Open mike 28/06/2010
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6:00 am, June 28th, 2010 - 28 comments
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2 hours ago - Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head: Dunedin Flooding
I noted a few days ago that the Hospital protest happened to coincide with favourable weather. Well, it was a very happy coincidence, because the past twenty-four hours have been rather wet in this part of the world. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/weather-pictures-dunedin-flooded-as-state-of-local-emergency-declared/HNOB5YIEWFCUXNWXYIWGICZ6ZU/ In terms of sheer amount of rain, it’s one of those ...12 hours ago - Is the New Zealand’s Retirement Strategy Sustainable?
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When cancer minister Casey Costello convinced Cabinet to give her mates at Philip Morris a $216 million tax cut, she did so in the face of departmental advice that there would be no benefits and that Philip Morris' "heated tobacco products" were more cancerous and toxic than cigarettes. But she ...15 hours ago - National’s democratic suppression fails
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3 days ago - A private matter
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So Crusher Collins is going to ban smoking in prisons. No consultation with the Prison Guards’ union, and I bet no thoughts about how to implement it in a way which minimises danger to the guards or damage to the inmates.
Nanny state has been replaced by grumpy grandpa state who insists that he knows is best, will not talk to anyone and who will throw his weight around just because he can.
Talk back radio inspired policy.
Link is at http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2010/06/28/12480acb8761
A friend of mine is a Prison Officer and he got assaulted recently by a prisoner. I can imagine how pissed off prisoners will be if they are forced to give up their smokes and my friend (and other officers) will be in even greater danger from assault.
PS, The prisioner was charged internally because his punishment would be harsher that way than if he was charged externally and had to go to court! Go figure.
Yes, lets have double bunking and ban tobacco at the same time! Genius!
Collins like Bennett has no doubt had lessons in how to turn things ugly in New Zealand. It seems to be part of the plan along with wrecking infrastructures,creating unemployment,and totally mismanaging the economy.
A confused depressed,population is easier to exploit and hoodwink into staying quiet when they sell the country to another lot of greedy crooks.
The way around that is chewing tobacco.
A horrible thought for anyone but if one was in a crusher palace.
Crusher complained that she was exposed to smoke, could they not just keep the crims away from her? What a dictator! 👿
What happens in a capitalistic society when you legalise grass for medical problems.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/business/27pot.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th&adxnnlx=1277668808-daYq My Z27FrS2lsTI4vg
Fixed Link
Hah, protectionism 😀
Cute and ‘cuddly’ they may be but $10m worth? I think not. Money would be better spent on Health, affordable housing or Education or keeping and creating REAL jobs in NZ.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3859300/PMs-panda-diplomacy-fails-to-woo-Auckland-Zoo
FFS – Key is a wally of the highest order.
It is called panda diplomacy for a reason.
You may not think it is a big deal, but the politicians in China certainly do. The question of whether we really want to snuggle up to tight to China is another matter of course, but one that we as a country are going to have to answer within the next 5 years one way or the other. Given that China (and India) is the rising economic star at the moment, the tone of our relationship with China really is something that could have major impacts on NZs future.
Something to get you enraged from yesterday’s SST:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/opinion/3858503/We-re-in-no-position-to-lecture-China
Is it just me or is Ms Mcleod grasping at straws here trying to justify her position?
And why to we have to tolerate a supposed journalist offering their banal opinion on why an MP (and party leader) is “cultural[ly] arrogant”, “snide”, “a dork”, “graceless”, a “git”, “beige”(!), “hysterical”, “mouthing off” etc etc?
And, she says “We may disagree, but so what? We won’t be changing anything.”.
FFS – look up ‘protest’ in any damn dictionary and get a fuckin’ clue. If there was no protest in this world to highlight inherent unfairness (or worse) that costs people their culture, identity, freedom and lives then where would we be?
Let’s just sit back and let it all happen around us – if we see injustice somewhere that may impact our trading position we should keep our mouths shut – apparently.
And, sorry, but suggesting that Russel is like one of the politicians (or, more generally, NZers) that supported or instigated the poll tax or the general denegration of the Chinese people (and Maori before them) is just ridiculous.
Clearly with Laws, McLeod and that Marshall thing at the SST it’s not even worthy as toilet paper. (at least Finlay MacDonald is there for some sort of balance – even if he’s far out-weighed by the bile from the right).
GRRRR!!
/rant
Wouldn’t it be great to find a way to reignite the turn-up-somewhere-in-person protest movement.
I know people are so much busier keeping the wolf from the door, but the tv stations are our friends here, cos there’s nothing on the telly.
True, as long as the media aren’t distracted from the message by someone jumping on a car or some-such that makes reporting easier for them. “there was a protest about X where someone jumped on the PM’s car, isn’t that terrible?, in other news Miley Cyrus/Jusin Bieber…”
You are wrong Pete as it makes a very good weekly supply of ‘wee’ paper for my cat in her toilet tray. 🙂
Just had a look at the rank / status of The Standard versus other blogs….the graph and numbers seem up the wap.
http://rankr.projectxtech.com/site/show/thestandard.org.nz
Any comments?
I do not understand the graph. Please explain. 🙂
Thats what I noticed first, hence the question.
Less is more
They look like rehashed Alexa numbers – see http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thestandard.org.nz
Essentially the “Global Rank” says where we are in the websites in the world (now in the top 100,000). The country rank is a measure of how popular the site is in a given country. We’re usually in the top 130’s recently (KB sneaks in the top 100).
You have to take site rankings with a very large grain of salt. I had a play with Alexa at one point and came to the conclusion that you can move these particular rankings with a single person using Alexa.
However we are doing pretty well on both our internal measures and these external ones. It is hard to get a viable public ranking.
Tumeke seems to have jammed at December 2009.
Open Parachutes one relies on public info – which we don’t give – but generally it seems pretty good
scubones one seems to be designed to push the crosses up high.
Generally I don’t concern myself that much with rankings. It is our internal figures that concern me because they affect loadings.
Celia Lashlie on Radnz this a.m. lashed into the idea of making tobacco in prisons a no-no. As usual she had interesting and pragmatic things to say.
She’s been talking good sense from way back.
“…about three miles off the coast of Alaska, BP is moving ahead with a controversial and potentially record-setting project to drill two miles under the sea and then six to eight miles horizontally to reach what is believed to be a 100-million-barrel reservoir of oil under federal waters.” ( my emphasis)
And it’s not subject to any moratorium because, well they constructed an artificial island and put their rig on top. Technically on shore drilling then. Oh, and it’s called Liberty.
And I wish I could make up shit like this, write it down and sell it. But I can’t.
A Hero comes to the Southern Ocean to protect the Whales from the oath breakers who treat their signed treaties as lies and garbage and show to the World their contempt of our feelings there by announcing their own worthlessness, who are they? The Japanese. The hero does what our Cowards fear to do he confronts the cruel Whale Slayers with courage and conviction if only we had men like that here in NZ and Aussie. Hail SeaShepherd.
Yes real men not rubbish pifflers!
Some interesting economics from Stiglitz (Nobel prizewinner in economics) in the Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/osbornes-first-budget-its-wrong-wrong-wrong-2011501.html
No great suprise that we here in NZ are travelling mostly in the wrong direction.
“Stiglitz has one more practical solution to offer. Governments should set up their own banks to restart lending to businesses and save struggling homeowners from repossession. “If the banks aren’t lending, let’s create a new lending facility to do that job,” he says. “In the US, we gave $700bn to the banks; if we had used a fraction of that to create a new bank, we could have financed all the lending that was needed.” Take note Bill English!
Scientists Warn Gulf Of Mexico Sea Floor Fractured “Beyond Repair’
http://www.thelibertyblog.net/2010/06/scientists-warn-gulf-of-mexico-sea.html
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.