Open mike 27/10/2023

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, October 27th, 2023 - 40 comments
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Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

40 comments on “Open mike 27/10/2023 ”

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  1. Tricledrown 1
    27 October 2023 at 7:41 am

    Mark Mitchell makes it up, make up for gang members to cover tattòos claiming they do it in Australia. No such thing .Breaking news Mark Mitchell has appointed Suzanna Paul to implement new policy.

  2. Reality 2
    27 October 2023 at 7:55 am

    Well done Trickledown for your "scoop" of Suzanne Paul's new role as makeup consultant to the incoming government.

  3. Mac1 3
    27 October 2023 at 8:23 am

    Is this to be the MO of the new government- make it up or cover it up, aka lies and deceit?

    And they say we get the government we deserve!

    • SPC 3.1
      27 October 2023 at 9:03 am

      A middle class media prepared the way for a middle class government, the online diversity is also from the middle class.

      It may be a consequence of the diminishment of centres of resistance to neo-liberalism, the global market crushing of the nation-state economy, ending the capability of government to implement state planning, then the ECA (and worker migration) to diminish the place and role of unions (industry awards) and the funding criteria (per student) model to universities combined with debt to turn them into meal ticket factories (producing people to serve the global market capitalist machine).

      Once we were proud to be the best colony, a better English farm and town society. Now our home ownership levels are lower than the UK and still declining. We are now becoming a class society, where half no longer aspire to own their home, and in days past such could not vote and thus their opinion counted for naught.

      It's a society conforming to its tax regime, the most unequal in taxing wealth in the entire OECD (35/36 have a CGT and 24/36 have an estate tax).

    • AB 3.2
      27 October 2023 at 10:24 am

      It already feels like "The Great Postponement" where serious problems are parked to fester, while we try a re-run of the Key playbook.

  4. Dennis Frank 4
    27 October 2023 at 9:21 am

    Infrastructure crisis in Aotearoa: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/taxpayer-investment-in-salvaging-coastal-shipping-founders

    If ever New Zealand needed a wakeup call to the vulnerability of its road and rail networks, Cyclone Gabrielle provided it. With Gisborne and the East Coast cut off, government agencies turned to 'the blue highway' as a lifeline.

    The Government provided a $500,000 grant and $2.25 million underwrite to Eastland Port to charter the cargo ship Rangitata for three months, to bring in vital supplies – and ship out what little produce the region was still able to salvage from its devastated farms and forests.

    But with the withdrawal of Maersk shipping line, delays to Aotearoa Shipping Alliance's barge, and now Move Logistics’ cancellation of plans to build and launch a new ship for coastal routes, even that blue highway is under renewed threat.

    Earlier this month, Maritime Union national secretary Craig Harrison had hailed the investment in coastal shipping as one of the Labour Government’s key achievements. This morning, the union is expressing concern that the modest growth does not stall. "NZ desperately needs to develop coastal shipping capacity for our regional supply chain," it says. "The incoming Government needs to continue this support."

    But the red & blue teams are meant to fight each other, right? To maintain the democracy sham. Whereas the country needs to regenerate infrastructure, and to create effective systems everyone needs to use developmental strategic thinking. To get from polarisation to consensus, one must transcend the status quo. Transcendent mainstreamers are rare, but who else is likely to sort the situation out??

    • SPC 4.1
      27 October 2023 at 9:37 am

      Global warming resilience lite … raiding funds to afford tax cuts.

      We could not get produce to the NI from the SI because of problems getting cargo across the Cook Strait – thus higher prices than should have occurred with floods etc. On top of the gib board monopoly consequences …

    • alwyn 4.2
      27 October 2023 at 2:20 pm

      Another of Michael Wood's schemes that has crashed.

      Was there anything he did that worked out well for the New Zealand populace? The only one that I can think of was that he has lost his seat in Parliament. Everything else was a total failure.

      • Barfly 4.2.1
        27 October 2023 at 5:47 pm

        Jeez you are a sad little man

      • Patricia Bremner 4.2.2
        27 October 2023 at 8:32 pm

        Alwyn.

        The failure is the incoming Governments' " short termism" Using the funds budgeted for other purposes will come back to bite them. Your nastiness is noted, and sadly it is not a surprise.

        • alwyn 4.2.2.1
          28 October 2023 at 9:36 am

          "The failure is the incoming Governments".

          You mean that a party who has, currently, absolutely no say in what is going on is somehow responsible for the the stupidity of the soon to be former Government's actions?

          Jeez [deleted]

          [lprent: Since I can’t see anyone of that name in the conversation, I have to assume that you are trying to out or dox the person behind a handle. It is against our policy and we take a very dim view about anyone who who can be perceived as trying to do that. This is your warning. ]

            • alwyn 4.2.2.1.1.1
              28 October 2023 at 2:52 pm

              You are possibly a bit young to remember the TV series A Week of It that appeared on New Zealand TV from 1977 to 1979. It featured, among others, McPhail and Gadsby.

              To quote from WikiPedia about the show.

              "The show popularised the catchphrase "Jeez, Wayne", still heard in New Zealand used as a reaction to another person's comments or actions to indicate disbelief."

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Week_of_It

              I suppose I am showing my advanced age in that I remember it and that you, a comparatively young fellow, don't. So, no. I wasn't intending to "Out somebody". It is only a fond memory of a very funny show.

              • lprent …
                28 October 2023 at 3:22 pm

                That explains it.

                Not that young. I would have been 16-20 depending on exactly what time of the year that it started and stopped. I remember it well.

                Mid next year I can get superannuation.

                The only noticeable effect of getting superannuation will be irritation. Most of it will be into the top tax bracket. Currently I am considering not taking it because the cost in my time to account and aggravation of actually filing returns to the IRD is probably more than any return.

                At present I have a simple tax structure – PAYE + PIR + no claims of deductions for anything. I just ignore tax benefits for home office, charities, etc as being a waste of time to try to reduce taxation.

                On the other hand, if I don't collect it, then the NAct government will only waste the savings on the undeserving affluent and excessively wealthy as unsustainable tax cuts or cross-subsidies thereby wasting all of my efforts since 1975 to pay into Muldoon's superannuation rort. Like the reduction in the bright-line or the low RUC rates for heavy trucks or the way that urban populations pay extra climate change taxes while our most polluting greenhouse gas industry (farming) doesn’t pay anything significiant – and expects us to pay for their tar sealed roads.

                I may as well collect it, figure out how not to have to account for it in useless paperwork and just give it away to deserving causes.

        • Ghostwhowalks 4.2.2.2
          28 October 2023 at 1:02 pm

          Every government re-prioritises budgeted spending

          Some is under spend other times its over spend/more allocated

          Its all done via Supplementary Estimates bill and is passed by Parliament

          as Robertson said earlier this year

          The Appropriation (2022/23 Supplementary Estimates) Bill seeks appropriation by Parliament of changes to appropriations and new appropriations for the 2022/23 financial year that the Government agreed to between 22 April, when the 2022/23 Estimates were finalised, and 23 April, when the 2022/23 Supplementary Estimates were finalised. Spending against these appropriations has already been incurred under the authority of imprest supply, but unless this spending is appropriated by Parliament before the end of the 2022/23 financial year, it would become other unauthorised expenditure requiring validation by Parliament in the appropriation (confirmation and validation) bill.

          Browse the actual changes if you like – but you wont as its just a sock puppet claim made by the Nats and Actors

          https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/search?f%5B0%5D=issue_status%3A%21%282475%7C5527%29&f%5B1%5D=resource_type%3A2624

          eg Social Welfare Supplementaries description

          Reasons for Change in Appropriation This appropriation increased by $65.403 million to $2,073.794 million for 2022/23 due to: • $41.244 million for the continued delivery of support to tāngata whaikaha Māori and disabled people and their families by addressing increases in volumes as well as inflationary pressures for disability support services • $11.894 million transfer within Vote Social Development for the new entity Whaikaha – Ministry of Disabled People • $10.613 million for the increase for the new (from 1 July 2022) support workers minimum wage rates included in the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Act 2022 • $1.354 million drawdown of funding for improving relativities for funded sector health workers, and • $756,000 for the Whaikaha Public Sector Pay Adjustment. The increased was offset by $458,000 transfer to Vote Health to provide for the Disability Support System reform

  5. Molly 5
    27 October 2023 at 10:11 am

    Given the fallout from NZ celebrating the silencing of women continues – https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/posie-parker-assault-case-tomato-juice-protester-eli-rubashkyn-fails-in-bid-to-have-charges-dropped/5BT76CBC3RCM3CVTDYXGA6DLWI/

    – this is what adults are able to do while holding opposing views:

    One-hour discussion:

    On the Panel:

    Peter Tatchell – Human rights campaigner and activist.

    Freda Wallace – Political commentator, freelance writer and host of the Gender Nebulous podcast.

    Helen Joyce – Former finance editor at the Economist, author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality and director of advocacy at Sex Matters.

    Marc Glendening – Head of Cultural affairs at the IEA and author of the Transgender Ideology report published by the IEA in August.

    https://youtu.be/Va3i-_Fbfpo?si=jNXzxPbZ9sPrjx7p

    • weka 5.1
      27 October 2023 at 11:44 am

      watching now. Interesting start from Glendening, who is arguing liberal values from a libertarian view and placing them in opposition to liberal values from what he calls a 'new left' pov.

      It's worth pausing and understanding his liberal views are based in sovereignty of mind and body. Probably not the only irony we will hear.

      I don't like his placing science as primary way of knowing (humans knew what male and female were before the advent of modern or older sciences. But he does say the science is based on material, observable reality, and goes on to state his central premise about the laws of logic,

      … one type of physical object cannot simultaneously be another type of physical entity.

      which leaves TRAs with a definitional, strategic and political predicament. Are TW literally women, in other words female? Or are TW gender non-conforming males with a strong desire to self identify as women?

      I think we are thankfully moving past the assertion that TW are female, although I still see it a fair bit.

      My sense is that most trans allies want to subsume biological sex under gender to the extent that it is mostly invisible (except for medicine blah blah), rather than thinking someone can literally change sex. Thus Trans Women Are Women (where woman is an identity rather than a material reality).

      But that leaves the next predicament: why should trans women's rights trump women's rights?

      Anyway, I digress. I agree Molly, that NZ could learn a lot from watching these debates on how to address the issue. TRAs don't want to do that because they know their project is one of social engineering and that their arguments won't hold up under scrutiny. Tbf, most of the new left ones do have good intentions, but tolerance for that is fast running out.

      • Molly 5.1.1
        27 October 2023 at 1:01 pm

        Ending cut off abruptly. If I find a better link I'll post.

      • weka 5.1.2
        27 October 2023 at 6:11 pm

        Glendening's next point: if reality is socially constructed, and one believes that language either supports the status quo or can overturn, and one believes that language has that power, then you cannot adopt a live and let live approach, language becomes a zero sum game.

        I haven't heard that explanation before, and it makes sense of a lot of what is happening politically at this time, including around gender/sex, but beyond that. It's a huge shift from rationality to society operating from the position that reality is fluid. We're seeing that from Winston Peters as we speak.

        • weka 5.1.2.1
          27 October 2023 at 6:18 pm

          then, the importance of knowing what words mean. If a politician talks about women only hospital wards (or female only), we have to know what they mean by that.

          My view is that currently we don't. Again, this is the milieu that Peters has re-arisen in.

        • Nic the NZer 5.1.2.2
          27 October 2023 at 7:37 pm

          I'm very surprised you would be unaware of this as you appear well read on these topics generally. This idea that reality (or at least its power structures and hierarchies) is socially constructed (largely meaning its a product of language) is a common thread in the relation of these topics to post-modernism. Of course in fact this idea is just horse shit, its completely incoherent in practice.

          For the most part I don't think society is shifting in its thinking of course. Just that most supporters are ignorant of the philosophical basis for the cause they are supporting, find (and have it constructed to be) easier otherwise just to go along with the nonsense than to be disagreeable and unkind.

          • Dennis Frank 5.1.2.2.1
            27 October 2023 at 8:20 pm

            Seems like a grey area to me. We got socially conditioned into the reality thing when young, and as a physics grad I saw the other side of that monoculture default (a flawed presumption generally held to be true).

            Relativism is more to the point than postmodernism nowadays – the latter seeming somewhat dated, like a cultural wind that blew awhile then blew out.

            True-believers abound, but less so nowadays due to escalating biodiversity within human groups. The commons will always be there, and even leftists will eventually notice that. Survival for many will hinge on finding common ground to group together on, yet complacency remains inertial in Aotearoa. Perhaps that is a commons we share with the USA (exemplified by Alfred E Neuman's "What, me worry?"). However that social archetype may no longer be influential down the generations. Younger yanks may be worried.

            I agree re going along with nonsense, but that is usually a simulation rather than real, huh? Folks play that card if the game seems to call for it at the time…

          • weka 5.1.2.2.2
            27 October 2023 at 8:43 pm

            I don't in fact have a great education background and there are some big gaps in my knowledge (eg economics). But I do understand the reality as a social construct bit. What was new was the understanding that if one does believe that reality is a social construct, and that language has immense power, then it becomes an imperative to control language by whatever means possible. Hadn't made that connection before but it's a good description of the ideological aspects of trans rights.

            I'm not so sure we aren't shifting societally. While I think most people are still grounded in material reality, both the rise of conspiracy theory culture and politics, and trans rights activism, both speak to not insignificant movements who no longer work within a material reality frame.

            In addition, we have the pressures of social media, cyberspace generally, and now AI. Those are fucking with human relationships with body and mind at the worst possible time, when we are freaking out about climate etc. The motivation to escape our bodies matching the avenues for doing so.

            I do agree that many people are going along with the be kind side of TA without necessarily understanding the philosophical and ideological underpinnings.

            • Nic the NZer 5.1.2.2.2.1
              27 October 2023 at 9:22 pm

              Absolutely the language policing is a strong theme through the TRA movement and plenty of other ideologically similar movements. This probably also occurs because at inception the concept was more or less coming out of literary departments at universities. The idea was that you could validly interpret a text not with the authors intent in mind but with the readers interpretation at the center. I think this had a larger impact on volume of text analysis more so than the quality of course.

              The concerning aspects are more how these supposedly academic movements are behaving. I don't really consider a subject whose basis is to enact political action over knowledge to be legitimate, but that is a central part of many such subjects that they operate around political action rather than knowledge. This is a big part of why they resemble cult like behaviours in many cases.

              If you have looked into cults (like the scientology movement) you will see many similarities. As far as I can observe this is just about separating friends and acquaintances of the members into in and out groups. It doesn't seem to matter for scientology that the doctrine is obviously nonsense and the members do understand they are being expected to condition their behaviours to not challenge that obvious knowledge, or the cult tends to cut them off or punish them back into line.

              Ultimately these kinds of movements and groups will never match the severe in/out group separation of a cult, but I do thing that having to repair damage caused by expecting members to comply with this nonsense (or face consequences) will be quite difficult when institutions are eventually needing to reform.

            • lprent 5.1.2.2.2.2
              28 October 2023 at 3:08 pm

              In addition, we have the pressures of social media, cyberspace generally, and now AI. Those are fucking with human relationships with body and mind at the worst possible time, when we are freaking out about climate etc. The motivation to escape our bodies matching the avenues for doing so.

              I suspect that you are confusing effect with cause.

              This is a process that has been in progress since the printing press was invented, thereby reducing the cost of transmission of ideas. The christian reformation and the doctrinaire religious wars in Europe being the classic exemplar. But the same schisms happened in most religious regions as printing became widespread.

              It also started the secular intrusions of things like scientific thinking, basic economic theory, and theories about the process of government that roiled following centuries. Plus of course the development and spread of conspiracy theories, porn, and much wider revolutionary groups.

              You can also see in history exactly the same calls for exactly the same reasons for restricting, licensing, taxing and controlling the process of printing. The words and phasing eerily echo the same calls to control the internet these days.

              This too will pass. We just have the usual problem that our generations are kind of long. Most people learn most of what they can learn as a process before they hit 25-30. They spend the rest of their long lives worrying about what their kids and grand-kids are learning.

              BTW: What you call "AI" is simple data mining and pulling inferences and correlations out of the data that get expressed as algorithms. It is just another technology like TV, radio, newspapers, printing, double ledger book-keeping, writing, agriculture, fire…. each of which caused massive disruptions in the old ways of doing things.

              People have been doing analysis of data patterns since they started to get serious about accounting or started to collect data about people or systems.

              Generally the generative AI is worse at figuring out those algorithms than the best of the intuitive humans to who can the same thing with less electricity. Ever watch a forensic accountant read transaction patterns? I can do it after I worked on accounting computer systems for a few years. It is just a learned skill.

              The advertising industry thrived on those individuals with learned or intuitive skills, as did the publishing industry, as did the propaganda industry, the electronics industry, managers, the computer industry….. What generative AI is doing is providing similar but probably always inferior service at a cheaper cost.

              It isn't any different from being able to get on the net to find out information about how to do things that I have been doing since the mid-1980s. I've taught university classes in how to search online data, how to distinguish significance from dross, and how to extract reproducible patterns as algorithms.

              The world shifts and the over-30s spend their time saying that it is all going too fast while the under 30s parents have already partially adapted to the technologies that they grew up with, and are starting to worry about what their kids now know.

    • CAnker the pig fucker 5.2
      27 October 2023 at 4:34 pm

      Thanks Molly. Will take a look.

    • gsays 5.3
      27 October 2023 at 7:09 pm

      Thanks Molly that was worth while.

      Way more light than heat,

    • weka 5.4
      28 October 2023 at 2:29 pm

      – this is what adults are able to do while holding opposing views:

      Freda Wallace was appalling. I disagree with Peter Tatchell most of the time and some of his arguments are just pig ignorant and demonstrate he doesn't listen to women. But at least he can formulate an argument based on his beliefs and values. Wallace was there to throw shit at Sex Matters, LGBA and Joyce and seemed incapable of responding to points raised. This is classic TRA. Don't address the issues, instead make declarative statements about the way things are and that in this format aren't so easily rebutted.

      Although as Joyce points out, the reason Wallace is there is because Stonewall, Mermaids and the Trans orgs won't front up. In large part because they can't make an argument beyond the ideology.

      Joyce was a delight to watch, she's very good at what she does now, and has a first class mind, albeit tempered as the limits of her patience were tested in this panel.

      • Molly 5.4.1
        30 October 2023 at 9:38 am

        I admit I'd only watched the fist 20 min or so when I posted. It was holding together pretty well, despite dissenting views. It did get messier.

        Would have like to see the Q&A. IEA have said they'll post it, so keeping n eye out.

    • CAnker the pig fucker 5.5
      30 October 2023 at 4:07 pm

      What a real charmer Freda is! Mini skirt up around his upper thighs, admitted he is a fetishist, agressive, incoherant arguements and getting drunker as the debate goes on (so much so his debating partner told him to lay off the drink).

      No Freda, I don't want you in my change room. Case closed.

      • weka 5.5.1
        30 October 2023 at 7:48 pm

        My respect for Tatchell went up a bit at that point, but I would also guess it's the same paternalistic stuff that makes him ignore what women are saying about the issues.

  6. SPC 6
    27 October 2023 at 11:45 am

    Google has for awhile been informing those on You Tube, they do not allow people to view videos on You Tube if they have ad blocker, now it's 3 more videos and then blocked.

    The social media conspiracy of ravens flock together, (first gathering information they can on-sell for either money, or government monopoly protection). Obey or it’s the murder of old crows.

    X.com man started the charging on top of that game and now it is all on.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2023/10/18/youtubes-new-ad-blocker-crackdown-what-you-need-to-know/?sh=27c58c974bfb

    • weka 6.1
      27 October 2023 at 12:41 pm

      I'm completely blocked on mac Firefox now until I whitelist youtube. I'm watching YT on Safari or Brave now with no issues (thus far). Possibly because the ad blocks are built in rather than add ons like FF.

  7. SPC 7
    27 October 2023 at 12:32 pm

    Bella is not the only celebrity to speak out on the devastating war — Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who served in her country’s defence forces as a combat trainer several years ago, called for onlookers not to “sit on the fence” as hundreds are killed.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/supermodel-bella-hadid-breaks-silence-on-israel-palestine-conflict-calling-for-urgent-humanitarian-aid-in-gaza/6TXWNEKOPVAS3DYJLEVQHKJDBQ/

    Gal Gadot put up a social media post, since removed (she was told to be quiet), saying innocent civilian life – Israeli or Palestinian life is equal.

    And darkness was upon the face of the deep. Upon the face of the abyss of the massacre in the south, darkness is taking hold of Israel. Now it is still a gathering of clouds, but it may turn to darkness: Israel is going mad. The left is “wising up,” the right is growing more extreme,and McCarthyism and fascism reign.

    Wartime is always a time of silencing, uniformity of opinion, racism, incitement and hatred; absolute enlistment in service of propaganda, the end of tolerance and the persecution of anyone who dares step out of line. The atrocities perpetrated by Hamas in the south brought all of these manifestations to extreme levels, as if the atrocities justify the loss of all restraint.

    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-10-26/ty-article-opinion/.premium/and-darkness-was-upon-the-face-of-israel/0000018b-6813-d78a-a5eb-7c93d6fe0000

  8. Descendant Of Smith 8
    27 October 2023 at 2:54 pm

    Must be time for a new three year run of A Week Of It – seems ripe for the plucking.

    • weka 8.1
      27 October 2023 at 3:26 pm

      they look so young!

      • Descendant Of Smith 8.1.1
        27 October 2023 at 4:27 pm

        Yeah. There must be twenty bald headed male comedians wearing blue suits to make up the national party.

        The first week episode:

        1. Compulsory make up on gangs
        2. Winnie finally realises the terrorist didn't send him the manifesto cause he wasn't important enough
        3. Luxon intends to move parliament to Auckland – starts with coalition negotiations
        4. Ramraids stop since election – well at least from media headlines – as did all the logs on Gisborne beaches – signs from god …..
        5. Shane Reti styopd rebuild of public hospital as it competes with his share-holding one
        6. National announces it is rolling back all the nothings that Labour did in first 100 days

    • gsays 8.2
      27 October 2023 at 7:23 pm

      @ 20 secs there looks like someone in blackface. Ironically they seem to have a gang member vibe from the '80's- WW11 german helmet, insignia on sleeveless army surplus shirt.

      You are right about the material for satire, TBF, from both sides of the house.