Open mike 27/04/2010

16 comments on “Open mike 27/04/2010 ”

• Comments are now closed

1. Dan 1

   27 April 2010 at 6:39 am

   I see Act has slipped to 1.6% so how come we get all the this: the touting of mining on protected land, much doubted National Standards in education, tax cuts for the rich, the sale of the much admired ACC, and further privatisation of public utilities.
   National needs a change of brand to reflect its true philosophy: NACT has been around a while; the ME party. Any other ideas?
   • Bored 1.1

     27 April 2010 at 8:31 am

     What makes you think National are not also the ME party? They have always stood for private interest at thee expense of the rest of the populace.
2. mickysavage 2

   27 April 2010 at 7:24 am

   This is why National’s handling of ACC is so wrong.

   They lack the understanding that a collective system designed to help all individuals in their hour of need is exactly that and to use an accountant’s approach to make decisions that will lessen cover will result in tragedy.

   They lack compassion. They lack understanding. They are not fit to rule.
3. travellerev 3

   27 April 2010 at 9:16 am

   Hi guys,

   I can’t make it to Auckland this Saturday so I thought I would try to find a video for people to send to their mates to try to convince them to go.

   I found this heartbreaking video of the destruction of more than 500 mountain tops in the Appalachian mountains.

   It explains also why there won’t be any jobs or profit from this one time profit making adventure. it’s not profitable enough to dig under the mountains but it is very profitable for the mining companies to just blow the mountains up.

   Captcha: FACT. Yep!
4. Pascal's bookie 4

   27 April 2010 at 9:51 am

   taxy taxy banker rents.

   IMF reckons all sorts of things these days that wouldn’t oughta have reckoned not too long ago.

   Here they are suggesting a tax on banks, levied not at the transaction phase, (which hits consumers and activites, not all of whom are rent seeking) but at the bank profit and renumeration phase.

   http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/04/the-fat-tax.html

   and

   http://taxjustice.blogspot.com/2010/04/imf-interim-report-to-g-20.html

   take that randian superheroes!

   Betwixt this and recent IMF murmurings about how inflation just possibly isn’t the be all and end all for central banks to be chasing, I think Goff should have himself as high a profile speech as he can manage to flesh out his announcement about monetary policy.

   I’d get Bryan Sheppard, and Ganesh Nana along, both are scathing of the effects of the current RBA. Have it at some exporters or manufacturers outfit.

   About 5 days before the budget would be good. Just sayin.
5. prism 5

   27 April 2010 at 10:18 am

   Thoughts about radio news this a.m.

   I find it annoying how NZ authorities reinforce the efficacy of their ideas by saying “they are doing this successfully overseas”. Why not say where? Be precise! What country, state, one-horse town or organisation is the shining example?
   Mayor Bob Harvey said it this morning when talking about the wish to make child abuse reporting mandatory. There are arguments both ways and this stupid calling on the authority of ‘overseas’ is I think appealing to our cultural cringe. ‘Oh if they’re doing it “overseas” it must be good’.

   Blair Peach’s death in Britain can now be understood 30 years after, and probably only because of concerted efforts to get the truth and look at the murderous behaviour of police special units. I think we have had such units here – they can become scarily bloated with their importance and violent though I don’t think there was a death involved.
   Police are government agents but can be hard for government to control. I hope we get clear accountability for the Tuhoe debacle and police behaviour there. It seemed like a replay of colonial attitudes to Maori and set back mutual good relations.

   A deep sea oil rig has blown up or something off Louisiana spilling oil now over large areas. Hard to fix. And ‘they’ want to go down to Antarctica and other harsh yet fragile areas for oil. These are the same sort of people who have happily wrecked the USA financial system and started a world-wide recession and pay themselves big bonuses for being super-smarts.
   Heard a recent interview with Dr John about New Orleans and the oil industry was named as the biggest destroyers of the coastal natural defences against flooding there. They have carved canals through the terrain there apparently and this has increased the vulnerability of low-lying New Orleans and dependence on the protection provided by US Army engineer’s dykes. It wasn’t Katrina that ruined New Orleans – they say it had passed before the water came. It was the dykes weakness, unable to replicate their coastal wetlands natural protection.
6. Sanctuary 6

   27 April 2010 at 11:14 am

   And so it begins…

   http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10641028

   “…A review of new rules for sexual abuse counselling has come too late to save a South Auckland mother who died four days after her claim for ACC-funded counselling was rejected…”
   • Bill 6.1

     27 April 2010 at 1:03 pm

     What’s with the ‘died’?

     If she died, then there is nothing connecting the lack of counselling and her death.

     I assume she killed herself? So why isn’t that stated? If it has anything to do with directives or whatever on mentioning suicide in the press, then the directive needs to be well and truly buried.

     Or is somebody going to read that a victim of abuse killed themselves and think ‘My, what a good idea, excuse while I…’

     I really do wish that we’d credit ourselves with more intelligence than that possessed by all the ‘do good pricks’ who alter our behaviours by insisting that suicide is contagious and that it’s mere mention will unleash an epidemic of dead bodies turning up all over the show.

     The only impact suicide reporting might have is when the method is picked up by another or others who are ready to check out and go. And that is not always necessarily a bad thing…that they employ a good method as opposed to a painful or messy one.
   • JAS 6.2

     27 April 2010 at 1:15 pm

     I find it appalling that we are treating victims this way. They do not deserve to be re-victimised by a system that should be there to help them in every way it can. A child waiting 4 months for counselling after rape is totally disgusting!

     Can only hope that things change, and FAST!
7. Pascal's bookie 7

   27 April 2010 at 11:52 am

   Feeling a bit peaky?

   http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2010/04/forced-simplification.html
   • Bill 7.1

     27 April 2010 at 12:49 pm

     The soon to be experienced joys of being stuck up a gum tree?
   • mach1 7.2

     27 April 2010 at 2:03 pm

     Feeling a bit peaky?

     Nope,over the falls though.

     The world reportedly uses 40,000 gallons of oil every second to keep the globe a-whirring. But what would this river of Texas Tea look like? The amount of water per second that flows down India’s Jog Falls.

     edit: a surfing term to describe blowing your take off and over the falls being the end result. .
8. prism 8

   27 April 2010 at 12:04 pm

   Rod Oram this morning on 9to Noon was completely against John Key’s suggestion of NZ being an international financial backoffice. Oram says that we haven’t got any advantages to make it a success, and that Australia has interests in developing its facilities and can do it better than we can. Oram gave an emphatic thumbs-down (I forget the word he actually used but it was direct not fudged). The IRD have produced a report with a negative trend if not complete rejection.
   • bored 8.1

     27 April 2010 at 2:19 pm

     Could not agree more, what NZ really needs to do is to actually produce something, own all the stages of production through to marketing and sales and keep the profits here. As it is Key only knows something about speculation, nothing about hard graft that results in tangible goods and services.
9. In The Know 9

   27 April 2010 at 1:18 pm

   Here is a letter I have just emailed to Nick Smith …

   “Anger, disbelief, disgust and horror do not go far enough to describe how I am feeling right now about your policy of making victims of Sexual Abuse and Rape be assessed and diagnosed with a clinical mental illness BEFORE they are entitled to receive ACC funded councelling.

   I am totally appalled that you would allow situations such as the poor woman who killed herself due to lack of help and support through ACC to ever get that far.
   .
   Victims need, deserve and are entitled to IMMEDIATE help, support and councelling, if they seek it.

   Government should not be stopping this process in any way, shape or form. A life is on the line and that is far more important than trying to save a few pennies while spending huge dollars forcing victims to wait to be assessed by a psychologist to be diagnosed with a mental illness.

   SHAME … SHAME … SHAME on you for your lack of empathy, morality and good judgement.

   I am a survivor of rape and sexual abuse so I know full well what going through these traumatic events can do to a person.

   I HAVE BEEN RAPED … DON’T RAPE ME (or anyone else) AGAIN with your policy.”

   Yes I am angry, yes I am appalled but someone, somewhere needs to get their head out of their arse and see the reality of the situation instead of convening yet another committee to work out a new way of giving people “a kick in the pants”, to quote John Key. National are disgusting.
10. Quoth the Raven 10

    27 April 2010 at 5:41 pm

    Greenwald with more troubling news about the abominable Obama.

    The more I think and read about the Obama DOJ’s prosecution of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, the more I think this might actually be one of the worst steps the Obama administration has taken yet, if not the single worst step — and that’s obviously saying a lot. During the Bush years, in the wake of the NSA scandal, I used to write post after post about how warped and dangerous it was that the Bush DOJ was protecting the people who criminally spied on Americans (Bush, Cheney Michael Hayden) while simultaneously threatening to prosecute the whistle-blowers who exposed misconduct. But the Bush DOJ never actually followed through on those menacing threats; no NSA whistle-blowers were indicted during Bush’s term (though several were threatened). It took the election of Barack Obama for that to happen, as his handpicked Assistant Attorney General publicly boasted yesterday of the indictment against Drake.

    …

    Think about to whose interests the Obama DOJ is devoted given that — while they protect the most profound Bush crimes based on the Presidential decree of “Look Forward, Not Backward” — they chose this whistle-blower to prosecute (and Drake, incidentally, is apparently impoverished, as he’s been assigned a Public Defender to represent him). In the process, of course, the Obama DOJ also intimidates and deters future whistle-blowers from exposing what they know, thus further suffocating one of the very few remaining mechanisms Americans have to learn about what takes place behind the virtually impenetrable Wall of Secrecy surrounding the Surveillance State — a Wall of Secrecy which the Obama administration, through its promiscuous use of “state secrets” and immunity claims, has relentlessly fortified and expanded. Anyone who doubts that whistle-blower prosecutions like this are intended to prevent any further disclosures of wrongdoing should simply review the 2008 Pentagon report which identified WikiLeaks as a major threat to the U.S. and proposed that exposure and prosecution of their sources would crush their ability to obtain further leaks.

• Comments are now closed

• Log in
• Donate
• Contribute post

• Articles RSS