There’s “a whole lot of new rules designed to get rid of the assholes. A wide range of article topics – like 1080, vaccinations and the disputed region of Kashmir – just won’t have the comments open anymore. Along with that, they plan to be a lot tougher on where the line that cannot be crossed is. And – in what might seem like an unrealistically utopian development – they even plan to have an ‘editor’s pick’ function to highlight the best, most enlightening comments.”
Carrot as well as stick. A traditional formula, usually works fairly well. “We asked Stuff’s editor in chief Patrick Crewdson why he was shutting down free speech. Why are you shutting down free speech? Because I’ve been ordered to by the World Government.”
“Toldya so!” will probably be the most frequent response from WhaleOil commenters.
“We’ve always had rules for comments, and before today we were rejecting around a third of the 7000 comments we receive daily. So this isn’t about the era of free speech coming to an end. It’s about our community standards, and drawing the boundary in a different place.”
Cool, let’s have more fluid boundaries. Fixed boundaries are boring. “One of the other stipulations is that comments will be rejected if they “just generally aren’t very nice.” Hypothetically, say you had an article about The Spinoff on your site. What would be an example of a not very nice comment that would be rejected?”
“I feel you’re trying to trick me into being mean to you.” Trickster is good, very valuable social archetype, pan-cultural too, let’s have more of that…
Yeah well it’s about bloody time. Corporations have a social responsibility too. Just what a shame it takes a tragedy to give them the proverbial boot they need.
Stuff have been extremely complicit- and encouraging- of beneficiary bashing which of course reached it’s zenith under the last regieme. By republishing the Natz press releases verbatim with no proper journalism to check the validity, then by opening the comments for the inevitably vile to be spewed. If they let what they did be published I hate to think what they rejected… A lot of what went though met the criteria for breaches of the Human Rights Act. So nice to see they won’t be opening comments for articles related to beneficiaries anymore, but proof in pudding and all that.
As I said in an OM post a few days ago, this is hate speech and words can kill.
Even our resident tabloid had the decency to quit with the comments years ago. If these coordinated (and probably paid) haters can’t handle the fact they’ve lost a large platform, tough shit.
“drawing the boundary in a different place.”
Cool, let’s have more fluid boundaries. Fixed boundaries are boring.
It is possible to reset fixed boundaries every now and then. That does not make them ‘fluid’. It is how organisations and organisms adapt to environmental change.
If I were a media owner, I’d be looking at it from a cost perspective. Do I want to pay employees to spend all day moderating comments?
Being Green, I also see it from an ecosystem perspective. Toxic commentators are like the worst weeds: those that grow fast & often. One must be a busy gardener to extract them.
Greywarshark – yes it would, but the Chinese government simply would not allow that. The Uighurs are seen as a threat to the communist party, and effectively isolated from the wider Chinese Empire.
Falun Gong pose a very real threat to the government of China, as they are openly anti China in their publications. The communist government can not and will not tolerate any organised group, regardless of their views. Says just how insecure they are.
I think the Chinese Empire will go the way of the USSR, and break apart. Nei Mongolia. Sichuan. Xinjiang. Xizhang. Take those away and China will be a rump of its current size. Will happen without a doubt.
Censorship usa style …. supporting the peacful BDS movement …. Or mention the HUGE influence the AIPAC israel lobby has on usa policy …. then your either breaking the law ……or your supporting anti semitisim , under the new ( and perverted) definition of it
I was reading the wiki page of Maajid Nawaz the other day after both David Farrar and Bryce Edwards had linked to an article of his post Christchurch (and if you want an idea of Edwards’ political leanings these days then there it is).
The wiki page had a featured quote:
It’s not Islamophobic to scrutinise Islam just as it’s not Christianophobic to scrutinise Christianity.
Maajid Nawaz The Big Questions (BBC show)
I wondered if his supposition would hold for Judaism?
And while we’re on the subject of lateral thinking, why not apply it to the Waiho Bridge? Instead of spending all that money replacing it every time climate change washes it away, just put a big hinge on the side of the damn thing!
Then either incorporate auto-opening with red lights to stop traffic every time the river gets high enough, or a trigger-release that gets activated when the river almost reaches the road. After the flood, get a truck and chain to pull it closed again.
If the bridge has been washed away many times before, it won’t be due to climate change, it will be as a result of south Westland getting horrendous floods which it has done just about forever.
They anticipate this by building a bailey bridge (basically a short term military bridge used when existing bridges have been blown up).
They could actually build a decent bridge, which could be future proofed against climate change. Probably would cost $30 million or so, but in the long run would seem better than a rickety old bailey bridge.
Was amused to hear the Westland mayor saying it was unusual for a “100 year event” on the Ciast to be so geographically widespread.
He didn’t sound older than about 55.
They need a bridge which spans the entire river, and at least 50 metres of the bank, in one leap. No piles in the shifting and unstable bed to get undermined.
… it won’t be due to climate change, it will be as a result of south Westland getting horrendous floods which it has done just about forever.
Yes, but it probably started out to be a one in 20 year flood, then it dropped to a one in 10 year flood and so on… now its happening frequently enough due to CC that it has weakened the bridge’s structure and the stability of the river bed.
It is working OK now though as they have shaved a little off it. That bridge works of course because the hinged bit is only wide enough to let a boat through. The Waiho Bridge is obviously too long for this to work. There is also hugely more water going under it.
There is a HUGE movement of gravel washing down the Waiho and raising the riverbed. Only a handful of years ago that Waiho bridge was raised about 3m or so due to the riverbed lifting to the underside of the bridge. In that handful of years the riverbed has lifted again.
This is a common occurence with all bridges in NZ. They constrain the river being bridged, which results in the gravel building up and up and up as it cannot spill out the side. It happens everywhere, but is more noticeable on the coast due to the extent of rainfall and one of the world’s highest mountain erosion rates. These rivers need digging out frequently.
The Waiho in particular has this HUGE gravel bulge coming down the river (due to glacier retreat). It has many years to go yet. Franz is in trouble. Everyone knows it. That is why that bridge has been a bailey-type bridge – easier to repair/replace every few decades.
Building a more permanent bridge would require more work to each end than actually building the bridge, such is the geography of the site.
The other point – much of NZ’s roading infrastrcture was built around 50-70 years ago. It is at the end-of-life point, in two main ways. One, all the roads were cut into hillsides and they are now eroding from above to an unpreventable level (e.g. Manawatu Gorge). Two, the constrained rivers are full to bursting, and are bursting.
Thank you, I was busy typing out a similar response but far less informed. Temporary bridges aren’t all bad, they have speed and weight limits and are a bit inconvenient, but from an engineering perspective make a great deal of sense in this sort of highly unstable environment.
And then of course there’s the Alpine Fault, (running through the township of Franz Joseph), that is due to go any day now ….
The Alpine Fault is one of the world’s major plate boundaries and New Zealand’s most hazardous earthquake-generating fault. It runs for 650 kilometres along the spine of New Zealand’s South Island and we know that it ruptures on average every 300 years, producing an earthquake of about magnitude 8.
The last time the Alpine Fault went was in 1717, when it shunted land horizontally by eight metres and uplifted the mountains a couple of metres.
Would need to be very well hinged! (As opposed to unhinged …)
NZ roads were never designed to carry 60 tonne trucks either.
*As they built the roads and the under base to carry a laden weight of only 20 tonnes or less,- then, as vehicles back then trucks were an average of 9 tonnes and rail carried 90% of our freight.
*But now that whole picture has reversed.
* Now 60+ tonne trucks are now 8 times heavier and carry 90% of our freight.
* Rail only carries 6% of our freight.
So vto; – common sense says “something had to give”.
Our problems are that the road transport industry is far to powerful and has far to much control and heavy influence over our politicians today and rail needs to now take at least half the freight.
Unless the government does change this, – this problem we will never fix the problem.
Uhh, yeah, railways are really relevant to a thread about a bridge failure hundreds of kilometres from the nearest railway, and is hundreds of kilometres from anywhere 60+ tonne trucks are allowed by the HPMV regulations.
You wanna start lobbying for a brand new railway line down the West Coast?
Not according to Jewish people who are not affiliated to Aipac or extreme zionisim Bewildered … these honest people think the false anti semite smear …. like you just dishonestly used ….. are the real threat to Israel …. and the rise of real anti Semitic feelings worldwide .
Your Blatant nasty dishonesty is ugly …. it’s so obvious ….and reflects very poorly upon honest Jewish people …. who would never spread your lies …. Bewildered.
Your a disgrace …. tainting others with your filth
But back to the good people …. like this Jewish man …. a brother to those seeking justice and truth
Previously Stuart Nash was against tighter gun controls. Today he has revised his opinion. It’s a pity that people in national or local government are governing by opinion which is limited by their own ignorance and lack of desire to obtain and understand the facts of the situation.
Teachable moment. Took my son and his friend to school today both aged 11. Raining here. They bought up climate change and we discussed increased energy and wilder extremes of weather. Had just helped homework with the boy around the difference between heat and temperature. They said that we (olders) weren’t doing enough and leaving them to deal with it. I said yep that is happening and we must continue to do all we can do including creating sustainability and resilience and community. I learnt so much from those young boys.
Given recent times, the chances of mistaken identities with our NZ PM must be next to nil, as Jacinda goes to embark on a whirlwind international diplomacy trip to meet the China heads of state.
Being able to do such whirlwind foreign engagements though, even amidst the ongoing backdrop of the past week or so, then beyond trade numbers and volumes, it would surely be very valuable to NZ if culturally more of an eye starts to be kept out for any headline get togethers as involves Ivanka Trump to gender equality promotions with leadership/corporate decision making structures.
Ivanka is very well known around the world in different places, including China, and there are far worse ideas of reference for a place in often chaotic world traffic than a layperson stickability like Ivanka, Jacinda, Gender Equality, New Zealand, to be understood with.
As I predicted a couple of months ago, Pentagon gets Trump’s wall started by shifting $1b of internal funds, unilaterally. Armed Forces Committee may complain, but DoD is its own kingdom with plenty of discretion.
Trump will now go to the electorate with tax reform, corruption scandals behind him, and wall started.
Dems are such a long way from a single candidate that they may simply run out of time to take Trump out.
It’s a point well made and worth repeating; our political landscape seems as much shaped by sullen incompetence on the left as it is by sly malfeasance on the right.
That seems a quotable quote RedLogix. And if that is not acceptable grammar to anyone, I note that stuff have included banning comments that protest against grammatical errors in its latest tranche of changes. It is good though if the piece is readable. I complain at large bricks without paras. Good thinking through things can be bypassed if its too dense, or having difficulty to get through someone’s brain that is too dense!
ROFL, so the whole Russian collusion conspiracy theory has just fallen over, and handed trump the sympathy card.
Could people play it any worse – oh wait this is the centre left were talking about so, yeah this could get way worse…
trump is going to walk in, becasue the centre left lost its mind and spent two years down the rabbit hole chasing a conspiracy theory.
An apology for the muppets who pushed the Russian Collusion conspiracy theory would be nice. Or at least an apology for the name calling of ‘putin puppets’ would be a good place to start.
AT least one thing to like about the centre left, when it comes to going crazy, at least you do it on a grand scale.
So this main actor goes into the Mosque. And passage-way-extra-guy1 is on the floor with bare feet. The main actor goes out, comes back in, and now the passage-way-extra-guy1 is still in the same place but now wearing socks, blue socks! I shit you not, it has been filmed in two takes! This is the level of BS in the video, super-fake and a very strange situation we find ourselves in. No surprise that Islamic leaders in NZ calling it how it looks.
[No more disrespectful comments, please. The next false flag fantasy sees you removed from the site. TRP]
Ahmed Bhamji, chairman of the Mt Roskill Masjid E Umar, gave a speech questioning where the gunman got his funding from. He said he suspected it came from “Mossad” and “Zionist business”.
When links get broken (like the link to the quote I give above), then I shout it louder. I would truly like to understand where you folk are coming from. Why should we censor all views other than the lone-wolf narrative? Do folk here believe that it is in the interests of national security? Is it fear? I read quotes from our leaders like Marama D calling for the truth. To quote James S, “when the facts change, we change our mind”. How do we avoid the polarisation of opinion? By making sure there is only one opinion? I respect that our leaders’ hands’ are politically tied, but that means that it’s up to us, farmers and unionist, to say the uncomfortable truths. If not us, now? Then who, and when? Perhaps I’m too direct. If so, then please, demonstrate to me the more graceful way. But to simply put on a head scarf and bury the truth, this is a sad defeat for us all.
In the setting of the bigger picture, as financial melt-down warms, with the US ready for civil war, Israel given the green light for expansion… sorry for the fear porn, but surely we would want to keep our local communities informed, if these impulses where to act upon our shores. The truth is safe if you remain empathetic with it. I thought the audience here was political. If I can’t share the truth here, then where? Well I have said my piece, and will leave you folk in peace now. Much to do on farm.
Yeah you are far from understanding anything here when you ask:
Why should we censor all views other than the lone-wolf narrative? Do folk here believe that it is in the interests of national security? Is it fear?
Here you will find the opposite – that views are broadly tolerated other than the ‘hate speech’ of your so-called lone-wolf narrative and other false-flag shit. This is where a line gets drawn – some don’t like it – but I entirely agree with such censorship.
Fear Porn, as you call it, seems to be at the heart of your rants.
Me disrespectful? How about NZ Police Commissioner Bush, is he being respectful by turning aspects of this investigation over to the FBI? (sorry my computer is too hacked to cut-n-paste at this minute, I’ll paraphrase his statement): “We are getting help from the FBI to paint a better picture of the (singular) attacker.” Is he turning it over to the FBI? Are NZ police not up to the job? Is he narrowing the focus down to one man? Sorry, I’m agreeing with mosque leader Ahmed Bhamji, chairman of the Mt Roskill Masjid E Umar. Smells like rat to me too.
But there’s some facts in Corodales comments. They aren’t all about his dumb opinions.
(Why did you put that Corodale? About socks and all that? Get some respect for the gravity of this matter. This is not a time for interesting discussion like about something minor that you saw on tv or a film!)
Facts as reported correctly one expects:
* The Mt Roskill leader of the local church was quoted as mentioning Mossad etc. mosque leader Ahmed Bhamji, chairman of the Mt Roskill Masjid E Umar.
** Jews have been quoted as being outraged about Mossad, their spy organisation, being referred to in a suspicious way by the Mt Roskill mosque chairman.
*** Commissioner Bush has mentioned that the FBI are here and the Australian Federal police and that they are in touch withother jurisdictions around the world. Video update 10 Can’t see any date (on-line seems chary about dates). e&oe https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=438111816929508
Study shows IPCC is underselling climate change
March 19, 2019, University of Adelaide
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
A new study has revealed that the language used by the global climate change watchdog, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is overly conservative – and therefore the threats are much greater than the Panel’s reports suggest.
Published in the journal BioScience, the team of scientists from the University of Adelaide, Flinders University, the University of Bristol (UK), and the Spanish National Research Council has analysed the language used in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (from 2014).
“We found that the main message from the reports—that our society is in climate emergency—is lost by overstatement of uncertainty and gets confused among the gigabytes of information,” says lead author Dr. Salvador Herrando-Pérez, from the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute and Australian Centre for Ancient DNA.
“The IPCC supports the overwhelming scientific consensus about human impact on climate change, so we would expect the reports’ vocabulary to be dominated by greater certainty on the state of climate science—but this is not the case.”
Clearing the mind of some of the nitty gritty to let the major matters emerge. That’s what is so important I think cleangreen. (Don’t read any further if you are inclined to depression – someone pointing out things clearly you sort of know is too much to take on sometimes. Did you have to say that? is the angry thought.)
Those points you put up are major, and so true about not getting the clear message we need to take on board. But often it’s more than I can cope with, and i am ahead of others. The young ones are still trying to make their lives and constantly be flexible, adapting to the new technology, demands, etc. If older people only think of pleasure, going on holidays, meeting at cafes for meals and chat, keeping up with the children and grand-children, limited input to keep up with society, who is actually confronting the problems? Big nasty ones too. That is the situation.
And that is why I won’t get tv again, Sky can keep ringing and I am polite most of the time to the worker at the end of the line. But I haven’t time. I am in a minority amongst people I meet in the everyday world who pay attention to the future, who regards with cynicism the pretty speeches of politicians and the ones about how love will keep us together. If it was so easy it would have been done decades ago. Love is essential, and it will enable us to decide what is the best thing to do for our families, our neighbourhood and what we are going to help with, and how to retire from the world when it becomes essential to do so. We might decide it is better to train as medical personnel and go into the war-torn areas there and help the brave and moral people attempting to act nobly and practically for instance. We are only costing the country money to keep us alive and active and doing our own thing in the midst of growing disaster. The eye of the storm we are living in at present.
Knowing the coldness and self-absorption of the better-off, which is the same all the way up to the leaders and manipualtors to whom money is no barrier, I can’t have hope that they will do anything to keep things going that is not expedient for them. Trying to improve anything back to the way it was is tremendously difficult because the people in power want to lower conditions down to necessities for the people, and the necessities are in their sights also. Our right to be able to afford our own homes, or even have decent rental ones is an example.
I hope that we can find true-hearted people to work with and do what we can to avoid the worst situations. But any slip-slide away to cults and
glamorous ideas and leave you in the lurch when you try to do anything, when you try to get a practical working group going that will fix on a system that is good in theory, and prove it in practice and change to meet changing needs and times, and not cling to historical methods.
The feedback practice on Stuff is being changed to meet criteria of the well-run ethical business they want to be Our political systems for instance shouldn’t be set in stone. Each plan is a compromise and should have clear objectives to be proud of, and then when not achieving them some change is acceptable, say each year.
corodale. Thanks for the link…I’m a little OCD about such things.
And bugger me, there it is….Bush saying how the FBI are over here helping out with the investigation. I thought I was keeping up but that wee tidbit had escaped me.
All I can say is, thank heavens for The FBI…..they have a sterling reputation for sorting shit out. /sarc 😉
We certainly have to be careful. There is a very snappy approach showing up on here at present. The shock has made us all tense and our reactions can be triggered. I was annoyed with someone starting a discussion referring to other tragedies and wondering if this was worse, rating it on a scale I felt which bothered me. That was picking up on our PM saying that the tragedy was unprecedented in NZ.
I agree grey. We’re going through the “angry” phase at present and I currently have a low tolerance level for bullshit and crank statements. This is in part because of personal historical experiences and the fact the people making them are flying in the face of present reality.
But a fence is not a wall, guys, what part of following instructions do you just not get?? I foresee tv pictures of hordes of locals jumping up & down in unison chanting “We Wanna Wall! We Wanna Wall!”
“The Pentagon has authorised army engineers to begin construction of additional fencing on the US-Mexico border, diverting an initial $1bn after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency to bypass Congress on the matter. The army would begin planning and building 57 miles of 18-foot-high fencing in Yuma, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas, according to a statement by acting defence secretary Patrick Shanahan.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-border-wall-mexico-funding-pentagon-security-congress-vote-a8839811.html
corodale can you understand that huge amount of unknown information that affects anybody’s ability to make a reasoned decision? And how much time is wasted that could be spent on learning the facts, but is wasted in engaging with dunderheads like you and similar smart-arses.
This is an expression of the thinking about information and its complexity.There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns
I suggest you don’t pretend ignorance about known things, otherwise you will never catch up with the quest for knowledge that others are on.
I think Dennis at 11, was in reply to 9 about the wall from joe90. He has put up a copy of the letter refusing Defence from taking $1 billion from its booty to help Trumpy and his wall. It could actually be a major tourist attraction for Mexico, and a place where artists hang out decorating it and fighting over where Banksy- like people can keep their art for posterity. The Berlin Wall was covered in graffiti.
Simultaneous writing actually. I was expecting to be first with the news but got beaten by a few minutes, so didn’t know the other report was in the pipeline – fortunately my quote provided more detail, so supplementing the other.
I find the fence/wall thing weird, inasmuch as the fence has been there awhile apparently – in some locations, even if not continuous. But we never got an explanation from Trump re Mexico funding so he’s just ad hoc.
I’m not sure why you’d be applauding that. Right leaning employer sacks employee making left wing comment might attract some consternation, and rightly so. Is that what you’re suggesting?
“Hooray!” probably needed a /sarc tag after it. This is actually a horrifying development, and I hope the current government is moving to give people working for temp agencies greater protection against this kind of thing. If the guy had been directly employed by Placemakers it would have been much harder to dismiss him (which is one of the reasons employers use temp agencies – the workers have fewer rights).
Yep thought it was sarcasm. More than 20,000 workers have been sacked in the last year who were on 90 day trials. Making political comments I suspect is one “justification” used by employers.
He could just not say things that marty mars retrospectively and without hearing them declares to be hate speech? Yes, that is too hard. Effectively, your argument is “He could just not say things.”
something to consider – now days indigenous peoples often focus on decolonising the mind. Basically as colonization occured it took from indigenous peoples and replaced with the unshakable belief that all euro aspects are the peak and naturally are the best way. Politics, social structure, law and ways of thinking about law, everything. Decolonising the mind is realizing the truth that there is no white supremacy in ANYTHING including how to think, react, what’s important and what isn’t.
So your logic and approach is not mine. Get used to it.
Given you have openly endorsed punishing people who say things you don’t like, I should point out that this is a system us toxic white people (and others) have tried out at various times in the past century or so, and demonstrated to be a catastrophically bad idea.
On the other hand you may have better luck with it.
and your first sentence is not correct. I applaud people being protected against white supremacist hate speech and religious hate speech. I think it hurts people and is sick anytime but especially now. Pity you don’t.
I stand on my track record here going back over a decade as being implacably opposed to religious zealots and fundamentalists of any kind. At the same time I’ve made it clear I am not an atheist, I have a long standing relationship with religion and I’ve spoken in respectful terms whenever the topic arose.
Indeed I’ve taken more than some flack for this over the years from people who hold all religions in contempt; ‘sky fairies’ and the like.
Long before it became the issue it has been this past 10 days.
Well the romans outlawed greek practitioners of rhetoric,then again they also outlawed athletics as the Greeks performed this naked in public,but allowed violent spectator sports (a bit like television programming)
Alexander Pope summed up the problems on discourse in his Epistle to man.
But errs not Nature from this gracious end,
From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
“No, (’tis replied) the first Almighty Cause
Acts not by partial, but by gen’ral laws;
Th’ exceptions few; some change since all began:
And what created perfect?”—Why then man?
If the great end be human happiness,
Then Nature deviates; and can man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of show’rs and sunshine, as of man’s desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As men for ever temp’rate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav’n’s design,
Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?
Who knows but he, whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms,
Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar’s mind,
Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
From pride, from pride, our very reas’ning springs;
Account for moral, as for nat’ral things:
Why charge we Heav’n in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right is to submit.
Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discompos’d the mind.
But ALL subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.
The gen’ral order, since the whole began,
Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.
There is only one logic Marty to argue otherwise is illogical Also there is a reason the world flock to western countries, democracies and ideals and not the other way round Hint , it’s not about colour
…there is a reason the world flock to western countries…
There was a reason western countries flocked to the world over the last 500 years, too. Indigenous people in many countries have some views on that. So, maybe not the best argument to offer to one of them (which I believe marty mars is)?
Reason isn’t “White,” it just is. If you mistake rational argument for a Pākehā cultural affectation and “decolonise” it from your mind, your ability to argue for your views will be damaged, not improved.
Reason – you assess information and reach conclusions. You’re not a machine – only some information is assessed – what info and why those ones? You reach conclusions based on past experience, knowledge etc. Its all subjective. If you live in society and every day the variables considered important are reinforced and others not which ones become natural? White isn’t a colour to me but a set of privileges attached to groups. Some have more, some less.
True, there are an infinite number of ways we assess information and one of the core ideas the radical left has embraced is that none of them are privileged above the other; they’re all equally valid.
I presume then you’d have no quibble with me ‘decolonising’ my modern western mind and embracing my Viking heritage:
You reach conclusions based on past experience, knowledge etc. Its all subjective.
Its even worse than that. We reach conclusions based on personal prejudices, emotions we’re feeling, whatever hormone happens to be getting the most traction at the time, things we believe are true but aren’t – there’s a big list.
That’s why reason is so important. What are the rational arguments for the conclusions I’ve reached? If I can’t come up with any, or I do but they’re a collection of logical fallacies and other people tear them to shreds in front of me, it’s time to figure out what’s really led me to those conclusions.
Yet when I speak seriously to the notion of a global civilisation, one that unites the best aspects of all cultures, one that expands our moral and emotional horizons to embrace the entire human race … as I have done many times … you go all silent on me.
In the global civilisation I have in mind, us white people would compose just 1 billion of the 7 or more billion humans. There is plenty of diversity to go around.
The members of your whanau are all unique and different people, yet together they are united as family. As with the citizens of a nation. We are all unique, diverse and individuals, while at the same time connected and merged at many different levels.
Unity does not imply uniformity; it means connection and the ability to work to a common purpose.
He said he knew as soon as the words came out of his mouth that he’d said the wrong thing.
Maybe he should have thought first.
But then a “qualified engineer” reduced to fruitpicking probably has other issues, too.
But although I don’t have much sympathy for him, arbitrarily kicking him was wrong. There should have been a disciplinary meeting, and based on exactly what he said (not his description of what he said) appropriate disciplinary action should have been taken.
Good you’re on board. It seemed like his co workers were a bit frightened and the boss listened to them and fair enough imo. Times change and they just did for this country.
Suppose his co-workers were “a bit frightened” because he spoke te reo Maōri or expressed support for tino rangatiratanga – still good if the boss listens to them and makes sure the troublemaker doesn’t get to “frighten” them again? Now that times have changed and it’s apparently OK to dismiss people for saying something you don’t like, an’ all that?
You’re not good on context imo – nothing is happening in a vacuum is it. Your principles are constructed yet you hold them so tight. They appear fragile if they can’t take this stuff.
My principles are so far from fragile that I can cope with hearing unpopular opinions without wanting to get the holders of the opinions sacked. It would be good if yours were equally robust.
You’re dreaming mate – you spent days here moaning about a call to prayer for a God you dont believe in. Lol wake up and be honest at least with yourself.
Gods you don’t believe in can kill you, as a lot of people have found out over the last few thousand years. They may kill you by proxy, via the people who do believe in them, but you end up just as dead. Don’t assume that gods you don’t believe in are trivial, because it’s not true.
Islam’s merely the ugliest of them. I wrote “gods” plural for a reason – the Christian ones have probably clocked up a bigger body count than Allah over the centuries, especially when you take the Americas into account. There have been plenty of others.
Influencers – this phenomenon is beyond me. This is a good article. Gives the vegan haters some good material and by jeeze they need it ha ha ha. Fishgate.
“Not only was Mendoza promoting a restrictive diet that was making her sick, she was extolling dangerous practices, such as 25-day water fasts, to her millions of followers. And she is far from the only influencer promoting extreme eating. Jordan Peterson, a prominent psychologist, has been outspoken about his all-beef diet, claiming it cured his depression and his gum disease. (Unfortunately, it hasn’t cured his pseudo-intellectual prattling.)”
Fortunately Peterson also makes it clear it’s a diet he has found addresses specific issues his family have encountered over the years. Nowhere does he recommend or promote it as a generally good idea. Indeed whenever someone does ask him about, he says it’s a restrictive and onerous diet he doesn’t like much at all.
Incidentally gum disease has been recently implicated in Alzheimers:
thanks for that – alzheimers eh – not good – I certainly wouldn’t wish that on him and i can’t imagine a journalist doing this connection thing you’ve bought up – it appears you’ve connected those dots all by yourself 🙂
‘Dental care is not only cosmetic’- it is part of our whole health and well being.
I got a clear message about this two years ago.
In 2016 my teeth got damaged after a boating accident and this was around Xmas and dental care was not carried out until four months later due to ACC hangups, and by then infections had been set in causing blood poisoning that threatened my life and I spend two years after wards getting the teeth fixed with 6 root canals and seven restorations.
Gum abbess infections and resulting blood poisoning from gum infections can destroy anyone’s health, mind and body,.
Don’t let the teeth health be left out of healthcare funding here; – as many cannot afford to pay for dental care.
It actually is sort of serious and just becoming known, so cleany felt he would give us the facts Gabby. Taking quite a few sentences to explain it which takes time and a desire to be helpful, just not pass judgment.
To be able to charge loads of fees
To be able to make parents buy devices they cannot afford
To pander to internation students
To kick out ‘dumb kids’ that make their schools look bad
**TO RUN SCHOOLS AS A TRADEABLE BUSINESS COMMODITY AND NOT A PUBLIC SERVICE**
To be honest, I trust civil servants to run schools than the red faced reactionary bourgeois hacks that control most boards of trustees, and have their own little networks.
The Hubs are going to shine some light on all the corruption and nepotism that goes on in our education system, and some people dont like that.
millsy
I noticed that the nice Maori woman keen and willing to be a good Board member didn’t get voted in to my local primary school with a catchment of mostly pakeha, and many professionals. Board members came from the public, but the accountant, businessman, the solicitor or solicitor’s wife were the vast majority
( could be both women). So having Boards chosen from the public giving the impression of reflecting the whole community is misleading.
And the middle class are not really open to progressive ideas, they just want their kids to learn get good jobs and know how to be naice. Their standards are derisory, they will want religion and allow any obsessive to prate on; they will want sex education but on the end of a barge pole, or not discussed on a level of personal experience of the youngsters, and the dry facts miss the chance of putting to them that they could take time before experiencing it, be a bit wary of jumping in because others start at 13 or 14. Why not decide for yourself that you will try it out after 18? A suggestion not a sacred promise. There is so much conservatism and also limitation in subjects that the Boards can decide. What they themselves know can form a protective barrier around school subjects and ways, and they are reluctant to allow the other ideas in, or not till everyone else is accepting them.
In both cases they spoke unwisely, through frustration or lips loosened by alcohol but what they said still stands. It’s what they said, it’s what they think, it’s what has escaped into the public arena. Excuses as to why they said it don’t retract what they actually said.
“I went to get a flight attendant and informed her of what was going on. They checked other witness accounts and the head of the flight service (a woman) asked the man to move.
“He resisted then started swearing at me and asked to talk to the boss and the head flight attendant said ‘I’m the boss, this is really serious and we could land the plane’.
“He moved. The attendants checked in with the young woman and wrote up a report.”
Airline staff later gave Ms Chiu and the other woman cards thanking them for stepping in and helping.
This book published in 2001 defines five lines of stress on the world and us. The summary sounds pretty right. Anyone read it?
Five Holocausts by Derek J Wilson
Paperback, 2001, 472pages, very good condition
Reviews:
Derek Wilson?s 10-year labour of love proposes that the world faces ruin through five intertwining apocalypses of human construction: militarism, human oppression, economic destitution, population explosion and environmental destruction.
The five holocausts cannot be understood or dealt with in isolation. The problems are vast and indisputable; uncounted acres of taxpayer gold are thoroughly wasted on armaments, trillions of dollars spin round the world in unproductive speculation, people enslave each other given half a chance, rich nations use vast shares of the Earth?s resources and the environment is in accelerating decline.
The point of a New Zealand-produced book on the subject ? given that none of the above registers in the average Kiwi?s day to day ? is that acting to stop it all is in everyone?s interests. (Alistair Bone Listener reviewer)
This authoritative book gives a clear and thorough overview of the impending global crisis, connecting the constituent parts of the global predicament. Derek Wilson draws attention to many dynamic and hopeful initiatives that are growing in response to the overall challenge and makes an impassioned case for action by government, institutions and society generally.
This is a book with a powerful challenge, packed with vital, thoroughly interesting information. (From the foreword by George Porter, founder and past President of the Pacific Institute of Resource Management, Aotearoa New Zealand)
Yes, I have. Bought a copy a few years ago and read it. Should go back and revisit it soon, just to see if it stands up.
I ‘enjoyed’ the read, being a local publication and very straightforward about the crises we face, but recall thinking it is not for the faint-hearted.
Thanks for the warning Molly. Perhaps one should be like the Oz politicians, take on some whiskies, and then that weakens the effect of the ideas, for a while.
Don’t mean to put anyone off. Probably those who visit this website regularly will find it a good read. Just mean that recommending it to people who aren’t politically active or interested in current affairs might be problematic.
I’ll have to dig it out after renovations and revisit it again. I know I was sufficiently interested enough to have a look for Derek Wilson to see if he was still alive and perhaps publishing or speaking.
They counted 1 to 12 reasons to put it back up. It’s the new bible for a drifting
generation whose parents have no idea of what principles to tell their children to live by. We are getting into loose hippy ideas of branching out, dropping out,
and making changes, so what do you do – you find some cult figure to tell you.
They had the Vietnam war looming which they were rejecting; we have the end of our world. That would make anyone grab at something like a calf will suck your thumb for comfort.
You nailed it GWS. A distinct lack of leadership and answers in tumultuous times.
I don’t see Peterson as a nasty type right, more a mediator among them. A bloke they identify with who might talk them back from a ledge. He got famous re: the pronoun debate and upset a lot of left wing people. This enamored him with a lot of disaffected right wing youth.
He’s asked them to be introspective. I like that, far cry from blaming immigrants for everything. He’s taken on their nihilism with instructions for self-responsibility.
And people mock his readers like slow children – for trying not to be nihilistic butt-heads. There’s a lot worse types out there they might have glommed on to.
I also rate his lectures on the bible stories. I’ve not read his recent book.
Audrey Young has been absent from writing her column since the christchurch massacre. Maybe she has been on leave? Her chosen topic for her first article is about Winston Peters supposedly falling asleep in Turkey.
The msm bias against the Coalition, Labour and Ardern is so very obvious right now.
I heard a woman ring in while out driving and give a robust account of how disgusted she was with Shorn Plunket’s pre-show blurb on Winston, you could apply her concerns to almost every host they have on that particular station now – with the slight exception that Brendan Telfer did play devil’s advocate on occasion to contest their rabid opinions.
She called it “talk at” rather than talk back and she is 100% correct.
Sadly Telfer is only a fill in for a couple of weeks for the equally horrible Peter Williams – his lack of experience shows as well but that seems no bar for a station who chose him for his familiar name and allow their hosts to push their personal barrows with contentious subjects in a very one-sided way.
A man dead from what seems to be a self inflicted stab wound – after refusing to surrender to Police. Cache of arms found on dead mans property after public tip off.
There is nowhere near enough information. It seems a suicide in preference to giving himself up. IF this is so, it is a very extreme reaction, and this guy was maybe up to something very nasty and/or is hiding other nasty people and designs.
IF he killed himself rather than give up.
Another scenario is that he was hurt by someone else, but that makes no sense in light of the standoff. If a so called associate tried silence you, you’d have second thoughts about dying to protect them.
But Killary!
How the fuck any person with an ounce of intelligence can say this current administration is as good as what might have been, had there not be an electoral college to stuff up the popular vote, I will never know.The environmental vandalism that has been carried out by t.rump and “friends” is unbelievable. This is just another sick instance of short term profit for a few takes precedence over all else.
Interesting books I have come across on Trade me. The first one is major along with climate change in its harsh effects on us if we can’t mobilise to think how we can manage. No-one else will! And the book by Derek J Wilson above talks about 5 holocausts we are facing. These books relate to all sorts of strife we are noticing.
“I am writing from inside the tech bubble to let you know that we are coming for your jobs.” So begins Andrew Yang’s book, The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future.
Despite the tagline, this isn’t fundamentally a book about Universal Basic Income (UBI). It’s about the market, and our attitude towards it….It isn’t simply the case that American society is separating into strata, Yang argues, but that the elites are consciously working to put the rest of society out of work.
The sectors where “normal” people tend to work—administration, retail, food service, transportation, and manufacturing—have high levels of repetitiveness and are highly susceptible to automation. Since competition in these sectors is quite fierce, companies are sooner or later forced to automate to keep up with their competition. Once a single competitor automates, the others must follow. In many cases, automation is not only cheaper, but also produces better products or services. The natural result is, as Yang relates through conversations he’s had with people in the tech industry, a race to make “normal” people redundant….
Keeping At It
The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government
by Paul Volcker and Christine Harper
Paul Volcker has devoted his life’s work to public service and the critical importance of open, disciplined and efficient government. As chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979-1987) he literally rescued the American economy from destroying itself, summoning the courage to take radical and controversial steps to slay the inflation dragon.
And whenever the going got really tough–the financial crash of 2008, the need to reform banking, the oil for food UN scandal, the turmoil in Switzerland over theft of Holocaust victims, cheating in Major League Baseball–US presidents and other leaders said to ‘get Volcker in here to help me work this thing through.’… http://fortune.com/2018/10/30/paul-volcker-book-review/
Lost Enlightenment S. Frederick Starr
In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia’s medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds–remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world.
Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic, they were long assumed to have been Arabs. In fact, they were from Central Asia–drawn from the Persianate and Turkic peoples of a region that today extends from Kazakhstan southward through Afghanistan, and from the easternmost province of Iran through Xinjiang, China. Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects.
They gave algebra its name, calculated the earth’s diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine, and penned some of the world’s greatest poetry. One scholar, working in Afghanistan, even predicted the existence of North and South America–five centuries before Columbus. Rarely in history has a more impressive group of polymaths appeared at one place and time. No wonder that their writings influenced European culture from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas down to the scientific revolution, and had a similarly deep impac ..
I thought that vid was as a parody at first Andre – bloody hell. And mark hamill is cool. Enjoyed visiting his Twitter feed- that one about t.rumps signature was good.
Thinking about it a bit, I’ve started to wonder if there’s a hidden message in that photo of a bunch of babies all the same age and fairly clearly mixed parentage. Y’know, Mike Lee being a libertarian-leaning Mormon an all.
The failure of the Left and the cowardice of the Centrists.
Green New Deal blocked. Democratic Senators abstain, (four voted against it).
….At 0-57, the nonbinding measure fell short of the necessary 60-vote threshold needed. No senators voted in support of it. Four members of the Democratic caucus voted against it. And most Democrats simply voted “present.”
How many votes did AOC get in her constituent like 15k. She’s about 70 million votes short of getting legislation across the house floor. Perhaps she should learn her craft first before assigning blame to others.
Sam 25.1
28 March 2019 at 6:53 am
How many votes did AOC get in her constituent like 15k……
In fact it is remarkable that AOC has a seat in Congress at all.
Usually money from corporate donors to fund your campaign is needed to win a seat, in the US congress.
Corporate backers that “most” Democratic Senators can’t afford to offend.
The Democratic Caucus know what needs to be done. This is shown by the fact, that “most” didn’t vote against the Green New Deal. That they didn’t actively vote for it, shows that they are afraid of offending their corporate sponsors.
What a cop out. How about using her position to lobby congress people instead of buying them off before she goes off half cocked proclaiming that America should give up air travel. Finger waving and facial features do not make up for a lack of support.
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute. https://youtu.be/u9Dg-g7t2l4
There should be a story about there not being a complaint process for the common person to make. Police Station have no complaints procedure that actually works.??????????????
snonky housing short has worked a treat one can not even rent a furniture storage in Rotorua I new that was going to happen that + no housing to rent. What a joke Ka kite ano link below
Jenny Eco Maori says it about time the government made laws to make the wealthy rent out the house they buy make them rent them out to the POOR COMMON PEOPLE. KA KITE ANO
I go to the gas station this morning and Eco Maori get a funny smell then I look around for the sandflys stalkers and sure enough there it is a 6 3 bald man peeping at me from behind the petrol pump. You see whanau were ever I go the sandflys are stalking here is a photo of one of there stalkers cars stalking me now. Ka kite ano.P.S the setting on. My phone are playing up when I get the bad smell it means they intend to ATTACK ECO MAORI
Don’t believe all the negative stories the oil barron have commissioned against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s the WEALTHY are shaking in their boots because of her MANA WAHINE Kia kaha Ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub It’s sad to see that humpback whale tangled with old fish gear mabe Dock could have a hot line so when the public see a issue like that with our wild life they can report it.
That beluga whale is a beautiful looking creature I miss the story on them. I know someone who has payed 10000 deposit on getting a new roof as far as I know he is still waiting 3 months later for his new roof I offered to help him but know some people have no scrupulous. I seen that Ruaumoko is waking up in Mexico.
Tawhirirmate is very powerful Mike Ka kite ano.
Kia ora Te ao Maori News its good to see that there was a good atmosphere in Christchurch today.
I that was a awesome sung NZ ational anthem I think you have a few songs on YouTube that I listened to. Poor Hine got it when she sang the Maori ational anthem in England at a All Blacks test Mana Wahine. I say if tangata whenua te reo is receiving GREAT Interest than Kapa Haka is receiving the same KA PAI.
Aroha is Nice but I want justice and Equal rights Equality. P.S you media people know how much attention the Authorities are paying to ECO MAORI subjects What I am getting at is everything I say is True you know the old saying the best trick the devil has pulled is no one believes it exists even when its ight in front of our EYES
These sandflys are using all the dirtiest tricks in their little books to try and stop Eco Maori but know I have something they know Eco Maori is UNTOUCHABLE Ka kite ano
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 ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. 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 ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
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 ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
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 ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
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 ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
The Government Communications Security Bureau denies hosting a foreign spying capability flagged by the watchdog, differentiating it from the system recently criticised. ...
RNZ News A group of academic staff at New Zealand’s largest university have expressed concern at the administration’s move to block a protest encampment that was planned to take place on campus calling for support for the rights of Palestinians. This week, the University of Auckland warned that while it ...
Genterwocky After a hard days marching, Sir Doocey calls in at the Village Tavern For a pint of ale and a pork pie. The grim villagers stare at him. “Do not be travelling on the forest road,” warns a crusty old beak. “And why is that, antique peasant?” Grins Sir ...
Political conferences after a party returns to power are usually a chance for some healthy, even unhealthy backslapping. Yet National Party president Sylvia Wood’s address to its mainland representatives on Saturday hardly contained the unalloyed delight that one might have expected following National’s escape from the wilderness of opposition. Yes, ...
Comment: Almost half the world is voting in national elections this year and artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. There are genuine fears AI-generated or AI-edited deepfakes will potentially manipulate election outcomes not just in the US and UK, but critically in countries such as India. For that ...
Ahead of the reality franchise’s return to New Zealand, allow us to introduce the eight brides and grooms. Chuck on a veil and tie back your man bun, because it’s time to say “I do” to a new season of Married at First Sight NZ. The reality TV “social experiment” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Vanuatu’s former prime minister and opposition MP Ishmael Kalsakau has stepped down — just two days after he confirmed he was the rightful opposition leader. Kalsakau, MP for Port Vila, confirmed to ABC’s Pacific Beat, and the Vanuatu Daily Post on Thursday that he ...
What’s to blame for the coalition’s choppy start? Six months in, and the mojo meter is in the doldrums. A new poll would put National out of power and sees its leader, Chris Luxon, sliding in popularity. How much is it about policy, how much coalition management and a perception ...
The striking report goes far beyond the proposed repeal of the Oranga Tamariki Act’s Treaty of Waitangi provision, and its impact should be felt far beyond the unique circumstances of the claim it addresses. Earlier this week, the Waitangi Tribunal released an interim report on the government’s proposed repeal of ...
The world has been experiencing a productivity slowdown, from which New Zealand has not been exempt. COVID-19 temporarily boosted labour productivity, but more recently, productivity has retreated. The overall trend since 2007 has been one of slow productivity ...
What’s more wasteful than spending $315k on syrup and machine maintenance? Trying to drum up a controversy about it.Cast your mind back to the pre-pandemic idylls of 2019. A “rat” was a disgusting rodent and not a self-administered plague test; the sixth Labour government was in power; and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Monash University Ken stocker/Shutterstock In the wake of numerous killings of women allegedly by men’s violence in 2024, thousands of Australians have joined rallies across the country to demand action ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University Oleg Ivanov IL/Shutterstock Waiting times for public hospital elective surgery have been in the news ahead of this year’s federal budget. That’s the type of non-emergency surgery ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne Amna Artist/Shutterstock One of the earliest descriptions of someone with cancer comes from the fourth century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the city of Heracleia on the Black Sea, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rose, Professor of Sustainable Future Transport, University of Sydney LanaElcova/Shutterstock Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport. Is this view correct? Yes – but only once uptake accelerates. Despite the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Natassia Woodley, Researcher and Phd Candidate, Edith Cowan University There is widespread agreement Australia needs to do better when it comes to gender-based violence. Anger and frustration at the numbers of women being killed saw national rallies over the weekend and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Graham, Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney Mark and Anna Photography/Shutterstock As home ownership moves further out of reach for many Australians, “rentvesting” is being touted as a lifesaver. Rentvesting is the practice of renting one property to live ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sukhmani Khorana, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW Sydney Netflix The new season of Heartbreak High is garnering mixed reviews. Critics are writing about the racy story lines, comparing it to other coming-of-age series about teenage relationships and ...
Bob Carr intends to launch legal action against Winston Peters and Julie Anne Genter is facing a second allegation of bullying. Both sucked the air out of an announcement on education, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in ...
High time social media toxicity resulted in an antidote: “New Zealand’s biggest news site has closed a huge swathe of their notorious comments section. Stuff editor in chief Patrick Crewdson spoke to The Spinoff about why they made the choice.” https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/27-03-2019/free-speech-under-attack-why-stuff-are-reining-in-their-comment-section/
There’s “a whole lot of new rules designed to get rid of the assholes. A wide range of article topics – like 1080, vaccinations and the disputed region of Kashmir – just won’t have the comments open anymore. Along with that, they plan to be a lot tougher on where the line that cannot be crossed is. And – in what might seem like an unrealistically utopian development – they even plan to have an ‘editor’s pick’ function to highlight the best, most enlightening comments.”
Carrot as well as stick. A traditional formula, usually works fairly well. “We asked Stuff’s editor in chief Patrick Crewdson why he was shutting down free speech. Why are you shutting down free speech? Because I’ve been ordered to by the World Government.”
“Toldya so!” will probably be the most frequent response from WhaleOil commenters.
“We’ve always had rules for comments, and before today we were rejecting around a third of the 7000 comments we receive daily. So this isn’t about the era of free speech coming to an end. It’s about our community standards, and drawing the boundary in a different place.”
Cool, let’s have more fluid boundaries. Fixed boundaries are boring. “One of the other stipulations is that comments will be rejected if they “just generally aren’t very nice.” Hypothetically, say you had an article about The Spinoff on your site. What would be an example of a not very nice comment that would be rejected?”
“I feel you’re trying to trick me into being mean to you.” Trickster is good, very valuable social archetype, pan-cultural too, let’s have more of that…
Yeah well it’s about bloody time. Corporations have a social responsibility too. Just what a shame it takes a tragedy to give them the proverbial boot they need.
Stuff have been extremely complicit- and encouraging- of beneficiary bashing which of course reached it’s zenith under the last regieme. By republishing the Natz press releases verbatim with no proper journalism to check the validity, then by opening the comments for the inevitably vile to be spewed. If they let what they did be published I hate to think what they rejected… A lot of what went though met the criteria for breaches of the Human Rights Act. So nice to see they won’t be opening comments for articles related to beneficiaries anymore, but proof in pudding and all that.
As I said in an OM post a few days ago, this is hate speech and words can kill.
Even our resident tabloid had the decency to quit with the comments years ago. If these coordinated (and probably paid) haters can’t handle the fact they’ve lost a large platform, tough shit.
It is possible to reset fixed boundaries every now and then. That does not make them ‘fluid’. It is how organisations and organisms adapt to environmental change.
There’s “a whole lot of new rules designed to get rid of the assholes.
A wide range of article topics – like 1080, vaccinations and the disputed region of Kashmir –
just won’t have the comments open anymore
And there it is…articles can be authored…and go unchallenged and unchecked…
A preordained list of subjects…where will the subject matter boundaries be…will a list be made public…
This is what folks asked for…
If I were a media owner, I’d be looking at it from a cost perspective. Do I want to pay employees to spend all day moderating comments?
Being Green, I also see it from an ecosystem perspective. Toxic commentators are like the worst weeds: those that grow fast & often. One must be a busy gardener to extract them.
They are rather careful not to mention the forced organ donations. Might have decided diplomacy best.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-shooting/111544569/muslim-group-wants-2-million-donation-to-be-returned-to-china
And it would b good if it could be spent on Muslim support and positive projects there. It would be needed help, not wasted.
Greywarshark – yes it would, but the Chinese government simply would not allow that. The Uighurs are seen as a threat to the communist party, and effectively isolated from the wider Chinese Empire.
I think they are more concerned with the forced imprisonment and reeducation of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, which our government is so silent on.
Forced organ donations are across the board in China, not a specifically Muslim thing.
They are predominantly taken from Uighurs + practitioners of Falong Gong.
No doubt.
Falun Gong pose a very real threat to the government of China, as they are openly anti China in their publications. The communist government can not and will not tolerate any organised group, regardless of their views. Says just how insecure they are.
I think the Chinese Empire will go the way of the USSR, and break apart. Nei Mongolia. Sichuan. Xinjiang. Xizhang. Take those away and China will be a rump of its current size. Will happen without a doubt.
And it can’t happen soon enough.
Tibetans, Mongolians and Uyghurs all deserve their own independent states (though no doubt the Mongolians of Inner Mongolia would join Mongolia).
Maybe even the Cantonese speaking Han would form a new country.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1110170205748187136
Censorship usa style …. supporting the peacful BDS movement …. Or mention the HUGE influence the AIPAC israel lobby has on usa policy …. then your either breaking the law ……or your supporting anti semitisim , under the new ( and perverted) definition of it
I was reading the wiki page of Maajid Nawaz the other day after both David Farrar and Bryce Edwards had linked to an article of his post Christchurch (and if you want an idea of Edwards’ political leanings these days then there it is).
The wiki page had a featured quote:
Maajid Nawaz The Big Questions (BBC show)
I wondered if his supposition would hold for Judaism?
Probably not.
Or perhaps Zionism.
And while we’re on the subject of lateral thinking, why not apply it to the Waiho Bridge? Instead of spending all that money replacing it every time climate change washes it away, just put a big hinge on the side of the damn thing!
Then either incorporate auto-opening with red lights to stop traffic every time the river gets high enough, or a trigger-release that gets activated when the river almost reaches the road. After the flood, get a truck and chain to pull it closed again.
If the bridge has been washed away many times before, it won’t be due to climate change, it will be as a result of south Westland getting horrendous floods which it has done just about forever.
They anticipate this by building a bailey bridge (basically a short term military bridge used when existing bridges have been blown up).
They could actually build a decent bridge, which could be future proofed against climate change. Probably would cost $30 million or so, but in the long run would seem better than a rickety old bailey bridge.
Was amused to hear the Westland mayor saying it was unusual for a “100 year event” on the Ciast to be so geographically widespread.
He didn’t sound older than about 55.
They need a bridge which spans the entire river, and at least 50 metres of the bank, in one leap. No piles in the shifting and unstable bed to get undermined.
… it won’t be due to climate change, it will be as a result of south Westland getting horrendous floods which it has done just about forever.
Yes, but it probably started out to be a one in 20 year flood, then it dropped to a one in 10 year flood and so on… now its happening frequently enough due to CC that it has weakened the bridge’s structure and the stability of the river bed.
Wayne Mapp = climate change denier.
Everyone’s an engineer.
They tried a cool neo-Bascule luft design in Whangarei. They forgot heat expansion so it stuck.
It is working OK now though as they have shaved a little off it. That bridge works of course because the hinged bit is only wide enough to let a boat through. The Waiho Bridge is obviously too long for this to work. There is also hugely more water going under it.
Punt.
Boosting local economy via employment? Good thinking. Have another govt workshop this morning, yesterday’s was excellent.
Flying fox.
There is a HUGE movement of gravel washing down the Waiho and raising the riverbed. Only a handful of years ago that Waiho bridge was raised about 3m or so due to the riverbed lifting to the underside of the bridge. In that handful of years the riverbed has lifted again.
This is a common occurence with all bridges in NZ. They constrain the river being bridged, which results in the gravel building up and up and up as it cannot spill out the side. It happens everywhere, but is more noticeable on the coast due to the extent of rainfall and one of the world’s highest mountain erosion rates. These rivers need digging out frequently.
The Waiho in particular has this HUGE gravel bulge coming down the river (due to glacier retreat). It has many years to go yet. Franz is in trouble. Everyone knows it. That is why that bridge has been a bailey-type bridge – easier to repair/replace every few decades.
Building a more permanent bridge would require more work to each end than actually building the bridge, such is the geography of the site.
The other point – much of NZ’s roading infrastrcture was built around 50-70 years ago. It is at the end-of-life point, in two main ways. One, all the roads were cut into hillsides and they are now eroding from above to an unpreventable level (e.g. Manawatu Gorge). Two, the constrained rivers are full to bursting, and are bursting.
It’s a biggie thing
Thank you, I was busy typing out a similar response but far less informed. Temporary bridges aren’t all bad, they have speed and weight limits and are a bit inconvenient, but from an engineering perspective make a great deal of sense in this sort of highly unstable environment.
And then of course there’s the Alpine Fault, (running through the township of Franz Joseph), that is due to go any day now ….
The Alpine Fault is one of the world’s major plate boundaries and New Zealand’s most hazardous earthquake-generating fault. It runs for 650 kilometres along the spine of New Zealand’s South Island and we know that it ruptures on average every 300 years, producing an earthquake of about magnitude 8.
The last time the Alpine Fault went was in 1717, when it shunted land horizontally by eight metres and uplifted the mountains a couple of metres.
Would need to be very well hinged! (As opposed to unhinged …)
http://theconversation.com/new-zealands-alpine-fault-reveals-extreme-underground-heat-and-fluid-pressure-77868
vto; yes
NZ roads were never designed to carry 60 tonne trucks either.
*As they built the roads and the under base to carry a laden weight of only 20 tonnes or less,- then, as vehicles back then trucks were an average of 9 tonnes and rail carried 90% of our freight.
*But now that whole picture has reversed.
* Now 60+ tonne trucks are now 8 times heavier and carry 90% of our freight.
* Rail only carries 6% of our freight.
So vto; – common sense says “something had to give”.
Our problems are that the road transport industry is far to powerful and has far to much control and heavy influence over our politicians today and rail needs to now take at least half the freight.
Unless the government does change this, – this problem we will never fix the problem.
Uhh, yeah, railways are really relevant to a thread about a bridge failure hundreds of kilometres from the nearest railway, and is hundreds of kilometres from anywhere 60+ tonne trucks are allowed by the HPMV regulations.
You wanna start lobbying for a brand new railway line down the West Coast?
http://nzta.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=e00b3ac6ab524cb19a369fc5c2b4e6fa
Two good women standing out … and standing up to …. the garbage enviromen and reporting …surrounding usa politic s.
And the comments directed towards Ilhan Omar on her twitter feed …. whaleoil / kiwi blog sickness does not even begin to describe it.
All the little Masa s commenting against her are sick …. in the worlds master nation
I’m surprised Mark Rubio has not threatened to Lynch her … as he sometimes tweets such stuff …. as a warning to those not doing what the Masa says
Isn’t she a racist anti Semite publicly and privately ? Very nice smile though
Not according to Jewish people who are not affiliated to Aipac or extreme zionisim Bewildered … these honest people think the false anti semite smear …. like you just dishonestly used ….. are the real threat to Israel …. and the rise of real anti Semitic feelings worldwide .
Your Blatant nasty dishonesty is ugly …. it’s so obvious ….and reflects very poorly upon honest Jewish people …. who would never spread your lies …. Bewildered.
Your a disgrace …. tainting others with your filth
But back to the good people …. like this Jewish man …. a brother to those seeking justice and truth
Regarding the unlawful theft of the Golan heights …,. this honest sister shows up the gangster ethos … in the Trump and Netanyahu crime partnership
In the sense that you’re a racist alcoholic diaper wearing masochist beewee or in a different sense? Very quizzical befuddled gape though.
She manages to keep her sense of humor …. when speaking to the worst of people …. Are you as good looking as Eliots Abrams Bewildered ?
As in …….. Do your looks match your personality ….. does your smile scare children ? 🙂
She’s a diamond.
From a few week ago.
West Coast Regional Council wants proof of human-caused climate change before supporting Zero Carbon Bill
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/110223334/west-coast-regional-council-wants-proof-of-humancaused-climate-change-before-supporting-zero-carbon-bill
Today
State of emergency as massive deluge hits West Coast, with more to come
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/111533664/heavy-rain-moving-up-nz-from-the-south-in-significant-weather-event-live-coverage
Previously Stuart Nash was against tighter gun controls. Today he has revised his opinion. It’s a pity that people in national or local government are governing by opinion which is limited by their own ignorance and lack of desire to obtain and understand the facts of the situation.
Thanks for the reminder dv.
I hope the locals have more sense next local body elections to vote out the neanderthals running their council.
Teachable moment. Took my son and his friend to school today both aged 11. Raining here. They bought up climate change and we discussed increased energy and wilder extremes of weather. Had just helped homework with the boy around the difference between heat and temperature. They said that we (olders) weren’t doing enough and leaving them to deal with it. I said yep that is happening and we must continue to do all we can do including creating sustainability and resilience and community. I learnt so much from those young boys.
Given recent times, the chances of mistaken identities with our NZ PM must be next to nil, as Jacinda goes to embark on a whirlwind international diplomacy trip to meet the China heads of state.
Being able to do such whirlwind foreign engagements though, even amidst the ongoing backdrop of the past week or so, then beyond trade numbers and volumes, it would surely be very valuable to NZ if culturally more of an eye starts to be kept out for any headline get togethers as involves Ivanka Trump to gender equality promotions with leadership/corporate decision making structures.
Ivanka is very well known around the world in different places, including China, and there are far worse ideas of reference for a place in often chaotic world traffic than a layperson stickability like Ivanka, Jacinda, Gender Equality, New Zealand, to be understood with.
As I predicted a couple of months ago, Pentagon gets Trump’s wall started by shifting $1b of internal funds, unilaterally. Armed Forces Committee may complain, but DoD is its own kingdom with plenty of discretion.
Trump will now go to the electorate with tax reform, corruption scandals behind him, and wall started.
Dems are such a long way from a single candidate that they may simply run out of time to take Trump out.
It’s a point well made and worth repeating; our political landscape seems as much shaped by sullen incompetence on the left as it is by sly malfeasance on the right.
That seems a quotable quote RedLogix. And if that is not acceptable grammar to anyone, I note that stuff have included banning comments that protest against grammatical errors in its latest tranche of changes. It is good though if the piece is readable. I complain at large bricks without paras. Good thinking through things can be bypassed if its too dense, or having difficulty to get through someone’s brain that is too dense!
Gentlemen, start your lawsuits.
It’s on!
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1110572158126833664
ROFL, so the whole Russian collusion conspiracy theory has just fallen over, and handed trump the sympathy card.
Could people play it any worse – oh wait this is the centre left were talking about so, yeah this could get way worse…
trump is going to walk in, becasue the centre left lost its mind and spent two years down the rabbit hole chasing a conspiracy theory.
An apology for the muppets who pushed the Russian Collusion conspiracy theory would be nice. Or at least an apology for the name calling of ‘putin puppets’ would be a good place to start.
AT least one thing to like about the centre left, when it comes to going crazy, at least you do it on a grand scale.
And right on cue…
Trump ‘gifts Golan’…having already gifted Jerusalem…
Yeah…but…Russian interference…
“Jews outraged after mosque leader blames Mossad for Christchurch …
https://www.newshub.co.nz/…/jews-outraged-after-mosque-leader-blames-mossad-for-…”
Link hacked and redirected, so search for yourself (I believe Yippy.com is an option to avoid the Google engine)
So this main actor goes into the Mosque. And passage-way-extra-guy1 is on the floor with bare feet. The main actor goes out, comes back in, and now the passage-way-extra-guy1 is still in the same place but now wearing socks, blue socks! I shit you not, it has been filmed in two takes! This is the level of BS in the video, super-fake and a very strange situation we find ourselves in. No surprise that Islamic leaders in NZ calling it how it looks.
[No more disrespectful comments, please. The next false flag fantasy sees you removed from the site. TRP]
Ahmed Bhamji, chairman of the Mt Roskill Masjid E Umar, gave a speech questioning where the gunman got his funding from. He said he suspected it came from “Mossad” and “Zionist business”.
Why are you repeating this shit here?
When links get broken (like the link to the quote I give above), then I shout it louder. I would truly like to understand where you folk are coming from. Why should we censor all views other than the lone-wolf narrative? Do folk here believe that it is in the interests of national security? Is it fear? I read quotes from our leaders like Marama D calling for the truth. To quote James S, “when the facts change, we change our mind”. How do we avoid the polarisation of opinion? By making sure there is only one opinion? I respect that our leaders’ hands’ are politically tied, but that means that it’s up to us, farmers and unionist, to say the uncomfortable truths. If not us, now? Then who, and when? Perhaps I’m too direct. If so, then please, demonstrate to me the more graceful way. But to simply put on a head scarf and bury the truth, this is a sad defeat for us all.
In the setting of the bigger picture, as financial melt-down warms, with the US ready for civil war, Israel given the green light for expansion… sorry for the fear porn, but surely we would want to keep our local communities informed, if these impulses where to act upon our shores. The truth is safe if you remain empathetic with it. I thought the audience here was political. If I can’t share the truth here, then where? Well I have said my piece, and will leave you folk in peace now. Much to do on farm.
Life, Light and Love
Yeah you are far from understanding anything here when you ask:
Here you will find the opposite – that views are broadly tolerated other than the ‘hate speech’ of your so-called lone-wolf narrative and other false-flag shit. This is where a line gets drawn – some don’t like it – but I entirely agree with such censorship.
Fear Porn, as you call it, seems to be at the heart of your rants.
Me disrespectful? How about NZ Police Commissioner Bush, is he being respectful by turning aspects of this investigation over to the FBI? (sorry my computer is too hacked to cut-n-paste at this minute, I’ll paraphrase his statement): “We are getting help from the FBI to paint a better picture of the (singular) attacker.” Is he turning it over to the FBI? Are NZ police not up to the job? Is he narrowing the focus down to one man? Sorry, I’m agreeing with mosque leader Ahmed Bhamji, chairman of the Mt Roskill Masjid E Umar. Smells like rat to me too.
Go away you nasty piece of work.
+ 1
You said that far too nicely marty.
hard words spoken softly
always superior
But there’s some facts in Corodales comments. They aren’t all about his dumb opinions.
(Why did you put that Corodale? About socks and all that? Get some respect for the gravity of this matter. This is not a time for interesting discussion like about something minor that you saw on tv or a film!)
Facts as reported correctly one expects:
* The Mt Roskill leader of the local church was quoted as mentioning Mossad etc. mosque leader Ahmed Bhamji, chairman of the Mt Roskill Masjid E Umar.
** Jews have been quoted as being outraged about Mossad, their spy organisation, being referred to in a suspicious way by the Mt Roskill mosque chairman.
*** Commissioner Bush has mentioned that the FBI are here and the Australian Federal police and that they are in touch withother jurisdictions around the world. Video update 10 Can’t see any date (on-line seems chary about dates). e&oe
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=438111816929508
And the other quote about Mt Roskill was on this link earlier supplied from which I copied. And put again.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/03/jews-outraged-after-mosque-leader-blames-mossad-for-christchurch-attack.html
[Rambling rant removed. Banned till 1st May. Repeat this behaviour when you return and the ban will be significantly longer. TRP]
Yes greywarshark
There is always two sides to every story, and some don’t want to accept this and just want to rubbish others and are not helping anything doing that.
Perhaps solka and marty need to read this. latest 19th March 2019 study;
” IPCC is underselling climate change”
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-ipcc-underselling-climate.html
Study shows IPCC is underselling climate change
March 19, 2019, University of Adelaide
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
A new study has revealed that the language used by the global climate change watchdog, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is overly conservative – and therefore the threats are much greater than the Panel’s reports suggest.
Published in the journal BioScience, the team of scientists from the University of Adelaide, Flinders University, the University of Bristol (UK), and the Spanish National Research Council has analysed the language used in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (from 2014).
“We found that the main message from the reports—that our society is in climate emergency—is lost by overstatement of uncertainty and gets confused among the gigabytes of information,” says lead author Dr. Salvador Herrando-Pérez, from the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute and Australian Centre for Ancient DNA.
“The IPCC supports the overwhelming scientific consensus about human impact on climate change, so we would expect the reports’ vocabulary to be dominated by greater certainty on the state of climate science—but this is not the case.”
Clearing the mind of some of the nitty gritty to let the major matters emerge. That’s what is so important I think cleangreen. (Don’t read any further if you are inclined to depression – someone pointing out things clearly you sort of know is too much to take on sometimes. Did you have to say that? is the angry thought.)
Those points you put up are major, and so true about not getting the clear message we need to take on board. But often it’s more than I can cope with, and i am ahead of others. The young ones are still trying to make their lives and constantly be flexible, adapting to the new technology, demands, etc. If older people only think of pleasure, going on holidays, meeting at cafes for meals and chat, keeping up with the children and grand-children, limited input to keep up with society, who is actually confronting the problems? Big nasty ones too. That is the situation.
And that is why I won’t get tv again, Sky can keep ringing and I am polite most of the time to the worker at the end of the line. But I haven’t time. I am in a minority amongst people I meet in the everyday world who pay attention to the future, who regards with cynicism the pretty speeches of politicians and the ones about how love will keep us together. If it was so easy it would have been done decades ago. Love is essential, and it will enable us to decide what is the best thing to do for our families, our neighbourhood and what we are going to help with, and how to retire from the world when it becomes essential to do so. We might decide it is better to train as medical personnel and go into the war-torn areas there and help the brave and moral people attempting to act nobly and practically for instance. We are only costing the country money to keep us alive and active and doing our own thing in the midst of growing disaster. The eye of the storm we are living in at present.
Knowing the coldness and self-absorption of the better-off, which is the same all the way up to the leaders and manipualtors to whom money is no barrier, I can’t have hope that they will do anything to keep things going that is not expedient for them. Trying to improve anything back to the way it was is tremendously difficult because the people in power want to lower conditions down to necessities for the people, and the necessities are in their sights also. Our right to be able to afford our own homes, or even have decent rental ones is an example.
I hope that we can find true-hearted people to work with and do what we can to avoid the worst situations. But any slip-slide away to cults and
glamorous ideas and leave you in the lurch when you try to do anything, when you try to get a practical working group going that will fix on a system that is good in theory, and prove it in practice and change to meet changing needs and times, and not cling to historical methods.
The feedback practice on Stuff is being changed to meet criteria of the well-run ethical business they want to be Our political systems for instance shouldn’t be set in stone. Each plan is a compromise and should have clear objectives to be proud of, and then when not achieving them some change is acceptable, say each year.
corodale. Please don’t ” quote” without linking to the source. It undermines credibility.
“Bush said FBI agents have traveled to New Zealand to help with the investigation.” https://www.foxnews.com/world/new-zealand-holds-first-funerals-for-mosque-shooting-victims
(sorry my computer was hanging, and I couldn’t cut-n-paste, I’ll lost my previous link)
corodale. Thanks for the link…I’m a little OCD about such things.
And bugger me, there it is….Bush saying how the FBI are over here helping out with the investigation. I thought I was keeping up but that wee tidbit had escaped me.
All I can say is, thank heavens for The FBI…..they have a sterling reputation for sorting shit out. /sarc 😉
You’re mad corodale.
Anne Nice please be nice not rude here,
It hurts and offends people; – as we are supposed to be living in a freedom of civil expression here.
Corridale said sorry; – so what do you want?
cleangreen look at the times. I posted mine in answer to his earlier mad rants. Since when there has been a plethora of replies to later comments.
I see he has now been banned until 1st May.
Check the facts before bursting into print eh?
We certainly have to be careful. There is a very snappy approach showing up on here at present. The shock has made us all tense and our reactions can be triggered. I was annoyed with someone starting a discussion referring to other tragedies and wondering if this was worse, rating it on a scale I felt which bothered me. That was picking up on our PM saying that the tragedy was unprecedented in NZ.
I agree grey. We’re going through the “angry” phase at present and I currently have a low tolerance level for bullshit and crank statements. This is in part because of personal historical experiences and the fact the people making them are flying in the face of present reality.
I will endeavour to curb my reactions to them. 🙂
But a fence is not a wall, guys, what part of following instructions do you just not get?? I foresee tv pictures of hordes of locals jumping up & down in unison chanting “We Wanna Wall! We Wanna Wall!”
“The Pentagon has authorised army engineers to begin construction of additional fencing on the US-Mexico border, diverting an initial $1bn after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency to bypass Congress on the matter. The army would begin planning and building 57 miles of 18-foot-high fencing in Yuma, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas, according to a statement by acting defence secretary Patrick Shanahan.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-border-wall-mexico-funding-pentagon-security-congress-vote-a8839811.html
Will engineers factor in the curvature of the earth, or is it presumed to be flat?
“Presumed”? By engineers?
corodale can you understand that huge amount of unknown information that affects anybody’s ability to make a reasoned decision? And how much time is wasted that could be spent on learning the facts, but is wasted in engaging with dunderheads like you and similar smart-arses.
This is an expression of the thinking about information and its complexity.There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns
I suggest you don’t pretend ignorance about known things, otherwise you will never catch up with the quest for knowledge that others are on.
not an either or question
it is both flat and curved
can you get your head around such?
I think Dennis at 11, was in reply to 9 about the wall from joe90. He has put up a copy of the letter refusing Defence from taking $1 billion from its booty to help Trumpy and his wall. It could actually be a major tourist attraction for Mexico, and a place where artists hang out decorating it and fighting over where Banksy- like people can keep their art for posterity. The Berlin Wall was covered in graffiti.
Simultaneous writing actually. I was expecting to be first with the news but got beaten by a few minutes, so didn’t know the other report was in the pipeline – fortunately my quote provided more detail, so supplementing the other.
I find the fence/wall thing weird, inasmuch as the fence has been there awhile apparently – in some locations, even if not continuous. But we never got an explanation from Trump re Mexico funding so he’s just ad hoc.
Good one. Dont tolerate hate speech. We are changing our country slowly but surely.
“A man lost his job after making comments about Muslims following the Christchurch terror attack.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12216465
We are changing our country slowly but surely.
Into one where you can lose your job for saying something your boss doesn’t like. Hooray!
PM
I’m not sure why you’d be applauding that. Right leaning employer sacks employee making left wing comment might attract some consternation, and rightly so. Is that what you’re suggesting?
“Hooray!” probably needed a /sarc tag after it. This is actually a horrifying development, and I hope the current government is moving to give people working for temp agencies greater protection against this kind of thing. If the guy had been directly employed by Placemakers it would have been much harder to dismiss him (which is one of the reasons employers use temp agencies – the workers have fewer rights).
Yep thought it was sarcasm. More than 20,000 workers have been sacked in the last year who were on 90 day trials. Making political comments I suspect is one “justification” used by employers.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1903/S00039/tens-of-thousands-of-kiwi-workers-sacked.htm
I spose he could just not say hate speech – too hard?
He could just not say things that marty mars retrospectively and without hearing them declares to be hate speech? Yes, that is too hard. Effectively, your argument is “He could just not say things.”
Ball gags for all employees…the idea has merit
Oh dear.
something to consider – now days indigenous peoples often focus on decolonising the mind. Basically as colonization occured it took from indigenous peoples and replaced with the unshakable belief that all euro aspects are the peak and naturally are the best way. Politics, social structure, law and ways of thinking about law, everything. Decolonising the mind is realizing the truth that there is no white supremacy in ANYTHING including how to think, react, what’s important and what isn’t.
So your logic and approach is not mine. Get used to it.
Given you have openly endorsed punishing people who say things you don’t like, I should point out that this is a system us toxic white people (and others) have tried out at various times in the past century or so, and demonstrated to be a catastrophically bad idea.
On the other hand you may have better luck with it.
Cool good to know.
and your first sentence is not correct. I applaud people being protected against white supremacist hate speech and religious hate speech. I think it hurts people and is sick anytime but especially now. Pity you don’t.
I stand on my track record here going back over a decade as being implacably opposed to religious zealots and fundamentalists of any kind. At the same time I’ve made it clear I am not an atheist, I have a long standing relationship with religion and I’ve spoken in respectful terms whenever the topic arose.
Indeed I’ve taken more than some flack for this over the years from people who hold all religions in contempt; ‘sky fairies’ and the like.
Long before it became the issue it has been this past 10 days.
Well the romans outlawed greek practitioners of rhetoric,then again they also outlawed athletics as the Greeks performed this naked in public,but allowed violent spectator sports (a bit like television programming)
Alexander Pope summed up the problems on discourse in his Epistle to man.
But errs not Nature from this gracious end,
From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
“No, (’tis replied) the first Almighty Cause
Acts not by partial, but by gen’ral laws;
Th’ exceptions few; some change since all began:
And what created perfect?”—Why then man?
If the great end be human happiness,
Then Nature deviates; and can man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of show’rs and sunshine, as of man’s desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As men for ever temp’rate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav’n’s design,
Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?
Who knows but he, whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms,
Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar’s mind,
Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
From pride, from pride, our very reas’ning springs;
Account for moral, as for nat’ral things:
Why charge we Heav’n in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right is to submit.
Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discompos’d the mind.
But ALL subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.
The gen’ral order, since the whole began,
Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.
Martians are boring.
There is only one logic Marty to argue otherwise is illogical Also there is a reason the world flock to western countries, democracies and ideals and not the other way round Hint , it’s not about colour
…there is a reason the world flock to western countries…
There was a reason western countries flocked to the world over the last 500 years, too. Indigenous people in many countries have some views on that. So, maybe not the best argument to offer to one of them (which I believe marty mars is)?
“Also there is a reason the world flock to western countries”
You mean Maori, Islander, Aboriginal and Amerindian countries.
But carry on in your delusion you are the greatest.
Reason isn’t “White,” it just is. If you mistake rational argument for a Pākehā cultural affectation and “decolonise” it from your mind, your ability to argue for your views will be damaged, not improved.
Reason – you assess information and reach conclusions. You’re not a machine – only some information is assessed – what info and why those ones? You reach conclusions based on past experience, knowledge etc. Its all subjective. If you live in society and every day the variables considered important are reinforced and others not which ones become natural? White isn’t a colour to me but a set of privileges attached to groups. Some have more, some less.
True, there are an infinite number of ways we assess information and one of the core ideas the radical left has embraced is that none of them are privileged above the other; they’re all equally valid.
I presume then you’d have no quibble with me ‘decolonising’ my modern western mind and embracing my Viking heritage:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings
Who do you think would win a waka full of Maori toa, or a longboat of Vikings? 🙂
You reach conclusions based on past experience, knowledge etc. Its all subjective.
Its even worse than that. We reach conclusions based on personal prejudices, emotions we’re feeling, whatever hormone happens to be getting the most traction at the time, things we believe are true but aren’t – there’s a big list.
That’s why reason is so important. What are the rational arguments for the conclusions I’ve reached? If I can’t come up with any, or I do but they’re a collection of logical fallacies and other people tear them to shreds in front of me, it’s time to figure out what’s really led me to those conclusions.
@ red
Yeah good you’re being a smartarse cos it shows you’re worried and uncertain. That’s the point really.
@pm
“and other people tear them to shreds in front of me,”
There are other ways of doing it.
@ marty
Yet when I speak seriously to the notion of a global civilisation, one that unites the best aspects of all cultures, one that expands our moral and emotional horizons to embrace the entire human race … as I have done many times … you go all silent on me.
@ red – I oppose merging. I like uniqueness and variety.
In the global civilisation I have in mind, us white people would compose just 1 billion of the 7 or more billion humans. There is plenty of diversity to go around.
The members of your whanau are all unique and different people, yet together they are united as family. As with the citizens of a nation. We are all unique, diverse and individuals, while at the same time connected and merged at many different levels.
Unity does not imply uniformity; it means connection and the ability to work to a common purpose.
Maybe he should have thought first.
But then a “qualified engineer” reduced to fruitpicking probably has other issues, too.
But although I don’t have much sympathy for him, arbitrarily kicking him was wrong. There should have been a disciplinary meeting, and based on exactly what he said (not his description of what he said) appropriate disciplinary action should have been taken.
Alleged hate speech mardymardy.
Good you’re on board. It seemed like his co workers were a bit frightened and the boss listened to them and fair enough imo. Times change and they just did for this country.
Ok so you won’t complain if a worker gets sacked on day 89 of his 90 day trial for merely praising the PM…
Suppose his co-workers were “a bit frightened” because he spoke te reo Maōri or expressed support for tino rangatiratanga – still good if the boss listens to them and makes sure the troublemaker doesn’t get to “frighten” them again? Now that times have changed and it’s apparently OK to dismiss people for saying something you don’t like, an’ all that?
You’re not good on context imo – nothing is happening in a vacuum is it. Your principles are constructed yet you hold them so tight. They appear fragile if they can’t take this stuff.
My principles are so far from fragile that I can cope with hearing unpopular opinions without wanting to get the holders of the opinions sacked. It would be good if yours were equally robust.
You’re dreaming mate – you spent days here moaning about a call to prayer for a God you dont believe in. Lol wake up and be honest at least with yourself.
Gods you don’t believe in can kill you, as a lot of people have found out over the last few thousand years. They may kill you by proxy, via the people who do believe in them, but you end up just as dead. Don’t assume that gods you don’t believe in are trivial, because it’s not true.
I’m aware of your views on Islam but feel free to spell them out for others who may not know.
Islam’s merely the ugliest of them. I wrote “gods” plural for a reason – the Christian ones have probably clocked up a bigger body count than Allah over the centuries, especially when you take the Americas into account. There have been plenty of others.
Influencers – this phenomenon is beyond me. This is a good article. Gives the vegan haters some good material and by jeeze they need it ha ha ha. Fishgate.
“Not only was Mendoza promoting a restrictive diet that was making her sick, she was extolling dangerous practices, such as 25-day water fasts, to her millions of followers. And she is far from the only influencer promoting extreme eating. Jordan Peterson, a prominent psychologist, has been outspoken about his all-beef diet, claiming it cured his depression and his gum disease. (Unfortunately, it hasn’t cured his pseudo-intellectual prattling.)”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/26/the-furore-over-the-fish-eating-vegan-influencer-is-a-warning-to-us-all
Fortunately Peterson also makes it clear it’s a diet he has found addresses specific issues his family have encountered over the years. Nowhere does he recommend or promote it as a generally good idea. Indeed whenever someone does ask him about, he says it’s a restrictive and onerous diet he doesn’t like much at all.
Incidentally gum disease has been recently implicated in Alzheimers:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2191842-gum-disease-may-be-the-cause-of-alzheimers-heres-how-to-avoid-it/
So maybe the author of this smear by association piece has it entirely backwards.
thanks for that – alzheimers eh – not good – I certainly wouldn’t wish that on him and i can’t imagine a journalist doing this connection thing you’ve bought up – it appears you’ve connected those dots all by yourself 🙂
Yeah, look after your gums. Gum disease seems to *cause* all kinds of other maladies – heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, pancreatic cancer …
https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/gum-disease-and-the-connection-to-heart-disease
and because of this Dental care is cosmetic, not a health care. 🙂
Sabine,
No!!
‘Dental care is not only cosmetic’- it is part of our whole health and well being.
I got a clear message about this two years ago.
In 2016 my teeth got damaged after a boating accident and this was around Xmas and dental care was not carried out until four months later due to ACC hangups, and by then infections had been set in causing blood poisoning that threatened my life and I spend two years after wards getting the teeth fixed with 6 root canals and seven restorations.
Gum abbess infections and resulting blood poisoning from gum infections can destroy anyone’s health, mind and body,.
Don’t let the teeth health be left out of healthcare funding here; – as many cannot afford to pay for dental care.
Irony isn’t your bag is it cleany.
It actually is sort of serious and just becoming known, so cleany felt he would give us the facts Gabby. Taking quite a few sentences to explain it which takes time and a desire to be helpful, just not pass judgment.
That’s good RL. Thanks. I can use that information.
Reposted from last night’s Daily Review..
The rich schools oppose the plan to return education to being a public service for the greater good:
http://www.communityschools.org/
They want:
To be able to charge loads of fees
To be able to make parents buy devices they cannot afford
To pander to internation students
To kick out ‘dumb kids’ that make their schools look bad
**TO RUN SCHOOLS AS A TRADEABLE BUSINESS COMMODITY AND NOT A PUBLIC SERVICE**
To be honest, I trust civil servants to run schools than the red faced reactionary bourgeois hacks that control most boards of trustees, and have their own little networks.
The Hubs are going to shine some light on all the corruption and nepotism that goes on in our education system, and some people dont like that.
millsy
I noticed that the nice Maori woman keen and willing to be a good Board member didn’t get voted in to my local primary school with a catchment of mostly pakeha, and many professionals. Board members came from the public, but the accountant, businessman, the solicitor or solicitor’s wife were the vast majority
( could be both women). So having Boards chosen from the public giving the impression of reflecting the whole community is misleading.
And the middle class are not really open to progressive ideas, they just want their kids to learn get good jobs and know how to be naice. Their standards are derisory, they will want religion and allow any obsessive to prate on; they will want sex education but on the end of a barge pole, or not discussed on a level of personal experience of the youngsters, and the dry facts miss the chance of putting to them that they could take time before experiencing it, be a bit wary of jumping in because others start at 13 or 14. Why not decide for yourself that you will try it out after 18? A suggestion not a sacred promise. There is so much conservatism and also limitation in subjects that the Boards can decide. What they themselves know can form a protective barrier around school subjects and ways, and they are reluctant to allow the other ideas in, or not till everyone else is accepting them.
What has that link got to do with NZ ?
Two separate articles in today’s news on separate topics but they seem to me to point out a common error.
When people try to excuse poor conduct, it does not help to excuse what they said by trying to explain it away by why they said it.
The two events are the Marlborough Federated Farmers’ president, Philip Neal, whose excuse was that he was frustrated at proposed taxation on such as farmers when he slagged beneficiaries as ‘useless’.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/111537528/farmers-share-tax-reform-fears-but-dont-back-beneficiary-bashing
The second is the excuse by the Australian One Nation’s party men who blamed alcohol for their talk about getting the American NRA to fund their party.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/111571472/one-nation-staffers-blame-booze-for-their-nra-boasting
In both cases they spoke unwisely, through frustration or lips loosened by alcohol but what they said still stands. It’s what they said, it’s what they think, it’s what has escaped into the public arena. Excuses as to why they said it don’t retract what they actually said.
They thought it, they said it, it’s the truth outing under stress without the protective cover of equivocation.
This is the story that counters the story of how a woman on a flight to NZ was sexually assulted and nothing was done.
https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/journalist-intervenes-after-creep-harasses-teen-seated-beside-him-on-plane/news-story/8fc72dfd7abbf1c4df10a59e673ef8b0
“I went to get a flight attendant and informed her of what was going on. They checked other witness accounts and the head of the flight service (a woman) asked the man to move.
“He resisted then started swearing at me and asked to talk to the boss and the head flight attendant said ‘I’m the boss, this is really serious and we could land the plane’.
“He moved. The attendants checked in with the young woman and wrote up a report.”
Airline staff later gave Ms Chiu and the other woman cards thanking them for stepping in and helping.
This book published in 2001 defines five lines of stress on the world and us. The summary sounds pretty right. Anyone read it?
Five Holocausts by Derek J Wilson
Paperback, 2001, 472pages, very good condition
Reviews:
Derek Wilson?s 10-year labour of love proposes that the world faces ruin through five intertwining apocalypses of human construction: militarism, human oppression, economic destitution, population explosion and environmental destruction.
The five holocausts cannot be understood or dealt with in isolation. The problems are vast and indisputable; uncounted acres of taxpayer gold are thoroughly wasted on armaments, trillions of dollars spin round the world in unproductive speculation, people enslave each other given half a chance, rich nations use vast shares of the Earth?s resources and the environment is in accelerating decline.
The point of a New Zealand-produced book on the subject ? given that none of the above registers in the average Kiwi?s day to day ? is that acting to stop it all is in everyone?s interests. (Alistair Bone Listener reviewer)
This authoritative book gives a clear and thorough overview of the impending global crisis, connecting the constituent parts of the global predicament. Derek Wilson draws attention to many dynamic and hopeful initiatives that are growing in response to the overall challenge and makes an impassioned case for action by government, institutions and society generally.
This is a book with a powerful challenge, packed with vital, thoroughly interesting information. (From the foreword by George Porter, founder and past President of the Pacific Institute of Resource Management, Aotearoa New Zealand)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=2197594
Derek J. Wilson
Yes, I have. Bought a copy a few years ago and read it. Should go back and revisit it soon, just to see if it stands up.
I ‘enjoyed’ the read, being a local publication and very straightforward about the crises we face, but recall thinking it is not for the faint-hearted.
Thanks for the warning Molly. Perhaps one should be like the Oz politicians, take on some whiskies, and then that weakens the effect of the ideas, for a while.
Don’t mean to put anyone off. Probably those who visit this website regularly will find it a good read. Just mean that recommending it to people who aren’t politically active or interested in current affairs might be problematic.
I’ll have to dig it out after renovations and revisit it again. I know I was sufficiently interested enough to have a look for Derek Wilson to see if he was still alive and perhaps publishing or speaking.
I see Whitcoulls have Jordan Peterson’s book back on their shelves. Must have decided it was a silly decision to remove it.
They counted 1 to 12 reasons to put it back up. It’s the new bible for a drifting
generation whose parents have no idea of what principles to tell their children to live by. We are getting into loose hippy ideas of branching out, dropping out,
and making changes, so what do you do – you find some cult figure to tell you.
They had the Vietnam war looming which they were rejecting; we have the end of our world. That would make anyone grab at something like a calf will suck your thumb for comfort.
You nailed it GWS. A distinct lack of leadership and answers in tumultuous times.
I don’t see Peterson as a nasty type right, more a mediator among them. A bloke they identify with who might talk them back from a ledge. He got famous re: the pronoun debate and upset a lot of left wing people. This enamored him with a lot of disaffected right wing youth.
He’s asked them to be introspective. I like that, far cry from blaming immigrants for everything. He’s taken on their nihilism with instructions for self-responsibility.
And people mock his readers like slow children – for trying not to be nihilistic butt-heads. There’s a lot worse types out there they might have glommed on to.
I also rate his lectures on the bible stories. I’ve not read his recent book.
Is it in the fairytale section now beewee?
Nah, it’s next to Marie Kondo’s latest. Does this spark joy? I know someone’s laughing.
Yep, right next to Mein Campf fairies in the garden
Audrey Young has been absent from writing her column since the christchurch massacre. Maybe she has been on leave? Her chosen topic for her first article is about Winston Peters supposedly falling asleep in Turkey.
The msm bias against the Coalition, Labour and Ardern is so very obvious right now.
I heard a woman ring in while out driving and give a robust account of how disgusted she was with Shorn Plunket’s pre-show blurb on Winston, you could apply her concerns to almost every host they have on that particular station now – with the slight exception that Brendan Telfer did play devil’s advocate on occasion to contest their rabid opinions.
She called it “talk at” rather than talk back and she is 100% correct.
Sadly Telfer is only a fill in for a couple of weeks for the equally horrible Peter Williams – his lack of experience shows as well but that seems no bar for a station who chose him for his familiar name and allow their hosts to push their personal barrows with contentious subjects in a very one-sided way.
A man dead from what seems to be a self inflicted stab wound – after refusing to surrender to Police. Cache of arms found on dead mans property after public tip off.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/resident-says-he-heard-gunshot-in-overnight-incident-suburban-christchurch
There is nowhere near enough information. It seems a suicide in preference to giving himself up. IF this is so, it is a very extreme reaction, and this guy was maybe up to something very nasty and/or is hiding other nasty people and designs.
IF he killed himself rather than give up.
Another scenario is that he was hurt by someone else, but that makes no sense in light of the standoff. If a so called associate tried silence you, you’d have second thoughts about dying to protect them.
Wild speculation. Not facts at all.
All those firearms and he stabs himself???
Thread about how the evil fuckers and their mates in the poisoning business are determined to kill every damn thing.
https://twitter.com/EricLiptonNYT/status/1110522380550590464
https://tttthreads.com/thread/1110522380550590464.html
http://archive.li/B7RdC
But Killary!
How the fuck any person with an ounce of intelligence can say this current administration is as good as what might have been, had there not be an electoral college to stuff up the popular vote, I will never know.The environmental vandalism that has been carried out by t.rump and “friends” is unbelievable. This is just another sick instance of short term profit for a few takes precedence over all else.
Interesting books I have come across on Trade me. The first one is major along with climate change in its harsh effects on us if we can’t mobilise to think how we can manage. No-one else will! And the book by Derek J Wilson above talks about 5 holocausts we are facing. These books relate to all sorts of strife we are noticing.
“I am writing from inside the tech bubble to let you know that we are coming for your jobs.” So begins Andrew Yang’s book,
The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future.
Despite the tagline, this isn’t fundamentally a book about Universal Basic Income (UBI). It’s about the market, and our attitude towards it….It isn’t simply the case that American society is separating into strata, Yang argues, but that the elites are consciously working to put the rest of society out of work.
The sectors where “normal” people tend to work—administration, retail, food service, transportation, and manufacturing—have high levels of repetitiveness and are highly susceptible to automation. Since competition in these sectors is quite fierce, companies are sooner or later forced to automate to keep up with their competition. Once a single competitor automates, the others must follow. In many cases, automation is not only cheaper, but also produces better products or services. The natural result is, as Yang relates through conversations he’s had with people in the tech industry, a race to make “normal” people redundant….
Keeping At It
The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government
by Paul Volcker and Christine Harper
Paul Volcker has devoted his life’s work to public service and the critical importance of open, disciplined and efficient government. As chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979-1987) he literally rescued the American economy from destroying itself, summoning the courage to take radical and controversial steps to slay the inflation dragon.
And whenever the going got really tough–the financial crash of 2008, the need to reform banking, the oil for food UN scandal, the turmoil in Switzerland over theft of Holocaust victims, cheating in Major League Baseball–US presidents and other leaders said to ‘get Volcker in here to help me work this thing through.’…
http://fortune.com/2018/10/30/paul-volcker-book-review/
Lost Enlightenment S. Frederick Starr
In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia’s medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds–remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world.
Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic, they were long assumed to have been Arabs. In fact, they were from Central Asia–drawn from the Persianate and Turkic peoples of a region that today extends from Kazakhstan southward through Afghanistan, and from the easternmost province of Iran through Xinjiang, China. Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects.
They gave algebra its name, calculated the earth’s diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine, and penned some of the world’s greatest poetry. One scholar, working in Afghanistan, even predicted the existence of North and South America–five centuries before Columbus. Rarely in history has a more impressive group of polymaths appeared at one place and time. No wonder that their writings influenced European culture from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas down to the scientific revolution, and had a similarly deep impac ..
new green deal is extinct.
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1110591219804049408
AOC and Waleed Shahid are much too kind to Mr Lee. The other posters are vastly more hilarious.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-lee-green-new-deal_n_5c9a64aae4b072a7f6006c44
edit: normally I just shitcan the autoplay video as soon as it starts, but this one’s worth watching.
There’s a disturbance in the force;
https://twitter.com/HamillHimself/status/1110583992938450944
+ 1 x 3
Thanks you three.
I thought that vid was as a parody at first Andre – bloody hell. And mark hamill is cool. Enjoyed visiting his Twitter feed- that one about t.rumps signature was good.
Thinking about it a bit, I’ve started to wonder if there’s a hidden message in that photo of a bunch of babies all the same age and fairly clearly mixed parentage. Y’know, Mike Lee being a libertarian-leaning Mormon an all.
Just dormant poisson.
There is no housing shortage.
And inevitably, just as predicted, the over supply of houses is leading to perfectly good houses being demolished.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/latest/111576642/saving-surplus-houses-from-demolition-is-helping-solve-housing-crisis
This is only the beginning
The wanton destruction, can only accelerate as more and more un-affordable new houses reach completion and can’t find buyers.
It won’t be much longer before newly built homes will also go under the wrecking ball.
https://thestandard.org.nz/the-ghost-house-epidemic-and-the-invisible-hand/#comment-1188477
We must not allow this
What is really needed is a government prepared to do what they did in Vancouver,
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/vancouver-bc-wields-7450-a-day-fine-in-crackdown-on-empty-homes/
The failure of the Left and the cowardice of the Centrists.
Green New Deal blocked. Democratic Senators abstain, (four voted against it).
How many votes did AOC get in her constituent like 15k. She’s about 70 million votes short of getting legislation across the house floor. Perhaps she should learn her craft first before assigning blame to others.
In fact it is remarkable that AOC has a seat in Congress at all.
Usually money from corporate donors to fund your campaign is needed to win a seat, in the US congress.
Corporate backers that “most” Democratic Senators can’t afford to offend.
The Democratic Caucus know what needs to be done. This is shown by the fact, that “most” didn’t vote against the Green New Deal. That they didn’t actively vote for it, shows that they are afraid of offending their corporate sponsors.
https://splinternews.com/democrats-who-swore-off-corporate-campaign-donations-ar-1830082624
What a cop out. How about using her position to lobby congress people instead of buying them off before she goes off half cocked proclaiming that America should give up air travel. Finger waving and facial features do not make up for a lack of support.
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
https://youtu.be/u9Dg-g7t2l4
There should be a story about there not being a complaint process for the common person to make. Police Station have no complaints procedure that actually works.??????????????
snonky housing short has worked a treat one can not even rent a furniture storage in Rotorua I new that was going to happen that + no housing to rent. What a joke Ka kite ano link below
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11630414
Jenny Eco Maori says it about time the government made laws to make the wealthy rent out the house they buy make them rent them out to the POOR COMMON PEOPLE. KA KITE ANO
I go to the gas station this morning and Eco Maori get a funny smell then I look around for the sandflys stalkers and sure enough there it is a 6 3 bald man peeping at me from behind the petrol pump. You see whanau were ever I go the sandflys are stalking here is a photo of one of there stalkers cars stalking me now. Ka kite ano.P.S the setting on. My phone are playing up when I get the bad smell it means they intend to ATTACK ECO MAORI
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
https://youtu.be/F4sNi2PUiWM
Don’t believe all the negative stories the oil barron have commissioned against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s the WEALTHY are shaking in their boots because of her MANA WAHINE Kia kaha Ka kite ano
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/28/dogs-can-smell-when-seizures-are-about-to-begin-scientists-
find
https://youtu.be/m5M8vvEhCFI
The fear they feel is probably what is behind the latest rule changes designed to keep popular progressive representatives like Ocasio-Cortez, out.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/28/progressive-caucus-rips-dccc-attack-primary-challengers-slap-face-democratic-voters?
https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2019/mar/27/people-are-dying-ocasio-cortez-delivers-fiery-speech-on-climate-inaction-video link for my story above people are dieing because of climate change the rich try and put a spin on the subject and call us leftys greens intelligent people Elite’s look in the – – – mirror BOY Ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub It’s sad to see that humpback whale tangled with old fish gear mabe Dock could have a hot line so when the public see a issue like that with our wild life they can report it.
That beluga whale is a beautiful looking creature I miss the story on them. I know someone who has payed 10000 deposit on getting a new roof as far as I know he is still waiting 3 months later for his new roof I offered to help him but know some people have no scrupulous. I seen that Ruaumoko is waking up in Mexico.
Tawhirirmate is very powerful Mike Ka kite ano.
Kia ora Te ao Maori News its good to see that there was a good atmosphere in Christchurch today.
I that was a awesome sung NZ ational anthem I think you have a few songs on YouTube that I listened to. Poor Hine got it when she sang the Maori ational anthem in England at a All Blacks test Mana Wahine. I say if tangata whenua te reo is receiving GREAT Interest than Kapa Haka is receiving the same KA PAI.
Aroha is Nice but I want justice and Equal rights Equality. P.S you media people know how much attention the Authorities are paying to ECO MAORI subjects What I am getting at is everything I say is True you know the old saying the best trick the devil has pulled is no one believes it exists even when its ight in front of our EYES
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
https://youtu.be/1SN7Pko_jCM
AT I HAVE A ASULT ON MY FREEDOM EVERYDAY OF THE YEAR JUSTICE EQUALITY WHAT A JOKE
Some things go missing from my house quite regularly can you guess who muppets.
https://youtu.be/tgVVG5EknuI
These sandflys are using all the dirtiest tricks in their little books to try and stop Eco Maori but know I have something they know Eco Maori is UNTOUCHABLE Ka kite ano
https://youtu.be/Yd2T3o-Ybow