“We see a real opportunity to cut carbon pollution,” said one of the White House officials. “And I think one of the most important and relevant points is that today we already set limits for arsenic, mercury and lead, but we let power plants release as much carbon pollution as they want.”
Scientific American
Political leaders from around the world give their reaction.
From the European Union:
After a number of important speeches from President Obama and Secretary Kerry, Europe has been eagerly waiting for the US to set out concrete steps. So this plan is a most welcomed step forward and, if implemented, it can put the US on a path towards a low carbon future.
Connie Hedegaard EU Climate Action Commissioner
“I very much welcome President Obama’s renewed push to tackle global climate change,”…..
“The plans set out are positive steps that will create further momentum for international climate action.”…..
(this will) “help give the world confidence that it’s possible to win this fight, if we fight it together”.
José Manuel Barroso President of the European commission
From the United Nations:
It remains vital that the United States as the world’s largest developed economy is seen to be leading serious action to deal with climate change, both at home and abroad….
…..”This US climate action plan must also be leveraged into fresh, high-level political consensus among countries that will smooth the way for faster progress in the international climate change negotiations under the United Nations.”
Christiana Figueres UNFCCC Executive Secretary
From Britain:
“President Obama is right when he says tackling climate change is a moral obligation and also right when he says cutting carbon pollution will help spark business innovation and create jobs. I welcome his Climate Action Plan. It’s a decisive step by the world’s second largest emitter and demonstrates the growing global momentum toward tackling the threat of dangerous climate change. The UK will work closely with the US on energy efficiency and low carbon technologies, and on securing ambitious global action on climate finance and emission reduction. We will also keep up the pressure elsewhere, including in Europe. The EU should adopt a 50% emissions reduction target by 2030 in order to help secure a global deal in 2015.”
Edward Davey UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
From the Pacific Islands:
“US President Obama’s announcement represents a positive step on climate change and we hope it translates into even more constructive engagement at the international climate negotiations, particularly when it comes to dramatically reducing greenhouse gases in the next few years, which is essential to keep the seas from washing over some of the world’s lowest lying island nations.
“However, we are painfully aware that coastal erosion, ocean acidification, degraded reefs and fisheries, droughts, floods, and relentless storms represent the new normal for many vulnerable communities. Therefore, any adequate response to climate change must also address permanent losses and damages stemming from the crisis.” Ambassador Marlene Moses Permanent Representative to the United Nations for Nauru and Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States
From the New Zealand Green Party:
“We need to be supporting international action on climate change not obstructing it.
“New Zealand is not doing its fair share.
“The National Government is stuck in the past examining the scientific consensus, to quote President Obama, ‘we don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society’.
“While Obama is stepping up action, National is stepping up pollution….
Under National, New Zealand’s net emissions have hit a record high and are continuing to grow.
“Last weekend’s storm, and this summer’s drought are a preview of the legacy we will leave for our children if we do not act now.
“We can make a difference, we can prepare, we can work internationally for binding targets, we can reduce emissions at home; but we need to start now,”
To date their has been no response to Obama’s speech from either Labour or National. And I think neither can we expect one.
Time for David Cunliffe to fill the gap perhaps? If Labour keep up its silence… Might we see ia press statement from Cunliffe to make up for the missing leadership sadly lacking in his own party?
I also notice that so far there has been no post on Obama’s speech from anyone at The Standard
Why is this?
Does nobody have any opinion on Obama’s speech?
Or could it be, that The Standard authors (consciously, or unconsciously), don’t want to acknowledge or bring attention to the uncomfortable fact that National and Labour’s policies are generally in alignment on further increasing CO2 emissions through more and riskier oil drilling and coal mining etc?
[lprent:
Firstly – What speech? I heard a brief mention on it on the car radio on my late return home last night. Looking at the timestamp on the news story and allowing for date lines, it would have been when? late in the day yesterday? We aren’t a news service, nor are we journalists and we tend to work hard on things other than this blog.
Secondly – Authors write on what they wish to and when they want to – as is stated clearly in the about and the policy.
Thirdly – I see that there was a post scheduled for this morning at the time you wrote that comment. I’d guess that it was written late last night. It gives Anthony’s opinion (which is what we are here to express) on the speech. Changes in policy direction usually take time to digest because the detail is important – not the headline.
Fourthly – You are banned for a week for again trying to tell us what we should be writing – read the policy. ]
“The National Government is stuck in the past examining the scientific consensus, to quote President Obama, ‘we don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society’.
Kennedy Graham Green Party Spokesperson for Climate Change
What Graham has said for the Nacts, could, painfully, be just as easily be said of Labour.
I can’t even bear to listen to the man at the moment. He has no credibility left at all, imo. How can you trust that what he says in a speech is what he really means after Guantanamo not being ended, drones in Pakistan, NSA spying, Bradley Manning incarceration conditions etc, etc? Not to mention people living in tent cities and the nation having to subsidise Walmart pay with food stamps.
All I’d expect from this speech is that he’s trying to change the topic, not that he might mean what he says. So no, I don’t have an opinion on the speech, but I have a very negative opinion about why he might be making in right now, and I can’t believe he means a word of it.
Thats right Mozza, Jenny et al have not done their homework into the General Electric (GE) backing of Obama, and what this means to that company’s NUCLEAR power plant production revenue streams, and control of the *energy market*!
Its why we are in this mess, because people like Jenny, have NFI, what they are contributing to!
I wonder if the Obama’s ephinany on US emissions has anything todo with the discovery of massive quantities of shale gas via large scale fracking. Is converting their coal burning to gas burning much better?
That too – I forgot about the fracking in the credibility stakes.
Biggest shale gas boom since whenever, isn’t it? Apparently it’s better than oil for climate change emissions, even more important is the shift from coal to gas. Although apparently the U.S. is displacing, rather than reducing, it’s emissions through coal exports.
Obama, like many of the names who have quoted above, Jenny, Barosso et al, is a criminal, who does exactly what he is told, by those who put him in power!
kia ora jenny, 2 things strike me about the whole obama thing;
firstly i think your enthusiasm for it is more about the position he holds talking about what he is talking about.
secondly and more importantly you seem to be desiring equal leadership, concerning climate change, to be shown in this country.
GINETTE McDONALD: He came up to me and said, “Ginette McDonald, do you know who I am? My name is Paul Scott Holmes and I am a great broadcaster!”
JIM MORA: Ha ha ha ha! Did he say that, Paul Holmes? ….[Long pause to indicate mourning]…. Peter Sinclair was cerebral. He wrote some very insightful columns.
GINETTE McDONALD: How smart he was and how vulnerable! What a sacrifice it is to be a public figure!
MORA: We could riff on THAT for the next ten minutes!
….Several minutes later….
MORA: Mahhh-vellous! I’ll never forget your interview with Sir Elton John! He ADORED you!
….Later….
GINETTE McDONALD: I think the young are completely mahhhh-vellous!
—-Eight Months to Mars, Afternoons with Jim Mora, Radio NZ National, Monday 11 February 2013
Yes indeed. I have tried listening to this stuff for as long as I can bear, in the hope that something useful might be discussed. But always I have to end by either switching off or changing to another channel, before my brain dissolves.
This poll is a concern and the flatness of the past polls is a concern. Between now and the spring the Caucus need to reform itself dramatically. It is possible.
As Toby Manhire suggested in the Herald last week “..the promotion of an MP who had served his time would project strength, evidence of the leader’s vaunted experience in conciliation..”
I’d add to that the early retirement of Goff, King and Mallard coupled with the appointment of new managers in Shearer’s office who are NOT selected by Grant Robertson. Shearer has to stop what he is currently doing. It is not working. He needs to create a new team.
Cunliffe seems to be more focused than ever on his portfolio. He continues to show that he can engage with business people and issues as well as with the workers, consumers and the disenfranchised. His recent contributions to debates in Parliament show he is more centered than ever. Cunliffe looks like a guy who has learned from whatever was done to him last year. He has demonstrated that he can swallow a rat, and get on with folk in the beltway as well a burbs.
Shearer has the choice: to continue as is or to make a change.
Go on Shearer, make the necessary changes, now, refresh and position yourself to get our score out of the low 30s and into the 40s.
Your last chance.
Don’t confuse Obama with Gandhi: Norman Finkelstein
At UBC on January 21, 2009, the day after Obama’s inauguration, Norman Finkelstein gave a short speech about his research into the life and works of Mahatma Gandhi. He claims there is no comparison between Gandhi, who gave up his life to a cause he believed in, and Barack Obama, who is merely a clever politician coasting on a wave of change that he didn’t work to create.
So today in Christchurch we will hear how Brownlee will lump a giant great dull convention centre right onto two of the very best blocks of CBD Christchurch so that all manner of private business can do private business. Brownlee will require the ratepayers to pay for these private businesses.
Why don’t private businesses pay for their private business? I thought Brownlee and his ilk believed in user-pays and the free market and not corporate handouts or picking winners? Why do they force elderly ratepayers to pay for them?
Secondly, a lumpen great convention centre is completely the wrong thing to place in that location. White elephant city here we come…..
i despair.
and so do countless others – witness the decaying hole of the donut city.
Christchurch central city rebuild is failing. I hope I am proved wrong.
When the work is complete, and Christchurch looks like the National Party, and violence and crime flourish, will it be too late to tear their monuments to greed and corruption down? Of course not!
Well that’s kind of what is hoped for – that given the time it will take to bring these giant monuments to fruition and given that time and tide and new and different governments and councils will come and go and shoulder and shove and pull and push these projects all around and they will get variously dumped and amended and shrunken and expanded as the will of the peoples dictate.
That is the hope.
But when all you have is hope you have nothing (sorry JK (kirwan that is)…)
Apparently Lancaster Park, I mean Jade Stadium, oh I mean AMI Stadium, whatever the f… its current corporate tag is…. is not even bloody broken. It is apparently structurally sound and the only problem is that from one end of the field to the other the stadium drops 200mm.
That’s about 8 inches. About $45million to repair so the rumour goes. Why not leave it at that? And don’t tell visiting teams as we will then get the downhill advantage….
He certainly is a lot more fluent than Dave.
David Cunliffe should be and is ready to be the Leader of Labour, I didn’t really think so last year but he’s certainly developed a bit more humility and lost the arrogance and pompousness.
I guess having your colleagues lining up to kick you in the nads does that, tends to make you reassess your approach and how you do things.
Well, it’s a bit of a back-handed compliment to David Bennett, for knowing all the loopholes that needed to be ended, having specialised in fiddling farm accounts in the past.
Clearly David is a criminal mastermind…..according to the police.
Disregarding the new evidence, the crown story is just daft:
22 yr old David gets up, shoots 4 of his family in the house and then pops out to do the paper run as an alibi. Gets back home just in time to hide behind the curtains and snuff the old man. Then he just has to leave a wee note on the computer to implicate dad and then finally ring the police and turn on the water works.
Or as you suggest ,
An elderly man gets up , puts on his sons’ clothes and glasses, shoots 4 of his family. takes off his sons clothes, puts the bloodied clothes in the washing machine,
Changes his clothes, goes into the front room, logs on the family computer, types a note obsolving the son ,whos clothes hes just worn ,while murdering his family.
Shoots himself ,the guns’ mag falling out of the gun and landing on its edge beside Robin Bains’ ‘hand.
Robins. body found with no blood on him ,except his own.
David, who is found with his siblings blood on him. cant remember how he knows his family his dead, or why he waited 20 mins to ring an ambulance.
Sounds like something a defence lawyer would come up with.
It wouldn’t wash as an Agatha Christie novel.
Alternatively, dad wants to shoot his entire family except for one son. Equally bizarre.
Fortunately, we don’t have trial by TV or blogosphere.
Meanwhile, a relative of mine has to avoid watching the news for the next few days because every time pundits spout opinions (based solely on TV reports or the internet, which compete for the award for disseminating the most utter BS) or cheer their particular team, it reminds her how much she misses her friend, even after all this time.
Some folk try Agatha Christie whodunnits, others just don’t bother with hiding a murder-suicide. Arguing that one or the other could not be done because it sounds “just daft” in the cold light of day in my opinion shows a marked under-estimation of (to quote WSBurroughs) “just how far human kicks can go”.
I still have one question. What is the first thing most men do first thing after the get up? Have a piss . . . amirite or amitire?? So, how is it explained that Robin Bain didn’t empy his bladder before setting about murdering his family?
Don’t get me wrong, I believe this whole thing has been yet another ongoing, ochestrated miscarriage of justice perpetrated by, if not corrupt, then bumbling police officers aided and abetted by officious bureacrats and their babmboozled and indifferent politicians. Milton Weir . Kevin Anderson, Phill Goff, Crusher Collins, Peter Doone, Peter Robinson, Jim Doyle, Kim Jones, N C Jaine, B P Duncan . . . “when honor and the Law no longer stand on the same side of the line, how do we choose?”
I still have one question. What is the first thing most men do first thing after the get up? Have a piss . . . amirite or amitire?? So, how is it explained that Robin Bain didn’t empy his bladder before setting about murdering his family?
I would have thought that the body would have all sorts of overrides to normal biological functions when one was about to commit mass murder.
The full bladder, therefore victim, argument has no evidential weight.
This always supposes improbability Robin slept and committed crime soon after rising without emptying his bladder.
What evidence is there that Robin may not have had a sleepless night contemplating shooting his family or woke well before the shooting. In such scenarios he could easily have started with a partially full bladder and accumulated further urine during the activity of shooting his family.
I have not studied this David Bain case – but the thing that has always been the BIG question to me – is MOTIVE?
What MOTIVE did David Bain have to murder all these members of his family?”
The link you posted Penny goes to the review of the case that is damning of the police. We will never know who killed the Bain family, because the police didn’t do their job properly. What was the motive for that?
We will never know who killed the Bain family, because the police didn’t do their job properly. What was the motive for that
An excellent question, Weka!
Dunedin, moreso than many NZ cities, has a very dark history, one which includes police, politicians etc, being tied to organized, and underaged crime, and various other sadistic goings on.
Rather like it being, the Adelaide of NZ, if you will!
so, they want to intercept Skype? 1/3 of all internet traffic. Good luck with that Amy and co.
(You better you better you bet).
Seven Sharp characterize Assange as an “albino weasel”. Really?
DHB’s fail to meet safety stds (Health Quality and Safety Board).Only a 1/4 to a 1/3 of all DHB’s “doing enough” to prevent falls, infection etc.
RB seriously considering restrictions on low-deposit loans, first-home buyers not exempt. “Something has to be done to prevent damage (wreckage) to the financial system.”
This morning around the time on Morning Report about 7.45am that radionz reads out the headlines of the main papers I thought I heard that the Waikato Times had an item on spending by the NZ Forces likely to go into drones etc. I haven’t been able to track this down. Did anybody else hear the full mention, very short, or have seen it in a newspaper? I would like to look at it, hear it further.
In my day Joe, we believed everything that authorities told us. (Almost.) Now we should doubt everything that authorities tell us. Skills learnt to predict the bad guy in a stirring”whodunnit” will nowadays be focussed on real authority figures selling real misinformation. My brain hurts.
Message to Christine Rankin …
A Doz size 7 eggs are on special at New World for $3.99.
That’s great aye Krussy?
That means the kuds can live on weetbix and milk for breakfast (at 57cents?); noodles for lunch; and egg and toast for dinner for the next week.
Well I know mine couldn’t possibly have, but as you know Krussy Rankin seems to know better.
(i.e. basing her experiences of a couple of decades ago transposed on today’s reality).
They’d probably have to be raw eggs as well, given the lack of electricity.
So little birdies on the twittery grapevine saying things about how that there Auckland Council voted 10-7 that they weren’t interested in some deal involving no skycity and some pokies and a convention centre so that’s a thing.
The comments list seems to becoming overwhelmed with some material from Gaza GPJA.. And Karol’s one on Women receiving awards also extra long, the wording of headings if too long is hard to read.
Remember last year? When ABC were using Garner and Gower to dump on Cunliffe … all off the record, whispering in the dark, using the TV3 twins to push their self-serving agenda.
It’s on again. But this time Shearer is the target. Remember there are no real Shearer supporters, they were Parker supporters a couple of weeks before the leadership ballot in 2011, they just wanted a front man, and Shearer got the nod.
Turns out he’s not up to the job (who could have guessed, eh?) so they’re leaking into Gower’s ear (eww) and tonight on TV3 they got him to do their work – it’s their usual method. And the next idiot who says “Non-story! MSM!” try and think for a moment … who’s feeding him? And why?
Shearer will be dumped by the people who put him there. Next up, Robertson.
Yes. But don’t they need to put it to a full membership vote? They may try to go for someone like Andrew Little, or Jacinda Ardern. They are short on options.
But I thought Gower was supposed to have pretty much made everything up last time to make headlines? But this time he’s being fed?
Or maybe last time “ABC” fed gower the idea of a Cunliffe coup in order to discredit cunliffe, (who didn’t need discrediting if he wasn’t planning a challenge), and this time they’re feeding gower the idea of a caucus challenge because, well, whatever.
Or maybe gower realises his paycheck rests on taking unwary comments and blowing them out of proportion. Where’s the benefit in flagging a challenge months down the road? There is none.
Got that.
The reports gower was making last year about Shearer’s leadership facing a possible challenge within months were complete falsehoods spread by confidential sources. The reports gower is making right now about Shearer’s leadership facing a possible challenge within months are complete truths spread by confidential sources.
Did you see the story? Long, detailed quotes. Not somebody caught off guard, but somebody planting.
I said (and you ignored) Garner because it was his blog that started it all last year. A blog that was brought about by senior Labour MPs attacking Cunliffe – anonymously, of course.
Funny thing about anonymous attackers. You never know what was the actual quote and what is the intermediary’s little bit of editorialising. Sometimes they’re 100% accurate, sometimes it’s all just an invention by the intermediary, usually it’s somewhere in between. The point is, you can never know.
If s/he said the complete opposite, you’d be right. But if the reporter is the only one with recordings or notes of the meeting, there’s a lot of room for misinterpretation that wouldn’t ruin come to light.
And if a journo does burn a source who is expendable, what could the anonymous source do?
unless he got something slightly less clear cut, but he now has the lens through which everything can be interpreted and the mp is therefore no longer needed.
I mean, the difference is whether they had lunch for an hour and gower drew together disparate lines and placed less emphasis on qualifications and equivocations, or had a 2 minute chat in the john where the mp wasn’t interrupted at all and spoke straight into the recorder.
No, the difference is the quote marks. And it doesn’t matter if Gower is ignoring all the kumbayah stuff they may have said. They also said this stuff, to Gower, (and Dannat TVNZ). It’s deliberate that they said this stuff, it’s something they chose to do, to get a story like this.
I’ve been “quoted” in the paper once or twice – different hats back in the day. Just in the local pages, nothing earth shattering. Quotation marks seemed to be largely similar to the role of the target in the Texas Sharpshooter analogy.
And that’s without the interview style “would you say something roughly along the lines of xxxxxx?” “yes”.
What is the problem with someone saying that Shearer has to either demonstrate that he can get his performance right or step aside?
What is the problem with telling the media?
The Membership and the public would like to know that the Party leaders are taking the continual poll paralysis seriously.
The sooner the Leadship issue is opened to a proper debate the better.
But according to the “Shearer’s a patsy” theory, doesn’t that mean that I’d be undermining shearer at this time so Robertson can take the leadership?
But of course your justification for that delusion is even more tenuous than CV’s guess: it consists solely of amateur-hour content pattern analysis. Even a political news editor would regard that as a bit thin.
By the way, your content analysis is as mistaken as your trend analysis.
There has been one Labour MP who has been providing information to Gower. This goes back a long way ….. Gower himself has mentioned in passing the name of that MP when I was with a small group of people a few years ago.
Labour leader David Shearer has been put on two months’ notice by his own MPs – if the poll ratings don’t improve, his leadership will be challenged.
A Labour MP told 3 News today that Mr Shearer had until spring – two months away – to pick up his and Labour’s performance.
The MP, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “The caucus is just really flat. It’s not panic or anxiety just yet, but a couple more bad polls and it will be. David’s got a couple more months. A change in leadership cannot be ruled out before the end of the year.
“Spring time is when people will get really nervous, just over a year out from the election. We don’t want to get into the “Goff-zone”, where it’s too late to change the leader, but you’ve got someone in there the public just don’t want -the phone is just off the hook.”
It is rare for Labour MPs to speak so openly of leadership concerns.
The MP who spoke to 3 News is not a loyal supporter of leadership rival David Cunliffe. That makes the comments more significant as it shows there are broader concerns in the caucus about Mr Shearer’s performance.
Meanwhile Mr Shearer was on the by-election battlefield of Ikaroa-Rawhiti with Meka Whaitiri, Labour’s candidate for the seat.
There he vowed to be the Labour leader come the next general election.
3 News
let’s refresh everyone on the basis you have for saying that Robertson and I are “old friends”. I said:
The only relationship I have with Robertson is that he was present of the students’ association at about the same time I started uni.
From that you draw a long bow from “uni at roughly the same time”, through “actually spoke to each other at the time” all the way to “are friends” [present tense = “are friends now”]. And spout on as if it’s fact.
this would be the brilliant tactic of creating rumours of a cunliffe challenge because mallard didn’t want cunliffe to be leader, even though cunliffe was extremely loyal and in no way going to challenge.
No challenge = no need to purposefully create rumours.
But if there was a challenge, gower didn’t need mallard to make anything up.
The MP who spoke to 3 News is not a loyal supporter of leadership rival David Cunliffe. That makes the comments more significant as it shows there are broader concerns in the caucus about Mr Shearer’s performance.
That suggests to me the MP was a member of the broader caucus and not notably aligned at any point to either the Shearer or the Cunliffe camp.
That’s why I said at any point. The Robertson/Parker acolytes joined with the Shearer-ites once the deals were done. One faction leader got deputy and the other finance. I’m inclined to think this was someone who kept in the background during the leadership battle and its aftermath.
Great, more Labour MPs spilling their guts to news reporters. Also, I’m pretty sure that apart from a very few MPs, there is no actual “Shearer camp”.
EDIT ffs, this Labour caucus instability is Hooten’s wet dream planned well over a year ago, coming true. I’m just amazed though that none of us on The Standard spotted the plan before.
The leader is (usually) not in Parliament on Thursday – today he was campaigning in Ikaroa-Rawhiti. So it’s safe to talk to the gallery, cat’s away, mice play …
In unrelated news, Trevor Mallard *was* in Parliament today.
I can’t believe someone from Caucus chose to leak this to Gower instead of working within caucus to bring a resolution to the Leadership problem. Unbelievable, I don’t think we can blame Hooten for this, I’m afraid that Labour is seriously fucked if a senior member of caucus has gone to the media with this.
Who ever it is is putting their ambitions ahead of the Party’s (Its per emptive, Shearer is gone!)…they need to be outed. Clearly it is the same person who set up Cunliffe in November. This person is poisonous, Labour will never succeed with this person within its ranks IMO.
Hmmm, I thought the whole point was that Shearer was put in to prevent Cunliffe, and he would then later be rolled to get who the ABCs really want. At least that’s what the Standardistas were talking about last year.
Sorry Saarbo, but it’s a given that too many Labour MPs put their own careers ahead of the good of the party.
btw, Labour MPs playing bullshit internal politics and Hooton having his hand in things are not mutually exclusive.
Y’all know I’m neither a LP member nor list voter, so take this as whatever.
But this stuff hurts your party. From now till ‘spring’ Gower has been given an explicit narrative. All political stories will now be in the frame of “What does this mean for Shearer’s position as leader’.
You might think “So, what’s new?” and fair enough, but this has made it official. It’s a Labour party framing, the media don;t need to speculate that caucus is looking, they can state it all as fact.
So LP members should be writing letters and making calls to your mps, and letting them know that this anonymous sniping should stop, and that whoever is doing it should launch a challenge and get this ball rolling. You’ve got your new process, it will take time, but it needs to be put to bed, and that can only happen one way or the other through a vote. Untill the party wide vote happens, this story will run, and Labour will not look like a govt in waiting. That vote needs to happen as soon as possible.
Have the bloody NATs been taking lessons from the UK tories? Conservative Government has just announced a massive £100B infrastructure and social housing build plan…but none of it starts for at least 4 years.
This is more bullshit “things will get better in the future” BAU messaging.
So if Labour falls below 30% will people here finally admit, “hey we’re in trouble here” or will you be like bob dole who thought because his cousin friend in tempe was going to vote for him, hes still in with a chance.
Every 2 or 3 fortnightly Morgan polls I have a look at the trends. Basically I am ignoring jitter.
I essentially ignore the other polls as they happen so infrequently for each poll as to be useless because of their infrequencies and that they only seem to make and effort to get an accurate population sample close to the election – which is why they always have dramatic shifts then.
As far as I can see, most people here do the same. Reading the right blogs is amusing. Many if not most seem to largely ignore Morgan despite its sampling rate and despite the fact that it seldom shifts much leading into an election and is usually the most accurate. Instead they concentrate on the infrequent polls with piss poor track records.
I guess they are either credulous fools with little understanding of statistics, or they are credulous fools with delusions that the “big lie” technique keeps working.
in the roy morgan, I probably would. Especially if it was coupled with a noticable reversal in the trend (as opposed to a single 8-point drop from 37%).
You can relax McFlock. The true mean of support for Labour sits on or very close to 32%. It’s very unlikely that it will fall under 30%, except perhaps momentarily.
I get the impression that you pray it does dip below 30%, otherwise all the helpul advice for Labour you’ve offered here is just useless horseshit you’ve been spouting since feb 2012.
Either someone is manipulating iPredict to push their point, or there really has been backroom talk over the last few weeks and the leak is just it eventuating.
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A most amazingly air-tight conspiracy Not research, but research-related. Skeptical Science reader John G. writes to point out an omission in our collection of rebuttals: "You are failing to rebut a prevailing narrative which blames a Globalist Elite for promoting CC as part of The Great Reset."Thank you John, ...
The travails of National MP Sam Uffindell are bad news for the National party in more ways than one. The obvious question is as to how an applicant with such a disreputable history could have secured the nomination as the National candidate in the Tauranga by-election. National’s vetting procedures seem ...
The “A View from Afar” podcast with Selwyn Manning and I resumed after a months hiatus. We discussed the PRC-Taiwan tensions in the wake of Nancy Pelosi’s visit and what pathways, good and bad, may emerge from the escalation of hostilities between the mainland and island. You can find it ...
A ballot for one member's bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn: Crown Minerals (Prohibition of Mining) Amendment Bill (Eugenie Sage) The bill is pitched as protecting conservation land, and it does immediately do that. But it also goes further, doing exactly what it ...
Sam Uffindell’s defenders keep reminding us that he was only 16 at the time of the King’s College incident, and haven’t we all done things in our teens that, as adults, we look back on with shame and embarrassment? True. Let’s be honest. Haven’t we all at one time or ...
Our media insists on telling us that Ukraine is a unified country suffering aggression from its neighbour the Russian Federation. But it is hardly unified. A violent civil war has raged there since the overthrow of the democratically elected government in February 2014. This civil war arose from deep ...
If National causes yet another by-election to be held in Tauranga, not only will it cost the taxpayers another unnecessary $1m for the taxpayers after Simon Bridges called it quits earlier in the year, but National will also pay a big price in terms of its reputation and integrity. A ...
Representing Pakeha Racism: The important thing to remember about Rob Muldoon, and the racist policies with which his name is associated, is that he drew his power from the hundreds-of-thousands of anxious, angry, and yes – racist – Pakeha who voted for him, and that his most effective campaign slogan was: “New Zealand the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections The U.S. Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act by a single vote on Sunday, August 7. The bill, headed to the House of Representatives within days, includes by far the largest and most consequential measures to reduce domestic climate pollution in the nation’s ...
I remember feeling anxious before making the phone call, although not at anxious I might have expected. But what sticks most in my mind is how the phone call ended. It was the late 1990s. I was deputy editor of the NZ Listener and I had to ring a guy ...
National is dripping “blue blood” again. The revelations over Sam Uffindell’s violent assault indicate that the National Party under Christopher Luxon hasn’t quite shed the toxicity and internal damage of the last few years. The crises besetting the party have recently been well documented in journalist Andrea Vance’s new book ...
Most of us believe in redemption and atonement… But the timing, the nature and the semantics of Sam Uffindell‘s apology for his role in a gang that beat a younger kid (reportedly) with wooden bed legs, has left much to be desired. The victim seems pretty clear about the motivation ...
Yesterday the news broke that newly elected National MP Sam Uffindell was asked to leave private Auckland school King’s College at the end of his fifth form year after being part of a group that viciously beat a younger student one night. There are many elements to this latest political ...
You’ve got to wonder why the National Party knowingly hid information from the public about their newest MP, Sam Uffindell. Surely they must’ve realised that their secret would eventually leak into the public domain. New Zealand is far too small for cover-ups of this kind to be effective.Despite his violent ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk With high energy prices and increasing urgency to reduce fossil fuel burning, it makes sense to get the most out of every gallon of gasoline or kilowatt-hour of electricity. A previous post showed that charging an EV costs around $1.41 per gallon ...
Back in the 1990s, Tony Blair rebranded The British Labour Party as “New Labour”, to try and draw a line under past failures. It’s as if Christopher Luxon is attempting to follow suit, and launch “New National” at the moment – a party that’s fresh-looking, has made some big breaks ...
Back in June Sam Uffindell was elected to parliament in the Tauranga by-election. Turns out he's a bully who beat a kid with a bed-leg at school: The National Party’s newest MP, Sam Uffindell, was asked to leave his exclusive boarding school after viciously beating a younger student late ...
The Justice Committee has called for submissions on the Electoral Amendment Bill. Submissions are due by Wednesday, 31 August 2022, and can be made at the link above. The bill improves disclosure of party finances, lowering the declaration threshold to $5,000 and requiring parties to disclose their annual financial statements. ...
Laughing With The Poor Folks - Or At Them? Christopher Luxon took rapper LunchMoney Lewis’s lyrics at their face value. “Bills”, as heard by Luxon, is a cri-de-cœur from a hard-working man determined to pull himself and his family up by their own bootstraps. It simply wouldn’t occur to him ...
On the rare occasions when it ever gets asked, the public keeps rejecting tax cuts as such, as a policy priority. It keeps saying it wants tax levels to either stay the same or be increased, so that public services can be maintained, or even (perish the thought) improved. In ...
Europe has been baking in a heatwave, of course. Not so much this part of the world, which benefits by still being in Winter (though let’s just say I am not looking forward to January 2023). Not that it’s been a particularly cold Winter – we haven’t had one ...
The Wagner Group is a private military company – effectively mercenaries. It has been used for the military activity of the Russian Federation in various parts of the world. Currently, it is operating in Ukraine and apparently has a reputation as a very brave and effective force in the ...
I have said this in other forums, but here is the deal: PRC military exercises after Pelosi’s visit are akin to male gorillas who run around thrashing branches and beating their chests when annoyed, disturbed or seeking to show dominance. They are certainly dangerous and not to be ignored, but ...
From July 7 to 26 we tried something new on our Facebook page by sharing one Cranky Uncle cartoon each day for 20 days in a row. There were two reasons for doing this: firstly, we wanted to ensure that at least one post would get published each day while I was ...
Too many commentators on current price pressures have not understood that this time it is very different from the 1970s. Their prescriptions may accelerate inflation.The New Zealand economy is experiencing an external price shock arising from the Covid pandemic and the Ukrainian invasion compounded by related supply chain difficulties. It ...
During the years of the Key government one hardy perennial of political journalism was that whenever the Labour Opposition would suggest a policy alternative to the status quo, the hard bitten response from the Gallery realists would be “But how’re you gonna pay for it?” National in Opposition has been ...
In The Wizard’s Garden: George Dunlop Leslie, 1904IT ALL SEEMS so long ago now, and, to be fair, in human terms, 48 years is a long time. New Zealand was a different country in 1974. Someone unafraid of courting controversy might say it had achieved “Peak Pakeha”. Although the Labour Government of ...
Proximate Cause: Tellingly, it was Helen Clark who was seated close by when, earlier this week, Jacinda Ardern delivered a speech carefully crafted to keep New Zealand’s dairy exports heading China’s way. Photo by PolitikPURISTS WOULD ARGUE that New Zealand’s foreign policy should not be determined by who its Prime Minister ...
We have a new clip out of The Rings of Power. It sees Galadriel and the affectionately nicknamed Gigwit* venturing into dark places in search of evil. At fifty-odd seconds, it also constitutes the longest single piece of show dialogue we have seen thus far. *An acronym. “Galadriel Is ...
Rising To The Challenge: Te Pāti Māori is reassuring the angry and the alienated that in 2023 voting will make a difference. Aotearoa is changing. Pakeha – especially young Pakeha – are changing. The racism is still there, of course, heightened, it would seem, by the prospect of Labour, the ...
"CAGW." A thing? With its provocative title and remarks grounded in respected published research, the perspective Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios just published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has caused a few ripples reaching into popular media. "Endgame" and "catastrophic" lean hard in the direction of "pay ...
In the past there's been a few interesting data points about the New Zealand Intelligence Community's desire to covertly manipulate public opinion through media and academic mouthpieces. In 2015 the Council for Civil Liberties revealed the existence of an NZIC "Strategic Communications Group" tasked with persuading the public that spying ...
Inflation is through the roof, and "coincidentally" so is oil company profiteering. UN Secretary-General António Guterres calls it what it is: grotesque: The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has described the record profits of oil and gas companies as immoral and urged governments to introduce a windfall tax, using ...
What on earth is going on with the main opposition parties at the moment? Both National and ACT have been making numerous flip-flops and miscommunications, clearly indicating that they aren’t a viable alternative to the current Labour led Government.Of particular note is the duplicitous reasoning given for why they support ...
A ballot for two member's bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn: Housing Infrastructure (GST-sharing) Bill (Brooke van Velden) Prohibition on Seabed Mining Legislation Amendment Bill (Debbie Ngarewa-Packer) Ngarewa-Packer's bill looks likely to start a shitfight with Labour, and not just because the ...
As you might have noticed, I have an on-going interest in working my way through old and intellectually influential reading material. Occasionally I even share my thoughts on it, which allows me to take a break from my generally-dominant Tolkien analysis. Well, today I thought I would take a ...
Golriz Ghahraman's Electoral (Strengthening Democracy) Amendment Bill will probably face its first reading today. And three months after it was introduced - pissing on the "as soon as practicable" requirement of Standing Order 269 - it has received a section 7 report from Attorney-General David Parker stating that its proposed ...
There's an interesting select committee report out today, from the Petitions Committee on the Petition of Conrad Petersen: The Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA). The petitioner raises some concerns about the slowness of the IPCA process and its lack of oversight, and suggests some solutions. The committee doesn't seem keen ...
Today is a Member's Day, but likely to be a boring one. There's no general debate today, and instead the House will move right into the third reading of the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Bill, which will add unelected, inherently conflicted Ngai Tahu representatives to ECan. Then there's ...
That gormlessly glum picture of Christopher Luxon in Samoa graphically tells us what kind of image New Zealand would be projecting abroad if there’s a change of government next year. The glumness is understandable. For months, National and ACT had been dog whistling to the bigots who oppose the creation ...
There is no corruption in New Zealand. At least that’s what authorities want the public to believe. For decades now our system of political finance regulation has been portrayed as highly rigorous, ensuring our politicians cannot be bought. Unfortunately, that’s just not true. Although politicians and officials have claimed tight ...
Pundits have come out of the woodwork to defend the Greens co-leader, after he was stripped of his leadership last week by unhappy party members. The defences have all stuck to basically the same script: Shaw is a successful leader and minister who’s handed the party big victories in politics ...
Meghan Murphy talks with Batya Ungar-Sargon the author of Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy. The book charts the trajectory of journalism in the US as it shifted from being a blue collar occupation producing the penny press for the masses, to a profession for Ivy League university ...
Co-Leaders? The uncomfortable truth is: not the Army, not the Police, not the Spooks, and not even a combination of all three, could defeat the scale and violence of White Supremacist and Māori Nationalist resistance which the imposition of radical decolonisation – or its racism-inspired defeat – would unleash upon ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson and Jeff Masters Torrents of rain that began before dawn on Tuesday, July 26, gave St. Louis, Missouri, its highest calendar-day total since records began in 1873. And the deadly event is just the latest example of a well-established trend ...
Completed reads for July: The Prince, by Niccolo MachiavelliFaust, Part I, by Johann Wolfgang von GoetheFaust, Part II, by Johann Wolfgang von GoetheParadise Lost, by John MiltonParadise Regained, by John MiltonThe NibelungenliedAgricola, by TacitusGermania, by TacitusDialogue on Orators, by TacitusThe Gods of Pegana, by Lord DunsanyTime and the Gods, ...
A couple of weeks ago the High Court exposed a loophole in our electoral donations law, enabling corrupt parties to take in unlimited amounts of secret money and explicitly sell policy to the rich. Pretty obviously, this is unacceptable in a country which wants to call itself a democracy, and ...
This morning, National’s deputy leader Nicola Willis managed to get top of the bulletin news coverage by pointing out that some Kiwis living abroad might receive the government’s cost of living payment. Quelle horreur. What is the problem here? Inflation is a global problem, and Kiwis living abroad may be ...
Beyond Fixing? The critical question confronting New Zealanders is whether we any longer have the resources to repair our physical and human infrastructure?WHO WILL MAKE the New Zealand of the next 50 years? We had better hope that, whoever they are, they make a better job of it than those ...
Today’s speech by Jacinda Ardern to the China Business Summit in Auckland was full of soothing words for Beijing. The headline-grabber was Ardern’s comment that ‘a few plans are afoot’ for New Zealand ministers to return to China – and that the Prime Minister herself hopes to return to the ...
Rule-Breaker? It is easy to see why poor James Shaw found himself brutally deposed as the Greens’ co-leader. By seeking the responsibilities of leadership – and exercising them – he violated the first rule of Green Party governance. Then, by accepting the limitations of the Green Party’s electoral mandate (7.8 ...
After the incredibly sad story about the deaths of over 50 Ukrainian POWs in a Ukrainian missile attack on the prison they were housed in (see Over 50 POWs killed. A military accident or a cynical war crime?)I came across the heartwarming story about another Ukrainian POW. It’s about a ...
British mercenary Aiden Aslin, now a prisoner in the Donetsk People’s Republic, expressed real concern that he may die from the Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk. He has experienced many missile attacks that came close to the prison.Is he still alive? Understandably, we are always shocked about the losses ...
Politics is largely reported as theatre: tragedy and comedy, thriller and farce. Andrea Vance captures it all very successfully in Blue Blood. But it is the politics of personality, not of policy – of the impact of government on the people’s wellbeing. Even so, we can see from the book ...
This year the government finally got its clean car feebate scheme into place. But there's a problem: it's been too successful: Transport Minister Michael Wood will shortly review the cost of the fees and rebates in the Government's "feebate" scheme after the runaway success of the policy has meant ...
Given how the pandemic has disrupted the sporting calendar, no-one would begrudge our elite athletes their chance to compete at international level. What with the war in Ukraine and the cost of living, there are also not many ‘good news” stories out there. So… I suppose the strenuous efforts the ...
Everybody Having A Say: Democracy commands us to look outward; it demands our trust; it tells us what is expected of our humanity; it elevates the collective above the self; it celebrates the things we have in common; it defines our morals and values; it calculates what we owe one ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to ensure that as a nation which produces enough food to feed 40 million people, everyone in New Zealand can put an abundance of nourishing, nutritious kai on the table. ...
Following months of work by the Green Party and community and environmental organisations, Parliament will have the opportunity to pass legislation to protect public conservation land and waters from mining. ...
New evidence released today by Alcohol Healthwatch shows there’s never been a better time for Parliament to pass Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick’s Alcohol Harm Minimisation Bill. ...
We’re helping more Kiwis into work, to help support whānau, grow our skilled workforce and secure our economy for future generations. During our time in Government, we’ve delivered record low unemployment rates, as well as a steady fall in the number of New Zealanders receiving a main benefit, and we’re ...
The Green Party once again calls on the Government to ban bottom trawling on all seamounts following the release of an industry white paper on so-called ‘sustainable’ trawling. ...
Urgent reform is essential to ensure disabled people have equal access to the care and support they need, the Green Party says in response to a new report that challenges politicians to fix the current system. ...
COVID-19 is here to stay and so the Government needs to put in place long-term protection measures, including mandatory ventilation standards, the Green Party says. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to overhaul the Recognised Seasonal Employers scheme in the wake of revelations of shocking human rights violations. ...
The Green Party is calling for a cross-party commitment to guaranteeing at least a living wage and safe working conditions to people seeking employment, instead of continuing benefit sanctions. ...
The Green Party is once again calling on the Government to announce its support for a moratorium on deep sea mining, and to support a member’s bill going to select committee. ...
The Government must take steps to ensure that the way we build our homes is helping to meet New Zealand’s climate change targets, the Green Party said. ...
The Government’s employment initiatives led by the Ministry of Social Development must guarantee liveable incomes and fair working conditions, the Green Party says. ...
New Zealanders deserve a health system that works for everyone, no matter who you are or where you live. Our Government has a plan to make this a reality, and we’re taking the next steps. We now have thousands more health professionals, such as doctors and nurses, working in New ...
During her time as Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern has navigated New Zealand through unprecedented times. Through it all, she’s become known as someone who leads with kindness, compassion and strength, while keeping the wellbeing of Kiwis at the heart of her approach. To celebrate five years of Jacinda leading the ...
Since taking office in 2017, our Government has worked hard to lift wages and make life more affordable for New Zealanders, as we move forward with our plan to grow a secure economy for all. ...
The Government must use the opportunity of the Electoral Amendment Bill in Parliament to close the loophole in the political donations regime, the Green Party says. ...
Thanks to political pressure from the Green Party and the more than 900 personal stories of birth injury and trauma delivered to Minister Sepuloni, more injuries have been added to the ACC birth injuries bill. ...
Supporting New Zealanders is at the heart of our approach as a Government, and we’re working hard to tackle the big issues Kiwis are facing. While long term challenges like child poverty won’t be solved overnight, we’re putting in place policies that make a real difference for New Zealanders. Here ...
As-salamu alaykum, Tena tatou katoa, Thank you all for being here today. To the Afghan human rights defenders and your family members, welcome to Aotearoa. And thank you Your Excellency for hosting us all here at Government House. We have with us today from Afghanistan, human rights advocates, journalists, judges, ...
It’s my great pleasure to be able to speak with you about a really positive move for the Build-to-Rent sector. As you know, we announced changes last year to help steer property investors way from the existing pool of housing and toward solving New Zealand’s grave housing shortage - by ...
· Tax changes aimed at growing quality, secure rental supply · New and existing build-to-rent developments exempt from interest limitation rules in perpetuity, when offering ten-year tenancies · Exemption to apply from 1 October 2021. The Government is encouraging more long-term rental options by giving developers tax incentives for as ...
The Government has marked another milestone in its push for better rural connectivity, welcoming the delivery of Rural Connectivity Group’s (RCG) 350th tower. Waikato’s Te Ākau, which sits roughly 50 kilometres out of Hamilton is home to the new tower. “The COVID 19 pandemic has highlighted the ever-increasing importance of ...
Biosecurity co-operation topped the agenda when Australia and New Zealand’s agriculture ministers met yesterday. Australia’s Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Senator Murray Watt met with his New Zealand counterpart, Damien O’Connor, Minister of Agriculture, Biosecurity, and Rural Communities in a conference call, which had particular focus on foot and ...
People could spend less time in hospital, thanks to a smart new remote device that lets patients be monitored at home, Health Minister Andrew Little says. “Technology has the potential to really change the way we do things – to do things that are better for patients and at the ...
Concrete steps to clarify inclusive, evidence-informed teaching practices Strengthen capability supports along the professional pathway Enhance partnerships between the education system and whānau, iwi, communities Embed equitable additional learning supports and assessment tools that help teachers effectively notice and respond to the needs of students Improved student achievement is a ...
Aotearoa New Zealand has committed to strengthen global prevention, preparedness and responses to future pandemics with seed funding for a new World Bank initiative, Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta announced today. “We cannot afford to wait until the next pandemic. We must all play our part to support developing countries ...
A law change to ensure that forestry conversions by overseas investors benefit New Zealand has passed its final reading in Parliament. Previously, overseas investors wishing to convert land, such as farm land, into forestry only needed to meet the “special forestry test”. This is a streamlined test, designed to encourage ...
International tourism recovery well underway with higher level of overseas visitor arrivals than previously expected UK and US card spend already back at pre-COVID levels Visitors staying in New Zealand longer and spending more compared to 2019 Govt support throughout pandemic helped tourism sector prepare for return of international ...
The Ministry for Ethnic Communities has released its first strategy, setting out the actions it will take over the next few years to achieve better wellbeing outcomes for ethnic communities Minister for Diversity, Inclusion and Ethnic Communities Priyanca Radhakrishnan announced today. “The Strategy that has been released today sets out ...
The Prime Minister has officially opened the Hawke’s Bay Regional Aquatic Centre today saying it is a huge asset to the region and to the country. “This is a world class facility which will be able to host national and international events including the world championships. With a 10-lane Olympic ...
The Associate Minister of Education, Aupito William Sio, has today announced the recipients of the Tulī Takes Flight scholarships which were a key part of last year’s Dawn Raids apology. The scholarships are a part of the goodwill gesture of reconciliation to mark the apology by the New Zealand Government ...
96% of estimated menstruating students receive free period products 2085 schools involved 1200 dispensers installed Supports cost of living, combats child poverty, helps increase attendance Associate Minister of Education Jan Tinetti today hailed the free period products in schools, Ikura | Manaakitia te whare tangata, a huge success, acknowledging ...
The Tourism Industry Transformation Plan outlines key actions to improve the sector This includes a Tourism and Hospitality Accord to set employment standards Developing cultural competency within the workforce Improving the education and training system for tourism Equipping business owners and operators with better tools and enabling better work ...
Minister for the Digital Economy and Communications Dr David Clark welcomes Google Cloud’s decision to make New Zealand a cloud region. “This is another major vote of confidence for New Zealand’s growing digital sector, and our economic recovery from COVID 19,” David Clark said. “Becoming a cloud region will mean ...
A package of changes to NCEA and University Entrance announced today recognise the impact COVID-19 has had on senior secondary students’ assessment towards NCEA in 2022, says Associate Minister of Education Jan Tinetti. “We have heard from schools how significant absences of students and teachers, as a result of COVID-19, ...
Te Reo Māori tauparapara… Tapatapa tū ki te Rangi! Ki te Whei-ao! Ki te Ao-mārama Tihei mauri ora! Stand at the edge of the universe! of the spiritual world! of the physical world! It is the breath of creation Formal acknowledgments… [Your Highness Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II and Masiofo] ...
The Government’s commitment to combatting firearms violence has reached another significant milestone today with the passage of the Firearms Prohibition Order Legislation Bill, Police Minister Chris Hipkins says. The new law helps to reduce firearm-related crime by targeting possession, use, or carriage of firearms by people whose actions and behaviours ...
Minister for Veterans, Hon Meka Whaitiri sends her condolences to the last Battle for Crete veteran. “I am saddened today to learn of the passing of Cyril Henry Robinson known as Brant Robinson, who is believed to be the last surviving New Zealand veteran of the Battle for Crete, Meka ...
Legislation to repeal the ‘Three Strikes’ law has passed its third reading in Parliament. “The Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill ends an anomaly in New Zealand’s justice system that dictates what sentence judges must hand down irrespective of relevant factors,” Justice Minister Kiri Allan said. “The three strikes law was ...
Work is under way on preliminary steps to improve the Government’s support for survivors of abuse in care while a new, independent redress system is designed, Public Service Minister Chris Hipkins says. These steps – recommended by the Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry – include rapid payments for ...
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki Online Forum 77 years ago today, an atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Three days earlier, on the 6th of August 1945, the same fate had befallen the people of Hiroshima. Tens of thousands died instantly. In the years that followed 340,000 ...
An agreement signed today between the New Zealand and United States governments will provide new opportunities for our space sector and closer collaboration with NASA, Economic and Regional Development Minister Stuart Nash said. Stuart Nash signed the Framework Agreement with United States Deputy Secretary of State, Wendy Sherman. The signing ...
An agreement signed today between New Zealand’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the United States’ Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will strengthen global emergency management capability, says Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty. “The Government is committed to continually strengthening our emergency management system, and this Memorandum of Cooperation ...
New Zealand will remain at the Orange traffic light setting, while hospitalisations remain elevated and pressure on the health system continues through winter. “There’s still significant pressure on hospitals from winter illnesses, so our current measures have an ongoing role to play in reducing the number of COVID-19 cases and ...
Streets will soon be able to be transformed from unsafe and inaccessible corridors to vibrant places for all transport modes thanks to new legislation proposed today, announced Transport Minister Michael Wood. “We need to make it safe, quicker and more attractive for people to walk, ride and take public transport ...
More young minds eyeing food and fibre careers is the aim of new Government support for agricultural and horticultural science teachers in secondary schools, Agriculture and Rural Communities Minister Damien O’Connor announced today. The Government is committing $1.6 million over five years to the initiative through the Ministry for Primary ...
Kākāpō numbers have increased from 197 to 252 in the 2022 breeding season, and there are now more of the endangered parrots than there have been for almost 50 years, Conservation Minister Poto Williams announced today. The flightless, nocturnal parrot is a taonga of Ngāi Tahu and a species unique ...
The relationship between Aotearoa New Zealand and Malaysia is to be elevated to the status of a Strategic Partnership, to open up opportunities for greater co-operation and connections in areas like regional security and economic development. Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta met her Malaysian counterpart Dato’ Saifuddin Abdullah today during a ...
With additional trains operating across the network, powered by the Government’s investment in rail, there is need for a renewed focus on rail safety, Transport Minister Michael Wood emphasised at the launch of Rail Safety Week 2022. “Over the last five years the Government has invested significantly to improve level ...
The Foreign Minister has wrapped up a series of meetings with Indo-Pacific partners in Cambodia which reinforced the need for the region to work collectively to deal with security and economic challenges. Nanaia Mahuta travelled to Phnom Penh for a bilateral meeting between ASEAN foreign ministers and Aotearoa New Zealand, ...
Kia ora koutou Firstly, thank you to the President of the Criminal Bar Association, Fiona Guy Kidd QC, for her invitation to attend the annual conference this weekend albeit unfortunately she is unable to attend, I’m grateful to the warm welcome both Chris Wilkinson-Smith (Vice-President, Whanganui) and Adam Simperingham (Vice-President, Gisborne) ...
Extension of Aotearoa Touring Programme supporting domestic musicians The Programme has supported more than 1,700 shows and over 250 artists New Zealand Music Commission estimates that around 200,000 Kiwis have been able to attend shows as a result of the programme The Government is hitting a high note, with ...
Minister of Defence Peeni Henare will depart tomorrow for Solomon Islands to attend events commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Guadalcanal. While in Solomon Islands, Minister Henare will also meet with Solomon Islands Minister of National Security, Correctional Services and Police Anthony Veke to continue cooperation on security ...
The Government is partnering with Ngāi Tahu Farming Limited and Ngāi Tūāhuriri on a whole-farm scale study in North Canterbury to validate the science of regenerative farming, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor announced today. The programme aims to scientifically evaluate the financial, social and environmental differences between regenerative and conventional practices. ...
52.5% of people on public boards are women Greatest ever percentage of women Improved collection of ethnicity data “Women’s representation on public sector boards and committees is now 52.5 percent, the highest ever level. The facts prove that diverse boards bring a wider range of knowledge, expertise and skill. ...
I am honoured to support the 2022 Women in Governance Awards, celebrating governance leaders, directors, change-makers, and rising stars in the community, said Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio. For the second consecutive year, MPP is proudly sponsoring the Pacific Governance Leader category, recognising Pacific women in governance and presented to ...
Today Economic and Regional Development Minister Stuart Nash turned the sod for the new Whakatāne Commercial Boat Harbour, cut the ribbon for the revitalised Whakatāne Wharf, and inspected work underway to develop the old Whakatāne Army Hall into a visitor centre, all of which are part of the $36.8 million ...
New Zealanders are not getting a fair deal on some key residential building supplies and while the Government has already driven improvements in the sector, a Commerce Commission review finds that changes are needed to make it more competitive. “New Zealand is facing the same global cost of living and ...
ANALYSIS:By Shailendra Singh of the University of the South Pacific In Fiji’s politically charged context, national elections are historically a risky period. Since the 2022 campaign period was declared open on April 26, the intensity has been increasing. Moreover, with three governments toppled by coups after the 1987, 1999 ...
RNZ Pacific The Queen’s Representative in the Cook Islands, Sir Tom Marsters, has confirmed Mark Brown as the Prime Minister. In a statement issued from Mark Brown’s office, Sir Tom said he was “satisfied” that Mark Brown had the majority of the MPs elected to Parliament. Following the final count ...
Former list MP Aaron Gilmore, who resigned in 2013 after he used his position as a threat to a hotel employee, says there has been "outrageous behaviour" by those in Parliament. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pasi Sahlberg, Professor of Education, Southern Cross University Federal Education Minister Jason Clare and his state colleagues met in Canberra on Friday.Lukas Coch/AAP Last Friday, Australia’s state and federal education ministers met with emotional teachers, who spoke of working on weekends ...
Despite an 11th-hour rush of nominations for this year's local body elections, Local Government New Zealand says the numbers could still be too low. ...
A political analyst says people who would have voted for Leo Molloy in Auckland's mayoral election may now turn to Efeso Collins, because both candidates have working-class appeal. ...
Podcast - After one of the fastest political downfalls in New Zealand's history, Political Reporter Katie Scotcher examines how both major parties now face bullying accusations. ...
The government has unveiled what it is calling a radical plan to overhaul reading, writing and maths teaching after two decades of sliding literacy rates. ...
ANALYSIS:By Russel Norman, executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa Only people power can ensure genuine enduring progress on climate and people need to know the truth if they are to act on it. For that reason greenwashing is the enemy of progress on climate and where you stand on ...
PNG Post-Courier Papua New Guinea’s Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai says he will seek a further extension from the Governor-General for the return of writ for Southern Highlands provincial seat which has faced protracted delays in counting. He said any discussions and talks of “failing” an election and calling for a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Madeline Taylor, Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University Shutterstock Australia’s energy ministers on Friday voted to make emissions reduction a key national energy goal, in a major step forward in the clean energy transition. Federal, state and territory energy ministers agreed to ...
Labour MP Gaurav Sharma has launched another broadside at his own party, posting a lengthy statement on social media that details his interactions with Parliamentary Service and the Labour whips. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Wadham, Director, Open Door: Understanding and Supporting Service Personnel and their Families, Flinders University The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide has released its interim report after more than 1,900 submissions and 194 witnesses. It includes recommendations considered so urgent ...
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More details come out on Obama’s plan of attack to address climate change.
Obama’s climate plan will limit emissions from plants and trucks
Political leaders from around the world give their reaction.
From the European Union:
From the United Nations:
From Britain:
From the Pacific Islands:
From the New Zealand Green Party:
To date their has been no response to Obama’s speech from either Labour or National. And I think neither can we expect one.
Time for David Cunliffe to fill the gap perhaps? If Labour keep up its silence… Might we see ia press statement from Cunliffe to make up for the missing leadership sadly lacking in his own party?
I also notice that so far there has been no post on Obama’s speech from anyone at The Standard
Why is this?
Does nobody have any opinion on Obama’s speech?
Or could it be, that The Standard authors (consciously, or unconsciously), don’t want to acknowledge or bring attention to the uncomfortable fact that National and Labour’s policies are generally in alignment on further increasing CO2 emissions through more and riskier oil drilling and coal mining etc?
[lprent:
Firstly – What speech? I heard a brief mention on it on the car radio on my late return home last night. Looking at the timestamp on the news story and allowing for date lines, it would have been when? late in the day yesterday? We aren’t a news service, nor are we journalists and we tend to work hard on things other than this blog.
Secondly – Authors write on what they wish to and when they want to – as is stated clearly in the about and the policy.
Thirdly – I see that there was a post scheduled for this morning at the time you wrote that comment. I’d guess that it was written late last night. It gives Anthony’s opinion (which is what we are here to express) on the speech. Changes in policy direction usually take time to digest because the detail is important – not the headline.
Fourthly – You are banned for a week for again trying to tell us what we should be writing – read the policy. ]
What Graham has said for the Nacts, could, painfully, be just as easily be said of Labour.
And a month ago you were calling the greens climate change deniers and sellouts.
“Does nobody have any opinion on Obama’s speech?”
I can’t even bear to listen to the man at the moment. He has no credibility left at all, imo. How can you trust that what he says in a speech is what he really means after Guantanamo not being ended, drones in Pakistan, NSA spying, Bradley Manning incarceration conditions etc, etc? Not to mention people living in tent cities and the nation having to subsidise Walmart pay with food stamps.
All I’d expect from this speech is that he’s trying to change the topic, not that he might mean what he says. So no, I don’t have an opinion on the speech, but I have a very negative opinion about why he might be making in right now, and I can’t believe he means a word of it.
And Jenny is aware, I take it, that Obama is advocating a massive reinvestment in NUCLEAR power. That’s how committed to conservation the man is.
It’s like being lectured on victims’ rights by Garth McVicar. Some people have simply no credibility at all.
Thats right Mozza, Jenny et al have not done their homework into the General Electric (GE) backing of Obama, and what this means to that company’s NUCLEAR power plant production revenue streams, and control of the *energy market*!
Its why we are in this mess, because people like Jenny, have NFI, what they are contributing to!
Whats the link between nuclear power and conservation, Moz?
I wonder if the Obama’s ephinany on US emissions has anything todo with the discovery of massive quantities of shale gas via large scale fracking. Is converting their coal burning to gas burning much better?
That too – I forgot about the fracking in the credibility stakes.
Biggest shale gas boom since whenever, isn’t it? Apparently it’s better than oil for climate change emissions, even more important is the shift from coal to gas. Although apparently the U.S. is displacing, rather than reducing, it’s emissions through coal exports.
then of course there are the tar-sands they are also going gangbusters for..
phillip ure..
Obama, like many of the names who have quoted above, Jenny, Barosso et al, is a criminal, who does exactly what he is told, by those who put him in power!
What part of that, do you NOT get!
kia ora jenny, 2 things strike me about the whole obama thing;
firstly i think your enthusiasm for it is more about the position he holds talking about what he is talking about.
secondly and more importantly you seem to be desiring equal leadership, concerning climate change, to be shown in this country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EaCr1aRits
in response to the first; the first minute of this clipsays it very succintly (if darkly).
secondly; dont look to wellington for leadership, it starts and ends with yourself
Luvvies on the Loose
No. 1: Ginette McDonald
GINETTE McDONALD: He came up to me and said, “Ginette McDonald, do you know who I am? My name is Paul Scott Holmes and I am a great broadcaster!”
JIM MORA: Ha ha ha ha! Did he say that, Paul Holmes? ….[Long pause to indicate mourning]…. Peter Sinclair was cerebral. He wrote some very insightful columns.
GINETTE McDONALD: How smart he was and how vulnerable! What a sacrifice it is to be a public figure!
MORA: We could riff on THAT for the next ten minutes!
….Several minutes later….
MORA: Mahhh-vellous! I’ll never forget your interview with Sir Elton John! He ADORED you!
….Later….
GINETTE McDONALD: I think the young are completely mahhhh-vellous!
—-Eight Months to Mars, Afternoons with Jim Mora, Radio NZ National, Monday 11 February 2013
I’m amazed you listen to this stuff…
Yes indeed. I have tried listening to this stuff for as long as I can bear, in the hope that something useful might be discussed. But always I have to end by either switching off or changing to another channel, before my brain dissolves.
You listen to other channels??!!!
What the famous fair and balanced ZB?
I’m amazed you listen to this stuff…
It’s poetry, Paul. Poetry is what it is.
‘luvvies on the loose’..?
this example is happening now/today..a whole gaggle of them..
..in parts foreign..
http://whoar.co.nz/2013/commentwhoar-ed-local-celebs-go-on-charity-wheezeboys-own-adventure-but-was-it-actually-just-a-free-junketscam-of-sorts/
(excerpt:..)
“..ed:..breakfast television has reported how a gaggle of local celebs have been on a ‘wheeze’ of an adventure..”
phillip ure..
Hell Morrissey don’t your ears bleed listening to this this drivel.
This does not have to be hard.
This poll is a concern and the flatness of the past polls is a concern. Between now and the spring the Caucus need to reform itself dramatically. It is possible.
As Toby Manhire suggested in the Herald last week “..the promotion of an MP who had served his time would project strength, evidence of the leader’s vaunted experience in conciliation..”
I’d add to that the early retirement of Goff, King and Mallard coupled with the appointment of new managers in Shearer’s office who are NOT selected by Grant Robertson. Shearer has to stop what he is currently doing. It is not working. He needs to create a new team.
Cunliffe seems to be more focused than ever on his portfolio. He continues to show that he can engage with business people and issues as well as with the workers, consumers and the disenfranchised. His recent contributions to debates in Parliament show he is more centered than ever. Cunliffe looks like a guy who has learned from whatever was done to him last year. He has demonstrated that he can swallow a rat, and get on with folk in the beltway as well a burbs.
Shearer has the choice: to continue as is or to make a change.
Go on Shearer, make the necessary changes, now, refresh and position yourself to get our score out of the low 30s and into the 40s.
Your last chance.
Don’t confuse Obama with Gandhi: Norman Finkelstein
At UBC on January 21, 2009, the day after Obama’s inauguration, Norman Finkelstein gave a short speech about his research into the life and works of Mahatma Gandhi. He claims there is no comparison between Gandhi, who gave up his life to a cause he believed in, and Barack Obama, who is merely a clever politician coasting on a wave of change that he didn’t work to create.
So today in Christchurch we will hear how Brownlee will lump a giant great dull convention centre right onto two of the very best blocks of CBD Christchurch so that all manner of private business can do private business. Brownlee will require the ratepayers to pay for these private businesses.
Why don’t private businesses pay for their private business? I thought Brownlee and his ilk believed in user-pays and the free market and not corporate handouts or picking winners? Why do they force elderly ratepayers to pay for them?
Secondly, a lumpen great convention centre is completely the wrong thing to place in that location. White elephant city here we come…..
i despair.
and so do countless others – witness the decaying hole of the donut city.
Christchurch central city rebuild is failing. I hope I am proved wrong.
When the work is complete, and Christchurch looks like the National Party, and violence and crime flourish, will it be too late to tear their monuments to greed and corruption down? Of course not!
Well that’s kind of what is hoped for – that given the time it will take to bring these giant monuments to fruition and given that time and tide and new and different governments and councils will come and go and shoulder and shove and pull and push these projects all around and they will get variously dumped and amended and shrunken and expanded as the will of the peoples dictate.
That is the hope.
But when all you have is hope you have nothing (sorry JK (kirwan that is)…)
What they believe in is user pays for the poor and government handouts from taxing the poor to themselves and their rich mates.
Yep, it’s what happens when dictators take over.
Covered Sports Stadium, Indoor Sports Stadium, Convention Centre; a monumental Tory.
(Crown- 2.9B Council- 1.9B; Game, set, match).
what? * cough splutter choke croak ….*
next government and council please
overturn coming
Apparently Lancaster Park, I mean Jade Stadium, oh I mean AMI Stadium, whatever the f… its current corporate tag is…. is not even bloody broken. It is apparently structurally sound and the only problem is that from one end of the field to the other the stadium drops 200mm.
That’s about 8 inches. About $45million to repair so the rumour goes. Why not leave it at that? And don’t tell visiting teams as we will then get the downhill advantage….
Really, sheesh, where is the thinking?
… thinking thinking thinking ….
And Brownlee better steer well fucking clear of tossing a covered stadium into the mix. That will seriously bring down the house.
Isn’t politics a funny thing sometimes …
Following is a recent speech by David Cunliffe where he praises Todd McClay, compliments David Bennett and agrees with Matthew Hooton …
I kid you not!
The video is here.
He certainly is a lot more fluent than Dave.
David Cunliffe should be and is ready to be the Leader of Labour, I didn’t really think so last year but he’s certainly developed a bit more humility and lost the arrogance and pompousness.
I guess having your colleagues lining up to kick you in the nads does that, tends to make you reassess your approach and how you do things.
Well, it’s a bit of a back-handed compliment to David Bennett, for knowing all the loopholes that needed to be ended, having specialised in fiddling farm accounts in the past.
I’m afraid that for a Tory its actually a 100% sincere compliment, nothing backhanded about it.
You know what, Auckland’s support for the CRL is proof that we’d get better governance from referendum than we get from representatives.
The latest David Bain revelations………….
(Just posted this comment on the Radio Live facebook page).
“Seen this Sean Plunket?
I would have put this on your facebook page directly – but you seem to have ‘blocked’ me?
(Don’t you believe in ‘freedom of expression’ Sean? 🙂
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/twelve-reasons-worry-about-bain-case-lf-134942 ”
______________________________________________________________________________
I have not studied this David Bain case – but the thing that has always been the BIG question to me – is MOTIVE?
What MOTIVE did David Bain have to murder all these members of his family?
A bad day on the paper run?
DUH?
Penny Bright
Clearly David is a criminal mastermind…..according to the police.
Disregarding the new evidence, the crown story is just daft:
22 yr old David gets up, shoots 4 of his family in the house and then pops out to do the paper run as an alibi. Gets back home just in time to hide behind the curtains and snuff the old man. Then he just has to leave a wee note on the computer to implicate dad and then finally ring the police and turn on the water works.
Sounds like something from Agatha Christie.
Or as you suggest ,
An elderly man gets up , puts on his sons’ clothes and glasses, shoots 4 of his family. takes off his sons clothes, puts the bloodied clothes in the washing machine,
Changes his clothes, goes into the front room, logs on the family computer, types a note obsolving the son ,whos clothes hes just worn ,while murdering his family.
Shoots himself ,the guns’ mag falling out of the gun and landing on its edge beside Robin Bains’ ‘hand.
Robins. body found with no blood on him ,except his own.
David, who is found with his siblings blood on him. cant remember how he knows his family his dead, or why he waited 20 mins to ring an ambulance.
Sounds like something a defence lawyer would come up with.
It wouldn’t wash as an Agatha Christie novel.
Alternatively, dad wants to shoot his entire family except for one son. Equally bizarre.
Fortunately, we don’t have trial by TV or blogosphere.
Meanwhile, a relative of mine has to avoid watching the news for the next few days because every time pundits spout opinions (based solely on TV reports or the internet, which compete for the award for disseminating the most utter BS) or cheer their particular team, it reminds her how much she misses her friend, even after all this time.
“Alternatively, dad wants to shoot his entire family except for one son. Equally bizarre.”
Why? Surely not any more bizzare than shooting one or all?
“equally”.
Some folk try Agatha Christie whodunnits, others just don’t bother with hiding a murder-suicide. Arguing that one or the other could not be done because it sounds “just daft” in the cold light of day in my opinion shows a marked under-estimation of (to quote WSBurroughs) “just how far human kicks can go”.
+1
a shooter is likely to have powder residue on his hands, regularly; shooting birds for example.
‘
I still have one question. What is the first thing most men do first thing after the get up? Have a piss . . . amirite or amitire?? So, how is it explained that Robin Bain didn’t empy his bladder before setting about murdering his family?
Don’t get me wrong, I believe this whole thing has been yet another ongoing, ochestrated miscarriage of justice perpetrated by, if not corrupt, then bumbling police officers aided and abetted by officious bureacrats and their babmboozled and indifferent politicians. Milton Weir . Kevin Anderson, Phill Goff, Crusher Collins, Peter Doone, Peter Robinson, Jim Doyle, Kim Jones, N C Jaine, B P Duncan . . . “when honor and the Law no longer stand on the same side of the line, how do we choose?”
I still have one question. What is the first thing most men do first thing after the get up? Have a piss . . . amirite or amitire?? So, how is it explained that Robin Bain didn’t empy his bladder before setting about murdering his family?
I would have thought that the body would have all sorts of overrides to normal biological functions when one was about to commit mass murder.
The full bladder, therefore victim, argument has no evidential weight.
This always supposes improbability Robin slept and committed crime soon after rising without emptying his bladder.
What evidence is there that Robin may not have had a sleepless night contemplating shooting his family or woke well before the shooting. In such scenarios he could easily have started with a partially full bladder and accumulated further urine during the activity of shooting his family.
“The latest David Bain revelations………….
I have not studied this David Bain case – but the thing that has always been the BIG question to me – is MOTIVE?
What MOTIVE did David Bain have to murder all these members of his family?”
The link you posted Penny goes to the review of the case that is damning of the police. We will never know who killed the Bain family, because the police didn’t do their job properly. What was the motive for that?
An excellent question, Weka!
Dunedin, moreso than many NZ cities, has a very dark history, one which includes police, politicians etc, being tied to organized, and underaged crime, and various other sadistic goings on.
Rather like it being, the Adelaide of NZ, if you will!
http://www.critic.co.nz/features/article/631/dunedins-dark-past
There has been a massive cover up, it always was, with the reasons most likely becoming, *future conspiracy theories*.
“There has been a massive cover up,”
Got any evidence of that muzza?
Just saw this gif on facebook:
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!!!!!
Very funny
so, they want to intercept Skype? 1/3 of all internet traffic. Good luck with that Amy and co.
(You better you better you bet).
Seven Sharp characterize Assange as an “albino weasel”. Really?
DHB’s fail to meet safety stds (Health Quality and Safety Board).Only a 1/4 to a 1/3 of all DHB’s “doing enough” to prevent falls, infection etc.
RB seriously considering restrictions on low-deposit loans, first-home buyers not exempt. “Something has to be done to prevent damage (wreckage) to the financial system.”
Is David Shearer merely a ‘great-souled-man’?
New Horizon Poll out today on how Aucklanders view the government, titled Government suffers poor performance ratings on Auckland issues.
Also worth a read is the follow up commentary:
What happened to Government supporters in the performance rating poll?
Guessing they knew this was the case when they swallowed the dead rat before them, and made noises about supporting the CRL.
This morning around the time on Morning Report about 7.45am that radionz reads out the headlines of the main papers I thought I heard that the Waikato Times had an item on spending by the NZ Forces likely to go into drones etc. I haven’t been able to track this down. Did anybody else hear the full mention, very short, or have seen it in a newspaper? I would like to look at it, hear it further.
Maybe this?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8850279/Kiwi-drones-won-t-be-killers
Truthers!.
/
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/19/here_come_the_edward_snowden_truthers/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/my-creeping-concern-that-the-nsa-leaker-edward-snowden-is-not-who-he-purports-to-be/5339161
http://tarpley.net/2013/06/19/how-to-identify-a-cia-limited-hangout-operation/
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://21stcenturywire.com/2013/06/25/snowden-an-exercise-in-disinformation/
How would we ever, actually know!
We can’t, and have to draw our own conclusions!
In my day Joe, we believed everything that authorities told us. (Almost.) Now we should doubt everything that authorities tell us. Skills learnt to predict the bad guy in a stirring”whodunnit” will nowadays be focussed on real authority figures selling real misinformation. My brain hurts.
Maybe Naomi Wolf really works for the CIA. Or the KGB. Or the Al Qaeda!
That would not be any real surprise, Weka.
What all three? Busy woman I guess.
Message to Christine Rankin …
A Doz size 7 eggs are on special at New World for $3.99.
That’s great aye Krussy?
That means the kuds can live on weetbix and milk for breakfast (at 57cents?); noodles for lunch; and egg and toast for dinner for the next week.
they wouldn’t live on that mate.
it sounds like a recipe for enteric dysfunction.
i.e. diaorhea.
Well I know mine couldn’t possibly have, but as you know Krussy Rankin seems to know better.
(i.e. basing her experiences of a couple of decades ago transposed on today’s reality).
They’d probably have to be raw eggs as well, given the lack of electricity.
So little birdies on the twittery grapevine saying things about how that there Auckland Council voted 10-7 that they weren’t interested in some deal involving no skycity and some pokies and a convention centre so that’s a thing.
Don’t understand the point Pascal. As an out of Aucklander that is.
http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2013/06/embarrassing.html
The comments list seems to becoming overwhelmed with some material from Gaza GPJA.. And Karol’s one on Women receiving awards also extra long, the wording of headings if too long is hard to read.
So the back-stabbing has begun.
Remember last year? When ABC were using Garner and Gower to dump on Cunliffe … all off the record, whispering in the dark, using the TV3 twins to push their self-serving agenda.
It’s on again. But this time Shearer is the target. Remember there are no real Shearer supporters, they were Parker supporters a couple of weeks before the leadership ballot in 2011, they just wanted a front man, and Shearer got the nod.
Turns out he’s not up to the job (who could have guessed, eh?) so they’re leaking into Gower’s ear (eww) and tonight on TV3 they got him to do their work – it’s their usual method. And the next idiot who says “Non-story! MSM!” try and think for a moment … who’s feeding him? And why?
Shearer will be dumped by the people who put him there. Next up, Robertson.
Yes. But don’t they need to put it to a full membership vote? They may try to go for someone like Andrew Little, or Jacinda Ardern. They are short on options.
Ahhh, yes they do. TRP, you asked me why I was still a member?
I’d always wondered that myself. Makes sense now.
makes it too easy for the bastards if you let them have it all their own way.
But I thought Gower was supposed to have pretty much made everything up last time to make headlines? But this time he’s being fed?
Or maybe last time “ABC” fed gower the idea of a Cunliffe coup in order to discredit cunliffe, (who didn’t need discrediting if he wasn’t planning a challenge), and this time they’re feeding gower the idea of a caucus challenge because, well, whatever.
Or maybe gower realises his paycheck rests on taking unwary comments and blowing them out of proportion. Where’s the benefit in flagging a challenge months down the road? There is none.
lolz Gower was being fed BS then, he’s being fed BS now, and thanks for repeating the BS McFlock.
Got that.
The reports gower was making last year about Shearer’s leadership facing a possible challenge within months were complete falsehoods spread by confidential sources. The reports gower is making right now about Shearer’s leadership facing a possible challenge within months are complete truths spread by confidential sources.
“Unwary comments”?
Did you see the story? Long, detailed quotes. Not somebody caught off guard, but somebody planting.
I said (and you ignored) Garner because it was his blog that started it all last year. A blog that was brought about by senior Labour MPs attacking Cunliffe – anonymously, of course.
Same MO.
Funny thing about anonymous attackers. You never know what was the actual quote and what is the intermediary’s little bit of editorialising. Sometimes they’re 100% accurate, sometimes it’s all just an invention by the intermediary, usually it’s somewhere in between. The point is, you can never know.
Nah Quotes are quotes. If a journo misrepresents an off the record quote they’ll never get another one.
If s/he said the complete opposite, you’d be right. But if the reporter is the only one with recordings or notes of the meeting, there’s a lot of room for misinterpretation that wouldn’t ruin come to light.
And if a journo does burn a source who is expendable, what could the anonymous source do?
An mp who has pretty much promised you two months worth of storyline is by definition, not burnable.
Paddy will be, quite rightly, wanting to follow this story up at some point.
unless he got something slightly less clear cut, but he now has the lens through which everything can be interpreted and the mp is therefore no longer needed.
I mean, the difference is whether they had lunch for an hour and gower drew together disparate lines and placed less emphasis on qualifications and equivocations, or had a 2 minute chat in the john where the mp wasn’t interrupted at all and spoke straight into the recorder.
No, the difference is the quote marks. And it doesn’t matter if Gower is ignoring all the kumbayah stuff they may have said. They also said this stuff, to Gower, (and Dannat TVNZ). It’s deliberate that they said this stuff, it’s something they chose to do, to get a story like this.
I’ve been “quoted” in the paper once or twice – different hats back in the day. Just in the local pages, nothing earth shattering. Quotation marks seemed to be largely similar to the role of the target in the Texas Sharpshooter analogy.
And that’s without the interview style “would you say something roughly along the lines of xxxxxx?” “yes”.
http://www.3news.co.nz/Shearer-put-on-notice-by-Labour-MPs/tabid/370/articleID/303006/Default.aspx
What is the problem with someone saying that Shearer has to either demonstrate that he can get his performance right or step aside?
What is the problem with telling the media?
The Membership and the public would like to know that the Party leaders are taking the continual poll paralysis seriously.
The sooner the Leadship issue is opened to a proper debate the better.
Btw, McFlock is a Grant Robertson tool.
But according to the “Shearer’s a patsy” theory, doesn’t that mean that I’d be undermining shearer at this time so Robertson can take the leadership?
But of course your justification for that delusion is even more tenuous than CV’s guess: it consists solely of amateur-hour content pattern analysis. Even a political news editor would regard that as a bit thin.
By the way, your content analysis is as mistaken as your trend analysis.
There has been one Labour MP who has been providing information to Gower. This goes back a long way ….. Gower himself has mentioned in passing the name of that MP when I was with a small group of people a few years ago.
Shearer should have a word with his deputy.
http://www.3news.co.nz/Shearer-put-on-notice-by-Labour-MPs/tabid/370/articleID/303006/Default.aspx
text version
Labour leader David Shearer has been put on two months’ notice by his own MPs – if the poll ratings don’t improve, his leadership will be challenged.
A Labour MP told 3 News today that Mr Shearer had until spring – two months away – to pick up his and Labour’s performance.
The MP, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “The caucus is just really flat. It’s not panic or anxiety just yet, but a couple more bad polls and it will be. David’s got a couple more months. A change in leadership cannot be ruled out before the end of the year.
“Spring time is when people will get really nervous, just over a year out from the election. We don’t want to get into the “Goff-zone”, where it’s too late to change the leader, but you’ve got someone in there the public just don’t want -the phone is just off the hook.”
It is rare for Labour MPs to speak so openly of leadership concerns.
The MP who spoke to 3 News is not a loyal supporter of leadership rival David Cunliffe. That makes the comments more significant as it shows there are broader concerns in the caucus about Mr Shearer’s performance.
Meanwhile Mr Shearer was on the by-election battlefield of Ikaroa-Rawhiti with Meka Whaitiri, Labour’s candidate for the seat.
There he vowed to be the Labour leader come the next general election.
3 News
Read more: http://www.3news.co.nz/Shearer-put-on-notice-by-Labour-MPs/tabid/1607/articleID/303006/Default.aspx#ixzz2XOu4ZQaZ
Flock off McFuck, you know full well that most people thought Trevor Mallard was leaking to Gower during the conference.
Please excuse him. McFlock is an old Dunedin and Otago uni friend of Grant Robertson.
That’s the sort of thing that should be called “doing a gower”, CV
Loyalty is a value underestimated these days, and it’s great that you are loyal to your friends. Good on ya mate.
let’s refresh everyone on the basis you have for saying that Robertson and I are “old friends”. I said:
From that you draw a long bow from “uni at roughly the same time”, through “actually spoke to each other at the time” all the way to “are friends” [present tense = “are friends now”]. And spout on as if it’s fact.
I think we can call that “a gower”.
Ummm.. I never knew that (on the same basis) Lyn was a close personal friend of R…
Nah….
this would be the brilliant tactic of creating rumours of a cunliffe challenge because mallard didn’t want cunliffe to be leader, even though cunliffe was extremely loyal and in no way going to challenge.
No challenge = no need to purposefully create rumours.
But if there was a challenge, gower didn’t need mallard to make anything up.
That suggests to me the MP was a member of the broader caucus and not notably aligned at any point to either the Shearer or the Cunliffe camp.
But it doesn’t rule the informant out from being a Robertson/Parker supporter.
That’s why I said at any point. The Robertson/Parker acolytes joined with the Shearer-ites once the deals were done. One faction leader got deputy and the other finance. I’m inclined to think this was someone who kept in the background during the leadership battle and its aftermath.
One fond of saying “a couple more”.
Great, more Labour MPs spilling their guts to news reporters. Also, I’m pretty sure that apart from a very few MPs, there is no actual “Shearer camp”.
EDIT ffs, this Labour caucus instability is Hooten’s wet dream planned well over a year ago, coming true. I’m just amazed though that none of us on The Standard spotted the plan before.
😉
It’s a classic “Thursday story”.
The leader is (usually) not in Parliament on Thursday – today he was campaigning in Ikaroa-Rawhiti. So it’s safe to talk to the gallery, cat’s away, mice play …
In unrelated news, Trevor Mallard *was* in Parliament today.
I can’t believe someone from Caucus chose to leak this to Gower instead of working within caucus to bring a resolution to the Leadership problem. Unbelievable, I don’t think we can blame Hooten for this, I’m afraid that Labour is seriously fucked if a senior member of caucus has gone to the media with this.
Who ever it is is putting their ambitions ahead of the Party’s (Its per emptive, Shearer is gone!)…they need to be outed. Clearly it is the same person who set up Cunliffe in November. This person is poisonous, Labour will never succeed with this person within its ranks IMO.
Hmmm, I thought the whole point was that Shearer was put in to prevent Cunliffe, and he would then later be rolled to get who the ABCs really want. At least that’s what the Standardistas were talking about last year.
Sorry Saarbo, but it’s a given that too many Labour MPs put their own careers ahead of the good of the party.
btw, Labour MPs playing bullshit internal politics and Hooton having his hand in things are not mutually exclusive.
Onya Edith.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-edie-windsor-doma-supreme-court-20130626,0,3126206.story
This labour party Gower thing.
Y’all know I’m neither a LP member nor list voter, so take this as whatever.
But this stuff hurts your party. From now till ‘spring’ Gower has been given an explicit narrative. All political stories will now be in the frame of “What does this mean for Shearer’s position as leader’.
You might think “So, what’s new?” and fair enough, but this has made it official. It’s a Labour party framing, the media don;t need to speculate that caucus is looking, they can state it all as fact.
So LP members should be writing letters and making calls to your mps, and letting them know that this anonymous sniping should stop, and that whoever is doing it should launch a challenge and get this ball rolling. You’ve got your new process, it will take time, but it needs to be put to bed, and that can only happen one way or the other through a vote. Untill the party wide vote happens, this story will run, and Labour will not look like a govt in waiting. That vote needs to happen as soon as possible.
Fuck spring.
So when will Labour give up on winning this election and concentrate on 2017?
“Three more years!, three more years!”
Have the bloody NATs been taking lessons from the UK tories? Conservative Government has just announced a massive £100B infrastructure and social housing build plan…but none of it starts for at least 4 years.
This is more bullshit “things will get better in the future” BAU messaging.
It is ‘pretend and extend’ creeping into policy promises.
So if Labour falls below 30% will people here finally admit, “hey we’re in trouble here” or will you be like bob dole who thought because his cousin friend in tempe was going to vote for him, hes still in with a chance.
I think you are right Brett. No-one on ts has ever speculated before now that Labour might be in trouble.
weka:
every time there is a poll here, it doesnt matter what it shows, everybody jumps
up and down and acts like its a victory for labour.
The only poll that counts is on election day unless that poll shows an increase for Labour in which case its an indicator of Labours resurgence
Brett Dale. Please attempt to pay more attention to what people actually say here, next time.
Every 2 or 3 fortnightly Morgan polls I have a look at the trends. Basically I am ignoring jitter.
I essentially ignore the other polls as they happen so infrequently for each poll as to be useless because of their infrequencies and that they only seem to make and effort to get an accurate population sample close to the election – which is why they always have dramatic shifts then.
As far as I can see, most people here do the same. Reading the right blogs is amusing. Many if not most seem to largely ignore Morgan despite its sampling rate and despite the fact that it seldom shifts much leading into an election and is usually the most accurate. Instead they concentrate on the infrequent polls with piss poor track records.
I guess they are either credulous fools with little understanding of statistics, or they are credulous fools with delusions that the “big lie” technique keeps working.
in the roy morgan, I probably would. Especially if it was coupled with a noticable reversal in the trend (as opposed to a single 8-point drop from 37%).
You can relax McFlock. The true mean of support for Labour sits on or very close to 32%. It’s very unlikely that it will fall under 30%, except perhaps momentarily.
I get the impression that you pray it does dip below 30%, otherwise all the helpul advice for Labour you’ve offered here is just useless horseshit you’ve been spouting since feb 2012.
Pretty amazing that iPredict hinted this last week.
https://www.ipredict.co.nz/app.php?do=contract_detail&contract=SHR.DEPART.2013
Either someone is manipulating iPredict to push their point, or there really has been backroom talk over the last few weeks and the leak is just it eventuating.
Interesting times!
El Pueblo Unido Jamas sera vencido!
Viva el Chile, viva el mundo, viva Novo Zelanda, viva!!!
Libertad por Chile Y el mondo, especial por latin america!!!
Not taking sides, just detected info and downloaded, for others to research!