Open mike 27/07/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, July 27th, 2024 - 41 comments
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41 comments on “Open mike 27/07/2024 ”

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  1. PsyclingLeft.Always 1
    27 July 2024 at 8:11 am

    From the what part of your Animals welfare dont you get ? Fwit file…..

    Southland dairy farmer facing prosecution for animal welfare offences

    Animal welfare inspectors carried out a search warrant at a Southland dairy farm today after again finding cows in unacceptable conditions there this week.

    Again ! ?

    "Over the last couple of months we've attended the farm for assessments, monitoring and inspections on 13 occasions," MPI's director of compliance and response Glen Burrell told 1News.

    "When our inspectors have turned up earlier this week there were things that we saw that were concerning and also a standard that was unacceptable.

    "In these very serious cases a prosecution is likely."

    13 times. Un fucking believable.

    I sincerely hope the POS is prosecuted and more. They and other farmers cannot say they didnt know/werent aware ! Obviously too many cows on pasture that cant handle them !

    And onya Steve Abel ( a Green who we should be hearing much more from )

    <

    blockquote>
    But the Green Party is unimpressed with how long it has taken MPI to act on what it calls a "mud farm".

    "It's taken far too long. It's over since 70 days now (since a complaint was laid) and there are still now cows on that farm … Most New Zealanders do not want to see animals wallowing in mud and their own excrement," Steve Abel, the party's animal welfare spokesperson, said.

    "It's good that they're taking action, unfortunately that action has only occurred because members of the public have courageously filmed and documented what's happening there."

    https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/07/26/southland-dairy-farmer-facing-prosecution-for-animal-welfare-offences/

    And…also onya to the People who did speak up !

  2. Michael Scott 2
    27 July 2024 at 10:06 am

    Maria Muchado is standing against Nicolas Maduro in the Venezuelan elections this weekend. She is a remarkable woman who has policies to get Venezuela back to where it was economically and socially before Chavez took control.

    Polls suggest the opposition has more than twice the support of the ruling party.

    Lets hope she is kept safe and the votes are counted in a fair fashion

    • Michael Scott 2.1
      27 July 2024 at 10:58 am

      Just received news that Maria Muchado was banned from standing against Maduro.

      She has thrown her support behind Edmundo Gonzalez and my friends from the city of Merida are now requesting my prayers for him.

      Found this BBC link. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cevwzvxqw1vo

    • adam 2.2
      27 July 2024 at 7:42 pm

      Polls suggest the opposition has more than twice the support of the ruling party.

      I've not seen a poll out of Venezuela which in not corrupt one way or the other. Got any credible links on polling data? Only reporting I've seen is the right faction are doing their usual of death squads and intimidation. And the left are bribing everyone as much as they can with food, health care and housing.

  3. Subliminal 3
    27 July 2024 at 10:13 am

    It really is extraordiary that a man in charge of a plausible case of genocide, who is on the verge of indictment by the ICC for war crimes, can be greeted and lauded by the US Congress. There is no other country in the world where such craven support for the overwhelming horror and destruction of an entire people could exist. Even the UK is in the process of distancing itself from complicity, as the realization of the support for Palestine, emphasized by the loss to Labour of four seats to Palestine supporting Independents, sinks in.

    On Wednesday, Netanyahu was back-slapped, glad-handed, whooped and cheered as he slowly made his way – hailed at every step as a conquering hero – to the podium of the US Congress…

    And yet, there was just one visible protester in the congressional chamber. Rashida Tlaib, the only US legislator of Palestinian heritage, sat silently grasping a small black sign. On one side it said: “War criminal”. On the other: “Guilty of genocide.”

    One person among hundreds mutely trying to point out that the emperor was naked…

    This looked less like a visit by a foreign leader than a decorated elder general being welcomed back to the Senate in ancient Rome, or a grey-haired British viceroy from India embraced in the motherland’s parliament, after brutally subduing the “barbarians” on the fringes of empire.

    This was a scene familiar from history books: of imperial brutality and colonial savagery, recast by the seat of the imperium as valour, honour, civilisation. And it looked every bit as absurd, and abhorrent, as it does when we look back on what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago…

    …as Netanyahu stated in a moment of unintentional candour to Congress: “Our enemies are your enemy, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory.”

    Israel is Washington’s largest military outpost in the oil-rich Middle East. The Israeli army is the Pentagon’s main battalion in that strategically important region. And Netanyahu is the outpost’s commander in chief.

    What is vital to Washington elites is that the outpost is supported at all costs; that it doesn’t fall to the “barbarians”.

    The Israeli prime minister stated that what was happening in Gaza was “a clash between barbarism and civilisation”. He was not wrong.

    On the one side, there is the barbarism of the current joint Israeli-US genocide against the people of Gaza, a dramatic escalation of the 17-year Israeli siege of the enclave that preceded it, and the decades of belligerent rule under an Israeli system of apartheid before that.

    And on the other side, there are the embattled few desperately trying to safeguard the West’s professed values of “civilisation”, of international humanitarian law, of the protection of the weak and vulnerable, of the rights of children.

    The US Congress decisively showed where it stood: with barbarism.

    Netanyahu has become the most feted foreign leader in US history, invited to speak to Congress four times, surpassing even Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill.

    He is fully Washington’s creature. His savagery, his monstrousness is entirely made in America. As he implored his US handlers: “Give us the tools faster and we’ll finish the job faster.”

    Finish the job of genocide…

    Decoded, that means a continuing horror show for the Palestinians there, as they are forced to continue living and dying with an Israeli aid blockade, starvation, bombs and unmarked “kill zones”.

    https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/us-failing-empire-so-blind-cheer-netanyahu-and-his-genocide

    • Mikey 3.1
      27 July 2024 at 12:41 pm

      I don't see a ceasefire happening until Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya run out of rockets.

    • Bearded Git 3.2
      27 July 2024 at 2:21 pm

      A 100 House and 27 Senate Democrats boycotted the speech. That is remarkable.

      I think Bernie Sanders said this is the first time a war criminal has been invited to speak to Congress.

      • Subliminal 3.2.1
        27 July 2024 at 4:12 pm

        And yet none of these congress people are prepared to do the one thing that would instantly end the genocide. That is, cease the endless supply of bombs and missiles. Simply put, neither Israel, nor Netanyahu, can sustain this carnage without the unflinching support of the US military and that military is subject to the oversight of congress if they were ever to care to wield that capacity and reject the endless flow of cash from the MIC. Sadly for Palestinians, when the US gained this bare minimum of consciousness with regard to SA apartheid, it still took 20 years to convert to ending apartheid. Simply put, Palestinians don't have the luxury of this time frame.

    • gsays 3.3
      27 July 2024 at 6:36 pm

      Thanks for putting it so succinctly, Subliminal.

      Listening to the uncritical coverage the last few days has been a head scratcher. Kinda not surprising when BG above mentions an invited war criminal speaking in Congress as opposed to the ones that are elected to speak in Congress.

      • Subliminal 3.3.1
        27 July 2024 at 8:36 pm

        It is truly a terrible evil that has been unleashed on Palestinians gsays.

        In his interview, Perlmutter, vice president of the International College of Surgeons, said what he saw in Gaza was worse than all of the disaster zones he’s seen combined. “Forty mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes. All of that combined doesn’t equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza,” he said.

        When asked if the civilians he saw wounded or killed were mostly children, Perlmutter said, “Almost exclusively children. I’ve never seen that before. Never seen that. I’ve seen more incinerated children than I’ve ever seen in my entire life combined. I’ve seen more shredded children in just the first week.”

        Asked what he meant by “shredded” children, Perlmutter explained, “Missing body parts, being crushed by buildings, the greatest majority, or bomb explosions, the next greatest majority. We’ve taken shrapnel as big as my thumb out of eight-year-olds.”

        https://news.antiwar.com/2024/07/22/american-surgeon-who-volunteered-in-gaza-says-idf-snipers-shoot-toddlers/

  4. tc 4
    27 July 2024 at 10:16 am

    Granny did have some balance this week with former labour health ministers having a say up against the wall of bs from cigareti, luxon etc.

    Then true to form old captain dildo gets his soapbox to blame the reforms in another unchallenged spin piece.

    • Michael Scott 4.1
      27 July 2024 at 11:22 am

      There is an alternative view offered in Stephen Joyces article on the health reforms by Andrew little – but it is rather weak.

      I am no expert but my major observation of the merger of the DHB's is that the bureaucracy increase was huge. Normally in a merger the bureaucracy decreases.

      • SPC 4.1.1
        27 July 2024 at 1:42 pm

        I guess that is because there is no adjustment for the reduced bureaucracy at the regional HB level, nor of the need to develop IT for the 21st C – for an integrated national network.

      • Grey Area 4.1.2
        27 July 2024 at 9:29 pm

        Link please.

      • lprent 4.1.3
        28 July 2024 at 7:06 am

        Normally in a merger the bureaucracy decreases.

        Not a correct statement. What would be correct is something like "Normally in a merger the bureaucracy usually eventually decreases if the merger is successful."

        This should be obvious to anyone with half a brain. However this trait is usually lacking in most people associated with the Act party. Probably because so few of them are management trained. Look at their botched legislative reorganisation of the Auckland city councils back in 2010 that took most of a decade to achieve the desired levels of synergy that they were after. On the way through, the expenditure

        There was a massive increase in staff required to do basic things like merging the data from things as simple as dog registrations from disparate systems with incompatible data. These are all one off costs, but mergers require a lot of them.

        It takes a lot of work to join previously separate organisations with disparate accounting, payroll, property management, inventory and many other systems. This is what is required to achieve any synergies in organisational infrastructure.

        The most common approach to mergers that results in in a successful organisational mergers is that there is needs to be additional large transition team formed. Typically this requires some of the senior and junior staff from parts of the organisation to be pulled together, and inevitably their normal workload being taken up by others.

        Contractors and staff are hired to merge data systems. At one point it felt like a third of the programmers in Auckland were working on council projects. And there were only 8 councils being merged – not 24 DHBs.

        The normal process is usually that the bureaucracy increases during merger changes, expenditures increase, and only after a few years will the structural organisational benefits appear.

        This happens in private companies (I have been through about 8 mergers or changes of ownership in my career, half in large organisations) and in governmental ones. The latter are arguably harder because you don't get the quick financial benefits from synergies in sales and marketing that private companies have from mergers and takeovers.

        Badly done they are a disaster at all levels. Well done, they usually increase workloads during merges that will last years.

        If you ever have a look at post-merger analytical articles this trait comes up over and over again. When I did my MBA back in the mid-80s, the management case studies were pretty clear that successful mergers and acquisitions were pretty damn hard to get right. looks like noting much has changed in the interim.
        https://scholar.google.co.nz/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_vis=1&q=synergistic+benefits+and+costs+of+mergers&btnG=

    • Grey Area 4.3
      27 July 2024 at 9:28 pm

      Link please.

  5. tWig 5
    27 July 2024 at 10:59 am

    Frazer Barton, lawyer and former Board member of Presbyterian Support Otago gave some ambiguous advice to their CEO in 2018 about destruction of records, which was used by PSO to illegally destroy records before the Commission on Abuse in State and Church Care.

    100 years ago, the highly-regarded Rev Edward Andrews, working in a Presbyterian boys' home, was finally prosecuted after 20 years of sex abuse.

    The more things change , the more they stay the same.

    • Visubversa 5.1
      27 July 2024 at 11:46 am

      It just shows that predators go where there is prey. Any place that has people in vulnerable situations must be required to have safeguarding protocols that are strictly adhered to. There are no "sacred classes" – no class of person is exempt from this requirement.

    • David 5.2
      27 July 2024 at 3:11 pm

      If you don’t pay for the advice, it’s your responsibility to ensure that you are doing the right thing.

  6. tWig 6
    27 July 2024 at 11:06 am

    Bernard Hickey covers mis- and disinformation in our carbon trading market, NZ Big Farma spend on distraction and deflection, and the real cost of ignoring climate change.

    'In other news, a new study from the EDHEC- Risk Climate Impact Institute shows that failure to address climate change could gouge 40% from global equity valuations….'“Perhaps we are focusing too much on catastrophic events rather than on chronic damages,” Rebonato said. “There is a chronic aspect in terms of the loss of productivity, the loss of efficiency, which is less visible and more insidious and will create a continuous drag.”'

  7. Adrian 7
    27 July 2024 at 12:40 pm

    Christ I’m a fast healer but even I couldn’t match Trumps miraculous recovery. Stuff has photos today of Trumps ear while talking to Netanyahu and there’s not a mark on it. Along with his reluctance to leave the podium because he had lost a shoe the whole “ attempt “ looks dodgier and dodger, If some fucker was shooting at me I be out of there faster than a cat with its arse on fire even if I was stark naked! I’m of the Cock-up over conspiracy cohort but this thing is looking really bloody suspicious.

  8. SPC 8
    27 July 2024 at 2:12 pm

    ACT justice spokesperson Todd Stephenson has claimed that polices such as the Fair Pay Agreement and secure rights of tenancy, divided New Zealand against employers and landlords.

    Apparently anything not pro landlord or employer first is divisive and they talk about unity … on their terms of course.

    Labour pitted employers against employees, landlords against renters

    H went further and complained about the border and mandate policies.

    Labour were successful in bringing protesters and riot police together on the grounds of Parliament, but their Covid response mostly kept people apart, pregnant citizens overseas and their family at home

    Finally he, Justice Spokesperson for the party that is in a coalition that wants the Treaty out of legislation, no Maori Health Authority and to limit Maori customary fishing rights because it did not like a court decision and wants re-write of the TOW, says this.

    Stephenson said Labour attempted radical constitutional change by giving different groups different rights.

    We can celebrate Māori culture, and every other, within the framework of a liberal democracy that unites us on the basis of our common humanity he said.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/523315/enough-is-enough-chris-hipkins-blasts-government-over-maori-policies

    The totality of his arguement is

    1. supremacy of the economic power of employers and landlords – class warfare capitalism.

    2. a settler order of rule over the indigenous people – despite the Treaty and UNDRIP.

    • weka 9.1
      27 July 2024 at 3:54 pm

      yes. We should be powering down to a lower level of consumption across everything, and then using the high tech for the stuff that really matters.

      We will eventually be forced to power down by climate/ecological collapse if we don't change now, but then it will be extremely ugly and we will lose a lot of the usefulness of the high tech. No point in having an electric car if there's not enough power to run it.

  10. aj 10
    27 July 2024 at 3:19 pm

    https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/350356513/not-so-14-layers-management-health-nz

    This story about the so-called 14 layers of health management is subscription only, but Ayesha Verrall comments:

    Material supplied by Reti’s office lists 14 so-called layers, but many errors: the board, a chief of staff and patients! count towards Luxons 14.

    It’s also arguable whether a clinical team leader or supervisor is a management tier… they will often care for patients

    This issue matters because the govt used the claim as part of a justification for a $1.4b programme of cuts in the health system.

    The govt asserted the cuts were required because of bloated middle management

    https://x.com/drayeshaverrall/status/1816953259535499304

  11. Adrian 11
    27 July 2024 at 3:54 pm

    Exactly how many tiers of management does the military have starting from Lance Corporal, tho there’s probably one or two below that, Private for one , and don’t they have classes of them. I’ll bet bloody Air NZ had at least 14 when King of the Fuckups was there, can’t have too many layers of denialability ehh!

    • Obtrectator 11.1
      27 July 2024 at 11:40 pm

      The army can have up to 17 ranks above that of private, but in time of peace in NZ, there'll usually only be 14, with Major-General the highest. (But if the Chief of the Defence Force is from the army, he's put up to the next-higher rank of Lieutenant-General – the only one in all three services to be at that level.)

      • Macro 11.1.1
        28 July 2024 at 1:15 pm

        the only one in all three services to be at that level

        Nope. Both Navy and Air increase the ranking of the substantive Chief of Defence while they hold that appointment. Naval rank for Chief of Defence is Vice Admiral. The next highest rank is Admiral (not used in NZ because of our size) , then Admiral of the Fleet (reserved for Royalty). RNZN was a division of RN until 1 October 1941 Naval rank is Rear Admiral as Chief of Naval Staff. For RNZAF it's Air Vice Marshall for Chief of Air Staff, then Air Marshall for Chief of Defence.

        Chief of Defence like other similar Defence Force HQ appointments is filled on a rotational basis.

        (I served on the Naval Staff as Director of Officer Postings (Navy) ).

        • Obtrectator 11.1.1.1
          29 July 2024 at 6:10 pm

          The Macsplaining wasn't really necessary – I do know all that stuff. What the second part of my final sentence should have said was something like: only the CDF holds the rank of Lt-Gen, or its equivalent in the other services.