"If the party and its various factions are led well, there is nothing inherently unstable about the Greens' relatively horizontal structure. The problem now is that there is clearly a strong disagreement over the party's direction – with some prominent members explicitly critical of even being in government.
This, wedded to the fact no-one really seems to know what they want to do about it, has created a perfect storm of instability and indecision."
It's paywalled so I pasted part of the article. They need to let James get on with his job (as co leader) and the others should come out and support him not spend days deciding whether they will run or not for leadership.
I was a bit surprised the only Green MP to actually publicly support James was Eugenie Sage. All the others were not very supportive with their "lets follow the process" type statements.
As they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer!
And of course, Gordon's nailed that Luxon question.
“Confusingly though, Luxon has since claimed to be (a) taking responsibility for the mis-representation while (b) claiming he had not nothing to apologise for, and moreover (c) it had all been a valuable learning experience:”
As well as he nailed the issue within the Greens….
"What the Greens rebels seem to want is for the party to vehemently pursue policies that are almost certainly bound to fail, and/or to then exit from government altogether. Sure, there can be virtue in righteous failure. The Greens used to be very good at being right, and being ignored. An exit on principle would certainly feel great for a while. It would just as certainly deliver a centre right victory in Election 2023 that would be devastating for the goals expressed in the Greens’ founding principles, on social justice and the environment."
"What the Greens rebels seem to want is for the party to vehemently pursue policies that are almost certainly bound to fail, and/or to then exit from government altogether. Sure, there can be virtue in righteous failure. The Greens used to be very good at being right, and being ignored. An exit on principle would certainly feel great for a while. It would just as certainly deliver a centre right victory in Election 2023 that would be devastating for the goals expressed in the Greens’ founding principles, on social justice and the environment."
my point is that there's no argument supporting the idea that the Greens leaving the current arrangement would ‘certainly’ lead to a Nact govt in 2023. I already said that, and you evaded and didn't provide the argument.
you are fixated on some agreement (I assume you are referring to the agreement that provides the Greens Ministerial positions outside Cabinet)….Campbell makes no mention of the agreement and its not the basis of his argument….even Robert appears to have grasped this.
you are fixated on some agreement (I assume you are referring to the agreement that provides the Greens Ministerial positions outside Cabinet)
I already linked to it. It's the agreement that underpins the Greens working with the Labour government (or being in government if you prefer, although they're kind of in govt and not in govt). It covers a lot more than the Ministerial positions. Understanding that agreement is necessary for understanding the current situation within the GP.
"Where is the evidence to support a view that the more radical policies sought by the faction challenging Shaws position will attract more (and not less) support for the Green Party?…..have any other political party adopted more radical policies?….where is the growth in Green Party support indicating that the wider public want more of what is on offer?
If the majority of Green Party members believed the radicals were more likely to succeed than the status quo then the status quo wouldnt be what it is.
But that would mean submitting to the majority view…..or democracy."
"What the Greens rebels seem to want is for the party to vehemently pursue policies that are almost certainly bound to fail, and/or to then exit from government altogether. "
That's unclear writing, imo. The "Green rebels" might indeed want to pursue policies, but don't necessarily see those as leading to failure and/or an exit from government. They may well believe they'll cause a great increase in public support and a better position for The Greens post-election.
Has anyone delved into the rationale of the "rebels" and published that anywhere?
The general consensus seems to be that ousting James would be damaging for the party's hopes, and I agree with that. I expect James will remain in his roles. I expect the "rebels" will come to their senses 🙂 and learn from their outburst/rush of blood to their heads and seek other avenues of change within the structure of the party. I expect the existing Green MP's will be more alert to the ebb and flow of their own party and supporters.
Seems to me that a faction within the Green Party is trying to shift the internal Overton window within the party. This will then somehow magically shift Labour’s thinking and acting towards a bolder CC approach. Or so the belief system seems to operate with some, I believe.
"That's unclear writing, imo. The "Green rebels" might indeed want to pursue policies, but don't necessarily see those as leading to failure and/or an exit from government. They may well believe they'll cause a great increase in public support and a better position for The Greens post-election."
Then we disagree…its perfectly clear.
Where is the evidence to support a view that the more radical policies sought by the faction challenging Shaws position will attract more (and not less) support for the Green Party?…..have any other political party adopted more radical policies?….where is the growth in Green Party support indicating that the wider public want more of what is on offer?
If the majority of Green Party members believed the radicals were more likely to succeed than the status quo then the status quo wouldnt be what it is.
But that would mean submitting to the majority view…..or democracy.
"Where is the evidence to support a view that the more radical policies sought by the faction challenging Shaws position will attract more (and not less) support for the Green Party?"
You're asking the wrong question. The pertinent one is: "Do the "rebels" believe "that the more radical policies sought by the faction challenging Shaws position will attract more (and not less) support for the Green Party?""
"In sum, hard choices are involved if the Green rebels ever do get serious about their insurgency. Stay in government, or not ? Stay in the party and accept the limits of party politicking, or not? Regard a deeply flawed unity as the price of averting a worse government, or not?"
When centralist, neo-liberal lobbyists like Clint Smith and Neale Jones are singing Shaw's praises, then I can understand while those who want urgent action (lets face it, that is what is required now), are putting the heavies on Shaw.
Scientists say there is "compelling evidence" that Wuhan's Huanan seafood and wildlife market was at the centre of the Covid-19 outbreak.
One of the researchers involved, virologist Prof David Robertson from the University of Glasgow, told the BBC that he hoped the studies would "correct the false record that the virus came from a lab".
Crowded, live animal markets, many scientists agree, provide an ideal transmission hotspot for new diseases to "spill over" from animals. And in the 18 months up to the beginning of the pandemic, a separate study showed that nearly 50,000 animals – of 38 different species – were sold at markets in Wuhan.
Prof Neil said the pandemic was very likely to have been a consequence of an "unhealthy, cruel and unhygienic practice that Chinese authorities had been warned about".
The major risk of being distracted by looking for someone in a laboratory to blame for all this, he added, "is that we run the risk of letting this happen again because we've focused on the wrong problem".
Prof Neil said the pandemic was very likely to have been a consequence of an “unhealthy, cruel and unhygienic practice that Chinese authorities had been warned about”.
I was told by my watchmaker yesterday with absolute certainty that the virus is a Chinese government plot and they have at least ten more variants waiting to be released.
If he repairs watches, many of which will be Chinese manufactured, has he considered the likelihood of catching viruses, maleficently inserted, whenever he opens the back of a watch?
He is a watchmaker. Which means he can repair and rebuild mechanical watches (as opposed to the quartz movements possessed by vast mass of watch wearing peasants out there). Get yourself an automatic watch with a lovely movement, if you can't afford a good Swiss one buy a Seiko. A mechanical watch will last three lifetimes and doesn’t require a polluting battery. They are the Green option.
Avoid the once proud brands laid low by the 1970s quartz revolution and purchased by soulless corporates to produce a facade of class to their Chinese knock offs.
Watchmaking itself is a literally dying profession. Like other professions it is a footnote to the bitter tragedy of Rogernomics. Nowadays it's largely staffed by men in their late sixties and early seventies, because watchmaking apprenticeships were done away with by the Rogernomics revolution and have never come back. One day soon the last of the New Zealand trained watchmakers will retire, to infirm of hand and eye to continue the intricate art of maintaining a mechanical watch. And they'll pass into history. And then we'll need to bring in watchmakers from China or India, while young New Zealander who might find joy in the beauty of a watch movement will never get a chance. “Too expensive” they’ll say.
If I want to know the time, well I look at the screen. Or if I'm out and about I look at the phone of the time in the car.
A lot easier than carrying jewellery on my wrist. Especially while I’m working on a keyboard and mouse.
(incidentally this debate goes all the way back to the arguments about the value and efficacy of wristwatches vs pocket watches that was such a feature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries)
Barely 40 years for me. The only times I've missed a watch is on those increasingly rare occasions when someone else asks for the time – I can give my time, but when is comes to 'the time', a near guess is the best I can do.
Well I write with fountain pens using only Japanese Iroshizuku ink because I love the sound the pen makes on the paper, the shine of the fresh ink and way it looks on the page. It elevates the mundane to a moment of beauty. So I guess it depends on how much you value beauty over utility, how much pleasure you derive from the aesthetic of possessing a piece of horological beauty and how much you value the elevation of a mundane task "What time is it?" to a minor pleasure. For me, every time I look at my watch I get to see a perfection in design, detail and execution that is thrilling.
I guess that like all luxury items my watches are a massive indulgence that I am lucky enought to be able to afford and they give me a great deal pleasure.
Original documents tell a fascinating story about watch sales to British POWs.
Lot 311: Ref. 3525, Stainless Steel So-Called "Monoblocco” with Exceptional Original Documentation. Rolex, “Oyster Chronograph, Antimagnetic”, Ref. 3525. Case No. 185983. Made in 1941, sold "gratis” on July 8, 1943 to Corporal Clive James Nutting whilst a prisoner of War in Stalag Luft III
Technology is awfully alluring, especially when it's beautiful, horological or otherwise. I favour "elegant" as the aesthetic measure, but hey. I too, have fountain pens, though I use them rarely, despite my intention to use them always. This particular message wouldn't travel in as timely a manner, had I to scratch it onto paper, though I could photograph and attach as a jpeg. That which "makes" a thing aesthetically pleasing (or not) fascinates me; what is that judgement based upon and is there a universal aesthetic, recognised by all beings? Everything is beautiful, it is sung, but I'm not convinced entirely, though the case can be made. Differential seems a thing to consider.
Before 1910 wristwatches were regarded as for women only. Men wore pocket watches. Once WW1 broke out however the need to check the time quickly led to the widespread adoption of wrist watches as male attire. That is why early mens watches are frequently referred to as "trench watches."
Depends on the situation. For instance wristwatches were extensively used in the European and American military from about the 1880s. In Europe the impetus was from the increased use of timed bombardments. In the US from coordinated and timed cavalry attacks.
Timing manoeuvres, which especially on horseback, was a hell of a lot easier than using a pocket watch. Some cavalry units issued them. It is likely that they drifted into civilian male fashions from ex-soldiers.
Of course the same applied in the trenches of WW1. If you’re holding a weapon, often a ladder, and burdened with too much gear in mud – then using a watch was damn sight easier than a pocket watch. That is a two handed operation to hold a pocket watch in one hand usually open with the other (most had lids).
Fortunately I’m no longer in the military. I have computers and they notify me when something is timed is to happen. Good thing as I’m chronic for finishing the bug task at hand – and never taking appointments.
I love moments in history with hidden fashion import. There is a photo of Douglas Haig from 1915 with a trench watch peeking out from his sleeve – it was THE fashion signal that wrist watches were indeed for men.
Or look at this photo of John F Kennedy at his inaugural address. Notice anything? Almost everyone except the president is wearing a hat. Hats were already falling out of fashion – some say it was because it was inconvenient to wear a hat in a car. After JFK didn't wear one at his inaugeration they vanished almost overnight as a required item of menswear for the modern man.
Heh, as a younger person I wore my grandfathers watch, it was automatic, never needed winding.
My significant other has a 'fitbit'. Or at least I think that's what it is. Heart rate, steps, time … but it's got to be charged each day or it is of no use.
I was told by a phlebotomist yesterday that it's just bad weather, not climate change, and if it was climate change, it would all be the fault of the Chinese anyway. Still, it was a quick and painless blood-taking and I was not about to argue with someone wielding a needle.
The barber told me how hospitals were inflating number of covid deaths because they were getting payments for every covid death. Minutes later he was muttering about elderly clients not showing up because of these hospital payments.
Ah, this is a local variant of the American conspiracy theory where every death was being labelled as covid because they got a federal payment for them.
That can't be right Sanct @ 2.1 because I was told by a lady in the bank queue that Dr Fauci payed the Wuhan Lab millions of dollars to produce the virus and release it into the Chinese community.
No, you got that all wrong. Dr Fauci thought he was paying the Wuhan Lab but in fact he donated the money to the CCP. It was a cunning plan to divert attention away from dodgy donations to bat shit in a cave.
You know, hearing from boomers like Richard Prebble, Don Brash and Michael Bassett descending into unalloyed lunacy is kinda affirming – they are now powerless old men and their salty tears of resentment are music to my ears.
Listening to ex-reserve bank head Arthur Grimes railing against government/reserve bank monetary policy after listening to Nicola Willis doing her best "first time as tragedy, second time as farce" Ruth Richardson Mk II advocacy of Thatcherism last week made me think the pandemic certainly has flushed out the monetarist/neoliberal right wing Gen X types out there. The struggle against the right never ceases, it seems.
Also, is it just me or is everyone struggling to be interested at all in the Commonwealth Games? Seems to me it is now an obsolete event with no real purpose in the sporting calendar than allowing people to get gold medals in obscure sports like lawn bowls.
Aw, c'mon Sanctuary, the Commonwealth Games serve as a pleasant distraction from the impending catastrophe of climate change – as do, for that matter, World Cup soccer and rugby tests, and so on.
You've got to distract the masses, y'know, otherwise they just might demand the powers do something meaningful.
I saw a clip of TVNZ's Daniel Faitaua looking forlornly at a vacant "fan zone" in downtown Birmingham muttering about no-one being there. I thought that was entirely appropriate given the event hadn’t started. What did he expect?
I did wonder for a split second how many will bother to turn up when it does get under way but quickly moved on.
Thanks for this clarification. Many people seem to think everyone over age 60 is a baby boomer. In fact the cohort covers from about age 50 up to 77. It started as people returned to New Zealand at the end of World War Two and continued to the early 1970s.
Without sounding like a Nordmeyer doomsayer, this Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill is the kind of thing that could put a Maori seat or two in play.
The vast majority of the 10% of our population who still smoke regularly are Maori.
The bill is aimed at getting smoking prevalence beneath 5% of the adult population within years (not decades). The bill provides for three key strategies:
– drastically reducing nicotine content in tobacco so it is no longer addictive (known as “denicotinisation” or “very low nicotine cigarettes” (VLNC))
– a 90% to 95% reduction in the number of shops that can sell tobacco
– making it illegal to sell tobacco to people born in 2009 or later (thus creating a “smokefree generation”).
If implemented effectively this is anticipated to have a profound impact on smoking.
Now, there will be standard arguments brought up including: more ram-raids as the cigarette black market really heats up, more effective shaming and social criminalisaiton of Maori, more growth in gangs, more use of substitute legal vaping and illegal marijuana smoking, and more dairies going out of business.
I will certainly be watching for fulsome support for this bill from the new Te Aka Whai Ora the new Maori health organisation. But will Winston still reach for the Winstons? He he given up? Will he 'fight' for their 'rights' anyway?
Maybe this is the Helen Clark eco-lightbulb moment when the government has just spent the reform capital it had. Or maybe we are just in for a mature debate in which Maori leaders of all kinds have their own argument – and the legislation just goes ahead anyway.
The public policy outcomes are a no-brainer. But there's always politics.
much will depend on the details, and on how Labour and the relevant government departments and NGOs handle the messaging.
eg I can see a potential problem in rural communities with a huge reduction in sellers. Good design will make sure that this doesn't negatively affect low income rural communities esp Māori ones. Bad design will mean some bod in Wellington who doesn't understand rural life, doesn't think this through properly and there end up big geographical gaps. Cue bad headlines for Labour, as well as the more invisible pressures this places in whānau and communities.
The shift to VLNC could potentially help people quite smoking, depending on how and how fast it was done. But if it's done fast, that's a lot of people struggling with a nicotine addiction suddenly.
I haven't read the link Ad. But credit where credit is due. If smoking is significantly reduced then Maori's health outcomes will significantly improve. From memory Maori smoke at 4 times the rates of Pakeha per % of the population. This accounts for a large chunk of their high lung cancer statitics. I would be interested to see to what extent smokiig is corelated to class. The only people I see smoking now are our road side workers on their breaks (what I refer to as the real workers)
I have to add, that this is what is needed, rather than an over priced health restructure with a separate Maori Health division (what about Pasifika who also have poorer health?). that an addressing our health workforce staffing crisis
whether I think society's view on smoking has changed is not at issue….as you asserted it I asked why it would then be difficult to ban…we have no difficulty 'banning' all manner of things politically and operationally (i even mentioned cannabis)….what is special about tobacco?
ah, I see we're at the stage of the debate where you utterly fail to make any argument to support your position, or even explain what you mean, and instead resort to dictionary deflections and questions.
Let me spell it out then.
Banning is politically tricky. Think ICEs or light bulbs.
You apparently believe they're not but can't name three significant bans in the past decade.
Tobacco use isn't special, it's just a particular health issue that Labour has been working on for decades. It's managed to decrease smoking rates in that time with a mix of legislation, education, and support programmes.
Labour now want to take the next step. They're not doing an outright ban, my guess is because that's politically and socially difficult to do. Instead they're bringing in a range of tactics to help lower the rate again by restricting access.
We've reached the point where dictionary definitions are required to elicit frank statements.
We have an estimated 10% of the population smoking (skewed to the low end of the income quintiles, who we know are also the most politically disengaged), we have medical consensus that smoking is both harmful and potentially fatal (the same health system that is overwhelmed), we have a social environment that excludes smoking (almost everywhere) …..all changes that align with your statement …"We have been very successful as a country in changing smoking culture and attitudes about it."….so I ask again where is the political and operational difficulty in banning it?
Bans 'are by their nature difficult' has not prevented them in other instances.
One for RedLogix (he'll love this: Jack Lovelock, "Gaia" man and remarkable thinker, says stuff that makes my skin crawl 🙂
"In the four decades since you published the Gaia hypothesis, the idea of interconnected earth systems has become mainstream. There is growing concern about how humans are affecting these planetary systems, pushing us into the Anthropocene, the age of humans.
I think we’re forging ahead into the post-Anthropocene, into the Novacene. I think the chemical-physical type of humanity has had its time. We’ve mucked about with the planet and we’re moving towards a systems type of thing, [a future species] running on cybernetics. The great thing is that if you run your systems on electronics or optical devices, they’re up to 10,000 times faster than what we’ve got at the moment, and this opens up enormous possibilities.
So will we and the rest of the natural world survive alongside these cyborgs?
Well, the biological won’t necessarily vanish completely, but it will be of less fundamental importance. People automatically assume that therefore humans will be finished. That’s nonsense. We are much faster, more advanced, than plants and it doesn’t mean plants have all vanished – we rather enjoy having them around. I always imagine one of these new cyborg-type people standing on a five-bar gate and looking out at the humans…
I guess the whole cyborg things makes sense after you support nuclear power. Because you still have to solve all the other problems created by the system that gave us the climate crisis. And if you don't do that by working with nature, I guess you have to work outside of nature (apologies for such a binary, haven't thought it through enough to see if it's a false one).
Pretty hard though, for anything concrete or virtual, to be "outside of nature".
I guess "some folks" such as myself, look to a particular expression of nature, the "oak, octopus, orangutan" presentment, and base our understanding and decision-making on that. Others might look to triangles and dodecahedrons, neutrons and quarks for their inspiration, and still others, Jung's deep ocean.
I also believe that everything exists within nature. Seems like a lot of people act as if that is not true. One can see the expression in the oak or maths or the unconscious, but if one takes the position that nature is over there/not us too, then it leads to the great harm unfolding. If one starts with nature it's hard to see how cybernetics would be a solution.
If Picasso's claim is true (Everything you can imagine, is true) then try imagining something outside of nature, then arguing that everything is within nature 🙂
His research actually constrained idealistic understanding of Gaia,and its constraints in the understanding of geoscience and both causal mechanisms with both biology and ecology,due to entropy.
What would you do if you wanted to detect life on Mars?” Without thinking, I said I would look for an entropy reduction. Well, that made him spurt with laughter, but he gave me two days to come up with a practical experiment to find life on Mars or I was out.
A reduction in entropy means an increase in complexity; it implies that life is creating order. But how could you measure it?
In bed at night, it suddenly came to me: all you have to do is analyse the atmosphere of Mars. If it has got gases in it that react with one another, then it is at a low entropy.
As he stated low entropy increases complexity,and significantly reduces predictive qualities in systems and models (such as tipping points and feedbacks) due to algorithmic irreducibility.
Here, we argue that understanding the Earth as a complex system requires a consideration of the Gaia hypothesis: the Earth is a complex system because it instantiates life—and therefore an autopoietic, metabolic-repair (M,R) organization—at a planetary scale. This implies that the Earth’s complexity has formal equivalence to a self-referential system that inherently is non-algorithmic and, therefore, cannot be surrogated and simulated in a Turing machine.
They are saying that there are limits into computational forecasting ( the ugly mathematics of numerical simulation) this is well known in weather forecasting with a temporal limit of 10 days for mid latitudes on a rotating planet..
With planetary scale earth models,you need to be able to capture the response of negative feed backs in the MR systems,such as increased or heavy rainfall increasing the rate of weathering and carbon sequestion,or the rate of change from biological feedback to increased rain,mineral exposure (say river to ocean runoff with increased phytoplankton growth-increased DMS (sulfur) production transfer back to land and suppression of CH4),
They use a good example that is well known with weathering and the CaCo2 feedback where under increasing solar irriadiance (and where biological life has existed) the surface temperature of the planet has decreased.(see references) or the limitations of scale to a metrological scale such as summer due to being almost intransitive and being too short to capture initial conditions (lorenz 1968)
In theory, every state on the attractor has a climatological probability of being visited in a given summer if the trajectory is long enough such that the memory of the initial condition is lost. However, the summer season could well be too short for this to be the case before the heating distribution changes with the onset of autumn.
They gave the answer in the conclusions (by analogy)
In other words, the relation between Earth complexity and power scaling laws, feedbacks, nonlinearity, and chaos may be compared to the situation faced by early cartographers, who were attempting to map the surface of a sphere while armed only with pieces of (tangent) planes. “As long as they only mapped local regions, the planar approximations sufficed; but as they tried to map larger and larger regions, the discrepancy between the map and the surface grew as well. If they wanted to make accurate maps of large regions of the sphere, they had to keep shifting their tangent planes. The surface of the sphere is in some sense a limit of its planar approximations, but to specify it in this way requires a new global concept (the topology of the sphere; i.e., its curvature) that cannot be inferred from local planar maps alone”
What they are saying is there are scales to the model,that converge from reality.The older cartographers got around this problem with a model of 1:1 as Borges described.
No round,the ancient greeks,knew that and calculated the circumference of the globe (with an error) Columbus who also knew the world was round (but smaller) bumped into a continent hidden in the error.
Isn't the point of the Anthropocene that it is a geological stratum delineated by a series of extinctions? The obvious one being that of the eponymous ape-descended primate.
Covenant archeologists may fight over the Novacene-Anthropocene boundary, but it is probable that our species will not get to, any more than the ammonites got to dispute the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.
Speaking of why we should fight the good fight, Siobhan.
Chris Williamson, the former Derby North MP who had declared himself the most pro-Corbyn candidate in Britain, paid the price for putting his head above the parapet and being the voice of the radical left. No fan of Starmer. Very direct interview with George Galloway.
His segment should start about 58 mins into this video, if I have the start time correct.
Joe Manchin has just agreed a massive piece of legislation that increases taxes on the rich, targets inflation, and gives a massive programme forage climate.
At US$740B, that's a big Senate rescue for Biden's luckless Presidency once it proceeds through the Senate.
Probably the first Western sex tourist sanctioned by his own country.
A British citizen who video blogs pro-Kremlin material from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine has been added to a UK government sanctions list.
Graham Phillips, who has been accused of being a conduit for pro-Russian propaganda, is one of 42 new designations added to the UK’s Russia sanctions list. Other additions include Russia’s minister and deputy minister of justice and two nephews of the Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who was himself placed under sanctions by Britain in March.
Every cloud has a silver lining as manna fell from heaven last week into the hydro storage.
National hydro storage increased by 20% to 109% of the historical average for this time of year. North Island hydro storage decreased to 151% of the historical average. However, South Island storage increased to 105% of the historical average for this time of year due to a week of high inflows.
Cheap water allowed increased hydro production last week (65% vs 58.9% 52 weeks) with reasonable wind (some reduction due to excess wind) renewables came to 89%.
Here in Twizel, that rain and snow not only fills our lakes, but builds a cool reserve to see our salmon through the hot months. Huey is pretty good to us.
On the spot market now NZ wholesale rates are 10.07 mwh,Australia is 551 mwh.The UK is importing surplus electricity from Norway (as is the Netherlands ) at 397 euro mwh.
Tonight due to high wind in NI,and high levels in run of river hydro,there is no SI transfer north,later tonight as demand lessens if wind sustains,flows will be from North to South to allow the battery ( lakes) to reduce outflow,as system is intended.
That's the thing, we don't pay a power bill in the UK or Aus.
We used to own the infrastructure here till Bradford did his thing. Now, it seems it's only business (read shareholders and executives) that can enjoy the upside of the market.
No that is the difference in not being at risk from international markets (small risk with thermal coal) the Bradford reform let the brains trusts from many local distribution providers ( councils) sell offshore,or remove some generation (contact) to infrastructure companys that are adverse to tax.
The JK sell off was to make the books look good for the budget,key and english then prior to a partial selloff,front loaded the generation soe's with debt,then got them to pay a special dividend.
Woods decided to remove the low user charges discount as it discriminated against high users (hello hello) then labour brought in the winter subsidy,as people will be working from home more (5 year spend of 3 billion) or around the cost of 7 years of Transpower upgrades that could be done with low loss technology saving around 40% of transmission loss or around the equivalent of a weeks total nz electricity generation.
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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 ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
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. ...
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"If the party and its various factions are led well, there is nothing inherently unstable about the Greens' relatively horizontal structure. The problem now is that there is clearly a strong disagreement over the party's direction – with some prominent members explicitly critical of even being in government.
This, wedded to the fact no-one really seems to know what they want to do about it, has created a perfect storm of instability and indecision."
Unforced errors hurting Christopher Luxon and the Greens – Thomas Coughlan – NZ Herald
It's paywalled so I pasted part of the article. They need to let James get on with his job (as co leader) and the others should come out and support him not spend days deciding whether they will run or not for leadership.
I was a bit surprised the only Green MP to actually publicly support James was Eugenie Sage. All the others were not very supportive with their "lets follow the process" type statements.
As they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer!
A good piece by Nandor on TDB today. Pretty much:
'James has done much but the country hasn't done enough, hope he gets elected again, and learns from it and improves his efforts. '
Imagine if, say, Luxon acted like that as a leader!
And of course, Gordon's nailed that Luxon question.
“Confusingly though, Luxon has since claimed to be (a) taking responsibility for the mis-representation while (b) claiming he had not nothing to apologise for, and moreover (c) it had all been a valuable learning experience:”
http://werewolf.co.nz/2022/07/gordon-campbell-on-luxons-holiday-and-the-greens-phantom-revolt/
Hmmm has anyone seen Ian Foster and Chris Luxon in the same room together?
Both seen together last week in a phone box in Te Puke.
'parently
That wasn’t a phone box but a Tardis, which is how Luxon can time-travel between Hawaii and Te Puke.
Question is were they wearing their masks?
That's mask (singular 🙂
As well as he nailed the issue within the Greens….
"What the Greens rebels seem to want is for the party to vehemently pursue policies that are almost certainly bound to fail, and/or to then exit from government altogether. Sure, there can be virtue in righteous failure. The Greens used to be very good at being right, and being ignored. An exit on principle would certainly feel great for a while. It would just as certainly deliver a centre right victory in Election 2023 that would be devastating for the goals expressed in the Greens’ founding principles, on social justice and the environment."
http://werewolf.co.nz/2022/07/gordon-campbell-on-luxons-holiday-and-the-greens-phantom-revolt/
why would leaving the agreement now ensure that National wins the next election? Talk us through how that would work IRL.
What agreement are you speaking of?….Gordon Campbell makes no reference to any agreement.
Campbell, from your quote.
Labour and the Greens have a cooperation agreement that outlines how they work together while Labour is the government.
https://www.parliament.nz/media/7554/labour_greens_cooperation_agreement-1.pdf
But let me rephrase,
why would the Greens leaving the government now ensure that National wins the next election? Talk us through how that would work IRL.
Thats not what Campbell has said.
do you disagree with what you quoted?
Obviously not as its part of the link I described as having 'nailed' it.
What is your point?
my point is that there's no argument supporting the idea that the Greens leaving the current arrangement would ‘certainly’ lead to a Nact govt in 2023. I already said that, and you evaded and didn't provide the argument.
you are fixated on some agreement (I assume you are referring to the agreement that provides the Greens Ministerial positions outside Cabinet)….Campbell makes no mention of the agreement and its not the basis of his argument….even Robert appears to have grasped this.
"even Robert"?
That dullard?
I already restated it thus,
Summary,
Pat: good argument by Campbell, the Greens leaving government would = certain Nact government in 2023
weka: how?
Pat: deflect, deflect, crickets…
Even Robert…that Green Party flag carrier.
@ Weka
Projection much.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-28-07-2022/#comment-1902573:~:text=1.2.1.2.2.2-,28%20July%202022%20at%202%3A41%20pm,-%22That%27s%20unclear%20writing
I already linked to it. It's the agreement that underpins the Greens working with the Labour government (or being in government if you prefer, although they're kind of in govt and not in govt). It covers a lot more than the Ministerial positions. Understanding that agreement is necessary for understanding the current situation within the GP.
Covered hours ago…
"Where is the evidence to support a view that the more radical policies sought by the faction challenging Shaws position will attract more (and not less) support for the Green Party?…..have any other political party adopted more radical policies?….where is the growth in Green Party support indicating that the wider public want more of what is on offer?
If the majority of Green Party members believed the radicals were more likely to succeed than the status quo then the status quo wouldnt be what it is.
But that would mean submitting to the majority view…..or democracy."
"What the Greens rebels seem to want is for the party to vehemently pursue policies that are almost certainly bound to fail, and/or to then exit from government altogether. "
That's unclear writing, imo. The "Green rebels" might indeed want to pursue policies, but don't necessarily see those as leading to failure and/or an exit from government. They may well believe they'll cause a great increase in public support and a better position for The Greens post-election.
Has anyone delved into the rationale of the "rebels" and published that anywhere?
The general consensus seems to be that ousting James would be damaging for the party's hopes, and I agree with that. I expect James will remain in his roles. I expect the "rebels" will come to their senses 🙂 and learn from their outburst/rush of blood to their heads and seek other avenues of change within the structure of the party. I expect the existing Green MP's will be more alert to the ebb and flow of their own party and supporters.
Seems to me that a faction within the Green Party is trying to shift the internal Overton window within the party. This will then somehow magically shift Labour’s thinking and acting towards a bolder CC approach. Or so the belief system seems to operate with some, I believe.
"That's unclear writing, imo. The "Green rebels" might indeed want to pursue policies, but don't necessarily see those as leading to failure and/or an exit from government. They may well believe they'll cause a great increase in public support and a better position for The Greens post-election."
Then we disagree…its perfectly clear.
Where is the evidence to support a view that the more radical policies sought by the faction challenging Shaws position will attract more (and not less) support for the Green Party?…..have any other political party adopted more radical policies?….where is the growth in Green Party support indicating that the wider public want more of what is on offer?
If the majority of Green Party members believed the radicals were more likely to succeed than the status quo then the status quo wouldnt be what it is.
But that would mean submitting to the majority view…..or democracy.
"Where is the evidence to support a view that the more radical policies sought by the faction challenging Shaws position will attract more (and not less) support for the Green Party?"
You're asking the wrong question. The pertinent one is: "Do the "rebels" believe "that the more radical policies sought by the faction challenging Shaws position will attract more (and not less) support for the Green Party?""
I suspect the did/do.
"In sum, hard choices are involved if the Green rebels ever do get serious about their insurgency. Stay in government, or not ? Stay in the party and accept the limits of party politicking, or not? Regard a deeply flawed unity as the price of averting a worse government, or not?"
Nandor's summation is excellent and right on the button.
I agree.
When centralist, neo-liberal lobbyists like Clint Smith and Neale Jones are singing Shaw's praises, then I can understand while those who want urgent action (lets face it, that is what is required now), are putting the heavies on Shaw.
Yep I thought Nandor's piece was excellent
Prof Neil said the pandemic was very likely to have been a consequence of an “unhealthy, cruel and unhygienic practice that Chinese authorities had been warned about”.
I always thought this. And absolutely agree.
I was told by my watchmaker yesterday with absolute certainty that the virus is a Chinese government plot and they have at least ten more variants waiting to be released.
Still, he is an excellent watchmaker.
He makes watches?
From what?
If he repairs watches, many of which will be Chinese manufactured, has he considered the likelihood of catching viruses, maleficently inserted, whenever he opens the back of a watch?
He needs to know…
He is a watchmaker. Which means he can repair and rebuild mechanical watches (as opposed to the quartz movements possessed by vast mass of watch wearing peasants out there). Get yourself an automatic watch with a lovely movement, if you can't afford a good Swiss one buy a Seiko. A mechanical watch will last three lifetimes and doesn’t require a polluting battery. They are the Green option.
Avoid the once proud brands laid low by the 1970s quartz revolution and purchased by soulless corporates to produce a facade of class to their Chinese knock offs.
Watchmaking itself is a literally dying profession. Like other professions it is a footnote to the bitter tragedy of Rogernomics. Nowadays it's largely staffed by men in their late sixties and early seventies, because watchmaking apprenticeships were done away with by the Rogernomics revolution and have never come back. One day soon the last of the New Zealand trained watchmakers will retire, to infirm of hand and eye to continue the intricate art of maintaining a mechanical watch. And they'll pass into history. And then we'll need to bring in watchmakers from China or India, while young New Zealander who might find joy in the beauty of a watch movement will never get a chance. “Too expensive” they’ll say.
Who uses watches?
If I want to know the time, well I look at the screen. Or if I'm out and about I look at the phone of the time in the car.
A lot easier than carrying jewellery on my wrist. Especially while I’m working on a keyboard and mouse.
(incidentally this debate goes all the way back to the arguments about the value and efficacy of wristwatches vs pocket watches that was such a feature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries)
I've not worn a watch for 50 years now 🙂
Nor do I have a phone.
Time is a tyrant 🙂
Likewise. Mind you, no one asks me 🙂
My response would be, "Don't you have a phone?"
🙂
Well I write with fountain pens using only Japanese Iroshizuku ink because I love the sound the pen makes on the paper, the shine of the fresh ink and way it looks on the page. It elevates the mundane to a moment of beauty. So I guess it depends on how much you value beauty over utility, how much pleasure you derive from the aesthetic of possessing a piece of horological beauty and how much you value the elevation of a mundane task "What time is it?" to a minor pleasure. For me, every time I look at my watch I get to see a perfection in design, detail and execution that is thrilling.
I guess that like all luxury items my watches are a massive indulgence that I am lucky enought to be able to afford and they give me a great deal pleasure.
Original documents tell a fascinating story about watch sales to British POWs.
Lot 311: Ref. 3525, Stainless Steel So-Called "Monoblocco” with Exceptional Original Documentation. Rolex, “Oyster Chronograph, Antimagnetic”, Ref. 3525. Case No. 185983. Made in 1941, sold "gratis” on July 8, 1943 to Corporal Clive James Nutting whilst a prisoner of War in Stalag Luft III
https://web.archive.org/web/20070428080110/http://www.timezone.com/library/extras/200704246126
Writing is "mundane"? 🙂
Technology is awfully alluring, especially when it's beautiful, horological or otherwise. I favour "elegant" as the aesthetic measure, but hey. I too, have fountain pens, though I use them rarely, despite my intention to use them always. This particular message wouldn't travel in as timely a manner, had I to scratch it onto paper, though I could photograph and attach as a jpeg. That which "makes" a thing aesthetically pleasing (or not) fascinates me; what is that judgement based upon and is there a universal aesthetic, recognised by all beings? Everything is beautiful, it is sung, but I'm not convinced entirely, though the case can be made. Differential seems a thing to consider.
But I bet the sight of a glorious marrow thriving on a beautiful summers day makes your heart sing, eh? We all have our delights.
Sure and there's no accounting for taste; I find frogs compellingly elegant!
why did we switch from pocket to wrist?
Because wrist watches are hands-free devices.
Before 1910 wristwatches were regarded as for women only. Men wore pocket watches. Once WW1 broke out however the need to check the time quickly led to the widespread adoption of wrist watches as male attire. That is why early mens watches are frequently referred to as "trench watches."
Depends on the situation. For instance wristwatches were extensively used in the European and American military from about the 1880s. In Europe the impetus was from the increased use of timed bombardments. In the US from coordinated and timed cavalry attacks.
Timing manoeuvres, which especially on horseback, was a hell of a lot easier than using a pocket watch. Some cavalry units issued them. It is likely that they drifted into civilian male fashions from ex-soldiers.
Of course the same applied in the trenches of WW1. If you’re holding a weapon, often a ladder, and burdened with too much gear in mud – then using a watch was damn sight easier than a pocket watch. That is a two handed operation to hold a pocket watch in one hand usually open with the other (most had lids).
Fortunately I’m no longer in the military. I have computers and they notify me when something is timed is to happen. Good thing as I’m chronic for finishing the bug task at hand – and never taking appointments.
How I miss the notched candles and sand-filled hour-glasses of my youth.
Not large monolithic circular clocks on a plateau?
I hear that setting the alarm function on those was as challenging as reading a 1980s IBM PC manual.
You could only set it for a few days in a year.
I love moments in history with hidden fashion import. There is a photo of Douglas Haig from 1915 with a trench watch peeking out from his sleeve – it was THE fashion signal that wrist watches were indeed for men.
Or look at this photo of John F Kennedy at his inaugural address. Notice anything? Almost everyone except the president is wearing a hat. Hats were already falling out of fashion – some say it was because it was inconvenient to wear a hat in a car. After JFK didn't wear one at his inaugeration they vanished almost overnight as a required item of menswear for the modern man.
Heh, as a younger person I wore my grandfathers watch, it was automatic, never needed winding.
My significant other has a 'fitbit'. Or at least I think that's what it is. Heart rate, steps, time … but it's got to be charged each day or it is of no use.
There's progress for ya.
I was told by a phlebotomist yesterday that it's just bad weather, not climate change, and if it was climate change, it would all be the fault of the Chinese anyway. Still, it was a quick and painless blood-taking and I was not about to argue with someone wielding a needle.
The barber told me how hospitals were inflating number of covid deaths because they were getting payments for every covid death. Minutes later he was muttering about elderly clients not showing up because of these hospital payments.
Ah, this is a local variant of the American conspiracy theory where every death was being labelled as covid because they got a federal payment for them.
That can't be right Sanct @ 2.1 because I was told by a lady in the bank queue that Dr Fauci payed the Wuhan Lab millions of dollars to produce the virus and release it into the Chinese community.
No, you got that all wrong. Dr Fauci thought he was paying the Wuhan Lab but in fact he donated the money to the CCP. It was a cunning plan to divert attention away from dodgy donations to bat shit in a cave.
Well…thats a bit ..synchronous.
You know, hearing from boomers like Richard Prebble, Don Brash and Michael Bassett descending into unalloyed lunacy is kinda affirming – they are now powerless old men and their salty tears of resentment are music to my ears.
Listening to ex-reserve bank head Arthur Grimes railing against government/reserve bank monetary policy after listening to Nicola Willis doing her best "first time as tragedy, second time as farce" Ruth Richardson Mk II advocacy of Thatcherism last week made me think the pandemic certainly has flushed out the monetarist/neoliberal right wing Gen X types out there. The struggle against the right never ceases, it seems.
Also, is it just me or is everyone struggling to be interested at all in the Commonwealth Games? Seems to me it is now an obsolete event with no real purpose in the sporting calendar than allowing people to get gold medals in obscure sports like lawn bowls.
Similar thoughts to yours about the Commonwealth Games…a non event,B grade at…best.
Aw, c'mon Sanctuary, the Commonwealth Games serve as a pleasant distraction from the impending catastrophe of climate change – as do, for that matter, World Cup soccer and rugby tests, and so on.
You've got to distract the masses, y'know, otherwise they just might demand the powers do something meaningful.
And that would never do!
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/11/what-would-it-look-like-if-we-treated-climate-change-as-an-actual-emergency?fbclid=IwAR3Gcci4OYuAvs_695IembRvXxIqPrA6Q4jizQ54H1QT1ME0doGjCfzkEHA
Also, is it just me or is everyone struggling to be interested at all in the Commonwealth Games?
NO. Its not just you.
Me too.
I saw a clip of TVNZ's Daniel Faitaua looking forlornly at a vacant "fan zone" in downtown Birmingham muttering about no-one being there. I thought that was entirely appropriate given the event hadn’t started. What did he expect?
I did wonder for a split second how many will bother to turn up when it does get under way but quickly moved on.
Thanks for this clarification. Many people seem to think everyone over age 60 is a baby boomer. In fact the cohort covers from about age 50 up to 77. It started as people returned to New Zealand at the end of World War Two and continued to the early 1970s.
See the following link. https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/28730/baby-boom-generation-about-1969
Prebble and Brash were born in 1940 and 1948.
Just saying!
Without sounding like a Nordmeyer doomsayer, this Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill is the kind of thing that could put a Maori seat or two in play.
Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill – New Zealand Parliament (www.parliament.nz)
The vast majority of the 10% of our population who still smoke regularly are Maori.
The bill is aimed at getting smoking prevalence beneath 5% of the adult population within years (not decades). The bill provides for three key strategies:
– drastically reducing nicotine content in tobacco so it is no longer addictive (known as “denicotinisation” or “very low nicotine cigarettes” (VLNC))
– a 90% to 95% reduction in the number of shops that can sell tobacco
– making it illegal to sell tobacco to people born in 2009 or later (thus creating a “smokefree generation”).
If implemented effectively this is anticipated to have a profound impact on smoking.
Now, there will be standard arguments brought up including: more ram-raids as the cigarette black market really heats up, more effective shaming and social criminalisaiton of Maori, more growth in gangs, more use of substitute legal vaping and illegal marijuana smoking, and more dairies going out of business.
I will certainly be watching for fulsome support for this bill from the new Te Aka Whai Ora the new Maori health organisation. But will Winston still reach for the Winstons? He he given up? Will he 'fight' for their 'rights' anyway?
Maybe this is the Helen Clark eco-lightbulb moment when the government has just spent the reform capital it had. Or maybe we are just in for a mature debate in which Maori leaders of all kinds have their own argument – and the legislation just goes ahead anyway.
The public policy outcomes are a no-brainer. But there's always politics.
much will depend on the details, and on how Labour and the relevant government departments and NGOs handle the messaging.
eg I can see a potential problem in rural communities with a huge reduction in sellers. Good design will make sure that this doesn't negatively affect low income rural communities esp Māori ones. Bad design will mean some bod in Wellington who doesn't understand rural life, doesn't think this through properly and there end up big geographical gaps. Cue bad headlines for Labour, as well as the more invisible pressures this places in whānau and communities.
The shift to VLNC could potentially help people quite smoking, depending on how and how fast it was done. But if it's done fast, that's a lot of people struggling with a nicotine addiction suddenly.
I haven't read the link Ad. But credit where credit is due. If smoking is significantly reduced then Maori's health outcomes will significantly improve. From memory Maori smoke at 4 times the rates of Pakeha per % of the population. This accounts for a large chunk of their high lung cancer statitics. I would be interested to see to what extent smokiig is corelated to class. The only people I see smoking now are our road side workers on their breaks (what I refer to as the real workers)
I have to add, that this is what is needed, rather than an over priced health restructure with a separate Maori Health division (what about Pasifika who also have poorer health?). that an addressing our health workforce staffing crisis
Why do we think smoking has not been banned (not that banning has stopped the use of cannabis) ?…..there could be a billion reasons.
because banning is politically difficult to achieve and then operationally difficult to control because of the black market.
Just as well it's not a ban.
We have been very successful as a country in changing smoking culture and attitudes about it.
If we have successfully changed smoking culture how then is a ban politically and operationally difficult?
because bans are by their nature.
What do you mean 'if'? You think we haven't changed how society views smoking?
whether I think society's view on smoking has changed is not at issue….as you asserted it I asked why it would then be difficult to ban…we have no difficulty 'banning' all manner of things politically and operationally (i even mentioned cannabis)….what is special about tobacco?
name three things that have been banned in the past decade that are deeply entrenched in society.
Whats special about tobacco?
What do you mean by special?
special
/ˈspɛʃ(ə)l/
adjective
better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual.
"they always made a special effort at Christmas"
belonging specifically to a particular person or place.
"we want to preserve our town's special character"
ah, I see we're at the stage of the debate where you utterly fail to make any argument to support your position, or even explain what you mean, and instead resort to dictionary deflections and questions.
Let me spell it out then.
Banning is politically tricky. Think ICEs or light bulbs.
You apparently believe they're not but can't name three significant bans in the past decade.
Tobacco use isn't special, it's just a particular health issue that Labour has been working on for decades. It's managed to decrease smoking rates in that time with a mix of legislation, education, and support programmes.
Labour now want to take the next step. They're not doing an outright ban, my guess is because that's politically and socially difficult to do. Instead they're bringing in a range of tactics to help lower the rate again by restricting access.
common sense pro nouns?
We've reached the point where dictionary definitions are required to elicit frank statements.
We have an estimated 10% of the population smoking (skewed to the low end of the income quintiles, who we know are also the most politically disengaged), we have medical consensus that smoking is both harmful and potentially fatal (the same health system that is overwhelmed), we have a social environment that excludes smoking (almost everywhere) …..all changes that align with your statement …"We have been very successful as a country in changing smoking culture and attitudes about it."….so I ask again where is the political and operational difficulty in banning it?
Bans 'are by their nature difficult' has not prevented them in other instances.
7 Maori seats
Possibly…and 1.25 billion in revenue per annum.
Whatever the reasons, we can be sure they wont be the ones trotted out.
What other instances?
Good grief…everything from skyrockets (fireworks) to murder ….
including offshore oil exploration, nuclear ships, foreign buyers of existing residential property, ad infinitum.
Jolly jumpers
Cat skins
Winston Peters (well from parliament at least).
What's special about tobacco?
It contains nicotine which is an addictive substance.
The response to supply cut-off would be different to one where the "goods" were not physically addictive.
Careful management is needed when attempting to remove an element of everyday life from people with a physical addiction.
"…Without sounding like a Nordmeyer doomsayer…"
Not sure if most people born since 1950 will get the reference!
Even I was born well after that. I only know about it from history texts.
What I have read looks like a unremarkable budget by today’s standards.
Welcome to Nerdprom 🙂
One for RedLogix (he'll love this: Jack Lovelock, "Gaia" man and remarkable thinker, says stuff that makes my skin crawl 🙂
"In the four decades since you published the Gaia hypothesis, the idea of interconnected earth systems has become mainstream. There is growing concern about how humans are affecting these planetary systems, pushing us into the Anthropocene, the age of humans.
I think we’re forging ahead into the post-Anthropocene, into the Novacene. I think the chemical-physical type of humanity has had its time. We’ve mucked about with the planet and we’re moving towards a systems type of thing, [a future species] running on cybernetics. The great thing is that if you run your systems on electronics or optical devices, they’re up to 10,000 times faster than what we’ve got at the moment, and this opens up enormous possibilities.
So will we and the rest of the natural world survive alongside these cyborgs?
Well, the biological won’t necessarily vanish completely, but it will be of less fundamental importance. People automatically assume that therefore humans will be finished. That’s nonsense. We are much faster, more advanced, than plants and it doesn’t mean plants have all vanished – we rather enjoy having them around. I always imagine one of these new cyborg-type people standing on a five-bar gate and looking out at the humans…
And when does your Novacene start?
I’m not sure, it may have already started."
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332401-000-james-lovelock-at-100-the-creator-of-gaia-theory-on-humanitys-future/
good lord. He should have lived in NZ for a few years to get to grips with what Rūaumoko will do to electronic and optical device systems.
Does this come down to the people that side with nature and the people that side with humanity? (the latter missing that the former includes humans).
He has just now died (I hear).
His views surprised me greatly.
I guess the whole cyborg things makes sense after you support nuclear power. Because you still have to solve all the other problems created by the system that gave us the climate crisis. And if you don't do that by working with nature, I guess you have to work outside of nature (apologies for such a binary, haven't thought it through enough to see if it's a false one).
Pretty hard though, for anything concrete or virtual, to be "outside of nature".
I guess "some folks" such as myself, look to a particular expression of nature, the "oak, octopus, orangutan" presentment, and base our understanding and decision-making on that. Others might look to triangles and dodecahedrons, neutrons and quarks for their inspiration, and still others, Jung's deep ocean.
Opinions may vary.
I also believe that everything exists within nature. Seems like a lot of people act as if that is not true. One can see the expression in the oak or maths or the unconscious, but if one takes the position that nature is over there/not us too, then it leads to the great harm unfolding. If one starts with nature it's hard to see how cybernetics would be a solution.
If Picasso's claim is true (Everything you can imagine, is true) then try imagining something outside of nature, then arguing that everything is within nature 🙂
His research actually constrained idealistic understanding of Gaia,and its constraints in the understanding of geoscience and both causal mechanisms with both biology and ecology,due to entropy.
As he stated low entropy increases complexity,and significantly reduces predictive qualities in systems and models (such as tipping points and feedbacks) due to algorithmic irreducibility.
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/7/915/htm
So our chances of making sense of all this; of making accurate predictions of what's to come, are falling fast?
They are saying that there are limits into computational forecasting ( the ugly mathematics of numerical simulation) this is well known in weather forecasting with a temporal limit of 10 days for mid latitudes on a rotating planet..
With planetary scale earth models,you need to be able to capture the response of negative feed backs in the MR systems,such as increased or heavy rainfall increasing the rate of weathering and carbon sequestion,or the rate of change from biological feedback to increased rain,mineral exposure (say river to ocean runoff with increased phytoplankton growth-increased DMS (sulfur) production transfer back to land and suppression of CH4),
They use a good example that is well known with weathering and the CaCo2 feedback where under increasing solar irriadiance (and where biological life has existed) the surface temperature of the planet has decreased.(see references) or the limitations of scale to a metrological scale such as summer due to being almost intransitive and being too short to capture initial conditions (lorenz 1968)
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/34/15/JCLI-D-20-0943.1.xml
So that's a yes?
They gave the answer in the conclusions (by analogy)
What they are saying is there are scales to the model,that converge from reality.The older cartographers got around this problem with a model of 1:1 as Borges described.
https://kwarc.info/teaching/TDM/Borges.pdf
But the earth, she's flat, right??
No round,the ancient greeks,knew that and calculated the circumference of the globe (with an error) Columbus who also knew the world was round (but smaller) bumped into a continent hidden in the error.
https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200606/history.cfm
as an aside, the ancient Egyptians knew the earth wasn't flat. This has been doing the rounds lately.
https://twitter.com/YahiaLababidi/status/1339396399251767297
"round"?
I have long believed…spherical.
"…a zest for [enquiry and] experiment." – Love it!
Isn't the point of the Anthropocene that it is a geological stratum delineated by a series of extinctions? The obvious one being that of the eponymous ape-descended primate.
Covenant archeologists may fight over the Novacene-Anthropocene boundary, but it is probable that our species will not get to, any more than the ammonites got to dispute the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.
Hey! In this interview, Luxon says something sensible!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/129397398/morgan-godfery-shaw-a-good-guy-but-compromises-put-him-at-odds-with-party-base
https://twitter.com/MerseyPensioner/status/1551591122446737409?s=20&t=3zbt4MIHaYe88Pd5mt-eKw
Nice to see the good fight is being fought ..and atleast Starmer is self aware enough to realise he doesn't have any defense or counter argument.
For those interested, the feisty Lady is Audrey White, the real woman behind the Glenda Jackson movie "Business As Usual".
Thanks for that Siobhan.
Well said that woman. Smarmy Starmer caught in the headlights.
Speaking of why we should fight the good fight, Siobhan.
Chris Williamson, the former Derby North MP who had declared himself the most pro-Corbyn candidate in Britain, paid the price for putting his head above the parapet and being the voice of the radical left. No fan of Starmer. Very direct interview with George Galloway.
His segment should start about 58 mins into this video, if I have the start time correct.
Take a bow Mr Schumer.
Joe Manchin has just agreed a massive piece of legislation that increases taxes on the rich, targets inflation, and gives a massive programme forage climate.
At US$740B, that's a big Senate rescue for Biden's luckless Presidency once it proceeds through the Senate.
Manchin has been so busy chasing his selfish plans for Governor that he has blocked most reforms and voted with GOP. What a loser.
Probably the first Western sex tourist sanctioned by his own country.
A British citizen who video blogs pro-Kremlin material from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine has been added to a UK government sanctions list.
Graham Phillips, who has been accused of being a conduit for pro-Russian propaganda, is one of 42 new designations added to the UK’s Russia sanctions list. Other additions include Russia’s minister and deputy minister of justice and two nephews of the Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who was himself placed under sanctions by Britain in March.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/26/british-pro-kremlin-video-blogger-graham-phillips-added-to-uk-government-russia-sanctions-list?
Every cloud has a silver lining as manna fell from heaven last week into the hydro storage.
Cheap water allowed increased hydro production last week (65% vs 58.9% 52 weeks) with reasonable wind (some reduction due to excess wind) renewables came to 89%.
https://www.transpower.co.nz/sites/default/files/bulk-upload/documents/MO%20Latest%20Daily%20Update.pdf
In the UK forward energy prices are meaning many are looking at a 500 quid energy bill for January alone.
https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1552255202216099845?cxt=HHwWioC-jbv424orAAAA
Here in Twizel, that rain and snow not only fills our lakes, but builds a cool reserve to see our salmon through the hot months. Huey is pretty good to us.
Full hydro, that will explain power bills dropping.
Great to see the omniscient market at work. /sarc.
On the spot market now NZ wholesale rates are 10.07 mwh,Australia is 551 mwh.The UK is importing surplus electricity from Norway (as is the Netherlands ) at 397 euro mwh.
Tonight due to high wind in NI,and high levels in run of river hydro,there is no SI transfer north,later tonight as demand lessens if wind sustains,flows will be from North to South to allow the battery ( lakes) to reduce outflow,as system is intended.
That's the thing, we don't pay a power bill in the UK or Aus.
We used to own the infrastructure here till Bradford did his thing. Now, it seems it's only business (read shareholders and executives) that can enjoy the upside of the market.
I don’t mean any of this personally.
No that is the difference in not being at risk from international markets (small risk with thermal coal) the Bradford reform let the brains trusts from many local distribution providers ( councils) sell offshore,or remove some generation (contact) to infrastructure companys that are adverse to tax.
The JK sell off was to make the books look good for the budget,key and english then prior to a partial selloff,front loaded the generation soe's with debt,then got them to pay a special dividend.
Woods decided to remove the low user charges discount as it discriminated against high users (hello hello) then labour brought in the winter subsidy,as people will be working from home more (5 year spend of 3 billion) or around the cost of 7 years of Transpower upgrades that could be done with low loss technology saving around 40% of transmission loss or around the equivalent of a weeks total nz electricity generation.
In the 'so weird I can't believe it's true' category – research is continuing into anti-Covid chewing gum – after highly positive initial results
The intention is to introduce 'trap' cells with the ACE2 protein to which the Covid cells spike to (rather than infecting normal body cells).
https://dnascience.plos.org/2022/06/02/can-chewing-gum-protect-against-covid/
This is a pop science review – but the actual research is published in Molecular Therapy – which seems entirely legit.