A good follow up to Nigel Latta’s expose of the sugar industry in NZ.
Katherine Rich ( ex Nat MP ) is the hired gun for the sugar industry.
I think they used Slater to attack people who questioned the sugar industry.
Lewis Road Creamery Chocolate Milk, with queues of customers waiting for delivery every day. Each bottle contains 22 pieces of (delicious) Whittakers chocolate (half a chocolate slab).
Twenty two pieces …….. Glug glug glug.
A second drink, perhaps? Or a glass of coke to ‘wash it down’?
Could I please have a side order of diabetes?
The research referred to was some blind taste testing with dinner guests, that I carried out . Nothing to do with Mars. I was trying to understand if the queues could really be justified on the basis of taste, and also highlight the foolishness of the queues on the basis of health.
Yep he was floored by the question by Espiner about whether it was moral for NZ to enter the war. I thought he had difficulties understanding the concept of morality.
I have looked in vain for six years for any suggestions that Mr Key has a moral base. Right now the National Party is a convenient vehicle to satisfy his personal interests. Hopefully somone can explain why my view has no substance, as I would like to think better of him?
I think he has said himself that he is not an “ideology” type of person. The only thing I recall he has said he that believes in are asset sales. Is there another living NZer that cannot recall what they thought about the Springbok tour? When he first came out with this I thought he was lying. Now I actually believe it.
Yep one of his answers to ‘is it moral’ was “It is if we agree to that.” So what is moral is what we agree is moral.
That might be an interesting philosophical stance on ethics al la David Hume, but I for one would like a stance less cynical from our leader that doesn’t smack of focus group analysis on this issue. Higher standards anyone?
I don’t think he has any idea. He is totally amoral. I can recognise it because I was like that until I grew up a bit in my late 20s. As far as his philosophy goes, it’s a weird mix of Aleister Crowley and Nietsche, mixed with a desire for acceptance from those he worships. As a human being, he is hugely dysfunctional.
Why is that such a surprise, the ‘terror’ narrative arrived within a week of the election duely pushed by the MSM muppets so top diversionary tactic whilst the RMA, employment, exploration and sell offs etc etc continue.
kiwi soldiers bodies being returned home will be another unwanted legacy of key as he marches them off and increases our risk once we engage.
this govt has no moral compass just a monetary one.
This morning on the news about David cameron the journalist said all western leaders were on high alert since the canadian parliament incident.
I was at dinner sunday evening when the Pm arrived. There was no pre dinner sweep of the restaurant, he arrived with his wife and son, alone. NO guards, none of his special big boys. They were not discreetly outside they were nowhere…
So, NOT on high alert here.
BUT maybe he was dining as John Key the man, and not PM. The terrorists will probably respect that distinction aye?
He needs to be truthful. This isn’t about NZers, it is that he believes we should play a part alongside our allies. There are many who agree with that thinking so why not just say it, Honest John?
I’ve said before, how many of the jingoistic types will send their own children. I note, John Keys daughter the right age to fight – should she not be running off to basic?
i didnt see him… heads turned, conversations lowered and my right wing dad and his wife said he had arrived. he sat at a table behind me. i had eaten so it was just a question of keeping it down.
when i stood to leave, i was so tempted to say lousd enough
“i see the terror threat is very low tonight”… but didnt
he has good taste in restaurants. hes come in before when i was there…
But Tracey did you notice the casually dressed but awkward bloke who came in a few minutes before maybe with a companion, who could have been man or a woman, and the lone diner who came in a bit later or who stayed hanging around the door or feigned interest in the shop windows in the vicinity.
Key is paranoid, but increasingly aware that more NZers think the whole “entourage” thing is preposterous posing
The entourage thing is US-style politics invading New Zealand. Have you seen the motorcades that travel with the likes of Eric Holder? Not even the President.
I bet Steven Joyce et al. are frothing at the mouth for a personal security detail.
I wonder whether David Parker has demanded a team from the Diplomatic Protection Squad to travel with him all the time now he is the (acting) leader of the party? Cunliffe wanted them around all the time. Perhaps he thought it made him seem important.
Actually perhaps Cunliffe was worried about the other members of his caucus. It would seem justified wouldn’t it? http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10470344/Campaign-Diary-Monday-September-8
“Dirty Journalism” post by Bat Bean Beam is a must read. Asks all the right questions about journalists in NZ and the failure to change anything substantial since the release of Hager’s Dirty Politics book:
And while Nicky Hager is constantly questioned about the ethics of his working with stolen correspondence, none of the reporters who have collaborated with Slater have had to defend the public interest value of their stories against the danger of exposing others to Whaleoil. Yet that is also where the naivety defence falls apart: for nobody can claim not to have known what that blog was about. There is no excuse.
“We are always told that wages shouldn’t rise unless productivity rises. Well, productivity rose 48% from 1990 to 2010 – but after inflation, the average wage rose only 18%. This is a fundamentally unfair wages system, caused in large part by the lack of bargaining power that working people – wage and salary earners – have suffered.”
For a lot of people, those in the lower decile, as productivity has risen their wages have actually gone down.
It’s a simple fact that, if everything else remains the same, as productivity increases wages must decline. This government and all governments going back to the 4th Labour government have been working to keep everything else the same in the name of stability and with that has come the inevitable decrease in bargaining power and remuneration.
Oh, look, IT just increased productivity, had nothing to do with employees!
I must be due a bonus, and my banker can leverage the new ongoing wealth to sustain even higher valuations.
It must be great to live in a world when citizens are widgets, expendable moveable parts, where discourse about finance is all about how wealth is mismeasird and allotted to a shrinking class of super rich and their hanger on-ers.
Key screws us all, locking away choice.
Help Shut Down the Illegal and extremely cruel Dog Meat Trade in Thailand. Watch the video to understand what is happening there.
Please act immediately to stop thousands of dogs from being tortured and butchered for their meat.
Every aspect of the dog meat trade in Southeast Asia is horrifically cruel.
You can save thousands of dogs from unspeakable pain by adding your name to Soi Dog’s global petition. It calls on Thailand’s leaders to crack down hard on the criminals who profit from the agony of animals.
The modern equivalent of slavery is slavery. It’s pretty gross to exploit the utter dehumanisation of actual humans in order to make a cheap shock-value attack on people who eat things you don’t like.
Even conservative John Armstrong has something bad to say about National’s housing ‘reform’ (read: sell off all the shit to our corporate funders for pennies on the dollar). Armstrong refers to the policy as ideological for ideology’s sake.
National is continuing its policy of strip mining all the assets of the state, thus breaking a promise it made that there would be no more selling. They are behaving like a mafia that has taken over a business to squeeze every last dollar out of it before they send it into bankruptcy.
History tells us that the invisible hand is NOT the best solution to social problems. One of the main jobs of Government is dealing with the negative externalities the invisible hand creates in the first place, which is in essence what state housing is an example of – Providing where the market can’t, or won’t without the introduction of overbearing regulation.
Isis will “rain carnage on the world”, Prime Minister John Key tells us today … but he has yet to make a decision on whether NZ troops will go.
What sort of apocalyptic theology does he subscribe to these days ? Revelations ?
Will a NZ SAS haka have any effect on the Saudis and Qataris who used Chlorine at Kobane ? Is he referring to ballistic mass destruction ?
He may wish retire to a professorship in strategic decision making at Auckland University.
Isn’t this phrase indicative of the breathtaking level of arrogance of our current PM – given the carnage unremittedly being dropped from the sky creating vast civilian casualties is primarily and immorally being committed by his US “allies”?
The carnage being rained is a direct result of the insane invasion of Iraq which Key wanted NZ to be part of. So we could sell more butter to the yanks. Still need to shift more of it…
He’s just making sure that when we send our troops over, we know we’re doing A Good Thing, because otherwise we might have some public pressure to the contrary.
Last time I looked, it was nation states with developed economies, and strong military forces that were capable of raining carnage on the world, not a bunch of Koran waving teenagers with a couple of stolen MiGs.
Millsy, we are very selective about which people who are doing harm in the world that we should visit with our strong military forces, that as you say are capable of raining carnage on the world. Let us not forget that Vietnam received triple the bombing that took place in all of WWII !
In relationship to all this, I wonder what certain elements of society today would have called the men who went as volunteers to Spain to fight Franco’s fascists. Is that similar to the young men fighting with the Islamic State? Were those Spanish War volunteers idealists and defenders of freedom or were they brainwashed, radicalised terrorists?
Would our present Government have considered a military intervention into Republican Spain then?
It is the remuneration packages of bank CEOs that have been out of control. They are the ones who are left unchecked and will rain carnage on the world.
Well, well, I never knew that. George Key. My use of the Spanish Civil War analogy was entirely outside of that information. (And that’s no John Key-style memory lapse. His techniques for avoidance of issues are well criticised in tonight’s Marlborough Express editorial, by the way).
Remember that those who fought against Franco were reviled by the establishment, who thought that fascism, which got rid of those “pesky communist trade unions”, was a good idea.
Right up until Poland was invaded, and their skills were needed.
[lprent: I have no real objections to you placing these links here (all about ISIS, chemical weapons, and Kurds). However I do have a strong objection to you link-whoring them on our site for promoting google links. You haven’t provided a reason in the form of a paragraph or two for the people on this site why they should click into them.
This site values the opinions of those who comment here. We don’t value straight linking with no explanations. ]
Strange thing though, I imagine that there are many more young people willing to take up arms against IS than the few odd entrails that media manage to find have signed for IS.
Re. “link-whoring them on our site for promoting google links.”
.. they all linked to newspaper media sources, as I remember it, not google. A link is just an economical way of doing it ..
Putting raw links in a comment is most commonly used by bots and spam artists to increase google scores. When I look at a list of raw links that is what I presume.
There are many other search and meta-search engines out there besides google. I find google very limited, predictable, and constricting these days and try to broaden my sources. In this case I used
Moral is a word beloved of the Hasbara Zionists. The IDF is a moral army, Israel acts morally, etc….. Key is on the same side, so it’s no surprise to see the word being misused here as well. It’s a favourite term of immoral liars.
Good point. Plenty of more conservative lefties and left leaning intellectuals will nod sagely with the PM though. What could be more worthy than a ‘just’ war?
He won’t have read Dirty Politics
He will ignore all evidence on any subject which counters his limited self interested and parochial viewpoint.
He will rely on anecdotes to support his points.
He will aim tok provoke.
He’s unlikely to admit the only reason he voted for the Tories is naked self interest.
In short, he is not worth debating with.
I believe very much in democracy especially the last election where the people of NZ (well enough of them anyway) told you exactly what they think of so-called dirty politics and voted National back in
If you think an elected dictator every 3 years is cool and nobody should ask questions and the media should just be a propaganda tool,
then you are a f*cken tool as well mate.
Far be it for me to agree with a curmudgeon, but check out Gavin Ellis? (Elice?) on the regular gal’s NinetoNoon today. Completely on the mark – and couple that with the recent TVNZ decision.
When I get around to it, it may form a question on another post re what the fuck are prospective Labour Party candidates going to do about our media, and in particular PSB.
I’m hopeful I’ll hear that there will be some sort of bipartisan mechanism that protects our 4th Estate (not that we have one), and our public sphere. AND such a mechanism that bypasses old hacks and self-interested old boy/gal networks.
Personally, I believe there is such a mechanism, and one that not only recognises individuals’ true worth, and one that puts back a citizenry’s RIGHT.
(Might take one or two ex-pats to return home, and they can be convinced – AND one which is somewhat more ambitious than a CBB – which I have to support, but regard as JUST a little namby pamby – otherwise known as a co-alascence of a 3rd Way)
EDIT: What the fuck ever happened to protest, and journalistic integrity?
“America used to be a country that built for the future,” Krugman opens, somewhat mournfully. “Sometimes the government built directly: Public projects, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, provided the backbone for economic growth. Sometimes it provided incentives to the private sector, like land grants to spur railroad construction. Either way, there was broad support for spending that would make us richer.”
Not any more. These days, our government steadfastly refuses to invest in the country’s future.
It isn’t as if there’s no cash to do so. Seven years after the housing bubble burst, “the country is awash in savings,” Krugman writes, “with nowhere to go.” Corporations and banks are holding on to trillions in excess reserves that are simply sitting idle. State governments are strapped, yes, but the federal government, with its ability to borrow money cheaply, could easily help them out.
(if watching replays of q-time..i wouldn’t bother much past question five..if i were you..
..norman under-performed/delivered..
..king got follow-up question of the day..(referencing/comparing collins/key..vis a vis ‘ministerial-responsibility’..
..and this:..
(excerpt..)
‘..and english slam-dunks him/labour by noting labour signed up to the social-accord in 2013..which detailed this dismantling/devolution of the state houses asset..(!)
..(ed:..i didn’t know that..did you..?..that labour signed up to this..?..whoar..!..)..’
John Robertson, Professor of Media Politics at the University of West Scotland, on media bias in the Scottish Independence Referendum …..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajd4R-9BEIw
Some of his arguments towards the end of the clip (on the Establishment Media’s demonization of Opposition Leaders) has particular relevance for New Zealand.
A couple of minor corrections and additions to your report.
1. Oceana Gold is not a NZ company. It is just another foreign owned company making money out of NZ.
2. It is poisoning El Salvador’s water.
3. It is using a free trade agreement to sue the El Salvador government.
“Oceana Gold is claiming that under the US-central America free trade agreement, it has a “right” to compel mining or be compensated for loss of profits. In response, the company will today be handed a petition signed by 200,000 opponents to its attempt to force gold mining in El Salvador.”
But who cares. Some selfish shareholders are making heaps of money out of polluting the earth and screwing over a people.
Simply put yes, yes it does…except for the little issue of its not a case of me doing well therefore no one else can do well instead its a case of I’m doing well and everyone else can do well if they so choose
The problem with the left in general is you all think that for someone to do well (whatever the definition of doing well is) it has to be at the expense of someone else
Whereas the inconvenient truth of the matter is that everyone can do well if they choose to but most choose not to
actually, if you bought power shares you are doing well at the expense of everyone else, in the form of increased overseas debt the government pays because of the reduced dividend take.
“Restaurant Brands is a fast food company based in New Zealand and is listed on the NZ Stock Exchange as RBD. It operates most of New Zealand’s KFC, Pizza Hut, Carl’s Jr. and Starbucks stores and provides management and support services to New Zealand’s independent KFC franchisees. It holds the New Zealand franchise for KFC and Pizza Hut from Yum Restaurants and Starbucks from Starbucks USA.”
So just a subsidiary and a franchise of a massive US company owned by large multinational banks.
“Yum! Brands, Inc. or Yum! is an American fast food company. A Fortune 500 corporation, Yum operates the licensed brands Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Wing Street worldwide. Prior to 2011, Yum! also owned Long John Silver’s and A&W Restaurants.”
Nope sorry they weren’t, they were offered at a fair price and the controlling majority were kept by the government and there been two elections thus far that have returned National to be power
James Shaw, the new Green Party MP’s maiden speech in parliament,
When we’re presented with this conflict between the environment and the economy and it is almost always a false choice. There’s almost always a solution that delivers both.
Problems and conflicts that seem unsolvable have solutions, and the hard part is getting the different parties to work together to find them
Yes, Shaw is in the section of the Green Party that see a future working with National. They are still in a minority but do have influence. Julie-Ann Genter and Russel Norman are in this group also, but are not quite as right as Shaw.
I am still appalled that Norman said in the minor leader’s debate that the politician he most admired in another party was Bill (sell off state houses) English.
I’ve always had some criticisms of Norman’s values.
Actually. In the speech, Shaw doesn’t say he’s a fan of “market forces”. He says he’s a fan of “the market”; that the cause of destructive climate change is economic, but the solution is political. He said the market is not sentient, and we need to tell it what to do.
I have heard before that people generally rate him as pretty right wing.
So, he’s into regulated markets. He cites the abolition of slavery (having outlined the various strand of his whakapapa, which includes a female slave in the US).
He also talked of his mother raising him and his siblings on her teacher’s salary, as well as saying he was raised by his mother and her female partner. He spoke in praise of suffragettes and stroppy activist women.
Even those Greens who have rightish economic views are still a lot smarter and more socially enlightened than the right of the Labour Party (Cosgrove, O’Connor etc).
I’m just listening now. He’s saying some prettty radical stuff eg that nature has inherent rights. His stuff about the expansion of rights is very good (how they are feared but the fears prove unfounded in time).
and yeah, interesting re his statement that he likes the market, which he follows by saying that the market needs to be controlled. He says that for setting prices and allocating scarce resources it’s better than the alternatives. It would be good to see him do actual comparisons with the alternatives.
I know that presently we are stuck. To get unstuck, we will all need to let go of some things, and to be more committed to finding the answers than to being right or to others being wrong
The guy has serious problem solving intelligence and skills, I can see why the GP have promoted him. Very good speech.
I was also appalled at Russel Norman’s snuggling up to the Nats. Because of that I changed my vote from Greens to Labour and wonder if that comment lost them many votes at the election. Politics is in a woeful state at the moment.
I will probably vote reluctantly for Andrew Little in the Labour Leader contest, dont like any of the others in the running but is a worry when I cant even say to myself that I will vote for Greens if the outcome isn’t what I prefer.
Well, it’s the likes of Metiria Turei, Catherine Delahunty, and Jan Logie in the Greens that keep me voting Green. i’d also like to see Jack McDonald and Marama Davidson in the House.
But it is hard to decide who to vote for when I have criticisms of every party on the “left”.
“..I am still appalled that Norman said in the minor leader’s debate that the politician he most admired in another party was Bill (sell off state houses) English…”
yeah..that one is still echoing/bedding-in…
..and yeah..macdonald and davidson have both impressed..
“There’s a lot of chatter on twitter about Shaw being into market force. A bit worrying.”
I think it is inevitable with the Greens. Unless the left organises a progressive movement pretty damn quick, the party will work with whatever it can, including market forces. Norman of course is also into using the market to effect change.
It will be an interesting dilemma for the Greens. There is this idea that they’re neither left nor right (I think Lynn once used the imagery of them being vertical to the horizontal axis of the traditional left/right spectrum). I tend to see them as trying to move beyond the left/right gulf (which is why the whole ‘we can work with anyone on policy’ thing is so important to them). I have some sympathy for this because the left appears to be failing to stop neoliberalism and proto-fascism. Not that I think the left is necessarily at fault, but that we may need other things as well.
I’ll try and download Shaw’s speech later so I can see what all the fuss is about.
i also empathise. i think they are trying to go beyond left right dichotomy and are saying that whoever is in power and wants to advance policies the green party advocate they will work with.
that is not the same as being “right”
it seems to me that there is no single solution to many of our big problems but amalgams which most of our parties dont want a bar of.
It’s the same as doing what the Maori Party does, without the cabinet posts. It’s hugely dangerous, but then again, I also consider any collaboration with Labour since 1984 as working with the right.
the greens memorandum with national has resulted in over 400,000 homes being more insulated.
there has been a pilot scheme for a building wof
both things done by parties not around the cabinet table and with no outside cabinet baubles either.
far too little credit, and too many brickbats, get thrown for this. insulating homes is a step toward homes affects health improvements for the poorer amongst us
I don’t buy that line about moving beyond left and right. The MO of working for consensus and collaborative rather than being into competitive game-playing is to me a left wing value.
I think people like Shaw =, saying they are beyond political partisanship, and being into working with whoever for solutions to the big problems, are deluded.
They ignore that there are those out to maintain their power and privilege, and will resists any changes that challenge that – even if it damages the whole planet.
Slavery, for instance, never really went away, the capitalists used the market for exploit people in new ways.
i am not even sure it is a left wing value given the labour caucus consider itself left wing.
it is possible that people can believe they are moving beyond left and right in an attempt to place the value or ethic pursued above any exterior label. they may or may not achieve that but it doesnt change the intent. intent is often more key than outcome whether that outcome is negative or positive. the greens appear to be trying to place their policies, the intent above traditional labels. i admire the attempts given the people and process they are surrounded by
Well, I don’t see the current Labour caucus as being into consensus building and collaborative approaches.
There’s a strong element within that caucus that are into approaching politics as combative game playing. Very different from the approach of the Greens.
oh i agree but many behaving that way will consider themselves left wing.
i hesitate to say this but collaborative and consensus, imo, is a feminine trait rather than left or right wing… and before anyone leaps on that by feminine i mean as opposed to masculine not women versus men.
I see a collaborative approach as being more dominant on the left. I also see it as being more common among women. But, there are also some pretty competitive, combative, individualistic and right wing women: Judith Collins, for example.
For me, traditional human communities have always functioned with both conservative and liberal elements. While I also see the intent to shift beyone game playing and power-over structures as being more naturally left, I think that conservatives can also work collaboratively (I’m not talking about neoliberals or fundamentalists). The GP moving beyond left/right doesn’t mean they leave left wing values or skills behind.
“I think people like Shaw =, saying they are beyond political partisanship, and being into working with whoever for solutions to the big problems, are deluded.”
That’s a somewhat different thing than what I was talking about. I think that in principle we could have multi-party accords on some things (across the left/right divide), and to an extent this already happens within MMP. But in practice it won’t happen much because NACT’s agenda is so extreme and because we live in an MMP age where taking out opponents is part of the process (aka cutting off one’s nose to spite’s one face).
A question for any IT geeks around. Is there a technical reason for not having platforms that allow multiple logins at the same time on the same computer/browser (eg gmail, twitter etc)? Or is it that developpers don’t see the need?
yes I know how to use different browsers, my question is if there is a technical reason why it can’t be done on the same app.
How do you login to two different gmail accounts in the same browser? When I do that, gmail just logs me out of the first one, once I’m in the second one.
in gmail using a web browser, click on the person-shaped icon (top right) and click “add account”. Each account is opened in a different tab in firefox.
I suspect it involves cookies that link each session on the website to the specific tab, so on the flipside it might not work so well for sites whose users like to open the browser, go to the site and straight into their account with no further clicks.
Of course, all of the above are security workarounds that mean anyone using your machine can open your accounts, so you might not want to do it with any emails you conduct business on.
It’s by design, for security and convenience (in most use cases – not yours though!).
The Gmail login page creates an “authentication” cookie, so when you open a new tab Google knows you are logged in already. And when you open your other Gmail account, a new Gmail cookie is created which supersedes the previous one.
You may wonder why opening a different browser does what you want. It’s because they don’t share cookies among one another. Each browser (Firefox, IE, Chrome, Safari, etc.) has a separate set of cookies.
Email clients like Outlook or Thunderbird should make it easier to collect your email from different accounts.
Thanks. I understand why using different browsers works (cookies).
I’m still not clear if there is a technical reason multiple logins can’t be used on one platform. How is it a security issue? And in this day and age, how is it a convenience issue?
“Clients like Outlook or Thunderbird should make it easier to collect your email from different accounts.”
Can I send from the different gmail accounts using Outlook?
It’s not about making it easier to collect email. It’s about being able to work in two or more different logins at once. eg working with googledocs, I’ve been logged in on a community group account and my own account, which requires me currently to use two browsers.
Cookies are per-website not per-account. If you had 2 cookies for the same website there’s a good chance the browser will mix up the account details when sending email.
Outlook is able to send & receive from different accounts no probs.
‘Canadian Green MP warns against harsh anti-terror measures’
By Keith Locke / October 28, 2014
“Canada’s Green Party has provided a welcome counterpoint to Prime Minister Harper’s call for tougher anti-terrorism laws in the wake of a soldier outside the Canadian Parliament…
How many times does it need to be said that it was not terrorism.
It was an act of war in a country that has been at war for 13 years. Unless can someone prove otherwise. Or just silly gormless soundbites for te news. probably
The latest news I’ve heard on Canada is that Toronto heavyweight Rob Ford was going to stand again for Mayor? but became ill, and at the last minute his brother stepped into his place. So how will Toronto vote?
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Since Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953, US presidents have joined an informal club intended to provide support - and occasionally rivalry - between those few who have been ‘leaders of the free world’. Donald Trump, elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and a constant mocker of his predecessors, ...
For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Kieren Mitchell; Alice Mouton, Université de Liège; Angela Perri, Durham University, and Laurent Frantz, Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichThanks to the hit television series Game of Thrones, the dire wolf has gained a near-mythical status. But it was a real animal that roamed the Americas for at least 250,000 ...
Tide of tidal data rises Having cast our own fate to include rising sea level, there's a degree of urgency in learning the history of mean sea level in any given spot, beyond idle curiosity. Sea level rise (SLR) isn't equal from one place to another and even at a particular ...
Well, some of those chickens sure came home bigly, didn’t they… and proceeded to shit all over the nice carpet in the Capitol. What we were seeing here are societal forces that have long had difficulty trying to reconcile people to the “idea” of America and the reality of ...
In the wake of Donald Trump's incitement of an assault on the US capitol, Twitter finally enforced its terms of service and suspended his account. They've since followed that up with action against prominent QAnon accounts and Trumpers, including in New Zealand. I'm not unhappy with this: Trump regularly violated ...
Peter S. Ross, University of British ColumbiaThe Arctic has long proven to be a barometer of the health of our planet. This remote part of the world faces unprecedented environmental assaults, as climate change and industrial chemicals threaten a way of life for Inuit and other Indigenous and northern ...
Susan St John makes the case for taxing a deemed rate of return on excessive real estate holdings (after a family home exemption), to redirect scarce housing resources to where they are needed most. Read the full article here ...
I’m less than convinced by arguments that platforms like Twitter should be subject to common carrier regulation preventing them from being able to decide who to keep on as clients of their free services, and who they would not like to serve. It’s much easier to create competition for the ...
The hypocritical actions of political leaders throughout the global Covid pandemic have damaged public faith in institutions and governance. Liam Hehir chronicles the way in which contemporary politicians have let down the public, and explains how real leadership means walking the talk. During the Blitz, when German bombs were ...
Over the years, we've published many rebuttals, blog posts and graphics which came about due to direct interactions with the scientists actually carrying out the underlying research or being knowledgable about a topic in general. We'll highlight some of these interactions in this blog post. We'll start with two memorable ...
Yesterday we had the unseemly sight of a landleech threatening to keep his houses empty in response to better tenancy laws. Meanwhile in Catalonia they have a solution for that: nationalisation: Barcelona is deploying a new weapon in its quest to increase the city’s available rental housing: the power ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters, PhD The 2020 global wildfire season brought extreme fire activity to the western U.S., Australia, the Arctic, and Brazil, making it the fifth most expensive year for wildfire losses on record. The year began with an unprecedented fire event ...
NOTE: This is an excerpt from a digital story – read the full story here.Tess TuxfordKo te Kauri Ko Au, Ko te Au ko Kauri I am the kauri, the kauri is me Te Roroa proverb In Waipoua Forest, at the top of the North Island, New ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Coming attraction: IPCC's upcoming major climate assessmentLook for more emphasis on 'solutions,' efforts by cities, climate equity ... and outlook for emissions cuts in ...
Ringing A Clear Historical Bell: The extraordinary images captured in and around the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021 mirror some of the worst images of America's past.THERE IS A SCENE in the 1982 movie Missing which has remained with me for nearly 40 years. Directed by the Greek-French ...
To impact or not to impeach? I understand why some of those who are justifiably aghast at Trump’s behaviour over recent days might still counsel against impeaching him for a second time. To impeach him, they argue, would run the risk of making him a martyr in the eyes of ...
The Capitol Building, Washington DC, Wednesday, 6 January 2021. Oh come, my little one, come.The day is almost done.Be at my side, behold the sightOf evening on the land.The life, my love, is hardAnd heavy is my heart.How should I live if you should leaveAnd we should be apart?Come, let me ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 3, 2021 through Sat, Jan 9, 2021Editor's ChoiceAfter the Insurrection: Accountability, Reform, and the Science of Democracy The poisonous lies and enablers of sedition--including Senator Hawley, pictured ...
This article, guest authored by Prof. Angela Gallego-Sala & Dr. Julie Loisel, was originally published on the Carbon Brief website on Dec 21, 2020. It is reposted below in its entirety. Click here to access the original article and comments. Peatlands Peatlands are ecosystems unlike any other. Perpetually saturated, their ...
The assault on the US Capitol and constitutional crisis that it has caused was telegraphed, predictable and yet unexpected and confusing. There are several subplots involved: whether the occupation of the Michigan State House in May was a trial run for the attacks on Congress; whether people involved in the ...
On Christmas Eve, child number 1 spotted a crack in a window. It’s a double-glazed window, and inspection showed that the small, horizontal crack was in the outermost pane. It was perpendicular to the frame, about three-quarters of the way up one side. The origins are a mystery. It MIGHT ...
Anne-Marie Broudehoux, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Will the COVID-19 pandemic prompt a shift to healthier cities that focus on wellness rather than functional and economic concerns? This is a hypothesis that seems to be supported by several researchers around the world. In many ways, containment and physical distancing ...
Does the US need to strike a grand bargain with like-minded countries to pool their efforts? What does this tell us about today’s global politics? Perhaps the most remarkable editorial of last year was the cover leader of the London Economist on 19 November 2020. Shortly after Joe Biden was ...
Alexander Gillespie, University of Waikato and Valmaine Toki, University of WaikatoAotearoa New Zealand likes to think it punches above its weight internationally, but there is one area where we are conspicuously falling behind — the number of sites recognised by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. Globally, there are 1,121 ...
An event organised by the Auckland PhilippinesSolidarity group Have a three-course lunch at Nanam Eatery with us! Help support the organic farming of our Lumad communities through the Mindanao Community School Agricultural Foundation. Each ticket is $50. Food will be served on shared plates. To purchase, please email phsolidarity@gmail.com or ...
"Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here." Prisons are places of unceasing emotional and physical violence, unrelieved despair and unforgivable human waste.IT WAS NATIONAL’S Bill English who accurately described New Zealand’s prisons as “fiscal and moral failures”. On the same subject, Labour’s Dr Martyn Findlay memorably suggested that no prison ...
This is a re-post from Inside Climate News by Ilana Cohen. Inside Climate News is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here. Whether or not people accept the science on Covid-19 and climate change, both global crises will have lasting impacts on health and ...
. . American Burlesque As I write this (Wednesday evening, 6 January), the US Presidential election is all but resolved, confirming Joe Biden as the next President of the (Dis-)United State of America. Trump’s turbulent political career has lasted just four years – one of the few single-term US presidents ...
The session started off so well. Annalax – suitably chastised – spent a pleasant morning with his new girlfriend (he would say paramour, of course, but for our purposes, girlfriend is easier*). He told her about Waking World Drow, and their worship of Her Ladyship. And he started ...
In a recent column I wrote for local newspapers, I ventured to suggest that Donald Trump – in addition to being a liar and a cheat, and sexist and racist – was a fascist in the making and would probably try, if he were to lose the election, to defy ...
When I was preparing for my School C English exam I knew I needed some quotes to splash through my essays. But remembering lines was never my strong point, so I tended to look for the low-hanging fruit. We’d studied Shakespeare’s King Lear that year and perhaps the lowest hanging ...
When I went to bed last night, I was expecting today to be eventful. A lot of pouting in Congress as last-ditch Trumpers staged bad-faith "objections" to a democratic election, maybe some rioting on the streets of Washington DC from angry Trump supporters. But I wasn't expecting anything like an ...
Melted ice of the past answers question today? Kate Ashley and a large crew of coauthors wind back the clock to look at Antarctic sea ice behavior in times gone by, in Mid-Holocene Antarctic sea-ice increase driven by marine ice sheet retreat. For armchair scientists following the Antarctic sea ice situation, something jumps out in ...
Christina SzalinskiWhen Martha Field became pregnant in 2005, a singular fear weighed on her mind. Not long before, as a Cornell University graduate student researching how genes and nutrients interact to cause disease, she had seen images of unborn mouse pups smaller than her pinkie nail, some with ...
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidates for President and Vice President respectively for the US 2020 Election, may have dispensed with the erstwhile nemesis, Trump the candidate – but there are numerous critical openings through which much, much worse many out there may yet see fit to ...
I don’t know Taupō well. Even though I stop off there from time to time, I’m always on the way to somewhere else. Usually Taupō means making a hot water puddle in the gritty sand followed by a swim in the lake, noticing with bemusement and resignation the traffic, the ...
Frances Williams, King’s College LondonFor most people, infection with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – leads to mild, short-term symptoms, acute respiratory illness, or possibly no symptoms at all. But some people have long-lasting symptoms after their infection – this has been dubbed “long COVID”. Scientists are ...
Last night, a British court ruled that Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the US. Unfortunately, its not because all he is "guilty" of is journalism, or because the offence the US wants to charge him with - espionage - is of an inherently political nature; instead the judge accepted ...
Is the Gender Identity Movement a movement for human liberation, or is it a regressive movement which undermines women’s liberation and promotes sexist stereotypes? Should biological males be allowed to play in women’s sport, use women-only spaces (public toilets, changing rooms, other facilities), be able to have access to everything ...
Ian Whittaker, Nottingham Trent University and Gareth Dorrian, University of BirminghamSpace exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including commercial human spaceflight and returning samples of an asteroid to Earth. The coming year is shaping up to be just as interesting. Here are some of ...
Michael Head, University of SouthamptonThe UK has become the first country to authorise the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for public use, with roll-out to start in the first week of 2021. This vaccine is the second to be authorised in the UK – following the Pfizer vaccine. The British government ...
So, Boris Johnson has been footering about in hospitals again. We should be grateful, perhaps, that on this occasion the Clown-in-Chief is only (probably) getting in the way and causing distractions, rather than taking up a bed, vital equipment and resources and adding more strain and danger to exhausted staff.Look at ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... SkS in the News... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Many Scientists Now Say Global Warming Could Stop Relatively Quickly After Emissions Go to ZeroThat’s one of several recent ...
The situation in the UK is looking catastrophic.Cases: over *70,000* people who were tested in England on 29th December tested positive. This is *not* because there were more tests on that day. It *is* 4 days after Christmas though, around when people who caught Covid on Christmas Day might start ...
by Don Franks For five days over New Year weekend, sixteen prisoners in the archaic pre WW1 block of Waikeria Prison defied authorities by setting fires and occupying the building’s roof. They eventually agreed to surrender after intervention from Maori party co-leader Rawiri Waititi. A message from the protesting men had stated: ...
As we welcome in the new year, our focus is on continuing to keep New Zealanders safe and moving forward with our economic recovery. There’s a lot to get on with, but before we say a final goodbye to 2020, here’s a quick look back at some of the milestones ...
Bay Conservation Cadets launched with first intake Supported with $3.5 million grant Part of $1.245b Jobs for Nature programme to accelerate recover from Covid Cadets will learn skills to protect and enhance environment Environment Minister David Parker today welcomed the first intake of cadets at the launch of the Bay ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
Babies born with tongue-tie will be assessed and treated consistently under new guidelines released by the Ministry of Health, Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. Around 5% to 10% of babies are born with a tongue-tie, or ankyloglossia, in New Zealand each year. At least half can ...
The prisoner disorder event at Waikeria Prison is over, with all remaining prisoners now safely and securely detained, Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis says. The majority of those involved in the event are members of the Mongols and Comancheros. Five of the men are deportees from Australia, with three subject to ...
Travellers from the United Kingdom or the United States bound for New Zealand will be required to get a negative test result for COVID-19 before departing, and work is underway to extend the requirement to other long haul flights to New Zealand, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed today. “The new PCR test requirement, foreshadowed last ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has added her warm congratulations to the New Zealanders recognised for their contributions to their communities and the country in the New Year 2021 Honours List. “The past year has been one that few of us could have imagined. In spite of all the things that ...
Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment David Parker has congratulated two retired judges who have had their contributions to the country and their communities recognised in the New Year 2021 Honours list. The Hon Tony Randerson QC has been appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says the New Year’s Honours List 2021 highlights again the outstanding contribution made by Pacific people across Aotearoa. “We are acknowledging the work of 13 Pacific leaders in the New Year’s Honours, representing a number of sectors including health, education, community, sports, the ...
The Government’s investment in digital literacy training for seniors has led to more than 250 people participating so far, helping them stay connected. “COVID-19 has meant older New Zealanders are showing more interest in learning how to use technology like Zoom and Skype so they can to keep in touch ...
Pacific Media Watch newsdesk Human Rights Watch (HRW) has criticised the Indonesian government of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo for its weak health response to covid-19 which has brought Indonesia to its knees since March 2020, reports CNN Indonesia. The assessment is based on Indonesia’s poor rates of testing and tracing ...
By The National in Port Moresby An expatriate who tested positive for the covid-19 coronavirus last week has been admitted to a private hospital in the Papua New Guinea capital of Port Moresby, an official has confirmed. Pacific International Hospital (PIH) chief executive officer Colonel Sandeep Shaligram toldThe National the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Bartlett, Associate Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, University of Newcastle Reports of about 30 deaths among elderly nursing home residents who received the Pfizer vaccine have made international headlines. With Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) expected to approve the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Culum Brown, Professor, Macquarie University How do gills work? Tully, aged 7 Great question, Tully! Animals on land breathe air, which is made up of different gasses. Oxygen is one of these gases, and is made by plants (hug ...
Dairy prices increased by 3.9% across the board at the latest Fonterra global auction. The lift followed rises of 1.3% and 4.3% in the December auctions which took dairy prices to their highest level in 11 months, defying those analysts who believed Covid-19 had disrupted dairy markets. In the latest ...
America's Cup team American Magic has spoken publicly after their boat Patriot capsized when on its way to their first win of the Challenger Selection Series yesterday. Patriot dramatically capsized yesterday, becoming temporarily airborne before crashing back into the water and tipping. The boat, helmed by New Zealander Dean Barker, could not be ...
It’s a seemingly age old question: why do Auckland’s beaches become unswimmable after every single downpour? Stewart Sowman-Lund investigates.Ah, the beach. A staple of the New Zealand summer. Unless, of course, you’re based in Auckland and it’s raining. The start of 2021 has been a lot like every other New ...
We have opened a book, among members of the Point of Order team, on how long it will be before the PM offers to sort out the land dispute at Wellington’s Shelly Bay and (to win the double) how much the settlement will cost taxpayers. Just a few weeks ago ...
Breakfast TV news is back for 2021, and Tara Ward got up early to watch. “Thank god it’s almost Christmas,” John Campbell said during the opening minutes of Breakfast’s premiere episode of the year. “2021’s been rough so far. I’m buggered”. We’re all buggered, to be fair, but I’m worried that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Pearson, Professor of Journalism and Social Media, Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Griffith University The blame for the recent assault on the US Capitol and President Donald Trump’s broader dismantling of democratic institutions and norms can be ...
Despite a popular and unifying leader of the governing party, divisions both in policy and culture will test the progressive movement, writes Peter McKenzie.‘I think we’re confused.” Marlon Drake is an organiser for the Living Wage Movement. His job takes him all over Wellington, trying to convince businesses to increase ...
Covid-19 Recovery Minister Chris Hipkins says vaccinations should be available to the public by the middle of the year, but other countries are prioritised. ...
It’s as true now as it ever has been: nowhere else offers an education experience like that of Dunedin. But rather than resting on their laurels, the University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic have plans to make the city an even more inspiring place for students.From high in the summit ...
Haggis, neeps and tatties and whisky may not be a traditional spread for a summer gathering in NZ, but trust Auckland city councillor and Kiwi-Scot Cathy Casey on this one. Gie it laldy! Rule one: Hold it on (or near) January 25Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759. Since the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University It could be argued artificial intelligence (AI) is already the indispensable tool of the 21st century. From helping doctors diagnose and treat patients to rapidly advancing new drug discoveries, it’s our ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University Through recent natural disasters, global upheavals and a pandemic, Australia’s political centre has largely held. Australians may have disagreed at times, but they have also kept faith with governmental norms, eschewing the false ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Seale, Associate professor, UNSW Health workers are at higher risk of COVID infection and illness. They can also act as extremely efficient transmitters of viruses to others in medical and aged care facilities. That’s why health workers have been prioritised to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jim Orchard, Adjunct Lecturer, Monash University Last week, somewhat overshadowed by the events in Washington, the Democrats took control of the US Senate. The Democrats now hold a small majority in both the House and the Senate until 2022, giving President-elect Joe ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mittul Vahanvati, Lecturer, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University Heatwaves, floods, bushfires: disaster season is upon us again. We can’t prevent hazards or climate change-related extreme weather events but we can prepare for them — not just as individuals ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mandie Shean, Lecturer, School of Education, Edith Cowan University Starting school is an important event for children and a positive experience can set the tone for the rest of their school experience. Some children are excited to attend school for the first ...
Some families in emergency housing are reporting their children are becoming emotionally distressed because of their living conditions. Demand for emergency accommodation has escalated this past year with the number of emergency housing grants increasing by half. Data showed nearly 10,000 people were given an Emergency Housing Special Needs Grant between ...
Summer reissue: Michèle A’Court, Alex Casey and Leonie Hayden are back for a second season of On the Rag, and where better to start than with the mysterious, exhausting world of wellness?First published June 23, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is ...
With few Covid-19 infections and negiligible natural immunity, New Zealand faces being a victim of its own success when it is left till last to get the vaccines, argues Dr Parmjeet Parmar. ...
Steve Braunias reports on a literary cancelling. The Corrections department has refused to allow Jared Savage's best-selling book Gangland inside prison on the grounds that it "promotes violence and drug use". An inmate at Otago Corrections Facility in Dunedin was sent a copy of the book – but it was ...
New data from the CTU’s annual work life survey shows a snapshot of working people’s experiences and outlook heading out of 2020 and into the new year. Concerningly 42% of respondents cite workplace bullying as an issue in their workplace - a number ...
An international player, selector and self-confessed cricket stats nerd, Penny Kinsella has now played a hand in recording the rich history of the women's game in New Zealand. Penny Kinsella’s cricketing career was perched on the cusp of change for the White Ferns. “My first tour to Australia, we ...
The dramatic capsize of American Magic brought out the best in the America's Cup sailing fraternity. But, Suzanne McFadden asks, what does it mean to the crippled New York Yacht Club campaign and to the Prada Cup? It was a scene as unreal as it was calamitous. Right at the moment the ...
The current number of members of parliament is starting to get too low for the job we expect them to do, argues Alex Braae. As a general rule, with the possible exception of their families, nobody likes backbench MPs. But it’s nevertheless time we accepted that parliament should have more of ...
The experience in the Brazilian city of Manaus reveals how mistaken, and dangerous, the herd-immunity-by-infection theory really is. As families around the world mourn more than two million people dead from Covid-19, the Plan B academics and their PR industry collaborator continue to argue that the New Zealand government should stop ...
As New Zealand gears up to fight climate change, experts warn that we need to actually reduce emissions, not just plant trees to offset our greenhouse gases. ...
A nationwide poll has found majority support for the government to continue to closely monitor abortions in New Zealand and the reasons for it, despite the Ministry of Health recently suggesting that there is not a use for collecting much of this information. ...
The out-of-control growth in gangs, gun crime, and violent gang activity is exposing our communities to dangerous levels of violence that will inevitably end in tragedy, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “The recent incidents of people being shot and ...
Successive governments have paid lip service to our productivity challenge but have failed to deliver. It's time to establish a Productivity Council charged with prioritising efforts. ...
Understanding the connection between chronic fatigue syndrome and ‘long Covid’ might be helpful in treating symptoms that doctors will find all too easy to dismiss.When people began to report signs of “long Covid”, characterised by a lack of full recovery from the virus and debilitating fatigue, I recognised their stories. ...
Nadine Anne Hura, who never considered herself an artist, reflects on what art and making has taught her.I couldn’t clean or cook or wash the clothes, but I could sew. That’s a lie, I’m a terrible sewer, but I left work early to fossick around in the $1 bin of ...
Summer reissue: In the final episode of this season of Bad News, Alice is joined by Billy T award winner Kura Forrester to look at how well we’re honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 2020.First published September 3, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The ...
Lucy Revill’s The Residents is a blog about daily life in Wellington that has morphed into a stylish, low-key coffee-table book featuring interviews and photographic portraits of 38 Wellingtonians. In this extract, Revill profiles Eboni Waitere, owner and executive director of Huia Publishers. The Residents features names like Monique Fiso ...
Pacific Media Watch correspondent The pro-independence conflict in West Papua with a missionary plane reportedly being shot down at Intan Jaya has stirred contrasting responses from the TNI/POLRI state sources, church leaders and an independence leader. A shooting caused a plane to catch fire on 6 January 2021 in the ...
“Last year ACT warned that rewarding protestors at Ihumātao with taxpayer money would promote further squatting. We just didn’t think it would happen as quickly as it is in Shelly Bay” says ACT Leader David Seymour. “The prosperity of all ...
Our kindly PM registered her return to work as leader of the nation with yet another statement on the Beehive website, the second in two days (following her appointment of Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council on Wednesday). It’s great to know we don’t have to check with ...
A Pūhoi pub is refusing to remove a piece of memorabilia bearing the n-word from its walls. Dr Lachy Paterson looks at the history of the word here, and New Zealand’s complicity in Britain’s shameful slave trading past.Content warning: This article contains racist language and images.On a pub wall in ...
Supermarket shoppers looking for citrus are seeing a sour trend at the moment – some stores are entirely tapped out of lemons. But why? Batches of homemade lemonade will be taking a hit this summer, with life not giving New Zealand shoppers lemons. Prices are high at supermarkets and grocers that ...
You’re born either a cheery soul or a gloomy one, reckons Linda Burgess – but what happens when gene pools from opposite ends of the spectrum collide?In our shoeboxes of photos that we have to sort out before we die or get demented – because who IS that kid on ...
Summer reissue: Prisoner voting rights are something that few in government seem particularly motivated to do anything about. Could a catchy charity single help draw attention to the issue?First published September 1, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its ...
Hundreds more Cook Islanders are expected to begin criss-crossing the Pacific, Air NZ will triple the number of flights to Rarotonga next week, and about 300 managed isolation places will be freed up for Kiwis returning from other parts of the world. When Thomas Tarurongo Wynne took a job in Wellington at ...
SPECIAL REPORT:By Ena Manuireva in Auckland It seems a long time ago – some 124 days – since Mā’ohi Nui deplored its first covid-19 related deaths of an elderly woman on 11 September 2020 followed by her husband just hours later, both over the age of 80. The local ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Turnbull, Postdoctoral research associate, UNSW A global coalition of more than 50 countries have this week pledged to protect over 30% of the planet’s lands and seas by the end of this decade. Their reasoning is clear: we need greater protection ...
The Reserve Bank Governor’s apology and claim he will ‘own the issue’ is laughable given the lack of answers and timing of its release. Jordan Williams, a spokesman for the Taxpayers’ Union said: “It’s been five days since they came clean, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olga Kokshagina, Researcher – Innovation & Entrepreneurship, RMIT University Are too many online meetings and notifications getting you down? Online communication tools – from email to virtual chat and video-conferencing – have transformed the way we work. In many respects they’ve made ...
The Reserve Bank acknowledges information about some of its stakeholders may have been breached in a malicious data hack. The Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has commissioned an independent inquiry into how stakeholders' information was compromised when hackers breached a file sharing service used by the bank. “We ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Syme, PhD in Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of Queensland This story contains spoilers for Ammonite Palaeontologist Mary Anning is known for discovering a multitude of Jurassic fossils from Lyme Regis on England’s Dorset Coast from the age of ten in 1809. ...
A tribute to the sitcoms of old? In the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Yup. Sam Brooks reviews the audacious WandaVision.Nothing sends a chill up my spine like the phrase “Marvel Cinematic Universe”. Since launching in 2008 with Iron Man, the MCU has become a shambling behemoth, with over 23 films (not ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University The alt-right, QAnon, paramilitary and Donald Trump-supporting mob that stormed the US Capitol on January 6 claimed they were only doing what the so-called “founding fathers” of the US had done in ...
The Point of Order Ministerial Workload Watchdog and our ever-vigilant Trough Monitor were both triggered yesterday by an item of news from the office of Conservation Minister Kititapu Allan. The minister was drawing attention to new opportunities to dip into the Jobs for Nature programme (and her statement was the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreas Kupz, Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University In July 1921, a French infant became the first person to receive an experimental vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), after the mother had died from the disease. The vaccine, known as Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG), is ...
The first Friday Poem for 2021 is by Wellington poet Rebecca Hawkes.While you were partying I studied the bladeI your ever-loving edgelord God-emperorof the bot army & bitcoin mine subsistingon an IV drip of gamer girl bathwaterfinally my lonelinessis your responsibility………. you seeI need a girlfriend assigned to me by the ...
The arming of police officers in Canterbury was inevitable with the growing numbers and brazenness of the gangs across the country – this should be a permanent step, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “It is unfortunate that we have come to the point ...
Celebrations in Aotearoa New Zealand to mark the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will begin on Thursday 21 January with ICAN Aotearoa New Zealand’s Wellington and online event, and continue on Friday ...
Hardly anyone is using their Covid Tracer app. Something needs to change.As the mercury approaches 30°C in Aotearoa, there is a good deal of slipping and slopping, but, let’s face it, piss-all scanning. As few as around 500,000 QR codes are being scanned by users of the NZ Covid Tracer ...
On the East Coast, a group of Māori-owned enterprises is innovating to create new revenue streams while doing what they love.New Zealand’s remote and sparsely populated regions are typically not the best places to create thriving brick-and-mortar businesses. In small communities miles away from any major centres, there are so ...
As we reach the height of summer, it’s not too late to do a safety check on your gas bottle. The Environmental Protection Authority’s Safer Homes programme has some tips and tricks to keep in mind before you fire up the grill. "If you’ve ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $37)If you’re in any way unsure about ...
“We may as well knock on the gang headquarters around this country and tell them we all give up," says Darroch Ball co-leader of Sensible Sentencing Trust. “It is simply outrageous that violent offender, James Tuwhangai, has been released from ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Ireland, Israel, and Lebanon. Chart by Keith Rankin. The countries with the most recent large outbreaks of Covid19 are those with large numbers of recent recorded cases, but yet to record the deaths that most likely will result. In this camp, this time, are Ireland, Israel ...
RuPaul is in Aotearoa, kicking back in managed isolation to await the filming of an Australasian version of her hugely popular reality show Drag Race. But not everyone is happy about, explains Eli Matthewson. The world’s most famous drag queen, RuPaul, is in New Zealand, the government confirmed earlier this week ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Melleuish, Professor, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong What can we make of Clive Palmer? This week, he announced his United Australia Party (UAP) would not contest the upcoming West Australian state election on March 13. After a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gisela Kaplan, Emeritus Professor in Animal Behaviour, University of New England Have you ever seenmagpies play-fighting with one another, or rolling around in high spirits? Or an apostlebird running at full speed with a stick in its beak, chased by a ...
“..John Oliver Calls Out Sugar Industry..
..How much sugar are you eating?
Odds are you don’t know – and as John Oliver pointed out Sunday on ‘Last Week Tonight’ –
-it’s because food makers are doing their best to make sure you never find out..”
(cont..)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/27/john-oliver-sugar-peanuts_n_6052298.html
A good follow up to Nigel Latta’s expose of the sugar industry in NZ.
Katherine Rich ( ex Nat MP ) is the hired gun for the sugar industry.
I think they used Slater to attack people who questioned the sugar industry.
http://tvnz.co.nz/nigel-latta/index-group-6006369
rich pimps for the sugar-pushers..
..and other rightwinger/actite heather roy now pimps for big-pharma..
..classy..!..
..both of them earning their dirty-money by/for essentially..selling us out..
(and funny story..!..i had forgotten roys’ name..so i googled ‘act mp big-pharma’..)
..first link/hit..?..bingo..!..heather roy…)
Lewis Road Creamery Chocolate Milk, with queues of customers waiting for delivery every day. Each bottle contains 22 pieces of (delicious) Whittakers chocolate (half a chocolate slab).
Twenty two pieces …….. Glug glug glug.
A second drink, perhaps? Or a glass of coke to ‘wash it down’?
Could I please have a side order of diabetes?
Thanks Katherine.
Chocolate Milk comparison
(personal experiment)
it’s also measured as 82 grams..3+ ounces..or 21 teaspoons of sugar..
..it is like the crack of sugar..
..that’s what those idiots/fools/suckers are queuing to pay top-dollar for..
..’there’s one (a sucker) born every minute’..eh..?
..and today we can know them by their chosen/favoured brand of chocolate milk..
..eh..?
..(do we have sugar-lift-off..?..)
..(and those rushing out to buy/stock up on milk chocolate on the back of that research (funded by mars bars..(!)..)
..that chocolate is good for aging-minds/memories..
..should know those results were found after using almost pure cocao..
..which is sure as hell not what you get in the sugary-delights offered by..i dunno.!…milk-chocolate/the mars company..?..)
@ phillip ure (1.1.2.1)
The research referred to was some blind taste testing with dinner guests, that I carried out . Nothing to do with Mars. I was trying to understand if the queues could really be justified on the basis of taste, and also highlight the foolishness of the queues on the basis of health.
Keep on the good work talking about sugar.
Good one phillip. Sugar is a bad bad word. And thanks to Nigel Latta for his more detailed program.
Did anyone hear Key’s interview with Espiner on RNZ this morning?
It sounded to me like he was positioning us for military action.
Oh dear.
Yep he was floored by the question by Espiner about whether it was moral for NZ to enter the war. I thought he had difficulties understanding the concept of morality.
I have looked in vain for six years for any suggestions that Mr Key has a moral base. Right now the National Party is a convenient vehicle to satisfy his personal interests. Hopefully somone can explain why my view has no substance, as I would like to think better of him?
Made a career in currency trading. Made 50m in the financial sector. You have to have very selective morality to get as far as he did…
There are no flawlessly ethical guys at the top of banking or money market trading… they are loophole boys, rationalisers of untruths.
He’s no doubt worth far, far more than $50M now.
To get that far in finance you pretty much have to have no morality.
I think he has said himself that he is not an “ideology” type of person. The only thing I recall he has said he that believes in are asset sales. Is there another living NZer that cannot recall what they thought about the Springbok tour? When he first came out with this I thought he was lying. Now I actually believe it.
is pursuit of money at any cost an ideology?
A common trait in psychopaths.
Yep one of his answers to ‘is it moral’ was “It is if we agree to that.” So what is moral is what we agree is moral.
That might be an interesting philosophical stance on ethics al la David Hume, but I for one would like a stance less cynical from our leader that doesn’t smack of focus group analysis on this issue. Higher standards anyone?
“Higher standards anyone?”
Bahahaha that’s a fucking myth.
not quite… it is in the cabinet manual so it is real.
I don’t think he has any idea. He is totally amoral. I can recognise it because I was like that until I grew up a bit in my late 20s. As far as his philosophy goes, it’s a weird mix of Aleister Crowley and Nietsche, mixed with a desire for acceptance from those he worships. As a human being, he is hugely dysfunctional.
Of course he is Paul.
And to make matters worse Key knew he would be doing this if re-elected yet he deceitfully declined to raise the matter during the election.
Key is going to bring war and death into our country.
Why is that such a surprise, the ‘terror’ narrative arrived within a week of the election duely pushed by the MSM muppets so top diversionary tactic whilst the RMA, employment, exploration and sell offs etc etc continue.
kiwi soldiers bodies being returned home will be another unwanted legacy of key as he marches them off and increases our risk once we engage.
this govt has no moral compass just a monetary one.
when key was saying earlier this year that he ‘had no intention of taking nz into another middle-east war’..
..i was writing/calling ‘bullshit!’ on that..
..and that if re-elected..that five minutes later key would morph into spear-carrier/war-monger for america..
..to me at the time..it seemed the bleeding obvious..
..i am actually surprised people are surprised that this is how it has turned out..
..as key now marches us into yet another intractable sectarian/religious-war..as americas’ mercenaries..
..killing more arabs..for america..again..
..and of course..in the process..painting a big fucken bulls-eye on nz..
..as a soft-target for retaliatory-attacks..(!)
(of course key also lied until the un seat was secured..playing the peacemaker up until then..did anyone else also notice that..?..)
..and 21,000 civilians were killed by the invading/occupying forces in afghanistan..
..i wonder how many were killed in our name..?
If the gummint has a monetary compass I wish they would set up an expedition, go and find it and pay the workers better!!
This morning on the news about David cameron the journalist said all western leaders were on high alert since the canadian parliament incident.
I was at dinner sunday evening when the Pm arrived. There was no pre dinner sweep of the restaurant, he arrived with his wife and son, alone. NO guards, none of his special big boys. They were not discreetly outside they were nowhere…
So, NOT on high alert here.
BUT maybe he was dining as John Key the man, and not PM. The terrorists will probably respect that distinction aye?
He needs to be truthful. This isn’t about NZers, it is that he believes we should play a part alongside our allies. There are many who agree with that thinking so why not just say it, Honest John?
Perhaps Tracey, Key was having a last meal before sending his son off to fight war against ISIS …….
I’ve said before, how many of the jingoistic types will send their own children. I note, John Keys daughter the right age to fight – should she not be running off to basic?
no – no – no – no..!
..armchair-warriors always send other peoples’ children to war..
..and funny story..!..they are usually the children of the poor..
..those children who are sent to war..
..no parnell boys there..
Seeing Key would have spoilt my meal. In fact, it would have spoilt my whole evening.
i didnt see him… heads turned, conversations lowered and my right wing dad and his wife said he had arrived. he sat at a table behind me. i had eaten so it was just a question of keeping it down.
when i stood to leave, i was so tempted to say lousd enough
“i see the terror threat is very low tonight”… but didnt
he has good taste in restaurants. hes come in before when i was there…
not suggesting he is stalking me
“he sat at a table behind me”
I would have farted loudly. Would have been the “morally right” thing to do.
and you cd tell him that fart did not come from you as you..
..(i am sure he would understand..)
lol
But Tracey did you notice the casually dressed but awkward bloke who came in a few minutes before maybe with a companion, who could have been man or a woman, and the lone diner who came in a bit later or who stayed hanging around the door or feigned interest in the shop windows in the vicinity.
Key is paranoid, but increasingly aware that more NZers think the whole “entourage” thing is preposterous posing
hmmmm….i hang around the minties bowl myself
The entourage thing is US-style politics invading New Zealand. Have you seen the motorcades that travel with the likes of Eric Holder? Not even the President.
I bet Steven Joyce et al. are frothing at the mouth for a personal security detail.
I wonder whether David Parker has demanded a team from the Diplomatic Protection Squad to travel with him all the time now he is the (acting) leader of the party? Cunliffe wanted them around all the time. Perhaps he thought it made him seem important.
Actually perhaps Cunliffe was worried about the other members of his caucus. It would seem justified wouldn’t it?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10470344/Campaign-Diary-Monday-September-8
maybe but key is the one saying we are under threat from terrorists while standing down his security
“Dirty Journalism” post by Bat Bean Beam is a must read. Asks all the right questions about journalists in NZ and the failure to change anything substantial since the release of Hager’s Dirty Politics book:
hooton prounounced hager NOT a journalist today. so i guess tgat ends the argument
An Unfair Wages System
For a lot of people, those in the lower decile, as productivity has risen their wages have actually gone down.
It’s a simple fact that, if everything else remains the same, as productivity increases wages must decline. This government and all governments going back to the 4th Labour government have been working to keep everything else the same in the name of stability and with that has come the inevitable decrease in bargaining power and remuneration.
Oh, look, IT just increased productivity, had nothing to do with employees!
I must be due a bonus, and my banker can leverage the new ongoing wealth to sustain even higher valuations.
It must be great to live in a world when citizens are widgets, expendable moveable parts, where discourse about finance is all about how wealth is mismeasird and allotted to a shrinking class of super rich and their hanger on-ers.
Key screws us all, locking away choice.
Help Shut Down the Illegal and extremely cruel Dog Meat Trade in Thailand. Watch the video to understand what is happening there.
Please act immediately to stop thousands of dogs from being tortured and butchered for their meat.
Every aspect of the dog meat trade in Southeast Asia is horrifically cruel.
You can save thousands of dogs from unspeakable pain by adding your name to Soi Dog’s global petition. It calls on Thailand’s leaders to crack down hard on the criminals who profit from the agony of animals.
https://savedogs.soidog.org/petition
@ clem..
..a slight amendment/edit could be needed there..
“..Every aspect of the meat trade is horrifically cruel..”
..there ya go..!
..fixed now..!
..we wouldn’t want selective/speciesist-outrage to break out..would we now..?
..i mean..!..people might choke on their bacon..
..so..”..Please act immediately to stop thousands of dogs(pigs/calves/chooks etc.) from being tortured and butchered for their meat..”
..we should try for consistancy..eh..?
I just ate a bacon sandwich. It was delicious.
What can you say to a response like that.
You could say “Now I want some bacon too”?
No thanks. I would hate to think I would be as insensitive and lacking in empathy as you are.
You got that from a bacon sandwich?
yep..!
Amazing
no ‘amazing’..you are the modern equivalent of the slave-owner..
..thinking animals are just there for you to do whatever you like to them..
..that they have no ‘rights’ as sentient-beings..
..to be treated with respect/humanely..
..much the same way slave-owners scoffed at the very idea of their human-slaves having any ‘rights’..
..what do you find so hard to understand about that..?
..are you really that unthinking/dull..?
Slavery now? Of course, it is just like slavery dear.
The modern equivalent of slavery is slavery. It’s pretty gross to exploit the utter dehumanisation of actual humans in order to make a cheap shock-value attack on people who eat things you don’t like.
it’s a shame the power-imbalance prevents me from replying to you..
“it’s a shame the power-imbalance prevents me from replying to you..”
Don’t you mean your yellow streak and insipid fortitude?
I got a desire to eat a bacon sandwich…
Fuck. Now I’m really hungry.
nom nom
Even conservative John Armstrong has something bad to say about National’s housing ‘reform’ (read: sell off all the shit to our corporate funders for pennies on the dollar). Armstrong refers to the policy as ideological for ideology’s sake.
National is continuing its policy of strip mining all the assets of the state, thus breaking a promise it made that there would be no more selling. They are behaving like a mafia that has taken over a business to squeeze every last dollar out of it before they send it into bankruptcy.
History tells us that the invisible hand is NOT the best solution to social problems. One of the main jobs of Government is dealing with the negative externalities the invisible hand creates in the first place, which is in essence what state housing is an example of – Providing where the market can’t, or won’t without the introduction of overbearing regulation.
Interesting read:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/john-armstrong/news/article.cfm?a_id=3&objectid=11347878
only cos we are past the election and he is getting his balance reporting in now to refer back to nearer the next election
Money Wars, A Race To The Bottom And Massive Wealth Transfer Or Why The $ 523 Billion Printed In August 2012 Is Bad News For New Zealanders
They sold $521 million in August this year. Only a thousand times less, and 2 years later.
Isis will “rain carnage on the world”, Prime Minister John Key tells us today … but he has yet to make a decision on whether NZ troops will go.
What sort of apocalyptic theology does he subscribe to these days ? Revelations ?
Will a NZ SAS haka have any effect on the Saudis and Qataris who used Chlorine at Kobane ? Is he referring to ballistic mass destruction ?
He may wish retire to a professorship in strategic decision making at Auckland University.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11349273&ref=rss
“Rain carnage on the world”?
Isn’t this phrase indicative of the breathtaking level of arrogance of our current PM – given the carnage unremittedly being dropped from the sky creating vast civilian casualties is primarily and immorally being committed by his US “allies”?
The carnage being rained is a direct result of the insane invasion of Iraq which Key wanted NZ to be part of. So we could sell more butter to the yanks. Still need to shift more of it…
Did he himself actually come up with that turn of phrase? Seriously?
He’s just making sure that when we send our troops over, we know we’re doing A Good Thing, because otherwise we might have some public pressure to the contrary.
Last time I looked, it was nation states with developed economies, and strong military forces that were capable of raining carnage on the world, not a bunch of Koran waving teenagers with a couple of stolen MiGs.
Millsy, we are very selective about which people who are doing harm in the world that we should visit with our strong military forces, that as you say are capable of raining carnage on the world. Let us not forget that Vietnam received triple the bombing that took place in all of WWII !
In relationship to all this, I wonder what certain elements of society today would have called the men who went as volunteers to Spain to fight Franco’s fascists. Is that similar to the young men fighting with the Islamic State? Were those Spanish War volunteers idealists and defenders of freedom or were they brainwashed, radicalised terrorists?
Would our present Government have considered a military intervention into Republican Spain then?
It is the remuneration packages of bank CEOs that have been out of control. They are the ones who are left unchecked and will rain carnage on the world.
I read on wikipedia that John Key’s Dad went to fight in the Spanish civil war
Well, well, I never knew that. George Key. My use of the Spanish Civil War analogy was entirely outside of that information. (And that’s no John Key-style memory lapse. His techniques for avoidance of issues are well criticised in tonight’s Marlborough Express editorial, by the way).
“Fight for the filthy commo’s, no way”.
Remember that those who fought against Franco were reviled by the establishment, who thought that fascism, which got rid of those “pesky communist trade unions”, was a good idea.
Right up until Poland was invaded, and their skills were needed.
[deleted]
[lprent: I have no real objections to you placing these links here (all about ISIS, chemical weapons, and Kurds). However I do have a strong objection to you link-whoring them on our site for promoting google links. You haven’t provided a reason in the form of a paragraph or two for the people on this site why they should click into them.
This site values the opinions of those who comment here. We don’t value straight linking with no explanations. ]
Strange thing though, I imagine that there are many more young people willing to take up arms against IS than the few odd entrails that media manage to find have signed for IS.
Re. “link-whoring them on our site for promoting google links.”
.. they all linked to newspaper media sources, as I remember it, not google. A link is just an economical way of doing it ..
Putting raw links in a comment is most commonly used by bots and spam artists to increase google scores. When I look at a list of raw links that is what I presume.
There are many other search and meta-search engines out there besides google. I find google very limited, predictable, and constricting these days and try to broaden my sources. In this case I used
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/World+News/Middle+East/Syria?JavaScript=1&searchheadlines=&search=Aleppo
.. but because it is continually updating it seems to use a lot of bandwidth.
Key: Action against IS ‘morally right’
http://www.3news.co.nz/politics/key-action-against-is-morally-right-2014102810
Odd statement coming from a compulsive liar.
Not at all, brazenly claiming the moral high ground is standard practice for compulsive liars.
And Key gets away with it too.
Moral is a word beloved of the Hasbara Zionists. The IDF is a moral army, Israel acts morally, etc….. Key is on the same side, so it’s no surprise to see the word being misused here as well. It’s a favourite term of immoral liars.
Good point. Plenty of more conservative lefties and left leaning intellectuals will nod sagely with the PM though. What could be more worthy than a ‘just’ war?
Not strictly politics, but good comedic analysis – and it’s just so damn funny. Key and Peele alien imposters
Questions for oral answer today:
More questions to the PM on his communications with Slater – aimed at Key doing this in his role as PM.
Questions on workplace safety; state and social housing; TVNZ outsourcing it’s Māori & Pacific content.
*Yawn*
Oh sorry are we still talking about the thing that the opposition parties complained about stealing all oxygen during the election?
Jolly good then, carry on.
Are you from North Korea? Prefer licking the boots of the Great Leader?
In this country some still believe in this quaint notion called ‘democracy’, where the government is accountable to the people.
He won’t have read Dirty Politics
He will ignore all evidence on any subject which counters his limited self interested and parochial viewpoint.
He will rely on anecdotes to support his points.
He will aim tok provoke.
He’s unlikely to admit the only reason he voted for the Tories is naked self interest.
In short, he is not worth debating with.
I believe very much in democracy especially the last election where the people of NZ (well enough of them anyway) told you exactly what they think of so-called dirty politics and voted National back in
1 million people did not vote.
here’s who voted for National. It’s democracy as borderline failure. Funny you should like that so much chris.
If you think an elected dictator every 3 years is cool and nobody should ask questions and the media should just be a propaganda tool,
then you are a f*cken tool as well mate.
+1 ropata.
There is a little bit of Slater in everybody…my conclusion from that result.
Far be it for me to agree with a curmudgeon, but check out Gavin Ellis? (Elice?) on the regular gal’s NinetoNoon today. Completely on the mark – and couple that with the recent TVNZ decision.
When I get around to it, it may form a question on another post re what the fuck are prospective Labour Party candidates going to do about our media, and in particular PSB.
I’m hopeful I’ll hear that there will be some sort of bipartisan mechanism that protects our 4th Estate (not that we have one), and our public sphere. AND such a mechanism that bypasses old hacks and self-interested old boy/gal networks.
Personally, I believe there is such a mechanism, and one that not only recognises individuals’ true worth, and one that puts back a citizenry’s RIGHT.
(Might take one or two ex-pats to return home, and they can be convinced – AND one which is somewhat more ambitious than a CBB – which I have to support, but regard as JUST a little namby pamby – otherwise known as a co-alascence of a 3rd Way)
EDIT: What the fuck ever happened to protest, and journalistic integrity?
Rock stars do really die much younger than the general population.
So what about a so-called rock star economy when compared with other economies?
Good quip from a listener on Raionz yesterday.
NZ has a rock star economy because as usual the managers have run off with the money.
DTB put up a link on housing in the USA on Alternet. Very good reporting with anecdotes and background. http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/turning-public-housing-over-private-developers-has-unfortunate-consequences?page=0%2C2
While I was there I saw this piece by Paul Krugman on the USA decline into stasis and ‘starvation in the midst of plenty’.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/paul-krugman-how-gops-ideology-destroying-americas-future
“America used to be a country that built for the future,” Krugman opens, somewhat mournfully. “Sometimes the government built directly: Public projects, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, provided the backbone for economic growth. Sometimes it provided incentives to the private sector, like land grants to spur railroad construction. Either way, there was broad support for spending that would make us richer.”
Not any more. These days, our government steadfastly refuses to invest in the country’s future.
It isn’t as if there’s no cash to do so. Seven years after the housing bubble burst, “the country is awash in savings,” Krugman writes, “with nowhere to go.” Corporations and banks are holding on to trillions in excess reserves that are simply sitting idle. State governments are strapped, yes, but the federal government, with its ability to borrow money cheaply, could easily help them out.
(if watching replays of q-time..i wouldn’t bother much past question five..if i were you..
..norman under-performed/delivered..
..king got follow-up question of the day..(referencing/comparing collins/key..vis a vis ‘ministerial-responsibility’..
..and this:..
(excerpt..)
‘..and english slam-dunks him/labour by noting labour signed up to the social-accord in 2013..which detailed this dismantling/devolution of the state houses asset..(!)
..(ed:..i didn’t know that..did you..?..that labour signed up to this..?..whoar..!..)..’
http://whoar.co.nz/2014/new-zealand-parliament-list-of-questions-for-oral-answer-tuesday-28-october-2014/
laugh-out-loud appearance on panel from rodeo-pimp..
..quote:..’rodeo are leaders in animal welfare’…
..when in fact..they are ritualised animal-abuse/torture..
..and the rodeo-pimp made a real horses’-arse of trying to defend what they do..
..making farcical-claims that the animals ‘like it’..(!)..
John Robertson, Professor of Media Politics at the University of West Scotland, on media bias in the Scottish Independence Referendum …..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajd4R-9BEIw
Some of his arguments towards the end of the clip (on the Establishment Media’s demonization of Opposition Leaders) has particular relevance for New Zealand.
here..the greens and labour just seemed relieved that harawira was ‘it’..
..and not them..
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11349388
– Woohoo! Good to see NZ companies doing well
As far as OceanaGold is concerned, I’m happier to go with the Guardian and call it Australian. It’s not particularly good to see any company threatening a sovereign country, especially one which has been kept dirt poor by corruption and foreign business.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/03/australian-mining-is-poisoning-el-salvador-it-could-soon-send-it-broke-too
A couple of minor corrections and additions to your report.
1. Oceana Gold is not a NZ company. It is just another foreign owned company making money out of NZ.
2. It is poisoning El Salvador’s water.
3. It is using a free trade agreement to sue the El Salvador government.
“Oceana Gold is claiming that under the US-central America free trade agreement, it has a “right” to compel mining or be compensated for loss of profits. In response, the company will today be handed a petition signed by 200,000 opponents to its attempt to force gold mining in El Salvador.”
But who cares. Some selfish shareholders are making heaps of money out of polluting the earth and screwing over a people.
Woohoo, as you put it so intelligently chris 73.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/03/australian-mining-is-poisoning-el-salvador-it-could-soon-send-it-broke-too
And Mighty River Power and Meridian were stolen from us.
All that chart demonstrates is the level of the theft.
Stolen? No I think you’ll find NZ still has majority shareholding but if it makes you feel better I’m doing better out of it
As long as you are ok.
That’s all that matters, isn’t it.
Simply put yes, yes it does…except for the little issue of its not a case of me doing well therefore no one else can do well instead its a case of I’m doing well and everyone else can do well if they so choose
The problem with the left in general is you all think that for someone to do well (whatever the definition of doing well is) it has to be at the expense of someone else
Whereas the inconvenient truth of the matter is that everyone can do well if they choose to but most choose not to
actually, if you bought power shares you are doing well at the expense of everyone else, in the form of increased overseas debt the government pays because of the reduced dividend take.
Ah, the old myth of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps. Works pretty well when you can afford a Harvard education, or you went to school with the PM, or your brother is the Speaker of the House…
It also works pretty well if you’re the son of a cleaner and a sickness bene, who went to a state school
Utter nonsense.
“Restaurant Brands is a fast food company based in New Zealand and is listed on the NZ Stock Exchange as RBD. It operates most of New Zealand’s KFC, Pizza Hut, Carl’s Jr. and Starbucks stores and provides management and support services to New Zealand’s independent KFC franchisees. It holds the New Zealand franchise for KFC and Pizza Hut from Yum Restaurants and Starbucks from Starbucks USA.”
So just a subsidiary and a franchise of a massive US company owned by large multinational banks.
“Yum! Brands, Inc. or Yum! is an American fast food company. A Fortune 500 corporation, Yum operates the licensed brands Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Wing Street worldwide. Prior to 2011, Yum! also owned Long John Silver’s and A&W Restaurants.”
You can always look up Starbucks Shareholders ….
http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/sbux/institutional-holdings#ixzz3HQ11PYg1
Looks really NZ owned, chris 73.
Do you understand how capitalism works nowadays?
In your defence, Liam Dann, who wrote the article comes out looking like a fool too.
Or a puppet.
It’s just you should know by now not to believe what you read in the Herald.
The shares I have are in the power companies so your points are moot
They were stolen from ordinary New Zealanders.
Nope sorry they weren’t, they were offered at a fair price and the controlling majority were kept by the government and there been two elections thus far that have returned National to be power
The people have spoken, deal with it.
James Shaw, the new Green Party MP’s maiden speech in parliament,
ahem, you listening Labour? (and Russel Norman).
There’s a lot of chatter on twitter about Shaw being into market force. A bit worrying.
yeah..he’s a rightwinger..
..(support a national gummint..?..you betcha..!..)
Yes, Shaw is in the section of the Green Party that see a future working with National. They are still in a minority but do have influence. Julie-Ann Genter and Russel Norman are in this group also, but are not quite as right as Shaw.
I am still appalled that Norman said in the minor leader’s debate that the politician he most admired in another party was Bill (sell off state houses) English.
I’ve always had some criticisms of Norman’s values.
Actually. In the speech, Shaw doesn’t say he’s a fan of “market forces”. He says he’s a fan of “the market”; that the cause of destructive climate change is economic, but the solution is political. He said the market is not sentient, and we need to tell it what to do.
I have heard before that people generally rate him as pretty right wing.
So, he’s into regulated markets. He cites the abolition of slavery (having outlined the various strand of his whakapapa, which includes a female slave in the US).
He also talked of his mother raising him and his siblings on her teacher’s salary, as well as saying he was raised by his mother and her female partner. He spoke in praise of suffragettes and stroppy activist women.
Even those Greens who have rightish economic views are still a lot smarter and more socially enlightened than the right of the Labour Party (Cosgrove, O’Connor etc).
I’m just listening now. He’s saying some prettty radical stuff eg that nature has inherent rights. His stuff about the expansion of rights is very good (how they are feared but the fears prove unfounded in time).
and yeah, interesting re his statement that he likes the market, which he follows by saying that the market needs to be controlled. He says that for setting prices and allocating scarce resources it’s better than the alternatives. It would be good to see him do actual comparisons with the alternatives.
The guy has serious problem solving intelligence and skills, I can see why the GP have promoted him. Very good speech.
I was also appalled at Russel Norman’s snuggling up to the Nats. Because of that I changed my vote from Greens to Labour and wonder if that comment lost them many votes at the election. Politics is in a woeful state at the moment.
I will probably vote reluctantly for Andrew Little in the Labour Leader contest, dont like any of the others in the running but is a worry when I cant even say to myself that I will vote for Greens if the outcome isn’t what I prefer.
Well, it’s the likes of Metiria Turei, Catherine Delahunty, and Jan Logie in the Greens that keep me voting Green. i’d also like to see Jack McDonald and Marama Davidson in the House.
But it is hard to decide who to vote for when I have criticisms of every party on the “left”.
@ karen..
“..I am still appalled that Norman said in the minor leader’s debate that the politician he most admired in another party was Bill (sell off state houses) English…”
yeah..that one is still echoing/bedding-in…
..and yeah..macdonald and davidson have both impressed..
“There’s a lot of chatter on twitter about Shaw being into market force. A bit worrying.”
I think it is inevitable with the Greens. Unless the left organises a progressive movement pretty damn quick, the party will work with whatever it can, including market forces. Norman of course is also into using the market to effect change.
It will be an interesting dilemma for the Greens. There is this idea that they’re neither left nor right (I think Lynn once used the imagery of them being vertical to the horizontal axis of the traditional left/right spectrum). I tend to see them as trying to move beyond the left/right gulf (which is why the whole ‘we can work with anyone on policy’ thing is so important to them). I have some sympathy for this because the left appears to be failing to stop neoliberalism and proto-fascism. Not that I think the left is necessarily at fault, but that we may need other things as well.
I’ll try and download Shaw’s speech later so I can see what all the fuss is about.
i also empathise. i think they are trying to go beyond left right dichotomy and are saying that whoever is in power and wants to advance policies the green party advocate they will work with.
that is not the same as being “right”
it seems to me that there is no single solution to many of our big problems but amalgams which most of our parties dont want a bar of.
It’s the same as doing what the Maori Party does, without the cabinet posts. It’s hugely dangerous, but then again, I also consider any collaboration with Labour since 1984 as working with the right.
@ murray..
“..I also consider any collaboration with Labour since 1984 as working with the right…”
..aye..!
the greens memorandum with national has resulted in over 400,000 homes being more insulated.
there has been a pilot scheme for a building wof
both things done by parties not around the cabinet table and with no outside cabinet baubles either.
far too little credit, and too many brickbats, get thrown for this. insulating homes is a step toward homes affects health improvements for the poorer amongst us
“It’s the same as doing what the Maori Party does,”
Except the Māori party is actually right wing.
I don’t buy that line about moving beyond left and right. The MO of working for consensus and collaborative rather than being into competitive game-playing is to me a left wing value.
I think people like Shaw =, saying they are beyond political partisanship, and being into working with whoever for solutions to the big problems, are deluded.
They ignore that there are those out to maintain their power and privilege, and will resists any changes that challenge that – even if it damages the whole planet.
Slavery, for instance, never really went away, the capitalists used the market for exploit people in new ways.
i am not even sure it is a left wing value given the labour caucus consider itself left wing.
it is possible that people can believe they are moving beyond left and right in an attempt to place the value or ethic pursued above any exterior label. they may or may not achieve that but it doesnt change the intent. intent is often more key than outcome whether that outcome is negative or positive. the greens appear to be trying to place their policies, the intent above traditional labels. i admire the attempts given the people and process they are surrounded by
Well, I don’t see the current Labour caucus as being into consensus building and collaborative approaches.
There’s a strong element within that caucus that are into approaching politics as combative game playing. Very different from the approach of the Greens.
oh i agree but many behaving that way will consider themselves left wing.
i hesitate to say this but collaborative and consensus, imo, is a feminine trait rather than left or right wing… and before anyone leaps on that by feminine i mean as opposed to masculine not women versus men.
I see a collaborative approach as being more dominant on the left. I also see it as being more common among women. But, there are also some pretty competitive, combative, individualistic and right wing women: Judith Collins, for example.
yup, she uses some masculine characteristics as part of her methodology.
we are none of us, in my opinion all masculine or all feminine.
Well, i think it’s a cultural thing. And I think many upperclass or upper middleclass women are used to tell others what to do.
For me, traditional human communities have always functioned with both conservative and liberal elements. While I also see the intent to shift beyone game playing and power-over structures as being more naturally left, I think that conservatives can also work collaboratively (I’m not talking about neoliberals or fundamentalists). The GP moving beyond left/right doesn’t mean they leave left wing values or skills behind.
“I think people like Shaw =, saying they are beyond political partisanship, and being into working with whoever for solutions to the big problems, are deluded.”
That’s a somewhat different thing than what I was talking about. I think that in principle we could have multi-party accords on some things (across the left/right divide), and to an extent this already happens within MMP. But in practice it won’t happen much because NACT’s agenda is so extreme and because we live in an MMP age where taking out opponents is part of the process (aka cutting off one’s nose to spite’s one face).
and we now have labour talking about 50% of the vote… FPP thinking
has that been said recently?
in the recesses of my memory i think it was parker… am happy to be corrected
How Pinkwashing is Creating More Cancer
Komen is supposed to be curing breast cancer. So why is its pink ribbon on so many carcinogenic products?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/21/komen-is-supposed-to-be-curing-breast-cancer-so-why-is-its-pink-ribbon-on-so-many-carcinogenic-products/?hpid=z11
Good link, and great to see the Washington Post covering this.
A question for any IT geeks around. Is there a technical reason for not having platforms that allow multiple logins at the same time on the same computer/browser (eg gmail, twitter etc)? Or is it that developpers don’t see the need?
MS Outlook 2013
what?
I can do it. However, there is something that happens with gmail that it locks into one gmail account from my computer some times.
It can be undone – forget how – maybe clear cache, start again, and untick something -“stay logged in”?
Google pisses me off. It tries to link everything I do, under diverse identities, to each other.
Oh, and to use different logins simultaneously – try using different browsers for each log in.
yes I know how to use different browsers, my question is if there is a technical reason why it can’t be done on the same app.
How do you login to two different gmail accounts in the same browser? When I do that, gmail just logs me out of the first one, once I’m in the second one.
in gmail using a web browser, click on the person-shaped icon (top right) and click “add account”. Each account is opened in a different tab in firefox.
Brilliant! thanks. Interestingly, that doesn’t work if I open a new tab manually, go to the login page, and then add another account that way.
So that answers the question. There appears to be no technical reason to not design for this. ie it could be done on other platforms too.
I suspect it involves cookies that link each session on the website to the specific tab, so on the flipside it might not work so well for sites whose users like to open the browser, go to the site and straight into their account with no further clicks.
Of course, all of the above are security workarounds that mean anyone using your machine can open your accounts, so you might not want to do it with any emails you conduct business on.
It’s by design, for security and convenience (in most use cases – not yours though!).
The Gmail login page creates an “authentication” cookie, so when you open a new tab Google knows you are logged in already. And when you open your other Gmail account, a new Gmail cookie is created which supersedes the previous one.
You may wonder why opening a different browser does what you want. It’s because they don’t share cookies among one another. Each browser (Firefox, IE, Chrome, Safari, etc.) has a separate set of cookies.
Email clients like Outlook or Thunderbird should make it easier to collect your email from different accounts.
More details here.
Thanks. I understand why using different browsers works (cookies).
I’m still not clear if there is a technical reason multiple logins can’t be used on one platform. How is it a security issue? And in this day and age, how is it a convenience issue?
“Clients like Outlook or Thunderbird should make it easier to collect your email from different accounts.”
Can I send from the different gmail accounts using Outlook?
It’s not about making it easier to collect email. It’s about being able to work in two or more different logins at once. eg working with googledocs, I’ve been logged in on a community group account and my own account, which requires me currently to use two browsers.
Cookies are per-website not per-account. If you had 2 cookies for the same website there’s a good chance the browser will mix up the account details when sending email.
Outlook is able to send & receive from different accounts no probs.
“Outlook is able to send & receive from different accounts no probs.”
Different gmail accounts?
“So that’s why websites don’t do it”
Except the others just demonstrated it’s possible in gmail (above) 😉
I hear what you are saying abotu cookies, just not sure why some other system can’t be used.
Bloody McFlock showed me up! 😮
A cookie is just a simple little text file stored on your computer, not having to log in everywhere you go is part of the convenience they offer.
Something like LastPass (browser addon) is a possible alternative
cheers 🙂
Technically: multiple sessions in one browser are possible, but almost always a bad idea! So that’s why websites don’t do it 😛
‘Canadian Green MP warns against harsh anti-terror measures’
By Keith Locke / October 28, 2014
“Canada’s Green Party has provided a welcome counterpoint to Prime Minister Harper’s call for tougher anti-terrorism laws in the wake of a soldier outside the Canadian Parliament…
– See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/10/28/canadian-green-mp-warns-against-harsh-anti-terror-measures/#sthash.Weky26Uy.dpuf
How many times does it need to be said that it was not terrorism.
It was an act of war in a country that has been at war for 13 years. Unless can someone prove otherwise. Or just silly gormless soundbites for te news. probably
The latest news I’ve heard on Canada is that Toronto heavyweight Rob Ford was going to stand again for Mayor? but became ill, and at the last minute his brother stepped into his place. So how will Toronto vote?