Open mike 26/12/2015

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 26th, 2015 - 79 comments
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79 comments on “Open mike 26/12/2015 ”

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  1. Ffloyd 1
    26 December 2015 at 8:31 am

    I see the Herald is trying again to make Max Key relevant. Article about him pining in Hawaii for little girlfriend. Complete with photo of the back of daddy’s head while watching the sea. Why????

    • Tinfoilhat 1.1
      26 December 2015 at 8:41 am

      The herald appears to have decided some time ago that it’s easier and cheaper to be a broadsheet version of the woman’s weekly with a couple of cut and paste jobs from overseas journalists/real newspapers to maintain the illusion that they are still a real newspaper.

      • tc 1.1.1
        26 December 2015 at 9:08 am

        Pieces on max key are about identifying with the non voting youth to eek a few more votes out for daddy’s side.

        It’s about being a messenger for the rulers with position pieces like this, smear, dog whistling, repeating CT spin handed out by NACT and being a willing player in the dirty politics caper.

        If the backers wanted granny to do serious pieces it would so what you see is exactly what is required of granny….dumb it down and pass on this govts BS without any serious critique including the facade of Key and family being ordinary kiwis.

      • Visubversa 1.1.2
        26 December 2015 at 11:18 am

        Fortunately the girl child is in Paris furthering her “artistic career”, so we are spared the details of what she wears, and what the gossip columnists think she feels.

      • Tautuhi 1.1.3
        26 December 2015 at 12:00 pm

        The Herald is the National Party Daily Tabloid, it complements 7 Sharp and Mike Hoskins who preaches National Party Propaganda.

    • Paul 1.2
      26 December 2015 at 9:06 am

      The Herald now sources its news from Twitter and Instagram feeds from ‘celebrities’.
      Why?
      Because…
      1. it’s easy to get hold of
      2. It’s clickbait.
      3. The Herald’s owners and editor want a dumbed down populace.

      • savenz 1.2.1
        26 December 2015 at 9:26 am

        @Paul

        4) They don’t employ any journalists anymore.

      • Heather Grimwood 1.2.2
        26 December 2015 at 6:27 pm

        to Paul at 1.2 “The Herald’s owners want a dumbed down populace” So did, as I heard in one of his tetchy comments, Rob Muldoon.

    • Wensleydale 1.3
      26 December 2015 at 11:05 am

      Because Granny Herald is an appalling partisan rag with all the integrity of a balsa wood chair. Also today we have one of their infamous anonymous editorials basically saying, “Hooray! The fat German should bugger off to the US! We can trust the Americans to deal with him fairly… no, really, we can, honest.”

      And then we have John Roughan, who opens his mouth and causes the entirety of God’s creation to simultaneously shriek in anguish. Seriously, whenever I read anything by him I’m overwhelmed with a desire to punch myself repeatedly in the face for being such a hopeless masochist. And yes, I do appreciate the irony of that statement.

    • vaughan little 1.4
      26 December 2015 at 2:35 pm

      real journalism takes real money. which nobody in news has got much of anymore.

  2. Whispering Kate 2
    26 December 2015 at 9:08 am

    Don’t give The Herald any oxygen at all, don’t look it up or subscribe to it – I confess I sometimes look it up online and each and every time I think, “you stupid bugger why do you bother its just crap”. They haunt us on the phone to re-subscribe and again I just email them a letter explaining very plainly why they are just crap. I believe the Herald is struggling for subscribers so if enough people do this it will be like Channel 3 bleeding slowly to death. Death by lack of blood and or oxygen, how nice. Just like “no name” I have decided to give our leader a “no name” for a title for this year. It feels like a huge weight off my shoulders. Why give the little s…. even his name – “no name” sounds really great – it could start a trend!!!!

    Enjoy the rest of your holidays if you are lucky to not be working. Keep away from the Boxing Day sales as well – another entity which needs to be starved of oxygen. I have just had a wander around my rustic garden, breathed in the new air of the day, watched the birds pecking in our vegie patch and thank God for small mercies. So many of us do not even get that opportunity and for them I have sadness in my heart and hope life will eventually get better in this country. I am forever an optimist – I am a Saggi and they are optimists so they say.

  3. DH 3
    26 December 2015 at 9:17 am

    This is worth some quiet pondering….

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/75443924/international-tourism-overtakes-dairy-to-regain-top-spot-as-our-biggest-export-earner

    I’d think the majority of tourists come here largely because it’s safe and because the natives are friendly. No Government of the last thirty years can take any credit for that.

    It’s ironic really, that our economy is surviving in spite of our politicians not because of them. Without that tourism revenue we’d likely be a third world country by now.

    • Paul 3.1
      26 December 2015 at 9:25 am

      Sadly we don’t have a government known for its quiet pondering.

    • ianmac 3.2
      26 December 2015 at 9:27 am

      Sadly in spite of the money, it seems sad that our clean green country is being swamped by spectators. This helps destroy the very quality that they come to look at. But how fragile is Tourism. A blink and they stop coming leaving facilities and people unemployed. Prefer a production economy.

      • Paul 3.2.1
        26 December 2015 at 11:09 am

        And the Herald celebrates our being bought out by foreign billionaires….

        http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11565728

      • Olwyn 3.2.2
        26 December 2015 at 11:19 am

        Spectators and property speculators – that’s us. And tourism as the main industry in a country is more indicative of a slide toward third world status than something to brag about.

      • Draco T Bastard 3.2.3
        26 December 2015 at 11:54 am

        More rivers in Canterbury unsafe to swim in

        When the Government replaced the elected council with commissioners in 2010 – supposedly because it was failing to meet water targets – the commissioners aimed to have 80 per cent of rivers swimmable by 2015.

        It revealed in August it had missed its deadline, and the number of swimmable rivers had dropped to 67 per cent. It now says that figure has fallen again, to 64 per cent.

        I’m pretty sure that we’ll find that the farmers in the area are quite happy now that other people don’t have a say in how their environment is kept.

        • Paul 3.2.3.1
          26 December 2015 at 12:03 pm

          That’ll help bring more tourists in.
          Clean Green NZ.
          What a joke!

          • Macro 3.2.3.1.1
            26 December 2015 at 2:29 pm

            Look! The Minister of Tourism can always find a scientist to say that it is perfectly safe to swim in that river – The scientist may be retired and in receipt of a large envelope with money from an anonymous donor – but hey! It’s safe!

      • Tautuhi 3.2.4
        26 December 2015 at 12:04 pm

        JK can take all the credit for the huge growth in the Tourism Sector after all he is Minister of Tourism?

        • repateet 3.2.4.1
          26 December 2015 at 12:30 pm

          Inasmuch as he could fairly take the credit for the growth in other sectors? Like unemployment, crime, road deaths? He is after all the Minister in charge of other Ministers.

        • Graeme 3.2.4.2
          26 December 2015 at 3:33 pm

          Well if can if he want’s to take credit for “crashing” the NZD from 0.85 to 0.65 against USD. That’s all that’s making tourism work right now, and why it was bloody hard work for the previous 5 years. When our dollar went through 0.70 US it was like the lights came on.

          The best thing a government can do for tourism is a low, stable exchange rate.

        • b waghorn 3.2.4.3
          26 December 2015 at 4:21 pm

          So key is responsible for the rise of the Chinese middle class, who make up most of the new tourists to nz,??, Interesting theory!!

        • mary_a 3.2.4.4
          26 December 2015 at 5:06 pm

          @ Tautuhi (3.2.4) – Funny that isn’t it? Because the very same Minister of Tourism doesn’t do holidays in NZ!

          Instead he prefers propping up the local economy in Hawaii, vacationing at his luxury apartment on the island of Maui, doing chit chat, informing and playing golf with the US President!

          What will FJK do when Obama leaves his position late 2016? Wonder if he will bother finding out where the next President takes his/her holidays?

        • Expat 3.2.4.5
          26 December 2015 at 6:05 pm

          Approximately 3m tourists last year, one third from Australia, most Ausies say, after visiting NZ that the scenery is beautiful but very expensive.

    • Leftie 3.3
      26 December 2015 at 10:40 am

      @DH
      Sadly, in many respects, we are already a third world country, resembling a banana republic.

      • tinfoilhat 3.3.1
        26 December 2015 at 11:28 am

        Don’t be silly leftie, while we certainly have a less than ideal government we are in no respect a third world country by the current definitions.

        http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries.htm

        • Leftie 3.3.1.1
          26 December 2015 at 9:43 pm

          @tinfoilhat

          “less than ideal government” doesn’t go far enough to describe the abject failures of the self serving Key National government who have woefully let the people and country down, and badly. We have gone backwards not forward. Open your eyes to the mess this country is in, my initial comment is not silly at all.

          ” low economic development, high levels of poverty, low utilization of natural resources, and heavy dependence on industrialized nations” coupled with an unprecedented level of government debt, not to mention that we should be doing way better on infant mortality than what we are pretty much describes New Zealand under the Key National government, wouldn’t you say?

      • Macro 3.3.2
        26 December 2015 at 11:36 am

        We are a milk-powder republic dominion of the British realm (not that the last bit does us any good these days) and we have to fork out for expensive visits by “you know who” to help boost the polling for he who shall not be named.

    • Gabby 3.4
      26 December 2015 at 11:09 am

      Well I hope we’ve been a bit friendlier to Zahra Ramadani than Peder Duddon’s mob.

    • weka 3.5
      26 December 2015 at 3:21 pm

      “Without that tourism revenue we’d likely be a third world country by now.”

      I really don’t think so. We weren’t a third world country before the tourism boom and there is no reason why we can’t make a living in other ways. The push to industrial tourism was part of the neoliberal capture of NZ in the 80s as primary industry was disbanded and sent overseas. We don’t need tourism (at least not the kind we have now) and we certainly can’t afford it. Consider what will happen to the NZ economy in a big oil shock. Tourism in NZ appears to not even recognise that climate change and peak oil exist. It’s dangerous.

  4. Paul 4
    26 December 2015 at 9:18 am

    Evidence of climate change…..

    New York at 74F/23 C
    http://nypost.com/2015/12/24/its-the-warmest-christmas-eve-in-nyc-history/

    London at 63F/17 C
    ‘The European ski season is suffering the consequences of the mild weather’
    ‘In Scotland, daffodils, usually a harbinger of spring, are in full bloom’
    ‘Weird weather confuses nature as wasps seen sunbathing’

    Read more: http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Weird-weather-confuses-nature-wasps-seen/story-28420299-detail/story.html#ixzz3vMjUdxoc
    Follow us: @WMNNews on Twitter | westernmorningnews on Facebook
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/12057600/UK-weather-Christmas-storms-to-disrupt-travel-for-millions-live.htm
    http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Weird-weather-confuses-nature-wasps-seen/story-28420299-detail/story.html
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11566225

    It seems as if Paris was too little, too late.

    Watch this film

  5. Andre 5
    26 December 2015 at 12:21 pm

    Paris was about how bad it’s going to get in fifty years and beyond. Realistically it was already “too late” by 2000 or earlier, depending on how you feel about the survival of Arctic ecosystems.

    And the other really big issue, population control, still isn’t getting anywhere near the attention needed.

  6. fisiani 6
    26 December 2015 at 2:30 pm

    Given current polling and the complete inability of Labour/Greens to exceed 45% i suppose the hope of the Left is that NZF get over 5% and that Winston suddenly trusts the Greens. Wishful thinking. There is no certainty that Winston will even be alive in late 2017. What are the issues that will persuade 200,000 National voters to switch to Labour. Charismatic leader, Nope. Empty promises of jobs and houses for all. Nope.
    Christmas is a time for dreams. Happy dreams folks.

    • vaughan little 6.1
      26 December 2015 at 2:44 pm

      what happens after the housing bubble pops?

      the herd of clark-to-key swing voters won’t be unified anymore by their fantastical pursuit of real estate investment wealth.

      i do hope that whatever capital they have left they’ll decide to plough into productive, healthy investment, but they have probably by now fried whatever imaginations they started out with.

    • sabine 6.2
      26 December 2015 at 3:26 pm

      links please.

    • Grant 6.3
      26 December 2015 at 3:43 pm

      “My noble African name is sacred”.

      Citation please. No amount of earnest good faith Googling on my part can verify that statement.

      • fisiani 6.3.1
        26 December 2015 at 4:14 pm

        Try looking under the Chitumbuka language.

        • Grant 6.3.1.1
          26 December 2015 at 5:31 pm

          In other words you don’t care to back up your assertion. Thanks, that means I can choose not to care about it too.

          • McFlock 6.3.1.1.1
            26 December 2015 at 5:53 pm

            There also seems to be a conceptual problem as to why anybody would sow such utter bullshit whilst using as a pseudonym a name they hold sacred.

            • Grant 6.3.1.1.1.1
              26 December 2015 at 6:04 pm

              Indeed. I thought I might call myself ‘Siddhartha Gautama’ so that when I express some outrageous opinion and someone slaps me down for it by fucking with my handle I can claim that my name is too sacred to be attacked by potty mouthed mortals.

            • One Anonymous Bloke 6.3.1.1.1.2
              27 December 2015 at 8:17 am

              Not to mention why they’d post completely different explanations of it at the Sewer.

    • Paul 6.4
      26 December 2015 at 3:43 pm

      Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

      • Reddelusion 6.4.1
        26 December 2015 at 6:18 pm

        Zzzzzzzzzzz to your persistent and boring zzzzzzzzzz, if you are going use a put down some orinality pauly, please, we come here to entertained by wacky thoughts and deranged Fjk comment. Zzzzz is boring

        • Paul 6.4.1.1
          26 December 2015 at 10:01 pm

          zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

          • alwyn 6.4.1.1.1
            27 December 2015 at 9:58 am

            Does anyone know how to set up a campaign on givealittle?
            I think we need to set up something that will provide Paul with lots and lots of the character “z”. His keyboard must be running out of them.
            He needs more of them so he can continue with comments like “zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz” which are certainly the most incisive, and intelligent, that he has made all year.

    • Tautuhi 6.5
      26 December 2015 at 5:23 pm

      Winston is currently at about 11% heading to 15%, should be 20% + by next election time, people have had enough of the uneducated, attention seeking JK, Labour are the ones that need to get their acts together, they need to put a stake in the sand and say who they support in today’s society, rather than having a dollar each way?

      • b waghorn 6.5.1
        26 December 2015 at 5:34 pm

        “Coalitions: This is crucial, says Seymour. “Most people on the [political] Right don’t want to see Winston Peters destroy a third Government. “”http://i.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/75365336/Rising-housing-prices-in-2015-put-pressure-on-politicians
        This is the meme that will grow in strength over the next 15 months to take Winston out.

      • alwyn 6.5.2
        26 December 2015 at 6:07 pm

        “Winston is currently at about 11% heading to 15%”
        As both Sabine and Grant would say “Citation please”.
        As far as I can find Winston and his party are on about half that figure.

  7. b waghorn 7
    26 December 2015 at 5:16 pm

    http://i.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/75465142/Italian-shops-have-been-selling-cocaine-tea-for-years
    So they’ve be selling a natural tea for years with no harmful effects but in stead of considering the pros and Cons of leaving things as they are they immediately ban it. Dim thinking pollies are the same the world over,!!

  8. Molly 8
    26 December 2015 at 6:15 pm

    Found this Blue Rodeo video while looking for something else, song written for another Crosby/Textor Prime Minister – Steven Harper. But eerily relevant:

    • Reddelusion 8.1
      26 December 2015 at 6:23 pm

      Do the loony left have a global dress code ?

      razor or hair brushes also appear very unpopular 😀

      • Macro 8.1.1
        26 December 2015 at 7:08 pm

        Your potty training is showing dear. 😡

      • Halfcrown 8.1.2
        26 December 2015 at 7:15 pm

        Hey disillusioned for your information as a socilaist This morning
        I. Showered and as a looney I knew how to turn the fucking taps on
        2. Shaved and as a looney lefty I used the correct end of the razor
        3. Don’t own a hair brush as I am bald. but I find the towel works just as well .

        But at lest my mother potty trained me more than can be said for that disgusting fucking hair pulling spiv you worshop.

      • Sacha 8.1.3
        26 December 2015 at 7:42 pm

        the hirsute infidel
        #gasp

      • Paul 8.1.4
        26 December 2015 at 7:49 pm

        Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

      • b waghorn 8.1.5
        26 December 2015 at 8:14 pm

        Nothing like a black leather jacket and a buzz cut to bring out the right in you a mate.

      • Molly 8.1.6
        26 December 2015 at 8:37 pm

        I’m guessing the left are more likely to be aware of The True Cost of fashion 🙂 – but they are usually well ahead of the game in that respect.

      • ropata 8.1.7
        27 December 2015 at 12:09 am

        At least they don’t all dress like white collar criminals,
        all you RWNJ’s like to dress like there’s a stick up your arse,
        emulating your corrupt Wall St heroes

  10. Halfcrown 10
    26 December 2015 at 7:24 pm

    One other thing disillusioned I agree with Paul
    Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  11. fisiani 11
    26 December 2015 at 8:29 pm

    If Andrew Little fails to get Labour above 35% all though 2016 when does Grant Robertson host the barbeque. The only way to exclude the unions again choosing the leader would be depose the leader a few months before the election.

    • b waghorn 11.1
      26 December 2015 at 8:39 pm

      10% of people vote purely on wanting to be on the winning side, if Little gets labour to 35% key’ll be rideing a landslide to the bottom of the hill.

    • Paul 11.2
      26 December 2015 at 10:00 pm

      zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

    • Leftie 11.3
      26 December 2015 at 10:14 pm

      @fisiani

      Are you obsessed with Labour and Andrew Little? who couldn’t have won the leadership on the union vote alone. The unions didn’t choose the leader, and why exclude them? Labour was founded on the unions. The unions only have 20% of the vote. The remaining 80% is made up of caucus and the membership.

      What’s your beef with the unions anyway? Don’t you believe that workers should have rights, and get a fair pay so as to be able to look after themselves and their families? Do you believe in slavery then, and think workers should be exploited and work for free?

  13. Marie 13
    26 December 2015 at 9:37 pm

    Where are you hiding?