Just been watching something about the Aus refugee camps in Nauru on Al Jazeera. It’ so depressing to hear as Australia and NZ having a special relationship when they are so fundamentally racist and abusive.
We should be applying more pressure. Sadly we seem to lack political will
Please tell us. What pressure do you really think we can apply to make Australia change its ways? Remember when you propose ideas that the Australian Government actions are supported by all the major political parties there and are popular with the Australian public.
Should we declare war on them? Expel all Australian-national residents in New Zealand? Seize all Australian owned property and businesses?
And if you choose to do any of those things what would you do if they retaliate?
No we should publicaly call out their actions on the world stage. Whether it makes a difference or not is irrelevant. We should stand for human rights for all.
But right wing scum like yourself probably don’t give a shit about human rights unless a buck can be made from it.
“But right wing scum like yourself probably don’t give a shit about human rights unless a buck can be made from it.”
You have no reason whatsoever to such a remark. But then evidence for something is never required in your dirty little world view is it?
A**hole.
“Calling out their actions on the world stage” isn’t going to apply any “pressure” at all to the Australian Government. Their actions are popular with their own population and they really don’t give a damn about what anyone else thinks of the matter.
It would be about as successful as simply saying what vile people Iranians are for all the executions they carry out and for wanting to build nuclear weapons.
It wasn’t those statements that had any effect. It was the sanctions that supplied the pressure. The only pressure we can apply to Australia would be something similar. There isn’t really anything effective we can do though is there?
Of course it is not.
What is a “dirty little world view” is accusing someone who asks how you hope to achieve your aim, ie “to apply pressure on Australia” how you expect to achieve.
Your second paragraph abusing me is the crappy composition of an idiot.
How can you possibly think that my question makes me someone who is in favour of human rights abuses?
You want to “apply pressure”. What can you propose that might have any such effect?
I think we would have to ban all their MPs. Both the Government and the Opposition (at least most of them) are thoroughly in favour of the policy.
On the other hand I doubt it would really inconvenience them unless, just possibly, they were going to pass through Auckland on the way to the US.
“Go to Nauru and arrest them”. I’m not sure we would be able to. They probably have more military there than we could deliver to the island.
Would that be an act of war I wonder?
. I admire your disgust at the bastardry of the Australians and their gulags dotted around the pacific ocean and indian ocean. A truly objectionable Mr John Howard got these established.
He was extremely proud of his excruciating punishment of any people his redneck followers disliked.
However if New Zealand were to complain too loudly Australia would simply say go and fix up your own problems. You’ve got 40,000 homeless people living in shitty conditions and you don’ t do a damn thing about it.
The Kettle tries to avoid calling the pot black.
.
South Africa really cared about rugby – while whites only counted, it was their major winter sport, like here. Rugby is only minor 3rd winter sport in Oz, so forget it.
Not just rugby, all sport. Netball, league – the lot, and encourage other countries to do it. Aussies love all sport and the relationship NZ has with Aussie makes the context very different to South Africa. The real problem is that nobody’s got the guts. If they did it it’d work.
Tony Veitch (not the partner-bashing 3rd rate broadcaster) 2
“What we have undergone is a coup d’etat in slow motion, and we’ve lost. They’ve won.”
Chris Hedges, author of ‘Death of the Liberal Class,’ in a lecture delivered at the University of Toronto, November 4th, 2010.
Well, they [the corporates] may have won a battle or two, but the war is still raging. We, the activists are the front-line troops who will/must ultimately triumph. Literally, the survival of the human race is at stake.
But we need to ‘self-ask’: what am I doing to bring about a favourable conclusion in this epic fight?
The Day of Action is a protest, but also an affirmation of reclaiming democracy. We will highlight and celebrate the positive alternatives in communities in Aotearoa – through organics, permaculture, community gardens; local renewable energy, EVs, divestment from fossil fuels; campaigns for better public transport and cycling; UBI, community finance, time banking; refugee support groups; etc.
Chris Hedges is correct, particularly for the US situation. A corporate coup d’etat took over government for the people of the people, sometime in the 1980s or early 1990s.
A corporate coup d’etat took over government for the people of the people, sometime in the 1980s or early 1990s.
5th August 1981, to be precise.
On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who’d defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.
It was a bold and brash move. No one had ever tried it. What made it even bolder was that PATCO was one of only three unions that had endorsed Reagan for president! It sent a shock wave through workers across the country. If he would do this to the people who were with him, what would he do to us?
[…]
And so it went. But Reagan could not have pulled this off by himself in 1981. He had some big help:
The AFL-CIO.
The biggest organization of unions in America told its members to cross the picket lines of the air traffic controllers and go to work. And that’s just what these union members did. Union pilots, flight attendants, delivery truck drivers, baggage handlers — they all crossed the line and helped to break the strike. And union members of all stripes crossed the picket lines and continued to fly.
Apart from supporting Reagan here, the AFL CIO have of course also been long time collaborators of the crony capitalists on the other side of the chamber.
Mr Rolleston said the cattle were downstream from the Havelock North Bores – what sort of pathetic excuse is that, for what shouldn’t be happening ever in NZ. He said its a huge job to get on top of for farmers and there will be lapses from time to time – does that mean he can find it comfortable to allow 4000 people to get sick and just get over it. because of the odd lapse. Disgraceful conduct from Fed. Farmers.
On easy ground such as one finds next to most bigger rivers , one man could easily put up 200mtrs of single wire electric fence in a day, two men with a tractor mounted post rammer could probably do close to a km. It’s not a big job ,it’s just some farmers are ignorant fools.
I’ve just commented below about the need to talk about regenerative practices. So fencing off waterways is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff response (still necessary, we need ambulances). Beyond that is riparian plantings. But even that is not regenerative if we are still overstocking, over fertilising etc. There is still excess nitrogen in that system, still too much soil degradation, too much compaction etc.
My point is that I think we need to get past this idea of we have to protect the waterways, esp now our drinking water is making us sick, and think about the whole system. Because fencing off the waterways so the e coli doesn’t get in the bore won’t stop the other problems and we will have another set of crises to manage next time, some of them much worse and harder to solve eg 20 years of campylobacter filtered through the ground (nicely fenced off) to the aquifer that will take 20 years to clear.
“what sort of pathetic excuse is that, for what shouldn’t be happening ever in NZ.”
Many farms in NZ have waterways which stock have access to. That’s normal and for 150 years that wasn’t the kind of problem we have now. Not saying it was no problem, just that what we are dealing with now is intensitification, overstocking and dairying, and it’s those modern things that create problems for town water supplies. I don’t think it’s realistic to think that all waterways in NZ will be fenced off from all stock at all times. Rather than expecting that, I’d like to see us moving towards regenerative land use, where farming practices increase the health of land, and that may or may not include stock with access to water.
I agree with you that Rolleston’s response was disgraceful, and it had all the hallmarks of PR spin. Rachel Stewart has been pointing out that the pro-dairy people will use the word ‘cattle’ instead of ‘dairy cows’ as a way to obfuscate.
I do not agree with you Weka although you are of course entitled to your own opinion. Livestock should never be allowed to drink or wade in our waterways defecating and peeing in the water and polluting it. It is realistic to expect farmers to keep their stock within fencing parameters, if it had been legislated years ago then it would be just second nature to fit it into their budgets just like any other legislation that other companies have to adhere to. This is an animal sewage problem and should be contained and dealt with.
National have had a love affair with Federated Farmers for too long and needs to get tough with them but I fear intensification has become too much of a problem and the accompanying technology which should have been keeping up with it to manage it hasn’t eventuated to keep the sewage problem under control.
“Livestock should never be allowed to drink or wade in our waterways defecating and peeing in the water and polluting it”
Why?
Animals pee and poo in water all the time. Nature has ways of dealing with that. Animal waste in water is not inherently polluting. It becomes pollution when the number of animals exceeds the natural systems’ abilities to process that waste (which is dependent on things like river flow). That’s basic ecology and basic sustainable land management. There are additional problems with issues like deforestation and other processes that alter the functioning of the ecosystem. But animal pee and poo is not itself pathogenic or necessarily a problem. Not all animal waste is ‘sewerage’. It’s what the humans (farmers) are doing that is the problem. Humans create the sewerage or not.
All dairy farms should be fenced and have riparian strips as a basic minimum, because that kind of farming comes with high stocking rates and a lot of effluent. But in other situations eg large SI sheep and cattle stations, I think the bigger problems are from the foot traffic and from grazing out all the biodiversity along the water way, as well as the related problems from fertiliser use and general land management. The ratios of sheep poo to water flow are such that you don’t necessarily get ‘polluted’ water in all situations.
Are those waterways in pristine condition? No. But if all land in NZ that has stock on it was mandated to be fenced, we’d still have a lot of the problems that come with farming. I’d much rather see those resources go into supporting farms to shift to regenerative agrictulture with riparian planting and fencing where appropriate to the design of that particular land but without being fixated on fence everything regardless.
What I’m arguing here is approach. If we reduce it down to all animal shit is bad and all waterways must be fenced, I think we are going to created a different set of problems and avoid dealing with some of the more urgent ones.
The fear that many farmers have around river fencing in the sheep and beef sector is that they are going to be forced to fence water off in places that are hugely expensive that will require a lot of up keep and or mean fencing out large chunks of productive land, this is why i believe they are being so stubborn about it.
Stock would still need to cross the waterways when being moved right? So there is the extra cost of gate systems presumably.
It’s a tricky one, especially for smaller rivers and streams. They really need riparian planting too, but it’s easy to see how much land would be lost. Probably the riparian planting needs to be productive somehow.
If your talking gate to get cattle trough a 1 or 2 wire electric it’s a $60 set up and an hour or so to build .
It’s going to be about having a policy that forces cattle to be excluded with out having some dipstick with a letter or two behind his name pissing everyone of with unworkable ideas.
(Unitary plan and developers doing as was expected and deciding not to even develop 10% of affordable houses and instead to use the more developer friendly unitary plan rules. With the SHA, only 26 out of 154 managed to complete some houses, but many made a killing out of the zoning changes. Great to see developers and land owners making money while delivering few houses, just as the government ordered (sarc.).
“A nation’s prosperity isn’t measured in exports and show and false fronts, it’s in the way people live and how much sun they get, and where the kids grow up and how the sanitation works.”
“40,000 families living in houses that should have been pulled down, living in rooms and flats, wherever they could find a roof over their heads, sometimes several families in one house. 40,000 families in 1935.”
Thanks so much Paul, appreciated. It’s an excellent glimpse of our history that is just as relevant today, as it was back then. Given what is happening today, we really have gone backwards, haven’t we? The struggle is still the same, nothing has changed except the dates.
Any noticeable difference between the RM and the media ones (eg CB)? Just wondering of the TV networks are moving away from polling as part of the shift to infotainment.
Bad times for the Nats. And maybe AG’s got some bad news coming about Saudi sheep and Mr McCully? Holding fire until Nat spin machine swings into action?
RM had originally stated on their web page that their Aug poll was due on the 19th. Then they changed the date on their web page to the 26th. It is still hasn’t materialised.
It may be something as simple as them prioritising contact centre resources to their more commercial polls this month.
“Well Roy Morgan only polls once a month, instead of every 2 weeks, as I’m sure you know … So that change by itself results in far fewer polls taking place.”
True. But that was already the case last year … and yet look at the comparison – 18 by late Aug 2015 / just 12 this year.
And (naturally enough) Polls are usually fewest in number during the first year after the election. This is the first time in quite a while that the “middle” year of the electoral cycle (2016) has had fewer polls (Jan-Aug) than the “first” year (2015) (as you can see … 12 compared to 18).
Colmar Brunton always release on a Sunday. The gap between each poll has always (well, for a very long time now) been 6 – 8 weeks (excepting the New Year/Summer Recess). It’s now an absolutely bloody astounding 12 weeks (to the day) since their last poll was released. All down, of course, to decisions made by One News.
There hasn’t been much significant, sustained movement in the polls (beyond the notorious bounciness of the Roy Morgan) since 2014. So one possible explanation is that news editors got bored of printing stories saying “National still has whopping majority, Labour+Greens still kind of neck-and-neck with National, Winston still probably going to make the final decision”.
Yeah, but Lab+Green and the Oppo Bloc are well up on their 36% (L+G) and 46% (Oppo) share at the Sep 2014 Election. And the Broad Right (Govt parties + Cons) are well down on their 53% share. (Luckily for National, a broad Nat-to-Lab swing has been largely disguised by the collapse of Colin Craig’s Conservatives).
So the polls haven’t been static. It’s possible to discern a broad swing to the Left (and the wider Opposition) through the middle of last year, then a swing back towards the Right over the Summer months and more recently a move back to the Left and NZF.
And that’s reflected in the National-to-Lab+Green aggregate comparisons.
National’s pollsters struggling to spin it in the Nats favour anymore?
I think the Nats are in trouble Swordfish, and they don’t want any bad publicity of opinion polling to show it.
I agree with your point that Trump is desperate for campaign donations.
Yes, I also agree that Trump is raising far less money than Clinton and is having to push the boundaries harder.
The real problem for Trump’s campaign financing is huge. Simply put, he cannot get the big donations from Wall St hedge funds, bankers and K street lobbyists that Clinton is able to solicit.
That means that Clinton has been able to outspend Trump in TV and other media ads by more than 3 to 1.
The million people who protested in Sana’a against the Saudi invasion were not even mentioned in MSM.
Surprise, surprise…..the BBC, Guardian and the rest are just mouthpieces of the neo-liberal globalist establishment.
It’s funny you say “hysteria”, a word with its roots in assumptions about women’s anatomy and intelligence, when the most notoriously obnoxious Bernie Sanders fans were dudes.
Clinton hasn’t beaten Trump yet. I expect she will – but the US system (voter suppression/Tuesday elections/electoral college etc) is such a clusterfuck I don’t think anyone should crow about it until the votes are counted (and the lawsuits are settled).
Centrist isn’t out of touch, and extra holidays are an extra cost to business. Perhaps we could replace Labour Day with it – society has given up on it anyway.
Primarily the socially progressive left leaning, top economic quintile (that is the top 20%) of NZers.
The bottom 50% of NZers who earn less than $30,000 p.a. are talked about by Labour, but they are never prioritised above the interests of higher earning groups.
Utter crap CV…… for your unhappy wherever you’re at in your deepest being CV…… a bunch of yuppies university degrees etc lucrative public service positions…….that’s the 20%s for Labour ? Stop it ! Stop it right now ! You’re acting like a troubled child shrieking all sorts of shit that no one takes seriously. Grief counseling maybe CV ? Grief about what I don’t know but fuck CV……!
Geeezus, talking about giving up on the principles of Labour Day, now you’re saying that we can’t afford to load business with any more labour costs like holidays???
I’ll tell you what, I think that we need to go to a four day working week, and that penalty rates need to be brought back.
What do you think about that for extra costs on business?
I fully agree. 4 day, 30 hour week, double time for more than either of those, triple time if both, and also triple time on public holidays, 6 weeks annual leave.
Anybody here disappointed with the National government’s anti Kiwi/worker legislation and National’s sycophantic supporters?
Lets face it, in National’s ideal draconian and feudal world, workers would be enslaved to serve it’s elites on no pay at all and there would be no public holidays to give workers break either.
No public holiday for New Zealand Land Wars
The Government has made it very clear: The Land Wars commemoration day will not be a public holiday.
A commemorative day was announced last week after pressure from local communities and a school-led petition asked for a day of recognition.
However, Deputy Prime Minister Bill English said some people have misunderstood what has been agreed.
“We’ve taken a view that there’s no need for a public holiday and in any case, there isn’t yet agreement about a date even just for a commemoration.”
The decision had come out of discussion with the Maori Party, and English was “pretty sure” it had approved by Cabinet. Yet, Maori Party co-leader Marama Fox called for a public holiday and believed it was “still up for debate”.
English also said any commemorations on the day should be locally-led.
“The Government provides some resource, but this has to be something that people want to own, not something that’s pushed on them,” English said.
“It’s up to the people who want to see a commemoration occur. There was a bit of a ceremony last week with the handover of one of the pa sites to Tainui where a significant battle occurred in the Waikato. There may be more of that. That’ll unfold as we go.”
Prime Minister John Key said no progress had been made yet on choosing a date: “We are saying it’s likely there might be agreement at some point that that commemoration date can be set, but it would be also subject, I think, to iwi agreeing.”
SWAP EXISTING HOLIDAYS FOR LAND WARS?
A current public holiday could possibly we swapped out, says Labour leader Andrew Little – suggesting provincial holidays could be scrapped in lieu of a national New Zealand Wars commemoration day.
“I don’t understand why we continue to celebrate provincial holidays when we haven’t had provincial government since 1863.”
He agreed the Queen’s Birthday holiday could be another option.
“There is a case to be made for an observance by way of a day off,” he said.
However, Peeni Henare, Labour MP for Tamaki Makaurau, didn’t think it should be made a holiday.
“It was made clear in the first consultation that happened a number of months ago that it would not be made a public holiday, but simply a day for commemoration,” Henare said.
“There are some costs involved, there are already a number of public holidays … I’m quite clear as the Chairperson of the Ruapekapeka Pa Trust that it shouldn’t be a holiday.”
Little supported the Government setting aside a day in principle: “We ought to be observing our own internal land wars in the way that we observe conflicts and casualties in other wars that we’ve participated in.”
Little also believed more needed to be taught at schools about the New Zealand wars.
“We shouldn’t be embarrassed by it, we should accept that it’s happened in the past, and we should learn from it and embrace what we have now, which is a set of legal arrangements that ensure that the Treaty of Waitangi is starting now to be observed – not only in the law but in the spirit.”
Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei said a public holiday during winter should be part of consideration by the Government.
Lovely day here in Auckland – Friday nights storms are over except that Vector have cut power for hot water here on parts of the North Shore. Seems to be the poorer parts too, again.
Now 36 hours and counting.
This has been a persistent problem for a decade – a bit of rough weather in the north or west and no hot water for a day or more. According to Vector’s fault-line it is due to an ‘architectural issue’ in the old United Networks system acquired by Vector in 2002.
In 2015 Vector paid 8 cents per share in dividends. Total share issue according to NZX is 995m shares.
So it looks like that is $80m in 2015 alone paid out as unearned income for shareholders? I wonder how much it might cost to fix that ‘architectural issue’?
Seems to me that all the 1990’s privatisation of these utilities was a scam, allowing some NZers (the ones well off enough to buy shares) to parasitise other NZers through high electricity charges and in this case poor service and reduced quality of life.
Cutting the hot water circuits is a quick and dirty way (ahem) of reducing load on power distribution components that are near to failing, until something can be done to patch the system up.
Over the next few years, as storm intensity increases, this ‘strategy of fragility’ is going to leave Auckland with bigger and bigger disruptions.
I’m pretty sure large parts of Auckland use pilot wire rather than ripple controlled hot water switching and in my experience restoring supply is paramount with pilot wires a secondary task.
So CV how was Labour responsible for that and how will your darling Drumpf fix that and do you promise ? Egg carried away with your bitterness and a plague on EVERYTHING accordingly. You didn’t used to be like this CV. What’s happened to you ?
And ended up Trump-eting. Like actually supporting the presently ascertainble greater evil. Don’t you understand how fucking ugly that is to people like me, and you CV. And you ! ???
AB, cutting power to hot water systems during bad weather has been going on for decades, if memory serves a sparky once told me some years back, it started in the 1950’s. I thought it was just a West Auckland thing too until he told me it occurs throughout Auckland. If you have the know how it’s an extremely simple and quick procedure to trip and bypass it in your fuse box and then you will never lose hot water again.
“privatisation of these utilities was a scam”.
Given that 75.1% of Vector is owned by the AECT, which is a trust owned by the people of Auckland and with a publicly elected board, it hardly seems that you can blame “Privatisation” for its failings. It wasn’t privatised, was it?
You might do a great deal better if it really was privatised. Thank God Vector sold the lines company here in Wellington. We don’t have anything like the problems that Auckland seems to.
Vector is still 75% owned by the AECT Trust. This Trust is governed by a democratically elected Board.
The AECT is scheduled to be returned to the Council in about 60 years.
Unless a government can be persuaded to accelerate that a whole lot faster.
That would give Auckland Council a fairly large money-printing machine.
Plus comprehensive control of all major utilities, like when we had coherent government.
The kind of people supporting Trump, and the kind of people Trump supports (refusing to denounce endorsements from the bedsheets and brown shirts types, appointing Breibart’s Bannon as campaign manager) :
This review of the film The Childhood of a Leader by Kim Newman is quite apposite:
The adult actors are all excellent, though required to be stooges for Sweet. It takes three parents, several servants, a world war, a corrupt church (Prescott yells “I don’t believe in praying any more” like a mantra) to shape this monster. The failures of these adults and their institutions create the vacuum that allows his eventual rise. This may be the story of the childhood of a leader, but we have to look at the grown-ups who fail to solve or resolve anything – from a dinner menu to an equitable peace – for a sketch of the mass abdication of responsibility that might make a great many people want to be led by a dangerous maniac. This is also the story of those who will be led.
Whoever it is it had better not be one of the “light rail” fanatics. Rather than just accept it is far to expensive for a town like Wellington a group of them have arbitrarily decided that it can be done for half the price. These are the highly qualified engineering consultants like Laidlaw and Kedgley.
Jo Coughlan seems by far the best.
And it had better not be one of the “let’s concrete everything in sight and dig up the basin reserve and put 4 lanes of motorway through to the airport with the $300 million proposed ratepayer subsidy” all of which makes light rail look like petty cash.
Not Jo Coughlan
Rubbish, Coughlan wants to spend $1 billion on roading, including duplicating the Vic and Terrace tunnels, and flyovers and whatever else. That is just crazy in a world that’s already hitting its limits and with fluctuating oil prices.
Laying rails and wires down Campbridge Terrace, Adelaide Rd, Constable St and to the airport will be a shitload cheaper and much less work. Not hard to see that.
It is what happens when I start editing something at 0300.
In this case there was a function I wanted to remove in the trash as part of internal security review. It was hooked into the AEC (Ajax Edit Comments) which hadn’t been updated in 3 years and which provided our re-edit and which had a pile of extra functions that we didn’t use any more. So I hunted for something that just did the re-edit function.
The guy who wrote the AEC originally had done one called Simple Comment Edit (SCE) which after I tested it, turned out to be much better for our needs.
It was on my list last night. But I wound up working on several other issues first.
Coffee and I will try to merge the code bases together again.
In the meantime while I wait for the coffee to take effect, I’m purging 36 thousand revisions of the authors posts that are no longer required. That should save some backup bandwidth.
hehe that makes me feel important , but i’m not involved in nor do i know anyone who is involved with the running of the standard , just a random commenter is who i am.
I was having a chat outside the supermarket in my town with a District Court judge and I advanced the lament that we don’t have any strong moral leadership in NZ anymore……judge obviously understood me and responded – “Well yes, I agree John Key’s a little bit ‘relaxed’ maybe, but……. ”
Like it’s fucking OK overall ? And on the following Monday morning District Court judge went back to dispensing, ahem, justice ??? Yes he did. But none of the subjects of this dispensed ‘justice’ were fucking relaxed……and neither was ‘Mother Justice’. Rich people way up there are always fucking ‘relaxed’. Cos’ they don’t get hit with the unrelaxing shit that ordinary people have to suffer. So I don’t listen to them anymore. District Court judge et al……they’re wanking !
To persuade themselves, their own insides, that they’re selflessly making a difference. No…..!
Yep. Couldn’t agree more. You remind me of an incident that happened years and years ago. I was up before a district court judge on a speeding charge. Before I was called several others were up on the same charge and she dished out $50 fines. I came up before her… never spoke a word (my court appointed lawyer did the talking) and she lumbered me with a $100 fine. There was an audible gasp around the room. I was the only woman up on charges and I have to assume she did it because I was a young – a hell of a lot younger than her.
If I’d had the courage and confidence experience has since taught me, I would have called her out for what she was… a nasty bitch.
Just watch the BBC interviewer’s prejudice in favour of the establishment.
Can you imagine Sakkur treating a spokeperson from the banks in the same condescending manner?
I thought that was good Paul, Keen put his case forward very well while been challenged all the way, that’s what you want and guess why they call it hard talk To be fair to this interviewer he is pretty tough on all his interviews and prepared which is refreshing
For the first time since the Cold War the German government is advising citizens to stockpile food and water for use in a national emergency.
Some opposition MPs said the new civil defence concept, to go before ministers on Wednesday, was scaremongering.
Citizens are advised to store enough food to last them 10 days, because initially a disaster might put national emergency services beyond reach.
Five days’ water – two litres (half a gallon) per person daily – is advised.
I lived in Germany for nearly 2 years. I was impressed – they generally do much less stupid than we do. They discussed economic matters seriously, and conquered inflation long before we did. They also prevented the ridiculous house price problem we have. They are far more heavily populated, and have done far more than we have to counter pollution. And kept a truly successful economy, despite taking on the burden of an impoverished East Germany 26 years ago.
Not a known earthquake zone, but … I would listen if I were there.
But here in NZ we need fear nothing in these Golden Times with our Rocket Economy.
And our PM can find another expert to contradict anyone who points out a threat like filthy waterways…
And Germany has introduced debt-free tertiary education.
Yep – they are way ahead of us.
I expect they will under their small government masters want to normalise classes being held in libraries, staff rooms, resource rooms, and storage sheds in the same way the current government has normalised poverty, homelessness, and crime. After all, according to John Key’s men, this is what happens in tough economic times.
I would really love to see someone in the media track the progress of these “230 new classrooms”, and “six new schools”.
there’s empty classrooms all over the country but hey what the fuck lets all pile into the big cities so we can enjoy all the pleasures of traffic jams and overcrowding.
Dirty fucking cop…….what’re all those (certainly looked like essentially tidy) young fullas gonna think next time…….you humiliated me last time areshole cop……here, feast on this. Whack ! You can see it a mile off. All because of one Rambo Little Dick Cock. That kid on the bike was more a man by a mile than that thick bully fuck cop.
This should be the subject of a criminal charge of assault laid against the doggish bully cop. Won’t happen of course. Assaults BY police are ten fold of assaults AGAINST police. And judges know it but ‘politically’ they close their ears and then they end up believing their own closed ears.
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Grigori GuitchountsIn November, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, made an attention-grabbing announcement: More than 30 of its most prestigious journals, including the flagship Nature, will now allow authors to pay a fee of US$11,390 to make their papers freely available for anyone to read ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, and Benjamin Santer Imagine a major climate change law passing the U.S. Congress unanimously? Don’t bother. It turns out that you don’t need to imagine it. Get this: The Global Change Research Act of 1990 was passed ...
“They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”WHO CAN FORGET the penultimate scene of the 1956 movie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The wild-eyed doctor, stumbling down the highway, trying desperately to warn his fellow citizens: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”Ostensibly science-fiction, the movie ...
TheOneRing.Net has got its paws on the official synopsis of the upcoming Amazon Tolkien TV series. It’s a development that brings to mind the line about Sauron deliberately releasing Gollum from the dungeons of Barad-dûr. Amazon knew exactly what they were doing here, in terms of drumming up publicity: ...
Since Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953, US presidents have joined an informal club intended to provide support - and occasionally rivalry - between those few who have been ‘leaders of the free world’. Donald Trump, elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and a constant mocker of his predecessors, ...
For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Kieren Mitchell; Alice Mouton, Université de Liège; Angela Perri, Durham University, and Laurent Frantz, Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichThanks to the hit television series Game of Thrones, the dire wolf has gained a near-mythical status. But it was a real animal that roamed the Americas for at least 250,000 ...
Tide of tidal data rises Having cast our own fate to include rising sea level, there's a degree of urgency in learning the history of mean sea level in any given spot, beyond idle curiosity. Sea level rise (SLR) isn't equal from one place to another and even at a particular ...
Well, some of those chickens sure came home bigly, didn’t they… and proceeded to shit all over the nice carpet in the Capitol. What we were seeing here are societal forces that have long had difficulty trying to reconcile people to the “idea” of America and the reality of ...
In the wake of Donald Trump's incitement of an assault on the US capitol, Twitter finally enforced its terms of service and suspended his account. They've since followed that up with action against prominent QAnon accounts and Trumpers, including in New Zealand. I'm not unhappy with this: Trump regularly violated ...
Peter S. Ross, University of British ColumbiaThe Arctic has long proven to be a barometer of the health of our planet. This remote part of the world faces unprecedented environmental assaults, as climate change and industrial chemicals threaten a way of life for Inuit and other Indigenous and northern ...
Susan St John makes the case for taxing a deemed rate of return on excessive real estate holdings (after a family home exemption), to redirect scarce housing resources to where they are needed most. Read the full article here ...
I’m less than convinced by arguments that platforms like Twitter should be subject to common carrier regulation preventing them from being able to decide who to keep on as clients of their free services, and who they would not like to serve. It’s much easier to create competition for the ...
The hypocritical actions of political leaders throughout the global Covid pandemic have damaged public faith in institutions and governance. Liam Hehir chronicles the way in which contemporary politicians have let down the public, and explains how real leadership means walking the talk. During the Blitz, when German bombs were ...
Over the years, we've published many rebuttals, blog posts and graphics which came about due to direct interactions with the scientists actually carrying out the underlying research or being knowledgable about a topic in general. We'll highlight some of these interactions in this blog post. We'll start with two memorable ...
Yesterday we had the unseemly sight of a landleech threatening to keep his houses empty in response to better tenancy laws. Meanwhile in Catalonia they have a solution for that: nationalisation: Barcelona is deploying a new weapon in its quest to increase the city’s available rental housing: the power ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters, PhD The 2020 global wildfire season brought extreme fire activity to the western U.S., Australia, the Arctic, and Brazil, making it the fifth most expensive year for wildfire losses on record. The year began with an unprecedented fire event ...
NOTE: This is an excerpt from a digital story – read the full story here.Tess TuxfordKo te Kauri Ko Au, Ko te Au ko Kauri I am the kauri, the kauri is me Te Roroa proverb In Waipoua Forest, at the top of the North Island, New ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Coming attraction: IPCC's upcoming major climate assessmentLook for more emphasis on 'solutions,' efforts by cities, climate equity ... and outlook for emissions cuts in ...
Ringing A Clear Historical Bell: The extraordinary images captured in and around the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021 mirror some of the worst images of America's past.THERE IS A SCENE in the 1982 movie Missing which has remained with me for nearly 40 years. Directed by the Greek-French ...
To impact or not to impeach? I understand why some of those who are justifiably aghast at Trump’s behaviour over recent days might still counsel against impeaching him for a second time. To impeach him, they argue, would run the risk of making him a martyr in the eyes of ...
The Capitol Building, Washington DC, Wednesday, 6 January 2021. Oh come, my little one, come.The day is almost done.Be at my side, behold the sightOf evening on the land.The life, my love, is hardAnd heavy is my heart.How should I live if you should leaveAnd we should be apart?Come, let me ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 3, 2021 through Sat, Jan 9, 2021Editor's ChoiceAfter the Insurrection: Accountability, Reform, and the Science of Democracy The poisonous lies and enablers of sedition--including Senator Hawley, pictured ...
This article, guest authored by Prof. Angela Gallego-Sala & Dr. Julie Loisel, was originally published on the Carbon Brief website on Dec 21, 2020. It is reposted below in its entirety. Click here to access the original article and comments. Peatlands Peatlands are ecosystems unlike any other. Perpetually saturated, their ...
The assault on the US Capitol and constitutional crisis that it has caused was telegraphed, predictable and yet unexpected and confusing. There are several subplots involved: whether the occupation of the Michigan State House in May was a trial run for the attacks on Congress; whether people involved in the ...
On Christmas Eve, child number 1 spotted a crack in a window. It’s a double-glazed window, and inspection showed that the small, horizontal crack was in the outermost pane. It was perpendicular to the frame, about three-quarters of the way up one side. The origins are a mystery. It MIGHT ...
Anne-Marie Broudehoux, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Will the COVID-19 pandemic prompt a shift to healthier cities that focus on wellness rather than functional and economic concerns? This is a hypothesis that seems to be supported by several researchers around the world. In many ways, containment and physical distancing ...
Does the US need to strike a grand bargain with like-minded countries to pool their efforts? What does this tell us about today’s global politics? Perhaps the most remarkable editorial of last year was the cover leader of the London Economist on 19 November 2020. Shortly after Joe Biden was ...
Alexander Gillespie, University of Waikato and Valmaine Toki, University of WaikatoAotearoa New Zealand likes to think it punches above its weight internationally, but there is one area where we are conspicuously falling behind — the number of sites recognised by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. Globally, there are 1,121 ...
An event organised by the Auckland PhilippinesSolidarity group Have a three-course lunch at Nanam Eatery with us! Help support the organic farming of our Lumad communities through the Mindanao Community School Agricultural Foundation. Each ticket is $50. Food will be served on shared plates. To purchase, please email phsolidarity@gmail.com or ...
"Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here." Prisons are places of unceasing emotional and physical violence, unrelieved despair and unforgivable human waste.IT WAS NATIONAL’S Bill English who accurately described New Zealand’s prisons as “fiscal and moral failures”. On the same subject, Labour’s Dr Martyn Findlay memorably suggested that no prison ...
This is a re-post from Inside Climate News by Ilana Cohen. Inside Climate News is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here. Whether or not people accept the science on Covid-19 and climate change, both global crises will have lasting impacts on health and ...
. . American Burlesque As I write this (Wednesday evening, 6 January), the US Presidential election is all but resolved, confirming Joe Biden as the next President of the (Dis-)United State of America. Trump’s turbulent political career has lasted just four years – one of the few single-term US presidents ...
The session started off so well. Annalax – suitably chastised – spent a pleasant morning with his new girlfriend (he would say paramour, of course, but for our purposes, girlfriend is easier*). He told her about Waking World Drow, and their worship of Her Ladyship. And he started ...
In a recent column I wrote for local newspapers, I ventured to suggest that Donald Trump – in addition to being a liar and a cheat, and sexist and racist – was a fascist in the making and would probably try, if he were to lose the election, to defy ...
When I was preparing for my School C English exam I knew I needed some quotes to splash through my essays. But remembering lines was never my strong point, so I tended to look for the low-hanging fruit. We’d studied Shakespeare’s King Lear that year and perhaps the lowest hanging ...
When I went to bed last night, I was expecting today to be eventful. A lot of pouting in Congress as last-ditch Trumpers staged bad-faith "objections" to a democratic election, maybe some rioting on the streets of Washington DC from angry Trump supporters. But I wasn't expecting anything like an ...
Melted ice of the past answers question today? Kate Ashley and a large crew of coauthors wind back the clock to look at Antarctic sea ice behavior in times gone by, in Mid-Holocene Antarctic sea-ice increase driven by marine ice sheet retreat. For armchair scientists following the Antarctic sea ice situation, something jumps out in ...
Christina SzalinskiWhen Martha Field became pregnant in 2005, a singular fear weighed on her mind. Not long before, as a Cornell University graduate student researching how genes and nutrients interact to cause disease, she had seen images of unborn mouse pups smaller than her pinkie nail, some with ...
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidates for President and Vice President respectively for the US 2020 Election, may have dispensed with the erstwhile nemesis, Trump the candidate – but there are numerous critical openings through which much, much worse many out there may yet see fit to ...
I don’t know Taupō well. Even though I stop off there from time to time, I’m always on the way to somewhere else. Usually Taupō means making a hot water puddle in the gritty sand followed by a swim in the lake, noticing with bemusement and resignation the traffic, the ...
Frances Williams, King’s College LondonFor most people, infection with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – leads to mild, short-term symptoms, acute respiratory illness, or possibly no symptoms at all. But some people have long-lasting symptoms after their infection – this has been dubbed “long COVID”. Scientists are ...
Last night, a British court ruled that Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the US. Unfortunately, its not because all he is "guilty" of is journalism, or because the offence the US wants to charge him with - espionage - is of an inherently political nature; instead the judge accepted ...
Is the Gender Identity Movement a movement for human liberation, or is it a regressive movement which undermines women’s liberation and promotes sexist stereotypes? Should biological males be allowed to play in women’s sport, use women-only spaces (public toilets, changing rooms, other facilities), be able to have access to everything ...
Ian Whittaker, Nottingham Trent University and Gareth Dorrian, University of BirminghamSpace exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including commercial human spaceflight and returning samples of an asteroid to Earth. The coming year is shaping up to be just as interesting. Here are some of ...
Michael Head, University of SouthamptonThe UK has become the first country to authorise the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for public use, with roll-out to start in the first week of 2021. This vaccine is the second to be authorised in the UK – following the Pfizer vaccine. The British government ...
So, Boris Johnson has been footering about in hospitals again. We should be grateful, perhaps, that on this occasion the Clown-in-Chief is only (probably) getting in the way and causing distractions, rather than taking up a bed, vital equipment and resources and adding more strain and danger to exhausted staff.Look at ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... SkS in the News... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Many Scientists Now Say Global Warming Could Stop Relatively Quickly After Emissions Go to ZeroThat’s one of several recent ...
The situation in the UK is looking catastrophic.Cases: over *70,000* people who were tested in England on 29th December tested positive. This is *not* because there were more tests on that day. It *is* 4 days after Christmas though, around when people who caught Covid on Christmas Day might start ...
by Don Franks For five days over New Year weekend, sixteen prisoners in the archaic pre WW1 block of Waikeria Prison defied authorities by setting fires and occupying the building’s roof. They eventually agreed to surrender after intervention from Maori party co-leader Rawiri Waititi. A message from the protesting men had stated: ...
Lost Opportunity: The powerful political metaphor of the Maori Party leading the despised and marginalised from danger to safety, is one Labour could have pre-empted by taking the uprising at Waikeria Prison much more seriously. AS WORD OF Rawiri Waititi’s successful intervention in the Waikeria Prison stand-off spreads, the Maori ...
Dear friends, it’s been a covidious year,A testing time for all of us here—Citizens of an island nationIn a state of managed isolation,A team (someone said) five million strong,Making it up as we went along:Somehow in typical Kiwi fashion,Without any wild excess ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Dec 27, 2020 through Sat, Jan 2, 2021Editor's Choice7 Graphics That Show Why the Arctic Is in Trouble Arctic Sea Ice: NSIDC It’s no secret that the Arctic is ...
One of the books I read in 2020 was She, by H. Rider Haggard (1887). I thoroughly enjoyed it, as being an exemplar of a good old-fashioned adventure story. I also noted with amusement ...
Scottish doctor Malcolm Kendrick looks at the pandemic and the responses to it 30th December 2020 I have not written much about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, written many hundreds of ...
As we welcome in the new year, our focus is on continuing to keep New Zealanders safe and moving forward with our economic recovery. There’s a lot to get on with, but before we say a final goodbye to 2020, here’s a quick look back at some of the milestones ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
Babies born with tongue-tie will be assessed and treated consistently under new guidelines released by the Ministry of Health, Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. Around 5% to 10% of babies are born with a tongue-tie, or ankyloglossia, in New Zealand each year. At least half can ...
The prisoner disorder event at Waikeria Prison is over, with all remaining prisoners now safely and securely detained, Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis says. The majority of those involved in the event are members of the Mongols and Comancheros. Five of the men are deportees from Australia, with three subject to ...
Travellers from the United Kingdom or the United States bound for New Zealand will be required to get a negative test result for COVID-19 before departing, and work is underway to extend the requirement to other long haul flights to New Zealand, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed today. “The new PCR test requirement, foreshadowed last ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has added her warm congratulations to the New Zealanders recognised for their contributions to their communities and the country in the New Year 2021 Honours List. “The past year has been one that few of us could have imagined. In spite of all the things that ...
Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment David Parker has congratulated two retired judges who have had their contributions to the country and their communities recognised in the New Year 2021 Honours list. The Hon Tony Randerson QC has been appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says the New Year’s Honours List 2021 highlights again the outstanding contribution made by Pacific people across Aotearoa. “We are acknowledging the work of 13 Pacific leaders in the New Year’s Honours, representing a number of sectors including health, education, community, sports, the ...
The Government’s investment in digital literacy training for seniors has led to more than 250 people participating so far, helping them stay connected. “COVID-19 has meant older New Zealanders are showing more interest in learning how to use technology like Zoom and Skype so they can to keep in touch ...
Despite a popular and unifying leader of the governing party, divisions both in policy and culture will test the progressive movement, writes Peter McKenzie.‘I think we’re confused.” Marlon Drake is an organiser for the Living Wage Movement. His job takes him all over Wellington, trying to convince businesses to increase ...
Covid-19 Recovery Minister Chris Hipkins says vaccinations should be available to the public by the middle of the year, but other countries are prioritised. ...
It’s as true now as it ever has been: nowhere else offers an education experience like that of Dunedin. But rather than resting on their laurels, the University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic have plans to make the city an even more inspiring place for students.From high in the summit ...
Haggis, neeps and tatties and whisky may not be a traditional spread for a summer gathering in NZ, but trust Auckland city councillor and Kiwi-Scot Cathy Casey on this one. Gie it laldy! Rule one: Hold it on (or near) January 25Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759. Since the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University It could be argued artificial intelligence (AI) is already the indispensable tool of the 21st century. From helping doctors diagnose and treat patients to rapidly advancing new drug discoveries, it’s our ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University Through recent natural disasters, global upheavals and a pandemic, Australia’s political centre has largely held. Australians may have disagreed at times, but they have also kept faith with governmental norms, eschewing the false ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Seale, Associate professor, UNSW Health workers are at higher risk of COVID infection and illness. They can also act as extremely efficient transmitters of viruses to others in medical and aged care facilities. That’s why health workers have been prioritised to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jim Orchard, Adjunct Lecturer, Monash University Last week, somewhat overshadowed by the events in Washington, the Democrats took control of the US Senate. The Democrats now hold a small majority in both the House and the Senate until 2022, giving President-elect Joe ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mittul Vahanvati, Lecturer, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University Heatwaves, floods, bushfires: disaster season is upon us again. We can’t prevent hazards or climate change-related extreme weather events but we can prepare for them — not just as individuals ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mandie Shean, Lecturer, School of Education, Edith Cowan University Starting school is an important event for children and a positive experience can set the tone for the rest of their school experience. Some children are excited to attend school for the first ...
Some families in emergency housing are reporting their children are becoming emotionally distressed because of their living conditions. Demand for emergency accommodation has escalated this past year with the number of emergency housing grants increasing by half. Data showed nearly 10,000 people were given an Emergency Housing Special Needs Grant between ...
Summer reissue: Michèle A’Court, Alex Casey and Leonie Hayden are back for a second season of On the Rag, and where better to start than with the mysterious, exhausting world of wellness?First published June 23, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is ...
With few Covid-19 infections and negiligible natural immunity, New Zealand faces being a victim of its own success when it is left till last to get the vaccines, argues Dr Parmjeet Parmar. ...
Steve Braunias reports on a literary cancelling. The Corrections department has refused to allow Jared Savage's best-selling book Gangland inside prison on the grounds that it "promotes violence and drug use". An inmate at Otago Corrections Facility in Dunedin was sent a copy of the book – but it was ...
New data from the CTU’s annual work life survey shows a snapshot of working people’s experiences and outlook heading out of 2020 and into the new year. Concerningly 42% of respondents cite workplace bullying as an issue in their workplace - a number ...
An international player, selector and self-confessed cricket stats nerd, Penny Kinsella has now played a hand in recording the rich history of the women's game in New Zealand. Penny Kinsella’s cricketing career was perched on the cusp of change for the White Ferns. “My first tour to Australia, we ...
The dramatic capsize of American Magic brought out the best in the America's Cup sailing fraternity. But, Suzanne McFadden asks, what does it mean to the crippled New York Yacht Club campaign and to the Prada Cup? It was a scene as unreal as it was calamitous. Right at the moment the ...
The current number of members of parliament is starting to get too low for the job we expect them to do, argues Alex Braae. As a general rule, with the possible exception of their families, nobody likes backbench MPs. But it’s nevertheless time we accepted that parliament should have more of ...
The experience in the Brazilian city of Manaus reveals how mistaken, and dangerous, the herd-immunity-by-infection theory really is. As families around the world mourn more than two million people dead from Covid-19, the Plan B academics and their PR industry collaborator continue to argue that the New Zealand government should stop ...
As New Zealand gears up to fight climate change, experts warn that we need to actually reduce emissions, not just plant trees to offset our greenhouse gases. ...
A nationwide poll has found majority support for the government to continue to closely monitor abortions in New Zealand and the reasons for it, despite the Ministry of Health recently suggesting that there is not a use for collecting much of this information. ...
The out-of-control growth in gangs, gun crime, and violent gang activity is exposing our communities to dangerous levels of violence that will inevitably end in tragedy, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “The recent incidents of people being shot and ...
Successive governments have paid lip service to our productivity challenge but have failed to deliver. It's time to establish a Productivity Council charged with prioritising efforts. ...
Understanding the connection between chronic fatigue syndrome and ‘long Covid’ might be helpful in treating symptoms that doctors will find all too easy to dismiss.When people began to report signs of “long Covid”, characterised by a lack of full recovery from the virus and debilitating fatigue, I recognised their stories. ...
Nadine Anne Hura, who never considered herself an artist, reflects on what art and making has taught her.I couldn’t clean or cook or wash the clothes, but I could sew. That’s a lie, I’m a terrible sewer, but I left work early to fossick around in the $1 bin of ...
Summer reissue: In the final episode of this season of Bad News, Alice is joined by Billy T award winner Kura Forrester to look at how well we’re honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 2020.First published September 3, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The ...
Lucy Revill’s The Residents is a blog about daily life in Wellington that has morphed into a stylish, low-key coffee-table book featuring interviews and photographic portraits of 38 Wellingtonians. In this extract, Revill profiles Eboni Waitere, owner and executive director of Huia Publishers. The Residents features names like Monique Fiso ...
Pacific Media Watch correspondent The pro-independence conflict in West Papua with a missionary plane reportedly being shot down at Intan Jaya has stirred contrasting responses from the TNI/POLRI state sources, church leaders and an independence leader. A shooting caused a plane to catch fire on 6 January 2021 in the ...
“Last year ACT warned that rewarding protestors at Ihumātao with taxpayer money would promote further squatting. We just didn’t think it would happen as quickly as it is in Shelly Bay” says ACT Leader David Seymour. “The prosperity of all ...
Our kindly PM registered her return to work as leader of the nation with yet another statement on the Beehive website, the second in two days (following her appointment of Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council on Wednesday). It’s great to know we don’t have to check with ...
A Pūhoi pub is refusing to remove a piece of memorabilia bearing the n-word from its walls. Dr Lachy Paterson looks at the history of the word here, and New Zealand’s complicity in Britain’s shameful slave trading past.Content warning: This article contains racist language and images.On a pub wall in ...
Supermarket shoppers looking for citrus are seeing a sour trend at the moment – some stores are entirely tapped out of lemons. But why? Batches of homemade lemonade will be taking a hit this summer, with life not giving New Zealand shoppers lemons. Prices are high at supermarkets and grocers that ...
You’re born either a cheery soul or a gloomy one, reckons Linda Burgess – but what happens when gene pools from opposite ends of the spectrum collide?In our shoeboxes of photos that we have to sort out before we die or get demented – because who IS that kid on ...
Summer reissue: Prisoner voting rights are something that few in government seem particularly motivated to do anything about. Could a catchy charity single help draw attention to the issue?First published September 1, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its ...
Hundreds more Cook Islanders are expected to begin criss-crossing the Pacific, Air NZ will triple the number of flights to Rarotonga next week, and about 300 managed isolation places will be freed up for Kiwis returning from other parts of the world. When Thomas Tarurongo Wynne took a job in Wellington at ...
SPECIAL REPORT:By Ena Manuireva in Auckland It seems a long time ago – some 124 days – since Mā’ohi Nui deplored its first covid-19 related deaths of an elderly woman on 11 September 2020 followed by her husband just hours later, both over the age of 80. The local ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Turnbull, Postdoctoral research associate, UNSW A global coalition of more than 50 countries have this week pledged to protect over 30% of the planet’s lands and seas by the end of this decade. Their reasoning is clear: we need greater protection ...
The Reserve Bank Governor’s apology and claim he will ‘own the issue’ is laughable given the lack of answers and timing of its release. Jordan Williams, a spokesman for the Taxpayers’ Union said: “It’s been five days since they came clean, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olga Kokshagina, Researcher – Innovation & Entrepreneurship, RMIT University Are too many online meetings and notifications getting you down? Online communication tools – from email to virtual chat and video-conferencing – have transformed the way we work. In many respects they’ve made ...
The Reserve Bank acknowledges information about some of its stakeholders may have been breached in a malicious data hack. The Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has commissioned an independent inquiry into how stakeholders' information was compromised when hackers breached a file sharing service used by the bank. “We ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Syme, PhD in Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of Queensland This story contains spoilers for Ammonite Palaeontologist Mary Anning is known for discovering a multitude of Jurassic fossils from Lyme Regis on England’s Dorset Coast from the age of ten in 1809. ...
A tribute to the sitcoms of old? In the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Yup. Sam Brooks reviews the audacious WandaVision.Nothing sends a chill up my spine like the phrase “Marvel Cinematic Universe”. Since launching in 2008 with Iron Man, the MCU has become a shambling behemoth, with over 23 films (not ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University The alt-right, QAnon, paramilitary and Donald Trump-supporting mob that stormed the US Capitol on January 6 claimed they were only doing what the so-called “founding fathers” of the US had done in ...
The Point of Order Ministerial Workload Watchdog and our ever-vigilant Trough Monitor were both triggered yesterday by an item of news from the office of Conservation Minister Kititapu Allan. The minister was drawing attention to new opportunities to dip into the Jobs for Nature programme (and her statement was the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreas Kupz, Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University In July 1921, a French infant became the first person to receive an experimental vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), after the mother had died from the disease. The vaccine, known as Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG), is ...
The first Friday Poem for 2021 is by Wellington poet Rebecca Hawkes.While you were partying I studied the bladeI your ever-loving edgelord God-emperorof the bot army & bitcoin mine subsistingon an IV drip of gamer girl bathwaterfinally my lonelinessis your responsibility………. you seeI need a girlfriend assigned to me by the ...
The arming of police officers in Canterbury was inevitable with the growing numbers and brazenness of the gangs across the country – this should be a permanent step, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “It is unfortunate that we have come to the point ...
Celebrations in Aotearoa New Zealand to mark the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will begin on Thursday 21 January with ICAN Aotearoa New Zealand’s Wellington and online event, and continue on Friday ...
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Just been watching something about the Aus refugee camps in Nauru on Al Jazeera. It’ so depressing to hear as Australia and NZ having a special relationship when they are so fundamentally racist and abusive.
We should be applying more pressure. Sadly we seem to lack political will
Please tell us. What pressure do you really think we can apply to make Australia change its ways? Remember when you propose ideas that the Australian Government actions are supported by all the major political parties there and are popular with the Australian public.
Should we declare war on them? Expel all Australian-national residents in New Zealand? Seize all Australian owned property and businesses?
And if you choose to do any of those things what would you do if they retaliate?
No we should publicaly call out their actions on the world stage. Whether it makes a difference or not is irrelevant. We should stand for human rights for all.
But right wing scum like yourself probably don’t give a shit about human rights unless a buck can be made from it.
“But right wing scum like yourself probably don’t give a shit about human rights unless a buck can be made from it.”
You have no reason whatsoever to such a remark. But then evidence for something is never required in your dirty little world view is it?
A**hole.
“Calling out their actions on the world stage” isn’t going to apply any “pressure” at all to the Australian Government. Their actions are popular with their own population and they really don’t give a damn about what anyone else thinks of the matter.
It would be about as successful as simply saying what vile people Iranians are for all the executions they carry out and for wanting to build nuclear weapons.
It wasn’t those statements that had any effect. It was the sanctions that supplied the pressure. The only pressure we can apply to Australia would be something similar. There isn’t really anything effective we can do though is there?
Being opposed to human rights abuses is a “dirty little world view”?
Of course it is not.
What is a “dirty little world view” is accusing someone who asks how you hope to achieve your aim, ie “to apply pressure on Australia” how you expect to achieve.
Your second paragraph abusing me is the crappy composition of an idiot.
How can you possibly think that my question makes me someone who is in favour of human rights abuses?
You want to “apply pressure”. What can you propose that might have any such effect?
How dirty does a country have to be before a right winger will refuse to trade with them?
Apartheid South Africa? Nope: the right opposed trade sanctions at every turn.
Saudi Arabia? Nope.
Pinochet’s Chile? You copy his policies, for fucks sake!
Face it, at home you confiscate the proceeds of crime. If we applied that to your trade relationships the crown would be a whole lot richer.
Travel ban all the government MPs would be a good start. Also go to Nauru and arrest persons in charge of the facility there on human rights crimes.
I think we would have to ban all their MPs. Both the Government and the Opposition (at least most of them) are thoroughly in favour of the policy.
On the other hand I doubt it would really inconvenience them unless, just possibly, they were going to pass through Auckland on the way to the US.
“Go to Nauru and arrest them”. I’m not sure we would be able to. They probably have more military there than we could deliver to the island.
Would that be an act of war I wonder?
.
.Hi The Extremist
. I admire your disgust at the bastardry of the Australians and their gulags dotted around the pacific ocean and indian ocean. A truly objectionable Mr John Howard got these established.
He was extremely proud of his excruciating punishment of any people his redneck followers disliked.
However if New Zealand were to complain too loudly Australia would simply say go and fix up your own problems. You’ve got 40,000 homeless people living in shitty conditions and you don’ t do a damn thing about it.
The Kettle tries to avoid calling the pot black.
.
Well said OT.
How about we refuse to play sport against them? No rugby, just like South Africa. And get other countries to do the same.
South Africa really cared about rugby – while whites only counted, it was their major winter sport, like here. Rugby is only minor 3rd winter sport in Oz, so forget it.
Not just rugby, all sport. Netball, league – the lot, and encourage other countries to do it. Aussies love all sport and the relationship NZ has with Aussie makes the context very different to South Africa. The real problem is that nobody’s got the guts. If they did it it’d work.
“What we have undergone is a coup d’etat in slow motion, and we’ve lost. They’ve won.”
Chris Hedges, author of ‘Death of the Liberal Class,’ in a lecture delivered at the University of Toronto, November 4th, 2010.
Well, they [the corporates] may have won a battle or two, but the war is still raging. We, the activists are the front-line troops who will/must ultimately triumph. Literally, the survival of the human race is at stake.
But we need to ‘self-ask’: what am I doing to bring about a favourable conclusion in this epic fight?
Talk is never enough!
March for democracy, 10th September.
What March?
Day of Action Aotearoa – check out It’s Our Future NZ.
thanks.
https://itsourfuture.org.nz/event/day-action-across-aotearoa/
I liked this,
The Day of Action is a protest, but also an affirmation of reclaiming democracy. We will highlight and celebrate the positive alternatives in communities in Aotearoa – through organics, permaculture, community gardens; local renewable energy, EVs, divestment from fossil fuels; campaigns for better public transport and cycling; UBI, community finance, time banking; refugee support groups; etc.
What March?
Day of Action Aotearoa – check out It’s Our Future NZ.
You ask twice … you get answered twice 🙂
Lol, it wasn’t me, it was the other weka messing with you ;-p
Chris Hedges is correct, particularly for the US situation. A corporate coup d’etat took over government for the people of the people, sometime in the 1980s or early 1990s.
5th August 1981, to be precise.
On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who’d defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.
It was a bold and brash move. No one had ever tried it. What made it even bolder was that PATCO was one of only three unions that had endorsed Reagan for president! It sent a shock wave through workers across the country. If he would do this to the people who were with him, what would he do to us?
[…]
And so it went. But Reagan could not have pulled this off by himself in 1981. He had some big help:
The AFL-CIO.
The biggest organization of unions in America told its members to cross the picket lines of the air traffic controllers and go to work. And that’s just what these union members did. Union pilots, flight attendants, delivery truck drivers, baggage handlers — they all crossed the line and helped to break the strike. And union members of all stripes crossed the picket lines and continued to fly.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110908045727/http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/30-years-ago-today
Ahhhh, thanks for the history brief, joe90.
Apart from supporting Reagan here, the AFL CIO have of course also been long time collaborators of the crony capitalists on the other side of the chamber.
A corporate coup d’etat took over government in NZ in 1984, led by Roger Douglas.
Fed Farmers: We reserve the right to poison New Zealand’s water ways.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/environmentalists-exploited-river-cattle-saga—farmers-2016082806
He reminds me of a tobacco company shill.
Mr Rolleston said the cattle were downstream from the Havelock North Bores – what sort of pathetic excuse is that, for what shouldn’t be happening ever in NZ. He said its a huge job to get on top of for farmers and there will be lapses from time to time – does that mean he can find it comfortable to allow 4000 people to get sick and just get over it. because of the odd lapse. Disgraceful conduct from Fed. Farmers.
On easy ground such as one finds next to most bigger rivers , one man could easily put up 200mtrs of single wire electric fence in a day, two men with a tractor mounted post rammer could probably do close to a km. It’s not a big job ,it’s just some farmers are ignorant fools.
I’ve just commented below about the need to talk about regenerative practices. So fencing off waterways is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff response (still necessary, we need ambulances). Beyond that is riparian plantings. But even that is not regenerative if we are still overstocking, over fertilising etc. There is still excess nitrogen in that system, still too much soil degradation, too much compaction etc.
My point is that I think we need to get past this idea of we have to protect the waterways, esp now our drinking water is making us sick, and think about the whole system. Because fencing off the waterways so the e coli doesn’t get in the bore won’t stop the other problems and we will have another set of crises to manage next time, some of them much worse and harder to solve eg 20 years of campylobacter filtered through the ground (nicely fenced off) to the aquifer that will take 20 years to clear.
“what sort of pathetic excuse is that, for what shouldn’t be happening ever in NZ.”
Many farms in NZ have waterways which stock have access to. That’s normal and for 150 years that wasn’t the kind of problem we have now. Not saying it was no problem, just that what we are dealing with now is intensitification, overstocking and dairying, and it’s those modern things that create problems for town water supplies. I don’t think it’s realistic to think that all waterways in NZ will be fenced off from all stock at all times. Rather than expecting that, I’d like to see us moving towards regenerative land use, where farming practices increase the health of land, and that may or may not include stock with access to water.
I agree with you that Rolleston’s response was disgraceful, and it had all the hallmarks of PR spin. Rachel Stewart has been pointing out that the pro-dairy people will use the word ‘cattle’ instead of ‘dairy cows’ as a way to obfuscate.
I do not agree with you Weka although you are of course entitled to your own opinion. Livestock should never be allowed to drink or wade in our waterways defecating and peeing in the water and polluting it. It is realistic to expect farmers to keep their stock within fencing parameters, if it had been legislated years ago then it would be just second nature to fit it into their budgets just like any other legislation that other companies have to adhere to. This is an animal sewage problem and should be contained and dealt with.
National have had a love affair with Federated Farmers for too long and needs to get tough with them but I fear intensification has become too much of a problem and the accompanying technology which should have been keeping up with it to manage it hasn’t eventuated to keep the sewage problem under control.
“Livestock should never be allowed to drink or wade in our waterways defecating and peeing in the water and polluting it”
Why?
Animals pee and poo in water all the time. Nature has ways of dealing with that. Animal waste in water is not inherently polluting. It becomes pollution when the number of animals exceeds the natural systems’ abilities to process that waste (which is dependent on things like river flow). That’s basic ecology and basic sustainable land management. There are additional problems with issues like deforestation and other processes that alter the functioning of the ecosystem. But animal pee and poo is not itself pathogenic or necessarily a problem. Not all animal waste is ‘sewerage’. It’s what the humans (farmers) are doing that is the problem. Humans create the sewerage or not.
All dairy farms should be fenced and have riparian strips as a basic minimum, because that kind of farming comes with high stocking rates and a lot of effluent. But in other situations eg large SI sheep and cattle stations, I think the bigger problems are from the foot traffic and from grazing out all the biodiversity along the water way, as well as the related problems from fertiliser use and general land management. The ratios of sheep poo to water flow are such that you don’t necessarily get ‘polluted’ water in all situations.
Are those waterways in pristine condition? No. But if all land in NZ that has stock on it was mandated to be fenced, we’d still have a lot of the problems that come with farming. I’d much rather see those resources go into supporting farms to shift to regenerative agrictulture with riparian planting and fencing where appropriate to the design of that particular land but without being fixated on fence everything regardless.
What I’m arguing here is approach. If we reduce it down to all animal shit is bad and all waterways must be fenced, I think we are going to created a different set of problems and avoid dealing with some of the more urgent ones.
The fear that many farmers have around river fencing in the sheep and beef sector is that they are going to be forced to fence water off in places that are hugely expensive that will require a lot of up keep and or mean fencing out large chunks of productive land, this is why i believe they are being so stubborn about it.
Stock would still need to cross the waterways when being moved right? So there is the extra cost of gate systems presumably.
It’s a tricky one, especially for smaller rivers and streams. They really need riparian planting too, but it’s easy to see how much land would be lost. Probably the riparian planting needs to be productive somehow.
If your talking gate to get cattle trough a 1 or 2 wire electric it’s a $60 set up and an hour or so to build .
It’s going to be about having a policy that forces cattle to be excluded with out having some dipstick with a letter or two behind his name pissing everyone of with unworkable ideas.
That’s why the blanket thing doesn’t seem right.
I was thinking about sheep, re the gates.
Developers walk away from fast-track process as Auckland house prices top $1m
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11701098
(Unitary plan and developers doing as was expected and deciding not to even develop 10% of affordable houses and instead to use the more developer friendly unitary plan rules. With the SHA, only 26 out of 154 managed to complete some houses, but many made a killing out of the zoning changes. Great to see developers and land owners making money while delivering few houses, just as the government ordered (sarc.).
The solution.
A government that governs and builds houses for its citizens.
Thanks, Paul.
Two quotes from the film:
“A nation’s prosperity isn’t measured in exports and show and false fronts, it’s in the way people live and how much sun they get, and where the kids grow up and how the sanitation works.”
“40,000 families living in houses that should have been pulled down, living in rooms and flats, wherever they could find a roof over their heads, sometimes several families in one house. 40,000 families in 1935.”
Ain’t progress wonderful!
I have watched this Labour party doco in it’s entirety, and it’s good, can you upload the second part too please Paul?
Thanks so much Paul, appreciated. It’s an excellent glimpse of our history that is just as relevant today, as it was back then. Given what is happening today, we really have gone backwards, haven’t we? The struggle is still the same, nothing has changed except the dates.
Poll Drought
Number of Opinion Polls carried out Jan – late Aug:
(* = middle years comparable to 2016)
2016 12 *
2015 18
2014 45
2013 30 *
2012 28
2011 33
2010 24 *
2009 22
2008 43
Next Roy Morgan already overdue, next Colmar Brunton waayyyyy overdue. I mean, what the flying hell’s going on here ???
No landlines left to ring?
Any noticeable difference between the RM and the media ones (eg CB)? Just wondering of the TV networks are moving away from polling as part of the shift to infotainment.
Bad times for the Nats. And maybe AG’s got some bad news coming about Saudi sheep and Mr McCully? Holding fire until Nat spin machine swings into action?
Well Roy Morgan only polls once a month, instead of every 2 weeks, as I’m sure you know.
So that change by itself results in far fewer polls taking place.
Also, the fact that Parliament was on recess for like 6 weeks also means pollsters would have actively avoided polling during that time, I think.
RM had originally stated on their web page that their Aug poll was due on the 19th. Then they changed the date on their web page to the 26th. It is still hasn’t materialised.
It may be something as simple as them prioritising contact centre resources to their more commercial polls this month.
“Well Roy Morgan only polls once a month, instead of every 2 weeks, as I’m sure you know … So that change by itself results in far fewer polls taking place.”
True. But that was already the case last year … and yet look at the comparison – 18 by late Aug 2015 / just 12 this year.
And (naturally enough) Polls are usually fewest in number during the first year after the election. This is the first time in quite a while that the “middle” year of the electoral cycle (2016) has had fewer polls (Jan-Aug) than the “first” year (2015) (as you can see … 12 compared to 18).
Colmar Brunton always release on a Sunday. The gap between each poll has always (well, for a very long time now) been 6 – 8 weeks (excepting the New Year/Summer Recess). It’s now an absolutely bloody astounding 12 weeks (to the day) since their last poll was released. All down, of course, to decisions made by One News.
For Roy Morgan – see CV’s comment.
There hasn’t been much significant, sustained movement in the polls (beyond the notorious bounciness of the Roy Morgan) since 2014. So one possible explanation is that news editors got bored of printing stories saying “National still has whopping majority, Labour+Greens still kind of neck-and-neck with National, Winston still probably going to make the final decision”.
Yeah, but Lab+Green and the Oppo Bloc are well up on their 36% (L+G) and 46% (Oppo) share at the Sep 2014 Election. And the Broad Right (Govt parties + Cons) are well down on their 53% share. (Luckily for National, a broad Nat-to-Lab swing has been largely disguised by the collapse of Colin Craig’s Conservatives).
So the polls haven’t been static. It’s possible to discern a broad swing to the Left (and the wider Opposition) through the middle of last year, then a swing back towards the Right over the Summer months and more recently a move back to the Left and NZF.
And that’s reflected in the National-to-Lab+Green aggregate comparisons.
Take the Roy Morgans as an example:
Nat percentage point lead over L+G:
2014 Election: 11 points
Roy Morgan Quarterly Averages
2014 (4/4) 7 points
2015 (1/4) 9 points
2015 (2/4) 11 points
2015 (3/4) 3 points
2015 (4/4) 8 points
2016 (1/4) 6 points
2016 (2/4) 2 points
National’s pollsters struggling to spin it in the Nats favour anymore?
I think the Nats are in trouble Swordfish, and they don’t want any bad publicity of opinion polling to show it.
Illegal and desperate…
http://www.fastcompany.com/3063185/trump-campaign-continues-to-send-illegal-solicitations-to-foreigners-despite-warnings
Why did the woman hating Saudi Regime and other head chopping Gulf Tyrannies donate tens of millions to the Clintons?
And why did the Clintons accept these millions?
https://theintercept.com/2016/08/25/why-did-the-saudi-regime-and-other-gulf-tyrannies-donate-millions-to-the-clinton-foundation/
I don’t know but that’s not relevant to what I posted.
Why don’t address the topic? After all, you were moaning about foreign donations the other day.
I agree with your point that Trump is desperate for campaign donations.
Yes, I also agree that Trump is raising far less money than Clinton and is having to push the boundaries harder.
The real problem for Trump’s campaign financing is huge. Simply put, he cannot get the big donations from Wall St hedge funds, bankers and K street lobbyists that Clinton is able to solicit.
That means that Clinton has been able to outspend Trump in TV and other media ads by more than 3 to 1.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/clinton-vastly-outspending-trump-ads-hurting/
You know CV it would be fucking like horrific if you CV REALLY put your ahua behind Drumpf so why you been talking like that ?
The million people who protested in Sana’a against the Saudi invasion were not even mentioned in MSM.
Surprise, surprise…..the BBC, Guardian and the rest are just mouthpieces of the neo-liberal globalist establishment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZqDxq2sjXU
RT also has a piece on how Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against 3rd world Yemen has now killed almost 4,000 civilians and displaced 3M people.
But somehow, both the US and UK are happy to keep rearming the Saudis with billions in new weapon systems and munitions.
I guess all that hysteria about how Bernie would beat Trump, but Clinton wouldn’t, was all for naught, eh?
Let me check my calendar…did November already come and go, Lanth? 😛
No, it’s just Trump’s lead in the polls that came and went. And is very unlikely to ever return.
It’s funny you say “hysteria”, a word with its roots in assumptions about women’s anatomy and intelligence, when the most notoriously obnoxious Bernie Sanders fans were dudes.
Clinton hasn’t beaten Trump yet. I expect she will – but the US system (voter suppression/Tuesday elections/electoral college etc) is such a clusterfuck I don’t think anyone should crow about it until the votes are counted (and the lawsuits are settled).
Ah yes the pejorative “Bernie Bros” term that Clinton campaign supporters kept using.
it’s funny you say “hysteria”
With the Clintons Hysteresis is a better noun, as it describes the time dependent selection and inbreeding of their past advisors and big business,
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cq4_SO7UIAAv3VX.jpg
Speaking of who has whose ear…..
Anybody here disappointed with Labour’s failure to advocate for the NZ Land Wars commemoration day being a new public holiday?
Is it another telling sign Labour is still to centrist and out of touch?
Thoughts?
NZ Labour is the same as Clinton’s Democrats and the Blairite UK Labour party.
Just another mouthpiece of the neo-liberal globalist establishment.
Centrist isn’t out of touch, and extra holidays are an extra cost to business. Perhaps we could replace Labour Day with it – society has given up on it anyway.
“Centrist isn’t out of touch”
It is today, considering the whole political spectrum has moved so far right the Greens are now often deemed far left.
“Extra holidays are an extra cost to business”
Indeed. And I’m sure a number of employers oppose them. Just as a good number of employees would greatly welcome another holiday.
It’s interesting to see who Labour now represent.
Primarily the socially progressive left leaning, top economic quintile (that is the top 20%) of NZers.
The bottom 50% of NZers who earn less than $30,000 p.a. are talked about by Labour, but they are never prioritised above the interests of higher earning groups.
Utter crap CV…… for your unhappy wherever you’re at in your deepest being CV…… a bunch of yuppies university degrees etc lucrative public service positions…….that’s the 20%s for Labour ? Stop it ! Stop it right now ! You’re acting like a troubled child shrieking all sorts of shit that no one takes seriously. Grief counseling maybe CV ? Grief about what I don’t know but fuck CV……!
Geeezus, talking about giving up on the principles of Labour Day, now you’re saying that we can’t afford to load business with any more labour costs like holidays???
I’ll tell you what, I think that we need to go to a four day working week, and that penalty rates need to be brought back.
What do you think about that for extra costs on business?
I fully agree. 4 day, 30 hour week, double time for more than either of those, triple time if both, and also triple time on public holidays, 6 weeks annual leave.
Anybody here disappointed with the National government’s anti Kiwi/worker legislation and National’s sycophantic supporters?
Lets face it, in National’s ideal draconian and feudal world, workers would be enslaved to serve it’s elites on no pay at all and there would be no public holidays to give workers break either.
No public holiday for New Zealand Land Wars
The Government has made it very clear: The Land Wars commemoration day will not be a public holiday.
A commemorative day was announced last week after pressure from local communities and a school-led petition asked for a day of recognition.
However, Deputy Prime Minister Bill English said some people have misunderstood what has been agreed.
“We’ve taken a view that there’s no need for a public holiday and in any case, there isn’t yet agreement about a date even just for a commemoration.”
The decision had come out of discussion with the Maori Party, and English was “pretty sure” it had approved by Cabinet. Yet, Maori Party co-leader Marama Fox called for a public holiday and believed it was “still up for debate”.
English also said any commemorations on the day should be locally-led.
“The Government provides some resource, but this has to be something that people want to own, not something that’s pushed on them,” English said.
“It’s up to the people who want to see a commemoration occur. There was a bit of a ceremony last week with the handover of one of the pa sites to Tainui where a significant battle occurred in the Waikato. There may be more of that. That’ll unfold as we go.”
Prime Minister John Key said no progress had been made yet on choosing a date: “We are saying it’s likely there might be agreement at some point that that commemoration date can be set, but it would be also subject, I think, to iwi agreeing.”
SWAP EXISTING HOLIDAYS FOR LAND WARS?
A current public holiday could possibly we swapped out, says Labour leader Andrew Little – suggesting provincial holidays could be scrapped in lieu of a national New Zealand Wars commemoration day.
“I don’t understand why we continue to celebrate provincial holidays when we haven’t had provincial government since 1863.”
He agreed the Queen’s Birthday holiday could be another option.
“There is a case to be made for an observance by way of a day off,” he said.
However, Peeni Henare, Labour MP for Tamaki Makaurau, didn’t think it should be made a holiday.
“It was made clear in the first consultation that happened a number of months ago that it would not be made a public holiday, but simply a day for commemoration,” Henare said.
“There are some costs involved, there are already a number of public holidays … I’m quite clear as the Chairperson of the Ruapekapeka Pa Trust that it shouldn’t be a holiday.”
Little supported the Government setting aside a day in principle: “We ought to be observing our own internal land wars in the way that we observe conflicts and casualties in other wars that we’ve participated in.”
Little also believed more needed to be taught at schools about the New Zealand wars.
“We shouldn’t be embarrassed by it, we should accept that it’s happened in the past, and we should learn from it and embrace what we have now, which is a set of legal arrangements that ensure that the Treaty of Waitangi is starting now to be observed – not only in the law but in the spirit.”
Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei said a public holiday during winter should be part of consideration by the Government.
<a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/83459046/no-public-holiday-for-new-zealand-land-wars
Disappointment doesn’t capture these situations anymore. Par for the course is more apt a description these days.
They don’t see the value of celebrating a one-sided victory.
Discuss.
Lovely day here in Auckland – Friday nights storms are over except that Vector have cut power for hot water here on parts of the North Shore. Seems to be the poorer parts too, again.
Now 36 hours and counting.
This has been a persistent problem for a decade – a bit of rough weather in the north or west and no hot water for a day or more. According to Vector’s fault-line it is due to an ‘architectural issue’ in the old United Networks system acquired by Vector in 2002.
In 2015 Vector paid 8 cents per share in dividends. Total share issue according to NZX is 995m shares.
So it looks like that is $80m in 2015 alone paid out as unearned income for shareholders? I wonder how much it might cost to fix that ‘architectural issue’?
Seems to me that all the 1990’s privatisation of these utilities was a scam, allowing some NZers (the ones well off enough to buy shares) to parasitise other NZers through high electricity charges and in this case poor service and reduced quality of life.
Cutting the hot water circuits is a quick and dirty way (ahem) of reducing load on power distribution components that are near to failing, until something can be done to patch the system up.
Over the next few years, as storm intensity increases, this ‘strategy of fragility’ is going to leave Auckland with bigger and bigger disruptions.
I’m pretty sure large parts of Auckland use pilot wire rather than ripple controlled hot water switching and in my experience restoring supply is paramount with pilot wires a secondary task.
OK that does make sense then, I didn’t know that about the system in Auckland, cheers.
So CV how was Labour responsible for that and how will your darling Drumpf fix that and do you promise ? Egg carried away with your bitterness and a plague on EVERYTHING accordingly. You didn’t used to be like this CV. What’s happened to you ?
I gave up on supporting both the greater evil and the lesser evil
And ended up Trump-eting. Like actually supporting the presently ascertainble greater evil. Don’t you understand how fucking ugly that is to people like me, and you CV. And you ! ???
I’m not asking you to vote for Trump; neither am I asking for your approval of my political preferences.
AB, cutting power to hot water systems during bad weather has been going on for decades, if memory serves a sparky once told me some years back, it started in the 1950’s. I thought it was just a West Auckland thing too until he told me it occurs throughout Auckland. If you have the know how it’s an extremely simple and quick procedure to trip and bypass it in your fuse box and then you will never lose hot water again.
“privatisation of these utilities was a scam”.
Given that 75.1% of Vector is owned by the AECT, which is a trust owned by the people of Auckland and with a publicly elected board, it hardly seems that you can blame “Privatisation” for its failings. It wasn’t privatised, was it?
You might do a great deal better if it really was privatised. Thank God Vector sold the lines company here in Wellington. We don’t have anything like the problems that Auckland seems to.
Vector is still 75% owned by the AECT Trust. This Trust is governed by a democratically elected Board.
The AECT is scheduled to be returned to the Council in about 60 years.
Unless a government can be persuaded to accelerate that a whole lot faster.
That would give Auckland Council a fairly large money-printing machine.
Plus comprehensive control of all major utilities, like when we had coherent government.
Calling it a scam is generous.
It was theft, pure and simple.
Elites betray the people, considering themselves as gods
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqYc6qR6xcQ
The kind of people supporting Trump, and the kind of people Trump supports (refusing to denounce endorsements from the bedsheets and brown shirts types, appointing Breibart’s Bannon as campaign manager) :
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/25/what-alt-right-guide-white-nationalist-movement-now-leading-conservative-media/212643
This review of the film The Childhood of a Leader by Kim Newman is quite apposite:
The adult actors are all excellent, though required to be stooges for Sweet. It takes three parents, several servants, a world war, a corrupt church (Prescott yells “I don’t believe in praying any more” like a mantra) to shape this monster. The failures of these adults and their institutions create the vacuum that allows his eventual rise. This may be the story of the childhood of a leader, but we have to look at the grown-ups who fail to solve or resolve anything – from a dinner menu to an equitable peace – for a sketch of the mass abdication of responsibility that might make a great many people want to be led by a dangerous maniac. This is also the story of those who will be led.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/film-week-childhood-leader
Out of the candidates standing, who would you like to see become Wellington Mayor?
Johnny Overton, the rest are living in an endless growth/debt extreme political world. That applied to Wade-Brown too.
Whoever it is it had better not be one of the “light rail” fanatics. Rather than just accept it is far to expensive for a town like Wellington a group of them have arbitrarily decided that it can be done for half the price. These are the highly qualified engineering consultants like Laidlaw and Kedgley.
Jo Coughlan seems by far the best.
And it had better not be one of the “let’s concrete everything in sight and dig up the basin reserve and put 4 lanes of motorway through to the airport with the $300 million proposed ratepayer subsidy” all of which makes light rail look like petty cash.
Not Jo Coughlan
Rubbish, Coughlan wants to spend $1 billion on roading, including duplicating the Vic and Terrace tunnels, and flyovers and whatever else. That is just crazy in a world that’s already hitting its limits and with fluctuating oil prices.
Laying rails and wires down Campbridge Terrace, Adelaide Rd, Constable St and to the airport will be a shitload cheaper and much less work. Not hard to see that.
Using what is still there ( pirie street) is a more logical option,then linking it through Hataitai park and down to cobham drive.
http://www.teara.govt.nz/files/p-22518-pc.jpg
Bernard Hickey: Land is for living, not savings
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11701100
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/83585857/eugene-bingham-the-spectre-of-ghost-crimes-should-have-come-back-to-haunt-police
If you have any info on the police fiddling stats around burglary the chap who wrote this article would like to hear from you.
Holy shit batman the new edit function is the business.
Was that something Lynn did? I thought something had changed from my browser update yesterday.
It seems faster though. And cleaner to use.
Lol yeah, it took me by surprise too!!!
It is what happens when I start editing something at 0300.
In this case there was a function I wanted to remove in the trash as part of internal security review. It was hooked into the AEC (Ajax Edit Comments) which hadn’t been updated in 3 years and which provided our re-edit and which had a pile of extra functions that we didn’t use any more. So I hunted for something that just did the re-edit function.
The guy who wrote the AEC originally had done one called Simple Comment Edit (SCE) which after I tested it, turned out to be much better for our needs.
Oh and it even works in the mobile version of the site with a few quirks 🙂
Do you know whether he plans to provide the “search” function’s capabilities? It no longer abends for me but it doesn’t find any results either.
It was on my list last night. But I wound up working on several other issues first.
Coffee and I will try to merge the code bases together again.
In the meantime while I wait for the coffee to take effect, I’m purging 36 thousand revisions of the authors posts that are no longer required. That should save some backup bandwidth.
My misspellings hitting the dust – thank you
hehe that makes me feel important , but i’m not involved in nor do i know anyone who is involved with the running of the standard , just a random commenter is who i am.
Good news for us Lefties ,Labour has a land slide victory in Northen
Territory .
@PP
I expect our one man band will be relaxed and confortable about it.
I was having a chat outside the supermarket in my town with a District Court judge and I advanced the lament that we don’t have any strong moral leadership in NZ anymore……judge obviously understood me and responded – “Well yes, I agree John Key’s a little bit ‘relaxed’ maybe, but……. ”
Like it’s fucking OK overall ? And on the following Monday morning District Court judge went back to dispensing, ahem, justice ??? Yes he did. But none of the subjects of this dispensed ‘justice’ were fucking relaxed……and neither was ‘Mother Justice’. Rich people way up there are always fucking ‘relaxed’. Cos’ they don’t get hit with the unrelaxing shit that ordinary people have to suffer. So I don’t listen to them anymore. District Court judge et al……they’re wanking !
To persuade themselves, their own insides, that they’re selflessly making a difference. No…..!
Yep. Couldn’t agree more. You remind me of an incident that happened years and years ago. I was up before a district court judge on a speeding charge. Before I was called several others were up on the same charge and she dished out $50 fines. I came up before her… never spoke a word (my court appointed lawyer did the talking) and she lumbered me with a $100 fine. There was an audible gasp around the room. I was the only woman up on charges and I have to assume she did it because I was a young – a hell of a lot younger than her.
If I’d had the courage and confidence experience has since taught me, I would have called her out for what she was… a nasty bitch.
Just watch the BBC interviewer’s prejudice in favour of the establishment.
Can you imagine Sakkur treating a spokeperson from the banks in the same condescending manner?
The media is a large part of the problem.
Steve Keen interview on BBC HardTalk
I thought that was good Paul, Keen put his case forward very well while been challenged all the way, that’s what you want and guess why they call it hard talk To be fair to this interviewer he is pretty tough on all his interviews and prepared which is refreshing
New Zealanders should heed this message.
Australia headed for recession next year, Professor Steve Keen says.
Self funding – exploiting the fuck out of everyone and everything to break even or perhaps turn a tidy wee profit.
Have you looked at who is funding Clinton?
The usual culprits…..
Germans told to stockpile food and water for civil defence
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37155060
For the first time since the Cold War the German government is advising citizens to stockpile food and water for use in a national emergency.
Some opposition MPs said the new civil defence concept, to go before ministers on Wednesday, was scaremongering.
Citizens are advised to store enough food to last them 10 days, because initially a disaster might put national emergency services beyond reach.
Five days’ water – two litres (half a gallon) per person daily – is advised.
I lived in Germany for nearly 2 years. I was impressed – they generally do much less stupid than we do. They discussed economic matters seriously, and conquered inflation long before we did. They also prevented the ridiculous house price problem we have. They are far more heavily populated, and have done far more than we have to counter pollution. And kept a truly successful economy, despite taking on the burden of an impoverished East Germany 26 years ago.
Not a known earthquake zone, but … I would listen if I were there.
But here in NZ we need fear nothing in these Golden Times with our Rocket Economy.
And our PM can find another expert to contradict anyone who points out a threat like filthy waterways…
And Germany has introduced debt-free tertiary education.
Yep – they are way ahead of us.
Fascinating method of determining school needs here from the National government ministry of education.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/311981/'overall'-more-space-than-students-ministry
I expect they will under their small government masters want to normalise classes being held in libraries, staff rooms, resource rooms, and storage sheds in the same way the current government has normalised poverty, homelessness, and crime. After all, according to John Key’s men, this is what happens in tough economic times.
I would really love to see someone in the media track the progress of these “230 new classrooms”, and “six new schools”.
there’s empty classrooms all over the country but hey what the fuck lets all pile into the big cities so we can enjoy all the pleasures of traffic jams and overcrowding.
I’d rather a child sex offender living next door than the corrections minister.
Far less dangerous…
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/311986/nobody-wants-a-child-sex-offender-living-next-door-minister
Dirty fucking cop…….what’re all those (certainly looked like essentially tidy) young fullas gonna think next time…….you humiliated me last time areshole cop……here, feast on this. Whack ! You can see it a mile off. All because of one Rambo Little Dick Cock. That kid on the bike was more a man by a mile than that thick bully fuck cop.
FFS.http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/video.cfm?c_id=1&gal_cid=1&gallery_id=164677
This should be the subject of a criminal charge of assault laid against the doggish bully cop. Won’t happen of course. Assaults BY police are ten fold of assaults AGAINST police. And judges know it but ‘politically’ they close their ears and then they end up believing their own closed ears.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/video.cfm?c_id=1&gal_cid=1&gallery_id=164677
Look at it again. Completely unprovoked !
FFS ! Despatch both those flakes. Amendment ?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11701284