism/
Looks like Chris Trotter’s regretting mistaking a turkey (housing policy) and a lone swallow (power policy) for a summer.
Robertson disappoints, but he does not surprise.
With only two policies announced AFAIK, isn’t the turkey a lone turkey, too?
sometimes Chris Trotter disappoints
Some of his analysis is quite good. I think that he let wishful thinking get the better of him.
McF: lone turkey
Considering that there’s a new Lone Ranger film due out, I’m already imagining what Gary Larson would do with that line…
“The Adventures of the Lone Turkey and Swallow!”
lol
sounds a bit close to porno territory for my, er, taste…
orh Rhino, now you’ve gone and spoilt the Arc for me.
Oh dear, here I was thinking along the lines of cartoon’s he’d done like “Frontier Accountants” and suddenly Rule 34 kicks in…
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleThirtyFour
For the economics wonks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averch-Johnson_effect
The Averch–Johnson effect is the tendency of companies to engage in excessive amounts of capital accumulation in order to expand the volume of their profits. If companies profits to capital ratio is regulated at a certain percentage then there is a strong incentive for companies to over-invest in order to increase profits overall. This goes against any optimal efficiency point for capital that the company may have calculated as higher profit is almost always desired over and above efficiency.
As far as I can tell, this effect describes the main reason our electricity prices are so high.
Bye bye 350ppm, hello 400 parts per million.
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/the-science-of-350-the-most-important-number-on-the-planet.html
http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/what-does-400-ppm-look-like/
But it’s not really going to happen! Otherwise we’d be taking to the streets instead of sitting on the internet calling each other names or arguing about politics and shit.
*shudder*
It’s not really them that we have to worry about though. It’s us and all the people we know that know that CC is real but still aren’t doing much about it.
Our civilisation’s very foundations depends on energy, lots and lots of energy.
We’re not going to give it up voluntarily.
How is the Government going to get a ‘good price’ for Mighty River Power’?
CALL OFF THE SALE!
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/labour-greens-electricity-policy-halves-publics-mrp-appetite-bd-139218
Penny Bright
‘Anti-corruption / anti-privatisation’ campaigner
44% of kiwis living pay day to pay day.
That’ll be why every one looks so carefree and relaxed, then.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10879848
The Allen: That is the way I have lived here since I arrived! I NEVER saved and got anywhere, really, as just working honestly and hardly leaves you nowhere but down at the bottom. NZ has NOT improved or changed substantially since the 1980s, apart for a few. That is the sad reality, especially for ordinary, low paid workers, and certainly for benficiaries. Fuck National AND Labour for that!
Preaching to the choir, Bruv.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul since forever.
FORGET NOT, AND LEARN!
I have not taken a “knife” to WINZ, which I thought of doing so, but North cautioned me. I was not really decided and ready to let off my anger about welfare reforms and to be expected harassments in that manner. But given the most intimidating steps to be expected soon, I will not make any promise or take any commitments to what I can, can restrain myself from, or what may otherwise happen. I have been treated with utter contempt before and was near suicide, due to WINZ and MSD agendas and treatments.
This present Nat dominated government is pushing many of us to the brink, and if I need to take action, I will do so, even if I need to take the last step to take my life.
I HATE New Zealand for what this country has been turned into, it is now a disgustingly unfair, divided, racist and hateful place, I wish I had never come back to. It is up to YOU to make a difference and take a stand.
Much is happening behind the scenes, but few understand and will be prepared to listen.
Good luck, if you believe that freedom, democracy and rights will be preserved by sitting at home, blogging, chatting and otherwise just minding your own selective interests, you will soon see another thing coming. Iit is too much cowardice that rules this country.
For FUCKS sake, wake up, take a stand, and go on the Day of Action Today!!!
I respect and see my ideal in Che Guevara, as I identify very much with this man!
Xtasy in desperation!
Oh dear, oh dear, a few hundred marching and “holding up traffic” in Queen Street on the “Day of Action Against Asset Sales”, a supposed one hundred marching in Wellington, and was there any few others that bothered? Seems that to most the horse has bolted long ago, and it is more of “roll over Kiwis” all over the land. Yawn, sigh, what a mess!
That is how much people care, division is the rule now, self interest and self pre-occupation the prime ambition, so next election will likely show another term for this semi dictotorial lot running the show.
Import more slaves to do the dirty jobs at service stations in supermarkets, as cleaners in your offices, in fast food and restaurant outlets, in bars and what else need done to keep the show running.
F*** the rest, that seems to be the motto of most.
RIP NZ.