have tried to send emails but nothing seems to occur when send is pressed.
“I have an Android issue. I have a Samsung Galxy Ace.
When viewing The Standard, the page runs fine.
The problem is i cannot post comments.
I enter my name, press next, my email, press next and it goes to the website entry box.
I have no site info to enter but pressing next does not progress to comment/text entry box, hence i cannot go any further.
Is there a way to bypass the website box that I am unaware of?
thankyou in advance for any assistance you can offer
kind regards
freedom
Peter Blake’s son James I think is undertaking a big row to raise money for an artificial reef near Indonesia. This is such a great idea as climate change adversely affects coral reefs which are important maybe vital part of nurturing and protecting sea life. Some people are already acting by planting coral each day, like in coral gardens, and this will spread the reef area and renew. Really important. If you can afford some pennies please think of a donation as this week’s positive action for the planet. http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon
Tue27/9 09:35
James Blake
Sir Peter Blake’s son James Blake explains why he’s planning to row across the Tasman to try raise funds to build the world’s biggest artificial reef. (9′51″)
Download: Ogg Vorbis MP3 | Embed
Interesting tale on Facebooks devious policies on Radionz this morning – see link above. Be-ware, they say that everything you do is being passed on and privacy settings you’ve put in place are realigned to default each time they put in a new policy, or I think that’s what they said. I’m no expert. I do know that I tried to cancel my Facebook arrangement and was asked so many intrusive questions that I didn’t fill out the whole form so apparently invalidated my withdrawal and am still welcomed into the sweet and friendly Facebook family. And this morning’s interviewer said it doesn’t matter anyway they keep the settings and keep checking on what you do. Talk about BIG Brother!
Also in this morning’s radionz news –
NZ bid for Commonwealth Games now likely
The New Zealand Olympic Committee says mounting a bid for a future Commonwealth Games is now more likely to happen. The next possible year is 2022.
We can’t afford to make forward-looking responsible social and environmental moves but there’before the Rugby World Cup is over there is talk about circuses and junkets for the elite and Discretionaries (those with spare money) while the bread part isn’t ensured to go with the circuses.
And in Oz those hopeful young NZs who went to Australia and worked for a better life are now beginning to feel the cold and callous side of OZ that wiped all social welfare benefits to us whether we had worked there, no matter how long, and only if we were granted residency which would be refused as we do, if there were health problems etc., when Helen Clark was in, with hardly a peep from her. They didn’t tighten access to benefits – they wiped them altogether.
One family talked this morning – they’re son was born in Oz and because of medical misadventure is brain damaged and required ongoing care for which they receive nothing from the authorities there although they have worked there for some years I think. Presumably they can sue the hospital. Young Kiwi women are turning to prostitution to survive, and degradation of living conditions causes 40 phone calls daily to a Queensland help line. They can be stranded in Oz by pride, as in the biblical Prodigal Son, or because of lack of money in their extended family to bring them home. There was a song from way back by Gene Pitney with the final line – “And I can never, never, go home again.” This is sad – we should start a compassionate fund for NZ refugees in Australia, that lucky country.
@ Joe Bloggs – Is that Sir Peter Leitch the mad butcher who used his interview on radionz to make an open play of affirmation for John Key, that lovely guy, the man everybody would invite to dinner, especially if he brought the wine to go with the rib-eye steak. For those who can afford it!
Actually many of us are concerned to get a Prime Minister who shows continuing concern and responsibility for advancing the welfare of all NZs socially and through business and employment opportunities and makes achievable promises, not feelgood kissing of cheeks, and showing off his dental work.
What’s the problem here? If Rodney Hide said “I won’t shop at X because Y supports Labour” no one would blink an eye. Personally, I’m with Darien – Mad Butcher isn’t getting my money now. Neither is Car-fe. Free choice. Isn’t that what Slater and his lot get chubbies over?
Oh JB you’re such a funny troll….class traitor tactics, that’s f’n hilarious but then if slater’s your dictionary reference fair play doing a limbo dance under that bar.
Leitch is the typical working class made good who now wants to pull the ladder up by supporting the policies and folk who do this best.
Low wages/rights/employer friendly rules and most of his shops are the meat equivalient of low rent liquor outlets by the poor quality of product and who they target…..seen any in upmarket suburbs ?
Shop at your local butcher, they need it and you’ll get what you pay for….quality and service.
as for that tosser Ridge…wash your own car.
I’m referring to Sir Peter Leitch – you might know of him – he’s a working class man with no pretensions who has given away vast sums of money and more of his time to help those who are worse off .You might have heard of his serial fundraising and the work that he’s done for Christchurch folk
Perhaps you may have heard of the Mad Butcher Suburban Newspapers Community Trust which has raised almost $1.5 million for charity. Or the Butch who supported Helen Clark when she was PM…
…here’s a suggestion – instead of calling for a boycott of Mad Butcher shops simply because Butch dares to dabble with the Dark Side, try earning his support back. Now there’s a novelty.
Meanwhile I’m off to the local Mad Butcher for a dozen sausages, and a bit of brisket for the pooch.
Those of us who are not reliant on mainstream media for our information would have felt saddened by recent events in Savannah, Georgia. In fact some of us have felt quietly outraged at the execution of Troy Davis on September 21, 2011…
Have a read of the post Chris, and then tell me the MSM reported half of that information? I found out that he was going to be executed and there were protesters, but there was hardly any reporting in NZ by the MSM about the extent of injustice… But what else is new?
K Fair enough Chris, I’ve edited the post to more accurately define what I was meaning. You might like to also read the Wikipedia article on Troy Davis as well.
Interesting blog from the Torygraph’s US correspondent Toby Harnden. As Harnden points out, Davis was an unusual case for anti-death penalty campaigners to support, because he was almost certainly guilty of the murder plus two other violent assaults in the minutes before he shot the off duty cop. He certainly wasn’t an innocent man, in any sense of the phrase.
I have to say here, that I am opposed to the death penalty even if the person being executed (murdered) is guilty! Otherwise, if campaigners only oppose the killing of the innocent, whilst they should of course do so, it takes away from the point of opposing capital punishment – which is that human beings, being so flawed, have no right at all to decide who gets killed…
Clare Curran has been getting a fair bit of grief from David Farrar and Cameron Slater lately. What these right wing sycophants seem to ignore is that she’s a very switched on political commentator, and indispensable within the New Zealand blogosphere…
Phil Goff has an interesting question No 2, set down for today: Hon PHIL GOFF to the Attorney-General: Does he agree with the Prime Minister’s statement that “there are at least 40 trials and 50 investigations where those investigations currently – the video surveillance equipment’s been turned off and yeah I don’t think – that will harm those trials in my view”, and in how many of those cases does the prosecution rely on evidence from warrantless filming from private property without the owner’s consent?
FFS. The man has no idea at all.
He’s just treading water getting kicks out of standing beside ABs and txting heads of state – I wonder if he’s on the block list of Obama’s blackberry?
In a speech given on law and order held in Auckland last weekend, Don Brash came out in support of decriminalizing marijuana. It seems strange that he’s promoting decriminalization… and it appears to me that his controversial statements are designed to gain media attention…
Do I understand that under the now non existance Surveillance Bill taxi drivers are not allowed to use their new systems because the law as it stands forbids same without a specific judges agreement ?
Doesn’t sound right to me – the cameras are a safety/security issue and are there with the consent of the drivers (if the passengers don’t see the warning signs), so fall under one of the exemptions to the surreptitious filming legislation.
If the police broke into the vehicle one night and placed their own sneaky cameras, the’d not be able to use the footage as evidence in trivial caes. But they could use the taxi company footage quite easily.
As an aside, I was pretty pissed when I noticed the “privacy policy” for the camera footage in my last taxi trip – along the lines of “camera images are only permitted to be viewed by authorised persons”. No information as to who are authorised, character tests, restrictions on being able to copy files (lest a Queenstown bouncer has access to the archive), or expiry protocols. I’m just glad I don’t habitually wear short skirts and sit in the middle seat.
Absolutely not. In fact you can have covert surveillance pretty well anywhere unless you have to trespass on the person’s property to set the camera up. You can even have it on a tree in a park outside as long as it is not too obtrusive.
We’re twenty years in to this world wide web thing. Today, I myself celebrate twelve years of writing this blog. And yet those of us who love this medium, who’ve had our lives changed by the possibility of publishing our words to the world without having to ask permission, are constantly charged with defending this wonderful, expressive medium in a way that creators in every other discipline seldom find themselves obligated to do.
Some of this is because the medium is new, of course. But in large part, it’s because so many of the most visible, prominent, and popular places on the web are full of unkindness and hateful behavior.
The examples are already part of pop culture mythology: We can post a harmless video of a child’s birthday party and be treated to profoundly racist non-sequiturs in the comments. We can read about a minor local traffic accident on a newspaper’s website and see vicious personal attacks on the parties involved. A popular blog can write about harmless topics like real estate, restaurants or sports and see dozens of vitriolic, hate-filled spewings within just a few hours.
But that’s just the web, right? Shouldn’t we just keep shrugging our shoulders and shaking our heads and being disappointed in how terrible our fellow humans are?
Granny just can’t help herself can she ‘ readers leap to PM’s defense over coalmine joke’ should read ‘we think the sun shines out of JK’s arse and here’s some one sided ‘opinions’ to back it up’…..RIP journalism.
Sideshow showing how unfit for the role he is again isn’t news granny.
They didn’t detect DNA damage, what they found were changes in gene expression, which has a whole range of mechanisms other than DNA damage…
And it’s spelled out in the bloody abstract, which if DNA damage was involved, you’d think it’d be mentioned, being a summary of the findings and all that:
The biological consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are
unknown, especially for resident organisms. Here, we report
results from a field study tracking the effects of contaminating
oil across space and time in resident killifish during the first 4
mo of the spill event. Remote sensing and analytical chemistry
identified exposures, which were linked to effects in fish characterized
by genome expression and associated gill immunohistochemistry,
despite very low concentrations of hydrocarbons
remaining in water and tissues. Divergence in genome expression
coincides with contaminating oil and is consistent with genome
responses that are predictive of exposure to hydrocarbon-like
chemicals and indicative of physiological and reproductive impairment.
Oil-contaminated waters are also associated with aberrant
protein expression in gill tissues of larval and adult fish. These data
suggest that heavily weathered crude oil from the spill imparts
significant biological impacts in sensitive Louisiana marshes, some
of which remain for over 2 mo following initial exposures.
So learn 2 science pleez, and check wikipedia/google if you don’t understand something, instead of doing what teh deniers do and post truth claims without reading/understanding teh research.
On Radio NZ tonight they were on about Elizabeth Warren, a US law professor who is standing for senate; the person discussing this suggested the words of her speech as a way of shutting up dicks like farrar.
I am going to try an experiment soon; I am going to attempt a strategy on someone, a parasite on this forum. I did this once before on another site and it really caused the vermine to be frightened away.
Postmodernism has long been looked upon as an indecipherable ideology and a source of amusement. In 1996 Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University, had a hoax article published in ‘Social Text’ an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. In ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of ...
In a recent interview with RNZ (14th of January), NZ Council of Civil Liberties Chair Thomas Beagle, in response to Simon Bridges condemnation of the post-Trump Twitter purge of local far Right and other accounts, said the following: “Cos the thing about freedom of expression is that it’s not just ...
Let’s be clear: if Trump is not politically killed off once and for all, he will become a MAGA Dracula, rising from the dead to haunt US politics for years to come and giving inspiration to his wretched family of grifters and thousands of deplorables well into the next decade. ...
Since its demise as an imperial power, and especially its deindustrialisation under Thatcher, the UK's primary economic engine has been its role as a money laundry, using its network of overseas territories as tax havens to enable rich people around the world to steal from the societies they live in. ...
Last month OMV quit the Great South Basin and surrendered its offshore exploration permits outside of Taranaki. This month, Australian-owned Beach Energy has done the same: Beach Energy Resources New Zealand has decided to abandon all of its oil and gas exploration permits off the South Island coast, including ...
The new Northland case has been linked to the South African strain of Covid-19, one of a number of new, more contagious Covid variants. Here’s how they emerge and why. Let’s start with the basics. The genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for Covid-19 is a strand of RNA ...
MARVIN HUBBARD, US citizen by birth, New Zealand citizen by choice, Quaker and left-wing activist, has been broadcasting his show, "Community or Chaos", on Otago Access Radio for the best part of 30 years. On 24 November last year, I spoke with him about the outcome of the 2020 General ...
This is a guest blog post by Daniel Tamberg, Potsdam, co-founder and director of SCIARA GmbH. The non-profit organisation SCIARA is developing and operating a flexible software platform for scientific simulation games that allows thousands of players to explore, design and understand possible climate futures together. Decision-makers in politics, business, ...
Yesterday's Gone: Cold shivers are running up and down the spines of conservatives everywhere. Donald Trump may have gone, but all the signs point to there being something much more momentous in the wind-shift than a simple return to the status quo ante. A change is gonna come. ONE COULD ...
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A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 17, 2021 through Sat, Jan 23, 2021Editor's Choice12 new books explore fresh approaches to act on climate changeAuthors explore scientific, economic, and political avenues for climate action ...
This discussion is from a Twitter thread by Martin Kulldorff on 20 December 2020. He is a Professor at Harvard Medical School specialising in disease surveillance methods, infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety. His Twitter handle is @MartinKulldorff #1 Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single ...
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Joe Biden seems to be everything that Donald Trump was not – decent, straightforward, considerate of others, mindful of his responsibilities – but none of that means that he has an easy path ahead of him. The pandemic still rages, American standing in the world is grievously low, and the ...
Keana VirmaniFrom healthcare robots to data privacy, to sea level rise and Antarctica under the ice: in the four years since its establishment, the Aotearoa New Zealand Science Journalism Fund has supported over 30 projects.Rebecca Priestley, receiving the PM Science Communication Prize (Photo by Mark Tantrum) Associate Professor ...
Nothing more from me today - I'm off to Wellington, to participate in the city's annual roleplaying convention (which has also eaten my time for the whole week, limiting blogging despite there being interesting things happening). Normal bloggage will resume Tuesday. ...
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weaponscame into force today, making the development, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons illegal in international law. Every nuclear-armed state is now a criminal regime. The corporations and scientists who design, build and maintain their illegal weapons are now ...
"Come The Revolution!" The key objective of Bernard Hickey’s revolutionary solution to the housing crisis is a 50 percent reduction in the price of the average family home. This will be achieved by the introduction of Capital Gains, Land, and Wealth taxes, and by the opening up of currently RMA-protected ...
by Daphna Whitmore Twitter and Facebook shutting down Trump’s accounts after his supporters stormed Capitol Hill is old news now but the debates continue over whether the actions against Trump are a good thing or not. Those in favour of banning Trump say Twitter and Facebook are private companies and ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Democrats now control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives for the first time in a decade, albeit with razor thin Congressional majorities. The last time, in the 111th Congress (2009-2011), House Democrats passed a carbon cap and trade bill, but it died ...
Session thirty-three was highly abbreviated, via having to move house in a short space of time. Oh well. The party decided to ignore the tree-monster and continue the attack on the Giant Troll. Tarsin – flying on a giant summoned bat – dumped some high-grade oil over the ...
Last night I stayed up till 3am just to see then-President Donald Trump leave the White House, get on a plane, and fly off to Florida, hopefully never to return. And when I woke up this morning, America was different. Not perfect, because it never was. Probably not even good, ...
Watching today’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the United States’ 46th president, there’s not a lot in common with the inauguration of Donald Trump just four destructive years ago. Where Trump warned of carnage, Biden dared to hope for unity and decency. But the one place they converge is that ...
Dan FalkBritons who switched on their TVs to “Good Morning Britain” on the morning of Sept. 15, 2020, were greeted by news not from our own troubled world, but from neighboring Venus. Piers Morgan, one of the hosts, was talking about a major science story that had surfaced the ...
Sara LutermanGrowing up autistic in a non-autistic world can be very isolating. We are often strange and out of sync with peers, despite our best efforts. Autistic adults have, until very recently, been largely absent from media and the public sphere. Finding role models is difficult. Finding useful advice ...
Doug JohnsonThe alien-like blooms and putrid stench of Amorphophallus titanum, better known as the corpse flower, draw big crowds and media coverage to botanical gardens each year. In 2015, for instance, around 75,000 people visited the Chicago Botanic Garden to see one of their corpse flowers bloom. More than ...
Getting to Browser Tab Zero so I can reboot the computer is awfully hard when the one open tab is a Table of Contents for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and every issue has more stuff I want to read. A few highlights: Gugler et al demonstrating ...
Timothy Ford, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Charles M. Schweik, University of Massachusetts AmherstTo mitigate health inequities and promote social justice, coronavirus vaccines need to get to underserved populations and hard-to-reach communities. There are few places in the U.S. that are unreachable by road, but other factors – many ...
Israel chose to pay a bit over the odds for the Pfizer vaccine to get earlier access. Here’s The Times of Israel from 16 November. American government will be charged $39 for each two-shot dose, and the European bloc even less, but Jerusalem said to agree to pay $56. Israel ...
Orla is a gender critical Marxist in Ireland. She gave a presentation on 15 January 2021 on the connection between postmodern/transgender identity politics and the current attacks on democratic and free speech rights. Orla has been active previously in the Irish Socialist Workers Party and the People Before Profit electoral ...
. . America: The Empire Strikes Back (at itself) Further to my comments in the first part of 2020: The History That Was, the following should be considered regarding the current state of the US. They most likely will be by future historians pondering the critical decades of ...
Nathaniel ScharpingIn March, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to shut down major cities in the U.S., researchers were thinking about blood. In particular, they were worried about the U.S. blood supply — the millions of donations every year that help keep hospital patients alive when they need a transfusion. ...
Sarah L Caddy, University of CambridgeVaccines are a marvel of medicine. Few interventions can claim to have saved as many lives. But it may surprise you to know that not all vaccines provide the same level of protection. Some vaccines stop you getting symptomatic disease, but others stop you ...
Back in 2016, the Portuguese government announced plans to stop burning coal by 2030. But progress has come much quicker, and they're now scheduled to close their last coal plant by the end of this year: The Sines coal plant in Portugal went offline at midnight yesterday evening (14 ...
The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: As anybody with the intestinal fortitude to brave the commentary threads of local news-sites, large and small, will attest, the number of Trump-supporting New Zealanders is really quite astounding. IT’S SO DIFFICULT to resist the temptation to be smug. From the distant perspective of New Zealand, ...
RNZ reports on continued arbitrariness on decisions at the border. British comedian Russell Howard is about to tour New Zealand and other acts allowed in through managed isolation this summer include drag queen RuPaul and musicians at Northern Bass in Mangawhai and the Bay Dreams festival. The vice-president of the ...
As families around the world mourn more than two million people dead from Covid-19, the Plan B academics and their PR industry collaborator continue to argue that the New Zealand government should stop focusing on our managed isolation and quarantine system and instead protect the elderly so that they can ...
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Health authorities in Norway are reporting some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine. Is this causally related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are the things to consider. According to the news there have been 23 deaths in Norway shortly after vaccine administration and ...
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All nations have shadows; some acknowledge them. For others they shape their image in uncomfortable ways.The staunch Labour supporter was in despair at what her Rogernomics Government was doing. But she finished ‘at least, we got rid of Muldoon’, a response which tells us that then, and today, one’s views ...
Grigori GuitchountsIn November, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, made an attention-grabbing announcement: More than 30 of its most prestigious journals, including the flagship Nature, will now allow authors to pay a fee of US$11,390 to make their papers freely available for anyone to read ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, and Benjamin Santer Imagine a major climate change law passing the U.S. Congress unanimously? Don’t bother. It turns out that you don’t need to imagine it. Get this: The Global Change Research Act of 1990 was passed ...
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TheOneRing.Net has got its paws on the official synopsis of the upcoming Amazon Tolkien TV series. It’s a development that brings to mind the line about Sauron deliberately releasing Gollum from the dungeons of Barad-dûr. Amazon knew exactly what they were doing here, in terms of drumming up publicity: ...
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For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
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Tide of tidal data rises Having cast our own fate to include rising sea level, there's a degree of urgency in learning the history of mean sea level in any given spot, beyond idle curiosity. Sea level rise (SLR) isn't equal from one place to another and even at a particular ...
Well, some of those chickens sure came home bigly, didn’t they… and proceeded to shit all over the nice carpet in the Capitol. What we were seeing here are societal forces that have long had difficulty trying to reconcile people to the “idea” of America and the reality of ...
In the wake of Donald Trump's incitement of an assault on the US capitol, Twitter finally enforced its terms of service and suspended his account. They've since followed that up with action against prominent QAnon accounts and Trumpers, including in New Zealand. I'm not unhappy with this: Trump regularly violated ...
Peter S. Ross, University of British ColumbiaThe Arctic has long proven to be a barometer of the health of our planet. This remote part of the world faces unprecedented environmental assaults, as climate change and industrial chemicals threaten a way of life for Inuit and other Indigenous and northern ...
Susan St John makes the case for taxing a deemed rate of return on excessive real estate holdings (after a family home exemption), to redirect scarce housing resources to where they are needed most. Read the full article here ...
I’m less than convinced by arguments that platforms like Twitter should be subject to common carrier regulation preventing them from being able to decide who to keep on as clients of their free services, and who they would not like to serve. It’s much easier to create competition for the ...
The hypocritical actions of political leaders throughout the global Covid pandemic have damaged public faith in institutions and governance. Liam Hehir chronicles the way in which contemporary politicians have let down the public, and explains how real leadership means walking the talk. During the Blitz, when German bombs were ...
Over the years, we've published many rebuttals, blog posts and graphics which came about due to direct interactions with the scientists actually carrying out the underlying research or being knowledgable about a topic in general. We'll highlight some of these interactions in this blog post. We'll start with two memorable ...
Yesterday we had the unseemly sight of a landleech threatening to keep his houses empty in response to better tenancy laws. Meanwhile in Catalonia they have a solution for that: nationalisation: Barcelona is deploying a new weapon in its quest to increase the city’s available rental housing: the power ...
A growing public housing waiting list and continued increase of house prices must be urgently addressed by Government, Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson said today. ...
The green light for New Zealand’s first COVID-19 vaccine could be granted in just over a week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today. “We’re making swift progress towards vaccinating New Zealanders against the virus, but we’re also absolutely committed to ensuring the vaccines are safe and effective,” Jacinda Ardern said. ...
The Minister for ACC is pleased to announce the appointment of three new members to join the Board of ACC on 1 February 2021. “All three bring diverse skills and experience to provide strong governance oversight to lead the direction of ACC” said Hon Carmel Sepuloni. Bella Takiari-Brame from Hamilton ...
The Government is investing $9 million to upgrade a significant community facility in Invercargill, creating economic stimulus and jobs, Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson and Te Tai Tonga MP Rino Tirikatene have announced. The grant for Waihōpai Rūnaka Inc to make improvements to Murihiku Marae comes from the $3 billion set ...
[Opening comments, welcome and thank you to Auckland University etc] It is a great pleasure to be here this afternoon to celebrate such an historic occasion - the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This is a moment many feared would never come, but ...
The Government is providing $3 million in one-off seed funding to help disabled people around New Zealand stay connected and access support in their communities, Minister for Disability Issues, Carmel Sepuloni announced today. The funding will allow disability service providers to develop digital and community-based solutions over the next two ...
Border workers in quarantine facilities will be offered voluntary daily COVID-19 saliva tests in addition to their regular weekly testing, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. This additional option will be rolled out at the Jet Park Quarantine facility in Auckland starting on Monday 25 January, and then to ...
The next steps in the Government’s ambitious firearms reform programme to include a three-month buy-back have been announced by Police Minister Poto Williams today. “The last buy-back and amnesty was unprecedented for New Zealand and was successful in collecting 60,297 firearms, modifying a further 5,630 firearms, and collecting 299,837 prohibited ...
Upscaling work already underway to restore two iconic ecosystems will deliver jobs and a lasting legacy, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “The Jobs for Nature programme provides $1.25 billion over four years to offer employment opportunities for people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the COVID-19 recession. “Two new projects ...
The Government has released its Public Housing Plan 2021-2024 which outlines the intention of where 8,000 additional public and transitional housing places announced in Budget 2020, will go. “The Government is committed to continuing its public house build programme at pace and scale. The extra 8,000 homes – 6000 public ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has congratulated President Joe Biden on his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States of America. “I look forward to building a close relationship with President Biden and working with him on issues that matter to both our countries,” Jacinda Ardern said. “New Zealand ...
A major investment to tackle wilding pines in Mt Richmond will create jobs and help protect the area’s unique ecosystems, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor says. The Mt Richmond Forest Park has unique ecosystems developed on mineral-rich geology, including taonga plant species found nowhere else in the country. “These special plant ...
To further protect New Zealand from COVID-19, the Government is extending pre-departure testing to all passengers to New Zealand except from Australia, Antarctica and most Pacific Islands, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “The change will come into force for all flights arriving in New Zealand after 11:59pm (NZT) on Monday ...
Bay Conservation Cadets launched with first intake Supported with $3.5 million grant Part of $1.245b Jobs for Nature programme to accelerate recover from Covid Cadets will learn skills to protect and enhance environment Environment Minister David Parker today welcomed the first intake of cadets at the launch of the Bay ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Véronique Duché, A.R. Chisholm Professor of French, University of Melbourne In this series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen. When I first heard that Rowan Atkinson was to put on Maigret’s velvet-collared overcoat, I wondered ...
Auckland writer Olivia Hayfield* explains how she resurrected 16th-century playwright Christopher Marlowe to star in her new novel, Sister to Sister. Olivia Hayfield is a pen name. Real name: Sue Copsey. When I’m planning my modern retellings of historical tales, I read widely on the characters and see who leaps out at ...
The Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine could be approved as early as next week, Marc Daalder reports Medsafe will be asked to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine against Covid-19 on February 2, the Government has announced. The Medicines Assessment Advisory Committee (MAAC) is an independent panel that provides advice on some medicine approvals in ...
COMMENT:By Bryan Kramer, PNG’s Minister of Police who has defended Commissioner Manning’s appointment today in The National My last article, announcing that I intend to make a submission to the National Executive Council (NEC) to amend the Public Service regulation to no longer require the Commissioner of Police to ...
The Point of Order Trough Monitor was triggered today by the announcement of a $9 million handout for Southlanders – sorry, some Southlanders. The news came from the office of Grant Robertson who, as Minister of Finance, prefers to invest public money rather than give it away – especially when ...
Few people outside of her campaign team gave Chlöe Swarbrick any chance of winning in Auckland Central this year – but the Green Party MP was too busy to listen. Here’s how they turned the electorate green.First published November 12, 2020.Three Ticks Chlöe is part of Frame, a series of short ...
Interactions between parents and healthcare providers could have a big impact on the wellbeing of our children, according to new research. The way parents and healthcare providers interact has lasting implications for children’s health, new research has found – and that includes immunisation uptake.Released today, the report is based on research ...
The Opposition starts the political year calling for emergency, temporary legislation to free up house building National leader Judith Collins has set five priorities for her party over the next three years - but excluded climate change, education and Crown-Māori relations. Giving her first 'state of the nation' speech as party ...
One of the biggest challenges facing the Ardern government is in public health. New Zealand may have escaped the pressures heaped on other health systems by the Covid-19 pandemic but its health service has had its problems, not least those exposed in the first report from Heather Simpson and her ...
New Zealand’s Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins has revealed that 14 close contacts of the Northland community case have returned negative test results. Yesterday he announced two close contacts – her husband and hair dresser – were negative. In his tweet, Hipkins described the news as “encouraging”. However, New ...
Pacific Media Watch newsdesk Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the arbitrary and opaque experiments that Google is conducting with its search engine in Australia, with the consequence that many national news websites are no longer appearing in the search results seen by some users. The Australian, ABC, Australian Financial ...
Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta says councils can take stronger action against companies dumping contaminated waste water, even though they have identified loopholes in the law on fines. ...
Drag Race Down Under, part of the popular RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise, is filming in New Zealand. In their own words, local drag talent share what drag means to them and how it might be impacted by the show.RuPaul’s Drag Race is, quite simply, a television phenomenon. Love it or ...
For a long time, weighted blankets were considered a specialist device. Now they’re popular with even the most normal sleepers.Growing up, Temple Grandin spent time on her aunt’s cattle ranch in America, watching cow after stressed cow enter a squeeze chute and come out calm as the dead sea. She ...
Increased provisional tax thresholds, immediate low-value asset write offs and allowing the deferral of tax payments and use of money interest (UOMI) write offs were the most popular tax measures introduced by the Government to help businesses survive ...
The latest fleeing driver statistics show the numbers of incidents sky-rocketing out of control through 2020 with Police deciding the only tactic is to give up on chasing altogether, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “The inconvenient truth is ...
With new revelations of the appalling racism behind Israel’s refusal to provide Covid-19 vaccines to 4.5 million Palestinians under its occupation and control, PSNA has renewed our call for the government to speak out alongside the United Nations ...
The Youth of NZ will be standing up for climate action once again, on January 26th outside of Parliament for School Strike 4 Climate NZ’s 100 Days 4 Action campaign rally. “COVID-19 may have stopped us in our tracks in the past. However, I tend ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Parwinder Kaur, Associate Professor | Director, DNA Zoo Australia, University of Western Australia Koalas are unique in the animal kingdom, living on a eucalyptus diet that would kill other creatures and drinking so little their name comes from the Dharug word gula, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By S. Anna Florin, Research fellow, University of Wollongong Archaeological research provides a long-term perspective on how humans survived various environmental conditions over tens of thousands of years. In a paper published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution, we’ve tracked rainfall in northern ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Binoy Kampmark, Senior Lecturer in Global Studies, Social Science & Planning, RMIT University Since 2005, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has been one of the most stable and enduring of political forces, both in Europe and on the global stage. During her 16 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Véronique Duché, A.R. Chisholm Professor of French, University of Melbourne In this series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen. When I first heard that Rowan Atkinson was to put on Maigret’s velvet-collared overcoat, I wondered ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. Experts are calling for hotels with sub-par ventilation systems to no longer be used as managed isolation facilities as health officials investigate how a Northland woman became infected with Covid-19 while staying at the Pullman hotel, Rowan Quinn reports. ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 26, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur Members make The Spinoff happen! Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Questions to be answered about case in the community, major companies flagrantly breaching wastewater consents, and Tenancy Tribunal decisions harming abuse survivors.As of this morning, we’re still waiting on some crucial information about the situation in Northland, after a person travelled ...
With democracy what now separates the US from its adversaries, Wellington can bet on more continuity than change in Washington’s hardline view of China. ...
We continue our week-long examination of writer Roderick Finlayson. Today: his daughter Kate on his doomed love for Poti Mita, whose family inspired him to write short stories about Māori life in the 1930s We all knew of Poti Mita and how important Pukehina was to Dad. He wanted ...
Sleepyhead is chopping and changing its ambitious plan to build a super-factory and a community of 1100 medium density houses on a block of farmland in the north Waikato. Sydney Turner set his grandsons Craig and Graeme to work on the factory floor, building mattresses. Now Craig and Graeme Turner own ...
A change of plans for round-the-world single-handed sailor Elana Connor means she's helping Kiwi kids in foster care to go sailing - as she also seeks to 'demystify' the sport for women. Elana Connor wears a silver necklace engraved with the word “Fearlessness”. As she sails solo around the globe, it reminds her that ...
New Zealand rose to the occasion in its response to Covid-19. Will it do the same for climate change? Jack Santa Barbara looks ahead to the Climate Change Commission report. New Zealand’s management of the Covid pandemic clearly demonstrated the benefits of paying attention to the science and prioritising human wellbeing ...
Was Covid-19 and lockdown the catalyst for a new future for healthcare or did it just expose systemic inequity? In the latest of a series on the country's future infrastructure needs, Tim Murphy looks at how the long push to shift health's focus from hospitals to the community might have received a nudge ...
Not only is the New Zealand summer in danger of coming to a grinding halt, but we increase the risk that an almighty wreck might follow shortly afterwards. Here's what we can do, writes Dr Sarb Johal. While the rest of the world is wrestling with virulent new strains of the ...
Helen Petousis-Harris looks at the potential complications of vaccinating older New Zealanders - and how we should prepare Two weeks ago health authorities in Norway reported some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their Covid-19 vaccine. Are these deaths related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are ...
For two decades, under both National and Labour governments, housing costs have risen far faster than wages. Here’s a horrific graph that shows by just how much.Last Thursday saw the first of what will no doubt be dozens of housing-related set pieces from Labour, wherein they announced 8,000 public and ...
The new Northland case has been linked to the South African strain of Covid-19, one of a number of new, more contagious Covid variants. Here’s how they emerge and why.Let’s start with the basics. The genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for Covid-19 is a strand of RNA made ...
New Zealand’s richest citizen, Graeme Hart, has seen his fortune increase by NZ$3,494,333,333 since March 2020 – a sum equivalent to over half a million New Zealanders receiving a cheque for NZ$6,849 each, reveals a new analysis from Oxfam today. The New Zealand ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tauel Harper, Lecturer, Media and Communication, UWA, University of Western Australia With a vaccine rollout impending, key groups have backed calls for the Australian government to force social media platforms to share details about popular coronavirus misinformation. An open letter was put ...
Selling out ACT’s Waitangi Day State of the Nation Address is set to sell out again. If you’d like to start the political year right over brunch with fellow ACT supporters (Saturday 6 February 10am-12pm, Mt Eden), please buy your tickets ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Kirkness, Postdoctoral research fellow, Macquarie University As government COVID updates have become a daily part of our lives over the past 12 months, so too has the sight of sign language interpreters on our screens. This has understandably had a huge ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Dwyer, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communications, University of Sydney Executives from Google and Facebook have told a Senate committee they are prepared to take drastic action if Australia’s news media bargaining code, which would force the internet giants to ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. Hundreds of companies have dumped contaminants - like blood, fat, and toxic chemicals such as ammonia and sulphides - into sewers in breach of their trade waste consents over the past year, RNZ can reveal. Anusha Bradley reports. Frank ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Morag Kobez, Associate lecturer, Queensland University of Technology In this series, our writers explore how food shaped Australian history – and who we are today. The history of cheese in Australia has, until recent decades, been a rather tasteless affair. Not so ...
On the edge of the Mataura River, a disused paper mill is filled with thousands of bags of toxic waste. Locals want to find out who’s responsible for it – and they want it gone before disaster strikes.First published November 10, 2020.The Paper Mill is part of Frame, a series ...
At the Chorus Fibre Lab, José Barbosa peeked behind the curtain of the internet and found something beautiful and very, very fast. The human mind is a daily swarm of notions, speculations, ruminations, thoughts and otherwise base-level brain puffs. Just to get through the grind of survival, we’ve evolved to mentally ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. The Ministry of Health is confident the Northland community case came directly from the Pullman Hotel and there is no missing link. In a press conference this afternoon, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield confirmed the strain of Covid in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Longden, Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Heat is more dangerous than the cold in most Australian regions. About 2% of deaths in Australia between 2006 and 2017 were associated with the heat, and the estimate increases to ...
Levin GP Glenn Colquhoun talks with books editor Catherine Woulfe about his new collection of poetry, Letters to Young People.Glenn Colquhoun is an acclaimed and accomplished poet. He has published four collections, including Playing God, in December 2002, which sold a massive 10,000 copies. He’s won a clutch of Montanas ...
Contrasting reactions to news of Grainne Moss’s resignation as Oranga Tamariki chief executive inevitably can be found in the blogosphere. Lindsay Dawson has recorded the ACT Party’s response to the resignation and hailed it as “spot on”. The statement was made in the name of Karen Chhour, described as a ...
Zendaya has been around for a decade, but she’s gone from Disney prodigy to pop star to acclaimed actress. Here are the highlights of the 24-year-old’s already impressive career.Shaking it up: Zendaya on DisneyThe world’s first encounter with Zendaya was a little Disney show called Shake It Up, a series ...
What’s it like to have your life governed by your gut? It’s crap, frankly.On my birthday last year I was given a bottle of fancy Aesop post-poo drops which clear the air after rigorous bowel activity – though on reflection, it may have been more of a gift for my ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. Negative tests results for two of the closest contacts of a woman who tested positive for Covid-19 after leaving managed isolation is a good sign, says Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins. Two of the closest contacts of a woman ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Dyer, Associate Professor, RMIT University At a dinner party, or in the schoolyard, the question of favourite colour frequently results in an answer of “blue”. Why is it that humans are so fond of blue? And why does it seem to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Megan Davis, Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous UNSW and Professor of Law, UNSW We are on the eve of the nation’s annual ritual of celebrating the arrivals, while not formally recognising the ancient peoples who were dispossessed. Each year the tensions spill over, rendering ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bright, Senior Lecturer of Addiction, Edith Cowan University While the public focus remains on COVID vaccines, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) continues to evaluate a range of proposals around the provision of medical treatments in Australia. The regulatory body is currently ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Wilkinson, Professor, School of the Built Environment, University of Technology Sydney Many of us who endured lockdowns in Australia are familiar with the surge in energy bills at home. But for older Australians who depend on the Age Pension for income, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael P. Cameron, Associate Professor in Economics, University of Waikato Population growth plays a role in environmental damage and climate change. But addressing climate change through either reducing or reversing growth in population raises difficult moral questions that most people would prefer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Sonnemann, Fellow, School Education, Grattan Institute School is back for 2021, and some students will get extra help this year. Students who fell behind in their learning during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 will be eligible for extra tutoring in Victoria ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Duffy, Lecturer, School of Business, Western Sydney University Australia Day used to be an obvious and uncontroversial occasion for brands to endear themselves to Australian consumers. No longer. There has been a decided shift over the past decade in commercial attitudes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, University of Melbourne In January 1971, Art News published Linda Nochlin’s Why have there been no great women artists? Her ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 25, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nz7.40am: Two close contacts of new Covid case test negativeThe husband of the new Northland case of Covid-19 has tested negative for the virus, along with ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission Hundreds of staff won't come into work on Monday after a 56-year-old woman who later tested positive for Covid-19 visited about 30 locations in Northland and Auckland - a blow to businesses desperately holding on after a hard year. Harry ...
testing testing
Times?
More “Am I awake?”
I heart this time of year…
Testing what? System upgrades last night, so I am looking for breakages.
One thing broken is some forms of video embedding – see draft post that has been at the top of the queue for a while…
have tried to send emails but nothing seems to occur when send is pressed.
“I have an Android issue. I have a Samsung Galxy Ace.
When viewing The Standard, the page runs fine.
The problem is i cannot post comments.
I enter my name, press next, my email, press next and it goes to the website entry box.
I have no site info to enter but pressing next does not progress to comment/text entry box, hence i cannot go any further.
Is there a way to bypass the website box that I am unaware of?
thankyou in advance for any assistance you can offer
kind regards
freedom
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/10346643/rwc-probably-wont-break-even-key/
So we have recovered some of the additional costs from SCF? = So all is good.
Dear National. We know you’re in the pockets of the road builders and the housing industry but do you really have to make it so obvious? http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10754610
P.S. to Auckland. How do you like being run from Wellington?
Mind you Tigger, if someone like John Banks was Mayor the cooperation would be much more cosy with Central Government’s wishes. (Sarcasm warning.)
Fuck these idiots in NAct. Don’t they understand that we can’t afford massive, sprawling cities?
Yes, that’s a rhetorical question, of course they don’t understand as that would require them to take into account reality.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/5689052/Family-zombies-after-home-invasion
Don’t need to be home invaded to become a zombie if you live in a noisy neighborhood
overnight and during the day (so can’t catch up on sleep).
Peter Blake’s son James I think is undertaking a big row to raise money for an artificial reef near Indonesia. This is such a great idea as climate change adversely affects coral reefs which are important maybe vital part of nurturing and protecting sea life. Some people are already acting by planting coral each day, like in coral gardens, and this will spread the reef area and renew. Really important. If you can afford some pennies please think of a donation as this week’s positive action for the planet.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon
Tue27/9 09:35
James Blake
Sir Peter Blake’s son James Blake explains why he’s planning to row across the Tasman to try raise funds to build the world’s biggest artificial reef. (9′51″)
Download: Ogg Vorbis MP3 | Embed
Interesting tale on Facebooks devious policies on Radionz this morning – see link above. Be-ware, they say that everything you do is being passed on and privacy settings you’ve put in place are realigned to default each time they put in a new policy, or I think that’s what they said. I’m no expert. I do know that I tried to cancel my Facebook arrangement and was asked so many intrusive questions that I didn’t fill out the whole form so apparently invalidated my withdrawal and am still welcomed into the sweet and friendly Facebook family. And this morning’s interviewer said it doesn’t matter anyway they keep the settings and keep checking on what you do. Talk about BIG Brother!
Also in this morning’s radionz news –
NZ bid for Commonwealth Games now likely
The New Zealand Olympic Committee says mounting a bid for a future Commonwealth Games is now more likely to happen. The next possible year is 2022.
We can’t afford to make forward-looking responsible social and environmental moves but there’before the Rugby World Cup is over there is talk about circuses and junkets for the elite and Discretionaries (those with spare money) while the bread part isn’t ensured to go with the circuses.
And in Oz those hopeful young NZs who went to Australia and worked for a better life are now beginning to feel the cold and callous side of OZ that wiped all social welfare benefits to us whether we had worked there, no matter how long, and only if we were granted residency which would be refused as we do, if there were health problems etc., when Helen Clark was in, with hardly a peep from her. They didn’t tighten access to benefits – they wiped them altogether.
One family talked this morning – they’re son was born in Oz and because of medical misadventure is brain damaged and required ongoing care for which they receive nothing from the authorities there although they have worked there for some years I think. Presumably they can sue the hospital. Young Kiwi women are turning to prostitution to survive, and degradation of living conditions causes 40 phone calls daily to a Queensland help line. They can be stranded in Oz by pride, as in the biblical Prodigal Son, or because of lack of money in their extended family to bring them home. There was a song from way back by Gene Pitney with the final line – “And I can never, never, go home again.” This is sad – we should start a compassionate fund for NZ refugees in Australia, that lucky country.
Many ideas in here for FB control choices.
Ideas, as mentioned in the article and the comments, are not necessarily answers.
http://nikcub-cache.appspot.com/logging-out-of-facebook-is-not-enough
Simple lesson DONT USE FARCEBOOK. if you do it’s your own fault!
.
more biting the hands that once fed it…
It was less than a week ago that Jenny had a go at biting Owen Glenn’s hand
Now Darien Fenton’s trying similar class traitor tactics on Sir Peter Leitch.
Was it only yesterday that r0b called for less arrogance and reflexive negativity?
@ Joe Bloggs – Is that Sir Peter Leitch the mad butcher who used his interview on radionz to make an open play of affirmation for John Key, that lovely guy, the man everybody would invite to dinner, especially if he brought the wine to go with the rib-eye steak. For those who can afford it!
Actually many of us are concerned to get a Prime Minister who shows continuing concern and responsibility for advancing the welfare of all NZs socially and through business and employment opportunities and makes achievable promises, not feelgood kissing of cheeks, and showing off his dental work.
What’s the problem here? If Rodney Hide said “I won’t shop at X because Y supports Labour” no one would blink an eye. Personally, I’m with Darien – Mad Butcher isn’t getting my money now. Neither is Car-fe. Free choice. Isn’t that what Slater and his lot get chubbies over?
I’ve been told that The Mad Butcher was the moniker Leitch appropriated for himself following a trip to the US.
Oh JB you’re such a funny troll….class traitor tactics, that’s f’n hilarious but then if slater’s your dictionary reference fair play doing a limbo dance under that bar.
Leitch is the typical working class made good who now wants to pull the ladder up by supporting the policies and folk who do this best.
Low wages/rights/employer friendly rules and most of his shops are the meat equivalient of low rent liquor outlets by the poor quality of product and who they target…..seen any in upmarket suburbs ?
Shop at your local butcher, they need it and you’ll get what you pay for….quality and service.
as for that tosser Ridge…wash your own car.
Sorry – you have the wrong man.
I’m referring to Sir Peter Leitch – you might know of him – he’s a working class man with no pretensions who has given away vast sums of money and more of his time to help those who are worse off .You might have heard of his serial fundraising and the work that he’s done for Christchurch folk
Perhaps you may have heard of the Mad Butcher Suburban Newspapers Community Trust which has raised almost $1.5 million for charity. Or the Butch who supported Helen Clark when she was PM…
…here’s a suggestion – instead of calling for a boycott of Mad Butcher shops simply because Butch dares to dabble with the Dark Side, try earning his support back. Now there’s a novelty.
Meanwhile I’m off to the local Mad Butcher for a dozen sausages, and a bit of brisket for the pooch.
They aren’t the “hand that feeds” but the hand that takes away – capitalism = legalised theft.
Graeme Edgeler has posted a valuable Referendum on Public Address. Intriguing and worth doing even if to just confirm a position.
http://publicaddress.net/system/topic/3229/?p=229846#post229846
RIP Troy Davis
Those of us who are not reliant on mainstream media for our information would have felt saddened by recent events in Savannah, Georgia. In fact some of us have felt quietly outraged at the execution of Troy Davis on September 21, 2011…
What has the mainstream media got to do with this?
I learned about it and how he was more than likely not guilty through the mainstream media?
Have a read of the post Chris, and then tell me the MSM reported half of that information? I found out that he was going to be executed and there were protesters, but there was hardly any reporting in NZ by the MSM about the extent of injustice… But what else is new?
I did and I learnt nothing new:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/5665974/Troy-Davis-executed-after-appeal-fails
I read this on the day that he was being put to death.
There was also this editorial:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10754137
Plus a number of other articles about the case on both these sites.
K Fair enough Chris, I’ve edited the post to more accurately define what I was meaning. You might like to also read the Wikipedia article on Troy Davis as well.
Haha yep now that makes more sense to me now.
This was huge news it was all over the media.
Interesting blog from the Torygraph’s US correspondent Toby Harnden. As Harnden points out, Davis was an unusual case for anti-death penalty campaigners to support, because he was almost certainly guilty of the murder plus two other violent assaults in the minutes before he shot the off duty cop. He certainly wasn’t an innocent man, in any sense of the phrase.
Thanks for the link TVOR
I have to say here, that I am opposed to the death penalty even if the person being executed (murdered) is guilty! Otherwise, if campaigners only oppose the killing of the innocent, whilst they should of course do so, it takes away from the point of opposing capital punishment – which is that human beings, being so flawed, have no right at all to decide who gets killed…
The BBC did have a lot about it, but they are recently too scared of offending the Evil Empire to let rip the way they would have 5 years back.. 🙁
Hero of the Week Award – Clare Curran
Clare Curran has been getting a fair bit of grief from David Farrar and Cameron Slater lately. What these right wing sycophants seem to ignore is that she’s a very switched on political commentator, and indispensable within the New Zealand blogosphere…
Phil Goff has an interesting question No 2, set down for today:
Hon PHIL GOFF to the Attorney-General: Does he agree with the Prime Minister’s statement that “there are at least 40 trials and 50 investigations where those investigations currently – the video surveillance equipment’s been turned off and yeah I don’t think – that will harm those trials in my view”, and in how many of those cases does the prosecution rely on evidence from warrantless filming from private property without the owner’s consent?
Jeez, if it’s not too late for the Jackal’s arsehole of the week, John Key is a serious contender:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10754703
What a fucken muppet.
FFS. The man has no idea at all.
He’s just treading water getting kicks out of standing beside ABs and txting heads of state – I wonder if he’s on the block list of Obama’s blackberry?
See what happens when he slips the minders leash or isn’t given a script with the words in bold at the top ‘VERBATIM OR ELSE’
It’s all ok though – Herald readers have jumped to his defense. (And the Herald has made a story out of its facebook page!)
The man can do no wrong – apparently.
John Key has already won an Asshole Award. I’ll count your vote TVOR as a nomination for John Key to win the Asshole of the Year Award 🙂
Don Brash on Pot
In a speech given on law and order held in Auckland last weekend, Don Brash came out in support of decriminalizing marijuana. It seems strange that he’s promoting decriminalization… and it appears to me that his controversial statements are designed to gain media attention…
Do I understand that under the now non existance Surveillance Bill taxi drivers are not allowed to use their new systems because the law as it stands forbids same without a specific judges agreement ?
Doesn’t sound right to me – the cameras are a safety/security issue and are there with the consent of the drivers (if the passengers don’t see the warning signs), so fall under one of the exemptions to the surreptitious filming legislation.
If the police broke into the vehicle one night and placed their own sneaky cameras, the’d not be able to use the footage as evidence in trivial caes. But they could use the taxi company footage quite easily.
As an aside, I was pretty pissed when I noticed the “privacy policy” for the camera footage in my last taxi trip – along the lines of “camera images are only permitted to be viewed by authorised persons”. No information as to who are authorised, character tests, restrictions on being able to copy files (lest a Queenstown bouncer has access to the archive), or expiry protocols. I’m just glad I don’t habitually wear short skirts and sit in the middle seat.
Absolutely not. In fact you can have covert surveillance pretty well anywhere unless you have to trespass on the person’s property to set the camera up. You can even have it on a tree in a park outside as long as it is not too obtrusive.
This BBC news video is a rather sobering view of the coming economic collapse
“BBC Speechless As Trader Tells Truth The Collapse Is Coming ”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp-MQhssCqI&feature=player_embedded
If your website’s full of arsholes, It’s your fault.
We’re twenty years in to this world wide web thing. Today, I myself celebrate twelve years of writing this blog. And yet those of us who love this medium, who’ve had our lives changed by the possibility of publishing our words to the world without having to ask permission, are constantly charged with defending this wonderful, expressive medium in a way that creators in every other discipline seldom find themselves obligated to do.
Some of this is because the medium is new, of course. But in large part, it’s because so many of the most visible, prominent, and popular places on the web are full of unkindness and hateful behavior.
The examples are already part of pop culture mythology: We can post a harmless video of a child’s birthday party and be treated to profoundly racist non-sequiturs in the comments. We can read about a minor local traffic accident on a newspaper’s website and see vicious personal attacks on the parties involved. A popular blog can write about harmless topics like real estate, restaurants or sports and see dozens of vitriolic, hate-filled spewings within just a few hours.
But that’s just the web, right? Shouldn’t we just keep shrugging our shoulders and shaking our heads and being disappointed in how terrible our fellow humans are?
Not many human beings are like that, the problem is they are the ones that get noticed.
Granny just can’t help herself can she ‘ readers leap to PM’s defense over coalmine joke’ should read ‘we think the sun shines out of JK’s arse and here’s some one sided ‘opinions’ to back it up’…..RIP journalism.
Sideshow showing how unfit for the role he is again isn’t news granny.
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.php?c_id=1&objectid=10754740
Odd story. Where was the original outcry about it? As far as I can see that was the Herald http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.php?c_id=1&objectid=10754703. No one is reported as finding the joke troublesome.
So Herald created a ‘stir’ so Key could be defended from it…
Oil Damages DNA
A recently released peer reviewed study entitled Genomic and physiological footprint of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on resident marsh fishes (PDF) and released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has damaged the genetic structure of marsh fish in the effected area…
They didn’t detect DNA damage, what they found were changes in gene expression, which has a whole range of mechanisms other than DNA damage…
And it’s spelled out in the bloody abstract, which if DNA damage was involved, you’d think it’d be mentioned, being a summary of the findings and all that:
So learn 2 science pleez, and check wikipedia/google if you don’t understand something, instead of doing what teh deniers do and post truth claims without reading/understanding teh research.
On Radio NZ tonight they were on about Elizabeth Warren, a US law professor who is standing for senate; the person discussing this suggested the words of her speech as a way of shutting up dicks like farrar.
Enjoy
http://youtu.be/hOyDR2b71ag
I am going to try an experiment soon; I am going to attempt a strategy on someone, a parasite on this forum. I did this once before on another site and it really caused the vermine to be frightened away.
There are hundreds of reasons why young voters should turn up in force and send a strong message to this government on November 26.
http://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.com/2011/09/national-is-stealing-my-childrens.html