Open mike 27/03/2016

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, March 27th, 2016 - 34 comments
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openmikeOpen mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

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34 comments on “Open mike 27/03/2016 ”

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  1. Jenny 1
    27 March 2016 at 6:18 am

    “The U.S. presidential race is shining a spotlight on the TPP and building broad public awareness that its stated purpose and benefits are bogus.”

    The One Thing Sanders, Trump, and Clinton Agree On

    Yes!

    It’s that bad

    http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-thing-sanders-trump-and-clinton-agree-on-its-that-bad-20160323‘ rel=”nofollow

  2. Tony Veitch (not the partner-bashing 3rd rate broadcaster) 2
    27 March 2016 at 7:04 am

    Jenny – well said.

    A quote from the article sums up TPP:

    “International agreements like the TPP are a corporate lobbyist’s dream. Here is the playbook for creating them.

    · Get the world’s most powerful corporations together to make a wish list of rule changes.

    · Bundle them into an international agreement of thousands of pages of technical legal text that few people are likely to read.

    · Call it a free-trade agreement and promise that it will create jobs, grow economies, and bring the world together.

    · Include a provision that foreign corporations can sue a signatory government for any loss of anticipated profits due to government action.

    · Require that these claims be decided by secret international tribunals composed of three private-sector attorneys; preclude review of the awards they grant.

    · Push the agreement through the national legislative bodies of the prospective member nations under rules that limit debate, prohibit amendments, and require a simple up-or-down majority vote.”

    Almost everyone agrees this ‘agreement’ is toxic!

    • saveNZ 2.1
      27 March 2016 at 9:06 am

      + 1 Jenny & Tony V

      Also pretend TPPA is some solution to contain China, only they then invite China to the corporate TPP party to rout governments and tax payer money along with the rest of them. (P.s bet China has stronger side agreements so that they can just rout the other countries and taxpayers and migrate and buy up assets, without being impacted themselves).
      AKA our current free trade agreement with China where Chinese can buy land here, but Kiwis can’t buy land in China.

  4. swordfish 4
    27 March 2016 at 8:28 am

    John Key is really popular. Perhaps the most popular PM ever. He will be the politician most people would like to have a beer with around Christmas. He is trusted. Get over it. The more abuse he gets the more people trust him. The Cunliffe is not even trusted or wanted. Not by anyone. Not even by his caucus for goodness sake.

    fisiani commemoration comment # 167
    (an occasional series – remembering the words of the Great Man)

    • Paul 4.1
      27 March 2016 at 8:46 am

      These words by a UK Tory about Boris Johnson could so easily apply to Key.

      “Somebody has to call a halt to the gathering pretence that if only you’re sufficiently comical in politics you can laugh everything off,” he wrote.
      “Incompetence is not funny. Policy vacuum is not funny. A careless disregard for the truth is not funny. Creeping ambition in a jester’s cap is not funny. Vacuity posing as merriment, cynicism posing as savviness, a wink and a smile covering for betrayal … these things are not funny.”

      http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/26/matthew-parris-boris-johnson-london-mayor-times-attack

      • swordfish 4.1.1
        27 March 2016 at 9:08 am

        Yeah, Boris gets away with a hell of a lot. Plays the pantomime oaf / upper-class twit / old Etonian rugger-bugger and it seems the rules don’t apply (not entirely unlike Key – as you imply)

        Huge dissatisfaction, incidentally, with Cameron now – and growing favourability ratings for Corbyn (from truly dire a few months ago to only mildly negative now). Things are looking up-ish

        https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CeUVAU_WAAAUmYC.jpg:large

    • repateet 4.2
      27 March 2016 at 10:40 am

      Why could be the single politician most people would like to have a beer with around Christmas be John Key? I don’t disagree.

      So they can pretend to their friends they were mates with the PM? (Big noting.)

      Because while most people have met an MP, the mass have not met the same MP or know much about one in particular? Whereas John Key has traipsed up and down the country for years getting to lots of venues and has been wall to wall in many media formats over that time?

      There are always personable politicians who are good, interesting company. That Key would be the politician most people would like to have a beer with around Christmas is a sad comment on the masses.

    • alwyn 4.3
      27 March 2016 at 3:35 pm

      What is the Cunliffe thing he was talking about?
      ” The Cunliffe is not even trusted or wanted” Was it a TV program like that rubbish “The Bachelor” where one man seems to be having affairs with a big bunch of women?

  5. Jenny Kirk 5
    27 March 2016 at 9:04 am

    My goodness, Paul – that quote is exactly like Key !!

    And now – today – we have our sycophantic media continuing to peddle his failed fern flag idea :
    Athletes in favour of a flag change may be able to use the failed alternative at the Rio Olympics. So says the Herald …….
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11612296

    and Stuff trying to keep the story going …………..
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/the-flag-debate/78251247/a-time-and-a-place-we-missed-a-chance-to-forge-our-own-identity

    Its about time they dropped their pandering to Key’s infantile wishes !

    • logie97 5.1
      27 March 2016 at 10:42 am

      … perhaps the athletes are only aiming for Silver.
      aiming to come second is good enough.

      • seeker 5.1.1
        27 March 2016 at 2:17 pm

        I liked this comment posted after The Guardian article “New Zealand votes to keep its flag….”

        “Great..that the people of New Zealand are secure in their own identity and happy with who they are.”

        A happy, blessed and enlightening Eastertide to you all.

    • mary-a 5.2
      27 March 2016 at 2:58 pm

      Jenny (5) Read the same and thought treason is becoming contagious. Similar to the detestful FJK, who is fuelling the fires of treachery, it seems to know no bounds.

      If these athletes don’t want to align themselves with the official NZ flag, then they don’t represent NZ at the Olympics In Rio. Stay away.

    • Halfcrown 5.3
      27 March 2016 at 6:32 pm

      I tell you what, if these over privileged prats who want to play at life “think” they are going attend that fucking farce called the Olympic Games, think they can use their choice of flag, after the tax payer has paid for their junket, they better think again
      It should be spelt out to them by the Olympic committee or whoever As you are representing NZ you are ONLY ALLOWED TO USE THE NZ FLAG.

  6. Ffloyd 6
    27 March 2016 at 9:06 am

    So! The most important people in NZ, after John Key of course, the Very Important Athletes/Sports Stars, might be allowed to fly the fern flag in Rio. What gives!!

    • maui 6.1
      27 March 2016 at 10:57 am

      The athletes were just sucking up to the establishment in the hope of some more Sparc funding I would say. It would be intersting to know how much some were paid to appear in the campaign too.

      Without anyone recognisable wanting a flag change now and the referendum going off quietly into the night, I think the fern flag will slowly disappear. it’s now a divisive flag.

  7. Chooky 7
    27 March 2016 at 11:04 am

    This discussion is worth watching imo…why are not European leaders looking to the causes of the terrorist attacks and the refugee crisis?

    ‘Europe terrorized’

    https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/337149-europe-terrorists-nato-refugees/

    “This time it was Brussels. Europe has become a battlefield in which terrorists can roam free and undetected. Of course we mourn the victims. But it is way past the time to talk honestly – Europe’s experiment with limited sovereignty is negligent and endangers citizens. And NATO’s conflicts of choice in the Middle East generate war refugees, migrants, but also terrorists of all kinds. It is time for action.

    CrossTalking with Pepe Escobar, Gilbert Doctorow, and John Laughland.”

  8. Northsider 8
    27 March 2016 at 11:23 am

    “Then again, blaming the changes in the white working class on moral failures, rather than political and economic ones, is very convenient for conservatives and Republicans.

    At almost every juncture over the past 35 years, Republicans have supported and passed policies that have empowered businesses while supporting the removal of policies that protect workers.

    They have supported the shift towards an aggressive free market that rewards the winners, regardless of where they started, and does little to protect the losers.

    They supported, and got, massive tax cuts for the wealthiest.

    They supported, and got, the deregulation of Wall Street.

    They supported every effort to dismantle the social safety net: food stamps, welfare, social security and Medicaid.

    Some of the polices they have supported, such as free trade, have also been supported by the Democrats. These policies were justified by the notion that the entire country would win, because the winners will win more than the losers lose.

    Yet this is contingent on the winners sharing, and the Republicans have no interest in making the winners share.”

    Yes, for Republican read Tory/National. Depressing reading and no sign of a Rising.

    Mocked and forgotten: who will speak for the American white working class?

    http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/24/white-working-class-issues-free-trade-american-south

    • alwyn 8.1
      27 March 2016 at 3:45 pm

      “They supported, and got, the deregulation of Wall Street”.
      That one you can pin directly on Bill Clinton. Pin it? actually you can hammer it into him with a 6 inch nail.
      That was the repeal of sections of the Glass-Steagall legislation and their replacement by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
      Sure, the people whose names were sponsors of the new legislation were Republicans but Clinton need never have signed it. He has been trying to pretend it had nothing to do with him ever since.

  9. Anne 9
    27 March 2016 at 11:42 am

    Q&A had an interesting discussion on the flag referendum this morning and all appeared to agree it was a flawed process. It smelled rather of a bunch of Nat-leaning commentators wanting to be on the winning side. If the tea towel had won I have no doubt they would have been saying the opposite.

    Micheal Wood was the stand-out commentator and once again proved his ability to be articulate, informed and rational no matter the subject matter. I predict he is a candidate for future Labour leadership so watch out for the Nat/media dirty political machine to start putting him down. It will rev up shortly before the by-election in Mt Roskill which is likely to be later this year.

    • Whispering Kate 9.1
      27 March 2016 at 9:38 pm

      Anne, that was exactly what my daughter and I were discussing today, how articulate Michael Wood was and that hopefully he may be a candidate for future Labour leadership one day. God knows we need a miracle to change the face of Labour. I wondered if there might be someone who could be shoulder tapped from overseas like the PM was, we certainly do need a clean sweep, they are never going to get in at the moment as they are too much like what we have got now. Who ever it is, he/she doesn’t have to be photogenic and supposedly a charmer, one only has to look at Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn to see they just have to have a desire for change. And, a big change too. One can live in hope. But the face of politics is altering big time overseas and too many suffering people there are hoping for a miracle and a change in the status quo . Labour are hopeless right now and times are a gettin’ desperate. Something needs to happen and it has to be something totally different to National, At the moment it isn’t.

  10. UncookedSelachimorpha 10
    27 March 2016 at 12:04 pm

    Bunnings’ management bans a staff-purchased defibrillator from their Dunedin store.

    A new low even for that exploitative pack of scumbags.

    Abused staff are just the beginning!

  11. Sabine 11
    27 March 2016 at 12:21 pm

    a good read
    http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-walk-in-rome-in-the-days-of-trump?reload

    “As David Remnick remarked recently, though demagogues have long had their place in America, this is the first time one has come this close to Presidential power. The paralyzed, passive self-persuasion that overcomes ordinary politicians in extraordinary times is proof of this. With Paul Ryan and the rest of the collapsing Republican “leadership” we see the expected response: this will pass, it’s an oddity—and anyway it’s more important to be positioned after the demagogue’s fall than to take the costly action necessary to oppose him. Turn on that same Internet to the conservative press, and one reads frantic denunciations of Trump vying with equally frantic denunciations of Hilary Clinton, the habit of hatred still intact even in extremis. Reporters who know that the demagogue lies as he breathes are too depressed or discouraged or demoralized to say so loudly and repeatedly. And then among the pro-plebeian party there is an unworthy glee at the discomfiture of the patrician “establishment.” Well, they may deserve the demagogue. The rest of us don’t.”

  12. Richard Christie 12
    27 March 2016 at 4:37 pm

    The Brainwashing of My Dad Official Trailer 1 (2016) – Matthew Modine Decumentary HD

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=813V_GId5N8

    I bet this wn’t be shown by the MSM in NZ.

  13. Chooky 13
    27 March 2016 at 7:56 pm

    ‘Google upgrades warnings to alert users to when Big Brother is watching’

    https://www.rt.com/usa/337331-google-warning-state-attack/

  14. Macro 14
    27 March 2016 at 10:06 pm

    Petition to allow guns at Republican convention earns 24,000 signatures

    “Every American is endowed with a God-given constitutional right to carry a gun wherever and whenever they please,” the author writes.

    … what could possibly go wrong?