This dumb-cunt boofhead managed a much higher score of injured victims than Delegat, feels the same “remorse” that could be better described as “sentence mitigation tactic” and has escaped a prison term because it might hurt his “career” prospects, to the extent that playing a game for a living can be called a career. Still, nice to see consistency from NZ rugby in the role models it provides for us.
what “future prospects” are acceptable to the courts, and what “future prospects” are deemed of no value?
Whether your future prospects are capable of making you a millionaire or not. It’s essentially the courts deciding who’s worthy or not which is something that the courts simply should not be doing.
ANAND HIRA: One law for rugby players and a different law for everyone else.
A man has beat up four people – including two women. No one is denying it happened. And if this mongrel was an accountant, truck driver, labourer, firefighter, lawyer, doctor or just about anything else – he would be in prison. Because no one in their right mind would believe their job should excuse such a brutal behaviour.
Unless your name is Losi Filipo and that career is playing rugby.
Then we can’t have the punishment adversely affect his career. That just wouldn’t be fair. If you are good at rugby, you can get away with anything. That’s the New Zealand we live in. There is one law for rugby players and a different law for everyone else.
One victim couldn’t work for three months. One of the women has to get platic surgery on her face, she was a model. The other women – a world class barbershop singer – feared she’d never sing again. And one of his victims couldn’t work for eight months after the assault, and still suffers chronic fatigue and migraines, oh – and he was a promising rugby player too, who will never play the game again.
Their careers were affected by this attack. So can someone explain to me how it’s fair that Losi Filipo gets discharged without conviction. Because it makes no sense to me.
Playing sport for a living should be an honour. To represent the rest of the community and be paid for it is a privledge. This is a god-damn disgrace. Our justice system cares more about rugby potential than protecting New Zealanders from monsters. I am ashamed of a justice system that cares so little for victims. But that’s not the worst of it. We should be afraid.
There are monsters walking our streets who think they are above the law. And the law as proven them right.
Steve Tew does not front for interview about abuse case.
Paul Henry talks with family spokesperson Ruth Money, followed by Mark Henaghan, University of Otago Law Professor, on the case of Losi Filipo. How can someone violently attack a group of four people and escape conviction?
Yes , another bullshit case from a thoroughly Neolib society.
It’s all about ‘personal responsibility’ if you’re a designated loser, but ‘nice guy- give him a break’ if you’re a designated winner.
It’s not so much a matter of class, it’s a matter of total bloody hypocrisy.
Obvious mitigating features would include his age (he was only 17 at the time); his lack of previous convictions; his remorse; willingness to undergo restorative justice; the large body of community support he enjoys suggesting an unlikelihood of ever re-offending; his commitment to counselling and voluntary community work and the like.
Judges’ willingness to call some particular bullshit a “mitigating feature” is entirely subjective.
In this case, “remorse” from the kind of person who hangs out on the street looking for people he can issue with an unprovoked beating should be treated with skepticism, not just accepted at face value. Is there any evidence that the shithead perp felt “remorse” at any time other than when he was facing sentencing? Because, according to his victims, there’s evidence that he didn’t.
The “commitment to counselling and voluntary community work” is likewise easy to say when facing sentencing – actual intent to carry it out is another matter.
And “the large body of community support he enjoys” is as likely to endow him with a feeling of entitlement to impunity as it is to discourage further offending.
All that is true Psycho.
Maybe though the issue of support and remedy and compensation for the victims should be a vital part of the story. Victims do seem to be neglected. Of course whatever happens to the assailant will not change the victims’ position.
If he got chucked on the scrap heap and left to rot in the company of career crims, would that change anything for his victims? What would they, or anyone, stand to gain?
Ugh he deserves to have the book thrown at him, and hard. I’m just thinking as to what that would actually achieve tho?
Not so important for League because you can have a viable sports career in one or two countries easily, and it helps that NZ and Oz have softer rules for each other than anyone else.
For rugby, you have to be able to travel for at least Super rugby, and once you get into international and overseas pro comps, international travel is a big part of it.
The case law on the subject is that loss of careers in these circumstances amount to fines to the amount of the lost income, which can be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for a young player with 10-15 years ahead of them, particularly if they from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
By all accounts hes pretty good at league as well so really protecting his career shouldn’t have come into it as he would still have options after a sentence
“Protecting a persons possible career is not the job of the courts.”
Agree, its a disgrace that he avoided a criminal conviction. This thug not only stomped (multiply times) on one of his victims head, but also male v female assault.
If he was a truck driver, jail time would of been a real possibility…
In my recent line of work, I have, among other things, been trying to place people (mostly beneficiaries) into low-skilled jobs. It is nigh impossible to place people with convictions of any sort at this level because it’s one of the first filters applied by the employer, rightly or wrongly.
I agree with the judge’s reasons because the alternative, in my view, is worse, and will involve throwing a teenager on the scrapheap until the Clean Slate Act saves him, and he can’t even rely on that if he’s jailed. Meanwhile, the gaps in his CV will also make him hard to employ later on.
When people say “he deserves it for his actions”, understand that a conviction makes life much, much harder, particularly for young people with no employment history to overcome the conviction in employers’ considerations. Also understand that the outcome is massively expensive to the taxpayer, both in terms of immediate sentence, and in terms of long term welfare dependency.
I realise not everyone agrees.
However, it’s not just potential pro sports players who receive discharges without conviction. Here are a couple of manslaughter cases which resulted in discharges:
In my recent line of work, I have, among other things, been trying to place people (mostly beneficiaries) into low-skilled jobs. It is nigh impossible to place people with convictions of any sort at this level because it’s one of the first filters applied by the employer, rightly or wrongly.
You know, the whole idea behind a sentence is that the person convicted has paid their debt to society for the crime that they committed, that there is an end to the punishment. What you’re describing is people continuing the punishment after the punishment is supposed to have ended.
Perhaps what we should be doing at the end of the sentence is clearing/hiding the conviction so that people understand that the punishment is over.
I agree with the judge’s reasons because the alternative, in my view, is worse, and will involve throwing a teenager on the scrapheap until the Clean Slate Act saves him, and he can’t even rely on that if he’s jailed.
I don’t. People who commit crimes should be convicted. What we should be doing is far more in rehabilitation for those convicted and making people understand that the punishment doesn’t go on forever no matter how much those at the Sensible Sentencing Trust want it to.
I’d love to see it, particularly with substantially stronger Clean Slate legislation (ours is weak compared to elsewhere) and following the Scandinavian model of rehabilitative prisons, but until we do, judges are required to make that decision based on the rules and society we have, not the rules and society we’d like to have.
I’d also add the Basic Income and better employment to decrease the 100 applications for 1 job which leads to that kind of filtering – almost as if this stuff is interlinked…
If he got chucked on the scrap heap and left to rot in the company of career crims, would that change anything for his victims?
A prison sentence for him isn’t about improving things for his victims, it’s about protecting his future victims for the duration of his sentence, and hopefully giving him a reason to want to not do stuff that would put him back there again.
Compensation would change things for his victims – it’s a pity the courts can’t put a lien on his future earnings.
For me the issue is not what effect putting someone in prison has – clearly not a good effect in many, many cases.
The issue, however, is that many, many people ARE thrown in prison, and certainly convicted, for just this kind of offence – yet not this person.
That he has lots of support, ‘mentoring’ and the like actually suggests to me that a conviction (which is what he completely escaped, never mind the sentence) would not be as severe a penalty as it would be for someone who has little social support, ‘mentoring’, etc.. He could ‘bounce back’ from a conviction given all those in his corner.
He’s actually in better condition and circumstances to sustain a conviction than many who come to court in these circumstances – yet he is the one who is let off.
No doubt the community work will be rugby centric.
I have been responsible for ensuring someone doing community work actually does it and it is a bit of a joke really. Very easy to manipulate and abuse.
His community work involved working with kids around his chosen sport. All his games and practices ended up being community work as well. He probably did about a quarter of what was required.
The “dumb-cunt boofhead” mentioned in comment number 1 above. Your comment is in the thread as a reply to that comment – I guess it was intended be a new comment, not a reply?
There are no “moderate” rebels in Syria. Just Islamists who pretend to be moderate in order to get aid and arms from the US, and then go back to being Islamists after receiving the aid and the arms from the US.
Colonial Viper, did you hear John “Lord of Empathy” Campbell’s little performance on National Radio yesterday? He seems to have bought in to every single bit of propaganda from the White House about Syria.
oh yeah i heard a bit of that; I replied that Campbell needs to instead interview Stephen F Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, Princeton University and New York University, Contributing Editor to the Nation Magazine.
Miller’s own blurb. This is the propagandist Campbell accepted without question.
“JAMES MILLER is the Managing Editor of The Interpreter where he reports on Russia, Ukraine, and Syria. James runs the “Under The Black Flag” column at RFE/RL which provides news, opinion, and analysis about the impact of the Islamic State extremist group in Syria, Iraq, and beyond. He is a contributor at Reuters, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy Magazine, and other publications. He is an expert on verifying citizen journalism, and has been covering developments in the Middle East, specifically Syria and Iran, since 2009. ”
“The Interpreter is a daily translation and analysis journal funded and presented by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. In addition to covering political, social and economic events inside the Russian Federation, it chronicles Russia’s war in East Ukraine and its intervention in Syria in real time.
Founded in May 2013, this online journal set out with the modest goal of translating articles from the Russian press, the better to lower the language barrier that separates journalists, analysts, policymakers, diplomats and interested laymen in the English-speaking world from events taking place inside the Russian Federation.
Little did we realize then that The Interpreter would devote as much energy to covering what the Russian Federation got up to outside of its own borders.
The Interpreter is a leading real-time chronicle and analysis resource on all aspects of the crisis in Ukraine. Every day since violence first erupted in Kiev’s Independence Square, The Interpreter’s Ukraine live-blog has documented a revolution that became a war on European soil, often breaking news stories about Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its maskirovka insurgency in the Donbass, its cross-border shelling of Ukraine, the downing of MH17, and the Minsk II “cease-fire.”
None? Not a single one out of the entire 20 million people living there? Please keep in mind we’re talking about this planet, not the alternative one inhabited by RT watchers, in which the US government blew up the WTC and the Russian air force magically kills only “terrorists” when it rains phosphorus incendiaries on Aleppo.
It’s an especially astonishing claim because you’ve previously described the Assad regime, one of the most brutal dictatorships in the Middle East, as “moderate.” Those “Islamist” rebels must be demons in human form…
So why doesn’t everyone whose employment (and future employment) might be jeopardised by a conviction get similar lenient treatment under that section of the crimes act?
Or does only having a low wage job that’s at stake somehow make a conviction easier to bear?
When you’re on the bones of your bum, having trouble finding menial work because of a conviction can tip you into far more suffering than missing out on a professional rugby career and having to settle for an ordinary job.
There are many examples of diversion and discharge without convictions for precisely those reasons – two manslaughter cases are up thread. This gets press because of rugby, but with good legal representation, anyone else could have argued a similar case, and may well have been granted it as well.
That is according to prat Henry. You know the one who had his nose so far up Keys arse yesterday morning it was embarrassing.
Why I am not surprised by this prats right wing rant. Also, the Guardian is saying the shit against Corbyn is continuing.
It won’t be Corbyn that is unelectable, it will be the Labour Party that is unelectable if the shits don’t screw their heads in and get in behind the leader, and work to get Thatcher MkII and the Tories out.
Pat Mc Fadden calls for the party to seek inspiration from Wilson. Wilson who helped to destroy the British Aircraft Industry and fucking Blair a war criminal that should have been arrested years ago for war crimes, was so slippery earned the nickname of “Teflon Tony” McFadden must be fucking joking.
Quote from the Guardian
“Pat McFadden, the former minister, called for the party to seek inspiration from its “three great postwar leaders”, who he named as Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair.”
“the Guardian is saying the shit against Corbyn is continuing”
I’m in the UK at the moment and can confirm that – surprise, surprise – the vilification continues. A whole series of spurious, utterly contrived little Gotchas in the broadcast media since Corbyn’s latest victory.
Same old “Left are Anti-Semitic” smears (eg arch-Blairite Tristram Hunt on ITV’s Peston on Sunday last night) , same sad attempts to portray Corbynite support-group Momentum as a hotbed of violent misogynist larrikins (unfortunately for the Blairite-Brownite brigade – almost two thirds of Women Labour Party Members voted for Corbyn – including, incidentally, my strongly-feminist cousin – a kiwi domiciled in London since the early 80s. Momentum activists, meanwhile, appear to be disproportionately female and middle-aged)
… and a few new variations on these themes …
For example, after a post-leadership election TV interview yesterday in which Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell made very conciliatory gestures towards the PLP, he gets condemned by both the MSM, the Tories and the Establishment Centre-Right of the Labour Party for calling former Tory Minister Esther McVey “a stain on humanity” wayyyyy back in 2014 and refusing to apologise now. (also suggestions that he joked back in 2014 that McVey should be lynched – though he strongly disputes that allegation, suggesting he’d simply reported to the media what had been shouted at him at a public meeting).
McDonnell actually accepted in the interview that he’d sometimes “gone too far” in criticism of opponents but said voters wanted honesty rather than spin and he had been expressing honest anger back in 2014 over savage Tory Govt cuts to services for people with disabilities (McVey had been Disabilities Minister at the time) … Cue media beat-up over the last couple of days that McDonnell is encouraging a culture of intimidation, abuse and violence in the Party.
These tropes really are looking increasingly tired and desperate.
Meanwhile, the PLP plotters are pursuing a strategy of forcing Corbyn into a corner – either give whole-hearted support for the restoration of Shadow Cabinet elections (thus greatly empowering Corbyn’s critics in the PLP and possibly influencing which faction ultimately controls the NEC) or we’ll use every opportunity in the media to portray you as aggressive, divisive and insincere in your calls for unity and compromise.
Thanks for your report swordfish. Pretty much the impression I got over here from reading the UK media.
Those who control the narrative … just won’t give up their control of that narrative.
Makes sense when you don’t have popular support and it’s the only power going. But it results in such transparently silly hypocrisy it’s quite embarrassing. Dignity flies out the door when your grip on the levers starts to get a bit greasy.
Yes, Corbyn’s election has certainly shone a bright light on the enforcer role of various Courtiers and Bottom-feeders to the UK Establishment. Particularly the ruthlessly ambitious network of Blairite fellow-travellers within the “liberal” MSM and academia (not least, my own former lecturer in British politics, Tim Bale).
It seems that the moment they sniff a perceived threat to their interests, the UK Establishment swiftly closes ranks – and its those desperate souls out on the periphery of power – the most precarious of hangers-on – who appear to be the most aggressive in their defence of the Elite. Much like the legendary social snobbery of the Aristocracy’s leading Servants.
I enjoyed your Of bewildered herds blog post from July, incidentally. At roughly the same time as you, I was looking through Thrasher and Rallings’ National Equivalent Share of the Vote to try and get an unbiased take on the 2016 UK Locals in comparative perspective (I put all the detailed results going back to the late 70s in a draft post on my blog for future reference but, here in the UK, I’m locked out of both my email and my blog. Happens every time !).
Although some of Corbyn’s more enthusiastic supporters got a little carried away in their celebration of Labour’s result, the much more obvious spin came from the PLP plotters and their chums in the UK media who outrageously claimed that it was Labour’s worst performance in decades (They had a pre-prepared script and they were determined to stick to it)
For me, Labour’s Local Election results were mediocre but a long way from the disaster Blairites and Brownites were both predicting beforehand and desperately claiming afterwards.
I would be very afraid of a” more united Christendom”. History would lead one to suspect it would result in the usual “Preach more love and peace but carry out more war”.
I make the same comment about any of the monotheist religions . Their “one and only God” creates nothing but trouble as they run around killing each other in the name of their ‘version’.
I’m actually genuinely surprised about this, the amount of posts and threads on Clinton v Saunders and then Clinton v Trump I’d have thought people would want to see this
I’m pretty sure that there’s a lot of people interested in it. I’m not one of them and I’ve been keeping myself out of the Trump/Clinton debate as well. I don’t think either of them will be good for the US or the world.
+1,000,000 Muttonbird. Hype and more hype-Trump/Clinton will have been coached and scripted to the nth degree. Nothing new to learn here.
What gets me is the financial commentators are saying the stock market is jumping around on the basis of this debate, rather than on economic fundamentals.
On the same theme NZ’s awful trade figures today have been spun by the media as showing how strong the economy is where in fact it shows that we are not paying our way in the world. Borrowing and spending on flash cars and boats cannot go on ad infinitum, though Key and Blinglish seem to think it is fine.
The piece couches seven degrees in a 1000 year time frame. So, nothing to be concerned about. (Forget that we’re on track for something like four or six on our present course or that even if all Paris pledges honoured we’ll be hitting three or four)
Then the vid has talk of rectifying climate change – y’know, like we’ll just stick everything back together after we’ve broken it.
Don’t count on your time frame Bill. No-one knows exactly how this planet is going to behave because we have no record of such rapid change to make comparisons with. Anything is possible, and it’s not too far away (say ,about two decades).
Of course if you are an expert , like Hosking , then everything is business as usual and all will be honkydory as soon as these sunspots go away. Afterall these leftie plonkers that believe in Climate Change have just made a poor choice haven’t they?
No-one knows exactly how everything will respond to rising CO2. But we can extrapolate from ‘bench top’ experiments and employ concepts of probability to account for the uncertainty that a complex set of systems introduces to matters.
So we know that ‘x’ amount of CO2 will result in ‘y’ warming in a bench top scenario.
From that we can suggest carbon budgets for the planet and attach probable outcomes to each budget total. Not full proof. But bloody useful.
And when we throw in known rates of CO2 emissions, we can give a range of likely outcome. So. At present rates, we’re looking at 4 – 6 by century’s end. With Paris commitments, we’re looking at 3 – 4 by century’s end.
‘Century’s end’ doesn’t mean that we don’t hit that range of temperature before then – just that it’s the likely temp at that snapshot in time.
And, of course, that’s consciously and necessarily ignoring any and all non-linear tipping points that would set temps soaring and render any climate action redundant. All we know about them is that we don’t want them and that they become more likely with each incremental rise in temp.
So we know that ‘x’ amount of CO2 will result in ‘y’ warming in a bench top scenario.
That’s fine for a simplified, highly linear world, as you have identified.
However, you have also pointed out the reality which largely invalidates the usefulness of those bench top scenarios – or even the most complex climate models of today – as they do not account for all the positive feedback loops that climate change has already kicked off.
Everything from methane releases from fracking and melting permafrost (today’s increased atmospheric methane levels are equivalent to an extra 40-50ppm CO2), to the reduced albedo due to lost arctic sea ice, to the increased level of water vapour (a powerful greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere as the planet warms, to the cooling effect of the reflective heat shield that industrial pollutants in the atmosphere give us – which will disappear as we reduce the amount of coal and diesel that we burn, to the fact that large areas of rain forests – like the Amazon – have now become net contributors of CO2 as they become ravaged by climate change droughts and fires.
The dynamics of feedback loops are not known. What the threshold is for initiating any of the numerous feedback loops is also not known and probably not knowable. Feedback loops can only be learned about in retrospect – hardly useful. Given that, they can’t be factored in. Now, what’s your problem? Things aren’t being made to sound terrible enough?
Atmospheric concentrations of various gasses can be and are taken. Again, given the nightmarish complexities involved, extrapolations are made from basic knowable ‘bench top’ observations. Those extrapolations become more refined as better knowledge is gained from the observation of the real world situation.
What has been said to date – and this won’t hold in the future – is that the clutch of negative and positive forcings more or less balance out so that just looking at CO2 gives us a useful and usable ball park view of things.
But are you really saying that all the science around CO2 should be thrown away or disregarded and that we should just grapple blindly? Shining any light into a dark room is useful.
As a comparison. You know that the world view we use for navigation is a croc of shit? We place the world at the centre of things…and that’s not how things are. But it works – it’s accurate enough. The alternative is a complex tangle of head wrecking nonsense that produces results that are no better for most day to day, real world applications of navigational knowledge than the ‘wrong headed’ or simplistic one most people employ.
By the way – did you note that I wasn’t referring to models at all? No matter what complexities you want to feed in, they work on assumptions – circular walks in other words. Simply change an assumption (or two) if the results aren’t what are being sought. That’s useful for gaining understanding or insight.
Well, I think the whole mindset of – we still have this many more hundred gigatonnes of carbon dioxide we can put up, we have until 2030/2040/2050 to do this and do that – all that needs to be ended, right now, and some realistic talk take its place.
The dynamics of feedback loops are not known. What the threshold is for initiating any of the numerous feedback loops is also not known and probably not knowable.
However, at least some of these aren’t theoretical future phenomena. All the feedback loops I mentioned, defrosting permafrost, darkening of the arctic etc, are already well in motion.
I’ll indulge you one last time on this. (Will it finally get through to you?)
Until now, governments and NGOs have not quantified CO2. All they’ve done is push everything out into the future, disregard accumulated and accumulating amounts of CO2 and promised to cellotape everything back together after we’ve smashed it up.
The introduction of budgets provides a quantitative measure to work to/from. So all the unscientific and deeply insane talk of 30 below 1990 by 50 or whatever becomes redundant. Carbon budgets mean we have to look at what carbon we are releasing today and sort out what we are doing today.
Analogy?
How CC has been treated.
We’ll undertake to only drink half as much as we’re drinking now by the time 2 a.m. comes around. We’ll be right. We’ll have developed some detox wonder drug or technique by 2.30 am.
With carbon budgets.
If we carry on drinking like this, we’re on track for severe alcohol poisoning. We know that, by and large, the human body can only tolerate x amount of alcohol. So we can consume no more than y amount of alcohol if we want to avoid severe alcohol poisoning.
But you’d dismiss the latter because it wasn’t tabulating precise body weight or individual tolerances and a host of other factors?
However, at least some of these aren’t theoretical future phenomena. All the feedback loops I mentioned, defrosting permafrost, darkening of the arctic etc, are already well in motion.
See, here’s the question that you need to ask. Is defrosting permafrost (etc) currently irreversible? If it is, then we’re looking a non-linearity. If it’s not, then we’re not.
Can you answer that question one way or the other without the answer just being a matter of opinion?
Then – and even if your opinion is correct (that feed-back loops are proceeding) – what’s the point in clutching feverishly at the cock of doom?
We are in the midst of “abrupt climate change.” While there is no strict definition of what this is, major climate alterations occurring within one human life span would seem to count.
Methane release craters hundreds of metres wide, being discovered on land and on the sea floor.
I pick two degrees centigrade increase by 2030 (we are over one degree now) and four to six degrees centigrade by 2100.
That’s on average of course. Warming of five deg C to ten deg C over the last century has already been identified in various regions of the Arctic circle.
Which means that over the next 2 to 3 human generations (assuming a “generation” = 30 years or so) we are going to see multi metre sea level rise.
By the way, in the 1990s and early 2000s, serious scientists were talking about how anything over one degree C warming meant that we would cause serious, dangerous damage to the planet as we know it.
But like a frog in a pot of heating water we make excuses for how we can still manage things successfully.
People like McPherson need to stop flying. If they don’t, other people less commited will look at them and get the message that we can carry on BAU (see, the CC activists are still flying, it must be alright!). Actions speak louder than words.
I’m not only talking about the GHG emissions of his flights (divided by the numbers of people on the plane). I’m talking about the bigger picture. How much of the infrastructure that McPherson will use to get here is precisely the things that are causing CC. eg demands for cheap flights creates demand for new infrastructure, including new airports, which in turn increase the number of flights. And following from that all the GHG emitting infrastructure from transport, accommodation, meals etc. Unless one believes that airplanes will soon run on something other than FF, we have to stop flying now unless it is essential. There is no way around that argument morally if we are taking CC seriously.
We have the technology to share information without travelling (‘speaking tours’ are generally information sharing and not a lot else). And we need to be working towards relocalising as much as we can, and that includes activism (and making a living from speaking engagements). McPherson could instead be working with local activists remotely, training them up, getting them to work in their own communities, through NZ networks etc.
In order to respond meaningfully to CC we have to change our behaviour, all of us. And we have to stop using the cultural and conceptual tools that created CC in the first place (in this case flying, travel at will, globalisation,
Do I think we are at serious risk of runaway CC? Yes, of course. Do I think it’s too late and we are going to go extinct? Possibly but we don’t know that for a fact, so I disagree on McPherson’s view on that. Scaring people too much stops them acting.
What did you think about my viewpoints above re flying and change?
One reason it appears to be a “thousand year time frame” is because the scientists analysis wanted to cover several million years.
There is nothing to say that the 7 deg C rise detected in any given millenia could not have happened in say just 200 years.
Indeed, modern ice core analysis techniques can give researchers a year by year (or even month by month) account of how the atmosphere and climate changed. This is how scientists detected that in the past, parts of Greenland warmed by 10 deg C in just a few years.
The researchers talked about in the article could not have given us this same year by year account as much of the research they were examining for their own work would have been done before such techniques were available.
We’re already really fucked, but to have any chance at all we need to radically change everything we do today, and how we do it. And even then we’ll probably still be fucked but you might as well try and have fun doing it.
That during Democratic President Obama’s time, some of which Sec State Clinton was the top foreign policy officer, CO2 levels went up 20ppm, deep sea wells got green lit even after Deep Sea Horizon, the USA fought hard to water down the languaging at Paris COP, the fracking industry grew huge and Obama boasted how this would make the USA be energy independent.
But you support the Democrats if that makes you feel better, just make sure you understand what their true record on climate change actually is.
Point is that a media outlet headlined a possible 7 degree increase in a thousand years from now. Most casual readers (most people) would take that as some eye-brow raising factoid about the distant future…and then get straight down to their carbon profligacy. Climate change (the headline suggests) is a thousand years away. If 7 degrees takes a thousand years, then 1 degree takes 1/7th of 1000 years. Nothing to worry about. Torch that oil.
What is this ‘university educated political elite’ you refer to? You mean politicians?
You think the piece in stuff was penned with politicians in mind? Even in the highly unlikely event that it was, why would a politician (assuming that’s what you mean by that phrase you used) be more or less likely to read it in any way differently to any other reader?
Quite true, although I am not sure why you used the word “IF”.
The permafrost is melting.
Entire Siberian towns are falling down as the foundations of buildings crumble over through softening permafrost and huge sink holes open up.
Under the sea, researchers have taken video of mile long plumes of methane bubbles rising up from destabilised thawing methane hydrates as if the water is lemonade.
New Zealand, we looked like hypocrites this week.
We told the rest of the world to help with Syria, but we’re not doing our own share.
Prime Minister John Key gave the United Nations a telling off this week.
He said the international community had failed Syria.
This is the exact quote:
“Syria has become a byword for failure. Failure of the parties and their supporters to put peace, and the lives of innocent people ahead of self-interest and zero-sum politics.”
It would be a bold statement, if not for our double-standards.
If New Zealand had put “the lives of innocent people ahead” of “politics” we’d have taken more refugees.
There are more Syrians who have fled their country than there are Kiwis living in New Zealand: an estimated 5 million of them.
We offered to take an extra 750 a year ago (7 September 2015).
Lebanon is a country of roughly the same size as New Zealand. They’ve taken more than a million refugees. Admittedly, Lebanon doesn’t have much choice given its proximity to Syria, but regardless, the international burden isn’t being spread equally.
The truth is, John Key would suffer politically if he accepted thousands of Syrians and things went wrong. Maybe they’d struggle to get jobs. Maybe they’d put pressure on housing.
But hey, he reckons we should put the lives of innocent people ahead” of “politics”.
“Schools, orphanages and hospitals in Aleppo that moved underground to escape the destruction around them now feel that even they are at risk.
” “When I saw it I thought, my God, is it possible that there is so much destruction here and nobody wants to help us?” he said. “At that moment I knew that the international community had sentenced us to death, that we would be recorded as martyrs that they will weep over at some future date.”
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“I’ve been in Aleppo for five years and I’ve seen a lot of bombing, but the destruction of these bombs, I have never seen before,” said Omar Arab, a journalist who lives in the Mashhad neighbourhood..
———–
“The mask fell a long time ago from Russia and the regime, but now the mask has fallen from human rights defenders, from the international community. This is hell itself.”
As previously discussed, the PRA plays no part in decisions about *releasing* information – that’s the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA).
Among the insanity it seems that if you do anything for the rugby player perpetrator of the violent attacks who has been in the news, that you condone what he did.
So someone who serves him take-aways condones his behaviour.
These deductions from the Paul Henry book of logic. Which it must be said, include more than a few chapters on the “look at me” syndrome.
It’s not who cares Paul. It’s so what you Tory scum bags, so business like you. Are you that retarded you need a survey to tell you that the party represents their issues is supported by them.
Seems the Tory scum in this country are that stupid…
Well for one the Labour party president who’s job is to fund raise for the 2017 election.
With Andrew Little rating below the grandmother of NZ gardening (Maggie Barry) it clearly indicates that Little has little respect (and confidence) from the business community.
And Paul ask yourself why James Shaw is so high on the list…and for that matter Jacinda…
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Getting money from business was Labour’s greatest mistake, and they are still paying for it. But your vision is limited to the importance of finance and business, it seems.
Well, that list has lost it’s credibility straight away when they list The Double Dipping Dickhead from Dipton who I would not trust with the local boy scouts jamboree money let alone the economy as the top of the hit parade.
Pretty much all of our credentials including yours are ” Not having added 100 Billion to the nations debt.”
Bill English is , has and always will be a tool, a sly old double dipping no nothing tool. I suppose the best on economics they had was someone who was smart enough to claim housing costs whilst owning a home in Wellington.
Isn’t that also about the time Rodney and a few others got greedy too.
Yeah, we should has slashed benefits,cut WFF and taken an axe to the public sevice , none of this borrowing money to get us through the earth quake and global recession 🙄
And the left wonders why no one takes them seriously.
Bingles speaks their language. He’s really good at not noticing stuff and he doesn’t think anything stinks to high heaven. Ponyboy knows a not tax haven when he doesn’t see one.
Can’t imagine what a bunch of bonus hungry ceos could possibly see in them.
As you may have heard in the news, on Friday 23 September our current email provider, Yahoo, announced that they had discovered a security breach that took place in late 2014 where a large number of customer accounts were compromised.
Unfortunately we believe that your account was one of these. While Yahoo have advised that they have no evidence that the stolen passwords were used to gain unauthorized access to your account, we highly recommend you change your email password now to keep your email safe.
Changed my password, but I sure would like to know which “foreign government” enabled the hacking. Russia or China?
“Please note: By resetting your password, you are also giving permission for Spark to bring my email home in the move early next year. Once your email has been moved, it will continue to be provided free of charge as long as you have a broadband, dial-up or mobile broadband service plan with us on the same account. If you don’t have one of these plans, Xtra email will cost $5.95 per month from early next year.”
Try the GSCB, five eyes n all that.., they know i’m a hard core sympathizer for the communist, isis, holy trinity roman catholic death squad lefty righty splinter group hell bent on planting another highly explosive bomb on the table at any meeting that might occur near Emperor Rimmer and Herr Keynocio in the future,
Long live the rebellion alalalalalalalala
Who knows if they want to trawl through some account I have I hope letters from mum were worth the several days it probably took them to get it.
No doubt i’ll be getting mailing from readers digest and lotto’s in Europe saying that I won, can’t wait.
A cousin in Kenya, left millions from a dieing spinster, my lucks changing.
No dirty deal. I have no doubt the Greens decided it wasn’t worth the expense of standing a candidate especially when Labour’s candidate, Michael Wood is so highly regarded. Open and honest.
Unlike National who pretended to stand a candidate in Epsom while making sure their voters knew to vote for the ACT candidate. Dirty and dishonest.
“No dirty deal. I have no doubt the Greens decided it wasn’t worth the expense of standing a candidate especially when Labour’s candidate, Michael Wood is highly regarded by both parties. Open and honest.”
Oh please Anne can’t you at least be a little honest??
Here is what Metiria Turei said today…
“The Mt Roskill by-election will be closely contested, and we don’t want to play any role in National winning the seat.”
False equivalence. Not putting up a candidate to avoid splitting left vote is far less despicable than National putting up a candidate, telling him not to campaign, then telling Nats to vote for a tiny party that would have no seat in Parliament without such skulduggery. Nats would normally win easily in Mt Eden. Not the same thing at all. Greens all that time ago won their electorate because enough people genuinely supported Jeanette. Nobody ever believed in ACT winners in Epsom = dirty rort; Greens are clean. And please note – Jeanette won her seat in 1993 before MMP, so no rort there. No extra seat in parliament, as Epsom gives.
@rsbandit It is an entirely sensible decision. If National is going to do deals in Epsom election after election, which it does, then any electorate is fair game for a deal on the Left.
And the argument that National never pulls its candidate in Epsom is bollocks-it told people to vote for Seymour/Act and gave Goldsmith a high place on the list, which is 99% the same as pulling a candidate.
Now the Greens need to pull their candidate from Ohariu in the election.
For those who want to know why the site had some outages and now has a different performance profile…
The caching plugin using on the site proved to have a nasty vulnerability. The update provided to fix it broke the site. I’ve been having too many issues with it, so I fixed by purchasing and installing a different one.
Expect a few idiocies from the site while I tune this one up. Looks adequate so far.
We can’t say just because they do, we’ll do it. That makes us no better. If we don’t have our integrity, then why should we trust our politicians any more than we trust the other team?
No deals. I hope this not the shape of things to come, because it makes a mockery of MMP.
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
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Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
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Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
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In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
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The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
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A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
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A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
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So much for “If Nikolas Delegat had been poor and brown he would have got gaol time:”
Wellington rugby player discharged without conviction
This dumb-cunt boofhead managed a much higher score of injured victims than Delegat, feels the same “remorse” that could be better described as “sentence mitigation tactic” and has escaped a prison term because it might hurt his “career” prospects, to the extent that playing a game for a living can be called a career. Still, nice to see consistency from NZ rugby in the role models it provides for us.
everyone who comes before the court must be able to run the “will harm my future prospects” line ….
what “future prospects” are acceptable to the courts, and what “future prospects” are deemed of no value?
Whether your future prospects are capable of making you a millionaire or not. It’s essentially the courts deciding who’s worthy or not which is something that the courts simply should not be doing.
White Privilege
Sport privilege
Wealth privilege
I could go on.
Classless society all right,
ANAND HIRA: One law for rugby players and a different law for everyone else.
http://www.radiolive.co.nz/ANAND-HIRA-One-law-for-rugby-players-and-a-different-law-for-everyone-else/tabid/615/articleID/129218/Default.aspx
Steve Tew does not front for interview about abuse case.
Paul Henry talks with family spokesperson Ruth Money, followed by Mark Henaghan, University of Otago Law Professor, on the case of Losi Filipo. How can someone violently attack a group of four people and escape conviction?
http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Wellington-rugby-player-escapes-conviction-after-assaulting-four-people/tabid/504/articleID/129217/Default.aspx
Sponsors of the Wellington Lions.
Victoria University
Vodafone
Les Mills
The Dominion Post
Powerade
The image below shows the whole list.
Boycott them.
http://www.wellingtonlions.co.nz/assets/Uploads/_resampled/SetWidth586-Lions-sponsors-2016.png
How do you boycott a university?
Aren’t universities supposed to be progressive lefty organisations?
Students can pressurise their University.
Like this…
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED1609/S00124/yale-students-urge-auckland-university-to-go-fossil-free.htm
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1609/S00309/chancellor-presented-with-student-petition.htm
http://sustainable.org.nz/sustainability-news/victoria-university-to-divest-from-fossil-fuels#.V-muA_l97cs
The students are all paying big fees and in deep debt, they need to graduate to feed themselves, the system is designed to keep them quiet.
True, that.
Another person let off.
Now a prominent voice in sport…..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Veitch#Domestic_violence_controversy
Yes , another bullshit case from a thoroughly Neolib society.
It’s all about ‘personal responsibility’ if you’re a designated loser, but ‘nice guy- give him a break’ if you’re a designated winner.
It’s not so much a matter of class, it’s a matter of total bloody hypocrisy.
+111
On Morning Report they read out the Judge’s reasons for his judgement on the 17 year old school boy. Not quite so black and white.
@ 9:20 http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=201817670
The judge says:
Obvious mitigating features would include his age (he was only 17 at the time); his lack of previous convictions; his remorse; willingness to undergo restorative justice; the large body of community support he enjoys suggesting an unlikelihood of ever re-offending; his commitment to counselling and voluntary community work and the like.
Judges’ willingness to call some particular bullshit a “mitigating feature” is entirely subjective.
In this case, “remorse” from the kind of person who hangs out on the street looking for people he can issue with an unprovoked beating should be treated with skepticism, not just accepted at face value. Is there any evidence that the shithead perp felt “remorse” at any time other than when he was facing sentencing? Because, according to his victims, there’s evidence that he didn’t.
The “commitment to counselling and voluntary community work” is likewise easy to say when facing sentencing – actual intent to carry it out is another matter.
And “the large body of community support he enjoys” is as likely to endow him with a feeling of entitlement to impunity as it is to discourage further offending.
All that is true Psycho.
Maybe though the issue of support and remedy and compensation for the victims should be a vital part of the story. Victims do seem to be neglected. Of course whatever happens to the assailant will not change the victims’ position.
+1
If he got chucked on the scrap heap and left to rot in the company of career crims, would that change anything for his victims? What would they, or anyone, stand to gain?
Ugh he deserves to have the book thrown at him, and hard. I’m just thinking as to what that would actually achieve tho?
Would going to prison preclude him from a professional sports career?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Packer
Not so important for League because you can have a viable sports career in one or two countries easily, and it helps that NZ and Oz have softer rules for each other than anyone else.
For rugby, you have to be able to travel for at least Super rugby, and once you get into international and overseas pro comps, international travel is a big part of it.
The case law on the subject is that loss of careers in these circumstances amount to fines to the amount of the lost income, which can be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for a young player with 10-15 years ahead of them, particularly if they from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
By all accounts hes pretty good at league as well so really protecting his career shouldn’t have come into it as he would still have options after a sentence
Yep, including being a truck driver.
Protecting a persons possible career is not the job of the courts.
“Protecting a persons possible career is not the job of the courts.”
Agree, its a disgrace that he avoided a criminal conviction. This thug not only stomped (multiply times) on one of his victims head, but also male v female assault.
If he was a truck driver, jail time would of been a real possibility…
In my recent line of work, I have, among other things, been trying to place people (mostly beneficiaries) into low-skilled jobs. It is nigh impossible to place people with convictions of any sort at this level because it’s one of the first filters applied by the employer, rightly or wrongly.
I agree with the judge’s reasons because the alternative, in my view, is worse, and will involve throwing a teenager on the scrapheap until the Clean Slate Act saves him, and he can’t even rely on that if he’s jailed. Meanwhile, the gaps in his CV will also make him hard to employ later on.
When people say “he deserves it for his actions”, understand that a conviction makes life much, much harder, particularly for young people with no employment history to overcome the conviction in employers’ considerations. Also understand that the outcome is massively expensive to the taxpayer, both in terms of immediate sentence, and in terms of long term welfare dependency.
I realise not everyone agrees.
However, it’s not just potential pro sports players who receive discharges without conviction. Here are a couple of manslaughter cases which resulted in discharges:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5981533/Mum-walks-free-after-daughters-drowning
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/69124061/no-conviction-for-woman-in-manslaughter-of-her-son
Yes, they are negligent rather than deliberate offenses, but on the other hand, people died.
You know, the whole idea behind a sentence is that the person convicted has paid their debt to society for the crime that they committed, that there is an end to the punishment. What you’re describing is people continuing the punishment after the punishment is supposed to have ended.
Perhaps what we should be doing at the end of the sentence is clearing/hiding the conviction so that people understand that the punishment is over.
I don’t. People who commit crimes should be convicted. What we should be doing is far more in rehabilitation for those convicted and making people understand that the punishment doesn’t go on forever no matter how much those at the Sensible Sentencing Trust want it to.
I’d love to see it, particularly with substantially stronger Clean Slate legislation (ours is weak compared to elsewhere) and following the Scandinavian model of rehabilitative prisons, but until we do, judges are required to make that decision based on the rules and society we have, not the rules and society we’d like to have.
I’d also add the Basic Income and better employment to decrease the 100 applications for 1 job which leads to that kind of filtering – almost as if this stuff is interlinked…
If he got chucked on the scrap heap and left to rot in the company of career crims, would that change anything for his victims?
A prison sentence for him isn’t about improving things for his victims, it’s about protecting his future victims for the duration of his sentence, and hopefully giving him a reason to want to not do stuff that would put him back there again.
Compensation would change things for his victims – it’s a pity the courts can’t put a lien on his future earnings.
For me the issue is not what effect putting someone in prison has – clearly not a good effect in many, many cases.
The issue, however, is that many, many people ARE thrown in prison, and certainly convicted, for just this kind of offence – yet not this person.
That he has lots of support, ‘mentoring’ and the like actually suggests to me that a conviction (which is what he completely escaped, never mind the sentence) would not be as severe a penalty as it would be for someone who has little social support, ‘mentoring’, etc.. He could ‘bounce back’ from a conviction given all those in his corner.
He’s actually in better condition and circumstances to sustain a conviction than many who come to court in these circumstances – yet he is the one who is let off.
Makes no sense.
No doubt the community work will be rugby centric.
I have been responsible for ensuring someone doing community work actually does it and it is a bit of a joke really. Very easy to manipulate and abuse.
His community work involved working with kids around his chosen sport. All his games and practices ended up being community work as well. He probably did about a quarter of what was required.
A guy wearing a “New Zealand” t-shirt beats a Syrian soldier senseless
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/warning-graphic-content-syrias-moderate-rebels-brutally-torture-syrian-soldier/
I’m pretty sure Filipo’s not responsible for that one.
Who is, or was, Filipo ?
The “dumb-cunt boofhead” mentioned in comment number 1 above. Your comment is in the thread as a reply to that comment – I guess it was intended be a new comment, not a reply?
There are no “moderate” rebels in Syria. Just Islamists who pretend to be moderate in order to get aid and arms from the US, and then go back to being Islamists after receiving the aid and the arms from the US.
Colonial Viper, did you hear John “Lord of Empathy” Campbell’s little performance on National Radio yesterday? He seems to have bought in to every single bit of propaganda from the White House about Syria.
oh yeah i heard a bit of that; I replied that Campbell needs to instead interview Stephen F Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, Princeton University and New York University, Contributing Editor to the Nation Magazine.
This was the interview.
Miller’s own blurb. This is the propagandist Campbell accepted without question.
“JAMES MILLER is the Managing Editor of The Interpreter where he reports on Russia, Ukraine, and Syria. James runs the “Under The Black Flag” column at RFE/RL which provides news, opinion, and analysis about the impact of the Islamic State extremist group in Syria, Iraq, and beyond. He is a contributor at Reuters, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy Magazine, and other publications. He is an expert on verifying citizen journalism, and has been covering developments in the Middle East, specifically Syria and Iran, since 2009. ”
“The Interpreter is a daily translation and analysis journal funded and presented by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. In addition to covering political, social and economic events inside the Russian Federation, it chronicles Russia’s war in East Ukraine and its intervention in Syria in real time.
Founded in May 2013, this online journal set out with the modest goal of translating articles from the Russian press, the better to lower the language barrier that separates journalists, analysts, policymakers, diplomats and interested laymen in the English-speaking world from events taking place inside the Russian Federation.
Little did we realize then that The Interpreter would devote as much energy to covering what the Russian Federation got up to outside of its own borders.
The Interpreter is a leading real-time chronicle and analysis resource on all aspects of the crisis in Ukraine. Every day since violence first erupted in Kiev’s Independence Square, The Interpreter’s Ukraine live-blog has documented a revolution that became a war on European soil, often breaking news stories about Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its maskirovka insurgency in the Donbass, its cross-border shelling of Ukraine, the downing of MH17, and the Minsk II “cease-fire.”
There are no “moderate” rebels in Syria.
None? Not a single one out of the entire 20 million people living there? Please keep in mind we’re talking about this planet, not the alternative one inhabited by RT watchers, in which the US government blew up the WTC and the Russian air force magically kills only “terrorists” when it rains phosphorus incendiaries on Aleppo.
It’s an especially astonishing claim because you’ve previously described the Assad regime, one of the most brutal dictatorships in the Middle East, as “moderate.” Those “Islamist” rebels must be demons in human form…
Psycho Milt, you’re out of your depth, my friend.
He escaped a sentence because of section 106 of the crimes act when the punishment may outweigh the crime.
So why doesn’t everyone whose employment (and future employment) might be jeopardised by a conviction get similar lenient treatment under that section of the crimes act?
Or does only having a low wage job that’s at stake somehow make a conviction easier to bear?
When you’re on the bones of your bum, having trouble finding menial work because of a conviction can tip you into far more suffering than missing out on a professional rugby career and having to settle for an ordinary job.
There are many examples of diversion and discharge without convictions for precisely those reasons – two manslaughter cases are up thread. This gets press because of rugby, but with good legal representation, anyone else could have argued a similar case, and may well have been granted it as well.
Breaking News.
CORBYN IS UNELECTABLE.
That is according to prat Henry. You know the one who had his nose so far up Keys arse yesterday morning it was embarrassing.
Why I am not surprised by this prats right wing rant. Also, the Guardian is saying the shit against Corbyn is continuing.
It won’t be Corbyn that is unelectable, it will be the Labour Party that is unelectable if the shits don’t screw their heads in and get in behind the leader, and work to get Thatcher MkII and the Tories out.
Pat Mc Fadden calls for the party to seek inspiration from Wilson. Wilson who helped to destroy the British Aircraft Industry and fucking Blair a war criminal that should have been arrested years ago for war crimes, was so slippery earned the nickname of “Teflon Tony” McFadden must be fucking joking.
Quote from the Guardian
“Pat McFadden, the former minister, called for the party to seek inspiration from its “three great postwar leaders”, who he named as Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/25/jeremy-corbyn-critics-will-not-be-silenced-despite-unity-calls
Maybe Corbyn is just feeding them rope ….
Funny how ‘Mr Unelectable’ has held his own seat for 30+ years and now won two leadership elections and increased his majority.
Corbyn’s detractors want to replace him with someone electable, like THIS BLOKE…
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2014/12/11/15/ed-miliband.jpg
“the Guardian is saying the shit against Corbyn is continuing”
I’m in the UK at the moment and can confirm that – surprise, surprise – the vilification continues. A whole series of spurious, utterly contrived little Gotchas in the broadcast media since Corbyn’s latest victory.
Same old “Left are Anti-Semitic” smears (eg arch-Blairite Tristram Hunt on ITV’s Peston on Sunday last night) , same sad attempts to portray Corbynite support-group Momentum as a hotbed of violent misogynist larrikins (unfortunately for the Blairite-Brownite brigade – almost two thirds of Women Labour Party Members voted for Corbyn – including, incidentally, my strongly-feminist cousin – a kiwi domiciled in London since the early 80s. Momentum activists, meanwhile, appear to be disproportionately female and middle-aged)
… and a few new variations on these themes …
For example, after a post-leadership election TV interview yesterday in which Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell made very conciliatory gestures towards the PLP, he gets condemned by both the MSM, the Tories and the Establishment Centre-Right of the Labour Party for calling former Tory Minister Esther McVey “a stain on humanity” wayyyyy back in 2014 and refusing to apologise now. (also suggestions that he joked back in 2014 that McVey should be lynched – though he strongly disputes that allegation, suggesting he’d simply reported to the media what had been shouted at him at a public meeting).
McDonnell actually accepted in the interview that he’d sometimes “gone too far” in criticism of opponents but said voters wanted honesty rather than spin and he had been expressing honest anger back in 2014 over savage Tory Govt cuts to services for people with disabilities (McVey had been Disabilities Minister at the time) … Cue media beat-up over the last couple of days that McDonnell is encouraging a culture of intimidation, abuse and violence in the Party.
These tropes really are looking increasingly tired and desperate.
Meanwhile, the PLP plotters are pursuing a strategy of forcing Corbyn into a corner – either give whole-hearted support for the restoration of Shadow Cabinet elections (thus greatly empowering Corbyn’s critics in the PLP and possibly influencing which faction ultimately controls the NEC) or we’ll use every opportunity in the media to portray you as aggressive, divisive and insincere in your calls for unity and compromise.
Thanks for your report swordfish. Pretty much the impression I got over here from reading the UK media.
Those who control the narrative … just won’t give up their control of that narrative.
Makes sense when you don’t have popular support and it’s the only power going. But it results in such transparently silly hypocrisy it’s quite embarrassing. Dignity flies out the door when your grip on the levers starts to get a bit greasy.
Cheers, Puddleglum.
Yes, Corbyn’s election has certainly shone a bright light on the enforcer role of various Courtiers and Bottom-feeders to the UK Establishment. Particularly the ruthlessly ambitious network of Blairite fellow-travellers within the “liberal” MSM and academia (not least, my own former lecturer in British politics, Tim Bale).
It seems that the moment they sniff a perceived threat to their interests, the UK Establishment swiftly closes ranks – and its those desperate souls out on the periphery of power – the most precarious of hangers-on – who appear to be the most aggressive in their defence of the Elite. Much like the legendary social snobbery of the Aristocracy’s leading Servants.
I enjoyed your Of bewildered herds blog post from July, incidentally. At roughly the same time as you, I was looking through Thrasher and Rallings’ National Equivalent Share of the Vote to try and get an unbiased take on the 2016 UK Locals in comparative perspective (I put all the detailed results going back to the late 70s in a draft post on my blog for future reference but, here in the UK, I’m locked out of both my email and my blog. Happens every time !).
Although some of Corbyn’s more enthusiastic supporters got a little carried away in their celebration of Labour’s result, the much more obvious spin came from the PLP plotters and their chums in the UK media who outrageously claimed that it was Labour’s worst performance in decades (They had a pre-prepared script and they were determined to stick to it)
For me, Labour’s Local Election results were mediocre but a long way from the disaster Blairites and Brownites were both predicting beforehand and desperately claiming afterwards.
This was a timely and welcome return with the first presidential debate being imminent:
Awesomesauce, ty for the link, it’s brilliant
What a great teaser for this afternoons debate 🙂
A couple of really good points from the Pope.
All about corruption…
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2016/09/18/pope-francis-says-corruption-addictive-drugs/
You can just see some priests kicking themselves over that one.
And for all of you who take peace seriously…
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/peace-requires-us-to-do-more-than-change-the-channel-pope-francis-says-95272/
Good to see a more united Christendom
I would be very afraid of a” more united Christendom”. History would lead one to suspect it would result in the usual “Preach more love and peace but carry out more war”.
You do release it is no longer the middle ages there Garibaldi????
You sure about that adam.
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11717522
I make the same comment about any of the monotheist religions . Their “one and only God” creates nothing but trouble as they run around killing each other in the name of their ‘version’.
Nice one adam, pay no attention to the ignorant. The current Pope is the most progressive ever, doing God’s work always annoys people
IT IS ON!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11717437
Yawn.
You’re really not interested in the Trump v Clinton debate?
Yawn.
I am surprised
Two establishment figures working for the establishment?
No.
pr sees politics are a form of entertainment, not a means to improve our society and our world.
It can ackshully be both so I’m interested in seeing how Clinton is going to handle Trump and vice versa
Its probably going to determine the US election (or at least a large part of it) so yeah I look forward to it
I’m actually genuinely surprised about this, the amount of posts and threads on Clinton v Saunders and then Clinton v Trump I’d have thought people would want to see this
Definitely, though I may not be able to watch it live this afternoon unfortunately
I’m wondering if I have the sound down real low I might be able to catch it on line though management tend to look down on that sort of thing 🙂
It won’t be as fun but there’s got to be a live subtitled version somewhere for the hearing impaired
Jennifer Saunders is from the UK and isn’t running for Pres.
George Clinton v Jennifer Saunders would be an interesting match up
Its the US
How about George Clooney vs Jennifer Garner
He’ll probably end up in politics at some point
I’m pretty sure that there’s a lot of people interested in it. I’m not one of them and I’ve been keeping myself out of the Trump/Clinton debate as well. I don’t think either of them will be good for the US or the world.
+1,000,000 Muttonbird. Hype and more hype-Trump/Clinton will have been coached and scripted to the nth degree. Nothing new to learn here.
What gets me is the financial commentators are saying the stock market is jumping around on the basis of this debate, rather than on economic fundamentals.
On the same theme NZ’s awful trade figures today have been spun by the media as showing how strong the economy is where in fact it shows that we are not paying our way in the world. Borrowing and spending on flash cars and boats cannot go on ad infinitum, though Key and Blinglish seem to think it is fine.
If you watch no other music video this year.
The wonderful and thought provoking Saul Williams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXfVIPqcF9I
I’m a candle…
Poetic genius
Indeed
A dose of reality in the msm for once.
Today’s greenhouse gas levels could result in up to 7 degrees of warming
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/84687810/todays-greenhouse-gas-levels-could-result-in-up-to-7-degrees-of-warming
Dunno about that Paul.
The piece couches seven degrees in a 1000 year time frame. So, nothing to be concerned about. (Forget that we’re on track for something like four or six on our present course or that even if all Paris pledges honoured we’ll be hitting three or four)
Then the vid has talk of rectifying climate change – y’know, like we’ll just stick everything back together after we’ve broken it.
Don’t count on your time frame Bill. No-one knows exactly how this planet is going to behave because we have no record of such rapid change to make comparisons with. Anything is possible, and it’s not too far away (say ,about two decades).
Of course if you are an expert , like Hosking , then everything is business as usual and all will be honkydory as soon as these sunspots go away. Afterall these leftie plonkers that believe in Climate Change have just made a poor choice haven’t they?
I didn’t give a time frame.
No-one knows exactly how everything will respond to rising CO2. But we can extrapolate from ‘bench top’ experiments and employ concepts of probability to account for the uncertainty that a complex set of systems introduces to matters.
So we know that ‘x’ amount of CO2 will result in ‘y’ warming in a bench top scenario.
From that we can suggest carbon budgets for the planet and attach probable outcomes to each budget total. Not full proof. But bloody useful.
And when we throw in known rates of CO2 emissions, we can give a range of likely outcome. So. At present rates, we’re looking at 4 – 6 by century’s end. With Paris commitments, we’re looking at 3 – 4 by century’s end.
‘Century’s end’ doesn’t mean that we don’t hit that range of temperature before then – just that it’s the likely temp at that snapshot in time.
And, of course, that’s consciously and necessarily ignoring any and all non-linear tipping points that would set temps soaring and render any climate action redundant. All we know about them is that we don’t want them and that they become more likely with each incremental rise in temp.
That’s fine for a simplified, highly linear world, as you have identified.
However, you have also pointed out the reality which largely invalidates the usefulness of those bench top scenarios – or even the most complex climate models of today – as they do not account for all the positive feedback loops that climate change has already kicked off.
Everything from methane releases from fracking and melting permafrost (today’s increased atmospheric methane levels are equivalent to an extra 40-50ppm CO2), to the reduced albedo due to lost arctic sea ice, to the increased level of water vapour (a powerful greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere as the planet warms, to the cooling effect of the reflective heat shield that industrial pollutants in the atmosphere give us – which will disappear as we reduce the amount of coal and diesel that we burn, to the fact that large areas of rain forests – like the Amazon – have now become net contributors of CO2 as they become ravaged by climate change droughts and fires.
The dynamics of feedback loops are not known. What the threshold is for initiating any of the numerous feedback loops is also not known and probably not knowable. Feedback loops can only be learned about in retrospect – hardly useful. Given that, they can’t be factored in. Now, what’s your problem? Things aren’t being made to sound terrible enough?
Atmospheric concentrations of various gasses can be and are taken. Again, given the nightmarish complexities involved, extrapolations are made from basic knowable ‘bench top’ observations. Those extrapolations become more refined as better knowledge is gained from the observation of the real world situation.
What has been said to date – and this won’t hold in the future – is that the clutch of negative and positive forcings more or less balance out so that just looking at CO2 gives us a useful and usable ball park view of things.
But are you really saying that all the science around CO2 should be thrown away or disregarded and that we should just grapple blindly? Shining any light into a dark room is useful.
As a comparison. You know that the world view we use for navigation is a croc of shit? We place the world at the centre of things…and that’s not how things are. But it works – it’s accurate enough. The alternative is a complex tangle of head wrecking nonsense that produces results that are no better for most day to day, real world applications of navigational knowledge than the ‘wrong headed’ or simplistic one most people employ.
By the way – did you note that I wasn’t referring to models at all? No matter what complexities you want to feed in, they work on assumptions – circular walks in other words. Simply change an assumption (or two) if the results aren’t what are being sought. That’s useful for gaining understanding or insight.
Well, I think the whole mindset of – we still have this many more hundred gigatonnes of carbon dioxide we can put up, we have until 2030/2040/2050 to do this and do that – all that needs to be ended, right now, and some realistic talk take its place.
However, at least some of these aren’t theoretical future phenomena. All the feedback loops I mentioned, defrosting permafrost, darkening of the arctic etc, are already well in motion.
I’ll indulge you one last time on this. (Will it finally get through to you?)
Until now, governments and NGOs have not quantified CO2. All they’ve done is push everything out into the future, disregard accumulated and accumulating amounts of CO2 and promised to cellotape everything back together after we’ve smashed it up.
The introduction of budgets provides a quantitative measure to work to/from. So all the unscientific and deeply insane talk of 30 below 1990 by 50 or whatever becomes redundant. Carbon budgets mean we have to look at what carbon we are releasing today and sort out what we are doing today.
Analogy?
How CC has been treated.
We’ll undertake to only drink half as much as we’re drinking now by the time 2 a.m. comes around. We’ll be right. We’ll have developed some detox wonder drug or technique by 2.30 am.
With carbon budgets.
If we carry on drinking like this, we’re on track for severe alcohol poisoning. We know that, by and large, the human body can only tolerate x amount of alcohol. So we can consume no more than y amount of alcohol if we want to avoid severe alcohol poisoning.
But you’d dismiss the latter because it wasn’t tabulating precise body weight or individual tolerances and a host of other factors?
See, here’s the question that you need to ask. Is defrosting permafrost (etc) currently irreversible? If it is, then we’re looking a non-linearity. If it’s not, then we’re not.
Can you answer that question one way or the other without the answer just being a matter of opinion?
Then – and even if your opinion is correct (that feed-back loops are proceeding) – what’s the point in clutching feverishly at the cock of doom?
We are in the midst of “abrupt climate change.” While there is no strict definition of what this is, major climate alterations occurring within one human life span would seem to count.
Methane release craters hundreds of metres wide, being discovered on land and on the sea floor.
I pick two degrees centigrade increase by 2030 (we are over one degree now) and four to six degrees centigrade by 2100.
That’s on average of course. Warming of five deg C to ten deg C over the last century has already been identified in various regions of the Arctic circle.
Which means that over the next 2 to 3 human generations (assuming a “generation” = 30 years or so) we are going to see multi metre sea level rise.
By the way, in the 1990s and early 2000s, serious scientists were talking about how anything over one degree C warming meant that we would cause serious, dangerous damage to the planet as we know it.
But like a frog in a pot of heating water we make excuses for how we can still manage things successfully.
Professor Guy McPherson’s November 2016 NZ Speaking Tour
In November 2016 Professor Guy McPherson will be returning to NZ for another speaking tour on Runaway Abrupt Climate Change. ,
https://kevinhester.live/2016/05/15/professor-guy-mcphersons-november-2016-nz-speaking-tour/
People like McPherson need to stop flying. If they don’t, other people less commited will look at them and get the message that we can carry on BAU (see, the CC activists are still flying, it must be alright!). Actions speak louder than words.
I’m not only talking about the GHG emissions of his flights (divided by the numbers of people on the plane). I’m talking about the bigger picture. How much of the infrastructure that McPherson will use to get here is precisely the things that are causing CC. eg demands for cheap flights creates demand for new infrastructure, including new airports, which in turn increase the number of flights. And following from that all the GHG emitting infrastructure from transport, accommodation, meals etc. Unless one believes that airplanes will soon run on something other than FF, we have to stop flying now unless it is essential. There is no way around that argument morally if we are taking CC seriously.
We have the technology to share information without travelling (‘speaking tours’ are generally information sharing and not a lot else). And we need to be working towards relocalising as much as we can, and that includes activism (and making a living from speaking engagements). McPherson could instead be working with local activists remotely, training them up, getting them to work in their own communities, through NZ networks etc.
In order to respond meaningfully to CC we have to change our behaviour, all of us. And we have to stop using the cultural and conceptual tools that created CC in the first place (in this case flying, travel at will, globalisation,
Do you agree with his viewpoint?
Which viewpoint?
Abrupt climate change, as outlined by cv and Guy McPherson.
Also explained in this film.
Do I think we are at serious risk of runaway CC? Yes, of course. Do I think it’s too late and we are going to go extinct? Possibly but we don’t know that for a fact, so I disagree on McPherson’s view on that. Scaring people too much stops them acting.
What did you think about my viewpoints above re flying and change?
I agree with you.
One reason it appears to be a “thousand year time frame” is because the scientists analysis wanted to cover several million years.
There is nothing to say that the 7 deg C rise detected in any given millenia could not have happened in say just 200 years.
Indeed, modern ice core analysis techniques can give researchers a year by year (or even month by month) account of how the atmosphere and climate changed. This is how scientists detected that in the past, parts of Greenland warmed by 10 deg C in just a few years.
The researchers talked about in the article could not have given us this same year by year account as much of the research they were examining for their own work would have been done before such techniques were available.
Thanks CV… just what I said above, but with a little more verbosity!
A bad habit of mine lol
We’re already really fucked, but to have any chance at all we need to radically change everything we do today, and how we do it. And even then we’ll probably still be fucked but you might as well try and have fun doing it.
Yeah we could support deniers too – like you do.
I’ve learnt a lot about climate change in the last 6 months marty mars, do yourself a favour and do the same.
I know deniers are the problem and hypocrites also. What have you learnt 5ppm?
That during Democratic President Obama’s time, some of which Sec State Clinton was the top foreign policy officer, CO2 levels went up 20ppm, deep sea wells got green lit even after Deep Sea Horizon, the USA fought hard to water down the languaging at Paris COP, the fracking industry grew huge and Obama boasted how this would make the USA be energy independent.
But you support the Democrats if that makes you feel better, just make sure you understand what their true record on climate change actually is.
You throw that and then support a denier who is worse based on your own reckoning – bit funny that eh 5ppm
Just saying it like it is marty mars.
Yep foot in both camps – plausible deniability – a weak strategy in the times we are in 5ppm.
Point is that a media outlet headlined a possible 7 degree increase in a thousand years from now. Most casual readers (most people) would take that as some eye-brow raising factoid about the distant future…and then get straight down to their carbon profligacy. Climate change (the headline suggests) is a thousand years away. If 7 degrees takes a thousand years, then 1 degree takes 1/7th of 1000 years. Nothing to worry about. Torch that oil.
Ok that’s the casual reader, and yes they probably thought – hey that’s a long time away that makes it someone elses problem.
How about our university educated political elite class? What message will they take from it?
What is this ‘university educated political elite’ you refer to? You mean politicians?
You think the piece in stuff was penned with politicians in mind? Even in the highly unlikely event that it was, why would a politician (assuming that’s what you mean by that phrase you used) be more or less likely to read it in any way differently to any other reader?
If the permafrosts melt, get ready for a methane overload. And some pretty nasty consequences to go with it.
https://willnewzealandberight.com/2016/09/25/carbon-dioxide-not-th-only-gas-threat-to-climate/
Quite true, although I am not sure why you used the word “IF”.
The permafrost is melting.
Entire Siberian towns are falling down as the foundations of buildings crumble over through softening permafrost and huge sink holes open up.
Under the sea, researchers have taken video of mile long plumes of methane bubbles rising up from destabilised thawing methane hydrates as if the water is lemonade.
Heather du Plessis Allen writes some sense.
http://www.radiolive.co.nz/HEATHER-DU-PLESSIS-ALLAN-Were-hypocrites/tabid/615/articleID/129036/Default.aspx
Sharon Murdoch nails it.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CtJUd2VVUAAYDId.jpg:large
Has anyone noticed that since Key has been at the UN ‘helping’ Clarke her rating in the straw polls have been falling.
Yeah – Because the International Media and Leaders of every country hate Keys and laugh at him
He is a disgrace
Let’s hope, for Helen’s sake, he shakes off his magic ‘flag referendum’ touch.
Bunker bombs being used in Aleppo:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/26/hell-itself-aleppo-reels-from-alleged-use-of-bunker-buster-bombs
“Schools, orphanages and hospitals in Aleppo that moved underground to escape the destruction around them now feel that even they are at risk.
” “When I saw it I thought, my God, is it possible that there is so much destruction here and nobody wants to help us?” he said. “At that moment I knew that the international community had sentenced us to death, that we would be recorded as martyrs that they will weep over at some future date.”
————
“I’ve been in Aleppo for five years and I’ve seen a lot of bombing, but the destruction of these bombs, I have never seen before,” said Omar Arab, a journalist who lives in the Mashhad neighbourhood..
———–
“The mask fell a long time ago from Russia and the regime, but now the mask has fallen from human rights defenders, from the international community. This is hell itself.”
At last a Council actually does what Penny Bright thinks has been going on elsewhere all the time – breach the Public Records Act: http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2016/09/full-and-accurate.html
As previously discussed, the PRA plays no part in decisions about *releasing* information – that’s the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA).
Among the insanity it seems that if you do anything for the rugby player perpetrator of the violent attacks who has been in the news, that you condone what he did.
So someone who serves him take-aways condones his behaviour.
These deductions from the Paul Henry book of logic. Which it must be said, include more than a few chapters on the “look at me” syndrome.
Mood of the boardroom survey.
Warning you have to scroll a long way down for Mr Little … Marks out of 5
Jacinda however received a strong endorsement.
1 – Bill English 4.51
2 – John Key 4.00
3 – Steven Joyce 3.51
4 – Jacinda Ardern 3.37
5 – James Shaw 3.21
6 – Jonathan Coleman 3.17
7 – Simon Bridges 3.12
9 – Annette King 3.10
10 – Anne Tolley 3.09
11 – Michael Woodhouse 3.06
12 – Phil Twyford 2.93
13 – Nathan Guy 2.91
14 – Todd McClay 2.90
15 – Winston Peters 2.90
16 – Grant Robertson 2.86
17 – Hekia Parata 2.85
18 – Murray McCully 2.77
19 – David Shearer 2.72
20 – Gerry Brownlee 2.66
21 – David Parker 2.55
22 – Nick Smith 2.52
23 – Chris Hipkins 2.46
24 – Julie-Anne Genter 2.42
25 – Metiria Turei 2.37
26 – David Clark 2.35
27 – Maggie Barry 2.34
28 – Andrew Little 2.22
29 – Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 2.15
30 – Ron Mark 2.13
Who cares?
Get out of the cave Paul, the shadows are not reality
Hes kind of ignorant like that. Head in sand and not very bright.
I mean it.
Why do most people care what CEOs think?
If you could just answer the question as opposed to the usual ad hominems.
Well. Some voters care for a start.
And let’s face it – being on 7% preferred PM you would think Little would care as well.
Yes the CEOs represent the 1%.
So ACT voters care.
It’s not who cares Paul. It’s so what you Tory scum bags, so business like you. Are you that retarded you need a survey to tell you that the party represents their issues is supported by them.
Seems the Tory scum in this country are that stupid…
“Who cares?”
Well for one the Labour party president who’s job is to fund raise for the 2017 election.
With Andrew Little rating below the grandmother of NZ gardening (Maggie Barry) it clearly indicates that Little has little respect (and confidence) from the business community.
And Paul ask yourself why James Shaw is so high on the list…and for that matter Jacinda…
Why would the leader of a socialist party want the support of neo-liberal business leaders.
Sausage sizzles Chuck, no need for these neo-liberal business swine.
I for one am getting tired of your straw man arguments Chucky. Go troll whaleoil, I’m sure he’d love to have your half baked conspiracy theories.
Where is the conspiracy theory Adam?
Labour needs funds, business has funds, business thinks Andrew Little is a clown, therefore highly likely business won’t part with much needed funds.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Getting money from business was Labour’s greatest mistake, and they are still paying for it. But your vision is limited to the importance of finance and business, it seems.
Well, that list has lost it’s credibility straight away when they list The Double Dipping Dickhead from Dipton who I would not trust with the local boy scouts jamboree money let alone the economy as the top of the hit parade.
He is responsible for this.
$111 billion and counting.
http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/newzealand
And your credentials regarding finance are ?
Pretty much all of our credentials including yours are ” Not having added 100 Billion to the nations debt.”
Bill English is , has and always will be a tool, a sly old double dipping no nothing tool. I suppose the best on economics they had was someone who was smart enough to claim housing costs whilst owning a home in Wellington.
Isn’t that also about the time Rodney and a few others got greedy too.
Yeah, we should has slashed benefits,cut WFF and taken an axe to the public sevice , none of this borrowing money to get us through the earth quake and global recession 🙄
And the left wonders why no one takes them seriously.
I reckon Cullen would have got us through, with a surplus, the two big debt excuses Nats like yourself always trot out, the GFC and the quakes.
Or maybe English shouldn’t have done a regressive tax switch, or bailed out SCF, or trashed CoalCorp, or impoverished thousands of workers
Badge of Honour for Little
More like mark of the arse.
Bingles speaks their language. He’s really good at not noticing stuff and he doesn’t think anything stinks to high heaven. Ponyboy knows a not tax haven when he doesn’t see one.
Can’t imagine what a bunch of bonus hungry ceos could possibly see in them.
Anyone else had one of these from Spark?
Changed my password, but I sure would like to know which “foreign government” enabled the hacking. Russia or China?
Did you notice this?
“Please note: By resetting your password, you are also giving permission for Spark to bring my email home in the move early next year. Once your email has been moved, it will continue to be provided free of charge as long as you have a broadband, dial-up or mobile broadband service plan with us on the same account. If you don’t have one of these plans, Xtra email will cost $5.95 per month from early next year.”
Yes.
The United States is a “foreign government” and they have worked closely with all the large internet providers to put back doors in all their systems.
Try the GSCB, five eyes n all that.., they know i’m a hard core sympathizer for the communist, isis, holy trinity roman catholic death squad lefty righty splinter group hell bent on planting another highly explosive bomb on the table at any meeting that might occur near Emperor Rimmer and Herr Keynocio in the future,
Long live the rebellion alalalalalalalala
Who knows if they want to trawl through some account I have I hope letters from mum were worth the several days it probably took them to get it.
No doubt i’ll be getting mailing from readers digest and lotto’s in Europe saying that I won, can’t wait.
A cousin in Kenya, left millions from a dieing spinster, my lucks changing.
What’s the dirty deal in Mt Roskill?
I thought we were better than NACT….
Not impressed.
No dirty deal. I have no doubt the Greens decided it wasn’t worth the expense of standing a candidate especially when Labour’s candidate, Michael Wood is so highly regarded. Open and honest.
Unlike National who pretended to stand a candidate in Epsom while making sure their voters knew to vote for the ACT candidate. Dirty and dishonest.
“No dirty deal. I have no doubt the Greens decided it wasn’t worth the expense of standing a candidate especially when Labour’s candidate, Michael Wood is highly regarded by both parties. Open and honest.”
Oh please Anne can’t you at least be a little honest??
Here is what Metiria Turei said today…
“The Mt Roskill by-election will be closely contested, and we don’t want to play any role in National winning the seat.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11717757
Right. There is no moral high ground here at all. If it’s dirty when NACT do it, it’s dirty when we do it.
Dirty Politics. Disappointed.
False equivalence. Not putting up a candidate to avoid splitting left vote is far less despicable than National putting up a candidate, telling him not to campaign, then telling Nats to vote for a tiny party that would have no seat in Parliament without such skulduggery. Nats would normally win easily in Mt Eden. Not the same thing at all. Greens all that time ago won their electorate because enough people genuinely supported Jeanette. Nobody ever believed in ACT winners in Epsom = dirty rort; Greens are clean. And please note – Jeanette won her seat in 1993 before MMP, so no rort there. No extra seat in parliament, as Epsom gives.
and the rest of the article directly after your link makes it clear all it is is an independant decision by the greens to not run in that seat
theres no deal
theres no directing voters to vote labour
theres no joint decision by labour and greens
and most importantly,
the greens arent engineering a situation that allows a sub 5% party to get a seat
the whole thing is a dumb beat up
Its quite funny reading these comments…at least Bearded Git is being honest about the situation (apart from pulling a candidate, its not the same).
Unlike framu, Anne, Paul, adam etc.
Ignore the chuck troll.
😎
Chucky is a conspiracy theorist….
Chuck’s not clued up enough to recognise a by-election is different to a general election. Go easy on him.
MMP for the win, hope they do the same for the Nelson seat. MOU all the way.
@rsbandit It is an entirely sensible decision. If National is going to do deals in Epsom election after election, which it does, then any electorate is fair game for a deal on the Left.
And the argument that National never pulls its candidate in Epsom is bollocks-it told people to vote for Seymour/Act and gave Goldsmith a high place on the list, which is 99% the same as pulling a candidate.
Now the Greens need to pull their candidate from Ohariu in the election.
Dirty Politics.
What about the Green voters in Ohariu who WANT to vote Green?
They vote Green on the party vote. Which is the vote that matters if you want another Green MP in parliament.
Dr Gabor Maté – Why Capitalism Makes Us Sick
For those who want to know why the site had some outages and now has a different performance profile…
The caching plugin using on the site proved to have a nasty vulnerability. The update provided to fix it broke the site. I’ve been having too many issues with it, so I fixed by purchasing and installing a different one.
Expect a few idiocies from the site while I tune this one up. Looks adequate so far.
Thanks; I’m prone to idiocies so quite used to them 😉
You’re welcome. I’m unhappy to have supplied them for you tonight, however it is gratifying to meet a satisfied and replete customer….
😈
Ah, well that may explain why on my replies tab I have all of RedLogix’ replies but not mine.
EDIT: 😈 😀 🙄![:mrgreen:](https://bunny-wp-pullzone-vkc2vjtkjj.b-cdn.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/mrgreen.png)
And better smilies as well 🙂
Yes, I’m getting replies to RedLogix’s comments as well.
Me too 😺
We are all RedLogix
Actually, none of the tabs are updating at all.
Same here. But we have some new html tags to play with (shame img isn’t one of them)
code
If MMP were a software program it’s got a massive bug and needs a programmer to fix it.
Simply put.
The ACT scam with National, shows how the bug can be exploited.
But since this bug/glitch exploitation favours a particular party that’s ok.
IF you want people to engage in the political system make the political system hold a smidgeon of integrity.
But I don’t think ANY of you MP’s want that.
Well said.
We can’t say just because they do, we’ll do it. That makes us no better. If we don’t have our integrity, then why should we trust our politicians any more than we trust the other team?
No deals. I hope this not the shape of things to come, because it makes a mockery of MMP.