Free Trade Agreements mean Australian Firms can sell any alcohol they like to NZ Teens
Yeah our sovereignty as a country is screwed, thanks Free Traders, we can’t even regulate the kinds of alcopop drinks that our kids get smashed on. Who the hell are our politicians and business leaders working for again?
…the alcohol industry is considering ignoring any regulation through the Transtasman Mutual Recognition Arrangement, which states goods produced in or imported into Australia can be sold here.
“There is no need to circumvent anything – that’s the bilateral trade agreement signed by both Governments,” said Thomas Chin, chief executive of the Distilled Spirits Association of NZ.
Similarly, any ministerial ban on alcohol novelty products – such as vodka mouthwash or alcoholic chocolate milk – could be ignored under trade laws.
Got to admire the Aussies’ activism, take their devious opposition to NZ apples, or blaming the Ansett failure on NZ, meanwhile freely exporting all sorts of crap to dumb Kiwis
“Prime Minister John Key told United States diplomats all New Zealanders have a “socialist streak” and they secretly thought he was a “natural politician”,
How full of himself can he be? At first I could not believe my eyes, then I woke up, and yep it was real. Hopefully he will get a huge reality check in November.
As for him knowing what we ‘secretly think’ remember all those Nats have the ‘sense’ of the community – clearly National is full of mind-readers and psychics. Perhaps they should start up an 0900 psychic hotline so we can phone them up to ask where the lost keys are and whether Aunt Magnolia’s operation will be a success…
You have to wonder about this guy’s motives.
He always wanted to be Prime Minister, and now that he is, he spends his time getting his photo taken at several ops a day and going overseas to be seen with as many famous people and world leaders as possible and getting photos for his album.
Lake Ellesmere, NZ’s most polluted lake, is getting $12 million spent on restoring it to its natural state.
The pollution is the result of farmers activities within its catchment.
The cleanup however is being paid for by the local ratepayers Canterbury wide, and by NZ’s taxpayers, to the tune of $11 million, and $1 million by Fonterra.
So how does that work?
Why is there not a charge on the farms, through rates, within the catchment? And what about the farmers who did this simply paying to clen up their shit? Why am I and my kids paying for it? And at the same time paying the absolute maximum price for milk that dairy farmers can find in the entire world?
It is a step in the right direction by ffs it has hardly registered along the fairness pathway. Stand up farmers. Come on. Being the backbone and broad shouldered non-nonsense tell-it-how-it-is types. Pay your way.
And Smith said that some farmers will get compensation paid for their lost land and expenses. What! So if I dump a load of manure off my trailer in Queen Street, Smith will clean it up and pay me compensation for my trouble. Wow!
It’s not the farmers on the lake edge causing pollution – their land is required to plant a filtering wetland to aid the cleanup. The main contributing waterways are the Halswell, L2, Kaituna and Little River (and Selwyn). The biggest problem is nitrates from fertiliser and livestock filtering into these rivers.
Also, there is very klittle dairy farming on the banks of the lake – it is too wet. God knows why it is not opened upore frequently (even permanenty) to the sea (I am told Tgai Tahu are against it).
The lake was buggerred 40 years ago, about time it got cleaned up.
Yep, at least we are heading in the right direction mr grumpy. Re opening the lake I spend a bit of time there at the opening when its open. Imagine it would be near impossible to keep open permanently (the sea will always win) and if it was then the entire ecosystem would change to a more saltwater estuarine one, with all sorts of consequences biological and physical.
If things keep moving in this direction then in a decade or two hopefully many of our waterways will be back to being super-lush again. A bit like the Ohinemuri River which drains the gold-rich Waihi area in the Coromandel. When the old style practices using arsenic and all sorts of nasties to extract the gold were underway and using the river as a drain it was dead. After a couple of decades the move back to its natural state was quite remarkable. And that river was considerably worse than any farm-affected river.
I think Ngai Tahu have a proposal to keep Forsyth open permanently – if they can do that then Ellesmere could be likewise managed. The lake is certainly much better when opened.
Yes I have been watching that proposal with interest. Lordy knows how you do it though – the amount of gravel and sediment that gets moved is gigantic and I simply fail to see how it can be controlled. Yesterday for example a large south swell that was running was moving, I would guess, a couple tonnes per 10m of coastline with every wave. A man-made structure could not control that, even if it was up against the cliffs at the eastern end. And neither could the relatively low water flow from even a combined Ellesmere and Forsyth flow. No way imo.
And you are right in that Forsyth is even worse. Bleeargh…
Grumpy, am I right in thinking the farmers directly around the lake do not own the land but just have long term leases? Somebody told me that when I was playing golf near there a few years ago, but I can’t recall who whether he said it was Government owned or maybe owned by a trust?
A lot of the land is freehold and I suppose some may be leased but I don’t know from who (maybe DOC).
DoC (Wildlife Service) bought a lot of freehold land some time ago and some of this is leased out to farmers. The proposal to “retire” land and convert to wetland is a good one. DoC have a very good native plant nursery at Waihora pretty much for that purpose.
Then they can sort out Lake Forsyth, which for my money is much worse than Ellesmere.
Once again we spend a fortune on fixing some thing we destroyed, this is just more dog whistling to the dairy farmers and the Blue/Greens don’t worry fatty farmer after you have completely fucked it, then we will ask the Tax payer/rate payers and everyone else to feel good about cleaning up your mess.
VTO Green wash photo op by lizard eyes Nicolarse Smith. pandering to the green vote before the world cup cheap electioneering payed for by the tax payer outside the 100 days by a bankrupt Govt!
I don’t see any problem with doing an education deal with the Libyans, whether they are ruled by Qadaffi or the new lot. I’m inclined to think the United Press are just playing politics and attempting, indirectly, to blacken Qadaffi’s name.
Is anyone keeping an eye on the many and varied job positions being advertised by KiwiBank?
Are these positions to promote, strengthen and future-proof our state-owned bank or are fifth-columnists being put in strategic places to undermine the future ownership of our bank?
What’s with the ‘we’ Family First. I certainly didn’t vote for teenage drinks to have high alcohol content. I didn’t vote for the bottles to be designed and marketed in such a teenage-friendly way. Blame that on greedy businessmen.
It amazes me how rightwing misogynists continue to blame all of us when they are well aware that reducing the age was a National bill, which Helen Clark voted against.
If this government is having problems because of foreign or domestic agreements to take control of the drinking problems then maybe they need to rethink giving even more drastic powers through the TPPA. Talk about stupid, greedy men.
Have greedy stupid men actually intended for young women to drink and get drunk so that they and their offspring can now rape and batter with impunity and then blame it on those women and girls?
Have stupid women and girls realised yet that alcohol abuse is yet another way they can be controlled just as much as the pay equity issues and the abortion issues? Or are they calling that ‘drunk positivity’ like they call sex with anyone and everyone ‘sex positivity’?
Sex for women is great in exactly the same way as for men; just don’t confuse it with getting drunk and not knowing if you had sex or were raped, (same goes for men) not knowing the father of your child (men being too drunk to use a condom and the woman too drunk to insist on it) or getting an abortion which brings you into the orbit at abortion clinics of some seriously unhinged lunatics that seek to control not only your feminine and/or feminist freedoms but also to endanger the continued opening of abortion clinics to pregnant rape survivors, etc because it will give catholics in government or even just misogynists in government the always-present chance to close down your right to choose.
Try to understand that many men in New Zealand just don’t like women and do not regard them as equals. New Zealand under this government is becoming America where hospitals are bought and controlled by the catholic church in many cases and then proceed to deny safe abortions or contraceptives and over the last decade (when we elected our first woman Prime Minister) the religions or religious ideologies have streamed into New Zealand with their nutty messages all of which demand control over women.
P.S. Maybe if we organise a curfew for men women can get drunk and fall over safely. They can also die from alcoholism. Just saying.
@clandestino One day you may have to take some responsibility to pass on values of self-respect and control over one’s life and actions to children or others. I hope you will have realised by then that those who won’t limit themselves and are continually helped by their society to recover from their unwise behaviour are taking risks of many kinds and are not acting like people who would like to be adults who stand tall and responsible in society.
This morning a doctor talked about a couple of 18 year old women who regularly get drunk and participate in sex or are used for it by men whose identity they don’t know. One or both has had terminations. Yet they continue. Not only are they presently at risk, their future fertility may be completely damaged. It is very important to control one’s drinking, dependency is insidious and costly in money and loss of autonomy and pride.
Chris How hedonistic? Sounds like a line from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World where people are dosed on happy chemicals and are afraid to think of anything that might interfere with their positive brain functions.
“Bottle of mine, it’s you I’ve always wanted! Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted? Skies are blue inside of you, The weather’s always fine; For There ain’t no Bottle in all the world Like that dear little Bottle of mine.”
– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 5>
I totally identify with home brewing; you have to work for your alcohol, you know what’s in it and you don’t have to pay exorbitant prices for the garbage in pretty bottles the big breweries throw at us. And home brew tastes so much better as well, except for the odd ‘accident’ when the red wine tastes suspiciously like vinegar. But that’s where wine vinegar comes from! And only among consenting adults.
Better still, for the privilege of selling New Zealanders alcohol the big brewers and the retailers of it should be forced to pay a levy to reduce the cost of the damage to the consumers of it. Those who market a killing product with a rocketing alcohol content to teenagers must pay for their profits.
The producers and sellers must have a price control on their selling to discourage them from overcharging to recoup their levy charges. They have escaped fair charges since they were able to successfully lobby governments. That has to stop. It should not affect the buyers of alcohol, the damage to their systems if they overdo will affect them sufficiently.
Most important of all – who decided the alcohol content of these alcopops and is there a suitable jail time sorted for them – the higher the alcohol content, the higher the jail time, where a rape has occurred or a death has occurred. The guy in the plane crash that started the alcopops died. I’m sure the current czar has not reduced the content.
P.S. I love my wine, and malt whisky and boutique beer and gin’n’tonics and martinis.
However, I’m not silly enough to think that I don’t have to keep a continuous watch on my imbibing and my treatment of alcohol as just another grocery item. Alcohol is not just another grocery item.
Let’s not forget that the multi winery cabal including John Key and his vanishing winery business will be quite happy to see the alcohol passing through the supermarket doors at a great rate of knots.
I’m not sure which planet Draco is from, but obviously he was young once, and I’d like to think he stayed at home every Saturday eating four-cheese fondue in his sweet bachelor pad, but somehow I don’t think this was the case. Did you have a drink with your mates Draco? Did you like to get together, sing and dance, play pool or watch the game, hang out with the girls at a mates place or the bar? Or perhaps missing out is the reason for such bitterness and hyperbole? That’s a genuine attempt at understanding not a dig btw.
I’m a member of the younger generation I spose, and I get that we’ve had a long leash with cheap mass produced alcohol, but I would argue the leash remains and has gone from string to iron chains, and we have not only become the most vilified group of young people, but the most punished for the irresponsible actions of the few (hence you see the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ mentality when it comes to police, the consequences for doing something minor but foolish (opening a bottle of wine in public for eg.) are comparatively and excessively harsh. This exacerbates anti-social and anti-authoritarian reactionary behaviour like the aimless violence I see around). And yes stupid actions have consequences, but are instances of bad behaviour with respect to alcohol really worse now than 20/30/50/100 years ago?? Road stats would say otherwise, perhaps not assaults, but I believe that has deeper causes as I’ve said. Don’t even get me started on how high prices in downtown bars have led to supermarket consumption.
Prism. I would agree with you re those girls, but why do people always extrapolate that case out to include every bloody 18-25 year old round town??? Take it for what it is, a tragic case that may need intervention. As for the rest, I’m not sure how to combat that as I don’t believe your premise to be true, because you are equating weekend/fortnightly ‘binge’ (and I could go on about definitions there) drinking with alcoholism.
This is not to justify over the top consumption to the point of black-out, date rape with alcohol or violent and aggressive behaviour. Merely I wish to point out that what I see on a Saturday night is not all upskirt shots in the gutter or guys being predatory, but – shock, horror – many thousands of people having fun.
The question is why do people need a drug to feel better? Better about what? Themselves?
Nothing wrong with having a drink here and there but there is when it becomes a requirement for socialising and that really is where our society is at.
How about because it expands the definitions of sensory experience (probably more relevant to drugs), or decreases the inhibitions that exist within our cultural construct and assists people to connect at a baser, instinctual level (yes sex, but also friends and occasionally family)?
I don’t think these are bad things, maybe you differ on that.
I agree that there is a deeper element of neediness there. Call it escapism from the drudgery of existence or simply the fact we are the only species with the ability to know we will die, so why the fuck not, eh? I don’t know how or think you would be able to persuade me that we should legislate for these and against this particular freedom-to. Which is why I am of course pro-drug reform (must be a young ‘un with little experience huh).
As for it being a requirement, maybe for you, but you’ve got free will and the right to be different. Try ecstasy! Hehe.
clandestino I was just listening to Radionz and heard that LSD was never illegal here. Also the spread of drugs and how difficult to combat the tendency to go for a quick buzz with drugs and kill off brain and other cells needed to cope with life as a functioning adult.
But seriously, do you believe everything you hear with your own ears? Or do you go out to try and make the sound yourself. Function on that for a minute.
Remember the ‘new’ suburban housewives’ neuroses, when a trip to the doctor would fix all that with some Prozac? Doctors honestly believed that women should be deliriously happy at home alone with x no of babies/children. Not every woman is an earth mother.
All that was required was a lifeline for women to one another and luckily, instead of turning into druggies most of them formed a combined women’s union.
That suburban neuroses came about through idiot town planners forgetting to account for the fact that the extended family was no more; the nuclear family was in.
Jum
Another way of coping with neurosis was to drink sherry or port I think is high alcoholic. I had a rental house once and let it to a bloke who had a wife coming out of a nursing home and he was taking care of her. She had been actually drying out and renewed her old habits when she came out if one counted the sacks of bottles after they left the house after she set her mattress on fire smoking in bed. Drunk irresponsible with an out of control habit.
clandestino – You’re young. Don’t count on being young to protect you from all the difficult things that impact your life and getting drunk is an attempt to hang on to that careless happiness of youth where you don’t worry about your future, everything will be fine, or anything apart from yourself and your own interests. Part of being immature is trying to deflect facing problems by getting drunk or drugged as a regular thing daily or occasional binges. It makes you feel good temporarily but weakens your ability to find solutions and be clever about turning difficulties into opportunities for new directions advantageous to you.
I can’t help but think you view other people’s experiences through a prism of condescension there Prism. Like I said before, get off your high horse (pun unintended) and stop thinking of everyone who enjoys the social and dopaminal effects of drugs or alcohol with some kind of self-esteem deprived, socially incapable, life-loser. It is simply not true and you are apparently old enough to have realised that.
That final sentence to me proves you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
@ clandestino – I probably know about more cases of alcohol addiction than you do and don’t take it all so light-heartedly. Also I am looking at the problem in a macro way while I think you are viewing it from what suits you.
It’s a nation-wide problem and saying that everybody has done it (got drunk) doesn’t deal with what is a major social and medical problem.
Don’t think it is much different, for young males, from when we were young. Back in the dark ages.
Police and adults seemed to be more tolerant of stupid teenagers then.
Binge drinking has always been a NZ problem. It would be nice if we could change that culture, but I think it is too ingrained in most of us.
The most upsetting change, to me, is seeing very young girls, and boys, walking around sloshed on alcopops. The producers of alcohol are largely to blame, for making it easier for 14 year olds to drink.
But I will quibble with you in that perpetuating the myth of ‘binge’ drinking as a NZ problem doesn’t help. I have lived in continental Europe and know firsthand the ‘continentals do it better’ spiel we hear is almost complete bullshit. They start younger, and drink more (look at the alcohol consumption per capita for European countries especially for northern Europe but also the latin states compared to NZ). The difference is they don’t seem to have a societal guilt complex about it.
Also, is it a ‘change’ that you see 14 year olds sloshed? I’ve noticed as I get older everyone else gets younger and I’m in my twenties. I certainly got sloshed at 14 without alcopops, with the wonderfully liberating positive and terribly educational negative effects.
They start younger, and drink more (look at the alcohol consumption per capita for European countries especially for northern Europe but also the latin states compared to NZ).
From my anecdotal experience, yes. That might just be the young however. You do notice a high degree of alcohol dependency, alcohol in the morning in italy with coffee is popular for example, just to wake up. Some of it is cultural, but booze is so damn cheap over there (bottle of Absolut: 8 euro) that people drink constantly.
Yes, it seems to be a topping up rather than a blotto out kinda thing don’t you think? But the glasses of wine seem smaller, the sweet spirits less frequent. Where I am a glass of wine is way cheaper than a coffee – not sure I’d have both at the same time.
Have stupid women and girls realised yet that alcohol abuse is yet another way they can be controlled just as much as the pay equity issues and the abortion issues? Or are they calling that ‘drunk positivity’ like they call sex with anyone and everyone ‘sex positivity’?
I would like to think so! My nieces seem to think that getting bladdered is just “what you do to have a good time”, which is, I think, sad and mindless of them.
“… or getting an abortion which brings you into the orbit at abortion clinics of some seriously unhinged lunatics that seek to control not only your feminine and/or feminist freedoms but also to endanger the continued opening of abortion clinics to pregnant rape survivors, etc because it will give catholics in government or even just misogynists in government the always-present chance to close down your right to choose.”
Sorry, Jum, but I just can’t agree that abortion is freedom! It always has negative physical and psychological consequences (ask my sister who was bullied into two of them!). I know that QoT for one, simply did not believe that the group Feminists for Life was a real feminist group, but it is. (I had tried to find a link to the British or NZ group, but google has “personalised” me to American links for some unknown reason.. Also, aside from Bull English, how many Catholics in government do you know of? This not being the USA, thank God, such things are not generally known.
Try to understand that many men in New Zealand just don’t like women and do not regard them as equals. New Zealand under this government is becoming America where hospitals are bought and controlled by the catholic church in many cases and then proceed to deny safe abortions or contraceptives and over the last decade (when we elected our first woman Prime Minister) the religions or religious ideologies have streamed into New Zealand with their nutty messages all of which demand control over women.
For heaven’s sake, seriously! You seem to have a wee chip on your shoulder. AFAIK, America is protestant-dominated, and there’d be hell to pay if the RC church dominated there…
Abortion is something men want. Studies have shown that, time and again, men want women to have free access to abortion. Women, not so much.
I have read your same comments so many times; I was not swayed by them then. Nor am I now. I don’t have a chip on my shoulder. Ask the Rugby legend Frank whatsisname that used to write a column and said quite bluntly that there are many men who hate women.
I would have to say your chip is showing if having an opinion is having a chip; not all men want women to have abortions.
You can change ‘freedom’ to ‘choice’ but it still means the same in that women get to choose and that is a freedom.
I could believe that Feminists for Life is a feminist group; they chose. That is feminist. There are feminists who chose to wear clothes covering their bodies; that’s a feminist choice as long as they don’t choose for me.
I will find the link to the Catholic hospitals that refuse abortions and contraception. Be right back…
I have to say they are underlined by the reaction by people (usually right wing types) had to the recent Slutwalks.
It seems that the prevailing attitude, no matter how much they denied it, is that if a girl/woman was raped and she was wearing a short skirt and high heels, they somehow brought it on themselves.
Some people still have an issue with women and seek to control them and their behaviour. The vitirol directed at mothers on the DPB is a case in point. Essentially they are loose women who beat their children and swing their legs open like a rusty gate, according to the right.
As for you Millsy, you should be a long-jumper, if you think I am anti women…
Let’s change the subject matter here from female to male.
“What’s with the ‘we’ Family First. I certainly didn’t vote for teenage drinks to have high alcohol content. I didn’t vote for the bottles to be designed and marketed in such a teenage-friendly way. Blame that on greedy business(women). Yeah right!
It amazes me how rightwing misogynists continue to blame all of us when they are well aware that reducing the age was a National bill, which Helen Clark voted against. (No change there)
If this government is having problems because of foreign or domestic agreements to take control of the drinking problems then maybe they need to rethink giving even more drastic powers through the TPPA. Talk about stupid, greedy (women – no, Millsy. they don’t have that much power in this government, well, any government).
Have greedy stupid (women) actually intended for young (men) to drink and get drunk so that they and their offspring can now rape and batter with impunity and then blame it on those (men and boys)? Yeah right!
Have stupid (men and boys) realised yet that alcohol abuse is yet another way they can be controlled just as much as the pay equity issues and the abortion issues? Or are they calling that ‘drunk positivity’ like they call sex with anyone and everyone ‘sex positivity’? (Like men even have to worry about any of that, Millsy!)
Sex for (men) is great in exactly the same way as for (women); just don’t confuse it with getting drunk and not knowing if you had sex or were raped, (same goes for (women)) not knowing the (mother) of your child (being too drunk to use a condom and the woman too drunk to insist on it) or (the woman) getting an abortion which brings (her) into the orbit at abortion clinics of some seriously unhinged lunatics that seek to control not only (your male) freedoms but also to endanger the continued opening of abortion clinics to pregnant rape survivors, etc because it will give catholics in government or even just misogynists in government the always-present chance to close down (her) right to choose.
P.S. Maybe if we organise a curfew for (women, men) can get drunk and fall over safely. They can also die from alcoholism. Just saying.
In the end it’s all about men; the more women play the game men’s way the more men will win.
A women’s political party is the way to go and then we’ll see what feathers fall out.
Anyway, going back to the comments about booze above, I have to say New Zealanders have a pretty screwed up relationship with alcohol. We go on and on about teenagers drinking (its like a moral panic), even though the older generation shouldnt be one to point fingers. Over 40’s can be just as bad. Go to any RSA, chartered club, food and wine festival in this country, and youll see a lot of middle aged people off their faces and trying to **** each other, then every week they complain about drunk teenagers.
That same generation used to drive home drunk from the pub (and the local cop would turn a blind eye), build tacky booze barns, which were purposely designed to be warehouses for drunks, leave their kids out in the car with a bag of chips and a soft drink, and so on and so forth.
Of course every 3 years they would roll up to the polling booths and vote on whether to ban the stuff outright up till 1989 — fortunately they voted no every time.
I’m more intrigued about the ****. Please explain, unless it’s going to make you blush!
Dad used to tell me about a distant friend of the family who used to forget he’d swapped his horse for a car and used to get in, turn on the engine and go home at about 20mph, hugging the gutter; he was totally off his face. It was so acceptable in the time, but cars are faster, there’s more of them and hypocritical politicians looking for a cat to skin.
As the evolutionists are constantly pointing out to us, Prism, it’s all about survival of the fittest and in this case the choice of the superior being to birth the future of the race was woman.
But I actually said, “In the end it’s all about men; the more women play the game men’s way the more men will win.
A women’s political party is the way to go and then we’ll see what feathers fall out.”
It is all about men, Prism. They control the world. They also want to control women’s reproduction and their very beings. Getting drunk and falling over is what men do. Women don’t need to do that to prove they are equal. The fact that they do get drunk and lose a myriad of brain cells and liver health while they’re doing so allows men to not take them seriously, to batter them and to rape them and then blame them. That is a lose/lose situation. Women are so much better than that.
It’s almost as if women are following that near-quote from the late and highly respected Sir Paul Reeves. It is not failing that frightens New Zealanders; it is the fear of succeeding. In the case of women maybe they want to sabotage their futures; maybe they don’t want what society wants for them. If so they need to reinvent themselves, decide what they want and demand respect for their individual decisions, before religious and conservative influences decide for them. Maybe they need to do nothing at all because they want religious and conservative influences. Getting drunk and falling over is as silly for women (and vastly more dangerous) as it is for men. All you get is a headache and all your small fortune (that we all earn over decades of working) goes down the toilet. The alcohol czars are laughing even louder on their way to the bank.
That recent rape of a young woman would not have happened if her ‘friends’ had stayed with her. Also, the bars are geared to profit not caring about people. We also need to remember that women don’t have to be totally off their faces to be raped, so blaming her rape on her being drunk is wrong. She just needs to understand that it certainly did not help!
It is all about men, Prism. They control the world. They also want to control women’s reproduction and their very beings. Getting drunk and falling over is what men do. Women don’t need to do that to prove they are equal.
Women don’t need to get drunk etc, pity they can’t internalise that. As for women being equal, many are the better and brighter of the two genders. But I think women are often afraid to use their full powers. It used to be advised that girls shouldn’t appear to be too brainy and intellectual if they wanted to attract a man and I think this may still be the case, despite all that women have done to banish sexism. Perhaps that explains the plethora of deeply diving women’s necklines and exposed globes of breast. Certainly doesn’t seem intellectual, rather the opposite.
Unfortunately for women who want to both use their talents to the fullest and have a committed partnership, the scales of women with advanced education such as degrees are on the heavy side, and men with similar backgrounds are on the lighter side. So women may still have to concentrate on looking enticing etc. to get a mate if they are herteros, and find men attractive.
Ask Paula Bennett about that Jum and her daughter inter generational. The Right are the biggest hypocrites ever. Jum your Hero Dinosaur Don Bash has left solo mums in his wake!
. Ask the Rugby legend Frank whatsisname that used to write a column and said quite bluntly that there are many men who hate women.
I think you really have missed my point, Jum. I never said there aren’t men who hate women! I know there are. And I happen to think that some manifest that hatred by promotion open slather abortion – making women into mere sterile containers for their emissions, and pseudo-males. (Lots of recreational sex, all care and no responsibility!)
I would have to say your chip is showing if having an opinion is having a chip; not all men want women to have abortions.
I never said all of them do! Just that, studies have shown that men support ‘freedom of choice’ as they call it, significantly more than women do. My own friends and family have shown me, that what a woman wants is not for the man to help her pay for an abortion and hold her hand afterwards, but to commit to her and the baby. Obviously, they get very upset indeed when the man says blithely in answer to “I’m pregnant” “so do you think you’ll keep it? Or worse – “you’ll go to the clinic?” Or as an ex said to me in a hopeful tone (he knew my views) “maybe you’ll have a miscarriage?”
Vicky32
This should keep you going for a wee while. I am still searching for the one that started me thinking about the dangers of health care privatisation.
Thanks Jum, although casting a cursory glance over your links shows that perhaps one of your sources might be regarded as objective! I am reading the first one, and my first comment is that bluesing along to a Catholic hospital (and they don’t hide what they are!) and asking for ’emergency contraception’ – I use the quotes because you and I both know that’s a euphemism for abortifacient, is nothing but provocative! It wouldn’t be an innocent error but a deliberate attempt to court controversy. It’s a fac t that Catholic hospitals, like all hospitals will if asked, provide a referral to where the service asked for can be found!
Another thing you know as well as I do, is that pregnancy after rape is vanishingly rare. However it does stir the emotions! Hard cases make bad law, says the axiom.. and Bernard Nathanson has admitted that when he was campaigning in favour of abortion on demand, he and his colleagues vastly inflated the number and proportion of illegal abortions leading to maternal death at the time. Abortion proponents now, exaggerate the number of those seeking abortion who are rape survivors.
Your fifth link (to Religious Tolerance.org, which is of course noted for its intolerance), has a banner across the top that says: “Sterilization is evil. It is a mutilation that frustrates the purpose of the marriage act. You can’t call that health care.” Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Wenski, in the Miami Herald. ” To me, that’s quite uncontroversial!
The main point is that Caholic hospitals (especially in New Zealand) do not disguise themselves! No one is in such a hurry that they can’t go 2 kilometres down the road to their DHB and get what they want. If they choose not to, so that they can go to the media and weep and yell, I have no sympathy!
another one for you, re the NZ court case, and if I had the time to waste my personal time I would link you to a thousand more perfectly good objective/anti/for abortion sites but I think I would be hunted off this site very quickly for linking to sites you could. I am still looking for that one I found originally.
Having found that in the middle of serious scientific sites on evolution whole scripts of anti-evolution/procreationist blogs that had been cut and pasted into there I know that the people who want to control women in one way or another are deadly serious.
One thing I did not know, and just for once you didn’t try to convince me I did, was the catholic hospitals in New Zealand.
How many are there and I wonder how they will behave if given the chance to stop women having abortions in New Zealand through a myriad of court cases and perhaps killing doctors performing legal, safe abortions (as in America) as opposed to the knitting needle, gin baths and jumping up and down, or the illegal backstreet abortions. Can you really convince me that the same lunatic behaviour in America won’t occur here, as more conservative, religious views become the norm rather than the choices women have at present?
In America pharmacies/chemists are refusing to hand over contraceptives or an abortion pill; if enough of those places take over enough areas in New Zealand, can you really convince me that they won’t employ exactly the same tactics as in America. This world has become a global one and it is all about the fight for women’s rights, in the face of neo-conservative misogyny, as far as I am concerned.
Lastly, your statements:
“It’s a fact that Catholic hospitals, like all hospitals will if asked, provide a referral to where the service asked for can be found!
Another thing you know as well as I do, is that pregnancy after rape is vanishingly rare. However it does stir the emotions!”
You can’t prove whether Catholic hospitals will refer on or not. Neither you nor I know for a fact ‘that pregnancy after rape is vanishingly rare’. As for stirring the emotions, I think you’re the one at risk here.
I have not read the links I forwarded to you. I just typed in catholic hospitals re abortion and they came up. Unlike you Vicky32, I allow you to read and make up your own mind. I’m pleased that one of the links is an objective one; it proves that there is some sense of tolerance on both sides.
PS I have never advocated abortion above contraception or the less invasive drug that performs a chemical abortion.
I have always said there are three answers to a request for sex – No, end of conversation/ Maybe – the pressure begins, could get pregnant, could get diseased, could be disappointed, do I want to, does the person really care that much about me/ Yes – the odds on pregnancy, STDs, disappointment, made a mistake, was ditched straight after are magnified 100%.
Rape is quite different; I doubt the Catholic hospitals, pharmacies, churches see the difference and the woman will always be blamed.
Actually, the woman always being blamed is not just by Catholics, of course.
Rape is quite different; I doubt the Catholic hospitals, pharmacies, churches see the difference and the woman will always be blamed.
Jum, I think that you know almost nothing about Catholicism or Catholics, especially in New Zealand! You seem more than a little paranoid.
I recommend you try talking to a Catholic, and asking her how they see rape etc. You might get quite a shock!
http://oldsite.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2408/context/archive
you said:”The main point is that Catholic hospitals (especially in New Zealand) do not disguise themselves! No one is in such a hurry that they can’t go 2 kilometres down the road to their DHB and get what they want. If they choose not to, so that they can go to the media and weep and yell, I have no sympathy!”
As far as I could read, this particular rape survivor did not go to the phone book, find where the next Catholic hospital was and go there. Still, who knows. Maybe the rape was the last thing on her mind; it was all about complaining to the media because the hospital would not help her.
New Zealand is changing rapidly; it is becoming global. I hold out little hope that women will be able to stand against this onslaught from the religious masses. If only the women who don’t believe in abortion would allow other women to make up their own minds.
Maybe the anti abortionists don’t want women to use public funds for an abortion; well I don’t complain when some rugby player gets dashed into hospital for mending or a car accident victim gets treated over a hip replacement patient, all of which can be life-threatening.
Even the Catholic church did not outlaw abortions until the 1970s-1980s when women were beginning to demand equality and pay equity. I went looking for the date in my book by Marilyn French which is depressing in itself, because in The War Against Women she outlines many ways that the rulers of society use to reduce women to little value, and I find every time I flick through it, how little has actually changed) but am still looking for the book, so can’t say exactly what year. But, whatever it was, the church did not ban abortions per se until much later than a church which supposedly holds abortion to be a terrible sin now didn’t seem to think so then.
As far as I could read, this particular rape survivor did not go to the phone book, find where the next Catholic hospital was and go there.
Why would she? I never said “the next Catholic hospital!” I said DHB, district health board… that is, public hospital! Oh, I have just realised – you’re not a New Zealander at all, are you, or you’d have known that! Explains so much, does that…
Maybe the anti abortionists don’t want women to use public funds for an abortion; well I don’t complain when some rugby player gets dashed into hospital for mending
Well, I do! (About the rugby player, that is, not the car accident victim.)
“(Lots of recreational sex, all care and no responsibility!) ”
What’s with all this fuss about sex outside of the marriage/relationship context. It can be quite an enjoyable intamite and exciting act which can be enjoyed by two (or more) people who have an attraction for each either. I belive sexual stimulation by another human being can be the ultamite natural high, superior to booze and drugs, and if anything, people should be having more sex, not less (with consent, and within reasonable limits of course).
And no, you cannot have sex without emotion. On the raw phyiscal level, the stimulation of nerve endings and the consequent release of endorphins is an emotion in itself. Its just that we tend to tie up emotions with concepts that were developed by various authors dating back to Chaucer, and Shakespeare (that does not to say I dont think ‘romantic love’ exists, Im just very pragmatic about it — ultamitely, a friendship with a good sexual element is probably what should be aimed for)
Of course — it is a pity that 2000 years of god bothering (sorry Vicky, but hey, you guys dont exactly do yourselves credit) have totally screwed up our attitude to sexual relations.
What’s with all this fuss about sex outside of the marriage/relationship context. It can be quite an enjoyable intamite sic) and exciting act which can be enjoyed by two (or more) people who have an attraction for each either. I belive sexual stimulation by another human being can be the ultamite natural high, superior to booze and drugs, and if anything, people should be having more sex, not less (with consent, and within reasonable limits of course).
What a bizarre attitude, and may I say, a rather male one? You left out the most important thing that makes sex enjoyable – commitment and relationship! Yes, I have tried it both ways, so I know what I am talking about. If you’re just in it for the endorphins and won’t necessarily even recognise him/her 6 months later, why bother? Just whip one off the wrist, to use Jo Brand’s phrase. My observation is that the happier and more sexually fulfilled people I know are the married and faithful ones. Endless sexual variety with one person. By contrast, the people who have from 5-25 different ‘partners’ each year are pretty miserable buggers.
Of course — it is a pity that 2000 years of god bothering (sorry Vicky, but hey, you guys dont exactly do yourselves credit) have totally screwed up our attitude to sexual relations.
I have also thought that behind a lot of atheism, is sexual appetite! “I don’t like religion, because it says I can’t scratch my sexual itch whenever I feel like it, and with whomever I feel like it”. You ‘guys’ don’t do yourselves a lot of credit either – by that I mean I am assuming you’re of the ‘another notch on the bed post’ persuasion. (Or another two or three, depending on how many people and in what combination you’ve just had.)
It’s been just over a year since the informative movie Gasland was released to rave reviews. It documented the environmentally disastrous process known as Hydraulic Fracturing or Fracking for short, in the Continental United States. Josh Fox’s brilliant movie went a long way to creating awareness of the dangerous process. The share shock value of people lighting their drinking water on fire in Pennsylvania is something not easily forgotten…
This morning on radionz I heard a comment on suicides as they happen in the older population.
The speaker, a social worker, nurse possibly thought that more attention should be given to the senior group as much as to youth suicide. I am so annoyed at this too common attitude of caring being doled out to the young, reluctantly, while the older person who has already had their life chances is cossetted and encouraged to be self-centred and take the largest share of any pie that is available.
while the older person who has already had their life chances is cossetted and encouraged to be self-centred and take the largest share of any pie that is available.
Your comment makes me both cross and sad, prism. A relative of mine who was definitely not a youth (!), (though not an oldie, I will say) committed suicide a few years back. I was utterly stunned, as I had heard of only one other case of a non-yoof killing themself. Yet, in the years since, I have learned that it’s shockingly common, yet no one gives a flying ****.
In this respect at least, the old(er) people are not being cossetted, it’s the precise opposite. If an older person kills themself, the general attitude of anyone outside the family seems to be “Oh, he had his life, let’s move on. Who cares about it anyway, the problems of teens matter so much more!
We hear constantly (especially here on the Standard, about poor unemployed destitute teens. I am not saying they don’t matter – my point is that everyone matters! Not just brown people between 15-25 years old…
@vicky32 Get cross all you like but the saying from Orwell’s book that Everyone is equal but some are more equal than others, is true. Youth needs more help to get started, age needs help to comfortably finish. That seems a reasonable attitude which isn’t the one I hear much of at present.
And as for brown youth I didn’t mention them I was talking generally, but you have brought them forward because you have heard of their needs and how not enough is being done to meet those so you tacitly agree with my premise about youth getting a bigger share of the pie. After all they are young, still growing and need more.
And as for brown youth I didn’t mention them I was talking generally, but you have brought them forward because you have heard of their needs and how not enough is being done to meet those so you tacitly agree with my premise about youth getting a bigger share of the pie. After all they are young, still growing and need more.
Yes, youth do need a big share of the pie. But they don’t need all of it! I am not talking generally here, I am specifically talking about suicide prevention. The first time I ever heard of the suicide of a non-yoof was when I was studying a mental health module on my special education course at U of A. A fellow student talked about the shock of her father in law having eaten his gun, in the kitchen of the family home. She had called the mental health crisis team two days previously, but been told that her father in law was a very low priority, as suicide was a youth problem, and her 60 something father in law was wealthy (a farmer) and white and old, and could take care of himself. Which was seriously missing the point. Someone with clinical depression can’t even want to take care of themself! As was shown in the case of my relative who I will not identify even to the point of stating how old he was – only that he was manifestly not the youth all suicide victims are supposed by the media to be.
It’s all pointed up by an item on 3 News I just heard – about suicide. The expert spoken to was Mike King, who has a programme on Maori TV about depression in youth.
It’s probably a bit of a culture lag because the youth suicide rate skyrocketed 1986-1989, and into the 1990s, when the other demographic groups seemed to be trending slowly down or staying level-ish. It’s still high, but it was only in 2007 (the mortality set usually lags a couple of years for investigation and registration reasons, so 2007 is pretty much the latest data for last years report) that the 35-44y.o. suicide rate overtook the youth rate. There’s some transfer in resources accordingly (e.g. JK, rather than the rapper of the week, talking about depression), but the public perception tends to lag behind the data or the actual efforts for a while.
I agree suicide in general is not addressed enough, though. As an example, the mortality rate from assault is a tenth of that from suicide, but which is viewed as the more significant problem? I’d guess street violence.
What a good chance for the Super Fund to buy into Trademe. They can direct their cluster bomb and tobacco business share sales to investing in something that is a lively support of initiative by ordinary New Zealanders, and becoming a useful institution that seems like a never-fail company.
@millsy – I wonder if you buy technology stuff privately. The stuff from the dealers, has given us no probs. I buy books and some CDs, a few plants. Books are a safe bet, good old technology and not a big cost. Most of the traders are really great, and we have the occasional chat so it’s not as distant and cold as might be expected.
Yes I do buy technology stuff, but only from dealers. One example was $190 for a 2003-04 era laptop which failed less than a week after I bought it — It was from a businmess that sells ex corporate PC’s. I had bought heaps of old PC’s from him before and they worked fine. The guy was very apologetic and refunded me.
Another example was from a dealer who I bought a Chinese-made portable music player which turned out to be completely crap. I got my money back of them as well, even if they were a bit reluctant.
And of course there was a DVD recorder that wouldnt record. I still have it somewhere. I might see if I can have another look at it….
Stuff that I have been happy with from TM include hard drives, flash drives, and PC componentry, ie PCI expansion cards, RAM, etc.
“Why do we need education? To make profits? To make a business? Or to develop the country and have social integration and development? Those are the issues in dispute.”
What did you think education reforms announced by Piñera?
-We believe that there is no great reform, but a deception, a media bluff. Here, Piñera only reinforces a pattern that began in the mid-’80, a model based on the market as regulator, the competence and quality assurance in funding through vouchers, which are funded for especially in demand. There is an effort to establish a solid education system, collaborative, but to foster competition, as the traffic light of education. Finally here is a reform, but reform for the best, always for excellence.
How about the announcement of the reduction of hours of history in the school curriculum?
-With a little knowledge Chairman of the story, of course not see the relevance, importance of history as forming a critical conscience, of a citizenry aware of its past to design and build their future. And that is closely related to the decline in civic education training. Today’s discussion is on youth participation in the electoral system, but there has been no substantive discussion of how we set a state policy that actually helping citizens have greater empowerment, you know what their rights and their duties. The importance of teaching history is essential in the formation of a democratic society, and that you are not seeing Piñera and Lavin. There is an effort to improve the teaching process. They are only concerned with improving indicators.
It’s an excellent format, giving a chance to see the person behind the media image we are usually limited to.
I still have mixed views on Cunliffe, he didn’t change my mind, it’s not only that he’s too much ingrained as a politician, but I prefer others even in Labour.
New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan was sold to the public on the premise that we were there to help rebuild and train, not be involved in combat missions. Effectively John Key lied…
It was enlightening to hear on Kim Hill this morning about the revolution of Libya starting in France in 2010 and the objective was a thousand years’ supply of water. Given that France’s Veolia private water interests were rejected by its own country and needed to get its clutches on more (apart from New Zealand’s supply) it made for very interesting listening.
But we should all have known that it’s all about the privatisation, just like New Zealand.
Are we lucky enough to think that in New Zealand we won’t suffer an attack in the way that the people of Libya have suffered? After all, we Kiwis have just rolled over and said ‘nice John Key take it all’.
What stuns me is that New Zealanders can’t seem to grasp the fact that this privatisation plan is happening globally and that John Key is our cuckoo and in 2008 45% of Kiwis adopted his greed and fed it. The question is how many % of Kiwis will be responsible for letting him sell off our nest-eggs next year.
It is highly unlikely I will be able to enjoy the same kind of friendship I used to have with my National supporter friends, for the simple reason that they will have betrayed the whole reason most New Zealanders feel proud to be called New Zealanders and more intimately, Kiwis – a sense of fairness and a share in the pie which makes New Zealand tick over.
The wealthier ones among them will be able to take my extended family’s future assets and make more money.
Those living on the bones of their arses will get nothing; the Kiwisaver purchases that Key keeps mentioning are essentially run on a sell off to the highest bidder for the best price and won’t stay in New Zealand’s hands and let’s not forget the elephant in the corner – we all own them already.
Key does not own more than his one share, yet National voters will mandate him to own all shares in all assets.
I will purchase none of Key’s bloodied offerings. It makes me sick to the core that some New Zealanders can sell their country’s future off and that they cannot understand that in voting for Key this year, they will finally destroy what is left of anything that’s good in New Zealand.
Hey Jum – Yeah, I did hear that Kim Hill interview this morning. The water motive was new to me. With all these US/Nato/EU wars, it is always enlightening to follow the money. It was also pretty stunning to hear that the military “rebel” commander in Tripoli was a well-known Al Qaeda figure! I knew they were involved in the “rebellion”, but not that they were in such high positions of control.
Agree with your comments re. Key & the new political divisiveness in NZ. One has to fight on and stick up for what you believe in, even if it’s a minority view. In the worst case scenario, those power companies can be nationalised next time Labour gets in.
Sorry to disappoint you but if Key gets in again he will sign off the TPPA, which will mean that the obvious buyers of our assets will have megabucks behind them, will demand half the board members be from their side and they will use the international courts to sue the government if we try to reverse what they have done. A lost case will cost us zillions and all sorts of financial suffering through the global networks and the credit rating agencies in the pockets of Key’s backers.
We can’t then just do what Cullen did with Kiwirail anymore. We can’t then tell the Canadian Pension Fund to piss off and leave our airport alone.
New Zealanders’ votes this year have never been so important. Maybe just for once they’ll actually think about where to put the tick and what they may end up with.
If Key gets back in, New Zealand will be a very different place. Why do you think the backers went to such a lot of trouble to find Key? New Zealand is the door to the Pacific and to the mineral riches to the South of New Zealand. It produces food and it at present, or it did, protect the ocean life around New Zealand. Everyone thinks we’re such a wee country on the arse of the world but our value is beyond measure and we’re just handing it to the backers on a plate.
Well, that depends on whether the TPPA does actually get ratified. There’s still plenty of uncertainty about that one, including the state of the US economy and the lobbying-power of US dairy.
Good on the Greens for getting the TPPA in the news this year – and shame on Labour not making it more of an issue.
In the House, during debates I have heard Labour MPs speaking out against it but not in your face so much, unfortunately. Jane Kelsey is doing a great job. Labour need to be warned that the last thing they want to be is PERCEIVED to be on the side of Key and English when the fruits of TPPA are found to be hazardous to our health.
I do know that once the Americans invited themselves in a cosy little Pacific trade agreement went right out the window and quite frankly, if the secret handshakes on selling out our Kiwi rights are in the fine print with any of these deals, who damned well needs them. What did Key just give away to Australia recently? What a shame it wasn’t him!
Our country and its strategic environment is extremely valuable to the world.
As long as it is firstly producing food for its people and its land not being turned over to foreigners who turn it into golf courses for the rich or its bounty being sent overseas and the cleanup left to Kiwis we need to remind ourselves we owe other countries nothing.
We have given our sons and daughters to war because we expect support if we are caught up in war, we have lost many of our economic assets due to bad voting choices in the 80s, 90s, and this decade, and we have given refuge to many including our own. Enough handwringing already.
When are we going to stop saying we’re just a little country; that’s always the first step to allowing bigger sharks to come and take us over. And I’m sick to death of Key and English blaming New Zealanders for not saving when the whole strategy of the right for growing the economy is to import more of what we don’t need and brainwash us into buying it over the decades. Blame yourselves Key and English, Douglas and Joyce, Richardson and Brash. Your greed is bringing New Zealanders low, not mainstream New Zealanders.
We should see ourselves as the gatekeepers against global excess not the agents of it.
And by watching The Hollow Men on Maori TV tonight is surely giving us the best evidence of John Key’s cunning, especially the last part which brings him back to Crosby/Textor’s fold. But will Kiwis learn from that with their shallow attitude towards Key – possibly not, but they will certainly learn if NAct is allowed to remain in government.
Let’s start a 2011 mantra – “time for a strategic change of government’. The misogynists got rid of Helen Clark so they should be happy; the rich got richer and can always go overseas to the other hellholes they’ve made with their greed to get their rocks off and then come back for their free health care, the women who hate women leaders can slaver over Goff who has far more gravitas than Key ever will, tv is full of fishin’ and huntin’ and cookin’ and sexin’ and religion is once more putting the legirons on women. ‘Let’s change now before Key and backers’ fine print comes into force’. ‘Let’s change now before our sovereignty, our working rights, our sense of fair play has completely disappeared’. ‘Let’s change now before the area south of us which we are the guardians of is ruined by greed beyond repair’. ‘Let’s change now, before it’s too late’.
@Jum – I have decided that thinking too much drives one mad. No wonder people love to be alcoholic topers. It is a potent mix – the sadness of seeing our country that has missed so many opportunities always floundering, the backward conservative social thinking of so many people who have clawed or been elevated to the top, the lack of commitment to starting plans for the future etc. So don’t use up all your bullets today – save some to keep up a regular fire to keep the predators from the door.
You might recall the hullabaloo around comments reportedly made by Hone Harawira regarding the death of Osama Bin-Laden. Well it turns out that he was misquoted, and the National Business Review article contained inaccuracies…
Jum, I can’t find your post that I was just notified of, so I am replying here. I wasn’t talking about your link, I was talking about your quoting me as having said the “next Catholic hospital”. It seems to me you know absolutely nothing about Catholics in NZ, but I do – you need to realise that NZ is not (yet) the USA, and further, your equating freedom for women with the “right” to a late-term abortion is a huge mistake! As has been pointed out, early feminists considered that abortion was a not freedom for women, but for men – for women, it’s just another way of being controlled.
I won’t be around in 50 years, I can guarantee that 100%, but even if I would be, I still wouldn’t take your bet. Of course Catholic hospitals won’t be offering late-term abortions, and there’s no reason why they should have to. Why do you want them to have to? You should be asking yourself that.. Freedom of choice is only for people you approve of, hey?
You’ve written little replies all over the place so I thought I would consolidate them.
Stop making things up. I said nothing about late-term abortions. You just introduced that. I also don’t ‘bet’ on women’s lives. The 50 years, I believe, is the legal time limit on keeping information secret.
I’ve started wondering if you are even a Vicky or a Victor, or even No 32 robotoid replacing the other 31. Did they run out of batteries? But I won’t continue with that. You ‘sound’ genuine in your angst.
You could tell me how many Catholic hospitals there are in New Zealand.
I certainly agree and understand where you are coming from with the use by men of women’s freedom/choice to abortions, but as always that must be left to the women involved to come to terms with. Eventually everyone rebels under legirons, even women – I think!
Late term abortions are only a problem for people who think life begins at conception. That’s always a minefield. If people don’t want unwanted pregnancies start telling men to zip it or take some responsibility or wear condoms. The Catholic Church are noticeably lacking globally in that thought. I hope, finally, they realise the damage they have done in Africa, e.g. with the aids epidemic when the Pope refused to allow the men, many carrying the aids virus, to use condoms.
I don’t have to ask myself about late-term abortions. That is up to the people who experience them.
Stop making things up. I said nothing about late-term abortions. You just introduced that. I also don’t ‘bet’ on women’s lives. The 50 years, I believe, is the legal time limit on keeping information secret.
What a deeply unpleasant little man you are! You said all the things I replied to, then deleted your post, probably because you’d misquoted me – now I look like a prat for replying to your deleted post. I have the text of the post you deleted, in my email, so I can find it if I have to… I am sure you’d rather I didn’t!
I have had it up to my back teeth with you and your obsessions and your distortions and lies. I didn’t ask you ask anyone about their late-term abortions, I asked you to ask yourself why you want the Catholic church to have to make its hospitals act against Catholic principles!
Do us both a favour – have a cup of tea and a lie down. Have some St Johns Wort tea for preference, and lay off the booze. Or, get yourself some glasses so you can read what I actually say and not what you wish I said. I am not playing your reindeer games any more.
This is surreal to say the least. Please do find this post in your email and display it in this thread.
Thank you very much. This is priceless. Why are you leaving me; could it be because The Hollow Men are on Maori; Mamma Mia is on 3, The Jackal is on 4 and Bliss is on 1. Surely not.
Was this the post? I deleted it from its place because I wanted to put it at the end; I guess once you delete you cannot repost it. Luckily I usually keep them on file. I’ll try posting it again with extra words around it.
‘I’m so pleased Vicky32.
You are saying that in New Zealand women will never have to undergo the same sort of treatment suffered by that rape survivor in that American/Catholic or Catholic/American hospital.
Do read carefully, I said ‘this PARTICULAR rape survivor’ did not go to the phone book, find where the next Catholic hospital was and go there…’ in reply to your comment about rape survivors. Either you did not read the link I sent you or you are getting a bit hyper yourself. It was about a rape survivor in America. They don’t have DHBs there.
My intention was to warn that if everything else from personality politics and neo-conservatism as well as religious ideology was emanating from America then no doubt the controls over women’s freedoms/choice (call it what you will) will be under attack too in New Zealand.
But you’re saying that Catholics, the Catholic Hospitals and the Catholic Church in New Zealand are such wonderful people and institutions and totally unlike their American offshoot that the attacks on women’s choice could not possibly happen here. You must also be saying that the Catholic hospitals in New Zealand would be accepting of performing abortions here. Is that correct?
Will that (still) be the case when Key’s government opens up the public health system to private purchase?
If so, I’m so pleased Vicky32. You obviously have the inside knowledge on everything the Catholic Church and its administrators do in New Zealand, and no way would they turn away a rape survivor. Wonderful. Just put that down in writing and sign it will you, and in 50 years time we’ll have a look at it and we’ll find out if you were right or whether you were just peddling mischief to women.
Belittling my New Zealand citizenship will lose you any chance of me listening respectfully to rants from you in future. I will just attack.’
I have no problem with Catholic hospitals not doing abortions but only if they do not attempt to take control over the public hospitals and thereby remove the facility of abortion support for women.
I think you will find I said nothing in any of my posts about late term abortions until you raised the issue. As for the conversation over the DHB comments try reading my text again and you may just discover that you actually took my words out of context. Happy reading.
That’s it more or less – although you’ve continued to leave out the original wording of “and in 50 years time we’ll have a look at it and we’ll find out if you were right”… you originally “bet” that in 50 years time Catholic hospitals would still not be offering late term abortions… which you then realised was an absurd statement. That’s why I asked you to ask yourself why it was so desperately important to you that Catholic hospitals should be forced to go against their principles when there are plenty of state hospitals that will provide abortions, contraception and disguised abortifacients such as the ‘morning after pill’. (There are heaps of girls who don’t even realise that it’s an abortifacient, and actually a very strong and potentially dangerous chemical cocktail that should not be available without prescription, as it can make the woman gravely ill if taken without supervision.) Brothels probably hand them out, I wouldn’t know, but they shouldn’t.
Your statement that if they are different from American ones they must then perform abortions was deliberately provocative and again, absurd. Now, I don’t think you’re actually stupid, I do think however that you think with your emotions. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for the fact that you ignore, misinterpret and misquote what I say. The reason I believe you are a man, is that in my experience it’s men who think with their gonads emotions, and men who go in for ad hominem arguments such as your passionate insults against me.
Take a chill pill as my niece says!
Look right above your ‘ 15.1.1.2.1
29 August 2011 at 1:33 pm’ post Vicky32. You will see the very words ‘Just put that down in writing and sign it will you, and in 50 years time we’ll have a look at it and we’ll find out if you were right or whether you were just peddling mischief to women.’
There was nothing about a ‘bet’ that word was invented by you. There was nothing in any of my texts about late term abortions until you introduced it Vicky32.
Please stop lying.
I repeat ”If so, I’m so pleased Vicky32. You obviously have the inside knowledge on everything the Catholic Church and its administrators do in New Zealand, and no way would they turn away a rape survivor. Wonderful. Just put that down in writing and sign it will you, and in 50 years time we’ll have a look at it and we’ll find out if you were right or whether you were just peddling mischief to women.’ You say you still have it on email – go and look and if you want perhaps The Standard still has the original on hard drive.
Either way you are accusing me of lying Vicky32 and you are really starting to piss me off.
YOU said (15.1.1.2.1) : ‘That’s why I asked you to ask yourself why it was so desperately important to you that Catholic hospitals should be forced to go against their principles when there are plenty of state hospitals that will provide abortions, contraception and disguised abortifacients such as the ‘morning after pill’.’
I had already said (15.1.1.2) : ‘I have no problem with Catholic hospitals not doing abortions but only if they do not attempt to take control over the public hospitals and thereby remove the facility of abortion support for women.’
As long as Catholic hospitals don’t control our secular hospital care in New Zealand, we don’t have a problem Vicky32. Only you do.
The Mercy Hospital is a private hospital originally established by the Sisters of Mercy – a catholic order of nuns. At one time they would not perform abortions, tubal ligations or vasectomies – in keeping with its catholic ethos.
I was raised a catholic, and I actually entertained the thought of becoming a nun, until a realised nun sex really meant none. Not even a quick rub in the vestibules could be had without an eternity of purgatory and damnation to follow.
Vicky32 will tell you that the Catholic church is so much more inclusive and generous in its judgment these days. But perhaps you have made the better choice.
Intermittent signal # August 2011/5 (last 16/7)
Sunday morning Radionz – can be downloaded. Some more outstanding examples offering a possibility for a viable future NZ for all.
11.05 Ideas: Entrepreneurism
If there’s one thing that most economists agree on it’s that entrepreneurs are a key ingredient of economic growth. But how do you grow entrepreneurism? Ideas asks: Serial entrepreneur and spokesperson for the Productive Economy Council Selwyn Pellett; Grow Wellington’s chief executive Nigel Kirkpatrick; and, Ken Erskine of Auckland business incubator, Icehouse.
Presented by Chris Laidlaw
Produced by Jeremy Rose
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
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Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marina Deller, Casual Academic, Creative Writing and English Literature, Flinders University NetflixComedy is opening up spaces for silences to be broken and trauma stories to be told. In 2018, Hannah Gadsby started a revolution with Nanette, asking audiences to rethink ...
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Councils from Horowhenua, Kāpiti, Wairarapa, the Hutt Valley, Porirua and Wellington City will meet this Friday to work together on a plan for a Greater Wellington region water deal. ...
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Free Trade Agreements mean Australian Firms can sell any alcohol they like to NZ Teens
Yeah our sovereignty as a country is screwed, thanks Free Traders, we can’t even regulate the kinds of alcopop drinks that our kids get smashed on. Who the hell are our politicians and business leaders working for again?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10747476
Corporates rule. Fucking disgusting!!!
Got to admire the Aussies’ activism, take their devious opposition to NZ apples, or blaming the Ansett failure on NZ, meanwhile freely exporting all sorts of crap to dumb Kiwis
Hit him on the chin! These alcohol dealers are so insensitive that only physical pain would register.
“Prime Minister John Key told United States diplomats all New Zealanders have a “socialist streak” and they secretly thought he was a “natural politician”,
How full of himself can he be? At first I could not believe my eyes, then I woke up, and yep it was real. Hopefully he will get a huge reality check in November.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/5509870/Wikileaks-Key-said-Kiwis-have-socialist-streak
He says ‘socialist streak’ like it’s a bad thing…
As for him knowing what we ‘secretly think’ remember all those Nats have the ‘sense’ of the community – clearly National is full of mind-readers and psychics. Perhaps they should start up an 0900 psychic hotline so we can phone them up to ask where the lost keys are and whether Aunt Magnolia’s operation will be a success…
You have to wonder about this guy’s motives.
He always wanted to be Prime Minister, and now that he is, he spends his time getting his photo taken at several ops a day and going overseas to be seen with as many famous people and world leaders as possible and getting photos for his album.
He’s using us.
NEWS Key has OCD, He can’t stop the photo op
Lake Ellesmere, NZ’s most polluted lake, is getting $12 million spent on restoring it to its natural state.
The pollution is the result of farmers activities within its catchment.
The cleanup however is being paid for by the local ratepayers Canterbury wide, and by NZ’s taxpayers, to the tune of $11 million, and $1 million by Fonterra.
So how does that work?
Why is there not a charge on the farms, through rates, within the catchment? And what about the farmers who did this simply paying to clen up their shit? Why am I and my kids paying for it? And at the same time paying the absolute maximum price for milk that dairy farmers can find in the entire world?
It is a step in the right direction by ffs it has hardly registered along the fairness pathway. Stand up farmers. Come on. Being the backbone and broad shouldered non-nonsense tell-it-how-it-is types. Pay your way.
And Smith said that some farmers will get compensation paid for their lost land and expenses. What! So if I dump a load of manure off my trailer in Queen Street, Smith will clean it up and pay me compensation for my trouble. Wow!
It’s not the farmers on the lake edge causing pollution – their land is required to plant a filtering wetland to aid the cleanup. The main contributing waterways are the Halswell, L2, Kaituna and Little River (and Selwyn). The biggest problem is nitrates from fertiliser and livestock filtering into these rivers.
Also, there is very klittle dairy farming on the banks of the lake – it is too wet. God knows why it is not opened upore frequently (even permanenty) to the sea (I am told Tgai Tahu are against it).
The lake was buggerred 40 years ago, about time it got cleaned up.
Yep, at least we are heading in the right direction mr grumpy. Re opening the lake I spend a bit of time there at the opening when its open. Imagine it would be near impossible to keep open permanently (the sea will always win) and if it was then the entire ecosystem would change to a more saltwater estuarine one, with all sorts of consequences biological and physical.
If things keep moving in this direction then in a decade or two hopefully many of our waterways will be back to being super-lush again. A bit like the Ohinemuri River which drains the gold-rich Waihi area in the Coromandel. When the old style practices using arsenic and all sorts of nasties to extract the gold were underway and using the river as a drain it was dead. After a couple of decades the move back to its natural state was quite remarkable. And that river was considerably worse than any farm-affected river.
I think Ngai Tahu have a proposal to keep Forsyth open permanently – if they can do that then Ellesmere could be likewise managed. The lake is certainly much better when opened.
Yes I have been watching that proposal with interest. Lordy knows how you do it though – the amount of gravel and sediment that gets moved is gigantic and I simply fail to see how it can be controlled. Yesterday for example a large south swell that was running was moving, I would guess, a couple tonnes per 10m of coastline with every wave. A man-made structure could not control that, even if it was up against the cliffs at the eastern end. And neither could the relatively low water flow from even a combined Ellesmere and Forsyth flow. No way imo.
And you are right in that Forsyth is even worse. Bleeargh…
Grumpy, am I right in thinking the farmers directly around the lake do not own the land but just have long term leases? Somebody told me that when I was playing golf near there a few years ago, but I can’t recall who whether he said it was Government owned or maybe owned by a trust?
A lot of the land is freehold and I suppose some may be leased but I don’t know from who (maybe DOC).
DoC (Wildlife Service) bought a lot of freehold land some time ago and some of this is leased out to farmers. The proposal to “retire” land and convert to wetland is a good one. DoC have a very good native plant nursery at Waihora pretty much for that purpose.
Then they can sort out Lake Forsyth, which for my money is much worse than Ellesmere.
Once again we spend a fortune on fixing some thing we destroyed, this is just more dog whistling to the dairy farmers and the Blue/Greens don’t worry fatty farmer after you have completely fucked it, then we will ask the Tax payer/rate payers and everyone else to feel good about cleaning up your mess.
VTO Green wash photo op by lizard eyes Nicolarse Smith. pandering to the green vote before the world cup cheap electioneering payed for by the tax payer outside the 100 days by a bankrupt Govt!
I wonder if Anne Tolley still thinks that the education deal she did with the Gaddafi regime in Libya was such a great idea?
Toad, you know the answer to that. She doesn’t give a flying fig about who she whores us out to.
I don’t see any problem with doing an education deal with the Libyans, whether they are ruled by Qadaffi or the new lot. I’m inclined to think the United Press are just playing politics and attempting, indirectly, to blacken Qadaffi’s name.
Um, could it be any blacker? Or do you support authoritarian dictators who set their armed forces onto their own people, mikesh?
Or it could be a message on the failure of National standards.
Is anyone keeping an eye on the many and varied job positions being advertised by KiwiBank?
Are these positions to promote, strengthen and future-proof our state-owned bank or are fifth-columnists being put in strategic places to undermine the future ownership of our bank?
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1108/S00353/festering-sore-of-alcohol-harm-to-be-tickled.htm
What’s with the ‘we’ Family First. I certainly didn’t vote for teenage drinks to have high alcohol content. I didn’t vote for the bottles to be designed and marketed in such a teenage-friendly way. Blame that on greedy businessmen.
It amazes me how rightwing misogynists continue to blame all of us when they are well aware that reducing the age was a National bill, which Helen Clark voted against.
If this government is having problems because of foreign or domestic agreements to take control of the drinking problems then maybe they need to rethink giving even more drastic powers through the TPPA. Talk about stupid, greedy men.
Have greedy stupid men actually intended for young women to drink and get drunk so that they and their offspring can now rape and batter with impunity and then blame it on those women and girls?
Have stupid women and girls realised yet that alcohol abuse is yet another way they can be controlled just as much as the pay equity issues and the abortion issues? Or are they calling that ‘drunk positivity’ like they call sex with anyone and everyone ‘sex positivity’?
Sex for women is great in exactly the same way as for men; just don’t confuse it with getting drunk and not knowing if you had sex or were raped, (same goes for men) not knowing the father of your child (men being too drunk to use a condom and the woman too drunk to insist on it) or getting an abortion which brings you into the orbit at abortion clinics of some seriously unhinged lunatics that seek to control not only your feminine and/or feminist freedoms but also to endanger the continued opening of abortion clinics to pregnant rape survivors, etc because it will give catholics in government or even just misogynists in government the always-present chance to close down your right to choose.
Try to understand that many men in New Zealand just don’t like women and do not regard them as equals. New Zealand under this government is becoming America where hospitals are bought and controlled by the catholic church in many cases and then proceed to deny safe abortions or contraceptives and over the last decade (when we elected our first woman Prime Minister) the religions or religious ideologies have streamed into New Zealand with their nutty messages all of which demand control over women.
P.S. Maybe if we organise a curfew for men women can get drunk and fall over safely. They can also die from alcoholism. Just saying.
…or maybe alcohol helps many people feel good, tighten friendships and progress relationships, as it has done for millenia…
The one positive that will come out of these neo-temperants new-found success will be the proliferation of home brew and distillation. Hurrah!
But let the demonisation continue (as it always has) and focus on the negative aspects of life and it’s various pleasures.
@clandestino One day you may have to take some responsibility to pass on values of self-respect and control over one’s life and actions to children or others. I hope you will have realised by then that those who won’t limit themselves and are continually helped by their society to recover from their unwise behaviour are taking risks of many kinds and are not acting like people who would like to be adults who stand tall and responsible in society.
This morning a doctor talked about a couple of 18 year old women who regularly get drunk and participate in sex or are used for it by men whose identity they don’t know. One or both has had terminations. Yet they continue. Not only are they presently at risk, their future fertility may be completely damaged. It is very important to control one’s drinking, dependency is insidious and costly in money and loss of autonomy and pride.
Are the 18 year old girls happy?
Chris How hedonistic? Sounds like a line from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World where people are dosed on happy chemicals and are afraid to think of anything that might interfere with their positive brain functions.
Is a heroin addict happy after having secured enough product for the weekend?
Sometimes its worth thinking a little bit deeper.
Attitudes like this tells me that our society is very sick.
Clandestino,
I totally identify with home brewing; you have to work for your alcohol, you know what’s in it and you don’t have to pay exorbitant prices for the garbage in pretty bottles the big breweries throw at us. And home brew tastes so much better as well, except for the odd ‘accident’ when the red wine tastes suspiciously like vinegar. But that’s where wine vinegar comes from! And only among consenting adults.
Better still, for the privilege of selling New Zealanders alcohol the big brewers and the retailers of it should be forced to pay a levy to reduce the cost of the damage to the consumers of it. Those who market a killing product with a rocketing alcohol content to teenagers must pay for their profits.
The producers and sellers must have a price control on their selling to discourage them from overcharging to recoup their levy charges. They have escaped fair charges since they were able to successfully lobby governments. That has to stop. It should not affect the buyers of alcohol, the damage to their systems if they overdo will affect them sufficiently.
Most important of all – who decided the alcohol content of these alcopops and is there a suitable jail time sorted for them – the higher the alcohol content, the higher the jail time, where a rape has occurred or a death has occurred. The guy in the plane crash that started the alcopops died. I’m sure the current czar has not reduced the content.
Clandestino,
P.S. I love my wine, and malt whisky and boutique beer and gin’n’tonics and martinis.
However, I’m not silly enough to think that I don’t have to keep a continuous watch on my imbibing and my treatment of alcohol as just another grocery item. Alcohol is not just another grocery item.
Let’s not forget that the multi winery cabal including John Key and his vanishing winery business will be quite happy to see the alcohol passing through the supermarket doors at a great rate of knots.
I’m not sure which planet Draco is from, but obviously he was young once, and I’d like to think he stayed at home every Saturday eating four-cheese fondue in his sweet bachelor pad, but somehow I don’t think this was the case. Did you have a drink with your mates Draco? Did you like to get together, sing and dance, play pool or watch the game, hang out with the girls at a mates place or the bar? Or perhaps missing out is the reason for such bitterness and hyperbole? That’s a genuine attempt at understanding not a dig btw.
I’m a member of the younger generation I spose, and I get that we’ve had a long leash with cheap mass produced alcohol, but I would argue the leash remains and has gone from string to iron chains, and we have not only become the most vilified group of young people, but the most punished for the irresponsible actions of the few (hence you see the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ mentality when it comes to police, the consequences for doing something minor but foolish (opening a bottle of wine in public for eg.) are comparatively and excessively harsh. This exacerbates anti-social and anti-authoritarian reactionary behaviour like the aimless violence I see around). And yes stupid actions have consequences, but are instances of bad behaviour with respect to alcohol really worse now than 20/30/50/100 years ago?? Road stats would say otherwise, perhaps not assaults, but I believe that has deeper causes as I’ve said. Don’t even get me started on how high prices in downtown bars have led to supermarket consumption.
Prism. I would agree with you re those girls, but why do people always extrapolate that case out to include every bloody 18-25 year old round town??? Take it for what it is, a tragic case that may need intervention. As for the rest, I’m not sure how to combat that as I don’t believe your premise to be true, because you are equating weekend/fortnightly ‘binge’ (and I could go on about definitions there) drinking with alcoholism.
This is not to justify over the top consumption to the point of black-out, date rape with alcohol or violent and aggressive behaviour. Merely I wish to point out that what I see on a Saturday night is not all upskirt shots in the gutter or guys being predatory, but – shock, horror – many thousands of people having fun.
*waiting for the shoot-down*
The question is why do people need a drug to feel better? Better about what? Themselves?
Nothing wrong with having a drink here and there but there is when it becomes a requirement for socialising and that really is where our society is at.
How about because it expands the definitions of sensory experience (probably more relevant to drugs), or decreases the inhibitions that exist within our cultural construct and assists people to connect at a baser, instinctual level (yes sex, but also friends and occasionally family)?
I don’t think these are bad things, maybe you differ on that.
I agree that there is a deeper element of neediness there. Call it escapism from the drudgery of existence or simply the fact we are the only species with the ability to know we will die, so why the fuck not, eh? I don’t know how or think you would be able to persuade me that we should legislate for these and against this particular freedom-to. Which is why I am of course pro-drug reform (must be a young ‘un with little experience huh).
As for it being a requirement, maybe for you, but you’ve got free will and the right to be different. Try ecstasy! Hehe.
clandestino I was just listening to Radionz and heard that LSD was never illegal here. Also the spread of drugs and how difficult to combat the tendency to go for a quick buzz with drugs and kill off brain and other cells needed to cope with life as a functioning adult.
Never illegal? LSD is class A in NZ.
But seriously, do you believe everything you hear with your own ears? Or do you go out to try and make the sound yourself. Function on that for a minute.
Hey Draco T Bastard,
Remember the ‘new’ suburban housewives’ neuroses, when a trip to the doctor would fix all that with some Prozac? Doctors honestly believed that women should be deliriously happy at home alone with x no of babies/children. Not every woman is an earth mother.
All that was required was a lifeline for women to one another and luckily, instead of turning into druggies most of them formed a combined women’s union.
That suburban neuroses came about through idiot town planners forgetting to account for the fact that the extended family was no more; the nuclear family was in.
Jum
Another way of coping with neurosis was to drink sherry or port I think is high alcoholic. I had a rental house once and let it to a bloke who had a wife coming out of a nursing home and he was taking care of her. She had been actually drying out and renewed her old habits when she came out if one counted the sacks of bottles after they left the house after she set her mattress on fire smoking in bed. Drunk irresponsible with an out of control habit.
clandestino – You’re young. Don’t count on being young to protect you from all the difficult things that impact your life and getting drunk is an attempt to hang on to that careless happiness of youth where you don’t worry about your future, everything will be fine, or anything apart from yourself and your own interests. Part of being immature is trying to deflect facing problems by getting drunk or drugged as a regular thing daily or occasional binges. It makes you feel good temporarily but weakens your ability to find solutions and be clever about turning difficulties into opportunities for new directions advantageous to you.
I can’t help but think you view other people’s experiences through a prism of condescension there Prism. Like I said before, get off your high horse (pun unintended) and stop thinking of everyone who enjoys the social and dopaminal effects of drugs or alcohol with some kind of self-esteem deprived, socially incapable, life-loser. It is simply not true and you are apparently old enough to have realised that.
That final sentence to me proves you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
@ clandestino – I probably know about more cases of alcohol addiction than you do and don’t take it all so light-heartedly. Also I am looking at the problem in a macro way while I think you are viewing it from what suits you.
It’s a nation-wide problem and saying that everybody has done it (got drunk) doesn’t deal with what is a major social and medical problem.
I tend to agree.
We’ve all done it.
Don’t think it is much different, for young males, from when we were young. Back in the dark ages.
Police and adults seemed to be more tolerant of stupid teenagers then.
Binge drinking has always been a NZ problem. It would be nice if we could change that culture, but I think it is too ingrained in most of us.
The most upsetting change, to me, is seeing very young girls, and boys, walking around sloshed on alcopops. The producers of alcohol are largely to blame, for making it easier for 14 year olds to drink.
Thank you!
But I will quibble with you in that perpetuating the myth of ‘binge’ drinking as a NZ problem doesn’t help. I have lived in continental Europe and know firsthand the ‘continentals do it better’ spiel we hear is almost complete bullshit. They start younger, and drink more (look at the alcohol consumption per capita for European countries especially for northern Europe but also the latin states compared to NZ). The difference is they don’t seem to have a societal guilt complex about it.
Also, is it a ‘change’ that you see 14 year olds sloshed? I’ve noticed as I get older everyone else gets younger and I’m in my twenties. I certainly got sloshed at 14 without alcopops, with the wonderfully liberating positive and terribly educational negative effects.
But do they get drunk as often?
From my anecdotal experience, yes. That might just be the young however. You do notice a high degree of alcohol dependency, alcohol in the morning in italy with coffee is popular for example, just to wake up. Some of it is cultural, but booze is so damn cheap over there (bottle of Absolut: 8 euro) that people drink constantly.
Yes, it seems to be a topping up rather than a blotto out kinda thing don’t you think? But the glasses of wine seem smaller, the sweet spirits less frequent. Where I am a glass of wine is way cheaper than a coffee – not sure I’d have both at the same time.
I would like to think so! My nieces seem to think that getting bladdered is just “what you do to have a good time”, which is, I think, sad and mindless of them.
Sorry, Jum, but I just can’t agree that abortion is freedom! It always has negative physical and psychological consequences (ask my sister who was bullied into two of them!). I know that QoT for one, simply did not believe that the group Feminists for Life was a real feminist group, but it is. (I had tried to find a link to the British or NZ group, but google has “personalised” me to American links for some unknown reason.. Also, aside from Bull English, how many Catholics in government do you know of? This not being the USA, thank God, such things are not generally known.
For heaven’s sake, seriously! You seem to have a wee chip on your shoulder. AFAIK, America is protestant-dominated, and there’d be hell to pay if the RC church dominated there…
Abortion is something men want. Studies have shown that, time and again, men want women to have free access to abortion. Women, not so much.
Vicky 32
I have read your same comments so many times; I was not swayed by them then. Nor am I now. I don’t have a chip on my shoulder. Ask the Rugby legend Frank whatsisname that used to write a column and said quite bluntly that there are many men who hate women.
I would have to say your chip is showing if having an opinion is having a chip; not all men want women to have abortions.
You can change ‘freedom’ to ‘choice’ but it still means the same in that women get to choose and that is a freedom.
I could believe that Feminists for Life is a feminist group; they chose. That is feminist. There are feminists who chose to wear clothes covering their bodies; that’s a feminist choice as long as they don’t choose for me.
I will find the link to the Catholic hospitals that refuse abortions and contraception. Be right back…
Jum – regarding your comments above ^^^
I have to say they are underlined by the reaction by people (usually right wing types) had to the recent Slutwalks.
It seems that the prevailing attitude, no matter how much they denied it, is that if a girl/woman was raped and she was wearing a short skirt and high heels, they somehow brought it on themselves.
Some people still have an issue with women and seek to control them and their behaviour. The vitirol directed at mothers on the DPB is a case in point. Essentially they are loose women who beat their children and swing their legs open like a rusty gate, according to the right.
As for you Millsy, you should be a long-jumper, if you think I am anti women…
Let’s change the subject matter here from female to male.
“What’s with the ‘we’ Family First. I certainly didn’t vote for teenage drinks to have high alcohol content. I didn’t vote for the bottles to be designed and marketed in such a teenage-friendly way. Blame that on greedy business(women). Yeah right!
It amazes me how rightwing misogynists continue to blame all of us when they are well aware that reducing the age was a National bill, which Helen Clark voted against. (No change there)
If this government is having problems because of foreign or domestic agreements to take control of the drinking problems then maybe they need to rethink giving even more drastic powers through the TPPA. Talk about stupid, greedy (women – no, Millsy. they don’t have that much power in this government, well, any government).
Have greedy stupid (women) actually intended for young (men) to drink and get drunk so that they and their offspring can now rape and batter with impunity and then blame it on those (men and boys)? Yeah right!
Have stupid (men and boys) realised yet that alcohol abuse is yet another way they can be controlled just as much as the pay equity issues and the abortion issues? Or are they calling that ‘drunk positivity’ like they call sex with anyone and everyone ‘sex positivity’? (Like men even have to worry about any of that, Millsy!)
Sex for (men) is great in exactly the same way as for (women); just don’t confuse it with getting drunk and not knowing if you had sex or were raped, (same goes for (women)) not knowing the (mother) of your child (being too drunk to use a condom and the woman too drunk to insist on it) or (the woman) getting an abortion which brings (her) into the orbit at abortion clinics of some seriously unhinged lunatics that seek to control not only (your male) freedoms but also to endanger the continued opening of abortion clinics to pregnant rape survivors, etc because it will give catholics in government or even just misogynists in government the always-present chance to close down (her) right to choose.
P.S. Maybe if we organise a curfew for (women, men) can get drunk and fall over safely. They can also die from alcoholism. Just saying.
In the end it’s all about men; the more women play the game men’s way the more men will win.
A women’s political party is the way to go and then we’ll see what feathers fall out.
Wrong end of the stick there Jum.
I didnt think you were anti-women at all mate.
Anyway, going back to the comments about booze above, I have to say New Zealanders have a pretty screwed up relationship with alcohol. We go on and on about teenagers drinking (its like a moral panic), even though the older generation shouldnt be one to point fingers. Over 40’s can be just as bad. Go to any RSA, chartered club, food and wine festival in this country, and youll see a lot of middle aged people off their faces and trying to **** each other, then every week they complain about drunk teenagers.
That same generation used to drive home drunk from the pub (and the local cop would turn a blind eye), build tacky booze barns, which were purposely designed to be warehouses for drunks, leave their kids out in the car with a bag of chips and a soft drink, and so on and so forth.
Of course every 3 years they would roll up to the polling booths and vote on whether to ban the stuff outright up till 1989 — fortunately they voted no every time.
Millsy,
I’m more intrigued about the ****. Please explain, unless it’s going to make you blush!
Dad used to tell me about a distant friend of the family who used to forget he’d swapped his horse for a car and used to get in, turn on the engine and go home at about 20mph, hugging the gutter; he was totally off his face. It was so acceptable in the time, but cars are faster, there’s more of them and hypocritical politicians looking for a cat to skin.
Im not usually restrained like that on here, as some follow posters would attest to:
What I meant was **** = fuck, as in they want to get off their faces and fuck each others like rabbits in springtime.
@Jum “In the end it’s all about men.” Women play little games too you know, you seem to be talking as if women were always on the superior level.
Prism,
As the evolutionists are constantly pointing out to us, Prism, it’s all about survival of the fittest and in this case the choice of the superior being to birth the future of the race was woman.
But I actually said, “In the end it’s all about men; the more women play the game men’s way the more men will win.
A women’s political party is the way to go and then we’ll see what feathers fall out.”
It is all about men, Prism. They control the world. They also want to control women’s reproduction and their very beings. Getting drunk and falling over is what men do. Women don’t need to do that to prove they are equal. The fact that they do get drunk and lose a myriad of brain cells and liver health while they’re doing so allows men to not take them seriously, to batter them and to rape them and then blame them. That is a lose/lose situation. Women are so much better than that.
It’s almost as if women are following that near-quote from the late and highly respected Sir Paul Reeves. It is not failing that frightens New Zealanders; it is the fear of succeeding. In the case of women maybe they want to sabotage their futures; maybe they don’t want what society wants for them. If so they need to reinvent themselves, decide what they want and demand respect for their individual decisions, before religious and conservative influences decide for them. Maybe they need to do nothing at all because they want religious and conservative influences. Getting drunk and falling over is as silly for women (and vastly more dangerous) as it is for men. All you get is a headache and all your small fortune (that we all earn over decades of working) goes down the toilet. The alcohol czars are laughing even louder on their way to the bank.
That recent rape of a young woman would not have happened if her ‘friends’ had stayed with her. Also, the bars are geared to profit not caring about people. We also need to remember that women don’t have to be totally off their faces to be raped, so blaming her rape on her being drunk is wrong. She just needs to understand that it certainly did not help!
@Jum
Women don’t need to get drunk etc, pity they can’t internalise that. As for women being equal, many are the better and brighter of the two genders. But I think women are often afraid to use their full powers. It used to be advised that girls shouldn’t appear to be too brainy and intellectual if they wanted to attract a man and I think this may still be the case, despite all that women have done to banish sexism. Perhaps that explains the plethora of deeply diving women’s necklines and exposed globes of breast. Certainly doesn’t seem intellectual, rather the opposite.
Unfortunately for women who want to both use their talents to the fullest and have a committed partnership, the scales of women with advanced education such as degrees are on the heavy side, and men with similar backgrounds are on the lighter side. So women may still have to concentrate on looking enticing etc. to get a mate if they are herteros, and find men attractive.
Ask Paula Bennett about that Jum and her daughter inter generational. The Right are the biggest hypocrites ever. Jum your Hero Dinosaur Don Bash has left solo mums in his wake!
Mik e,
You’ve got a nut screwed loose if you think I have anything positive to say about Don Brash.
I think you really have missed my point, Jum. I never said there aren’t men who hate women! I know there are. And I happen to think that some manifest that hatred by promotion open slather abortion – making women into mere sterile containers for their emissions, and pseudo-males. (Lots of recreational sex, all care and no responsibility!)
I never said all of them do! Just that, studies have shown that men support ‘freedom of choice’ as they call it, significantly more than women do. My own friends and family have shown me, that what a woman wants is not for the man to help her pay for an abortion and hold her hand afterwards, but to commit to her and the baby. Obviously, they get very upset indeed when the man says blithely in answer to “I’m pregnant” “so do you think you’ll keep it? Or worse – “you’ll go to the clinic?” Or as an ex said to me in a hopeful tone (he knew my views) “maybe you’ll have a miscarriage?”
Vicky32
This should keep you going for a wee while. I am still searching for the one that started me thinking about the dangers of health care privatisation.
http://www.albionmonitor.com/0302a/copyright/catholicrape1.html
http://www.prochoicewisconsin.org/news/press/200510241.shtml
http://www.naral.org/media/fact-sheets/abortion-refusal-clauses-dangerous.pdf
http://www.christianpost.com/news/proposed-catholic-university-hospital-merger-causes-stir-over-values-53768/
http://www.macathconf.org/emergency_contraception_and_rape.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_rcc.htm
Thanks Jum, although casting a cursory glance over your links shows that perhaps one of your sources might be regarded as objective! I am reading the first one, and my first comment is that bluesing along to a Catholic hospital (and they don’t hide what they are!) and asking for ’emergency contraception’ – I use the quotes because you and I both know that’s a euphemism for abortifacient, is nothing but provocative! It wouldn’t be an innocent error but a deliberate attempt to court controversy. It’s a fac t that Catholic hospitals, like all hospitals will if asked, provide a referral to where the service asked for can be found!
Another thing you know as well as I do, is that pregnancy after rape is vanishingly rare. However it does stir the emotions! Hard cases make bad law, says the axiom.. and Bernard Nathanson has admitted that when he was campaigning in favour of abortion on demand, he and his colleagues vastly inflated the number and proportion of illegal abortions leading to maternal death at the time. Abortion proponents now, exaggerate the number of those seeking abortion who are rape survivors.
Your fifth link (to Religious Tolerance.org, which is of course noted for its intolerance), has a banner across the top that says: “Sterilization is evil. It is a mutilation that frustrates the purpose of the marriage act. You can’t call that health care.” Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Wenski, in the Miami Herald. ” To me, that’s quite uncontroversial!
The main point is that Caholic hospitals (especially in New Zealand) do not disguise themselves! No one is in such a hurry that they can’t go 2 kilometres down the road to their DHB and get what they want. If they choose not to, so that they can go to the media and weep and yell, I have no sympathy!
Vicky32,
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1108/S00376/abortion-access-again-at-risk-in-court-case.htm
another one for you, re the NZ court case, and if I had the time to waste my personal time I would link you to a thousand more perfectly good objective/anti/for abortion sites but I think I would be hunted off this site very quickly for linking to sites you could. I am still looking for that one I found originally.
Having found that in the middle of serious scientific sites on evolution whole scripts of anti-evolution/procreationist blogs that had been cut and pasted into there I know that the people who want to control women in one way or another are deadly serious.
One thing I did not know, and just for once you didn’t try to convince me I did, was the catholic hospitals in New Zealand.
How many are there and I wonder how they will behave if given the chance to stop women having abortions in New Zealand through a myriad of court cases and perhaps killing doctors performing legal, safe abortions (as in America) as opposed to the knitting needle, gin baths and jumping up and down, or the illegal backstreet abortions. Can you really convince me that the same lunatic behaviour in America won’t occur here, as more conservative, religious views become the norm rather than the choices women have at present?
In America pharmacies/chemists are refusing to hand over contraceptives or an abortion pill; if enough of those places take over enough areas in New Zealand, can you really convince me that they won’t employ exactly the same tactics as in America. This world has become a global one and it is all about the fight for women’s rights, in the face of neo-conservative misogyny, as far as I am concerned.
Lastly, your statements:
“It’s a fact that Catholic hospitals, like all hospitals will if asked, provide a referral to where the service asked for can be found!
Another thing you know as well as I do, is that pregnancy after rape is vanishingly rare. However it does stir the emotions!”
You can’t prove whether Catholic hospitals will refer on or not. Neither you nor I know for a fact ‘that pregnancy after rape is vanishingly rare’. As for stirring the emotions, I think you’re the one at risk here.
I have not read the links I forwarded to you. I just typed in catholic hospitals re abortion and they came up. Unlike you Vicky32, I allow you to read and make up your own mind. I’m pleased that one of the links is an objective one; it proves that there is some sense of tolerance on both sides.
Vicky32,
PS I have never advocated abortion above contraception or the less invasive drug that performs a chemical abortion.
I have always said there are three answers to a request for sex – No, end of conversation/ Maybe – the pressure begins, could get pregnant, could get diseased, could be disappointed, do I want to, does the person really care that much about me/ Yes – the odds on pregnancy, STDs, disappointment, made a mistake, was ditched straight after are magnified 100%.
Rape is quite different; I doubt the Catholic hospitals, pharmacies, churches see the difference and the woman will always be blamed.
Actually, the woman always being blamed is not just by Catholics, of course.
Jum, I think that you know almost nothing about Catholicism or Catholics, especially in New Zealand! You seem more than a little paranoid.
I recommend you try talking to a Catholic, and asking her how they see rape etc. You might get quite a shock!
Vicky32,
Found it:
http://oldsite.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2408/context/archive
you said:”The main point is that Catholic hospitals (especially in New Zealand) do not disguise themselves! No one is in such a hurry that they can’t go 2 kilometres down the road to their DHB and get what they want. If they choose not to, so that they can go to the media and weep and yell, I have no sympathy!”
As far as I could read, this particular rape survivor did not go to the phone book, find where the next Catholic hospital was and go there. Still, who knows. Maybe the rape was the last thing on her mind; it was all about complaining to the media because the hospital would not help her.
New Zealand is changing rapidly; it is becoming global. I hold out little hope that women will be able to stand against this onslaught from the religious masses. If only the women who don’t believe in abortion would allow other women to make up their own minds.
Maybe the anti abortionists don’t want women to use public funds for an abortion; well I don’t complain when some rugby player gets dashed into hospital for mending or a car accident victim gets treated over a hip replacement patient, all of which can be life-threatening.
Even the Catholic church did not outlaw abortions until the 1970s-1980s when women were beginning to demand equality and pay equity. I went looking for the date in my book by Marilyn French which is depressing in itself, because in The War Against Women she outlines many ways that the rulers of society use to reduce women to little value, and I find every time I flick through it, how little has actually changed) but am still looking for the book, so can’t say exactly what year. But, whatever it was, the church did not ban abortions per se until much later than a church which supposedly holds abortion to be a terrible sin now didn’t seem to think so then.
Why would she? I never said “the next Catholic hospital!” I said DHB, district health board… that is, public hospital! Oh, I have just realised – you’re not a New Zealander at all, are you, or you’d have known that! Explains so much, does that…
Well, I do! (About the rugby player, that is, not the car accident victim.)
“(Lots of recreational sex, all care and no responsibility!) ”
What’s with all this fuss about sex outside of the marriage/relationship context. It can be quite an enjoyable intamite and exciting act which can be enjoyed by two (or more) people who have an attraction for each either. I belive sexual stimulation by another human being can be the ultamite natural high, superior to booze and drugs, and if anything, people should be having more sex, not less (with consent, and within reasonable limits of course).
And no, you cannot have sex without emotion. On the raw phyiscal level, the stimulation of nerve endings and the consequent release of endorphins is an emotion in itself. Its just that we tend to tie up emotions with concepts that were developed by various authors dating back to Chaucer, and Shakespeare (that does not to say I dont think ‘romantic love’ exists, Im just very pragmatic about it — ultamitely, a friendship with a good sexual element is probably what should be aimed for)
Of course — it is a pity that 2000 years of god bothering (sorry Vicky, but hey, you guys dont exactly do yourselves credit) have totally screwed up our attitude to sexual relations.
Millsy,
It’s high on the list of calorie reduction…
What a bizarre attitude, and may I say, a rather male one? You left out the most important thing that makes sex enjoyable – commitment and relationship! Yes, I have tried it both ways, so I know what I am talking about. If you’re just in it for the endorphins and won’t necessarily even recognise him/her 6 months later, why bother? Just whip one off the wrist, to use Jo Brand’s phrase. My observation is that the happier and more sexually fulfilled people I know are the married and faithful ones. Endless sexual variety with one person. By contrast, the people who have from 5-25 different ‘partners’ each year are pretty miserable buggers.
I have also thought that behind a lot of atheism, is sexual appetite! “I don’t like religion, because it says I can’t scratch my sexual itch whenever I feel like it, and with whomever I feel like it”. You ‘guys’ don’t do yourselves a lot of credit either – by that I mean I am assuming you’re of the ‘another notch on the bed post’ persuasion. (Or another two or three, depending on how many people and in what combination you’ve just had.)
Opposition to Fracking Gains Momentum
It’s been just over a year since the informative movie Gasland was released to rave reviews. It documented the environmentally disastrous process known as Hydraulic Fracturing or Fracking for short, in the Continental United States. Josh Fox’s brilliant movie went a long way to creating awareness of the dangerous process. The share shock value of people lighting their drinking water on fire in Pennsylvania is something not easily forgotten…
This morning on radionz I heard a comment on suicides as they happen in the older population.
The speaker, a social worker, nurse possibly thought that more attention should be given to the senior group as much as to youth suicide. I am so annoyed at this too common attitude of caring being doled out to the young, reluctantly, while the older person who has already had their life chances is cossetted and encouraged to be self-centred and take the largest share of any pie that is available.
Your comment makes me both cross and sad, prism. A relative of mine who was definitely not a youth (!), (though not an oldie, I will say) committed suicide a few years back. I was utterly stunned, as I had heard of only one other case of a non-yoof killing themself. Yet, in the years since, I have learned that it’s shockingly common, yet no one gives a flying ****.
In this respect at least, the old(er) people are not being cossetted, it’s the precise opposite. If an older person kills themself, the general attitude of anyone outside the family seems to be “Oh, he had his life, let’s move on. Who cares about it anyway, the problems of teens matter so much more!
We hear constantly (especially here on the Standard, about poor unemployed destitute teens. I am not saying they don’t matter – my point is that everyone matters! Not just brown people between 15-25 years old…
@vicky32 Get cross all you like but the saying from Orwell’s book that Everyone is equal but some are more equal than others, is true. Youth needs more help to get started, age needs help to comfortably finish. That seems a reasonable attitude which isn’t the one I hear much of at present.
And as for brown youth I didn’t mention them I was talking generally, but you have brought them forward because you have heard of their needs and how not enough is being done to meet those so you tacitly agree with my premise about youth getting a bigger share of the pie. After all they are young, still growing and need more.
Yes, youth do need a big share of the pie. But they don’t need all of it! I am not talking generally here, I am specifically talking about suicide prevention. The first time I ever heard of the suicide of a non-yoof was when I was studying a mental health module on my special education course at U of A. A fellow student talked about the shock of her father in law having eaten his gun, in the kitchen of the family home. She had called the mental health crisis team two days previously, but been told that her father in law was a very low priority, as suicide was a youth problem, and her 60 something father in law was wealthy (a farmer) and white and old, and could take care of himself. Which was seriously missing the point. Someone with clinical depression can’t even want to take care of themself! As was shown in the case of my relative who I will not identify even to the point of stating how old he was – only that he was manifestly not the youth all suicide victims are supposed by the media to be.
It’s all pointed up by an item on 3 News I just heard – about suicide. The expert spoken to was Mike King, who has a programme on Maori TV about depression in youth.
It’s probably a bit of a culture lag because the youth suicide rate skyrocketed 1986-1989, and into the 1990s, when the other demographic groups seemed to be trending slowly down or staying level-ish. It’s still high, but it was only in 2007 (the mortality set usually lags a couple of years for investigation and registration reasons, so 2007 is pretty much the latest data for last years report) that the 35-44y.o. suicide rate overtook the youth rate. There’s some transfer in resources accordingly (e.g. JK, rather than the rapper of the week, talking about depression), but the public perception tends to lag behind the data or the actual efforts for a while.
I agree suicide in general is not addressed enough, though. As an example, the mortality rate from assault is a tenth of that from suicide, but which is viewed as the more significant problem? I’d guess street violence.
What a good chance for the Super Fund to buy into Trademe. They can direct their cluster bomb and tobacco business share sales to investing in something that is a lively support of initiative by ordinary New Zealanders, and becoming a useful institution that seems like a never-fail company.
Every time I buy something over $100 from trademe it doesnt actually quite work.
Mind you the sellers have been good to me and refunded my money, so that’s a good thing…
@millsy – I wonder if you buy technology stuff privately. The stuff from the dealers, has given us no probs. I buy books and some CDs, a few plants. Books are a safe bet, good old technology and not a big cost. Most of the traders are really great, and we have the occasional chat so it’s not as distant and cold as might be expected.
Yes I do buy technology stuff, but only from dealers. One example was $190 for a 2003-04 era laptop which failed less than a week after I bought it — It was from a businmess that sells ex corporate PC’s. I had bought heaps of old PC’s from him before and they worked fine. The guy was very apologetic and refunded me.
Another example was from a dealer who I bought a Chinese-made portable music player which turned out to be completely crap. I got my money back of them as well, even if they were a bit reluctant.
And of course there was a DVD recorder that wouldnt record. I still have it somewhere. I might see if I can have another look at it….
Stuff that I have been happy with from TM include hard drives, flash drives, and PC componentry, ie PCI expansion cards, RAM, etc.
The coolest Chilean since Allende?
“Why do we need education? To make profits? To make a business? Or to develop the country and have social integration and development? Those are the issues in dispute.”
Google translation of a 2010 interview with Camila Vallejo.
What did you think education reforms announced by Piñera?
-We believe that there is no great reform, but a deception, a media bluff. Here, Piñera only reinforces a pattern that began in the mid-’80, a model based on the market as regulator, the competence and quality assurance in funding through vouchers, which are funded for especially in demand. There is an effort to establish a solid education system, collaborative, but to foster competition, as the traffic light of education. Finally here is a reform, but reform for the best, always for excellence.
^^ This too.
How about the announcement of the reduction of hours of history in the school curriculum?
-With a little knowledge Chairman of the story, of course not see the relevance, importance of history as forming a critical conscience, of a citizenry aware of its past to design and build their future. And that is closely related to the decline in civic education training. Today’s discussion is on youth participation in the electoral system, but there has been no substantive discussion of how we set a state policy that actually helping citizens have greater empowerment, you know what their rights and their duties. The importance of teaching history is essential in the formation of a democratic society, and that you are not seeing Piñera and Lavin. There is an effort to improve the teaching process. They are only concerned with improving indicators.
I’ve just been to see David Cunliffe doing Vote Chat at Otago.
It’s an excellent format, giving a chance to see the person behind the media image we are usually limited to.
I still have mixed views on Cunliffe, he didn’t change my mind, it’s not only that he’s too much ingrained as a politician, but I prefer others even in Labour.
Pete why do you think I or anyone else should give the slightest credence to what you think?
NZSAS Combat Role in Afghanistan
New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan was sold to the public on the premise that we were there to help rebuild and train, not be involved in combat missions. Effectively John Key lied…
The Rape of Libya
Uke,
It was enlightening to hear on Kim Hill this morning about the revolution of Libya starting in France in 2010 and the objective was a thousand years’ supply of water. Given that France’s Veolia private water interests were rejected by its own country and needed to get its clutches on more (apart from New Zealand’s supply) it made for very interesting listening.
But we should all have known that it’s all about the privatisation, just like New Zealand.
Are we lucky enough to think that in New Zealand we won’t suffer an attack in the way that the people of Libya have suffered? After all, we Kiwis have just rolled over and said ‘nice John Key take it all’.
What stuns me is that New Zealanders can’t seem to grasp the fact that this privatisation plan is happening globally and that John Key is our cuckoo and in 2008 45% of Kiwis adopted his greed and fed it. The question is how many % of Kiwis will be responsible for letting him sell off our nest-eggs next year.
It is highly unlikely I will be able to enjoy the same kind of friendship I used to have with my National supporter friends, for the simple reason that they will have betrayed the whole reason most New Zealanders feel proud to be called New Zealanders and more intimately, Kiwis – a sense of fairness and a share in the pie which makes New Zealand tick over.
The wealthier ones among them will be able to take my extended family’s future assets and make more money.
Those living on the bones of their arses will get nothing; the Kiwisaver purchases that Key keeps mentioning are essentially run on a sell off to the highest bidder for the best price and won’t stay in New Zealand’s hands and let’s not forget the elephant in the corner – we all own them already.
Key does not own more than his one share, yet National voters will mandate him to own all shares in all assets.
I will purchase none of Key’s bloodied offerings. It makes me sick to the core that some New Zealanders can sell their country’s future off and that they cannot understand that in voting for Key this year, they will finally destroy what is left of anything that’s good in New Zealand.
Hey Jum – Yeah, I did hear that Kim Hill interview this morning. The water motive was new to me. With all these US/Nato/EU wars, it is always enlightening to follow the money. It was also pretty stunning to hear that the military “rebel” commander in Tripoli was a well-known Al Qaeda figure! I knew they were involved in the “rebellion”, but not that they were in such high positions of control.
Agree with your comments re. Key & the new political divisiveness in NZ. One has to fight on and stick up for what you believe in, even if it’s a minority view. In the worst case scenario, those power companies can be nationalised next time Labour gets in.
Uke,
Sorry to disappoint you but if Key gets in again he will sign off the TPPA, which will mean that the obvious buyers of our assets will have megabucks behind them, will demand half the board members be from their side and they will use the international courts to sue the government if we try to reverse what they have done. A lost case will cost us zillions and all sorts of financial suffering through the global networks and the credit rating agencies in the pockets of Key’s backers.
We can’t then just do what Cullen did with Kiwirail anymore. We can’t then tell the Canadian Pension Fund to piss off and leave our airport alone.
New Zealanders’ votes this year have never been so important. Maybe just for once they’ll actually think about where to put the tick and what they may end up with.
If Key gets back in, New Zealand will be a very different place. Why do you think the backers went to such a lot of trouble to find Key? New Zealand is the door to the Pacific and to the mineral riches to the South of New Zealand. It produces food and it at present, or it did, protect the ocean life around New Zealand. Everyone thinks we’re such a wee country on the arse of the world but our value is beyond measure and we’re just handing it to the backers on a plate.
Go figure, Uke.
I consider it quite disgusting that companies can effectively veto legislation passed by a democratically elected parliament.
Millsy,
“democratically elected parliament” now there’s a quaint sentiment.
I strongly suspect that if people were given an open choice, as to who was in parliament, they would not choose anyone who is there currently.
Well, that depends on whether the TPPA does actually get ratified. There’s still plenty of uncertainty about that one, including the state of the US economy and the lobbying-power of US dairy.
Good on the Greens for getting the TPPA in the news this year – and shame on Labour not making it more of an issue.
Uke,
In the House, during debates I have heard Labour MPs speaking out against it but not in your face so much, unfortunately. Jane Kelsey is doing a great job. Labour need to be warned that the last thing they want to be is PERCEIVED to be on the side of Key and English when the fruits of TPPA are found to be hazardous to our health.
I do know that once the Americans invited themselves in a cosy little Pacific trade agreement went right out the window and quite frankly, if the secret handshakes on selling out our Kiwi rights are in the fine print with any of these deals, who damned well needs them. What did Key just give away to Australia recently? What a shame it wasn’t him!
Our country and its strategic environment is extremely valuable to the world.
As long as it is firstly producing food for its people and its land not being turned over to foreigners who turn it into golf courses for the rich or its bounty being sent overseas and the cleanup left to Kiwis we need to remind ourselves we owe other countries nothing.
We have given our sons and daughters to war because we expect support if we are caught up in war, we have lost many of our economic assets due to bad voting choices in the 80s, 90s, and this decade, and we have given refuge to many including our own. Enough handwringing already.
When are we going to stop saying we’re just a little country; that’s always the first step to allowing bigger sharks to come and take us over. And I’m sick to death of Key and English blaming New Zealanders for not saving when the whole strategy of the right for growing the economy is to import more of what we don’t need and brainwash us into buying it over the decades. Blame yourselves Key and English, Douglas and Joyce, Richardson and Brash. Your greed is bringing New Zealanders low, not mainstream New Zealanders.
We should see ourselves as the gatekeepers against global excess not the agents of it.
And by watching The Hollow Men on Maori TV tonight is surely giving us the best evidence of John Key’s cunning, especially the last part which brings him back to Crosby/Textor’s fold. But will Kiwis learn from that with their shallow attitude towards Key – possibly not, but they will certainly learn if NAct is allowed to remain in government.
Let’s start a 2011 mantra – “time for a strategic change of government’. The misogynists got rid of Helen Clark so they should be happy; the rich got richer and can always go overseas to the other hellholes they’ve made with their greed to get their rocks off and then come back for their free health care, the women who hate women leaders can slaver over Goff who has far more gravitas than Key ever will, tv is full of fishin’ and huntin’ and cookin’ and sexin’ and religion is once more putting the legirons on women. ‘Let’s change now before Key and backers’ fine print comes into force’. ‘Let’s change now before our sovereignty, our working rights, our sense of fair play has completely disappeared’. ‘Let’s change now before the area south of us which we are the guardians of is ruined by greed beyond repair’. ‘Let’s change now, before it’s too late’.
@Jum – I have decided that thinking too much drives one mad. No wonder people love to be alcoholic topers. It is a potent mix – the sadness of seeing our country that has missed so many opportunities always floundering, the backward conservative social thinking of so many people who have clawed or been elevated to the top, the lack of commitment to starting plans for the future etc. So don’t use up all your bullets today – save some to keep up a regular fire to keep the predators from the door.
Prism,
I have only just begun.
@Jim – Well more power to your elbow as they say.
It’s Official – Hone Harawira was Setup
You might recall the hullabaloo around comments reportedly made by Hone Harawira regarding the death of Osama Bin-Laden. Well it turns out that he was misquoted, and the National Business Review article contained inaccuracies…
Why am I not surprised.
Thanks Jackal. That’s really important. And yeah I’m not surprised I haven’t seen this on the MSM websites.
Jum, I can’t find your post that I was just notified of, so I am replying here. I wasn’t talking about your link, I was talking about your quoting me as having said the “next Catholic hospital”. It seems to me you know absolutely nothing about Catholics in NZ, but I do – you need to realise that NZ is not (yet) the USA, and further, your equating freedom for women with the “right” to a late-term abortion is a huge mistake! As has been pointed out, early feminists considered that abortion was a not freedom for women, but for men – for women, it’s just another way of being controlled.
I won’t be around in 50 years, I can guarantee that 100%, but even if I would be, I still wouldn’t take your bet. Of course Catholic hospitals won’t be offering late-term abortions, and there’s no reason why they should have to. Why do you want them to have to? You should be asking yourself that.. Freedom of choice is only for people you approve of, hey?
Vicky32,
You’ve written little replies all over the place so I thought I would consolidate them.
Stop making things up. I said nothing about late-term abortions. You just introduced that. I also don’t ‘bet’ on women’s lives. The 50 years, I believe, is the legal time limit on keeping information secret.
I’ve started wondering if you are even a Vicky or a Victor, or even No 32 robotoid replacing the other 31. Did they run out of batteries? But I won’t continue with that. You ‘sound’ genuine in your angst.
You could tell me how many Catholic hospitals there are in New Zealand.
I certainly agree and understand where you are coming from with the use by men of women’s freedom/choice to abortions, but as always that must be left to the women involved to come to terms with. Eventually everyone rebels under legirons, even women – I think!
Late term abortions are only a problem for people who think life begins at conception. That’s always a minefield. If people don’t want unwanted pregnancies start telling men to zip it or take some responsibility or wear condoms. The Catholic Church are noticeably lacking globally in that thought. I hope, finally, they realise the damage they have done in Africa, e.g. with the aids epidemic when the Pope refused to allow the men, many carrying the aids virus, to use condoms.
I don’t have to ask myself about late-term abortions. That is up to the people who experience them.
What a deeply unpleasant little man you are! You said all the things I replied to, then deleted your post, probably because you’d misquoted me – now I look like a prat for replying to your deleted post. I have the text of the post you deleted, in my email, so I can find it if I have to… I am sure you’d rather I didn’t!
I have had it up to my back teeth with you and your obsessions and your distortions and lies. I didn’t ask you ask anyone about their late-term abortions, I asked you to ask yourself why you want the Catholic church to have to make its hospitals act against Catholic principles!
Do us both a favour – have a cup of tea and a lie down. Have some St Johns Wort tea for preference, and lay off the booze. Or, get yourself some glasses so you can read what I actually say and not what you wish I said. I am not playing your reindeer games any more.
Vicky32
LOL
This is surreal to say the least. Please do find this post in your email and display it in this thread.
Thank you very much. This is priceless. Why are you leaving me; could it be because The Hollow Men are on Maori; Mamma Mia is on 3, The Jackal is on 4 and Bliss is on 1. Surely not.
Vicky32,
Was this the post? I deleted it from its place because I wanted to put it at the end; I guess once you delete you cannot repost it. Luckily I usually keep them on file. I’ll try posting it again with extra words around it.
‘I’m so pleased Vicky32.
You are saying that in New Zealand women will never have to undergo the same sort of treatment suffered by that rape survivor in that American/Catholic or Catholic/American hospital.
Do read carefully, I said ‘this PARTICULAR rape survivor’ did not go to the phone book, find where the next Catholic hospital was and go there…’ in reply to your comment about rape survivors. Either you did not read the link I sent you or you are getting a bit hyper yourself. It was about a rape survivor in America. They don’t have DHBs there.
My intention was to warn that if everything else from personality politics and neo-conservatism as well as religious ideology was emanating from America then no doubt the controls over women’s freedoms/choice (call it what you will) will be under attack too in New Zealand.
But you’re saying that Catholics, the Catholic Hospitals and the Catholic Church in New Zealand are such wonderful people and institutions and totally unlike their American offshoot that the attacks on women’s choice could not possibly happen here. You must also be saying that the Catholic hospitals in New Zealand would be accepting of performing abortions here. Is that correct?
Will that (still) be the case when Key’s government opens up the public health system to private purchase?
If so, I’m so pleased Vicky32. You obviously have the inside knowledge on everything the Catholic Church and its administrators do in New Zealand, and no way would they turn away a rape survivor. Wonderful. Just put that down in writing and sign it will you, and in 50 years time we’ll have a look at it and we’ll find out if you were right or whether you were just peddling mischief to women.
Belittling my New Zealand citizenship will lose you any chance of me listening respectfully to rants from you in future. I will just attack.’
I have no problem with Catholic hospitals not doing abortions but only if they do not attempt to take control over the public hospitals and thereby remove the facility of abortion support for women.
I think you will find I said nothing in any of my posts about late term abortions until you raised the issue. As for the conversation over the DHB comments try reading my text again and you may just discover that you actually took my words out of context. Happy reading.
That’s it more or less – although you’ve continued to leave out the original wording of “and in 50 years time we’ll have a look at it and we’ll find out if you were right”… you originally “bet” that in 50 years time Catholic hospitals would still not be offering late term abortions… which you then realised was an absurd statement. That’s why I asked you to ask yourself why it was so desperately important to you that Catholic hospitals should be forced to go against their principles when there are plenty of state hospitals that will provide abortions, contraception and disguised abortifacients such as the ‘morning after pill’. (There are heaps of girls who don’t even realise that it’s an abortifacient, and actually a very strong and potentially dangerous chemical cocktail that should not be available without prescription, as it can make the woman gravely ill if taken without supervision.) Brothels probably hand them out, I wouldn’t know, but they shouldn’t.
Your statement that if they are different from American ones they must then perform abortions was deliberately provocative and again, absurd. Now, I don’t think you’re actually stupid, I do think however that you think with your emotions. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for the fact that you ignore, misinterpret and misquote what I say. The reason I believe you are a man, is that in my experience it’s men who think with their gonads emotions, and men who go in for ad hominem arguments such as your passionate insults against me.
Take a chill pill as my niece says!
Look right above your ‘ 15.1.1.2.1
29 August 2011 at 1:33 pm’ post Vicky32. You will see the very words ‘Just put that down in writing and sign it will you, and in 50 years time we’ll have a look at it and we’ll find out if you were right or whether you were just peddling mischief to women.’
There was nothing about a ‘bet’ that word was invented by you. There was nothing in any of my texts about late term abortions until you introduced it Vicky32.
Please stop lying.
I repeat ”If so, I’m so pleased Vicky32. You obviously have the inside knowledge on everything the Catholic Church and its administrators do in New Zealand, and no way would they turn away a rape survivor. Wonderful. Just put that down in writing and sign it will you, and in 50 years time we’ll have a look at it and we’ll find out if you were right or whether you were just peddling mischief to women.’ You say you still have it on email – go and look and if you want perhaps The Standard still has the original on hard drive.
Either way you are accusing me of lying Vicky32 and you are really starting to piss me off.
YOU said (15.1.1.2.1) : ‘That’s why I asked you to ask yourself why it was so desperately important to you that Catholic hospitals should be forced to go against their principles when there are plenty of state hospitals that will provide abortions, contraception and disguised abortifacients such as the ‘morning after pill’.’
I had already said (15.1.1.2) : ‘I have no problem with Catholic hospitals not doing abortions but only if they do not attempt to take control over the public hospitals and thereby remove the facility of abortion support for women.’
As long as Catholic hospitals don’t control our secular hospital care in New Zealand, we don’t have a problem Vicky32. Only you do.
The Mercy Hospital is a private hospital originally established by the Sisters of Mercy – a catholic order of nuns. At one time they would not perform abortions, tubal ligations or vasectomies – in keeping with its catholic ethos.
I was raised a catholic, and I actually entertained the thought of becoming a nun, until a realised nun sex really meant none. Not even a quick rub in the vestibules could be had without an eternity of purgatory and damnation to follow.
Nowadays, I am simply into Te Ao Maaori.
Adele,
Vicky32 will tell you that the Catholic church is so much more inclusive and generous in its judgment these days. But perhaps you have made the better choice.
Intermittent signal # August 2011/5 (last 16/7)
Sunday morning Radionz – can be downloaded. Some more outstanding examples offering a possibility for a viable future NZ for all.
11.05 Ideas: Entrepreneurism
If there’s one thing that most economists agree on it’s that entrepreneurs are a key ingredient of economic growth. But how do you grow entrepreneurism? Ideas asks: Serial entrepreneur and spokesperson for the Productive Economy Council Selwyn Pellett; Grow Wellington’s chief executive Nigel Kirkpatrick; and, Ken Erskine of Auckland business incubator, Icehouse.
Presented by Chris Laidlaw
Produced by Jeremy Rose