It is more certain than ever that human civilisation is the main cause of global warming, putting the world on track for dangerous temperature rises, the latest major UN assessment of climate change science has found.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it is “extremely likely” that humans are the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20th century, with carbon dioxide emissions the main factor.
If emissions remain high, by 2100 temperatures are likely to rise by more than 2 degrees – and up to 4.8 degrees – breaching a threshold agreed by governments as limiting the worst impacts of climate change.
Heatwaves will be more frequent and last longer, the report found. Most wet regions will get more rainfall, and most dry regions less.
Glaciers and ice sheets will continue to shrink, and the sea level will rise more quickly.
Scientists are now almost certain that mankind’s carbon emissions are warming up the planet.
As the world’s most important climate report was released internationally last night, its New Zealand authors spelt out the outlook for our country and our closest neighbours.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s draft fifth assessment report (AR5) warned that if the world could not rein in carbon emissions to a cap of one trillion tonnes of carbon – a budget already half spent – it would not be able to hold global warming back within 2°C, causing widespread extreme weather, drought and rising sea levels.
The report says that by the end of this century, the world’s climate would have warmed by at least this level.
The report says it is a virtual certainty that natural variables alone could not have fuelled changes that since 1950 have warmed the troposphere and warmed the stratosphere.
[…]
In New Zealand, extreme rainfall events will become more frequent and intense by the end of the century, while drought risk would increase substantially, especially in the east and north of the country.
Elsewhere in the country, more high temperature extremes and fewer cold extremes were virtually certain to become the norm.
“Longer observational records, improved models and better understanding tell us that climate change will be on-going this century and beyond and will bring significant changes to New Zealand and to the Pacific,” said Victoria University climate scientist Dr James Renwick, a contributor to the report.
“The South Pacific Convergence Zone, a major feature of rainfall variability in the tropical Southwest Pacific, may become more variable in its movement and rainfall intensity, which would be associated with increased risk of both floods and droughts for many of our Pacific neighbours.”
The number of tropical cyclones was not likely to increase, but they would become more powerful.
You can sit down to veggie bacon, a hash brown, grilled tomato and mushrooms for your breakfast and know you are making a small contribution and it tastes delish as well. Try it people!
Wellington cafes, I’m missing you. Ask at the local cafe if they make their own hashbrowns or buy them in – then you can check the ingredients. But, seeing as I love potato so much – home made hash browns with olive oil (although they do taste pretty yummy with butter). However, I prefer potato hash with a poached egg myself…
The kartoffelpuffer (potato pancake) man is back in town for the autumn/winter seasons in my part of the world – potato street food, I couldn’t believe my luck – cooked in those black drums that are used for roasting chestnuts on the street, then served with salt and/or crushed garlic painted on. Delicious when its minus something horrible degrees. Apparently they serve them with applesauce in Germany – that seems strange to me.
There is no other reason that potato tastes that good.
Sacrilege!, the Irish in me is deeply offended. As any true spuddie fan knows the best hash browns are made with grated cold baked in their skin spuddies formed into a cake, fried in butter and salted before eating. So there!.
Lolz, what is this breakfast thing you speak of, breakfast along with lunch has only ever been on the menu round here when one has been a guest of Her Majesty…
Vegans will eat fake meat because they like the taste but not the cruelty involved in eating meat.
So why would you put animals through torture when you can buy a substitute that doesnt involve cruelty and tastes the same.
The Auckland diocese has divested from fossil fuels.
Bill mcKibben on his recent speaking tour recommended divestment as a way to hurt the fossils who run fossil fuel industries.
How’s that CV padding line going for you guys? What DID John key do at Harvard? Where did Hooton get the idea he is NZ’s leading political commentator?
Shifting your target to flawed minor players now? Bit of a fail I’d say.
I also read the Guardian piece of Milliband’s power price freeze. After the GFC and failure of neo-liberalism we wallowed along in a vacuum as the previous generation of “left wing” politicians either wouldn’t or couldn’t face the facts about the failure of the central project of their political careers. What is happening, across the English speaking world, is social-democratic politicians are discarding the baggage of Blairism and the distractions of identity and are re-discovering their nerve and socialism. And in the process, they’ve discovered that the apparently iron fortress of neo-liberalism is built on increasingly shakey electoral foundations. There are never any final battles in politics, and the left is coming back again.
PS I love Millibands line: ” “the rising tide only seems to lift the yachts”.
is social-democratic politicians are discarding the baggage of Blairism and the distractions of identity embracing a “Larger world of Freedom” and are re-discovering their nerve and socialism.
I guess we all agree they are finally widening the focus from that which is commonly termed as ‘identity politics’ and putting class back into politics? It’s not and has never been an either/or situation. But until now class has been rendered invisible in political discourse. And that’s fueled a fair bit of perfectly understandable yet regrettable and misdirected resentment from those put aside and left to languish as liberal ‘identity politics’ (ie, class free policies) have been advanced through legislation.
i usually just call him Slippery, the British press tho waxed wonderfully lyrical over our Prime Ministers exhibition while a guest of the Queen at Balmoral this week allotting Him the grand title of ”the Galloping Colonial Clot”,
Not to be out done, the Herald’s Clare Trevett, usually found doting over the PM bestowed upon Him the descriptive ”the Antipodean Mouse that roared” after the PM opened His empty suitcase of intellectual rigor for all to see at the UN this week, lambasting the Security Council for failing to find a solution to the Syrian chemical weapons crisis at the very same time as news was breaking that a solution had been agreed…
Oh so there is our beloved Leader, opening his mouth really wide, inserting both feet in up to the knees. Then unlocks the Intellectual suitcase to find it’s full of dirty socks.
So this added to the 300k Grosser wasted, is our attempt at a seat on the security council. They must be pissing themselves in New York.
If you are seriously trying to pass off a middle market tabloid like the Daily Mail as the entirety of “the British press”, you should be helping Hoots-mon with his CV padding.
would this be a good time to introduce my idea/concept of ‘partial-nationalisation’..?
..without banging on and on/in a nutshell..
..it involves turning the tory ‘partial-privatisation’ plan on its’ head..
..veering away from energy for a mo’..lets look at the food-supply duopoly screwing us blind..(nz-owned..or not..)
..partial-nationalisation means the people/state takes 51% of any given entity..
..(and those bought out will of course get paid off..over a negotiated period of time..)
..so in the case of the supermarket-duopoly..the benefits from economies of scale/purchasing are obvious..and people still have to eat..the market won’t suddenly die..’
(plus..minimal upfront costs..as that 51% payback to current owners/shareholders comes largely from future profits..)
..and i think this what is essentially a marriage of capitalism/socialism has much to appeal..
..in that the people will no longer be screwed blind…(in the case of the supermarket-duopoly) healthy food regimes will be so much easier to implement..
..but the special beauty of this model i feel is that the commercial nous/operational-skills-base of any operation partially-nationalised will still be retained…
..and i wd add this model is especially relevant to the many monopolies that currently are bleeding the people dry..
..(and yes..!..of course the ‘sin’-industries are included..gambling/alcohol etc..)
..i have tipped this one upside-down/looked at it from all angles..
The robot’s circuitry is overloaded by human contradiction:
‘ Ms Collins is concerned about the length of time some judgments take and she is sick of hearing that the best answer to addressing delays is to appoint more judges.
“If I have heard that once I have heard it 100 times.”
But with crime rates dropping and fewer people going into court “it cannot be right; it does not compute”. ‘
Among its new rules:
‘ Allow court documents to be filed, held and issued electronically.
Require use of audio visual link for procedural cases involving prisoners to reduce transportation. ‘
I have just read something about James K. Galbraith economist, son of John K, and it is so damning of our present societal approach. I didn’t realise that such things were being said so strongly in public by leading professionals and academics. I’llput some text from him that I got from Wikipedia because it summarises much of what we have been saying here.
Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature — a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live.[6]
Galbraith is also highly critical of the Bush administration’s foreign policy apropos of the Iraq invasion:
There is a reason for the vulnerability of empires. To maintain one against opposition requires war — steady, unrelenting, unending war. And war is ruinous — from a legal, moral and economic point of view. It can ruin the losers, such as Napoleonic France, or Imperial Germany in 1918. And it can ruin the victors, as it did the British and the Soviets in the 20th century. Conversely, Germany and Japan recovered well from World War II, in part because they were spared reparations and did not have to waste national treasure on defense in the aftermath of defeat… The real economic cost of Bush’s empire building is twofold: It diverts attention from pressing economic problems at home and it sets the United States on a long-term imperial path that is economically ruinous.
On radionz this afternoon a USA couple from near the Appalachians were talking about their music. One letter from a music lover was from an Iraqi soldier saying how it reminded him of home. He is over there because he joined the Forces so he could get higher education, and he is not sure why he’s there, what it’s for. Some come home and then commit suicide. It all serves the USA and its imperialist purposes. It won’t bring peace.
Interesting…..Judge Judy takes on the beaks in populist fashion. Can we expect another Key swipe before long? Cracks appearing in the Natsy edifice lads, brace for a barrage of distraction…..
SSLands,you are proving to be the ever elusive fool, there might be advantages in the proposed TPP, there also might be some very unpalatable disadvantages,
David Cunliff has rightly said that we all should get to see the text of the agreement and have time to discuss it befor any decision is made on whether to sign it,
By the way, you still havn’t answered the question, which do you want to buy me, the new fridge or the new washing machine…
As if you would know how to use a washing machine.
The negotiations should be held in secret. It is impossible to hold multi party negotiations with the uneducated rabble like you baying inanities that get picked up in the MSM. It is a distraction from rational discussion.
Ok, i will take that as a yes to you buying me, as per new National Party policy, a brand new fridge/freezer,
Best tell Slippery to sign the thing befor November 2014 then, or the readers and writers, excluding you, of the Standard will get to have a strong voice on what is in that TPP,
SSLands is an excellent ‘handle’ for you who does not believe in the democratic process…
Um, no. That would be a Labour Shadow Minister still believing in the tooth fairy neo-liberal economics – the stuff that just brought the world economy to its knees.
In reply to bad12, who wrote…
“None of your taxes pay for the treatment of tobacco related illness or death, tobacco taxes have been estimated to be collecting up to a billion dollars a year over and above the cost to the country of tobacco usage…”
As a grow your own man and by the looks quite proud of it, none of your taxes are going to pay for your health care because you don’t pay any on your smokes. That’s like double dipping, but worse.
Sort of puts you in context. I could call hypocrite. 😉
Those taxes used for smoking related illness, wherever they come from ($250m in 2004 and no doubt much higher now) could help alleviate child poverty and provide opportunities to many in need. So much for your points about funding america cup races and other corporate welfare deals.
Like I said, you go for it, mate, just ’cause you are too obstinate, ignorant or stupid to use the stop smoking incentives to quit is completely up to you.
I don’t even mind if you don’t say thanks to taxpayers for the care you will get at our expense, but a sorry to the disadvantaged children who’s tax dollar funding you’re stealing should be mandatory for all left wing smokers, not to mention to the nurses on the lung cancer wards and the morgue porters who’ll have to trolley your frigid corpses around.
I just hope you don’t smoke anywhere near children.
That’s simply pathetic,the tax dollars smokers currently pay are around a billion dollars over and above the actual cost of smoking and it’s obvious even to the thickest head on the planet that the Government that imposed these taxes have no intention of spending such on impoverished children,
Do you tax rugby players extra and disburse that among needy children as every weekend 1000’s of them deliberately go out and get injured playing that game,
Road users, who also cost the country billions above and beyond what tobacco users cost get to pay extra cash to feed the kids most in need do they,
Considering what you have called me in that comment without answering the salient point which is the spurious claim that tobacco kills 50% of those who use it by means of heart disease and various cancers when 49. something % of people who have never touched tobacco products will die of that very same heart disease and those very same various cancers i would suggest that i am debating with a fucking moron who has a genetic intellectual disability,
So if we all stopped using tobacco the poor wee nurses on the cancer ward would simply have to follow us over to the other wards where we will still die in the same numbers from heart disease and various cancers coz that’s what kills 50% of us whether we smoke or not,
Your whole comment above reeks of mental retardation, you should get that seen to…
sheesh, just bunged out a long reply for bad12 and alien only to have the lot lost and now it too late on Saturday afternoon. Time for one of those naughty activities….
“Your whole comment above reeks of mental retardation”
Seriously? I don’t see it that way. That $250m spent on dying smokers by the government could, as you posted the other night, lift children out of poverty in a stroke (no pun intended).
Wherever the tax dollars come from, and clearly it’s not from you, having an extra 1/4 of a billion dollars in the kitty shouldn’t be so easily dismissed.
I can smell the guilty conscience on your breath as you type, but as a proven double dipper, you have to admit that your free will to smoke comes at a great cost to many deserving causes. That you don’t care, try to deflect the argument and dismiss a common sense point does you little credit at all.
Your points about taxing rugby players and drivers is avoidance (I’m sensing a theme).
Your point about percentages is manipulating statistics to support your view, and I believe, and I’m happy to be corrected by the scholars, false logic.
I’m okay with you smoking, though really you should pay your fair share of taxes or at least (try to) pay privately if you want healthcare down the track, but like a soft touch lefty, concede that you should be treated by the state at the expense of others when your time comes, because that’s what we do in the caring left, even for selfishly stupid people who could have helped themselves, given the encouragement and funding on offer.
I’m not okay with preventable illnesses costing vast amounts of money and causing social damage, which is why most of us want to stop our families living in sub standard housing, getting third world diseases – Same for smoking. Those kids, mums and dads can’t help themselves, but hard as stopping smoking is, you can.
I challenge you to quit. Right here, right now, even though it’ll add years to you.
Three months time when you can breathe and taste food again, you’ll thank me, rather than call me a retard.
Sod off with your pathetic rubbish you fool, i have no intentions of quitting, i just had a 4.99 pizza and it tasted just fine, finished off with a good puff on my home grown and a cup of tea,
Ah life’s great when you can appreciate the small things…
Ps, if you weren’t such an overcoat changing abusive little twat i would dig out the link to the health department stats that show 50% of those who do not smoke die of heart disease and various cancers so you have as much chance as me of clocking off via those ailments,
i have posted that same link befor here on the Standard, go fetch…
It is then even odds that either one or the both of us will die of cancer or heart disease, i pick yours to be brain cancer based upon the fact that there is obviously something amiss with it at present,
Me, i reckon heart disease caused by having too much fun will knock me off…
“It is then even odds that either one or the both of us will die of cancer or heart disease, i pick yours to be brain cancer based upon the fact that there is obviously something amiss with it at present,”
I think it was because I was desperately trying to find a valid point in the post, I skimmed past the third or fourth insult.
But interesting to note, given my charitable will to treat you should you be the 1 in 2 to die from smoking, how you respond to someone you view as having a genetic intellectual disability.
Maybe not just a leech, a hypocrite and enemy of the poor, but also an abuser of the intellectually challenged.
That’s not a good thing to have on ones record, but there it is in black and white.
Pathetic scum who are you to tell me what i should and should not do, smoking tobacco is perfectly legal as is growing it,
Do those who grow tomatoes,cabbages and apples in their back-yard get taxed for it, your zealots view show you up for the overcoat changing trash that you really are,
Perhaps you would like the chance now to deny that you voted for Labour and took the WFF tax credit and then changed your overcoat to vote National and took the tax cuts, something i put to you the other day and you did not deny,
You claim that i am a proven ‘double dipper’ you and Hooten use the same smear tactics, where exactly am i double dipping you pathetic fool,
“Perhaps you would like the chance now to deny that you voted for Labour and took the WFF tax credit and then changed your overcoat to vote National and took the tax cuts, something i put to you the other day and you did not deny,”
Like I wrote at the time, I’m as red/green as my logos eyes.
Not that I have to justify myself to some angry prick on the internet, but, I have never voted other than for Labour and the Green party, and can’t foresee a time when I would do otherwise.
“where exactly am i double dipping you pathetic fool”
“Do those who grow tomatoes,cabbages and apples in their back-yard get taxed for it”
Home tomato growers don’t get taxed, but then the tax on the tomato industry, using your argument, doesn’t adequately fund the healthcare and associated societal cost of one in two tomato eaters dying.
However, you smoking and not paying the taxes on smokes, means unless you have a private health plan, which I doubt, you’ll get your healthcare, should you be the one in two preventable deaths that need a share of the $250m (2004 figure) budget for nothing. Cake and eat it, with a double dose of dipping.
Shame on you. 😉
“Pathetic scum who are you to tell me what i should and should not do”
This site needs a :grrr: smiley or I’ll just use :bad12: as everyone will know what I mean 😆
Yes exactly, pathetic scum run round sticking their noses into other peoples business that is perfectly legal,
The above is why i think you are a fucking moron with some form of brain dysfunction/disease,
The 50% death figures for tobacco users is based upon deaths from heart disease and various cancers, correct,
The problem with those figures is that 50% of those who have never been near a cigarette will also according to the health statistics die of heart disease and various cancers including YOU,
So when that brain cancer inflames ya brain what are you going to blame,
As i said above i have posted a link to the figures befor on the Standard, be a good little puppy and go fetch…
Consider if the smokers who get sick, needing expensive health care and then die from smoking didn’t, how much extra cash would the health service have to treat and prevent non smokers from getting sick and dying? Not to mention extra taxes they’d contribute from not being too sick to work and or dead.
Consider the money spent on initiatives, programs and drugs that try, successfully in many cases, except for the very most weak willed, selfish or ignorant, to stop smokers from smoking with the goal of preventing addicts from getting sick and needing expensive health care, instead being diverted to preventing other causes of cancer and heart disease to help people who get sick without the option of choosing to play 50/50 russian roulette.
Consider all that extra money being spent on smokers being spent on children in poverty, for example, or education, night classes etc…
If only smokers weren’t so addicted and narcissistic to the point of sacrificing the health and well being of others and especially the poor.
Again, you argue like a bit of a dimwit, mate, deliberately diverting off in tangents, throwing out a challenge, having it answered, ignoring it and then repeating the same things over and over in a barrage of insults and slurs.
You are hard work, for sure.
Have been on a staff who ostracized smokers continuously, blah, blah,…yet there were lots of fat bastards who didn’t smoke and sat down at ‘smoko’ to their pies and donuts and whilst putting lashings of butter on their scones would deride their smoking colleagues who were outside as bad role models????
*Current tobacco excise revenues in New Zealand amount to approximately $1 billion per year and have been at that level for some years. This is just under 2% of total tax revenues.
*Of the approximate $1.6 billion per year retail spending on tobacco products, approximately 70% is accounted for by taxation, including GST as well as tobacco taxes.
Smoking has better returns for the Government than a Power Co!
If your figure of $250 million is the cost to ‘the country’; I’d say “Smokers- smoke away to your heart’s content.”
You make assumptions,(false), that if only all those smokers would just give up then they would not die of heart diseases nor cancers,
69.4% of us all will be snuffed out by one or the other, given that, if everyone quit using tobacco products tomorrow 49.4% of them would still die of cancers or heart diseases,
You make another assumption,(again false), that many are aided in giving up the use of tobacco products by aides and interventions which of course your small brain does not allow you to see are paid for from tobacco taxation,
The current round of interventions(past 4 years),have according to those who run the quitline and others who have conducted studies only reached 2% of tobacco users and resulted in only 2% of actual success after a 6 month period,
In other words, a waste of money, as the uptake among youth is un-measured but likely to out-number the minute numbers of those who quit,
Your whining is just that, smokers pay for ALL the money spent upon them in hospital care and in attempts to stop them using the product with hundreds of millions more going into the Governments general accounts,(Treasury says 1 billion dollars),from taxation on the product,
If no-one smoked how would this money get to be spent on hungry kids etc etc as you say, perhaps as ex-smokers you would have us taxed even more,
Your arguments are pathetic rubbish based upon nothing but your willingness to interfere in others lives and if you actually believe any of the trite bullshit you trot out then its obvious you are retarded by brainwashing…
And Paula could be Beneficial to the poor if she gave up some of her breakfast, lunch, multi-course dinner, morning tea, afternoon tea, supper, midnight snacks, office draw munchies, elevensies, high tea, brunch… thus giving her saved expenditure to the health budget; and by ‘slim-lining’ on this austerity she’d potentially not become a heart disease cost.
“You make assumptions,(false), that if only all those smokers would just give up then they would not die of heart diseases nor cancers,”
…that if only all those smokers would just give up then they would not die of heart diseases nor cancers earlier than non-smokers do (generally speaking).
Not that I’m saying you shouldn’t smoke – I only tell my kids that. Tis just that is more years are lost through earlier death, is all.
“Of the approximate $1.6 billion per year retail spending on tobacco products, approximately 70% is accounted for by taxation, including GST as well as tobacco taxes.”
“The New Zealand government collected a total of $842 million in tobacco excise tax in 2005.”
“The tangible costs of smoking to New Zealand in 2005 were around NZ$1.7 billion, or about 1.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product. This includes costs incurred because of lost production due to early death, lost production due to smoking-caused illness, and smoking-related health-care costs.”
“It is estimated that many deaths due to various diseases could be prevented if smoking was eliminated, including:
68% of female deaths and 82% of male deaths due to lung cancer
65% of female deaths and 79% of male deaths due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
11% of female deaths and 18% of male deaths due to heart disease
8% of female deaths and 15% of male deaths due to stroke.
Now you can be in denial all you like, but the $ shortfall in from the cost of smoking compared to revenue gained by smoking is huge, double by those figures. Imagine those extra $800m dollars getting kids out of poverty.
Every time you puff on a fag, you think how you’re taking food out of a poor kids belly, or sending that kid to school in shoes and an overcoat in winter.
If you enjoy the drag, then you are what I’ve called you, a leech, a hypocrite and enemy of the poor.
Accounting for the direct treatment of smoking-related illnesses assumes that those people will never get cancer, heart disease, nor any other condition that requires palliative care towards the end of life. In short, it assumes that every smoker would suddenly drop dead without warning at a ripe old age if only they did not smoke.
Secondly, assuming 20-odd years of lost life for one in two smokers, that period involves about 12 years of pensions paid by society saved by those smokers who die early.
Thirdly, the “lost economic activity” is only valid if it involves new production – again, not in retirement years. The deceased’s estate is distributed and spent by their inheritors – the economic activity is not lost.
Basically, all you’ve got is the smoking industry’s lies about addiction, and passive smoking. One hasn’t been valid in NZ for thirty-odd years, the other is negligible in current smokefree laws, barring the personal risk choices of relatives.
It seems that the National voters and the middle class have grown disillusioned with PinoKeyo, Blinglish and their government.
Well serves you right, were you stupid or what?
It is not akin to a corporate negotiation unkess it is true that it kowtows to corporate interests. Tppa is between countries and negotiations began in 2008. In any event its what the usa wants that will be driving this. Negotiate in private ratify in public.
Jesus tap-dancing Christ in a sidecar on a pogo stick. The misogyny of the pigs in blue knows no bounds. A senior cop thinks that a ten year old girl asked to be raped:
I repeat that: a TEN YEAR OLD GIRL was supposedly ASKING FOR IT.
That disgusting sack of shit thinks that a little girl wanted to be raped. These are the sort of people (I use the term loosely) decide to promote to senior positions.
Look at that swine’s “apology” – all the usual “I’m sorry if I MIGHT have…”
The most generous thing I can say is that Central District Commander Russell Gibson is a very, very sick man who needs some intensive psychiatric treatment… but I know that he’ll get a slap across the wrist with a wet bus ticket.
That being said, I disagree that he needs “intensive psychiatric treatment”. Mental illness doesn’t make people misogynist douchebags. Society makes normal people into misogynist douchebags quite happily.
(There’s a term for it, and it rhymes with “shmape culture”, but mentioning that would probably just be me being a nasty academic feminist or something)
That being said, I disagree that he needs “intensive psychiatric treatment”
Ah well, QoT, I was gritting my teeth over that. I have a mental illness – anxiety crossed with depression – and all my best friends have their own variants.
I was choking back what I really think and what he really deserves shouldn’t be mentioned here.
Anyway, yes, we see in that shitbag, and the people who promoted him to a position of authority, are rape culture embodied, and don’t let anyone deny that it exists.
Although it’s rape culture, the phrase sort of shortcuts what is going on here, and yeah, is dismissed as some academic, feminist rant thing. So just to spell it out…
This was a crime of child abuse, rape, abuse of trust (of child and her parents), abuse of power and a police officer’s complete misunderstanding of what grooming children means. Add to that it’s the absolving an adult, who is fully aware of what he’s doing, of responsibility for his crime for no justifiable reason.
Clearly he’s had a bit of a lesson and is repentant (the officer, that is) but is shows how easily this stuff gets embedded in people’s heads and how hard it is to remove when even the apologies are qualified with ‘may have re-victimised’ the child with a poor choice “of language” (?!)
No wonder that even if kids know what is happening to them is a crime and they’re in a position to report it, they don’t.
Clearly he’s had a bit of a lesson and is repentant (the officer, that is)
The pig isn’t repentant at all – he’s still making excuses – “I might have”, “people may have” “I made a poor choice of words” – that’s all diversionary bullshit by a coward.
Enough of this “may” and “might”.
“I am a complete and utter shitbag” is the only honest thing he can say, instead he tries to suggest that he’s being persecuted because other people have chosen to be offended.
Worse still, there are people who put this pig in a position of authority. Who are they? We must name them.
Just to add to that – we really have to ask ourselves some serious questions about the police. Their misogyny, their violence, the propensity for rape and corruption of justice has been well documented. Are they the enemy within now?
They’ve been the biggest gang in the country for as long as I can remember. Sure, sometimes they’ll deny that they’re a criminal organisation and say that while some individuals might commit offences, it’s not overall policy. They’ll try and tell us that they hang out together because they have a love of white cars and bright lights, plus blue uniforms, and they shouldn’t be judged by their propensity to use tasers. They say people ask for it and what can they do? Now and then they even do some good acts, such as rescue kittens, but that’s only to get public sympathy.
I dunno Jon. Not saying you’re wrong to read the article in the way you have. We know Goff is right-wing.
But when I read the article I bore in mind both the author and the fact that Tory sympathisers like her have been somewhat desperately casting around for divisions to leverage. And I’m aware that where none exist, attempts will be made to manufacture them.
Then I reflected that almost the entire article is O’Sullivan’s interpretation/opinion. There is only one quote of substance. And it contains a note of hesitancy, which given Goff’s neo-liberal pedigree is, at least, something – and maybe indicative of Goff pushing the bounds of the narrative rather than breaking it.
The quote runs:-
“There are huge advantages from being involved with TPP and even bigger disadvantages of being locked out. But there are defensive issues where we need to fight tooth and nail to protect interests.”
I disagree with his take, but at least he is not being unabashedly pro-free trade, eh?
This comment is for QoT (sorry folks, the phone doesn’t seem to let me insert a reply once the chain of discussion has moved on).
I’m seriously offended by your jibes about vegans. I and other vegans are committed enough to LIVE our politics, not just snipe away at others. You don’t have to agree with my values, but guess what, mate – I have never preached them at you or anyone else on this site, you seem to be the “preachy wanker trying to convert” me and others and if you give it more than a millisecond’s thought (a challenge I know, but try) you’ll see that in a discussion line that was up until then about global warming it is you who “look(s) like (a) total hypocrite”. Try going a bit of research into basic issues like carbon release vs oxygenation, or demands on land and water resources, then come on back and argue that it is we vegans who are the total hypocrites.
I’m also really disappointed that only one other person replied to this unprovoked rant.
by Molten Moira from Motueka If you want to be a woman let me tell you what to do Get a piece of paper and a biro tooWrite down your new identification And boom! You’re now a woman of this nationSpelled W O M A Na real trans woman that isAs opposed ...
Buzz from the Beehive New Zealand Education Minister Jan Tinetti is hosting the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers for three days from today, welcoming Education Ministers and senior officials from 18 Pacific Island countries and territories, and from Australia. Here’s hoping they have brought translators with them – or ...
Let’s say you’ve come all the way from His Majesty’s United Kingdom to share with the folk of Australia and New Zealand your antipathy towards certain other human beings. And let’s say you call yourself a women’s rights activist.And let’s say 99 out of 100 people who listen to you ...
James Shaw gave the Green party's annual "state of the planet" address over the weekend, in which he expressed frustration with Labour for not doing enough on climate change. His solution is to elect more Green MPs, so they have more power within any government arrangement, and can hold Labour ...
RNZ this morning has the first story another investigative series by Guyon Espiner, this time into political lobbying. The first story focuses on lobbying by government agencies, specifically transpower, Pharmac, and assorted universities, and how they use lobbyists to manipulate public opinion and gather intelligence on the Ministers who oversee ...
Nick Matzke writes – Dear NZ Herald, I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland. I teach evolutionary biology, but I also have long experience in science education and (especially) political attempts to insert pseudoscience into science curricula in ...
James Shaw has again said the Greens would be better ‘in the tent’ with Labour than out, despite Labour’s policy bonfire last week torching much of what the Government was doing to reduce emissions. File Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The Green Party has never been more popular than in some ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah Wesseler Poor air quality is a long-standing problem in Los Angeles, where the first major outbreak of smog during World War II was so intense that some residents thought the city had been attacked by chemical weapons. Cars were eventually discovered ...
Yesterday I was reading an excellent newsletter from David Slack, and I started writing a comment “Sounds like some excellent genetic heritage…” and then I stopped.There was something about the phrase genetic heritage that stopped me in tracks. Is that a phrase I want to be saying? It’s kind of ...
Brian Easton writes – Two senior economists challenge some of the foundations of current economics. It is easy to criticise economic science by misrepresenting it, by selective quotations, and by ignoring that it progresses, like all sciences, by improving and abandoning old theories. The critics may go ...
This week marks the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War. While it strongly opposed the US-led invasion, New Zealand’s then Labour-led government led by Prime Minister Helen Clark did deploy military engineers to try to help rebuild Iraq in mid-2003. With violence soaring, their 12-month deployment ended without being renewed ...
After seventy years, Auckland’s motorway network is finally finished. In July 1953 the first section of motorway in Auckland was opened between Ellerslie-Panmure Highway and Mt Wellington Highway. The final stage opens to traffic this week with the completion of the motorway part of the Northern Corridor Improvements project. Aucklanders ...
National’s appointment of Todd McClay as Agriculture spokesperson clearly signals that the party is in trouble with the farming vote. McClay was not an obvious choice, but he does have a record as a political scrapper. The party needs that because sources say it has been shedding farming votes ...
Rays of white light come flooding into my lounge, into my face from over the top of my neighbour’s hedge. I have to look away as the window of the conservatory is awash in light, as if you were driving towards the sun after a rain shower and suddenly blinded. ...
The columnists in Private Eye take pen names, so I have not the least idea who any of them are. But I greatly appreciate their expert insight, especially MD, who writes the medical column, offering informed and often damning critique of the UK health system and the politicians who keep ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Mar 12, 2023 thru Sat, Mar 18, 2023. Story of the Week Guest post: What 13,500 citations reveal about the IPCC’s climate science report IPCC WG1 AR6 SPM Report Cover - Changing ...
Buzz from the Beehive The building of financial capability was brought into our considerations when Social Development and Employment Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced she had dipped into the government’s coffers for $3 million for “providers” to help people and families access community-based Building Financial Capability services. That wording suggests some ...
Do you ever come across something that makes you go Hmmmm?You mean like the song?No, I wasn’t thinking of the song, but I am now - thanks for that. I was thinking of things you read or hear that make you stop and go Hmmmm.Yeah, I know what you mean, ...
By the end of the week, the dramas over Stuart Nash overshadowed Hipkins’ policy bonfire. File photo: Lynn GrieveasonTLDR: This week’s news in geopolitics and the political economy covered on The Kākā included:PM Chris Hipkins’ announcement of the rest of a policy bonfire to save a combined $1.7 billion, but ...
When word went out that Prime Minister Chris Hipkins would be making an announcement about Stuart Nash on the tiles at parliament at 2:45pm yesterday, the assumption was that it was over. That we had reached tipping point for Nash’s time as minister. But by 3pm - when, coincidentally, the ...
Two senior economists challenge some of the foundations of current economics. It is easy to criticise economic science by misrepresenting it, by selective quotations, and by ignoring that it progresses, like all sciences, by improving and abandoning old theories. The critics may go on to attack physics by citing Newton.So ...
Photo by Walker Fenton on UnsplashIt’s that time of the week again when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kaka for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on Riverside (we’ve moved from Zoom) for our chat about the week’s news with ...
In a nice bit of news, my 2550-word deindustrial science-fiction piece, The Dream of Florian Neame, has been accepted for publication at New Maps Magazine (https://www.new-maps.com/). I have published there before, of course, with Of Tin and Tintagel coming out last year. While I still await the ...
And so this is Friday, and what have we learned?It was a week with all the usual luggage: minister brags and then he quits, Hollywood red carpet is full of twits. And all the while, hanging over the trivial stuff: existential dread, and portents of doom.Depending on who you read ...
When I changed the name of this newsletter from The Daily Read to Nick’s Kōrero I was a bit worried whether people would know what Kōrero meant or not. I added a definition when I announced the change and kind of assumed people who weren’t familiar with it would get ...
There was a time when a political party’s publicity people would counsel against promoting a candidate as queer. No matter which of two dictionary meanings the voting public might choose to apply – the old meaning of odd, strange, weird, or aberrant, or the more recent meaning of gay, homosexual ...
Photo by Joakim Honkasalo on UnsplashIt’s that time of the week for an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session for paying subscribers about the week that was for the next hour, including:PM Chris Hipkins announcement of the rest of a policy bonfire to save a combined $1.7 billion, but which blew up ...
Even though concern over the climate change threat is becoming more mainstream, our governments continue to opt out of the difficult decisions at the expense of time, and cost for future generations. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Now we have a climate liability number to measure the potential failure of the ...
Thomas Cranmer writesLike it or not, the culture wars have entered New Zealand politics and look set to broaden and intensify. The culture wars are often viewed as an exclusively American phenomenon, but the reality is that they are becoming increasingly prominent in countries around the world, ...
Here’s an analogy for the Stuart Nash saga. If people are to be forgiven for their sins,Catholic dogma requires two factors to be present. There has to be a sincere act of confession about what has been done, but also a sincere act of contrition, which signals a painful ...
Here’s an analogy for the Stuart Nash saga. If people are to be forgiven for their sins,Catholic dogma requires two factors to be present. There has to be a sincere act of confession about what has been done, but also a sincere act of contrition, which signals a painful ...
Human Destabilisers: Russia now has a new strategic weapon – migratory waves of unwelcome human-beings. Desperate people with different coloured skins and different religious beliefs arriving at, or actually breaching, the national borders of Russia’s enemies can wreak as much havoc, culturally and politically, as a hypersonic missile exploding in the ...
Hi,After Webworm contributor Hayden Donnell wrote his latest piece, ‘RIP to Millennials Killing Everything’, he delivered this exciting and important bonus content.It will make more sense if you’ve read his piece.David. Read more ...
Hi,Before we get to Hayden’s column — RIP to Millennials Killing Everything — a quick observation.There was a day last week where it had suddenly reached 10pm and I hadn’t eaten all day. Hunger had suddenly gripped me with a panicky all-consuming force, so I jumped onto Uber Eats and ...
We add some of the CMIP6 models to the updateable MSU comparisons. After my annual update, I was pointed to some MSU-related diagnostics for many of the CMIP6 models (24 of them at least) from Po-Chedley et al. (2022) courtesy of Ben Santer. These are slightly different to what ...
In a memorable Pulp Fiction scene, Vincent inadvertently shoots their backseat passenger in the head. This leads our heroes Jules and Vincent to express alarm about their predicament.We're on a city street in broad daylight here!says Vincent. We gotta get this car off the roads. You know cops tend to ...
Primary, secondary and kindergarten teachers are all on strike today, demanding higher pay and an end to systematic understaffing. While the former is important - wages should at least keep up with inflation - its the latter which is the real issue. As with the health system, teachers have been ...
So the teachers are on strike, marching across Aotearoa today to press their demands for better pay and working conditions.Children remained in bed this brisk morning, many no doubt quite pleased about a day off school. Parents perhaps taking the day off to look after the kids, or working from ...
After the Cold War the consensus among Western military strategists was that the era of Big Wars, defined as peer conflict between large states with full spectrum military technologies, was at an end, at least for the foreseeable future. The … Continue reading → ...
Dairy giant Fonterra has posted a 50% lift in net profit to $546m, doubled its interim dividend, and is proposing a return of capital of 50c a share, injecting a note of optimism into the nation’s dairy industry. Fonterra’s strong performance is against a backdrop of market volatility. It ...
Buzz from the Beehive The bothersome economic news today is that New Zealand’s GDP fell by 0.6% in the December quarter, weaker than market forecasts of a fall of around 0.2% and much weaker than the Reserve Bank’s assumption of a 0.7% rise. This followed the even-more-bothersome news yesterday that ...
Ouch: Hipkins’ policy bonfire has resulted in an expensive self-administered removal of a Budgetary foot with an explosive device. File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Bonfires can be dangerous things when they get out of control. They also create a lot of smoke and heat and burn the grass. ...
* Dr Bryce Edwards writes – I teach a first-year course at Victoria University of Wellington about government and the political process in New Zealand. In “Introduction to Government and Law”, students learn there are rules preventing senior public servants from getting involved in big political debates – as we ...
I teach a first year course at Victoria University of Wellington about government and the political process in New Zealand. In “Introduction to Government and Law”, students learn there are rules preventing senior public servants from getting involved in big political debates – as we have recently witnessed with Rob ...
An issue of integrity has claimed the first ministerial scalp in Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ premiership. Police Minister Stuart Nash lasted mere weeks in the role after admitting in a radio interview this morning that he had called Police Commissioner Andrew Coster to ask him if police were going to ...
For some time now we’ve known that the cost and completion timeframe for the City Rail Link would increase. Yesterday we finally learned by just how much. Costs City Rail Link Ltd (CRL Ltd) today confirms it has submitted a formal funding request to its Sponsors – the Crown and ...
The Government’s decision to back peddle on lowering speed limits is hitting potholes. At this stage, although it is part of the Government’s reprioritisation efforts to free up money to alleviate cost of living increases, the speed limit change looks unlikely to do that. And it appears that it ...
The University of Otago – the oldest university in New Zealand – towers over my home city of Dunedin. When classes are on, something like a fifth of Dunedin’s population are university students. It is also the largest employer in the South Island. To say that this is a ...
Last weekend brought the latest instalment in Stuff’s bravura satirical series Of course you can afford a house! Just dig deeper!I love how much their appreciation of humour has evolved in just a few short years since the days when I would get to produce, for a few meagre dollars, ...
Australia’s move to strengthen its defence capability with five nuclear-powered attack submarines underlines how relatively defenceless New Zealand is in the Pacific. Kiwis may gasp that the Labor government in Australia recognises it must outlay $400bn on the nuclear subs, but this ensures that Australia is not exposed ...
Ironically, a repurposed Auckland Ratepayers Alliance placard (with a demand for climate action on the front) featured at the recent climate march. Voting ratepayers don’t want ‘bureaucrats in cushy council jobs’ borrowing or increasing rates, even when the need for investment is becoming increasingly obvious. So is council cost-cutting a ...
The quarterly ETS auction was held today. In the past, these have seen collusion by big players to game the price and force a dump of extra credits from the cost-containment reserve (essentially, trying to pick stuff up cheap now in the belief that it will be more valuable later). ...
Buzz from the Beehive Exempting bikes, electric bikes and scooters from fringe benefit tax looked like something of a sop for a Green Party that had good grounds to grumble after a bunch of climate change measures was tossed on to the PM’s policy bonfire. The combustibles included the clean car ...
Today is a Member's Day, the first of the year. Unfortunately it also looks to be a boring one. First, there's a two hour debate on the budget policy statement (somehow inexplicably "member's business", despite it being fundamentally a government thing). Then there's a couple of "private bills" - people ...
Most days, Chris Hipkins and James Shaw seem a bit like the Seals and Crofts of the centre-left: Earnest, inoffensive, and capable of quite nice harmonies at times. They blow gently through the jasmine in your mind, but you know they’re never going to rock your world. Back in 2020, ...
The reflection gazed back at him. Pale and a little paunchy, he wasn’t a well man.He had a toga made from a fitted sheet and it kept bunching up under his armpits.His Laurel wreath was made from some Christmas tree branches he’d found in the shed, not a real pine ...
Yesterday we covered the government’s latest policy/delivery changes with a focus on light rail. But there was another important transport part of the announcement: The government will also intends to scale back its road safety plans. The programmes that are being reprioritised include: Significantly narrowing the speed reduction programme to ...
Unbridled Consumption: This civilisation we have built (we being the whole human species) is the most astonishingly wonderful thing homo sapiens has ever seen. We love it. We cannot imagine how awful life would be without it. And, we most certainly are not going to co-operate with anyone who advises ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Let’s start with the absolute truisms.Politics is the art of the possibleHalf of something is better than all of nothingLet us now consider these with reference to the Under New Management government.What is a supporter of progressive politics to make of the abandonment of various policies, as announced in recent post-cabinet ...
Chris Hipkins has surprised even some of his closest friends and backers with the bounce he has secured for Labour in public polls since he became Prime Minister. He has been put to the test since he took over from Jacinda Ardern in the top job, and has shown a ...
Buzz from the Beehive It was a big day for the stopping or slowing of a second tranche of government programmes, an exercise which Beehive publicists are pitching as measures to allow the Government to focus more time, energy and resources on “the bread and butter issues” facing New Zealanders. ...
Last night there was a One News political poll which was welcomed by the left and will cause some concern in the opposition camp. A poll that showed no path to victory for ACT and National and which would likely result in another Labour/Greens government, possibly with the inclusion, or ...
Our young renters can vote Labour or Green as often as they like, but will end up paying the price of more and bigger climate emergencies, while also paying most of their after-tax income on rent with little hope of owning their own homes. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR:PM ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes – Labour’s shift in focus is working. Under Jacinda Ardern they were a party and government focused on the voters and ideologies of liberal Grey Lynn and Wellington Central. Now under Prime Minister Chris Hipkins Labour has a laser-like focus directed at ...
Labour’s shift in focus is working. Under Jacinda Ardern they were a party and government focused on the voters and ideologies of liberal Grey Lynn and Wellington Central. Now under Prime Minister Chris Hipkins Labour has a laser-like focus directed at the working class politics of places like West Auckland ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Chris Baraniuk It was an engineering problem that had bugged Zhibin Yu for years — but now he had the perfect chance to fix it. Stuck at home during the first UK lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic, the thermal engineer suddenly had all ...
Hi,I just wanted to say hello as this week really gets going, and check in about a few things. They’re a series of fractured random thoughts, so bear with me! First up — I haven’t watched the Oscars in ages and I’m really glad I watched yesterday. It felt like ...
Yesterday the Prime Minister laid out the next tranche of plans to scale back the ambition of Labour’s policy/delivery programme – and this time the Auckland light rail project gets a mention. “I can also confirm today that we will roll out transport projects in Auckland in stages. “Reducing transport ...
The Hipkins Government revealed its true colours yesterday as it chopped a whole series of “nice to have” policies — many of them promoted by the Greens — and instead diverted the savings to relieve the impact of inflation. His approach is all about taking action; no more excuses, ...
Saving The People From ... The People: The strangest aspect of the mass Israeli protests, from a New Zealand perspective, is that the judicial reforms proposed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government would only confer upon Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, powers which the New Zealand House of Representatives has not only exercised ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised in their State of the Planet speech today. ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party after the election must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised today. ...
You will never truly understand, from the pictures you’ve seen in the newspapers or on the six o-clock news, the sheer scale of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Gabrielle. ...
We’re boosting incomes and helping ease cost of living pressures on Kiwis through a range of bread and butter support measures that will see pensioners, students, families, and those on main benefits better off from the start of next month. ...
The error Labour Ministers made by stopping work on a beverage container return scheme will be reversed by the Greens at the earliest opportunity as part of the next Government. ...
“Cabinet needs to do better - and today has shown exactly why we need Green Ministers in cabinet, so we can prioritise action to cut climate pollution and support people to make ends meet,” says Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson. ...
Biggest increase in food prices for over three decades shows the need for an excess profit tax on corporations to help people put food on the table. ...
The Green Party has today launched a submission guide to help Aucklanders give crucial input and prevent potentially disastrous Auckland Council budget proposals. ...
With calls growing for inquiries and action on bank profits, the Greens say the Government has all the information it needs to act now and put a levy on banks. ...
As large parts of Aotearoa recover from two of the worst climate disasters we have ever experienced, it would be a huge mistake for the Government to deprioritise climate action from future transport investments, the Green Party says. ...
The Green Party is celebrating the signing of a historic United Nations Ocean Treaty, and calls on the new Oceans and Fisheries Minister to urgently step up protection for Aotearoa’s oceans. ...
This year has seen a series of extreme weather events, unparalleled in New Zealand’s recent history. From Cape Reinga in the far north down to the Tararua Ranges, families and businesses across the country have suffered enormous loss and hardship. While the severe weather hasn’t directly affected every part of ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has today appointed Ginny Andersen as Minister of Police. “Ginny Andersen has a strong and relevant background in this important portfolio,” Chris Hipkins said. “Ginny Andersen worked for the Police as a non-sworn staff member for around 10 years and has more recently been chair of ...
Six further bailey bridge sites confirmed Four additional bridge sites under consideration 91 per cent of damaged state highways reopened Recovery Dashboards for impacted regions released The Government has responded quickly to restore lifeline routes after Cyclone Gabrielle and can today confirm that an additional six bailey bridges will ...
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta departs for China tomorrow, where she will meet with her counterpart, State Councillor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang, in Beijing. This will be the first visit by a New Zealand Minister to China since 2019, and follows the easing of COVID-19 travel restrictions between New Zealand and China. ...
Education Ministers from across the Pacific will gather in Tāmaki Makaurau this week to share their collective knowledge and strategic vision, for the benefit of ākonga across the region. New Zealand Education Minister Jan Tinetti will host the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers (CPEM) for three days from today, ...
A vital transport link for communities and local businesses has been restored following Cyclone Gabrielle with the reopening of State Highway 5 (SH5) between Napier and Taupō, Associate Minister of Transport Kiri Allan says. SH5 reopened to all traffic between 7am and 7pm from today, with closure points at SH2 (Kaimata ...
Internal Affairs Minister Barbara Edmonds has thanked generous New Zealanders who took part in the special Lotto draw for communities affected by Cyclone Gabrielle. Held on Saturday night, the draw raised $11.7 million with half of all ticket sales going towards recovery efforts. “In a time of need, New Zealanders ...
The Government has announced funding of $3 million for providers to help people, and whānau access community-based Building Financial Capability services. “Demand for Financial Capability Services is growing as people face cost of living pressures. Those pressures are increasing further in areas affected by flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle,” Minister for ...
Minister of Education, Hon Jan Tinetti, has announced appointments to the Board of Education New Zealand | Manapou ki te Ao. Tracey Bridges is joining the Board as the new Chair and Dr Therese Arseneau will be a new member. Current members Dr Linda Sissons CNZM and Daniel Wilson have ...
Fifteen ākonga Māori from across Aotearoa have been awarded the prestigious Ngarimu VC and 28th (Māori) Battalion Memorial Scholarships and Awards for 2023, Associate Education Minister and Ngarimu Board Chair, Kelvin Davis announced today. The recipients include doctoral, masters’ and undergraduate students. Three vocational training students and five wharekura students, ...
High Court Judge Jillian Maree Mallon has been appointed a Judge of the Court of Appeal, and District Court Judge Andrew John Becroft QSO has been appointed a Judge of the High Court, Attorney‑General David Parker announced today. Justice Mallon graduated from Otago University in 1988 with an LLB (Hons), and with ...
The economy has continued to show its resilience despite today’s GDP figures showing a modest decline in the December quarter, leaving the Government well positioned to help New Zealanders face cost of living pressures in a challenging global environment. “The economy had grown strongly in the two quarters before this ...
Aucklanders now have more ways to get around as Transport Minister Michael Wood opened the direct State Highway 1 (SH1) to State Highway 18 (SH18) underpass today, marking the completion of the 48-kilometre Western Ring Route (WRR). “The Government is upgrading New Zealand’s transport system to make it safer, more ...
This section contains briefings received by incoming ministers following changes to Cabinet in January. Some information may have been withheld in accordance with the Official Information Act 1982. Where information has been withheld that is indicated within the document. ...
Aotearoa New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta reaffirmed her commitment to working together with the new Government of Fiji on issues of shared importance, including on the prioritisation of climate change and sustainability, at a meeting today, in Nadi. Fiji and Aotearoa New Zealand’s close relationship is underpinned by the Duavata ...
The Government is delivering a coastal shipping lifeline for businesses, residents and the primary sector in the cyclone-stricken regions of Hawkes Bay and Tairāwhiti, Regional Development Minister Kiri Allan announced today. The Rangitata vessel has been chartered for an emergency coastal shipping route between Gisborne and Napier, with potential for ...
The Government will progress to the next stage of the NZ Battery Project, looking at the viability of pumped hydro as well as an alternative, multi-technology approach as part of the Government’s long term-plan to build a resilient, affordable, secure and decarbonised energy system in New Zealand, Energy and Resources ...
This morning I was made aware of a media interview in which Minister Stuart Nash criticised a decision of the Court and said he had contacted the Police Commissioner to suggest the Police appeal the decision. The phone call took place in 2021 when he was not the Police Minister. ...
The Government’s sharp focus on trade continues with Aotearoa New Zealand set to host Trade Ministers and delegations from 10 Asia Pacific economies at a meeting of Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) Commission members in July, Minister for Trade and Export Growth Damien O’Connor announced today. “New Zealand ...
$25 million boost to support more businesses with clean-up in cyclone affected regions, taking total business support to more than $50 million Demand for grants has been strong, with estimates showing applications will exceed the initial $25 million business support package Grants of up to a maximum of $40,000 per ...
80 per cent of 2021 Resident Visas applications have been processed – three months ahead of schedule Residence granted to 160,000 people 84,000 of 85,000 applications have been approved Over 160,000 people have become New Zealand residents now that 80 per cent of 2021 Resident Visa (2021RV) applications have been ...
The Lead Coordination Minister for the Government’s Response to the Royal Commission’s Report into the Terrorist Attack on the Christchurch Mosques travels to Melbourne, Australia today to represent New Zealand at the fourth Sub-Regional Meeting on Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Security. “The Government is committed to reducing the threat of terrorism ...
The health and safety practices at our nation’s ports will be improved as part of a new industry-wide action plan, Workplace Relations and Safety, and Transport Minister Michael Wood has announced. “Following the tragic death of two port workers in Auckland and Lyttelton last year, I asked the Port Health ...
Bikes, electric bikes and scooters will be added to the types of transport exempted from fringe benefit tax under changes proposed today. Revenue Minister David Parker said the change would allow bicycles, electric bicycles, scooters, electric scooters, and micro-mobility share services to be exempt from fringe benefit tax where they ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta will hold bilateral meetings with Fiji this week. The visit will be her first to the country since the election of the new coalition Government led by Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sitiveni Rabuka. The visit will be an opportunity to meet kanohi ki ...
The Government is introducing the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill to ensure the recovery and rebuild from Cyclone Gabrielle is streamlined and efficient with unnecessary red tape removed. The legislation is similar to legislation passed following the Christchurch and Kaikōura earthquakes that modifies existing legislation in order to remove constraints ...
Approximately 1.4 million people will benefit from increases to rates and thresholds for social assistance to help with the cost of living Superannuation to increase by over $100 a pay for a couple Main benefits to increase by the rate of inflation, meaning a family on a benefit with children ...
$1 billion in savings which will be reallocated to support New Zealanders with the cost of living A range of transport programmes deferred so Waka Kotahi can focus on post Cyclone road recovery Speed limit reduction programme significantly narrowed to focus on the most dangerous one per cent of state ...
The remaining state of national emergency over the Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay regions will end on Tuesday 14 March, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced today. Minister McAnulty gave notice of a national transition period over these regions, which will come into effect immediately following the end of the ...
The Government is today delivering on one of its commitments as part of the New Zealand Government’s Dawn Raids apology, welcoming a cohort of emerging Pacific leaders to Aotearoa New Zealand participating in the He Manawa Tītī Scholarship Programme. This cohort will participate in a bespoke leadership training programme that ...
Industry Transformation Plan to transform advanced manufacturing through increased productivity and higher-skilled, higher-wage jobs into a globally-competitive low-emissions sector. Co-created and co-owned by business, unions and workers, government, Māori, Pacific peoples and wider stakeholders. A plan to accelerate the growth and transformation of New Zealand’s advanced manufacturing sector was launched ...
New Zealand will provide support for Pacific countries to prevent the spread of harmful animal diseases, Associate Minister of Agriculture Meka Whaitiri said. The Associate Minister is attending a meeting of Pacific Ministers during the Pacific Week of Agriculture and Forestry in Nadi, Fiji. “Highly contagious diseases such as African ...
The Public Transport Futures project will deliver approximately: 100 more buses providing a greater number of seats to a greater number of locations at a higher frequency Over 470 more bus shelters to support a more enjoyable travel experience Almost 200 real time display units providing accurate information on bus ...
All but six schools and kura have reopened for onsite learning All students in the six closed schools or kura are being educated in other schools, online, or in alternative locations Over 4,300 education hardpacks distributed to support students Almost 38,000 community meals provided by suppliers of the Ka Ora ...
A new health centre has opened with financial support from the Government and further investment has been committed to projects that will accelerate Māori economic opportunities, Regional Development Minister Kiri Allan says. Community health provider QE Health will continue its long history in Rotorua with the official opening of the ...
The new three year NZ UK Working Holiday Visas (WHV) will now be delivered earlier than expected, coming into force by July this year in time to support businesses through the global labour shortages Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says. The improved WHV, successfully negotiated alongside the NZ UK Free trade ...
It seems like only yesterday that we launched the discussion document Enabling Investment in Offshore Renewable Energy, which is the key theme for this Forum. Everyone in this room understands the enormous potential of offshore wind in Aotearoa New Zealand – and particularly this region. Establishing a regime to pave ...
Police has reached a major milestone filing over 28,000 charges related to Operation Cobalt. “I’m extremely proud of the fantastic work that our Police has been doing to crack down on gangs, and keep our communities safe. The numbers speak for themselves – with over 28,000 charges, Police are getting ...
The Government will provide $15 million in the short term to local councils to remove rubbish, as a longer-term approach is developed, the Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced today. “Several regions are facing significant costs associated with residential waste removal, which has the potential to become a public ...
$15 million of immediate reimbursement for marae, iwi, recognised rural and community groups $2 million for community food providers $0.5 million for additional translation services Increasing the caps of the Community and Provider funds The Government has announced $17.5 million to further support communities and community providers impacted by Cyclone ...
The Government’s approach of using frontline service providers to address inequities for Māori with mental health and addiction needs is making good progress in many communities, a new report says. An independent evaluation into the Māori Access and Choice programme, commissioned by Te Whatu Ora has highlighted the programme’s success ...
The Emissions Trading Scheme was always a neoliberal, market-based, get-out-of-jail-free plan. Time to lead the way with Tradable Energy Quotas insteadOpinion: The old saying about news – that it’s always bad or it wouldn’t be news – is distressingly true for the climate, both in terms of this summer’s weather ...
The Detail finds out why a law change in 2017 has led to a proliferation of independent taxi drivers – and why they're leaving some passengers feeling ripped off Not all taxis are created equal. RNZ newsreader Evie Ashton found this out the hard way, after Dave Chapelle's recent show at Auckland's ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Jotzo, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy and Head of Energy, Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solutions, Australian National University IISD/ENB The world is in deep trouble on climate change, but if we really put our shoulder to ...
RNZ Pacific New Caledonia’s only daily newspaper, Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes, has folded after the commercial court accepted the publishing company’s request for its liquidation. The court had deferred its decision by a day after an injunction by the public prosecutor who wanted to see if there was still a possibility ...
By Arieta Vakasukawaqa in Suva The installation of the Turaga Bale na Vunivalu Na Tui Kaba, Ratu Epenisa Cakobau, clearly indicates that Fiji’s traditional chiefly system still has a strong footing and chiefs still command respect among the country’s citizens. This is the view of Dr Paul Geraghty, the University ...
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The newly-minted Police Minister, Ginny Andersen, has been called on by the Council of Licensed Firearm Owners (COLFO) to investigate how the previous Minister allowed Police to propose extraordinary fee increases for licensed firearm owners without ...
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The second week of the Auckland Arts Festivals showed the versatility of the city’s spaces, even when not matched entirely correctly with shows. Sam Brooks reviews (with assistance from Shanti Mathias).I often dismay at the lack of performance spaces we have in Auckland, and it takes something like the ...
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New Zealand’s new minister of police will be one of the freshest faces around the cabinet table. Ginny Andersen, the MP for Hutt South, has been named as the new minister taking over from Stuart Nash. Andersen first became an MP in 2017 and only became a minister for the ...
The government has announced further roading reconnections, several weeks on from Cyclone Gabrielle. Earlier this morning it was confirmed the link between Napier and Taupō had been reestablished. And now, transport minister Michael Wood said another six bailey bridges would be constructed. “Our immediate priority has been to reopen lifeline ...
The Taxpayers’ Union has slammed the revelation that government agencies and State Owned Enterprises are spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on lobbying firms as revealed by Radio NZ this morning. Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, ...
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For the first time since 2019, a New Zealand minister will head to China this week. Foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta will meet with her Chinese counterpart Qin Gang in Beijing. “I intend to discuss areas where we cooperate, such as on trade, people-to-people and climate and environmental issues. I will ...
The Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier has completed his investigation into complaints about Auckland Council’s role in the National Erebus Memorial project. The complaints relate to the council’s approval and consents process for the memorial site in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Pawson, Professor of Housing Research and Policy, and Associate Director, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW Sydney Pandemic-generated pressures have left our rental housing market reeling. Australia-wide, vacancy rates are at rock-bottom levels. Rents are soaring at record rates. Queensland has ...
The first edition felt like a breath of fresh, local music-filled air. This year, with many of the same headliners as 2008 (and every year since), the formula has grown stale. It’s finally time to admit that on a cold night in Palmy 20 years ago, I felt Shihad frontman ...
The first edition felt like a breath of fresh, local music-filled air. This year, with many of the same headliners as 2008 (and every year since), the long-running Wellington festival has grown stale. It’s finally time to admit that on a cold night in Palmy 20 years ago, I felt ...
The anti-transgender activist that provoked aggressive protests in Australia over the weekend may not be able to enter New Zealand. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, the British anti-transgender campaigner, is scheduled to visit New Zealand next weekend for two public events. But according to a new statement from Immigration NZ, her ability to ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is pleased to hear that the Minister of Local Government, Kieran McAnulty, has invited concerned mayors to the Beehive to discuss the Three Waters reforms but believe he should meet with the country’s largest ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Dan Himbrechts/Paul Braven/AAP The New South Wales state election will be held on Saturday. I had a preview of both ...
Whether the anti-trans campaigner can enter the country without a visa is now up in the air. Controversy surrounds the upcoming visit by Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, the British anti-transgender campaigner on a global tour who is scheduled to visit New Zealand next weekend for two public events. During an appearance in Melbourne ...
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The idea of the Greens flirting with National gets an airing before almost every election. It remains as much of a nonstarter as ever, writes Henry Cooke.This article was first published in Henry Cooke’s politics newsletter, Museum Street. It’s far more reliable than clockwork. Every election cycle – often several ...
With half the value of all Lotto, Powerball and Strike tickets going to cyclone relief, the "Must-be-won" draw for $15.5 million on Saturday went to a Canterbury player. ...
Auckland’s mayor has taken aim at road closures and traffic disruption around the super city, revealing a plan to reduce road cones. Wayne Brown had previously pledged to clean up the city of road cones and set it out as an “immediate priority” for the council’s transport agency. Now, he’s ...
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Analysis by By Geoffrey Miller. Political Roundup: NZ’s Middle East strategy, 20 years after the Iraq War This week marks the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War. While it strongly opposed the US-led invasion, New Zealand’s then Labour-led government led by Prime Minister Helen Clark did deploy military engineers to try to help rebuild Iraq ...
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Despite being entrenched practice in New Zealand schools, the practice of academic streaming in schools might not be around much longer. A plan launched today sets out a pathway to achieve this.If you went to school in Aotearoa, odds are that streaming was part of your experience. The numerically-inclined ...
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MP Ibrahim Omer will replace Grant Robertson as Labour’s candidate in the Wellington Central electorate after beating former party president Claire Szabo in the candidate selection race. Omer arrived in New Zealand as a refugee and worked as a cleaner before enrolling at Victoria University in 2014. “As someone who has ...
A new report from Australia highlights the significant community exposure to alcohol advertising through social media platforms. Over a one-year period researchers observed nearly 40,000 advertisements from a subset of alcohol-related accounts on Meta platforms ...
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By Miriam Zarriga in Port Moresby Papua New Guinea’s Internal Security Minister Peter Tsiamalili Jr says the Royal PNG Constabulary is “stretched” with only 5000 men and women serving the country of more than 9 million people. “Now more than ever we need leadership, we are stretched as a force, ...
IPPC report now public, and even the MSM can’t ignore it, though expect it to slip off the main pages quickly:
Stuff:
Jamie Morton on NZ Herald:
Don’t worry Karol, the depopulation/eugenics policies will be ramping up to, ‘even more blatant’, soon enough!
Can’t imagine the IPCC will be too concerned about it!
from my roamings this morn..i have found ‘the guardian’ has the best coverage..
..so i wd recommend heading over there..
..and i found this one particularly chilling/scary..
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2013/sep/27/climate-change-how-hot-lifetime-interactive
go on..!..
key in yr offsprings’ birthdate..and then scroll thru what is going to happen to them/their world..
..if we continue to do nothing..
(and then go and vote for key and the other ‘drill baby! drill!’ bastards..?..eh..?..)
..(but hey..!..you will tutt-tutt…then you will probably sit down to bacon and eggs for breakfast..
..after you have slipped on yr animal-skin foot/body-coverings..
..(after washing/bathing in animal-fat..)
..and ask (helplessly/resigned) as you chew:..’but what can i do?’
..eh..?
phillip ure..
You can sit down to veggie bacon, a hash brown, grilled tomato and mushrooms for your breakfast and know you are making a small contribution and it tastes delish as well. Try it people!
Hash browns full of beef fat? There is no other reason that potato tastes that good.
“Hash browns full of beef fat?”
Wellington cafes, I’m missing you. Ask at the local cafe if they make their own hashbrowns or buy them in – then you can check the ingredients. But, seeing as I love potato so much – home made hash browns with olive oil (although they do taste pretty yummy with butter). However, I prefer potato hash with a poached egg myself…
The kartoffelpuffer (potato pancake) man is back in town for the autumn/winter seasons in my part of the world – potato street food, I couldn’t believe my luck – cooked in those black drums that are used for roasting chestnuts on the street, then served with salt and/or crushed garlic painted on. Delicious when its minus something horrible degrees. Apparently they serve them with applesauce in Germany – that seems strange to me.
Sacrilege!, the Irish in me is deeply offended. As any true spuddie fan knows the best hash browns are made with grated cold baked in their skin spuddies formed into a cake, fried in butter and salted before eating. So there!.
Lolz, what is this breakfast thing you speak of, breakfast along with lunch has only ever been on the menu round here when one has been a guest of Her Majesty…
veggie bacon
If the veg*n diet is so superior and delish, why do you need to eat fake meat?
fucking. awesome.
I’d never picked that Tegel didn’t produce “chicken-based imitation tofu”.
Ew. That’s a disgusting thought.
I have no true hatred of veg*nism in of itself, but fuck I hate preachy wankers trying to convert me while looking like total hypocrites.
that s*ems out of character
Vegans will eat fake meat because they like the taste but not the cruelty involved in eating meat.
So why would you put animals through torture when you can buy a substitute that doesnt involve cruelty and tastes the same.
Because they don’t and it doesn’t.
also @ guardian:..there is a blueprint for cunnliffe/ labour…
“..An iron law of politics has been broken.
The rulebook states clearly that if traditional Labour red meat is gobbled up inside the conference hall –
– the electorate watching from afar will start to gag.
For at least three decades that has been the received wisdom –
– accepted by Labour luminaries along with the rest of the political class:
– if it tickles Labour’s erogenous zone – then it’s too leftwing for the country.
But that was before Ed Miliband’s proposed 20-month freeze on energy bills.
It sent the Brighton conference hall into convulsions of ecstasy of course –
– but it also received an “off the charts” welcome from the public.
Indeed – it’s had the Conservatives and their allies reeling in rare confusion – as they head to their own clan gathering in Manchester.
Usually the Tories can cheerfully brand any Labour move leftward as a doomed journey into electoral Siberia:
– what should they say now – when Ed’s hint of red is unarguably popular?
It prompts an intriguing thought: if using the state to rein in the energy behemoths finds favour with the voters –
– what other left ideas might be popular?
Can Miliband repeat his success – and craft a populism of the left?
If populism often comes down to channelling public anger against a perceived elite –
– there is plenty of rich terrain for Labour to explore..”
(cont..)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/27/ed-milband-new-populism-energy-prices
phillip ure..
Nationalisation of powercos, re-branding “welfare” as “social security”.
Actually those are not new moves, not “re-” anything. They are a return to core Labour values.
going on labour both here and there ..since fucken douglas/prebble/whoever..
..i wd submit they are most certainly ‘new moves’..
..given the wholesale abandonment of those ‘core-values’ by labour..
..the new new labour…should/must be able to look back at that recent history..
..with a degree of horror..
..and an even higher degree of repudiation..
..phillip ure
The Auckland diocese has divested from fossil fuels.
Bill mcKibben on his recent speaking tour recommended divestment as a way to hurt the fossils who run fossil fuel industries.
Excellent News
I was also roaming this morning and I still fail to see anything about Paul Findlay. You dudes not talking about your colleagues?
How’s that CV padding line going for you guys? What DID John key do at Harvard? Where did Hooton get the idea he is NZ’s leading political commentator?
Shifting your target to flawed minor players now? Bit of a fail I’d say.
What did Richard Worth do, to have to resign?
How many tranzrail shares did John Key own?
Which charity does Key donate his PM salary to?
How did Arron Gilmore get selected?
You can add smiling sam to that as he stated he was donating one of his salaries to charity when double dipping as a paid akl city counciller.
Is it really “Worth” it Dumb Arse ?
You plugging for a ban?
I also read the Guardian piece of Milliband’s power price freeze. After the GFC and failure of neo-liberalism we wallowed along in a vacuum as the previous generation of “left wing” politicians either wouldn’t or couldn’t face the facts about the failure of the central project of their political careers. What is happening, across the English speaking world, is social-democratic politicians are discarding the baggage of Blairism and the distractions of identity and are re-discovering their nerve and socialism. And in the process, they’ve discovered that the apparently iron fortress of neo-liberalism is built on increasingly shakey electoral foundations. There are never any final battles in politics, and the left is coming back again.
PS I love Millibands line: ” “the rising tide only seems to lift the yachts”.
Agree with most of your comment, Sanctuary,
but this:
I guess we all agree they are finally widening the focus from that which is commonly termed as ‘identity politics’ and putting class back into politics? It’s not and has never been an either/or situation. But until now class has been rendered invisible in political discourse. And that’s fueled a fair bit of perfectly understandable yet regrettable and misdirected resentment from those put aside and left to languish as liberal ‘identity politics’ (ie, class free policies) have been advanced through legislation.
deep sigh, of relief.
+ 1
It’s time for boldness! Let boldness be your friend (ask Oracle).
People are crying out for leadership – the leadership of good ideas and equal opportunities; of the common good, of a fair go for all.
Who cares what the selfish self-interested think! Let them start worrying about tomorrow.
i usually just call him Slippery, the British press tho waxed wonderfully lyrical over our Prime Ministers exhibition while a guest of the Queen at Balmoral this week allotting Him the grand title of ”the Galloping Colonial Clot”,
Not to be out done, the Herald’s Clare Trevett, usually found doting over the PM bestowed upon Him the descriptive ”the Antipodean Mouse that roared” after the PM opened His empty suitcase of intellectual rigor for all to see at the UN this week, lambasting the Security Council for failing to find a solution to the Syrian chemical weapons crisis at the very same time as news was breaking that a solution had been agreed…
Oh so there is our beloved Leader, opening his mouth really wide, inserting both feet in up to the knees. Then unlocks the Intellectual suitcase to find it’s full of dirty socks.
So this added to the 300k Grosser wasted, is our attempt at a seat on the security council. They must be pissing themselves in New York.
If you are seriously trying to pass off a middle market tabloid like the Daily Mail as the entirety of “the British press”, you should be helping Hoots-mon with his CV padding.
would this be a good time to introduce my idea/concept of ‘partial-nationalisation’..?
..without banging on and on/in a nutshell..
..it involves turning the tory ‘partial-privatisation’ plan on its’ head..
..veering away from energy for a mo’..lets look at the food-supply duopoly screwing us blind..(nz-owned..or not..)
..partial-nationalisation means the people/state takes 51% of any given entity..
..(and those bought out will of course get paid off..over a negotiated period of time..)
..so in the case of the supermarket-duopoly..the benefits from economies of scale/purchasing are obvious..and people still have to eat..the market won’t suddenly die..’
(plus..minimal upfront costs..as that 51% payback to current owners/shareholders comes largely from future profits..)
..and i think this what is essentially a marriage of capitalism/socialism has much to appeal..
..in that the people will no longer be screwed blind…(in the case of the supermarket-duopoly) healthy food regimes will be so much easier to implement..
..but the special beauty of this model i feel is that the commercial nous/operational-skills-base of any operation partially-nationalised will still be retained…
..and i wd add this model is especially relevant to the many monopolies that currently are bleeding the people dry..
..(and yes..!..of course the ‘sin’-industries are included..gambling/alcohol etc..)
..i have tipped this one upside-down/looked at it from all angles..
..and can see so much to commend..
..and in my eyes…so little to criticise..
..phillip ure..
‘
A class system for internet data . . . no thanks.
This has been bubbling away for a long time now, it will be interesting to see how this comes to pass.
The robot’s circuitry is overloaded by human contradiction:
‘ Ms Collins is concerned about the length of time some judgments take and she is sick of hearing that the best answer to addressing delays is to appoint more judges.
“If I have heard that once I have heard it 100 times.”
But with crime rates dropping and fewer people going into court “it cannot be right; it does not compute”. ‘
Among its new rules:
‘ Allow court documents to be filed, held and issued electronically.
Require use of audio visual link for procedural cases involving prisoners to reduce transportation. ‘
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/politics/274855/collins-puts-judges-notice
I have just read something about James K. Galbraith economist, son of John K, and it is so damning of our present societal approach. I didn’t realise that such things were being said so strongly in public by leading professionals and academics. I’llput some text from him that I got from Wikipedia because it summarises much of what we have been saying here.
What a brilliant, concise summary!
The Predator State
Well worth a read.
2009; quite recent.
On radionz this afternoon a USA couple from near the Appalachians were talking about their music. One letter from a music lover was from an Iraqi soldier saying how it reminded him of home. He is over there because he joined the Forces so he could get higher education, and he is not sure why he’s there, what it’s for. Some come home and then commit suicide. It all serves the USA and its imperialist purposes. It won’t bring peace.
Interesting…..Judge Judy takes on the beaks in populist fashion. Can we expect another Key swipe before long? Cracks appearing in the Natsy edifice lads, brace for a barrage of distraction…..
“You can’t legislate for revenue.” – Phil Goff
“”There are huge advantages from being involved with TPP and even bigger disadvantages of being locked out.” – Phil Goff
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11131278
At last some encouragingly intelligent statements from a Labour shadow Minister. I wonder what will happen to him?
SSLands,you are proving to be the ever elusive fool, there might be advantages in the proposed TPP, there also might be some very unpalatable disadvantages,
David Cunliff has rightly said that we all should get to see the text of the agreement and have time to discuss it befor any decision is made on whether to sign it,
By the way, you still havn’t answered the question, which do you want to buy me, the new fridge or the new washing machine…
As if you would know how to use a washing machine.
The negotiations should be held in secret. It is impossible to hold multi party negotiations with the uneducated rabble like you baying inanities that get picked up in the MSM. It is a distraction from rational discussion.
Ok, i will take that as a yes to you buying me, as per new National Party policy, a brand new fridge/freezer,
Best tell Slippery to sign the thing befor November 2014 then, or the readers and writers, excluding you, of the Standard will get to have a strong voice on what is in that TPP,
SSLands is an excellent ‘handle’ for you who does not believe in the democratic process…
So, you think that we shouldn’t have a say in our own governance? That would make you an authoritarian but that really does come back to my saying:
Libertarians: Dictators hiding behind Liberal values.
Um, no. That would be a Labour Shadow Minister still believing in the
tooth fairyneo-liberal economics – the stuff that just brought the world economy to its knees.Not wanting to ruin Weekend social.
In reply to bad12, who wrote…
“None of your taxes pay for the treatment of tobacco related illness or death, tobacco taxes have been estimated to be collecting up to a billion dollars a year over and above the cost to the country of tobacco usage…”
As a grow your own man and by the looks quite proud of it, none of your taxes are going to pay for your health care because you don’t pay any on your smokes. That’s like double dipping, but worse.
Sort of puts you in context. I could call hypocrite. 😉
Those taxes used for smoking related illness, wherever they come from ($250m in 2004 and no doubt much higher now) could help alleviate child poverty and provide opportunities to many in need. So much for your points about funding america cup races and other corporate welfare deals.
Like I said, you go for it, mate, just ’cause you are too obstinate, ignorant or stupid to use the stop smoking incentives to quit is completely up to you.
I don’t even mind if you don’t say thanks to taxpayers for the care you will get at our expense, but a sorry to the disadvantaged children who’s tax dollar funding you’re stealing should be mandatory for all left wing smokers, not to mention to the nurses on the lung cancer wards and the morgue porters who’ll have to trolley your frigid corpses around.
I just hope you don’t smoke anywhere near children.
That’s simply pathetic,the tax dollars smokers currently pay are around a billion dollars over and above the actual cost of smoking and it’s obvious even to the thickest head on the planet that the Government that imposed these taxes have no intention of spending such on impoverished children,
Do you tax rugby players extra and disburse that among needy children as every weekend 1000’s of them deliberately go out and get injured playing that game,
Road users, who also cost the country billions above and beyond what tobacco users cost get to pay extra cash to feed the kids most in need do they,
Considering what you have called me in that comment without answering the salient point which is the spurious claim that tobacco kills 50% of those who use it by means of heart disease and various cancers when 49. something % of people who have never touched tobacco products will die of that very same heart disease and those very same various cancers i would suggest that i am debating with a fucking moron who has a genetic intellectual disability,
So if we all stopped using tobacco the poor wee nurses on the cancer ward would simply have to follow us over to the other wards where we will still die in the same numbers from heart disease and various cancers coz that’s what kills 50% of us whether we smoke or not,
Your whole comment above reeks of mental retardation, you should get that seen to…
sheesh, just bunged out a long reply for bad12 and alien only to have the lot lost and now it too late on Saturday afternoon. Time for one of those naughty activities….
“Your whole comment above reeks of mental retardation”
Seriously? I don’t see it that way. That $250m spent on dying smokers by the government could, as you posted the other night, lift children out of poverty in a stroke (no pun intended).
Wherever the tax dollars come from, and clearly it’s not from you, having an extra 1/4 of a billion dollars in the kitty shouldn’t be so easily dismissed.
I can smell the guilty conscience on your breath as you type, but as a proven double dipper, you have to admit that your free will to smoke comes at a great cost to many deserving causes. That you don’t care, try to deflect the argument and dismiss a common sense point does you little credit at all.
Your points about taxing rugby players and drivers is avoidance (I’m sensing a theme).
Your point about percentages is manipulating statistics to support your view, and I believe, and I’m happy to be corrected by the scholars, false logic.
I’m okay with you smoking, though really you should pay your fair share of taxes or at least (try to) pay privately if you want healthcare down the track, but like a soft touch lefty, concede that you should be treated by the state at the expense of others when your time comes, because that’s what we do in the caring left, even for selfishly stupid people who could have helped themselves, given the encouragement and funding on offer.
I’m not okay with preventable illnesses costing vast amounts of money and causing social damage, which is why most of us want to stop our families living in sub standard housing, getting third world diseases – Same for smoking. Those kids, mums and dads can’t help themselves, but hard as stopping smoking is, you can.
I challenge you to quit. Right here, right now, even though it’ll add years to you.
Three months time when you can breathe and taste food again, you’ll thank me, rather than call me a retard.
Sod off with your pathetic rubbish you fool, i have no intentions of quitting, i just had a 4.99 pizza and it tasted just fine, finished off with a good puff on my home grown and a cup of tea,
Ah life’s great when you can appreciate the small things…
Ps, if you weren’t such an overcoat changing abusive little twat i would dig out the link to the health department stats that show 50% of those who do not smoke die of heart disease and various cancers so you have as much chance as me of clocking off via those ailments,
i have posted that same link befor here on the Standard, go fetch…
“Sod off with your pathetic rubbish you fool, i have no intentions of quitting”
Then you are a leech, a hypocrite and enemy of the poor.
It is then even odds that either one or the both of us will die of cancer or heart disease, i pick yours to be brain cancer based upon the fact that there is obviously something amiss with it at present,
Me, i reckon heart disease caused by having too much fun will knock me off…
“It is then even odds that either one or the both of us will die of cancer or heart disease, i pick yours to be brain cancer based upon the fact that there is obviously something amiss with it at present,”
Ouch! 😆
your problem alien is the dismissal of humankinds desires
“your problem alien is the dismissal of humankinds desire for the wild”
I don’t think that’s true, but then there’s nothing wild or desirable about tumours 🙂
sorry, went and edited post post….
but I think you do dismiss something that cannot be so dismissed.
I saw your edit and amended my answer to reflect.
I don’t know what you’re thinking I’m dismissing, but desire and/or call of the wild wouldn’t be on my list if I were.
Missed this first time around 😆
“i would suggest that i am debating with a fucking moron who has a genetic intellectual disability”
As you now know, you’re not as good at astute as I am 🙂
Yes, you missing that the first time round just adds the proof to the assertion…
I think it was because I was desperately trying to find a valid point in the post, I skimmed past the third or fourth insult.
But interesting to note, given my charitable will to treat you should you be the 1 in 2 to die from smoking, how you respond to someone you view as having a genetic intellectual disability.
Maybe not just a leech, a hypocrite and enemy of the poor, but also an abuser of the intellectually challenged.
That’s not a good thing to have on ones record, but there it is in black and white.
Pathetic scum who are you to tell me what i should and should not do, smoking tobacco is perfectly legal as is growing it,
Do those who grow tomatoes,cabbages and apples in their back-yard get taxed for it, your zealots view show you up for the overcoat changing trash that you really are,
Perhaps you would like the chance now to deny that you voted for Labour and took the WFF tax credit and then changed your overcoat to vote National and took the tax cuts, something i put to you the other day and you did not deny,
You claim that i am a proven ‘double dipper’ you and Hooten use the same smear tactics, where exactly am i double dipping you pathetic fool,
^ 😆
“Perhaps you would like the chance now to deny that you voted for Labour and took the WFF tax credit and then changed your overcoat to vote National and took the tax cuts, something i put to you the other day and you did not deny,”
Like I wrote at the time, I’m as red/green as my logos eyes.
Not that I have to justify myself to some angry prick on the internet, but, I have never voted other than for Labour and the Green party, and can’t foresee a time when I would do otherwise.
“where exactly am i double dipping you pathetic fool”
“Do those who grow tomatoes,cabbages and apples in their back-yard get taxed for it”
Home tomato growers don’t get taxed, but then the tax on the tomato industry, using your argument, doesn’t adequately fund the healthcare and associated societal cost of one in two tomato eaters dying.
However, you smoking and not paying the taxes on smokes, means unless you have a private health plan, which I doubt, you’ll get your healthcare, should you be the one in two preventable deaths that need a share of the $250m (2004 figure) budget for nothing. Cake and eat it, with a double dose of dipping.
Shame on you. 😉
“Pathetic scum who are you to tell me what i should and should not do”
This site needs a :grrr: smiley or I’ll just use :bad12: as everyone will know what I mean 😆
Yes exactly, pathetic scum run round sticking their noses into other peoples business that is perfectly legal,
The above is why i think you are a fucking moron with some form of brain dysfunction/disease,
The 50% death figures for tobacco users is based upon deaths from heart disease and various cancers, correct,
The problem with those figures is that 50% of those who have never been near a cigarette will also according to the health statistics die of heart disease and various cancers including YOU,
So when that brain cancer inflames ya brain what are you going to blame,
As i said above i have posted a link to the figures befor on the Standard, be a good little puppy and go fetch…
Again, false logic bad12.
Consider if the smokers who get sick, needing expensive health care and then die from smoking didn’t, how much extra cash would the health service have to treat and prevent non smokers from getting sick and dying? Not to mention extra taxes they’d contribute from not being too sick to work and or dead.
Consider the money spent on initiatives, programs and drugs that try, successfully in many cases, except for the very most weak willed, selfish or ignorant, to stop smokers from smoking with the goal of preventing addicts from getting sick and needing expensive health care, instead being diverted to preventing other causes of cancer and heart disease to help people who get sick without the option of choosing to play 50/50 russian roulette.
Consider all that extra money being spent on smokers being spent on children in poverty, for example, or education, night classes etc…
If only smokers weren’t so addicted and narcissistic to the point of sacrificing the health and well being of others and especially the poor.
Again, you argue like a bit of a dimwit, mate, deliberately diverting off in tangents, throwing out a challenge, having it answered, ignoring it and then repeating the same things over and over in a barrage of insults and slurs.
You are hard work, for sure.
Have been on a staff who ostracized smokers continuously, blah, blah,…yet there were lots of fat bastards who didn’t smoke and sat down at ‘smoko’ to their pies and donuts and whilst putting lashings of butter on their scones would deride their smoking colleagues who were outside as bad role models????
*Current tobacco excise revenues in New Zealand amount to approximately $1 billion per year and have been at that level for some years. This is just under 2% of total tax revenues.
*Of the approximate $1.6 billion per year retail spending on tobacco products, approximately 70% is accounted for by taxation, including GST as well as tobacco taxes.
Smoking has better returns for the Government than a Power Co!
If your figure of $250 million is the cost to ‘the country’; I’d say “Smokers- smoke away to your heart’s content.”
Lolz unbridled stupidity is a joy to read only for the fact of it’s humor content, i actually got my %’s a little wrong above,
There’s always a little time for correction tho,
Annual death from heart diseases in New Zealand 40% of deaths annually,
http://www.heartfoundation.org.nz/know-the-facts/statistics
Annual death from cancers in New Zealand 29.4% of deaths annually,
http://www.cancernz.org.nz/divisions/about/cancer-statistics
You make assumptions,(false), that if only all those smokers would just give up then they would not die of heart diseases nor cancers,
69.4% of us all will be snuffed out by one or the other, given that, if everyone quit using tobacco products tomorrow 49.4% of them would still die of cancers or heart diseases,
You make another assumption,(again false), that many are aided in giving up the use of tobacco products by aides and interventions which of course your small brain does not allow you to see are paid for from tobacco taxation,
The current round of interventions(past 4 years),have according to those who run the quitline and others who have conducted studies only reached 2% of tobacco users and resulted in only 2% of actual success after a 6 month period,
In other words, a waste of money, as the uptake among youth is un-measured but likely to out-number the minute numbers of those who quit,
Your whining is just that, smokers pay for ALL the money spent upon them in hospital care and in attempts to stop them using the product with hundreds of millions more going into the Governments general accounts,(Treasury says 1 billion dollars),from taxation on the product,
If no-one smoked how would this money get to be spent on hungry kids etc etc as you say, perhaps as ex-smokers you would have us taxed even more,
Your arguments are pathetic rubbish based upon nothing but your willingness to interfere in others lives and if you actually believe any of the trite bullshit you trot out then its obvious you are retarded by brainwashing…
And Paula could be Beneficial to the poor if she gave up some of her breakfast, lunch, multi-course dinner, morning tea, afternoon tea, supper, midnight snacks, office draw munchies, elevensies, high tea, brunch… thus giving her saved expenditure to the health budget; and by ‘slim-lining’ on this austerity she’d potentially not become a heart disease cost.
“You make assumptions,(false), that if only all those smokers would just give up then they would not die of heart diseases nor cancers,”
…that if only all those smokers would just give up then they would not die of heart diseases nor cancers earlier than non-smokers do (generally speaking).
Not that I’m saying you shouldn’t smoke – I only tell my kids that. Tis just that is more years are lost through earlier death, is all.
NAS, your figures are wrong, but I agree with what you’re saying that fatties who smoke are the worst of all.
bad12 …
29 September 2013 at 1:17 am
Or you could just read the info on the smokefree website. It has gems like…
COSTS OF SMOKING
http://smokefree.org.nz/costs-smoking
“Of the approximate $1.6 billion per year retail spending on tobacco products, approximately 70% is accounted for by taxation, including GST as well as tobacco taxes.”
“The New Zealand government collected a total of $842 million in tobacco excise tax in 2005.”
“The tangible costs of smoking to New Zealand in 2005 were around NZ$1.7 billion, or about 1.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product. This includes costs incurred because of lost production due to early death, lost production due to smoking-caused illness, and smoking-related health-care costs.”
And…
HEALTH EFFECTS
http://smokefree.org.nz/health-effects
“It is estimated that many deaths due to various diseases could be prevented if smoking was eliminated, including:
68% of female deaths and 82% of male deaths due to lung cancer
65% of female deaths and 79% of male deaths due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
11% of female deaths and 18% of male deaths due to heart disease
8% of female deaths and 15% of male deaths due to stroke.
And…
One-half of smokers who do not quit smoking will die early from a smoking-related disease.
http://smokefree.org.nz/sites/default/files/Fact_One_in_two_smokers-fnl-081003_0.pdf
Smoking kills 5,000 New Zealanders every year
http://smokefree.org.nz/sites/default/files/Fact_5000_NZers-fnl-081003_0_0.pdf
Smokers who die from a smoking-related disease
lose, on average, 15 years of life
http://smokefree.org.nz/sites/default/files/Fact_15years-fnl-081003_0.pdf
Roll-your-own cigarettes are not safer to smoke than
tailor-made cigarettes
http://smokefree.org.nz/sites/default/files/Fact_Rollies-fnl-081003.pdf
Now you can be in denial all you like, but the $ shortfall in from the cost of smoking compared to revenue gained by smoking is huge, double by those figures. Imagine those extra $800m dollars getting kids out of poverty.
Every time you puff on a fag, you think how you’re taking food out of a poor kids belly, or sending that kid to school in shoes and an overcoat in winter.
If you enjoy the drag, then you are what I’ve called you, a leech, a hypocrite and enemy of the poor.
Right:
Accounting for the direct treatment of smoking-related illnesses assumes that those people will never get cancer, heart disease, nor any other condition that requires palliative care towards the end of life. In short, it assumes that every smoker would suddenly drop dead without warning at a ripe old age if only they did not smoke.
Secondly, assuming 20-odd years of lost life for one in two smokers, that period involves about 12 years of pensions paid by society saved by those smokers who die early.
Thirdly, the “lost economic activity” is only valid if it involves new production – again, not in retirement years. The deceased’s estate is distributed and spent by their inheritors – the economic activity is not lost.
Basically, all you’ve got is the smoking industry’s lies about addiction, and passive smoking. One hasn’t been valid in NZ for thirty-odd years, the other is negligible in current smokefree laws, barring the personal risk choices of relatives.
“Right”
Like your all authoritative 😆
lol
It was more where to get started after going through the latest debate on the issue 🙂
It seems that the National voters and the middle class have grown disillusioned with PinoKeyo, Blinglish and their government.
Well serves you right, were you stupid or what?
http://a-working-mans-opinion.blogspot.co.nz/2013/09/dear-john-this-is-break-up-letter.html
What a stupid blog entry.
It is not akin to a corporate negotiation unkess it is true that it kowtows to corporate interests. Tppa is between countries and negotiations began in 2008. In any event its what the usa wants that will be driving this. Negotiate in private ratify in public.
watch murdochs machinary damn the climate report.
This would be the TPPA that Labour supports, yes?
Some of the lowest paid people on the planet, Bangladeshi garment workers, have had paramilitary troops set upon them – yay globalisation.
//
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-26/bangladesh-deploys-paramilitary-in-garment-zone-after-protests.html
were our soldiers in afghanistan given larium..?…(a malaria preventitive..)
..british soldiers were…
..and it is known as ‘the suicide drug’..
..phillip ure..
A quick google – doxycycline.
Feb 7, 2003 – Commander Joint Forces New Zealand. Each Service has a …… by NZDF personnel in East Timor is Doxycycline (100 milligrams per day).
Jesus tap-dancing Christ in a sidecar on a pogo stick. The misogyny of the pigs in blue knows no bounds. A senior cop thinks that a ten year old girl asked to be raped:
http://news.msn.co.nz/nationalnews/8730373/cop-sorry-for-calling-rape-victim-willing
I repeat that: a TEN YEAR OLD GIRL was supposedly ASKING FOR IT.
That disgusting sack of shit thinks that a little girl wanted to be raped. These are the sort of people (I use the term loosely) decide to promote to senior positions.
Look at that swine’s “apology” – all the usual “I’m sorry if I MIGHT have…”
The most generous thing I can say is that Central District Commander Russell Gibson is a very, very sick man who needs some intensive psychiatric treatment… but I know that he’ll get a slap across the wrist with a wet bus ticket.
What an utter shit.
That being said, I disagree that he needs “intensive psychiatric treatment”. Mental illness doesn’t make people misogynist douchebags. Society makes normal people into misogynist douchebags quite happily.
(There’s a term for it, and it rhymes with “shmape culture”, but mentioning that would probably just be me being a nasty academic feminist or something)
That being said, I disagree that he needs “intensive psychiatric treatment”
Ah well, QoT, I was gritting my teeth over that. I have a mental illness – anxiety crossed with depression – and all my best friends have their own variants.
I was choking back what I really think and what he really deserves shouldn’t be mentioned here.
Anyway, yes, we see in that shitbag, and the people who promoted him to a position of authority, are rape culture embodied, and don’t let anyone deny that it exists.
Although it’s rape culture, the phrase sort of shortcuts what is going on here, and yeah, is dismissed as some academic, feminist rant thing. So just to spell it out…
This was a crime of child abuse, rape, abuse of trust (of child and her parents), abuse of power and a police officer’s complete misunderstanding of what grooming children means. Add to that it’s the absolving an adult, who is fully aware of what he’s doing, of responsibility for his crime for no justifiable reason.
Clearly he’s had a bit of a lesson and is repentant (the officer, that is) but is shows how easily this stuff gets embedded in people’s heads and how hard it is to remove when even the apologies are qualified with ‘may have re-victimised’ the child with a poor choice “of language” (?!)
No wonder that even if kids know what is happening to them is a crime and they’re in a position to report it, they don’t.
Clearly he’s had a bit of a lesson and is repentant (the officer, that is)
The pig isn’t repentant at all – he’s still making excuses – “I might have”, “people may have” “I made a poor choice of words” – that’s all diversionary bullshit by a coward.
Enough of this “may” and “might”.
“I am a complete and utter shitbag” is the only honest thing he can say, instead he tries to suggest that he’s being persecuted because other people have chosen to be offended.
Worse still, there are people who put this pig in a position of authority. Who are they? We must name them.
Just to add to that – we really have to ask ourselves some serious questions about the police. Their misogyny, their violence, the propensity for rape and corruption of justice has been well documented. Are they the enemy within now?
They’ve been the biggest gang in the country for as long as I can remember. Sure, sometimes they’ll deny that they’re a criminal organisation and say that while some individuals might commit offences, it’s not overall policy. They’ll try and tell us that they hang out together because they have a love of white cars and bright lights, plus blue uniforms, and they shouldn’t be judged by their propensity to use tasers. They say people ask for it and what can they do? Now and then they even do some good acts, such as rescue kittens, but that’s only to get public sympathy.
The question you have to ask every pig is this: Who do you serve? The rich, yourselves or both?
And oh yeah, all those “good cops”: what are you, personally, doing to stop the rapists and thugs in your own force?
Nothing, right?
I’ve known the odd one who has tried to do something. They quickly find their lives become unbearable and generally leave.
Is Cunliffe going to follow through and discipline Goff for his Neoliberal positioning around the TPPA (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11131278), that has totally distorted the Labour Party position (http://thestandard.org.nz/cunliffe-declares-war-national-tppa/), and contradicted Cunliffe’s framing?
Goff should take a seat beside Banks and make his ACT membership official.
I dunno Jon. Not saying you’re wrong to read the article in the way you have. We know Goff is right-wing.
But when I read the article I bore in mind both the author and the fact that Tory sympathisers like her have been somewhat desperately casting around for divisions to leverage. And I’m aware that where none exist, attempts will be made to manufacture them.
Then I reflected that almost the entire article is O’Sullivan’s interpretation/opinion. There is only one quote of substance. And it contains a note of hesitancy, which given Goff’s neo-liberal pedigree is, at least, something – and maybe indicative of Goff pushing the bounds of the narrative rather than breaking it.
The quote runs:-
I disagree with his take, but at least he is not being unabashedly pro-free trade, eh?
This comment is for QoT (sorry folks, the phone doesn’t seem to let me insert a reply once the chain of discussion has moved on).
I’m seriously offended by your jibes about vegans. I and other vegans are committed enough to LIVE our politics, not just snipe away at others. You don’t have to agree with my values, but guess what, mate – I have never preached them at you or anyone else on this site, you seem to be the “preachy wanker trying to convert” me and others and if you give it more than a millisecond’s thought (a challenge I know, but try) you’ll see that in a discussion line that was up until then about global warming it is you who “look(s) like (a) total hypocrite”. Try going a bit of research into basic issues like carbon release vs oxygenation, or demands on land and water resources, then come on back and argue that it is we vegans who are the total hypocrites.
I’m also really disappointed that only one other person replied to this unprovoked rant.