Open mike 27/11/2015

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, November 27th, 2015 - 54 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:

openmikeOpen mike is your post.

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

Step up to the mike …

54 comments on “Open mike 27/11/2015 ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Gavin 1
    27 November 2015 at 8:16 am

    The closing of iPredict is probably a good step for political democracy in NZ.

    For years, Hooton, Farrar, Slater and other right-wingers played with this site mercilessly, jacking up National’s chances in general. More recently, a few on the left have put some decent money in, and we’ve shown that contrary to their publicity about thousands of punters coming up with results – these polls, bets or trades- can be swayed by just one person, for days on end. Most of the predictions are lightly traded, and a few are actively monitored by the right, to keep them in trim.

    In the Northland byelection, leftie bets on Winston Peters were strong on iPredict, and National’s wilted away under the onslaught. I knew weeks before the byelection, that National had already given up on their candidate. I even made a good profit.

    Since then, iPredict has been noticeably quiet with no press releases, and why? Ongoing money has been used to pull back National’s chances of winning in 2017, so any report would have been damaging to National/Act. And we all can guess that Matthew Hooton did the closeoffs for these reports from his Exceltium office, at a time of his choosing, and after some predictions were ‘adjusted’. But for a good few days recently, Labour bets swamped National’s, used up all their shorts and pretend bets that they’d placed without any money backing them. Never reported.

    Of course, the board of Victoria University allowed all this to happen too, and some of them are fairly right-wing, to the extent that they are members of USA think-tanks.

    Good riddance to iPredict, this is another tool that National can’t use with their next election campaign.

    • alwyn 1.1
      27 November 2015 at 1:55 pm

      I enquired of someone I know who is involved with iPredict what he thought of your opinions about the site, and whether your suggestions were accurate.
      He said his answer were best be summed up here.

      • Tracey 1.1.1
        27 November 2015 at 3:58 pm

        And if, say, the poster was right would the person you know at ipredict admit it to you and would you then post that here?

      • Gavin 1.1.2
        27 November 2015 at 7:14 pm

        alwyn, please tell me which parts of my post are wrong.

        Prof Neil Quigley is/was on the Vic Uni board in question, and he’s a member of a USA think tank. He’s carving up Waik Uni parking spaces and charging parking fees to staff members, effectively a pay decrease, at the moment.

        I had a big hand in overriding National’s bets a few weeks ago. This was probably the first time their position had been overtaken in years, probably scary for them. I have proof of the National-leaning predictions being modified quite a bit in the minutes just before closeoff, on several occasions since early 2014. At the time, Exceltium was closing off the reports at changing days/times of their own choosing, ‘pro bono’. The last scoop closeoff in June 2015 was at an unspecified time and by an unspecified party. How can that be relied on?

        iPredict should have had a proper disinterested third party closing off the reports, not an extreme right-wing person like Exceltium’s owner, Matthew Hooton. And, they should be reporting at least every month between elections. Why don’t they let someone like me close it off? That would be fun.

        I’ve seen big shorting or supporting bets disappear as soon as they are accessed, that’s because they were placed there when the person had cash reserves, but they are not charged against their account until they are called in. So National people have been placing heaps of fake bids over time, and their people probably ran multiple accounts too. I never did.

        I noticed a response to taunting bids that would upset National politicos within a few minutes, at most hours of the day or night. They were certainly there watching and responding in a consistent way.

        When the reports were done, they were couched in such a way as to support National if at all possible. If they couldn’t say that it looks like National will take out the next election, they just don’t report.

        Of course, even when the Scoop/press reports don’t come out, politicians do look at the prediction figures, and make some conclusions. Closer to elections there have been TV items, and daily reports to the press.

        It appears to me that iPredict’s purpose was fundamentally to support National and neoliberal policies in NZ. If it couldn’t do that consistently, it needed to be shut down.

        • alwyn 1.1.2.1
          27 November 2015 at 11:33 pm

          Please provide proof that the people you name made the contracts you claim.
          All you have to do is provide proof of the details of the contracts entered into by Hooton, Farrar and Slater.
          Don’t just claim that ” So National people have been placing heaps of fake bids over time, and their people probably ran multiple accounts too”.
          You have to able to prove who it was and that they happened. Otherwise it is “Only dreaming”.
          You need details you can prove or they are only things you “think” might be true. ie “Dreams”.

          • Gavin 1.1.2.1.1
            28 November 2015 at 8:15 am

            You are a real smartarse alwyn. Obviously everyone is anonymous on iPredict. Except when they brag about how they’re gaming the system, like Farrah and Slater did, on record. Who else supports National predictions related to winning by bets in the hundreds, bets that later prove imaginary as they’ve spent their $2500 allocation for the six months on that account? The bids keep coming in, they’ve just started another account.

            Hooton is the most obvious person to be playing with the bids just before a report closeoff. You’d have to be placing opposing bets to notice it, so that’s just a few lefties who would know. I’m telling you, when the time of the closeoff was notified at the foot of the press release, often some crucial power-sharing bids were heavily modified a few minutes earlier, always in National’s favour. Bloody rogue.

            iPredict is doomed – there will be cash flying out of there because no-one cares what the site reports anymore, it’s obvious it was mostly pro-National bullshit.

            • Morrissey 1.1.2.1.1.1
              28 November 2015 at 8:27 am

              Is “smart” the right word to use for Alwyn?

            • alwyn 1.1.2.1.1.2
              28 November 2015 at 12:07 pm

              That is all the claim of “dreaming” says. There is no attempt to verify the identity of the people involved with iPredict. To identify certain individuals and to go into detail about what they are meant to be doing is impossible to know. I could probably set up an account in the name of David Farrar and no one would ever know who it really was.

              Your proposals may actually be true. However neither you nor I can possibly know. Saying things like “Who else supports” and “Hooton is the most obvious” doesn’t prove it. It is only an opinion aka “dream”.

              It is a little like my own musings about why reporters regularly claimed that David Cunliffe had a MBA from Harvard when he actually had an MPA. There seemed to be far to many giving MBA for it to be a coincidence. I hypothesised a reason but it was only my idea. I couldn’t possibly know whether it was actually true. That is the same as what you are doing.

              • Gavin …
                28 November 2015 at 3:15 pm

                alwyn, you’re clutching at straws now. Cunliffe always said officially he had an MPA, not his fault if some dopey press renamed it as a similar more well-known degree. But the scale of iPredict is a lot bigger, this is a site politicos had a lot to do with at crucial times of the election cycle. You have not explained your point of view that it was all right for someone like the heavily biased Matthew Hooton to write up the critical reports on iPredict, and why, if his time is so valuable, he’s done that for free. Nicky Hager provided evidence of emails that prove the concept of National bloggers gaming the site. The book didn’t stop that from happening, but it slowed them up. Over a year later, they’ve all seen the writing on the wall, and conceded the site has passed its use-by date.

                If I’ve helped in that process, I’m very pleased.

  2. AsleepWhileWalking 2
    27 November 2015 at 8:28 am

    Update on Ukraine situation
    http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/blog/7296/vital-jbsfc

  3. weka 3
    27 November 2015 at 9:37 am

    Simple and effective political action. Brunel University invites anti-welfare bigot to speak, so the students attend en masse and when she starts stalking they stand and turn their backs on her. After a minute they walk out.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/katie-hopkins-brunel-university-students-stage-mass-walk-out-at-debate-as-columnist-speaks-a6749456.html

  4. greywarshark 4
    27 November 2015 at 10:14 am

    Mike Field on RADIONZ this morning talking about odd things going on in Fiji. But outstanding to me is that while Fiji has long been sending troops for peacekeeping
    actually the UN is behind in paying its dues to Fiji to the tune of $30 million.

    This is a lot to a small country, which has regarded those duties for the UN as being a source of needed revenue. The USA is spending trillions on its Middle East Boys-Own-Adventures-Gone-Wrong. The USA is a big contributor to the UN, which is based in the USA in the middle of New York and is a big money maker for New York. So UN should pay up to the countries smaller than New York, who have far less resources than that city in that country. (New York City population 2013 8.406 million, Fiji Islands population 0.9 million 2014 est.)

  5. Puckish Rogue 5
    27 November 2015 at 10:21 am

    http://www.womensweekly.co.nz/latest/celebrity/jacinda-arderns-island-paradise-17402

    So that’ll be another percentage point or two for Jacinda

  7. Rosemary McDonald 7
    27 November 2015 at 12:20 pm

    I’d like to think that this….

    http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/290700/trump-mocks-disabled-reporter

    would spell the end of this fwit’s tilt at the US Presidency.

    He is described as being teflon coated…just like Someone Else….

    http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/11/trump-criticised-mocking-disabled-reporter-151126132428310.html

    • Andre 7.1
      27 November 2015 at 12:54 pm

      Careful what you wish for, Rosemary.

      What’s really amazing is if you look past the packaging and delivery to actual policy positions, Trump is actually … um …the least unpalatable of what’s on offer from the Republicans.

      If you disagree, please tell us which of the Republican candidates you prefer over Trump and why.

  8. Draco T Bastard 8
    27 November 2015 at 12:35 pm

    Reform 101: Why do we want to redefine money? (Post 1)

    The point here is that the health of our payments system, which underpins the real economy, depends on the lending decisions and risk taking of private banks, (even though the more banks lend and the more risks they take the more potential profits they can make). Accordingly, the success of the current monetary system is ultimately dependent on whether the government intervenes when banks fail.

    Deposit insurance and too big to fail give banks a layer of protection from their respective actions. This system allows for profits to be privatised but losses to be socialised. It thus engenders a certain level of moral hazard, where banks take on more risk knowing that someone else will bear the burden of those risks.

    My bold.

    When we have a close look at the present banking system we can see both the massive subsidies that the banking system gets from the state and the vulnerabilities built into it that force the state into bailing out the banks.

  9. The Chairman 9
    27 November 2015 at 12:45 pm

    A Government-commissioned report aimed at attracting more investment into New Zealand’s growing food and beverage sector says about a quarter of the sector is already foreign-owned.

    Food and beverage (F&B) exports account for 46 per cent of all goods and services exports – $30.7 billion of the $66.2 billion total in 2014.

    Read more: http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/nz-food-firms-quarter-owned-by-foreigners-2015112507#ixzz3sdvn4VoD

    Selling the goose that laid the golden egg?

    What percentage of the sector do we want to maintain ownership of?

    Does Labour have a bottom line in this regard?

    Should they?

    Thoughts?

  10. Mike the Savage One 10
    27 November 2015 at 12:47 pm

    So on Radio Live we got more of the mentally semi retired “political commentators” Michelle Bo(a)g and Josie Pagani(ni) present their supposedly “well informed” and “enlightening” opinions on the topics of the week, actually rather making a mockery of their “profession” as commentators.

    Firstly Josie repeated that nonsense that it was about 50 years since a NATO country shot down a “Russian” jet (commenting on the shooting down of a jet at the border with Syria two days ago). While the details about that more recent incident continue to be argued about between Turkey and Russia, the earlier incident she must have meant was actually 62 years ago, over Korea, during the end of the Korean war. The US was there not so much active as part of NATO, but as a nation on another war front, far away from the North Atlantic and Europe, where NATO had declared its strategic interests, and the plane shot down was a SOVIET Union air-force plane. The US did there not represent NATO, nor was it simply a “Russian” plane that was shot down, but we know how the MSM treat facts, do we not? So it proved again, how NZ self appointed, opinionated “commentators” parrot off what they hear and read in some media reports, without doing their own home-work, and yet they get plenty of air-time to spread their ill-informed drivel over the radio or TV.

    Here is one of those poorly written media reports from the US media:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/11/24/the-last-time-a-russian-jet-was-shot-down-by-a-nato-jet-was-in-1952/

    Russia was part of the USSR, but not THE USSR!

    But re the “Russians” or “Soviets”, they were not always that fussy about shooting down planes that came near their air-space, even civilian jets, e.g. two Korean civilian airliners, carrying hundreds of ordinary traveler. See that among other “downings” of civilian airliners by various forces over the decades:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents

    Yet the US have their own dark chapters in history to answer for, besides of the bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan not long ago:
    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/07/19/vinc-j19.html

    Then on Radio Live there was discussion about the threat of ISIS, and Michelle Boag defended “other cultures” and “their rules” or laws, when Josie brought Saudi Arabia into the discussion. So the Sharia based laws used in Saudi Arabia, although not that pleasant, particularly for her as a woman, were what we cannot do anything about and have to basically accept, Michelle commented.

    As for that law upheld in Saudi Arabia, and also often commented on here on TS, we know what that means:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_system_of_Saudi_Arabia

    Beheadings are apparently done in an “orderly fashion” when it comes to a “different law following” nation we do trade with, but it is appalling when done by ISIS. Now that is a really convincing argument, I suppose to build a strong and convincing front of opposition to that terror organisation.

    Then it went on later, to the “flag referendum”, and Josie shared her preference for that white fern on a black background, although it was not favoured for certain reasons (maybe being a bit similar to flags ISIS often use).

    That is what passes for “informed commentary” on Radio Live these days, and I did not even go into other stuff not worth listening to:
    http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Audio.aspx
    (Play the slots after 11 am on Friday, 27 Nov. 2015)

    Those two women should in my view not be allowed near a microphone to comment on serious matters!

    • Tc 10.1
      27 November 2015 at 1:10 pm

      Just more govt shills ticking 2 boxes. Pushing nact themes and turning away the objective thinkers from RNZ.

  11. Anne 11
    27 November 2015 at 2:31 pm

    I was having a lovely tranquil day until I read Scott Yorke’s latest ‘work of art’.

    http://imperatorfish.com/2015/11/27/kittens-at-work/

    • Tracey 12.1
      27 November 2015 at 4:03 pm

      Sadly there will be a few celebrating…

      Katherine Rich being one

      • Psycho Milt 12.1.1
        27 November 2015 at 4:53 pm

        Another being me. Every diabetic in the country has cause to celebrate whenever one of these old-school dogmatists quits and makes room for people who may be less committed to the failed orthodoxy of the past. The current dietary recommendations for diabetics are still appalling recipes for making the condition worse, and improvement can only come with the retirement of Toomath’s generation of doctors, nutritionists and dieticians.

        • Tracey 12.1.1.1
          27 November 2015 at 6:27 pm

          Yeah that will be the real reason why no progress has been made. Nothing to do with govts dragging the chain and resources.

          • Psycho Milt 12.1.1.1.1
            27 November 2015 at 6:52 pm

            I know you’re being sarcastic, but seriously, that is the most important reason no progress has been made. I’ve been enduring their dogma since I got type-1 diabetes in the mid-80s, and I’m well pissed off about the years of failed efforts to control blood sugar that I went through before learning that their advice was making things worse rather than better. The fact that the current government rejects advice from people like Toomath is one of its very few good points.

            • weka 12.1.1.1.1.1
              27 November 2015 at 9:32 pm

              +1

              Also, it’s pretty hard to take someone seriously who thinks that 1 in 3 NZ adults are obese (I assume RNZ got that from her).

              • Tim …
                28 November 2015 at 7:30 am

                It is actually type 2 diabetes (not type 1) which is associated with obesity and it is true that almost one third of NZ adults are obese. You two should try dealing in facts and specifics rather than trying to insult someone who has been trying to help… Shameful really.

                • Morrissey …
                  28 November 2015 at 7:52 am

                  Psycho Milt and Weka are continuing a long and dishonorable history of contempt for experts. Some years ago Raybon Kan and Gary McCormick, those leading intellectuals, were up to the same thing…..

                  http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11032011/#comment-306974

                • Psycho Milt …
                  28 November 2015 at 9:20 am

                  The dietary advice is the same for both Type 1 and Type 2. Facts and specifics: the dietary advice is to eat little of the kinds of foods that don’t raise your blood glucose level significantly, and instead to eat lots of the kinds of foods that do. High blood glucose levels = high insulin responses, and insulin is among other things the hormone in charge of storing fat. Little expertise is required to understand it.

                • weka …
                  28 November 2015 at 10:31 am

                  “It is actually type 2 diabetes (not type 1) which is associated with obesity and it is true that almost one third of NZ adults are obese. You two should try dealing in facts and specifics rather than trying to insult someone who has been trying to help… Shameful really.”

                  I know that the connectiong is between obesity and type 1 diabetes. I’m rejecting the notion of 1 in 3. I’m happy to talk facts so why don’t you start with posting the evidence for 1 in 3?

                  Milt is right. The official advice on fat and diet has been wrong for a long time.

    • Tracey 13.1
      27 November 2015 at 6:34 pm

      Hmmmm so openly no one in the media knew til Hoots tweeted.

      He has been very quiet recently

      • The Chairman 13.1.1
        27 November 2015 at 6:48 pm

        Busy plotting leadership change?

        • Tracey 13.1.1.1
          27 November 2015 at 7:21 pm

          Well he did turn on Key after Key “lied” about Hoots.

          You know the Right, they dont mind Key lying about anything… except them

          • Once was Tim 13.1.1.1.1
            28 November 2015 at 2:32 am

            The one redeeming feature of Hoots is that he’s never really liked John Key – oft trying to spin him as left wing such as on ninetonoon and elsewhere.
            Its probably more that Key has managed to be more effective in spinning bullshit than Hoots has. How dare that plebian Phil Stein be more convincing and believable to Joe Everidge Public than the highly sophisticated legend-in-his-own-mind Mr Hooten – it’s just not right!
            Its just a bloody big shame that whilst Hooten can see through our Dear Leader, and has done from the start, the public don’t seem to have yet.
            He should really be careful what he wishes for though – he’ll do himself out of a job.

            • Gangnam Style 13.1.1.1.1.1
              28 November 2015 at 6:16 am

              Hooton usually moans about Key because Hooton believes Key wasted political capital by not making more unpopular policies palatable, he thinks Key has been too safe.

  14. Draco T Bastard 14
    27 November 2015 at 5:07 pm

    NZ features in Isis’ latest propaganda video

    Former CIA analyst Paul Buchanan, who runs an intelligence analysis consultancy called 36th Parallel Assessments, called the featuring of the New Zealand flag as “an omen of things to come”.

    “The moment we announced we were going to send troops into the training role we put ourselves on their radar scope. I’m not surprised at all we figure, even briefly. I think (authorities) have to take it seriously, as small as the reference is.”

    Well, many of us did say that sending troops to the ME would make NZ a target and now we’re a target.

    • ianmac 14.1
      27 November 2015 at 5:41 pm

      Maybe that is Cameron’s dilemma as well. Cursed if you join in. Cursed if you don’t.
      (By the way interesting to scan the complement of flags shown on the link. Colour. Simplicity. Geometry.)

    • Tracey 14.2
      27 November 2015 at 6:30 pm

      John Key will see it as a badge og honour and will wilfully ignore which came first…

      His rhetoric and eagerness to do whatever the yanks want or Isis including our flag.

      Of course the real issue is that they could differentiate between our flag and australias

    • The Chairman 14.3
      27 November 2015 at 6:40 pm

      “Well, many of us did say that sending troops to the ME would make NZ a target and now we’re a target.”

      The price for being in the club.

      • Colonial Viper 14.3.1
        27 November 2015 at 7:01 pm

        The price paid by ordinary Kiwis being sent over there; our elites as usual pay no price for their stupidity and senility.

  15. ianmac 15
    27 November 2015 at 9:21 pm

    Can keep track of the number of Referendum votes received here:
    http://www.elections.org.nz/events/referendums-new-zealand-flag-0/voting-first-referendum/voting-statistics
    About 370,000 so far for 4 days,