Did you receive a pay rise? Has your benefit gone up? No? Mike Sabin’s salary has! And the future welfare bill has been cut by $7,5 B.
Government of the rich, for the rich and to hell with everyone else.
Yes that is the argument not whether MP’s deserve a pay rise. Everyone should get a pay rise that keeps ahead of the costs of living.
John Key’s stupid posturing is a detraction from the point that everyone should receive a pay increase. The opposition were a bit slow off the mark to have a crack at CEO’s like bankers ridiculously high pay increases.
One hundred and thirty years ago, at the beginning of 1885, New Zealanders debated whether or not to join a war against an Islamic army that had conquered a tract of desert and committed atrocities against its prisoners. In 1885, though, New Zealand Premier John Ballance decided not to join the British Empire in its war against jihadis. In fact, Ballance stated that he empathised with the Muslim forces fighting Britain. What lessons can we learn from history? http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/new-zealand-and-war-against-isis-lesson.html
Although I’d suggest that refrigeration turned at least a partial cultural dependence into economic dependence, not the other way around. No reason refrigerated ships had to go to England rather than Germany, Russia, Japan, or America.
Fifteen years into the 21st century the best NZ capitalism can offer many workers is a minimum wage of $14.75. At the same time, legally-guaranteed tea breaks have been lost and many conditions have been whittled away.
He must lose the Nats 1,000s of votes every time he appears. He reminds me of Nick Smith: he is so slimey that your confidence in humanity is slightly deminished after listening to him speak.
there’s something more appropriate to stick in his dimple.
Besides which (as an intermittent interloper on this site), it seems to me he may very well pop up on here regularly. If its not him, it must be his twin.
(Honest John ffs!)
I can see another Aaron GIlmore in the making with that fella. All it will take is for his JK arse-licking; ideologiclly-driven; spin and bullshit-uttering to get the better of him (a bit like patholocical liars forgetting their past BS).
Do you know if he ever sold real estate in a former life? or used cars perhaps.
Now, however, researchers fear there are more craters than anyone knew — and the repercussions could be huge. Russian scientists have now spotted a total of seven craters, five of which are in the Yamal Peninsula. Two of those holes have since turned into lakes. And one giant crater is rimmed by a ring of at least 20 mini-craters, the Siberian Times reported. Dozens more Siberian craters are likely still out there, said Moscow scientist Vasily Bogoyavlensky of the Oil and Gas Research Institute, calling for an “urgent” investigation.
He fears that if temperatures continue to rise — and they were five degrees higher than average in 2012 and 2013 — more craters will emerge in an area awash in gas fields vital to the national economy.
“It is important not to scare people, but to understand that it is a very serious problem and we must research this,” he told the Siberian Times. “We must research this phenomenon urgently, to prevent possible disasters.”
and your analogy .. or is it a metaphor ? not enough mouthwash in the known universe to remove the taste … here for perpetuity, however long that might be now !!
Nigel Haworth has been elected President on the NZLP. Trained as an economist and now a professor specialising in HR, he’s been influential on the policy council for the last few years.
Edit: And elected to the policy council are Michael Wood, Liz Craig, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, Virginia Andersen and Kieran McAnulty.
I would like to say that I hope Nigel Haworth and co. will create a special role for the losing presidential candidate, Robert Gallagher. He has huge organisational experience… something which has been in short supply in recent years.
yes my son, after being lean and fit, got quite fat after becoming a Vegan…thank goodness he is no longer one…but the weight gain and bad eating habits are hard to get rid of
I take it that you are a skinny vegan?…i am an empiricist ( admittedly on a sample of one teenage boy )….and propaganda is a “wonderful” thing…so easy to select the sample of fanatics and skew it away from any counter evidence
Christianity (and other religions) are also used by humans, ones with “human failings.” Why should science get the extra pass for “just being human” when you refuse to give them out for other human endeavours?
Science is a method, not an industry
Oh I agree.
But that’s not all that “science” is. Today science and technology is predominantly a tool of corporates, commercial interests and greed for power. Science which doesn’t serve those interests or their narratives is being systematically starved/sidelined.
Why does science have more credibility? Simple: falsifiable hypotheses, replicable results.
You’re pointing the bone in the wrong direction: where industrial concerns and other conflicts of interest are being allowed to distort scientific findings, the problem is politics.
You’re pointing the bone in the wrong direction: where industrial concerns and other conflicts of interest are being allowed to distort scientific findings, the problem is politics.
No the problem is greed Greed of the corporates which use “science” to promote unsustainable and unreliable products.
There are many instances of unsafe medicines, and medical products being promoted by greedy pharmaceutical companies. And that is only one area. Monsanto et al in agriculture is another. http://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/monsantos-good-bad-pr-problem/
But its not just the fact that it has poor PR, Frankly it deserves it deserves its infamy. It’s whole corporate culture is based on greed.
eg
Earlier this week, farmers flew in to Washington from across the country to lobby Capitol Hill for GMO labeling legislation. Many growers have turned to more toxic herbicides for use on crops genetically engineered to withstand herbicides such as glyphosate. Overuse of glyphosate has led to the growth of “super weeds” that require farmers to use even more toxic herbicides that have been linked to cancer, Parkinson’s disease and reproductive problems.
Abbott is a walking dead man, his slim hopes of remaining rests upon an Aussie win tomorrow, it would be a positive out of a bad situation if they won.
Is Labour going to stand aside to let Winston through to have a decent go at winning Northland?…this is a test for the Labour Party ….does it have the vision and the co-operation required to be part of a Left coalition government … or does Labour regard it as a horse race where its duty is to beat the other Left contenders?
‘Will Labour stand aside in Northland to let NZ First beat National? –
Absolutely not. That would be madness in the wider sense – imagine the message that the rest of NZ takes from that? Imagine the hay the Nats would make of it? Imagine having Winston Peters again in the hot seat? Imagine trusting the untrustworthy Peters?
no no no
it is only 2 1/2 years until labour takes office anyway. Just keep the peg on your nose for a while longer instead
it appears to me Little is trying to position Labour as THE credible opposition in its own right,never mind the other left parties.Seems like a good strategy to me.
No it’s not as it shows division in the Left parties. What Labour and the rest of the Left parties need to do is to show that each party is a tight nit group and that they can work together. What we’ve seen over the last few years is Labour falling apart at the seems and that they won’t work with any other party. They’re finally getting over the falling apart at the seems bit but they still refuse to work with any other party.
so what .Never mind what divides them,when the time is right,is the time to work together.In the meantime Labour gets painted as supporting all sorts of policy middle NZ cannot wear.
That depends what you mean by “work with”. They do that all of the time in parliament and there is a lot of local cooperation on the ground.
However what I usually see when people are talking about “working with” is that the Labour party should work against their own interests and in the interests of another party. I don’t see that happening with any other major party in Parliament (the subservient ones do seem to do it a lot), why do you think that Labour should?
But look at it from the viewpoint of the VOTERS. Te Tai Tokerau being a clear case in point.
The idea that political parties should try to preempt voters by removing candidates is incredibly stupid. Voters will react against that. I know I would. Remove my choice and I will vote against the parties doing it, either by not voting or voting for the best candidate who wasn’t involved.
In TTT, that Mana even suggested it was sufficient to cause a massive reaction against Mana by Labour maori activists and voters. It caused a massive increase in turnout and very little of that went to the Internet Mana candidate. That was in my view a direct reaction against such a politically corrupt suggestion.
Political parties and candidates need to win votes from voters on the basis of their arguments, not by dirty backroom deals between machine politicians. You don’t win it by deliberately removing voters choice of candidates. That is the kind of crap stupidity beloved by political theorists, and despised by voters. All it does is reduce the numbers of people voting.
The same thing applies to pre-election coalition talks. Sure, parties can indicate their preferences directly or indirectly. But what happens is entirely dependent on what the voters decide to support.
I’m getting pretty sick and tired of people droning on about this. What I have yet to hear is a reason why voters would support such “working with” behavior.
To me as a voter it simply looks like a way to elect more corrupt politicians who ignore voters. From the vast numbers of voters I have talked to over the years I’d expect the same reaction. And after all look at the way that the parties who have been elected using minor variants of this technique have survived. They wind up as useless stumps with one MP in an electorate who have more personal support than their party has party support across the whole rest of the country.
Political parties should stop looking for shortcuts and start working to build parties with widespread support over decades.
The idea that political parties should try to preempt voters by removing candidates is incredibly stupid. Voters will react against that. I know I would. Remove my choice and I will vote against the parties doing it, either by not voting or voting for the best candidate who wasn’t involved.
Considering that it’s a safe National seat what choice do Left leaning voters have in Northland? Labour, Greens, and Mana are never going to win Northland.
What we need to do is to give the Right wing voters a choice that will help them have a say about National’s corruption while also having a lot in common with the Left so that Left wing voters can support them as well and that means Winston.
I still think it would probably be a good idea to remove electorates so as to remove safe seats.
The same thing applies to pre-election coalition talks. Sure, parties can indicate their preferences directly or indirectly. But what happens is entirely dependent on what the voters decide to support.
Are you sure about that? From what I’ve seen it’s more about what the executives of the parties decide after the election rather than what the voters are supporting. It’s really very difficult to know what the voters are supporting when they’re not asked.
Peters is not standing my source says he is too tired age is getting to him. Fair enough too Labour won’t stand aside. Prime and her team are stoic if not slightly mad for going thru another election especially when you consider lefties within Labour don’t want her as a list MP, quite a revolt against her I’ve heard. She seems nice enough to me but there is a cloud hanging over her head. I would like to know what the skinny is with that?
Your source? Let me guess … it was your keyboard, wasn’t it? The same place you got the bullshit about Labour lefties not liking Willow-Jean Prime?
Still, at least you’re not a week out of date (we already had this discussion on TS last Thursday) and reduced to making up a “private poll” as the Daily Blog have done in order to justify the post. Meh.
I have a grudging admiration for Winston- don’t vote for him but he is becoming a bit incoherent in his parliamentary speeches.
He will be missed by many but its probably time to retire.
I hope his party stays out of the by-election
Yes we all know your a Labour Party cheerleader TRP, nothing wrong with that, however and with respect I trust a candidate and other NZF insiders word ahead of yours.
Look I’m not justifying what other unionists (a Generall Secretary & President of another union) have said to me. There is a question mark over idealodgy. There is nothing wrong with that being questioned, after all it is democratic.
As I’ve said she seems nice enough and very likable and I think her heart is in the right place, I just don’t know her so its all superficial niceties.
Unionists like to keep Labour left so naturally we want candidates as left as possible. You really need to keep your shrilly way of thinking to youself, it makes you look churlish coobah.
Well as if your opinion matters to me you just keep cheerleading for Labour and I’ll do fuck all for them till they get rid of Shearer, Goff and the other dead beats that put people off voting for them. My partner has quit the LP and is going to support the Greens. Having to suffer fools like you I won’t be far off.
Actually Labour got a fair amount of money thru me last election along with organising some professional forums to give them a solid platform. At this stage I’m in no hurry to do much till I see some changes. Plenty of options including room for a new party on the left vacated by Mana.
Right … so you were happy under the Cunliffe leadership, but now that the LP is being run by a unionist you won’t do SFA. What a strange kind of comrade you are, skinny!
I supported a opposition coalition its not all about Labour. Getting rid of deadwood MP’s should have happened when Clark lost, Goff kept them on so did Shearer because their included, too many National lite policies, scrap them and be left.
Skinny is a proud unionist. The use of ‘comrade’ was in that context. However, comrade still has meaning in the NZLP and we still sing the Red Flag with pride.
Labour had plenty of neoliberal candidates stand last election. By neoliberal, I mean candidates who believe that financials, financial markets and market mechanisms set, and should set, the direction of society albeit with some degree of regulation.
It’s a song I’ve been singing for a long, long time. As some of my other posts show I know and respect the meaning of the words. I know what ‘their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold’ means in the real world. I know what sacrifices have been made in the shade of the scarlet standard. So, less cheek, gsays and take a moment to honour those that came before us. Don’t flinch, don’t sneer.
The people’s flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyr’d dead
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold.
Then raise the scarlet standard high,
Within its shade we’ll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the red flag flying here.
yes ok trp, i do not doubt your sincerity and the gravity that comes with that anthem.
probably where i am coming from is that perhaps the labour party is no longer the vehicle that will address what is raiseed in that waiata.
the reforms of the ’80s, those mps last year with their noses in sky citys trough, labours behaviour towards parties to their left (alliance, helen and the greens, mana).
i do not expect for a moment to change your position but i do doubt that the current labour party would be something that mr savage, holland, lee, or fraser would be proud of.
Cheers, gsays. You may well be right about how Holland et al might see the modern LP, but the point is that it is on the way back to being a party they would be proud of. It’s a slow process, but the low point of the eighties is behind us in most ways. But the caucus will not change unless we win more seats. The sad fact of the last election result is that it further entrenched the ‘deadwood’ and we can only be thankful that Andrew Little just got over the line on the list.
We need more Willow-Jean Primes and Deborah Russells. But we won’t get them until we seriously improve our party vote.
Anyhoo, getting the look, so time to go! Onwards and upwards!
Haven’t seen any comment on here during the week about his many and variously-angled attempts to get any answer on who knew what and when re the Sabin issues before the election. Carter prevented any intelligence arising, including his own, but Winston had a go every day the House was in session. Of course, ministers including Key and someone else yesterday claimed it was outside their ministerial responsibilities.
Yesterday in fact, Carter so threatened Winston with expulsion from the house just prior to the last question, I wondered at Winston’s uncommon acquiescence and why he just sat there. It became crystal clear when the next question allowed to ask yet again about the issues up north and when they knew.
I trust Winston 100% on this one. He will not allow it to pass by unnoticed in the election .. and all power to him, as far as I’m concerned. He knows where the boundaries are and for sure, he remains agile enough to leap over them all.
(btw, have voted Green, Mana, Labour and NZ First as my conscience goes with the issues of the day requiring most attention, imho, so no name-calling please !)
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has confirmed he will compete in the Northland by-election… The electorate had been neglected by Government, he said, and it should be “the Florida of New Zealand”.
I wish him all the best in the by-election, he’ll certainly be better than whatever National crony gets the nod. But I’m not sure that comparing the electorate to; the public masturbation capital of the USA, is entirely the way to go about it.
“..Haven’t seen any comment on here during the week about his many and variously-angled attempts to get any answer on who knew what and when re the Sabin issues before the election…”
“(btw, have voted Green, Mana, Labour and NZ First as my conscience goes with the issues of the day requiring most attention, imho, so no name-calling please !)”
What! That is SHOCKING! How could you!
lol. Nah just kidding! All good!
I have mostly voted Labour and Alliance.
HOWEVER……
I voted for National twice : Once for Bolger (1990?) and once for the rubbish Key (2008), for mistaken sucked in wrong reasons. My biggest political error ever has been voting for this sweet talking crooked National and the untrustworthy Key. I voted for Mana (party vote) at the recent election as a matter of principal for the ganging-up-shafting Hone and Harre were getting from some parties, bloggers and MSM.
Bomber gets it wrong again. According to him NZ First were going to be wiped out last election and Internet Mana would do really well. Oh, and he thinks Stuart Nash is great, even though he is a right winger with links to WO and Lusk.
Winston Peters standing may take a few soft votes from the Nats and from the right wing of Labour, but he certainly wouldn’t win. Labour is very unlikely to win either unless all the Labour and Green supporters get out to vote and a large number of Nats are disillusioned/disgusted enough to stay at home. Depends how many know why Sabin stood down I guess.
To suggest Labour should stand aside for Peters is nuts – unless you have a right wing agenda that is.
Bomber is a bit if a fuck wit really. I read that horse shit of a post and it sucks. The man is sour over the epic fail of the Inernet/Mana connection.
I agree with you about lots of things PU but not in this case. Peters is just an old fashioned Nat, which is a bit better than the new breed of Nats, but a right-winger nevertheless.
He’d make life a little bit harder for the government if he won, but I don’t believe he has any chance of winning Northland, and Labour not standing a candidate in this seat would be used as fuel by the Nats for the next 2.5 years to suggest they are a spent force. Labour is more right wing that I would like already – collaborating with NZF just reinforces that tendency.
Personally I was hoping for a Labour/Green/Mana coalition, and a year out it looked possible. If it had to be Labour, NZFirst and the Greens then that would be better than what we have now, but there was no guarantee Peters would have agreed to this.
Little is not nearly as conservative as Peters on economic or social policy, so NZF would inevitably drag Labour rightwards. And I agree with you, Labour policies on helping the poorest and supporting mining/drilling were not good. That is why they need the Greens in coalition. Having NZF in coalition as well as the Greens would just make it harder to get better environmental and poverty policies enacted.
If I thought Winston Peters could win I’d agree, but I just can’t see it. Whangarei maybe, but not Northland.
IMO the 2014 NZF party votes were votes for Winston Peters. He’ll get a bigger proportion in the by-election, but not enough to beat the Nats – too big a gap to cover.
I think Peters will mostly get his extra votes from the Nats (he was once the National Party MP for Whangarei) and the reduction in National votes will give Prime an outside chance if she can get the vote out. Still a longshot, but worth pursuing..
Peters will make the by-election more interesting though, and I think he’ll find ways to let voters know the real story about Sabin.
hi phil and karen, cool discussion, found my self nodding internally to what has been discussed.
to out myself, i too have voted labour then green then mana/hone.
for me i would like to see the nats lose northland, by whatever means necesary(?).
i also have some empathy for what lprent said earlier in this post.
i am not a winnie fan (winston first), but i reckon the voting public in northland (from my view in the manawatu),is one revelation (sabin) from going ballistic.
The farming community that already know the reason of Sabin’s demise are showing their redneck blood by labeling him as the former ‘Maori’ MP. Nice easy way to explain things away. I nearly smacked the farmer that said this to me, instead I said oh right it’s a Maori thing is it, the farmer said don’t you read the paper there isn’t a day goes by that its not in the news. So there ya go easily explained away. Go figure huh.
Not to mention being a convenient smear of Peters campaign. In a; don’t vote for a M-aori candidate else they’ll surely end up engaging in the same vileness as Sabin, kind of way.
I don’t think Labour will stand aside. I do think they should. Winston is the only candidate I can see that would possibly take Northland off the Tories. He would also make sure the facts about Sabin became more widely known. One story going aroung Te Tai Tokerau is that Sabin and some mates smacked over some drug dealers. I wonder which Tory started that one?
Well, I would say that the Israeli *Government* has ghettoised an entire race.
The irony is that the Palestinian people are ethnically Semites. Many Jews in Israel nowadays eg. from Europe, Russia, Africa, etc. are not. It is in fact the country of Israel which is acting in an anti-Semitic way.
Bombing Gaza for Gas
They burn us in hell while they burn with gas.
“Guess what? Almost all the current wars, uprisings, and other conflicts in the Middle East are connected by a single thread, which is also a threat: these conflicts are part of an increasingly frenzied competition to find, extract, and market fossil fuels whose future consumption is guaranteed to lead to a set of cataclysmic environmental crises.”
Zionist State is what I would have called it Colonial Rawshark. It’s not just the government – but all the apparatus of the state working together – to create this very large prison.
Or even an AmeriZionist state – where the USA will sometimes act against its own geopolitical interests in order to further those of Israel. Like supplying billions in the latest advanced armaments to Israel to use against Palestinians – while trying to bring on to the US side Muslims in Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Comments like this are why some people conflate criticism of the Israeli government with anti-semitism. By all means criticise the *Israeli government*, but do not characterise or single out or blame *Jews*.
Sure, appreciate the sentiment also expressed above by CR but it aint that simple. What you are suggesting is de-personalising the situation but that is not always completely correct.
Israel is a jewish nation. It holds elections where the jewish population elects the government. The government then embarks on atrocities. Further elections are held where jewish people vote again. Further actions are undertaken.
I do, generally, blame Israeli jews. They personally choose the government which imprisons an entire nation of people. They need to take responsibility. Like men supposedly being more responsible for male rapists.
vto, excuse my butting in on your question to Michael re ‘why is it wrong?’
It is wrong simply because people of many views and beliefs, other than Jews, also live work breed serve fight vote and die in Israel.
We ourselves have “the one true God” spoken of in our Parliament every session (and I for one would prefer we didn’t) but no-one would say ‘the New Zealand Christians decided to go to war In Iraq.’
Despite the inextricably insidious nature of religion and politics they are, and should always be referred to as, separate idioms of identity.
Basically this. Israel is a pluralistic society, and citizens (incl. Arab citizens — presently 10% of the Israeli parliament are Arabs) have equal political rights regardless of ethnicity or religion. This also assumes that every Israeli Jew supports Netanyahu’s policies. That is false – look at the Israeli Labo(u)r Party’s policies, or Meretz’ policies. Very progressive parties and strongly support peace and a 2 state solution. The blame should lay with Israelis who support Netanyahu’s policies, and are not helping the peace process. Tarring all Israeli jews with the idea that they are imprisoning entire race is problematic. I assume that is an allusion to Nazi Germany.
There are ways to criticise Israel, without bordering on anti-semitism.
Hopefully Netanyahu will be gone in the upcoming Israeli election and a progressive, pro-peace left leaning government will be in place. The issue is much more complex than “Israeli Jews are imprisoning an entire race.” which is simply wrong and has anti semitic overtones.
Trust me, I don’t support Netanyahu’s policy at all. But I know that there is a constructive way to criticise Israel that is not bordering on anti semitic.
vto
The use of the word Jews is so emotionally laden that after it, the rest of any reasoned discussion can be lost to the highly sensitive who usually call themselves Zionists. Better just strip off the emotionally fraught stuff and stick to the basic facts which are alarming and provoking enough on their own.
Israel is a jewish nation. It holds elections where the jewish population elects the government.
Calling Israel a Jewish nation is like calling the US Government a Christian government. When in fact almost everything Congress and the White House prioritises to spend more money on is the exact inverse of the teachings of Jesus Christ. More money for weapons and war. More money for billionaires, bankers and money lenders. Less money for the poor and the needy. Less money for the welfare of the homeless, the struggling and the least of these.
And it doesn’t take a biblical scholar to figure out what inverting the teachings of Jesus Christ while at the same time using the symbology of Christianity is actually called.
“This week 40 groups—many of them focusing on rural and community-based responses to climate change—wrote Congress calling for the rejection of Fast Track trade authority, which would speed through two mega trade deals without fully assessing their impacts on the climate.”
President Obama wants Fast Track to pass two massive trade deals—the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) with a dozen Pacific Rim countries, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe. Both TPP and TTIP have been negotiated in secret, with only restricted access to the text for Members of Congress (but much greater access for corporate trade advisors).”
““There is little question that the economic globalization largely driven by trade deals over the last several decades has contributed to the expansion of fossil fuel and other dirty energy production that cause climate change, expanded deforestation and other methods of natural resource extraction, while undermining local and community-level responses to climate change,” the groups wrote. “We are concerned that Fast Track authority would expedite the quick passage of trade agreements without a full debate or assessment of climate and other potential negative impacts, and threatens to undermine efforts to address climate change at the local and community level.”
“There is little question that the economic globalization largely driven by trade deals over the last several decades has contributed to the expansion of fossil fuel and other dirty energy production that cause climate change, expanded deforestation and other methods of natural resource extraction, while undermining local and community-level responses to climate change,” the groups wrote. “We are concerned that Fast Track authority would expedite the quick passage of trade agreements without a full debate or assessment of climate and other potential negative impacts, and threatens to undermine efforts to address climate change at the local and community level.”
Protestors are occupying Sen. Ron Wyden’s office in Washington, DC “to remind him that the people want him to oppose Fast Track and the TPP.”
“Senator Wyden is the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee which is where fast track legislation would be introduced. The chair, Sen. Orrin Hatch, is pushing Wyden to join him in introducing a fast track bill.
The pressure is working! Last week, people all across OR told Sen. Wyden through rallies, teach-ins and a bus tour that they oppose fast track and the TPP. A new poll found that 62% of OR voters are opposed to the TPP and 73% oppose fast track. We’ve been in Wyden’s office for three days (since he returned to Washington).
Today, there was supposed to be a hearing on trade in the Senate Finance Committee but it was cancelled because Wyden is signalling that he is not ready to support fast track. This is great news!
Now is the time to thank Wyden and tell him that he needs to publicly oppose fast track. If he does that, the people will have his back.”
This week, we are occupying Sen. Ron Wyden’s office in Washington, DC to remind him that the people want him to oppose Fast Track and the TPP.
“Wellington City Council has voted to join nine other councils around the country in urging the Government to ensure the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership and Free Trade Agreement (TPPA) protects New Zealand’s interests and does not jeopardise the country’s sovereign rights.”
The Councils can shout that into a tin can. The government doesn’t give a stuff for our sovereign rights or, if they don’t give a stuff either for democracy, the country’s sovereign rights. They took them off Christchurch Environment when it was expedient for their mates in South Canterbury, they will sell bits off to foreigners when it seems advantageous to them. The test of TPPA’s worth is what is in it for them in money direct, or through gaining influence, or selling something for more than poor old NZ could afford to pay for it. Grannies had better watch out if they have gold fillings in their teeth.
Dwarf planet Ceres continues to puzzle scientists as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft gets closer to being captured into orbit around the object. The latest images from Dawn, taken nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers) from Ceres, reveal that a bright spot that stands out in previous images lies close to yet another bright area.
There are many disputed tales of where it all began, but like all good common man legends few clear facts exist to cement the origin. I lean to the World War one links (and slightly earlier stories) where the name itself was appearing first before an image was later added to a pre-existing graffiti. Kilroy is an aggregation of identities, defining none but encompassing many. Which is possibly why it has always appealed to me as a piece of visual humour. One I have reproduced in various forms in many many varied places.
It is the viewer’s identity as much as Kilroy’s that is represented. The idea of ‘we have already been here’.
And if you have never read them, I definitely recommend the War (& Peace) Memoirs of Spike Milligan, ( who makes a few references to Kilroy) but mainly because they are some of the most absurdly human accounts of the horrors and heydays of battlefields.
1 Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (1971)
2 “Rommel?” “Gunner Who?” (1974)
3 Monty: His Part in My Victory (1976) This and the previous two books were released and publicised as the first, second and third part respectively of a trilogy.
4 Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall (1978) (This was announced as the fourth part of his “increasingly misnamed” trilogy.)
5 Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (1985)
6 Goodbye Soldier (1986)
7 Peace Work (1992)
Bright spot has dimmer companion! For a moment I thought it was a commentary on the beige one’s regular appearances here at the Standard, but no …
Just an uneducated guess, but I’m going to go for volcanic eruptions melting sand into glass, which is reflecting light back at an unusual angle. Or our new insect overlords. Hard to tell from this distance!
I’d be more than happy to take a $150k salary and vote against everything in parliament, filibuster like Winston on speed, and be entirely unconstructive in select committees. In case you’re looking for potential anti-candidates…
Yes, it’s a way to strengthen our democracy, thus has merit.
If formalized, thus officially counted as a vote of no confidence in all of the above, it will effectively (if it attains the numbers) force a re-election, thus, requiring parties to re-look at and change their policies to regain voter confidence.
It will help encourage the large number of non-voters to partake and would also result in better party policy being formed.
This is the crux of Elizabeth Warren’s opposition to the TPPA in her own opinion piece in the Washington Post dated 25 Feb 2015.
“One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.
ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.”
A former US marine who worked at Iraq’s Taji Base near Bagdad says he doubts local soldiers can ever form an effective united army against Islamic State – http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20168680
“Apart from Little and Labour acting after the event rather than proactively. I’d have thought the timing was good for Little and Labour.”
Again he uses the same line that he failed to explain yesterday. Suggesting Labour should have acted more assertively in some fashion. How Labour are meant to do that before having knowledge of the events in question is an interesting notion.
Thinks he’s helping his idols and looking for material at the same time, if nothing to say how mean the commenters at TS are to him and play the martyr.
THERE WAS NO TERRORIST ATTACK AT WESTGATE HENDERSON!
Just before jumping to the wrong conclusion. It was not a terrorist attack. Truth be told – it was a van/car/truck fire in the car-park at the mall. Which in itself is bad, yes I’ll admit it bad and the smoke coming from it was toxic. But, and here is the but – out fire and police departments dealt with the situation really well. Indeed the fire department was awesome – they just had to deal with westy drivers – who lets face it are not the best. So no need to freak out!
Does beg the question – if this is a labelled a terrorist attack by the media – does that mean all us westies are now terrorist? There have been car/van/truck fires out here for years. Also for the naughty person who had the fire – I’m sure they feel bad enough. Will they get the Tory Terror law trip as well? Life happens – things go wrong – why the hell have we created a situation where by everything that goes wrong – is the terrorist fault?
The High Court in Auckland has also heard that Mona Dotcom was initially hesitant to donate money to the Internet Mana political party, at her husband’s suggestion, but eventually agreed the family trust would give $400,000
She believed Dotcom’s claims that his involvement with the Internet Mana party would eventually relieve the family of his threat of extradition, she said.
“At the end I was fine with it because Kim explained to me how this Internet Party would benefit us and the kids because it would help him with his political issues,” she said.
So who was it saying the Internet party had nothing to do with Dot Cons extradition?
A huge victory for Internet Neutrality and Freedom!…not all news coming out of the USA under Obama is bad!
‘FCC adopts net neutrality rules endorsed by open internet advocates’
“The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted to approve new rules endorsed by advocates of net neutrality and President Barack Obama that will prohibit internet service providers from discriminating against content producers”…
Israel continues to try and DOMINATE USA foreign policy …but now there is at last some resistance to the tail wagging the dog
‘Israeli PM’s unscheduled Congress speech causes diplomatic uproar in Washington’
“A rift is emerging between the US and Israel, after Barack Obama’s administration hit out at Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu for speaking to Congress without consent.
The Democrats say they are in the dark about Prime Minister Netanyahu being allowed to speak to Congress about Iran. The party says the Israeli delegation did not consult them and they therefore broke protocol. The Democrats were also fuming with the Republics after the Grand Old Party’s Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner, gave the Israeli PM the go-ahead”…..
‘Netanyahu ‘chickenshit’ & ‘coward’: US officials go tough on Israeli PM’
“US-Israeli relations have sunk to new lows after Obama administration officials were cited calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit” and “coward” engaging in political posturing, instead of efforts at Middle-Eastern de-escalation”…
The two countries have some congruent regional priorities – primarily the constraining of Persian/Shia power in the area (Iraq/Iran) as well as getting their preferred energy pipelines put in place across the region.
ISIS activity drains and distracts the Shia based Iraqi government and also its backers in Tehran from developing cohesive regional geopolitical strategies which might challenge Saudi Arabia or Israel. Basically, a large portion of the Iraqi and Iranian attention and resources is caught up fire fighting ISIS.
The last thing either Israel or Saudi Arabia want is some kind of oil rich Shia oriented Iran-Iraq superstate developing and affecting their own status in the middle east.
Of course, these little project pets have a habit of causing eventual blow back for their masters (witness Israel’s support of Hamas in the 1980s, or the CIA’s support of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan).
Well, that’s a stupid line. If investing in MRP was a good idea, it can’t have been good for NZ to divest istelf of half its shares.
I mean, we all know you’re a parasitic moral vacuum who confuses your own self interest with a public good (in those few occasions when you give any regard to anyone else), but to come out and claim such was a bit foolish of you.
This Key legacy motivated flag referendum is a HUGE waste of money.
He should have FIRST find out if there WAS a desire for change. He didn’t do that.
Went rough shod and framed his own questions, for not one, but two referendums, instead!
Dumb!
Can the referendums and Keep the present flag.
Think of changing it ONLY when and if we decide to become a Republic.
At least, in the proposed first referendum, have an option for people to indicate they do or do not wish to change the present flag at the present time. If the majority state that, then can the second referendum.
Looks like some complete sycophantic fool has advised this government.
Great poll on Campbell Live TV3 tonight regarding changing the New Zealand Flag. There were 10,000 participants – 16% = yes 84% = no. A decisive result if ever I saw one!
If John Key and co value democracy (this week’s episode on troops to Iraq leaves that very much in doubt), then the flag should remain as it is. The reported $27 million price tag required to change the flag could be spent in so many other productive ways such as feeding our children who are in poverty.
If democracy has any chance of surviving in this country, we must not allow the Government to bulldoze this through.
I texted NO. However further down the tract post-Key it would be OK to consider a change in a less expensive more democratic way. Remember Key railing against referenda in the last few years?
After coming under intense pressure PayPal has closed the account of cloud-storage service Mega. According to the company, SOPA proponent Senator Patrick Leahy personally pressured Visa and Mastercard who in turn called on PayPal to terminate the account. Bizarrely, Mega’s encryption is being cited as a key problem.
You get shut down by Visa and Mastercard despite meeting all legal requirements.
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
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Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
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Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
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Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
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Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
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What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
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The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
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Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
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Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
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Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
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In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
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The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
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Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Nearly everyone has experienced the frustration of something you use breaking and being difficult or expensive to fix. Proposed legislation could change that. It’s been raining on and off all Sunday afternoon but people are lining up outside a building in a corner of Gribblehirst Park in Sandringham, Auckland. In ...
What does a forever relationship look like when you don’t believe in marriage? And how do you celebrate it? This essay is part of our Sunday Essay series, made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.I’m going to do it, right now. I’m going to say ...
The Prime Minister has committed to resuming direct flights to Thailand. But it’s not a promise he will be able to deliver on anytime soon. The post Prime Minister jumps the gun in Thailand appeared first on Newsroom. ...
It’s not that long ago Eliza McCartney was seriously wondering if the Paris Olympics would be her pole vaulting swansong. After years of being hounded by injury after injury, the Rio Olympics bronze medallist was still confident she would compete at her second Olympics in Paris in July, unless something ...
FICTION 1 Take Two by Danielle Hawkins (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) There’s commercial fiction, like this book, and then there’s quality fiction, quality writers, quality literature; the forthcoming Auckland Writers Festival is full of quality, and ReadingRoom has two tickets to give away to the following events: Paul Lynch (Dublin ...
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You can’t have missed the Gallipoli story as the movies, documentaries, essays and books capture what it was like for New Zealand troops in their eight-month campaign on the Peninsula. But this Anzac Day the Auckland War Memorial Museum has published a book that sheds light on a little-known aspect of the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra In the free-for-all between the Australian government and Big Tech boss Elon Musk this week, the government had to be on a winner. Most people would have little sympathy with Musk’s vociferous opposition to ...
Asia Pacific Report Chief Mandla Mandela, a member of the National Assembly of South Africa and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, has joined the Freedom Flotilla in istanbul as the ships prepare to sail for Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. Mandela is also the ambassador for the Global Campaign to Return to ...
Pacific Media Watch Journalists who report on environmental issues are encountering growing difficulties in many parts of the world, reports Reporters Without Borders. According to the tally kept by RSF, 200 journalists have been subjected to threats and physical violence, including murder, in the past 10 years because they were ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra BagzhanSadvakassov/Upsplash, CC BY-SA Australia’s inflation rate has fallen for the fifth successive quarter, and it’s now less than half of what it was back in late 2022. ...
ACT's Rural Communities and Veterans spokesman Mark Cameron responds to cancellations and protests of ANZAC Day commemorations in Wellington. He says, "These pitiful attempts to detract from ANZAC Day are not at all indicative of the feelings of mainstream ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meighen McCrae, Associate Professor of Strategic & Defence Studies, Australian National University American and Australian stretcher bearers working together near the front line during the Battle of Hamel in 1918.Australian War Memorial While the AUKUS alliance is new, the Australian-American partnership ...
Pōneke based peace activists staged a silent protest at the ANZAC day service to highlight New Zealand’s complicity in war and genocide, and urge the government to take concrete steps to stop the genocide in Palestine. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Magdalena M.E. Bunbury, Postdoctoral Researcher, James Cook University Burial with a horse at the Rákóczifalva site, Hungary (8th century AD).Sándor Hegedűs, Hungarian National Museum, CC BY How do we understand past societies? For centuries, our main sources of information have been ...
Amanda Thompson doesn’t really do Anzac Day. But what she does do is remember the people she knew who had a lifetime to remember stuff they didn’t really want to, because of a war they didn’t ask for. And she does make Anzac biscuits.First published in 2021.All my ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Willis, Postdoctoral Researcher, CSIRO Xavier Boulenger/Shutterstock In the two decades to 2019, global plastic production doubled. By 2040, plastic manufacturing and processing could consume as much as 20% of global oil production and use up 15% of the annual carbon ...
With our collective remembrance, and steadfast belief in our common humanity, we strengthen our hope and resolve to do what we can to foster dialogue and understanding, and to heal divisions in our pursuit of peace. ...
Principal reasons for the opposition is the loss of the public’s democratic right to have “a fair say” and the vital need for a government free from corruption, said Casey Cravens of Dunedin, president of the New Zealand Federation of Freshwater ...
Never mind the scoreboard – in the 2000 Bledisloe Cup decider, the real trans-Tasman battle was won before kickoff.First published in 2016. The dawn of the new millennium was a dark time for the All Blacks. Their final game pre-Y2K was a 22-18 loss to South Africa in the ...
I’m on the wrong side of 40, I never pursued creative work and now my job is killing my soul. Help! Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,May I start with the least original conversation opener you’re likely to hear around the motu at the moment, particularly in Wellington: ...
“Never again - No AUKUS” was the message of the wreath laid at this morning’s national ANZAC Day commemorative service at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park this morning by the Stop AUKUS group. ...
Until this month, Auckland swimmer Hazel Ouwehand had never met a qualifying time in an Olympic event for a New Zealand team, even as a junior. Now she’s very likely off to the Paris Olympics after swimming well under the qualifying standard in the 100m butterfly twice – both in ...
While Anzac Day has experienced a resurgence in recent years, our other day of remembrance has slowly faded from view.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand. Original illustrations by Hope McConnell.First published in 2022.The high school’s head girl and ...
Australian and New Zealand volunteers fought together in the Waikato War, yet still its place in the Anzac tradition is unacknowledged by our defence forces or Returned Services Association.First published in 2018.When I was a boy cub I attended Anzac Day services in the South Auckland suburb of ...
A poem by Wellington writer Tayi Tibble.Hoki Mai She kisses him goodbye with her eyes still wet and alight from their last swim in the Awatere river. At the train station celebration, she leads the Kapa Haka but her voice keeps breaking under and over itself like waves. ...
A poem from Bill Manhire’s 2017 book of verse Some Things to Place in a Coffin.My World War I Poem Inside each trench, the sound of prayer. Inside each prayer, the sound of digging. Image courtesy of Auckland War Memorial Museum. ...
There are three books I have wolfed down in one sitting over the last two years. Colleen Maria Lenihan’s gorgeous and sad debut Kōhine, Noelle McCarthy’s memoir Grand about becoming her mother and then unbecoming her, and now Hine Toa, a staunch yet gentle self-portrait by living legend Ngāhuia te ...
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Asia Pacific Report Students and activist staff at Australia’s University of Sydney (USyd) have set up a Gaza solidarity encampment in support of Palestinians and similar student-led protests in the United States. The camp was pitched as mass graves, crippled hospitals, thousands of civilian deaths and the near-total destruction of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James B. Dorey, Lecturer in Biological Sciences, University of Wollongong Australian teddy bear bees are cute and fluffy, but get a look at that massive (unbarbed) stinger! James Dorey Photography Most of us have been stung by a bee and we ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Roberts, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong Aussie~mobs/FlickrVictor Farr, a private in the 1st Infantry Battalion, was among the first to land at Anzac Cove just before dawn on April 25 1915. Victor Farr ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Gregory Moore I had the good fortune to care for the sugar gum at The University of Melbourne’s Burnley Gardens in Victoria where I worked for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra BagzhanSadvakassov/Upsplash, CC BY-SA Australia’s inflation rate has fallen for the fifth successive quarter, and it’s now less than half of what it was back in late 2022. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Ong ViforJ, ARC Future Fellow & Professor of Economics, Curtin University Just when we think the price of rentals could not get any worse, this week’s Rental Affordability Snapshot by Anglicare has revealed low-income Australians are facing a housing crisis like ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meighen McCrae, Associate Professor of Strategic & Defence Studies, Australian National University American and Australian stretcher bearers working together near the front line during the Battle of Hamel in 1918.Australian War Memorial While the AUKUS alliance is new, the Australian-American partnership ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tracey Holmes, Professorial Fellow in Sport, University of Canberra When the news broke last weekend that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive to a banned drug in early 2021 and were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympic Games six months later ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cally Jetta, Senior Lecturer and Academic Lead; College for First Nations, University of Southern Queensland Australian War MemorialAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people, as well as sensitive historical information ...
RNZ News Melissa Lee has been ousted from New Zealand’s coalition cabinet and stripped of the Media portfolio, and Penny Simmonds has lost the Disability Issues portfolio in a reshuffle. Climate Change and Revenue Minister Simon Watts will take Lee’s spot in cabinet. Simmonds was a minister outside of cabinet. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University laurello/Shutterstock Some reports and popular books, such as Bill Gammage’s Biggest Estate on Earth, have argued that extensive areas of Australia’s forests were kept open through frequent burning by ...
Analysis - Christopher Luxon framing the demotion of two ministers as the portfolios getting "too complex" is a charitable way of saying they weren't up to the job. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra With Jim Chalmers’s third budget on May 14, Australians will be looking for some more cost-of-living relief – beyond the tax cuts – although they have been warned extra measures will be modest. As ...
Analysis: Melissa Lee has lost the media portfolio and her spot in Cabinet after multiple failed attempts to find solutions for a media industry in crisis. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister announced Lee would be losing her spot in Cabinet along with her media and communications ministerial portfolio. The job ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Wilmot, Senior Lecturer, Film, Deakin University Among the many Australian who served during the second world war, there is a small group of people whose stories remain largely untold. These are the Muslim men and women who, while small in number, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Saunders, PhD Candidate, University of Canberra There has been much analysis and praise of Justice Michael Lee’s recent judgement in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case against Channel Ten. Many people were openly relieved to read Lee’s “forensic” and “nuanced” application of law ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathy Gibbs, Program Director for the Bachelor of Education, Griffith University zEdward_Indy/Shutterstock Around one in 20 people has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It’s one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in childhood and often continues into adulthood. ADHD is diagnosed ...
The Fairer Future coalition of anti-poverty groups say Whaikaha must be properly funded going forward, and that to argue that poor financial management of the new Ministry is a red herring by the Prime Minister. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is today congratulating Hon. Paul Goldsmith on his appointment as Minister for Media and Communications and urges him to rule out state intervention in the private media sector. ...
Asia Pacific Report The West Papuan resistance OPM leader has condemned Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden, accusing their countries of “six decades of treachery” over Papuan independence. The open letter was released today by OPM chairman Jeffrey P Bomanak on the eve of ANZAC Day ...
Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits and quirks of New Zealanders at large. This week: writer and one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2024, Lauren Groff.The book I wish I’d writtenIf I wish I’d written a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Fechner, Research Fellow, Social Marketing, Griffith University mavo/Shutterstock Imagine having dinner at a restaurant. The menu offers plant-based meat alternatives made mostly from vegetables, mushrooms, legumes and wheat that mimic meat in taste, texture and smell. Despite being given that ...
“Three Strikes is a dead-end policy proposed by a dead-end government. The Three Strikes law ignores the causes of crime, instead just brutalising people already crushed by the cost of living.” ...
By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist An Australian-born judge in Kiribati could well face deportation later this week after a tribunal ruling that he should be removed from his post. The tribunal’s report has just been tabled in the Kiribati Parliament and is due to be debated by MPs ...
With its clear mandate for police use, political nuances, and nuanced public trust, Denmark's insights provide valuable considerations for Australia and New Zealand. ...
Did you receive a pay rise? Has your benefit gone up? No? Mike Sabin’s salary has! And the future welfare bill has been cut by $7,5 B.
Government of the rich, for the rich and to hell with everyone else.
don’t forget the back-payments..to last july…
..a nice little chq coming sabins’ way…
Yes that is the argument not whether MP’s deserve a pay rise. Everyone should get a pay rise that keeps ahead of the costs of living.
John Key’s stupid posturing is a detraction from the point that everyone should receive a pay increase. The opposition were a bit slow off the mark to have a crack at CEO’s like bankers ridiculously high pay increases.
Sabin needs the money for a lawyer to help him with his family matters.
You guys do understand MPs don’t control their pay right? They have no say in pay increases.
That said perhaps Key needs to look at changing the rules around MPs pay as he threatens to do every time there is a pay rise.
john key is the $100 million man..
..$70 million for a fucken war…
..and $30 million for a stupid fucken flag..
..imagine the good we could do here in new zealand with that money..?
..imagine how many homeless we could house..?
..as just one better use of this money..
+100 pu
But you forget were are just scum to be ignored, to the rich n powerful.
That’s because the elites no longer fear working people – like they should!
You’re destitute aren’t you?
Can’t even provide for your kids.
WTF would you know about money?
what do you know about ‘money’?Where does it come from ?
um..!..my ‘kids’..r adults..
..and w.t.f.has that got to do with key pissing a hundred mill up against a wall..?
..still as incoherent as ever..i see..
..w.t.f.do u know about anything..?
..you deranged old fool..
..how’s yr fucken ongoing dementia..?
..how’s talkback..?
..the adult diapers working ok..?
More than you.
One hundred and thirty years ago, at the beginning of 1885, New Zealanders debated whether or not to join a war against an Islamic army that had conquered a tract of desert and committed atrocities against its prisoners. In 1885, though, New Zealand Premier John Ballance decided not to join the British Empire in its war against jihadis. In fact, Ballance stated that he empathised with the Muslim forces fighting Britain. What lessons can we learn from history? http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/new-zealand-and-war-against-isis-lesson.html
Very interesting post, including the idea that refrigeration killed our developing independent spirit. We badly need to get it back.
hey murray, i reckon we are probably two generations at best, from going without refrigeration again.
thats why i am working towards that sort of future.
communal gardening, sharing any surplus, learning ‘old school’ skills, investing in our community.
Great post Scott
Interesting parallels.
Although I’d suggest that refrigeration turned at least a partial cultural dependence into economic dependence, not the other way around. No reason refrigerated ships had to go to England rather than Germany, Russia, Japan, or America.
Fifteen years into the 21st century the best NZ capitalism can offer many workers is a minimum wage of $14.75. At the same time, legally-guaranteed tea breaks have been lost and many conditions have been whittled away.
In many countries, workers fight.
But here, they by-and-large passively submit.
Here’s a take on how and why, using analysis by 1960s new left hero Herbert Marcuse:
Herbert Marcuse and the passivity of the NZ working class:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/herbert-marcuse-and-the-passive-state-of-the-new-zealand-working-class/
Phil
More Jamie-Lee Ross on TV3 please.
He must lose the Nats 1,000s of votes every time he appears. He reminds me of Nick Smith: he is so slimey that your confidence in humanity is slightly deminished after listening to him speak.
i find that after lee-ross has appeared on television..
..there is an oily-film i must wipe off the screen…
Stop licking the screen.
i just luv sticking my tongue into his dimple..
ewww! 🙂
there’s something more appropriate to stick in his dimple.
Besides which (as an intermittent interloper on this site), it seems to me he may very well pop up on here regularly. If its not him, it must be his twin.
(Honest John ffs!)
I can see another Aaron GIlmore in the making with that fella. All it will take is for his JK arse-licking; ideologiclly-driven; spin and bullshit-uttering to get the better of him (a bit like patholocical liars forgetting their past BS).
Do you know if he ever sold real estate in a former life? or used cars perhaps.
debt-collector..?..
..animal-control fascist..?
Smarmy is the word to describe Jamie Lee Ross.
edit link
http://www.yourdictionary.com/smarmy
More on the methane
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/66728187/nervous-scientists-wary-of-giant-craters-in-siberia
the taste in your mouth is the shit hitting the fan…
and in Alaska too .. will search for link …
and your analogy .. or is it a metaphor ? not enough mouthwash in the known universe to remove the taste … here for perpetuity, however long that might be now !!
images …
https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=methane+holes+in+arctic&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=667&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=LLjvVIHdF9KB8QWiyoDoBw&ved=0CCgQ7Ak
and it’s the methane being released under the ocean in the Arctic circle … tragic, but what is done cannot now be undone.
Nigel Haworth has been elected President on the NZLP. Trained as an economist and now a professor specialising in HR, he’s been influential on the policy council for the last few years.
Edit: And elected to the policy council are Michael Wood, Liz Craig, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, Virginia Andersen and Kieran McAnulty.
Good to see Virginia Anderson there…
I would like to say that I hope Nigel Haworth and co. will create a special role for the losing presidential candidate, Robert Gallagher. He has huge organisational experience… something which has been in short supply in recent years.
+1
So the question becomes – how much lower can labour go. A lecturer in H.R.
MMMM I wonder all those people I help – whose the one actually doing the dicking them over in the work place.
9 time out of 10 – The H.R. department.
Labour – proving to working people they are the enemy – one elected official at a time…
well said adam, i have said it before and i will say it again, labour was the party for the working person, what are they now?
(how about opening one here..?..)
“..Avatar Director James Cameron Opening Up America’s First Vegan School..
..In addition to blockbusters – the director says he’s focusing on getting kids to eat ‘the right thing’ –
– to aid the planet..”
(cont..)
http://www.alternet.org/media/avatar-director-james-cameron-opening-americas-first-vegan-school
Vegans drink Coke and eat potato chips and plenty of other rubbish.
yes my son, after being lean and fit, got quite fat after becoming a Vegan…thank goodness he is no longer one…but the weight gain and bad eating habits are hard to get rid of
Isn’t anecdata wonderful?
It’s time for your reality check.
I take it that you are a skinny vegan?…i am an empiricist ( admittedly on a sample of one teenage boy )….and propaganda is a “wonderful” thing…so easy to select the sample of fanatics and skew it away from any counter evidence
🙄
Science is propaganda. You sound like Rupert Murdoch.
According to CV it is because science is losing in the face of homeopathy
Everyone is losing because ‘science’ is a corporately controlled industry
+100 The Murphey
Science is a method, not an industry, or Ribena wouldn’t have had to change their labelling.
Science is a very useful method, which is why entire industries spring up around its findings.
It is also a method used by humans, with human failings. All you’re doing is pointing at them as though you think you’re the first person to notice.
Christianity (and other religions) are also used by humans, ones with “human failings.” Why should science get the extra pass for “just being human” when you refuse to give them out for other human endeavours?
Oh I agree.
But that’s not all that “science” is. Today science and technology is predominantly a tool of corporates, commercial interests and greed for power. Science which doesn’t serve those interests or their narratives is being systematically starved/sidelined.
Why does science have more credibility? Simple: falsifiable hypotheses, replicable results.
You’re pointing the bone in the wrong direction: where industrial concerns and other conflicts of interest are being allowed to distort scientific findings, the problem is politics.
No the problem is greed Greed of the corporates which use “science” to promote unsustainable and unreliable products.
There are many instances of unsafe medicines, and medical products being promoted by greedy pharmaceutical companies. And that is only one area. Monsanto et al in agriculture is another. http://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/monsantos-good-bad-pr-problem/
But its not just the fact that it has poor PR, Frankly it deserves it deserves its infamy. It’s whole corporate culture is based on greed.
eg
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/press-releases/3751/chef-colicchio-activists-lawmakers-demand-action-on-gmo-labeling#
(glyphosate is banned in Canada and many other countries – but not in NZ).
Corporates which abuse research, bring the scientific method into disrepute. And the end result is a population distrustful of science and the Age of Stupid.
“The problem is greed.”
I don’t think we’re eliminating greed any time soon. Political solutions are available, though.
Sometimes I despair. As if it’s not bad enough that the RWNJs hate science……..
@ chooky..i dunno how that happened..
..he must have been on a vegan junk-food diet..
..and i just had a look for it..(and couldn’t find it..will try again later..)
..but one of the most powerful items i have seen on this was an experiment conducted in a baptist church in florida..
..most of the congregation was african-american/middle-aged/overweight/obese..
..they were asked if they wd try an experiment for 30 days..
..they were supported with cooking/recipie/dietary-advice…
..and their testimonies at the end of this experiment are some powerful medicine..
..person after person rose to talk about how they have not only shed weight..but most of the meds they were on..
..and were feeling great..
..there were tears of gratitude all round…
(it would be a good/worthwhile exercise to do something similar here..)
“he must have been on a vegan junk-food diet”…well what else are teenage gamers into ?..
not the ones i know..les..
not a very convincing arguement for eating ‘the right thing’ Phil.My understanding is anything goes ,so long as it doesn’t involve…animals.
yr ‘understanding’ is wrong..
..and a vegan junk-fod diet cd do some serious harm..
Is Tony Abbott going to regret coming to NZ today? Aussie media is reporting that Turnbull is again mustering the numbers and Julie Bishop just so happened to contradict pretty much everything Abbott has said in the Parliament regarding the Gillian Triggs affair.
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/julie-bishop-admits-role-with-triggs-was-discussed-20150226-13q0nw.html
Abbott is a walking dead man, his slim hopes of remaining rests upon an Aussie win tomorrow, it would be a positive out of a bad situation if they won.
oooooh, perhaps it’s catching ? we can but hope ….
He has no hope, his ratings continue to drop and he compounds matters by opening mouth and being tony Abbott.
it wd be sweet if he was rolled while he is here…
Is Labour going to stand aside to let Winston through to have a decent go at winning Northland?…this is a test for the Labour Party ….does it have the vision and the co-operation required to be part of a Left coalition government … or does Labour regard it as a horse race where its duty is to beat the other Left contenders?
‘Will Labour stand aside in Northland to let NZ First beat National? –
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/02/26/will-labour-stand-aside-in-northland-to-let-nz-first-beat-national/
Absolutely not. That would be madness in the wider sense – imagine the message that the rest of NZ takes from that? Imagine the hay the Nats would make of it? Imagine having Winston Peters again in the hot seat? Imagine trusting the untrustworthy Peters?
no no no
it is only 2 1/2 years until labour takes office anyway. Just keep the peg on your nose for a while longer instead
the message they wd take..is that these parties can clearly work together..
..what can the nats say against tactical-voting..(c.f..epsom/ohariu?.”..
…and why the concern about what fucken national ‘would say’..?
..(and especially as a reason for labour not to do something..?..(can i suggest they ‘grow a pair’..?..)
..what ‘hot seat’..?
..what need to ‘trust’..?
..do you have any other reasons against..?
..labour won’t win in a two-horse race..
..this is an opportunity to take a tory safe-seat..
..and if you are worried about the message labour send –
– by dismissing this idea..all they show is that they still have not got their heads around operating in an mmp environment..
..and will continue to try to kill their potential coalition-partners..
..how seriously fucked-up is that..?
it appears to me Little is trying to position Labour as THE credible opposition in its own right,never mind the other left parties.Seems like a good strategy to me.
No it’s not as it shows division in the Left parties. What Labour and the rest of the Left parties need to do is to show that each party is a tight nit group and that they can work together. What we’ve seen over the last few years is Labour falling apart at the seems and that they won’t work with any other party. They’re finally getting over the falling apart at the seems bit but they still refuse to work with any other party.
so what .Never mind what divides them,when the time is right,is the time to work together.In the meantime Labour gets painted as supporting all sorts of policy middle NZ cannot wear.
So what? It shows that the Left are still not capable of governing.
That depends what you mean by “work with”. They do that all of the time in parliament and there is a lot of local cooperation on the ground.
However what I usually see when people are talking about “working with” is that the Labour party should work against their own interests and in the interests of another party. I don’t see that happening with any other major party in Parliament (the subservient ones do seem to do it a lot), why do you think that Labour should?
But look at it from the viewpoint of the VOTERS. Te Tai Tokerau being a clear case in point.
The idea that political parties should try to preempt voters by removing candidates is incredibly stupid. Voters will react against that. I know I would. Remove my choice and I will vote against the parties doing it, either by not voting or voting for the best candidate who wasn’t involved.
In TTT, that Mana even suggested it was sufficient to cause a massive reaction against Mana by Labour maori activists and voters. It caused a massive increase in turnout and very little of that went to the Internet Mana candidate. That was in my view a direct reaction against such a politically corrupt suggestion.
Political parties and candidates need to win votes from voters on the basis of their arguments, not by dirty backroom deals between machine politicians. You don’t win it by deliberately removing voters choice of candidates. That is the kind of crap stupidity beloved by political theorists, and despised by voters. All it does is reduce the numbers of people voting.
The same thing applies to pre-election coalition talks. Sure, parties can indicate their preferences directly or indirectly. But what happens is entirely dependent on what the voters decide to support.
I’m getting pretty sick and tired of people droning on about this. What I have yet to hear is a reason why voters would support such “working with” behavior.
To me as a voter it simply looks like a way to elect more corrupt politicians who ignore voters. From the vast numbers of voters I have talked to over the years I’d expect the same reaction. And after all look at the way that the parties who have been elected using minor variants of this technique have survived. They wind up as useless stumps with one MP in an electorate who have more personal support than their party has party support across the whole rest of the country.
Political parties should stop looking for shortcuts and start working to build parties with widespread support over decades.
“..over decades…”
don’t think we have that luxury..
..fings r kinda urgent..eh..?
..and yr arguments are based/rely on a lot of false premises..
..and seem to blissfully ignore the special circumstances in this case..
The idea that political parties should try to preempt voters by removing candidates is incredibly stupid. Voters will react against that. I know I would. Remove my choice and I will vote against the parties doing it, either by not voting or voting for the best candidate who wasn’t involved.
Considering that it’s a safe National seat what choice do Left leaning voters have in Northland? Labour, Greens, and Mana are never going to win Northland.
What we need to do is to give the Right wing voters a choice that will help them have a say about National’s corruption while also having a lot in common with the Left so that Left wing voters can support them as well and that means Winston.
I still think it would probably be a good idea to remove electorates so as to remove safe seats.
Are you sure about that? From what I’ve seen it’s more about what the executives of the parties decide after the election rather than what the voters are supporting. It’s really very difficult to know what the voters are supporting when they’re not asked.
Peters is not standing my source says he is too tired age is getting to him. Fair enough too Labour won’t stand aside. Prime and her team are stoic if not slightly mad for going thru another election especially when you consider lefties within Labour don’t want her as a list MP, quite a revolt against her I’ve heard. She seems nice enough to me but there is a cloud hanging over her head. I would like to know what the skinny is with that?
Your source? Let me guess … it was your keyboard, wasn’t it? The same place you got the bullshit about Labour lefties not liking Willow-Jean Prime?
Still, at least you’re not a week out of date (we already had this discussion on TS last Thursday) and reduced to making up a “private poll” as the Daily Blog have done in order to justify the post. Meh.
I have a grudging admiration for Winston- don’t vote for him but he is becoming a bit incoherent in his parliamentary speeches.
He will be missed by many but its probably time to retire.
I hope his party stays out of the by-election
Yes we all know your a Labour Party cheerleader TRP, nothing wrong with that, however and with respect I trust a candidate and other NZF insiders word ahead of yours.
Look I’m not justifying what other unionists (a Generall Secretary & President of another union) have said to me. There is a question mark over idealodgy. There is nothing wrong with that being questioned, after all it is democratic.
As I’ve said she seems nice enough and very likable and I think her heart is in the right place, I just don’t know her so its all superficial niceties.
Unionists like to keep Labour left so naturally we want candidates as left as possible. You really need to keep your shrilly way of thinking to youself, it makes you look churlish coobah.
Yeah, as I thought, making it up.
Well as if your opinion matters to me you just keep cheerleading for Labour and I’ll do fuck all for them till they get rid of Shearer, Goff and the other dead beats that put people off voting for them. My partner has quit the LP and is going to support the Greens. Having to suffer fools like you I won’t be far off.
Feel free to do one, then skinny. If you’re in the party and doing nothing as you say, then you’re the real deadbeat.
Actually Labour got a fair amount of money thru me last election along with organising some professional forums to give them a solid platform. At this stage I’m in no hurry to do much till I see some changes. Plenty of options including room for a new party on the left vacated by Mana.
Right … so you were happy under the Cunliffe leadership, but now that the LP is being run by a unionist you won’t do SFA. What a strange kind of comrade you are, skinny!
I supported a opposition coalition its not all about Labour. Getting rid of deadwood MP’s should have happened when Clark lost, Goff kept them on so did Shearer because their included, too many National lite policies, scrap them and be left.
+ 100% Te Reo Putake. ” A strange kind of comrade” indeed, and strange in reality as well !
hi trp and jenny, ive gotta say the use of the word comrade by labour party stalwarts, is damn near offensive.
with ya goffs, cosgroves, kings etc lingering there is bugger all comrade behaviour going on.
Skinny is a proud unionist. The use of ‘comrade’ was in that context. However, comrade still has meaning in the NZLP and we still sing the Red Flag with pride.
Labour had plenty of neoliberal candidates stand last election. By neoliberal, I mean candidates who believe that financials, financial markets and market mechanisms set, and should set, the direction of society albeit with some degree of regulation.
Far too many for my likes CV. Candidate selection had poor vetting the rightwing of the party too much influence was the problem.
hi cr, i agree, and wish to use this reply to ask trp if it is hard to sing with your tongue in your cheek?
It’s a song I’ve been singing for a long, long time. As some of my other posts show I know and respect the meaning of the words. I know what ‘their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold’ means in the real world. I know what sacrifices have been made in the shade of the scarlet standard. So, less cheek, gsays and take a moment to honour those that came before us. Don’t flinch, don’t sneer.
The people’s flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyr’d dead
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold.
Then raise the scarlet standard high,
Within its shade we’ll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the red flag flying here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-TFkb9-Rf0
yes ok trp, i do not doubt your sincerity and the gravity that comes with that anthem.
probably where i am coming from is that perhaps the labour party is no longer the vehicle that will address what is raiseed in that waiata.
the reforms of the ’80s, those mps last year with their noses in sky citys trough, labours behaviour towards parties to their left (alliance, helen and the greens, mana).
i do not expect for a moment to change your position but i do doubt that the current labour party would be something that mr savage, holland, lee, or fraser would be proud of.
Cheers, gsays. You may well be right about how Holland et al might see the modern LP, but the point is that it is on the way back to being a party they would be proud of. It’s a slow process, but the low point of the eighties is behind us in most ways. But the caucus will not change unless we win more seats. The sad fact of the last election result is that it further entrenched the ‘deadwood’ and we can only be thankful that Andrew Little just got over the line on the list.
We need more Willow-Jean Primes and Deborah Russells. But we won’t get them until we seriously improve our party vote.
Anyhoo, getting the look, so time to go! Onwards and upwards!
nighty night. another day tomorrow, go the nz cricket team!
Seems my source was wrong just got a call from one of his MPs to help with Peters campaign, its confirmed he is standing in the By-Election.
Well, I, for one, am very happy to hear that.
Haven’t seen any comment on here during the week about his many and variously-angled attempts to get any answer on who knew what and when re the Sabin issues before the election. Carter prevented any intelligence arising, including his own, but Winston had a go every day the House was in session. Of course, ministers including Key and someone else yesterday claimed it was outside their ministerial responsibilities.
Yesterday in fact, Carter so threatened Winston with expulsion from the house just prior to the last question, I wondered at Winston’s uncommon acquiescence and why he just sat there. It became crystal clear when the next question allowed to ask yet again about the issues up north and when they knew.
I trust Winston 100% on this one. He will not allow it to pass by unnoticed in the election .. and all power to him, as far as I’m concerned. He knows where the boundaries are and for sure, he remains agile enough to leap over them all.
(btw, have voted Green, Mana, Labour and NZ First as my conscience goes with the issues of the day requiring most attention, imho, so no name-calling please !)
@ rawshark..
“..Haven’t seen any comment on here during the week about his many and variously-angled attempts to get any answer on who knew what and when re the Sabin issues before the election…”
http://whoar.co.nz/2015/new-zealand-parliament-list-of-questions-for-oral-answer-thursday-26-february-2015/
“(btw, have voted Green, Mana, Labour and NZ First as my conscience goes with the issues of the day requiring most attention, imho, so no name-calling please !)”
What! That is SHOCKING! How could you!
lol. Nah just kidding! All good!
I have mostly voted Labour and Alliance.
HOWEVER……
I voted for National twice : Once for Bolger (1990?) and once for the rubbish Key (2008), for mistaken sucked in wrong reasons. My biggest political error ever has been voting for this sweet talking crooked National and the untrustworthy Key. I voted for Mana (party vote) at the recent election as a matter of principal for the ganging-up-shafting Hone and Harre were getting from some parties, bloggers and MSM.
+100 rawshark-yeshe
Bomber gets it wrong again. According to him NZ First were going to be wiped out last election and Internet Mana would do really well. Oh, and he thinks Stuart Nash is great, even though he is a right winger with links to WO and Lusk.
Winston Peters standing may take a few soft votes from the Nats and from the right wing of Labour, but he certainly wouldn’t win. Labour is very unlikely to win either unless all the Labour and Green supporters get out to vote and a large number of Nats are disillusioned/disgusted enough to stay at home. Depends how many know why Sabin stood down I guess.
To suggest Labour should stand aside for Peters is nuts – unless you have a right wing agenda that is.
Bomber is a bit if a fuck wit really. I read that horse shit of a post and it sucks. The man is sour over the epic fail of the Inernet/Mana connection.
@ karen..
as one who cd not really be classified as a ‘rightwinger’..
..i support labour learning how to play under mmp…
..and as a mana voter i shd really have the shits @ peters for his ganging-up on harawira..
..but that tribal-shit that seems to infect most of labour..
..doesn’t wash with me..
..i see a real chance to deal a body-blow to the tories…
..that’s what i see..
..not that historical f.p.p. tribal-bullshit..
.that seems to blind labour/labour-supporters..
..and in the process guarantee vote-splitting/defeat…
I agree with you about lots of things PU but not in this case. Peters is just an old fashioned Nat, which is a bit better than the new breed of Nats, but a right-winger nevertheless.
He’d make life a little bit harder for the government if he won, but I don’t believe he has any chance of winning Northland, and Labour not standing a candidate in this seat would be used as fuel by the Nats for the next 2.5 years to suggest they are a spent force. Labour is more right wing that I would like already – collaborating with NZF just reinforces that tendency.
it amazes me how terrified labour people seem to be about what the tories ‘might say’…
..to the extent it freezes them into inactivity..
..and yr argument that peters will make labour ‘more rightwing’ is kinda laughable..
..do you not see nz first as part of a new coalition running the country..?
..and if not with them..who/how..?
..so..?
..and a factcheck for you..
..have you forgotten how little promised to get rid of ‘radical-policies’..
..and to shed their ‘too-left’ policies from ’14..
..(keeping in mind that labour ’14 offered nothing to/for the poorest..promised drilling/mining etc..)
..peters didn’t make them/little do that..did he..?
Personally I was hoping for a Labour/Green/Mana coalition, and a year out it looked possible. If it had to be Labour, NZFirst and the Greens then that would be better than what we have now, but there was no guarantee Peters would have agreed to this.
Little is not nearly as conservative as Peters on economic or social policy, so NZF would inevitably drag Labour rightwards. And I agree with you, Labour policies on helping the poorest and supporting mining/drilling were not good. That is why they need the Greens in coalition. Having NZF in coalition as well as the Greens would just make it harder to get better environmental and poverty policies enacted.
“..Personally I was hoping for a Labour/Green/Mana coalition,..”
..ditto..
..this is second-best..
..but better than just giving up and handing the seat to the tories..
..surely..?
..and while i agree with yr peters more etc than lab/grns..
..i dunno if those concerns apply here..
..we are talking a bye-election..not post-election negotiations..
..with very special circumstances in play..
..and of course northland is such a neglected region..(by both the tories and labour..)
..that if peters got thru..and achieved some wins for the region..(which he would..)
..i cd see this breaking the certainties of being a safe tory seat..
..which wd also be a good thing..to try/have a go at..
..you’d think/surely..?
If I thought Winston Peters could win I’d agree, but I just can’t see it. Whangarei maybe, but not Northland.
IMO the 2014 NZF party votes were votes for Winston Peters. He’ll get a bigger proportion in the by-election, but not enough to beat the Nats – too big a gap to cover.
I think Peters will mostly get his extra votes from the Nats (he was once the National Party MP for Whangarei) and the reduction in National votes will give Prime an outside chance if she can get the vote out. Still a longshot, but worth pursuing..
Peters will make the by-election more interesting though, and I think he’ll find ways to let voters know the real story about Sabin.
ideally i wd like prime not to stand..to have a clear run..
..but even if she does..
..the alternate scenario is that peters splits the tory vote enough to let prime thru the miiddle.
..i actually think it is impossible to call the result..
..there are too many imponderables/sabin-scenarios to yet be played out…
hi phil and karen, cool discussion, found my self nodding internally to what has been discussed.
to out myself, i too have voted labour then green then mana/hone.
for me i would like to see the nats lose northland, by whatever means necesary(?).
i also have some empathy for what lprent said earlier in this post.
i am not a winnie fan (winston first), but i reckon the voting public in northland (from my view in the manawatu),is one revelation (sabin) from going ballistic.
The farming community that already know the reason of Sabin’s demise are showing their redneck blood by labeling him as the former ‘Maori’ MP. Nice easy way to explain things away. I nearly smacked the farmer that said this to me, instead I said oh right it’s a Maori thing is it, the farmer said don’t you read the paper there isn’t a day goes by that its not in the news. So there ya go easily explained away. Go figure huh.
oh skinny, that’s so horrible to read.
You gotta love the prejudice and the efficient rationalising away of their previous support of the prick
CR
Not to mention being a convenient smear of Peters campaign. In a; don’t vote for a M-aori candidate else they’ll surely end up engaging in the same vileness as Sabin, kind of way.
I don’t think Labour will stand aside. I do think they should. Winston is the only candidate I can see that would possibly take Northland off the Tories. He would also make sure the facts about Sabin became more widely known. One story going aroung Te Tai Tokerau is that Sabin and some mates smacked over some drug dealers. I wonder which Tory started that one?
New Banksy. Holiday in Gaza.
Very good.
The Israeli jews have imprisoned an entire race. Who would have thought.
Bastards.
Well, I would say that the Israeli *Government* has ghettoised an entire race.
The irony is that the Palestinian people are ethnically Semites. Many Jews in Israel nowadays eg. from Europe, Russia, Africa, etc. are not. It is in fact the country of Israel which is acting in an anti-Semitic way.
Bombing Gaza for Gas
They burn us in hell while they burn with gas.
“Guess what? Almost all the current wars, uprisings, and other conflicts in the Middle East are connected by a single thread, which is also a threat: these conflicts are part of an increasingly frenzied competition to find, extract, and market fossil fuels whose future consumption is guaranteed to lead to a set of cataclysmic environmental crises.”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175961/tomgram%3A_michael_schwartz%2C_israel%2C_gaza%2C_and_energy_wars_in_the_middle_east/
Yep. Gas and oil, and associated pipelines. That’s part of the hidden agenda.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article184806.html
Zionist State is what I would have called it Colonial Rawshark. It’s not just the government – but all the apparatus of the state working together – to create this very large prison.
Or even an AmeriZionist state – where the USA will sometimes act against its own geopolitical interests in order to further those of Israel. Like supplying billions in the latest advanced armaments to Israel to use against Palestinians – while trying to bring on to the US side Muslims in Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Correct CR
The obviousness of the repeated efforts to associate anti semitism with Judaism should be the red flag to most
Comments like this are why some people conflate criticism of the Israeli government with anti-semitism. By all means criticise the *Israeli government*, but do not characterise or single out or blame *Jews*.
Sure, appreciate the sentiment also expressed above by CR but it aint that simple. What you are suggesting is de-personalising the situation but that is not always completely correct.
Israel is a jewish nation. It holds elections where the jewish population elects the government. The government then embarks on atrocities. Further elections are held where jewish people vote again. Further actions are undertaken.
I do, generally, blame Israeli jews. They personally choose the government which imprisons an entire nation of people. They need to take responsibility. Like men supposedly being more responsible for male rapists.
You need to explain how this is wrong Michael.
vto, excuse my butting in on your question to Michael re ‘why is it wrong?’
It is wrong simply because people of many views and beliefs, other than Jews, also live work breed serve fight vote and die in Israel.
We ourselves have “the one true God” spoken of in our Parliament every session (and I for one would prefer we didn’t) but no-one would say ‘the New Zealand Christians decided to go to war In Iraq.’
Despite the inextricably insidious nature of religion and politics they are, and should always be referred to as, separate idioms of identity.
Basically this. Israel is a pluralistic society, and citizens (incl. Arab citizens — presently 10% of the Israeli parliament are Arabs) have equal political rights regardless of ethnicity or religion. This also assumes that every Israeli Jew supports Netanyahu’s policies. That is false – look at the Israeli Labo(u)r Party’s policies, or Meretz’ policies. Very progressive parties and strongly support peace and a 2 state solution. The blame should lay with Israelis who support Netanyahu’s policies, and are not helping the peace process. Tarring all Israeli jews with the idea that they are imprisoning entire race is problematic. I assume that is an allusion to Nazi Germany.
There are ways to criticise Israel, without bordering on anti-semitism.
Just a few things to read-
Israeli Labor Party platform: http://www.labor.org.il/%D7%91%D7%9E%D7%A4%D7%9C%D7%92%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94/60-%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%9C%D7%94/17641-israeli-labor-party-platfrom-2013.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meretz
Hopefully Netanyahu will be gone in the upcoming Israeli election and a progressive, pro-peace left leaning government will be in place. The issue is much more complex than “Israeli Jews are imprisoning an entire race.” which is simply wrong and has anti semitic overtones.
Trust me, I don’t support Netanyahu’s policy at all. But I know that there is a constructive way to criticise Israel that is not bordering on anti semitic.
Q. Why are you repeatedly using the term ‘ anti semitic’ ?
vto
The use of the word Jews is so emotionally laden that after it, the rest of any reasoned discussion can be lost to the highly sensitive who usually call themselves Zionists. Better just strip off the emotionally fraught stuff and stick to the basic facts which are alarming and provoking enough on their own.
Calling Israel a Jewish nation is like calling the US Government a Christian government. When in fact almost everything Congress and the White House prioritises to spend more money on is the exact inverse of the teachings of Jesus Christ. More money for weapons and war. More money for billionaires, bankers and money lenders. Less money for the poor and the needy. Less money for the welfare of the homeless, the struggling and the least of these.
And it doesn’t take a biblical scholar to figure out what inverting the teachings of Jesus Christ while at the same time using the symbology of Christianity is actually called.
Chilling in Gaza.
BANKSY delivers reality again
and casually creates one of his greatest ever site specific artworks
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/banksy-new-gaza-artwork/?fb=dd
Knowledge about the potential perils of TPPA is starting to seep through.
“Wellington City Council has voted to join nine other councils around the country in urging the Government to ensure the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership and Free Trade Agreement (TPPA) protects New Zealand’s interests and does not jeopardise the country’s sovereign rights.”
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1502/S00678/wellington-city-council-joins-calls-for-tppa-benefits.htm
Meanwhile in USA
“This week 40 groups—many of them focusing on rural and community-based responses to climate change—wrote Congress calling for the rejection of Fast Track trade authority, which would speed through two mega trade deals without fully assessing their impacts on the climate.”
President Obama wants Fast Track to pass two massive trade deals—the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) with a dozen Pacific Rim countries, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe. Both TPP and TTIP have been negotiated in secret, with only restricted access to the text for Members of Congress (but much greater access for corporate trade advisors).”
““There is little question that the economic globalization largely driven by trade deals over the last several decades has contributed to the expansion of fossil fuel and other dirty energy production that cause climate change, expanded deforestation and other methods of natural resource extraction, while undermining local and community-level responses to climate change,” the groups wrote. “We are concerned that Fast Track authority would expedite the quick passage of trade agreements without a full debate or assessment of climate and other potential negative impacts, and threatens to undermine efforts to address climate change at the local and community level.”
“There is little question that the economic globalization largely driven by trade deals over the last several decades has contributed to the expansion of fossil fuel and other dirty energy production that cause climate change, expanded deforestation and other methods of natural resource extraction, while undermining local and community-level responses to climate change,” the groups wrote. “We are concerned that Fast Track authority would expedite the quick passage of trade agreements without a full debate or assessment of climate and other potential negative impacts, and threatens to undermine efforts to address climate change at the local and community level.”
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/02/26/obamas-trade-agenda-smacks-down-climate
Also in the USA,
Protestors are occupying Sen. Ron Wyden’s office in Washington, DC “to remind him that the people want him to oppose Fast Track and the TPP.”
“Senator Wyden is the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee which is where fast track legislation would be introduced. The chair, Sen. Orrin Hatch, is pushing Wyden to join him in introducing a fast track bill.
The pressure is working! Last week, people all across OR told Sen. Wyden through rallies, teach-ins and a bus tour that they oppose fast track and the TPP. A new poll found that 62% of OR voters are opposed to the TPP and 73% oppose fast track. We’ve been in Wyden’s office for three days (since he returned to Washington).
Today, there was supposed to be a hearing on trade in the Senate Finance Committee but it was cancelled because Wyden is signalling that he is not ready to support fast track. This is great news!
Now is the time to thank Wyden and tell him that he needs to publicly oppose fast track. If he does that, the people will have his back.”
This week, we are occupying Sen. Ron Wyden’s office in Washington, DC to remind him that the people want him to oppose Fast Track and the TPP.
https://www.popularresistance.org/urgent-action-tell-sen-wyden-to-oppose-fast-track/
We need to stand up, speak up and show up!
TPPA Protest 7 March…
“Wellington City Council has voted to join nine other councils around the country in urging the Government to ensure the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership and Free Trade Agreement (TPPA) protects New Zealand’s interests and does not jeopardise the country’s sovereign rights.”
The Councils can shout that into a tin can. The government doesn’t give a stuff for our sovereign rights or, if they don’t give a stuff either for democracy, the country’s sovereign rights. They took them off Christchurch Environment when it was expedient for their mates in South Canterbury, they will sell bits off to foreigners when it seems advantageous to them. The test of TPPA’s worth is what is in it for them in money direct, or through gaining influence, or selling something for more than poor old NZ could afford to pay for it. Grannies had better watch out if they have gold fillings in their teeth.
The RSS feed needs to be fixed. It really sux and will be deterring readers
bright spot on Ceres
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2015/02/bright-spot-on-ceres-has-dimmer-companion
Check out the spot/s, the image is very intriguing.
Maybe the alien world savers are getting ready to do their stuff here to help sort the mess us standupapes have caused. 🙂
special scanning of Ceres reveals an even more amazing discovery 🙂 http://i.imgur.com/SkCoqzf.png
Amazing stuff!
Who is KILROY?
There are many disputed tales of where it all began, but like all good common man legends few clear facts exist to cement the origin. I lean to the World War one links (and slightly earlier stories) where the name itself was appearing first before an image was later added to a pre-existing graffiti. Kilroy is an aggregation of identities, defining none but encompassing many. Which is possibly why it has always appealed to me as a piece of visual humour. One I have reproduced in various forms in many many varied places.
It is the viewer’s identity as much as Kilroy’s that is represented. The idea of ‘we have already been here’.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/kilroy-was-here-180861140/?no-ist
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/kilroy-was-here.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here
And if you have never read them, I definitely recommend the War (& Peace) Memoirs of Spike Milligan, ( who makes a few references to Kilroy) but mainly because they are some of the most absurdly human accounts of the horrors and heydays of battlefields.
1 Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (1971)
2 “Rommel?” “Gunner Who?” (1974)
3 Monty: His Part in My Victory (1976) This and the previous two books were released and publicised as the first, second and third part respectively of a trilogy.
4 Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall (1978) (This was announced as the fourth part of his “increasingly misnamed” trilogy.)
5 Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (1985)
6 Goodbye Soldier (1986)
7 Peace Work (1992)
also a few on audio book here http://audiobookbay.to/audio-books/spike-milligan-collection-spike-milligan/
My query was a rhetorical one. Lol. Thanks.
From your third link,
Other names for the character include Mr Chad, Foo, Smoe, Clem, Flywheel, Private Snoops, Overby, The Jeep and Sapo.
lol – someone really needs to invent a ‘rhetorical’ emoticon 😛
Bright spot has dimmer companion! For a moment I thought it was a commentary on the beige one’s regular appearances here at the Standard, but no …
Just an uneducated guess, but I’m going to go for volcanic eruptions melting sand into glass, which is reflecting light back at an unusual angle. Or our new insect overlords. Hard to tell from this distance!
Is Ceres actively volcanic? I would have thought such a small body would be long dead.
it’s the main entertainment area on ceres..
..their las vegas..
Dunno, contact with an advanced alien civilisation is likely to be catastrophic…
That bright spot is much brighter even than the surface directly facing the sun…I can’t see even lava being that brilliant.
omg marty, I hope it’s not Planet Key after all ! 😀
Should New Zealand also be looking to formalize the none-of-the-above option?
The UK campaign to include ‘none-of-the-above’ on the ballot paper
http://youtu.be/QdiG9tCq-BU
http://notauk.org/
Or the vto party – vote them out, whereby those elected do not participate and effectively cancel the seat / list of theirs from existence.
But yep, none-of-the-above is also one way of exercising a democratic right.
I’d be more than happy to take a $150k salary and vote against everything in parliament, filibuster like Winston on speed, and be entirely unconstructive in select committees. In case you’re looking for potential anti-candidates…
No probs, will keep you in mind… though salary goes to good cause of course
I’m not so wealthy as John Key, so could only follow his example and just pretend to donate all of my salary to charity.
I suggest your MPs are allowed to keep the equivalent of the “average wage” circa $50K pa while donating the rest to recognisable charities.
geez cr, for a grand a week i’ll do it.
a grand a week!
man, i could buy that triumph tiger 1050 i was caught drooling over in the cafe car park this evening.
Yes, it’s a way to strengthen our democracy, thus has merit.
If formalized, thus officially counted as a vote of no confidence in all of the above, it will effectively (if it attains the numbers) force a re-election, thus, requiring parties to re-look at and change their policies to regain voter confidence.
It will help encourage the large number of non-voters to partake and would also result in better party policy being formed.
It’s a very good idea.
Elizabeth Warren being amazing. Talking about the TPPA and Wall Street.
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8114291/elizabeth-warren-tpp
This is the crux of Elizabeth Warren’s opposition to the TPPA in her own opinion piece in the Washington Post dated 25 Feb 2015.
“One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.
ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kill-the-dispute-settlement-language-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership/2015/02/25/ec7705a2-bd1e-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html
please, please let her challenge Her Maj Hillary Clinton for the Dem nom .. she is such a ray of hope in the corporate imperial gloom of the US …
+ 1..
..there are some encouraging signs that may well happen..
..i have all fingers/toes crossed..
A progressive political advocacy group is attempting to draft her/convince her to run.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLbGGikF3QI#t=36
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/233827-the-draft-warren-movement-crashing-the-gate-of-the-2016-election
This from Checkpoint on National Radio last night
A former US marine who worked at Iraq’s Taji Base near Bagdad says he doubts local soldiers can ever form an effective united army against Islamic State – http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20168680
Thanks for the link
shit petes more shit; vomit
use this donotlink {this dont strengthens his position high in search engines}
sepuloni;
http://www.donotlink.com/http://yournz.org/2015/02/26/bennett-accusations-follow-sepuloni-stand-down/
prentice-and-presland;
http://www.donotlink.com/http://yournz.org/2015/02/26/prentice-and-presland-onto-dirty-sepuloni-conspiracy/
“Apart from Little and Labour acting after the event rather than proactively. I’d have thought the timing was good for Little and Labour.”
Again he uses the same line that he failed to explain yesterday. Suggesting Labour should have acted more assertively in some fashion. How Labour are meant to do that before having knowledge of the events in question is an interesting notion.
Ah the unique beige brand of DP that’s is Peteys stock in trade.
He really should read hagers book, he might learn a new trick or 2 as he’s been well outed with his current ones.
He is too busy re-reading Siegfried Engelmann’s famous publication, The Pet Goat
Yes he should read Dirty Politics but he won’t – plausible deniability. He is a dirty dirt dirter covered in dirty dirt – scum dirt too.
jesus hes a disgusting dishonest little stalker
^^^^^ this
i cant decide whether hes staggeringly deluded – or, less charitably, he comes here and behaves like this in order to pump his ego over there
I expect he’s looking for some work from Carrick Graham, or one of that vile crowd.
i didnt think sharks employed sea cucumbers?
Would that stop Racist George from trying?
Thinks he’s helping his idols and looking for material at the same time, if nothing to say how mean the commenters at TS are to him and play the martyr.
yr donotlink link is not working..
.and you are driving traffic to the beige-one..
Works for me Phil.
THERE WAS NO TERRORIST ATTACK AT WESTGATE HENDERSON!
Just before jumping to the wrong conclusion. It was not a terrorist attack. Truth be told – it was a van/car/truck fire in the car-park at the mall. Which in itself is bad, yes I’ll admit it bad and the smoke coming from it was toxic. But, and here is the but – out fire and police departments dealt with the situation really well. Indeed the fire department was awesome – they just had to deal with westy drivers – who lets face it are not the best. So no need to freak out!
Does beg the question – if this is a labelled a terrorist attack by the media – does that mean all us westies are now terrorist? There have been car/van/truck fires out here for years. Also for the naughty person who had the fire – I’m sure they feel bad enough. Will they get the Tory Terror law trip as well? Life happens – things go wrong – why the hell have we created a situation where by everything that goes wrong – is the terrorist fault?
The Police already made a very clear statement
“Police say the fire is not suspicious.”
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/auckland-mall-blaze-sparks-mayhem-warning-drivers-6243407
probably won’t stop rumour mills and hysteria junkies from building MSM click-bait
One of the cops I say, said to a person not to be bloody silly it was not terrorism – it was just a fire in a van or a car.
I was going to the post office and the fire service and police said might be quicker to go somewhere else like Gen Eden or New Lynn.
To close it out in case you missed it.
A vehicle had a mechanical fault
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11409024
+ on a positive note, no over reactions apparent from the onlookers.
But it was a Toyota Isis Station Wagon …
http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2015/02/winston-peters-to-stand-for-northland/
I’d say hes tilting for a deal with National at the next election but really I don’t think anyone can predict accurately what Winston will do
” but really I don’t think anyone can predict accurately what Winston will do”
one of those truisms like death and taxes – 🙂
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/66686021/kim-dotcom-tells-court-he-is-broke-destitute-and-penniless
The High Court in Auckland has also heard that Mona Dotcom was initially hesitant to donate money to the Internet Mana political party, at her husband’s suggestion, but eventually agreed the family trust would give $400,000
She believed Dotcom’s claims that his involvement with the Internet Mana party would eventually relieve the family of his threat of extradition, she said.
“At the end I was fine with it because Kim explained to me how this Internet Party would benefit us and the kids because it would help him with his political issues,” she said.
So who was it saying the Internet party had nothing to do with Dot Cons extradition?
How would the Internet Party or Internet Party MPs have any material effect on Dotcom’s extradition?
Really?
Well, it’s very unlikely that Laila Harre as Internet Party MP would have been in Cabinet as Minister of Immigration.
Yes, really. Dotcom may have believed they would, and on what planet would the Minister of Justice have been a member of the IMP?
PS: CV, surely it’s the MoJ that decides extradition cases, not the MoI.
Ah yes, I think that you are right there, thanks.
You see? Peer review works 😉
LOL!
The great Irish potato harvest.
http://www.interest.co.nz/news/74215/nz-links-alleged-irish-scandal-highlight-potential-undesirable-form-regulatory-arbitrage-
There’s a Hua in the rua’s
https://twitter.com/DawgBelly/status/392003464273743873/photo/1
A huge victory for Internet Neutrality and Freedom!…not all news coming out of the USA under Obama is bad!
‘FCC adopts net neutrality rules endorsed by open internet advocates’
“The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted to approve new rules endorsed by advocates of net neutrality and President Barack Obama that will prohibit internet service providers from discriminating against content producers”…
http://rt.com/usa/235823-fcc-votes-net-neutrality/
+1
Now the fight starts all over again.
Israel continues to try and DOMINATE USA foreign policy …but now there is at last some resistance to the tail wagging the dog
‘Israeli PM’s unscheduled Congress speech causes diplomatic uproar in Washington’
“A rift is emerging between the US and Israel, after Barack Obama’s administration hit out at Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu for speaking to Congress without consent.
The Democrats say they are in the dark about Prime Minister Netanyahu being allowed to speak to Congress about Iran. The party says the Israeli delegation did not consult them and they therefore broke protocol. The Democrats were also fuming with the Republics after the Grand Old Party’s Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner, gave the Israeli PM the go-ahead”…..
http://rt.com/news/225539-netanyahu-congress-usa-rift/
http://rt.com/news/200427-netanyahu-chickenshit-us-interview/
‘Netanyahu ‘chickenshit’ & ‘coward’: US officials go tough on Israeli PM’
“US-Israeli relations have sunk to new lows after Obama administration officials were cited calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit” and “coward” engaging in political posturing, instead of efforts at Middle-Eastern de-escalation”…
The US is a loyal ally of Israel…but ironically it doesn’t appear to go the other way!
…and Israel and Saudi Arabia are friends
‘Saudi Arabia to allow Israel use of its airspace to strike Iran – report’
http://rt.com/news/235923-saudis-airspace-israel-iran/
http://rt.com/usa/233603-us-israel-nuclear-leaks/
The two countries have some congruent regional priorities – primarily the constraining of Persian/Shia power in the area (Iraq/Iran) as well as getting their preferred energy pipelines put in place across the region.
yes very well put….and where does ISIS fit into that mix?…ie “the constraining of Persian/Shia power in the area (Iraq/Iran)”….and Syria?
ISIS activity drains and distracts the Shia based Iraqi government and also its backers in Tehran from developing cohesive regional geopolitical strategies which might challenge Saudi Arabia or Israel. Basically, a large portion of the Iraqi and Iranian attention and resources is caught up fire fighting ISIS.
The last thing either Israel or Saudi Arabia want is some kind of oil rich Shia oriented Iran-Iraq superstate developing and affecting their own status in the middle east.
…so really ISIS is in their long term strategic interests?
…if so….irony much!
….I would like to see much more on this issue
Of course, these little project pets have a habit of causing eventual blow back for their masters (witness Israel’s support of Hamas in the 1980s, or the CIA’s support of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan).
A few days ago there was a blip in the MRP share price amid some rejoicing by posters here.
https://nzx.com/markets/NZSX/securities/MRP
Investing in MRP was well worth it for me and for NZ.
Well, that’s a stupid line. If investing in MRP was a good idea, it can’t have been good for NZ to divest istelf of half its shares.
I mean, we all know you’re a parasitic moral vacuum who confuses your own self interest with a public good (in those few occasions when you give any regard to anyone else), but to come out and claim such was a bit foolish of you.
Its a great feeling to invest in your country and get a good, safe rate of return as well
That’s how Dracula spun it, too.
Haters gonna hate
What your spiritual teacher Taylor Swift neglected to mention was that sometimes it’s incredibly well-deserved.
Why hate when one can state expropriate…
Well, when one state can expropriate, one will stop hating.
100% of the dividends was going to all of us. That wasn’t enough for you. Now 51% of the dividends goes to all of us, and you get extra.
Yes, I agree, it looks like you hate us.
hi pr, i will ask again, do you have a property portfolio?
hi fisiani, i know it is none of my business,however i will ask any way, do you have a property portfolio?
I’m not saying Christchurch City Council is doing the right or wrong thing; I’m just saying the planet where Gerry Brownlee has a fucking clue, doesn’t exist.
Remember when Christchurch defied the right wing scum and kept its assets? Now is the time to defy the right wing scum all over again.
campbell live poll – 10,000 votes..
..want flag-change – 16%..
..opposed – 84%..
This Key legacy motivated flag referendum is a HUGE waste of money.
He should have FIRST find out if there WAS a desire for change. He didn’t do that.
Went rough shod and framed his own questions, for not one, but two referendums, instead!
Dumb!
Can the referendums and Keep the present flag.
Think of changing it ONLY when and if we decide to become a Republic.
At least, in the proposed first referendum, have an option for people to indicate they do or do not wish to change the present flag at the present time. If the majority state that, then can the second referendum.
Looks like some complete sycophantic fool has advised this government.
Great poll on Campbell Live TV3 tonight regarding changing the New Zealand Flag. There were 10,000 participants – 16% = yes 84% = no. A decisive result if ever I saw one!
If John Key and co value democracy (this week’s episode on troops to Iraq leaves that very much in doubt), then the flag should remain as it is. The reported $27 million price tag required to change the flag could be spent in so many other productive ways such as feeding our children who are in poverty.
If democracy has any chance of surviving in this country, we must not allow the Government to bulldoze this through.
I texted NO. However further down the tract post-Key it would be OK to consider a change in a less expensive more democratic way. Remember Key railing against referenda in the last few years?
Who let OAB out of his padded cell ?
Who let you back on the crack pipe Red delusion?
What happens when you encrypt data end to end?
You get shut down by Visa and Mastercard despite meeting all legal requirements.
This.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/19/stop-calling-for-a-muslim-enlightenment