Fixed. The identicon button was unchecked, though I don’t know why. As far as I know, the identicons don’t slow page loading or have any impact on the way pages look, so I guess it was entirely unintentional. Lprent will put me right in his usual style if I’ve got that wrong 😉
” New Zealand is on track. One child dies in NZ as a result of abuse every five weeks.
Three children are dead so far in New Zealand this year as a result of domestic violence and it is not even the end of March.
In many cases they get fleeting news coverage and we may not even learn their names.
Names matter. We refuse to speak the name of the mosque murderer in our search for non-violence. We won’t give him any air time – he was not us, says Prime Minister Jacinda Adern. He does not exist.
But he did. He really did! And so do the children that are dying in New Zealand as a result of domestic violence occurring right here. We need to speak their names. We need to be just as outraged by their deaths as we are by the mosque killings.
Yet we keep quiet about them because they are our national shame. We look the other way.
Currently there is an almost obscene celebration of ourselves as New Zealanders.
Adern has carefully crafted a response to a terrorist act in New Zealand so that tables have been completely turned and we have come up smelling of roses.
The message is: ‘This is not us – it is just one individual who lost the plot’.
Adern really is a good leader – she is doing well in protecting our national identity. National identities are important in a global economy.
I think it is wrong that the world’s tallest building (in Dubai) is lit up with an image of Jacinda Adern when our own dying children in New Zealand get limited media coverage.
Blurb on NZ standards from the government on-line:
(How many people are employed in PR and seriously compromising their own integrity by writing this shit with a sure hand?)
Family Life in New Zealand | New Zealand Now https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/why-choose-nz/family-friendly
Nov 12, 2018 – But rest assured, New Zealand is a great place to bring up children. It’s why so many Kiwis living abroad come back home when it’s time to start nesting. … There are wonderful opportunities for young people to grow up with easy … Families in New Zealand get great support from a range of public services.
Maori have numerous systems going and success. But society is up against television and its content that is probably more anti-social than positive, also drugs – alcohol, mj, other chemicals, lack of meaningful jobs with decent pay,
peer pressure and modelling; also a general lack of respect from ignorant, snooty pakeha and middle-class whites who patronise and judge, is an observation of mine.
There has been action also from the private sector generally, and not all just to get on the money bandwagon from government. Which is how some charter schools see things when bad, but not all charter schools are no good, government should ensure better standards, mentors and overview.
There is Thrive – which sounds good but with little information about the people running it, no names. Under Waves Trust, 7 Henderson Valley Road, Henderson. http://www.thrive.org.nz/contact/
Our Vision
Young parents and their children are able to reach their full potential by being connected and secure within their families and communities.
Our Mission
Thriving young people, parents and families.
Mahi tahi
We are a small team of social workers, support staff and volunteers who are committed to helping young teenage parents and their whānau flourish and thrive.
What we do
We offer a range of innovative one on one wrap around support along with various programmes that are tailored and targetted towards the needs, hopes and aspirations of teen parents.
Our first priority is the wellbeing of you and your unborn or new born baby, pepi. We work in partnership with teen parents to be or new teen parents, by ensuring that your voice is heard and that we speak with you and not for you.
The aim of all that we do is based on working to break through and address any and all of the pressing issues that a young parent, young couple face as they look to strengthen and uphold their new roles as parents to be or new parents.
Our highly skilled staff are there to guide, shape and assist every step of the way. We are have a strong reputation of building and maintaining a solid relationship with teen parents and their baby, pepi through an effective and continuous quality service provision.
WHY?
The team is focused on ensuring that you are given the necessary support, tools, and information that will improve the health and well-being of you and your child. Our commitment is based on teen parents reaching and fulfilling their potential and reaching their goals.
(This is the work and the attitude about the social need, that the government should be showing itself not through a second party.)
Then there is government’s Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children. I wonder how Maori feel they are getting on with their job? Can’t see an overview on that but I imagine there will be one.
I have remembered more info that is valid for this and put it up further along the post.
Yes, it is there like an unreliable cat waiting for the right moment to bite you on the ankle. So nice to look at, so innocent a pleasure, and so difficult to know how to protect yourself. I have avoided having that, but others I know have been bitten.
The only thing about smoking is that it has become established. It is stupid not to notice how Prohibition went in the USA – it encouraged crime and now with tobacco becoming hard to obtain because of the price, it has gone up on the Bell curve of effectiveness from pricing to falling effectiveness because of the enhancement of the price raising the intrinsic value of the ciggies.
“What if we were to form a mass vigil for all the children who have died in New Zealand as a result of child abuse? One candle for every little life. Between 2010 and 2016 that was 66 lives.
What if we demanded an adequate social welfare system within which children and families had wrap around care?
What if we valued children so much in New Zealand that our leader Adern would raise the pay of our teachers in early childhood and schools to demonstrate the value of their work?
But she didn’t. And we looked the other way. We did not call a mass uprising to say we wanted our teachers and schools supported. We did not yell loud enough and say ‘this is not us’.
If the recent death of the child in Maketu doesn’t raise the hairs on your arms in the same way that the spine-chilling hakas did in the aftermath of the shootings it is because we have normalised it.
Another child has died in suspicious circumstances in New Zealand and we are in no position to deny that we are a violent society.”
All this ‘this is not us’ bullshit….I’m over it. It is us. We kill our kids.
I agree we need to be making a huge fuss about it and start doing some serious research into why it is happening. And start to fix it.! There are lots of theories and ideas, of course, but in order to start making the first meaningful steps to stop these tragic happenings we need some serious data and a workable plan.
The new IDI might be able to produce deeper information about relationships and generational issues, but there’s only so far one can go with probabilistic ID linkage between such diverse datasets.
I suspect the main problem is that the numbers of mortality are too low to get real relationships from, and the gap between detecting non-lethal abuse/neglect and identifying it in the morgue is so wide. Even though health professionals are getting better at looking for it, there’d still be a massive underreporting of child injuries resulting from assault – often difficult to tell an arm broken by accident with an arm broken by dragging etc. So we see the ones who turn up dead, but you’d be lucky to see maybe a quarter of assault injuries attributed to something other than accident.
So basically asfar as I can see the main thing we can do is lower family stress by reducing inequality and hardship, throwing more social workers at everyone, and then hoping that the upper-income sociopaths get outed by their kids at school.
OOOOOH …. Eric Idle, – my absolute favourite of the Python team !
There’s just something about his eyes, his face shape, his voice , mannerisms that perfectly suited his comic cheeky , cheerful persona, – Life of Brian , – speaking to the Roman guard … ” Nah – I’m only pullin’ your leg ,- its crucifixion really , yeah I know the way , out the door , one cross each, line on the left ”
Hahahaa! – as if hes an old hand at being crucified and its just the same old , same old , humdrum routine …
The guy used to have me in hysterics of laughter 🙂
Hoots ethos must be really feeling threatened, he slips the knife into Winston again over at the fish wrap this morning. 2020 is sure going to be an interesting election.
Not particularly anti. It’s just that the dude has survived more announcements of his political demise than Christopher Lee turned to dust in all the Hammer Horrors combined.
Big ups to all those attending the service this morning in Hagley Park…
An overly heavy weight fell upon the city, still rebuilding its strength post-eqs. You can almost touch it. It is on people’s faces. It will take time to dissipate.
grim
heavy
burdensome
(of course, the city is a minor bit-part and thoughts and wishes go first and foremost to the victims and their families and communities.)
It was a special event, an involving experience for everyone (& there were many), full of character and community; & a huge credit to all involved in putting together such a good display of NZ values of respect.
Agreed. American leadership is so shite their citizens are openly embarrassed, and for some time now many travelling pretend to be Canadian to take the heat off.
I went to live in Canada in 1968 when the anti-Vietnam war riots were spreading around the US and US young were dogging the ‘draft’ to go to Vietnam so this is a historical event that happens every time politics changes rapidly,
This time it’s Trump draining the ‘Washington swamp’ finally, so maybe some of the former ‘Washington intelligence staff’ are running away from being tracked as US citizens.
Had some relations here from the UK recently who had been travelling through Asia and Australia, they said any Americans they met would say they are from the State they are from in the USA rather than the USA. Does that tell you something about how they feel about the USA and it’s International Relations ?
Russian troops have landed in Venezuela, no doubt that will making a few waves for trump.
“The arrival of two Russian air force planes carrying nearly 100 Russian troops outside Caracas on Saturday has escalated the political crisis in Venezuela.”
Admittedly, Matthew is enmeshed in a rather abysmal lot. There is Hosking who daily writes about Hosking and little else.
There is Audrey Young who struggles in later life to know what a Topic is. Whether on Dan’s panel – Or Whatever. Although she is marginally more alive than Johnny Armstrong.
So from the large Herald nursery, only about two writers cut the mustard with Fact and Humour and Balance.
I punished myself today and read a bit of smooth Hooton dated 2004, where he was jacking up National in a bouquet of Flowers and Perfume – and a Brash of bright future. Oh Yeah.
Hooton does nothing but unjack everyone – EXCEPT – his idols – Johnny Key, Frau Bennett and Billy English, each of whom gave New Zealand great wealth. Huge wealth. Incredible wealth. Tax Cuts Tax Cuts Tax Cuts.
National have decided they must get rid of Winston Peters. He is too good to be allowed to stay alive. He is a threat to Simon. Equally a threat to “strange person of power” Papakura Collins. He is the enemy of excessive Wealth.
Not a single Journalist of the Herald has ever written a word about the real people of New Zealand.
The ones who go to work. Often two jobs a day. Both Parents. Struggling to pay for a bit of Fonterra’s bland cheese. Unhoused. Batted around by Dickensian Landlords.
Hooton is in decay. Yes. But he is not the only one who has hated and destroyed the backbone of the real people of this our Nation.
Michael Fay and David Richwhite infamous!! Yes and they hollowed it out sold shares to the workers in the bank branches complete with loans to buy their shonkey shares!!
Luckily my eldest son needed our signature on the loan and we explained why we thought it was a bad idea. Son was so relieved. No job and a debt was how they left many having unloaded worthless shares.
The bank folded and those people were left paying for fresh air. That pair went to Ireland and did similar over there.
“Not a single Journalist of the Herald has ever written a word about the real people of New Zealand.
The ones who go to work. Often two jobs a day. Both Parents. Struggling to pay for a bit of Fonterra’s bland cheese. Unhoused. Batted around by Dickensian Landlords.”
Oh – so you mean your definition of ‘real people of new zealand’.
Plenty of tea New Zealanders are going perfectly fine and dandy – they are real New Zealanders as well.
Global State of the Climate 2018 – Expert Reaction
Friday, 29 March 2019, 9:17 am
Press Release: Science Media Centre
The physical signs and socio-economic impacts of climate change are accelerating according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
In their 2018 State of the Global Climate report, they say 2018 saw record sea level rise and exceptionally high land and ocean temperatures over the past four years, continuing the warming trend observed over the past two decades.
The statement also covers climate impacts on human populations over the past year, such as at climate hazards, displacements and food security.
The SMC asked experts to comment, feel free to use these comments in your reporting.
Professor James Renwick, climate scientist and Head of the VUW School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, comments:
“The 25th annual State of the Climate report from the WMO is an excellent and accessible summary, but it makes for sobering reading. Carbon dioxide concentrations are at record levels, ocean heat content and sea levels are both at record highs, sea ice extent is well below normal in both hemisphere, glaciers and ice sheets are melting. On and on in the now-familiar litany of all the ways the climate is warming and changing around us. Even more worrying is the range of associated extreme weather events and impacts on human populations. World hunger is on the rise and we are now talking of millions of people displaced as a result of weather and climate extremes.
“Ecosystems are being affected worldwide, on land and in the oceans, where acidification is associated with rising temperatures and loss of dissolved oxygen. The record heat in New Zealand and the Tasman Sea during summer 2017/18 is an example of what we can expect much more of in future years. With no action on climate change, that record warm summer in New Zealand would be counted as a cold summer in another 50 years. The associated increases in climate and weather extremes would displace hundreds of millions and would threaten the fabric of societies everywhere.
“The globe is currently running a temperature of about 1°C above pre-industrial levels. To rein in the warming at no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial, global emissions need to halve by 2030, and go to zero by 2050. Yet, emissions increased to record levels in 2018! Policy-makers must really take on board that climate change is an existential threat to global society, to the global economy, and to all ecosystems on earth. I hope the planned United Nations Climate Action Summit later this year really galvanises action by governments around the world.”
No conflict of interest.
Gregor Macara, climate scientist, National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA), comments:
“In a week that has seen the highest 48-hour rainfall total ever in New Zealand, it seems fitting that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is highlighting the increasing impacts of climate change around the world.
“New Zealand is far from immune and has experienced many of the indicators the WMO has concluded are becoming more pronounced globally.
“These include:
• New Zealand’s hottest ever month in January 2018 when the mean temperature was 20.3°C, a remarkable 3.1°C above average
• At New Zealand climate stations over the past six years, for every record or near-record low monthly mean temperature there have been 12 record or near-record highs.
• A hot March this year – higher temperatures than what it’s usually like in mid to late summer.
• Marine heatwaves over the past two summers – likely a contributor to this week’s wettest 48 hours on record.
• A near record 40-day dry spell in Nelson this summer which included significant wildfires.
• 2018 coming in at NZ’s equal-second warmest year on record .” [High-res graph available here under creative commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)].
No conflict of interest.
Professor Jim Salinger, Visiting Scholar, Penn State University, comments:
“The 25th Anniversary issue shows hastening climate warming globally. This was true for the New Zealand region, a combined land and marine area of 4 million sq. km (the size of the Indian subcontinent), with the warmest year on 150 years of land and sea records.
“It is very alarming that the carbon dioxide levels reaching a highest 406 ppm – up from 280 ppm in the 19th century, and methane jumping unexpectedly by 25 ppb to a record 1850 ppb by 2017.
“The extra 3.7 mm of sea level rise will be very significant for the coast of Australia, and especially New Zealand with its many seaside urban areas and long coasts.
“The record warm summer ending in February 2019 produced the largest ice loss on the Southern Alps glaciers since the regular end of summer snowline surveys started 42 years ago.
“We’ve seen Queensland Groper in the Bay of Islands, Northland, 3000 km out of range, snapper in Milford Sound in Fiordland, and massive mortality in the aquaculture fisheries of the Marlborough Sounds. These are a harbinger of climate in the latter part of the 20th century if we do not take action to reduce emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and the production of greenhouse gases from other sources such as waste and agriculture immediately.”
No conflict of interest.
ends
Science Media Centre NZ
Our aim is to promote accurate, evidence-based reporting on science and technology by helping the media work more closely with the scientific community.
The Science Media Centre is New Zealand’s only trusted, independent source of information for the media on all issues related to science. Thousands of news stories providing context from and quoting New Zealand researchers have been published as a direct result of our work.
Contact Science Media Centre NZ
• Website – http://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz
• Email – smc@sciencemediacentre.co.nz
• Phone – +64 4 499 5476
• Mobile – +64 21 859 365
• Facebook
• Twitter – @smcnz
• YouTube
• Postal Address – PO Box 598, Wellington 6140
I’m so grateful to see the entire text of the media release faithfully pasted here including the contact details. That newfangled hyperlinking idea will never catch on. Off to scribe some papyrus and summon my faithful carrier pigeon.
Basic science says planetary gas traps heat, so digging up and burning carbon would inevitably increase the temperature globally. Especially if nothing is done to stop the concentration of co2 in the atmosphere. It really does not matter whether we have past the tipping point, we have or we will if nothing changes. So let’s grow the co2 level some more…
So we are running at the cliff, it looks now that we’ve run right off the top…
PM Jacinda Ardern was at the Memorial Service this morning, Soon she flies for a one day meeting with China. She will probably read that Report on her way. I’m sure James Shaw will read it as well.
Cleangreen, I know you didn’t mean to make it sound like she is neglectful, but it did rather read that way. Her plate is full.
A terrorist Attack which killed 50 and injured as many more.
A flight to China to salvage relations.
Gun law changes.
A Climate Change Tipping point Report.
A budget being prepared.
The ongoing repairs and replacements needed because of previous neglect.
I so admire this young woman who has taken on that role with such aplomb and sincerity.
She will do her level best for us all, and next election it is to be hoped we vote her a greater mandate to bring in change.
I marched on that day and held two banners up saying save rail save a planet.
I am nervous as the murders have shifted the spotlight off the most serious issue we now face for us and our children’s future.
I am 75 so don’t feel personally threatened as my life is now limited but when I look at my 7yr old grandson I almost cry at what he will face going forward so Jacinda must feel this too with a very young Girl under a year old.
Facebook is finally banning white nationalist content
The new ban, which will also apply to content supporting white separatism, comes after months of advocacy from civil rights groups.
Facebook has announced a ban on content that includes “praise, support and representation of white nationalism and separatism” — a significant policy shift that comes after months of criticism from civil rights groups.
The change, which was first reported Wednesday by Motherboard, will go into effect next week and will also apply to Instagram. The platform will also direct users who try to post this content to Life After Hate, an organization that helps people leave hate groups.
In a blog post published on Wednesday, Facebook explained its decision, noting that the new policy is the result of months of discussions between Facebook and outside groups. Previously, Facebook had banned content promoting white supremacy (generally, the belief that whites are superior to other races).
But the platform allowed white nationalist content (which promotes a belief that a white majority should control the social and political direction of predominantly white countries) and white separatist content (which argues that whites should create a separate ethnostate devoid of people of color). While their proponents argue that these ideologies are very different, groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center argue that the latter two often express a belief in white supremacy, making them all very similar.
Facebook says additional conversations with civil rights groups and experts “confirmed that white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups,” leading the social media platform to expand its policy on hate language.
Twitter is considering labeling tweets that violate its rules but should remain on the platform because they’re in the public interest.
Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal, policy and trust made the announcement during an on-stage interview with the Washington Post on Wednesday.
The social media company is trying to find a way of maintaining its standards while adding context to tweets from politicians and other figures that may be offensive but are important for public debate.
Twitter has come under fire from some critics who say President Donald Trump’s tweets often violate its rules against bullying, dehumanization and threatening harm.
Well I guess even that little step is something on the way to cleaning up the garbage tip that these ‘social media’ sites have created over the past decade.
Well I hope that Twitter applies some consistency and removes the hate speech of Ahmed Bhamji, chairman of the Mt Roskill Masjid E Umar Mosque.
Hate speech and conspiracy theories like his recent rant in Aotea Square have helped radicalize so many, whether Muslim, Jewish, white supremacists or whoever. It has no place in NZ.
I’m no fan of Netanyahu and his extremist mates, but that guy’s just really irresponsible. Unless you’ve got solid evidence to suggest Mossad had anything to do with this (and good luck with that), ranting like an unhinged lunatic about Zionist conspiracy theories is just pathetic. He’s just tipping the scales in the other direction, and it’s helping no one, least of all NZ’s Muslim community.
If all this sounds familiar, it’s because sadly it is. This is not the first time Facebook has declared it will take action in this way.
In April 2016, Robert Godwin, a 74-year-old grandfather, was shot and killed in Cleveland, Ohio having been chosen at random by a killer who broadcast it live on Facebook.
At the time CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Facebook’s annual developer conference, “We have a lot of work [to do], and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening”. In May of 2017 the company announced plans to add 3000 more staff to review user content to help battle violent videos.
Not much has changed. Today’s announcement sounds awfully hollow in light of the lack of action since 2016 and does little to assuage anyone’s concerns about the company and its ability to self-regulate.
Have people seen the film The Cleaners?
It sounds relevant https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/auckland/the-cleaners/
A thoroughly unnerving picture of our times, this gripping doco immerses us in the surreal world of the content moderators who decide what we see (or don’t see) on social media.
A thanks on 8.1 – – Thanks CG! Would have missed it otherwise
Soddenleaf
I agree with your point that we have no time here so we need to plan for the event now also. build less use of carbon emissions to slow the rate of destruction.
Yes Climate change updates like mine on 8 should be a subject that stays on the radar every day no matter what else goes on today.
As Climate change is about to kill at random many people who are also innocent in our communities as sea level rise and warming/ melting of our glaciers will flood many regions.
We saw this happen at the Franz Josef Glacier and all the flooding down at properties flooded at Hokitika perhaps from the melting of the glaciers there also?
How much pain and suffering does it take before the Government moves ‘decisively’ now?
We impatiently await James report, and hope like hell we have consensus on real change.
In the interim planting trees is a no brainer – soon as we (I) get some rains to support them…
The heat island effect in cities will only be exacerbated in future unless we take steps now to offset temperatures with the evaporative cooling and shading effect of trees. In addition trees perform many functions to enhance urban living.
Food, shade, shelter, habitat, aesthetic beauty, carbon capture, biodiversity, rain capture and transpiration, air cleaning, oxygen production…
To build resilience in communities we should get started, not wait on governments, though obviously we are… all hands on deck!
I put trees in recently that’ll take nearly a decade to bear food. Trees are a vote for the future. Start now.
Thinking about better outcomes for young children and teenagers and when they become young parents. This is heartening, and should be the norm now but probably not.
Dr Susan Baragwanath was the instigator of about 11 schools for teenage mothers, who the careless, condemning conformists with cold-blooded puritan minds were freezing out from society, and this was when the true facts about NZ early sexuality exploration and its effects were known – (by such as Jenny Shipley and the superior types in National Party).
Founder, He Huarahi Tamariki Schools
Dr. Susan Cave Baragwanath believes her fellowship came about because she had a problem, and she could not find anyone in New Zealand to help her solve it. She was a career secondary school teacher and administrator who had taught internationally. When she returned permanently to New Zealand in 1989 after 20 years away, she accepted a position as a deputy principal in one of the country’s poorest schools.
In the first week, she found a 14-year-old girl giving birth to a child in the school toilets. Baragwanath contacted the authorities about her continuing education, and she was told to forget about it. Baragwanath looked up New Zealand’s domestic law; there it was, in black and white, “every child is entitled to have a free basic formal education until the age of 19 years”. The only education available to this student, if she did not return to school (and she couldn’t as there were no childcare facilities), was distance learning. Her family did not own a phone, so she could not call her tutor, and she waited weeks for her school work to be delivered by mail. As a result, she quickly fell out of the system.
The pattern in New Zealand was for teenagers to have multiple pregnancies before age 21 and become state beneficiaries for life. Without proper research and a concrete plan going forward there seemed to Baragwanath no escape from this pattern continuing.
Maori focus:
Maori and teenage parents – Report on research. 2012
Marginalising Māori Parents
by Elizabeth Strickett and Helen Moewaka-Barnes
Massey University
Marginalising Maori Parents – for Massey University http://www.maramatanga.ac.nz/sites/default/files/12-IN-10%20Web%20ready%20%283%29.pdf
(p.10 gives information about difficulties for young fathers)
But if government could push the InZone style with good funding for it, I guess as a charter school with good overview, so that it can be offered to young parents – there would be immediate improvements and a dramatic rise in successful young people handling their lives well, whether they had a job, apart from parenting or not. But some in government might feel that sort of result really isn’t their thing
Ahem … t’was I. I’ve turned them back on, and I’m not sure how they came to be off. If there is a technical issue, I’m sure Lprent will let us know. In the mean time, enjoy the rainbow.
Awww thanks for that.
I always remember Sir Paul Reeves being interviewed some years back on Nat Radio on a Sat Morning by Kim Hill and she had a slot then when she would invite some well known person on to give a playlist of their favourite music and to talk about what it meant for them. This was a favourite of his – he particularly like the backing of the Uke and the soft way it was sung. He had first heard it Hawaii IIRC and it was one of his favourite songs. I admit on hearing itI fell for it as well – but I was never able to find it – I just remembered it. I think the singer was a little younger then by the sound of it also – but still beautiful.
Thanks once again. I’ve stored it on my youtube.
I pointed out an article on great farming practice in the Kaipara recently, and now, in Southland, a catchment wide initiative involving more than 600 farms.
They’re treating each farm individually (smart!) and collecting massive data as they go on all manner of systems and processes. This is commendable work, and it seems they’ve done their homework.
I hope some of the trial farms involve earthworks and water retention.
But… yay for this initiative.
I also like the links on the side of the page. Get involved – Become a Citizen Scientist – etc.
Climate, to some odd people, is an enormous black hole.
One such odd person being the Honourable Simon Bridges and the other his idol, the Honourable Donald Trump.
Neither of whom have ever shown any glimpse of Reality.
The ultimate Goofs in Goofs clothing.
But as long as they can sell today’s youth off into Slums – without hope of housing or a fair slice of Life – Bridges and Trump will have achieved their Monstrous aims.
I took a drive through Panmure the other day. It was Tuesday. Its the Neighbour of expensive Remuera.
Panmure is the sort of filth Simon wants. It is dreadful. Few townships in the entire world could be as sick. Long Live dead head Simon. Long live mexicop Trump.
\Winston Peters has carved a career out of race baiting immigrants.
But at least he finally has the grace to admit he was wrong to have done so. (sort of)
Maybe, just maybe, Winston Peters has sensed the wind of change blowing through the nation’s psyche.
“If you want to look at someone who’s had the longest political career of anybody in this parliament, and you think that I would claim that I’m blameless over that long career. Well, you might but I don’t assume such a thing, and I never will.”
Jenny I think the media has miss reported Winston on a number of occasions, he has been critical of the quality of the immigrants we are bringing in ie the Christchurch Mosque Shooter and the share number of Asians entering the country when we do not have the housing stock and Infrastructure to support this level of Immigration.
Labour are continuing down this track of bringing in large numbers of Immigrants which is putting pressure on ordinary New Zealanders. ie housing and social services ?
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Resuming Normal Service: The Republican Party's nominee for in 1920, Warren Harding, promised the American people: “not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration”. If she wishes to remain our prime minister, then Jacinda Ardern will offer New Zealanders the same.HOW EDUCATED AMERICA snickered when the ...
No Free Society Without A Free And Functioning News Media: If we are to surrender our civil rights to the broader cause of defeating Covid-19, then foreign corporations must, likewise, surrender their right to inflict immense economic and cultural harm on New Zealanders simply because it improves their bottom line.I’M ...
by Daphna Whitmore A third of the world is under lockdown and a clear assessment of this measure to curb the spread of COVID-19 is urgently needed. With any high-stakes decisions it has to be asked what are we dealing with here? Are the measures warranted? Will they achieve their ...
I haven’t done a huge amount in the last few days. I’m reading The Poppy War and I’ve sort of poked at a couple of games – I started SOMA but I’m a wimp and I quit while in the first room after the brain scan. I might try it ...
The swan politicians may be gliding on the water, occasionally snapping at one another. Meanwhile, as the Covid19 crisis illustrates, the officials are desperately paddling below providing the real locomotion. One of the most fatuous recent grandstanding comments (of about a week ago), adding to the public’s anxieties, was ...
Much has been written about the importance of discretion in an emergency situation, and the concerns raised by the potential for it to be exercised arbitrarily. Given the quality of the discussion, there seemed little point in adding to it at any length. In particular, I point to the evidence ...
Today has felt surreal. I was all set to touch base online with my science communication students when a colleague shared the news that Bauer Media would be shutting down its publications immediately. The first link I saw implied it was Woman’s Weekly affected, and even that shocked me. But ...
Bogeymen, Real And Imagined: Is the number of psychopathic and sociopathic individuals in any given society truly as vanishingly small as we like to tell ourselves? Isn’t it more likely that the mass-shooters and serial-killers filling the headlines represent only the tip of a much, much larger iceberg of frightfulness? ...
Outgoing Police Commissioner Mike Bush appeared before the Epidemic Response Committee today, who asked him for the rules police are using to enforce the lockdown. He refused:Police Commissioner Mike Bush has admitted the advice given to Kiwis about what they're able to do during the lockdown hasn't been clear enough. ...
For those folk who find my other Lock-Down Diary versions too “negative” or otherwise unpalatable… Here’s a photo of my cat, . . Better? Tomorrow’s Sanitised Version: a pretty flower. . . . =fs= ...
. . April 1: Day seven of living in lock-down… This morning I had a brief chat with one of my neighbours, “D” (social distance between us, a good three or four metres). I learned he had resigned from his previous job and had been hired by another company – ...
Funnily enough, my thought as I start this post is whether it will be well written enough. Or should that be well enough written? Because so much of what I know about good writing came from my two stints at The Listener, which this morning was shut down due to ...
With normal democratic procedures in abeyance, there were two ways to go. First, it was open for the government to dissolve itself and invite the National Party to join a ministry of national salvation. That would have lessened the democratic deficit of the times by having a team of rivals without ...
Dr Kirsty Ross Children and young people can respond differently in times of distress. This also varies by age and developmental stage, with younger children having more magical and imaginative thinking, and older children having more awareness and knowledge of the issues our communities are facing (which brings up ...
Hungary has been a virtual dictatorship for a decade now, as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has gradually eroded its democracy. But now, its official, with the passage of an indefinite emergency law allowing rule by decree:Hungary’s parliament has passed a new set of coronavirus measures that includes jail terms for ...
While the economy is on pause under lockdown, the government is beginning to plan how to cope with the post-lockdown, post-tourism, post-export education world we will eventually find ourselves in. They're planning a lot of infrastructure spending as economic stimulus, and have asked for proposals which can start the moment ...
It's my distraction, setting up tiny scenes to photograph. I've got stuck on the Babushka dolls for now. Something about their bubble shape. Something about their never changing, smiling features, suggesting persistent equanimity. Can we get through everything that is being thrown at us and keep at least a tiny ...
. . March 31: Day six of living in lock-down… This time I managed to sleep a little longer and the alarm woke me at the pre-set time: 6.55am. Then remembered I was working a later shift and could’ve slept in. Oh well, there are things to do at home. ...
Image credit:Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ...
Yesterday's Horizon poll showing support for a "Yes" vote in this year's cannabis referendum sliding into the majority for the first time in a year looked like good news for reformers – and it probably is. But the result warrants some scrutiny.The poll is the fifth in a series commissioned ...
For almost a week now, every one of us who isn’t an essential worker has been confined to their bubble. We are allowed to go shopping for groceries, to visit the doctor, and to get a bit of exercise if we stay local. The reason we are doing this is ...
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...
In the absence of a vaccine or a cure for a deadly disease, staying home in your bubble is what you do, the concept is not new. To the best of my knowledge last time we did this in NZ was for polio, in the years before a vaccine came ...
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...
This has been a terrible summer for Hector’s dolphins. The first indication was very low numbers of dolphin sightings during late spring and early summer. The Otago University Marine Mammal Research Team has carried out routine dolphin surveys at Banks Peninsula for more than 30 years. In all that time, ...
On March 17, Finance Minister Grant Robertson was quick out of the blocks with an economic rescue package to help businesses through the inevitable recession resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Robertson had pulled together a scheme in short order that so far seems to have saved many jobs. In his ...
The purpose of the lockdown is to save lives, by reducing the spread of covid-19. We won't know if its really working for another week, but given the devastation that will result if it doesn't - 14,000 dead is the optimistic scenario - its definitely worth trying. But pausing the ...
. . March 30: Day five of living in lock-down… Woke up still in darkness. Alarm hadn’t gone off. Turn to radio clock; it’s a few minutes after 6am… I lie there in the dark, waiting to drift off to sleep… but it ain’t happening. Clock ticks over to 6.55 ...
The story of Les Gray, the public sector psychologist who told the truth about his use of cannabis and set off a storm, has a special place in the lore of cannabis reform in New Zealand.When Paul Shannon interviewed Gray for the 'Dope and Hope' issue of Planet magazine in ...
by Phil Duncan For Marxists, a key concern about social trends is their context – not just their causes, but why they happen when they do. Events and phenomena have causes, but they also are time or period-specific. While much of the left have capitulated recently to postmodernism, most notably ...
Since the lockdown began, we've all suddenly been reminded who the actually essential workers in our society are: not the people at the top who pay themselves the big bucks and rort the perks, but the people at the bottom they screw over and squeeze: cleaners, warehouse staff, truck drivers ...
Kia ora! As I've watched nearly all my remaining work vanish over the past couple of days, it has occured to me that one good way to keep me away from arguing with fools on Twitter all the time (in the knowledge that all we're really doing is processing our ...
Aotearoa New Zealand has committed to trying to extirpate the virus that causes COVID-19 from its shores. To do that, as a society we’ve moved to “Level 4”. That means adapting to unprecedented restrictions on our personal freedoms, particularly to our rights to move freely and associate with friends and ...
When the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency last week, she handed the police powers to enforce it. And almost immediately, we started hearing about heavy-handed, arbitrary "enforcement" by police who (at best) cared more about order than law, or (more likely) had no idea what the rules were ...
. . Lock Down: Day 4 – A photo essay with observations . March 29: Usual wake up routine as RNZ snaps on my radio-clock. Jim Mora’s voice slowly enters my conciousness; there’s talk of a second wave of covid19 taking hold in South Korea; the week in Parliament – ...
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... ‘Misinformation kills’: The link between coronavirus conspiracies and climate denialGrist / Rob Kim / Stringer / CSA Images Scientific ...
The kids did surprisingly well today – meltdown count was about 3, and mostly fairly short ones. (And a fourth while I was writing.) Game-wise I had a go at Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. It’s a fairly standard RPG with turn-based combat and what they call a “mature storyline” (it ...
by Don Franks Hi David, Nice hearing from you, I’m glad to hear you’re getting by okay in these grim times. You asked how’s it going for us back here in New Zealand. You would have heard that the whole country is locked down and with breaks for exercise and ...
. . Lock Down: Day 3 – A photo essay with observations . March 28: First day of the first weekend in Lock Down. It feels like it’s been weeks since only Level 3 was declared last Tuesday, only four days ago. Woke up this morning to RNZ; coffee; toast, ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 22, 2020 through Sat, Mar 28, 2020Articles Linked to on FacebookSun, Mar 22, 2020In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of Disasters by Chelsea Harvey, ...
I’m here in lockdown with my flatmate and her two girls (6 and 2) and it. is. a time. They’re usually really active so to start with the only boardgame in the house is the copy of Guess Who that the 6 year old got for her birthday. Flatmate commented ...
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...
. . Lock Down: Day 2 – A photo essay with observations . March 27 – Day 2 of our Strange New World. The Park and Ride near my suburb, usually filled with hundreds of vehicles, had just… four; . . Another drive into Wellington City on a highway nearly ...
Fortune's Children: Under extraordinary pressure, the leader of the Government and the leader of the Opposition will each show us what they are made of. Have they been blessed with intelligence, grace, wit, poise, toughness, empathy and humour – and in what measure? More importantly, to what extent have they ...
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of having to rent a property on the open market in New Zealand, which is one of the most expensive in the entire world, you’ll likely be keenly aware of just how arrogant and entitled landlords and their real estate agents can be.Unfortunately for ...
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights:In this legal blog we outline some ...
by Equipo Jurídico Pueblos and Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (25/03/2020) An escape plan in question On the night of March 21st and the early morning of the 22nd, the forces of the Colombian state stormed into the Modelo prison in Bogotá, murdering 23 prisoners and injuring 83, in response to the ...
When the government banned semi-automatic weapons in response to a terrorist atrocity, gun-nuts were outraged. Mired in toxic American gun culture, they thought owning weapons whose sole purpose was killing people was some sort of "constitutional right", a necessity for "defending themselves" against the government. Now, the Court of Appeal ...
Just before midnight on Wednesday March 25, Aotearoa New Zealand entered a countrywide alert level four lockdown. For at least the next four weeks, everyone who isn’t an essential worker is confined to their bubble. We are doing this to stop the explosive growth in people contracting and dying from ...
. . Lock Down: Day 1 – A photo essay with observations . Day one of the Level 4 nationwide lock-down (or, DefCon 4 as I sometimes cheekily call it) started at 11.59PM on 25 March. For a moment, most of the nation held it’s collective breath. In that brief ...
Broad, Sunlit Uplands: How those words fired my young imagination! Or, perhaps, it is more accurate to say: how those words fused, in my young mind, with the image printed on every packet of Fielder’s Cornflour. Always fascinated by history, especially modern history, I cannot hear Churchill’s wonderfully evocative words, even ...
. . 24 March 2020 9.46AM Number of covid19 cases in Aotearoa New Zealand: 102 . As of 11.59 on Thursday, most of New Zealand will go into “lock down”. People will be expected not to travel to work; not to socialise; and to stay home. I will not be ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections A respected research group, Project Drawdown, finds that deploying solutions consistent with meeting the Paris climate targets would cost tens of trillions of dollars globally. But crucially, those outlays would also yield long-term savings many times larger than the up-front costs. The new 2020 Drawdown ...
It will pass. What happens next? Not immediately, but longer term. There are many opinions, fewer certainties. Will it “change everything!” as many confidently, and contradictorily predict? In this post I look at how foresight can help bound some of the uncertainties so you can more objectively consider the future. ...
We’ve been meaning t write something on Cuba and the coronavirus but have just discovered a very good article on the subject in the US left publication Jacobin. The article looks at how Cuba, a poor country but one where capitalism has been done away with, is leading the way ...
In 2018, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey - two British citizens who had purportedly been stripped of their citizenship by the British government - were captured while fighting for Isis in Syria. The British government then conspired to hand them over to the US, and agreed to provide evidence ...
Transformers: The disaster of the Great Depression was transformed into a new and fairer society by the democratic socialism of the First Labour Government. The disaster of the Covid-19 Pandemic offers a similar transformative possibility to the Labour-NZ First-Green Government. Seize the time, Jacinda! You will never have a better ...
Tamper with The System? Well, we already are. But there's a difference between accidentally trickling sand into a precision gearbox versus formulating a plan to alter it on the fly with improvements in mind. One action is more or less innocently unscrupulous, the other amenable to earning an easy ...
Associate Prof George Thomson, Louise Delany, Prof Nick WilsonWhile it is possible that New Zealand can use intense public health controls to eradicate COVID-19 from the country – we must also plan for other scenarios where thousands of New Zealanders are sick – including many urgently hospitalised.1 Better resilience ...
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...
We're about to do something unprecedented as a nation. We hope that by taking this extraordinary action before a single life in New Zealand has been lost to the deadly novel virus we will save tens of thousands of lives. Our lives. We'll do it together, in households, in isolation ...
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”So writes the author of Ecclesiastes, a book in the Old Testament that’s counted as a ‘wisdom’ book and written as if by an unnamed king of Jerusalem. But who would have thought there would be a time ...
I was surprised when the prime minister described the Economic Response to Covid-19 package as the ‘largest peacetime government spend in New Zealand's history’. Reflecting – checking through history – I realised that the term ‘spend’ was crucial and the package had no income tax cuts. Even so, it has ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters says getting New Zealanders back home and other travellers out of the country is "a nightmare for our embassies, consuls, and staff around the world".Speaking to NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking, the Foreign Minister said that he gave a clear message to people travelling overseas that they ...
The domestic travel ban has been lifted for stranded foreign tourists trying to get to international airports to fly home, after the Coalition Government announced a plan to help the tens of thousands of foreigners stranded here. Foreign Minister Rt. Hon. Winston Peters spoke with RNZ's Susie Ferguson said foreign ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters believes the country is rediscovering its resilience and self-reliance through its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.He says he is heartened that the mass majority of New Zealanders are following lockdown rules and that the government looking at the future, including paying to keep much ...
New Zealand can emulate the success of the US after the Great Depression by exploiting our own resources to turn the economy around quickly, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says. Mr. Peters told Magic Talk that New Zealand has an opportunity to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic a "superior, ...
All 45 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel are either on their way back to New Zealand, or already in the country, according to Defence Minister Ron Mark."Twenty-eight personnel arrived back in New Zealand last week and are in isolation at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base in ...
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...
We know people are feeling anxious about COVID-19. While the situation is serious, New Zealand has a world-class health system and we’re well-prepared to keep New Zealanders safe. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging New Zealanders overseas to stay where they are amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "We are reaching a point where the best option for most New Zealanders offshore is to shelter in place, by preparing to safely stay where they are.” "This includes following the instructions ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging the tens of thousands of New Zealanders travelling overseas to consider sheltering in place, in light of COVID-19. “Since 18 March, we have been warning New Zealanders offshore that the window for flying ...
Ground-breaking law has passed that will decriminalise abortion and ensure women and pregnant people seeking abortions have compassionate healthcare. ...
The Green Party says that the measures announced by the Government today will help families and businesses to prioritise our collective health and wellbeing in the response to COVID-19. ...
As New Zealanders brace for a global downturn due to Covid-19, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says his Coalition Government’s rescue package "more significant" than any other he's seen around the world. The Coalition is to reveal a multi-billion-dollar stimulus plan on Tuesday afternoon designed to cushion the economic blow ...
The Government will be introducing legislation to make changes to the Companies Act to help companies facing insolvency due to COVID-19 to remain viable and keep New Zealanders in jobs. The temporary changes include: Giving directors of companies facing significant liquidity problems because of COVID-19 a ‘safe harbour’ from insolvency ...
The Government’s plan to cushion the blow of COVID-19 by supporting incomes, jobs and businesses, and position the economy to recover has been backed by another international report. International credit rating agency Moody’s today reaffirmed its highest Aaa credit rating on New Zealand, saying the economy is expected to remain ...
National sports organisations have been given certainty of funding to ensure they can remain viable through the COVID-19 pandemic, Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson announced today. “The global spread of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on sport and recreation in New Zealand, including the cancellation or postponement of ...
Changes have been made to allow butchers to process pork, only for supply to supermarkets or other processors or retailers that are open, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor has announced. “We carefully weighed the risk of allowing butchers to open their shops for retail customers, but the risk of spreading COVID-19 ...
Essential workers who take leave from work to comply with public health guidance are being supported with a leave scheme to ensure they will continue to receive income, say the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Iain Lees-Galloway and Minister for Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni. A number of essential businesses ...
A Government WhatsApp channel has been launched to help make information more easily accessible and shareable in the fight against COVID-19. Govt.NZ, which is free to use on any mobile device, will carry information and news for the public, businesses, healthcare providers, not for profits and local government. It can ...
The Government has announced a plan to enable the safe, orderly exit of tens of thousands of stranded foreign nationals from New Zealand during the current COVID-19 Alert Level 4 restrictions, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters has said. “When we moved into lockdown a week ago, the ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says the Government is delivering on its commitment to support general practice doctors and nurses, and pharmacies on the front-line of our fight against COVID-19. "For us to overcome COVID-19, we need community health services such as general practice and community pharmacy to step up ...
Justice Susan Thomas has been appointed Chief High Court Judge, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. She replaces Justice Geoffrey Venning who has resigned from the position. David Parker paid tribute to Justice Venning, who he said had stewarded the High Court very capably over the last five years. “On behalf ...
Businesses can start applying to their banks for loans under the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme set up to support the New Zealand economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re moving quickly to protect New Zealand businesses, jobs and the economy during this unprecedented global economic shock,” Finance Minister Grant Robertson said. ...
Work is underway looking at measures to speed up consents for development and infrastructure projects during the recovery from COVID 19, to provide jobs and stimulate our economy. Environment Minister David Parker said the COVID-19 pandemic is a serious global crisis that will have a wide ranging and lasting impact ...
Advance payments will be made to transport construction industry contractors to retain the workforce and ensure it is ready to quickly gear up to build projects which will be vital to New Zealand’s COVID-19 economic recovery, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. He said keeping the workforce required to build ...
The Government has tasked a group of industry leaders to seek out infrastructure projects that are ready to start as soon as the construction industry returns to normal to reduce the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford and Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones say. The Infrastructure ...
Work to scale up the health system in preparation for COVID-19 was today outlined by Health Minister David Clark, as he reported back to the new Epidemic Response Committee. “We are well placed to contain the spread of COVID-19. We have taken early and decisive action at our borders, and ...
The Government is refining its COVID-19 essential business guidance to include the distribution of news publications for communities which are hard to reach. The Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media, Kris Faafoi, said the move was in recognition of the importance for New Zealanders who might be harder to ...
The Government is ensuring supermarkets can open on Easter Sunday so we can buy groceries, but stay closed on Good Friday allowing workers to take a break. This provides a balanced approach and ensures we avoid large queues that two days closure may cause. “Supermarkets will be able to open ...
Following the successful conclusion of the Building Partner Capacity (BPC) mission at Taji, New Zealand defence personnel are returning to New Zealand from Iraq, in accordance with the Cabinet decision made in June 2019, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Ron Mark announced today. “New Zealand is very ...
The State of National Emergency to help stop the spread of COVID-19 has been extended for a further seven days, Minister of Civil Defence Peeni Henare said. The initial declaration on March 25 lasted seven days and can be extended as many times as necessary. “Since we went into isolation ...
New Zealand’s ability to go hard and go early in the fight against COVID-19 has been underpinned by strong Government finances and the growing economy heading into this global pandemic, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Treasury today released the Crown financial statements for the eight months to the end ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says 36 new intensive care beds at Christchurch Hospital’s new Hagley building are being fast tracked so they are available for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The Ministry of Health is working with contractor CPB and Canterbury DHB to enable access to the hospital’s ICU, ...
The Government has fast-tracked up to $1 million to help Air New Zealand move urgent freight to and from New Zealand, with the first flight to Shanghai leaving tonight, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Phil Twyford says it’s crucial that trade in vital goods such as medical supplies and ...
New Zealand will temporarily remove tariffs on all medical and hygiene imports needed for the COVID-19 response. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi said today that the New Zealand Customs Service will apply tariff concessions to all diagnostic reagents and testing ...
Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has clarified that the changes to the wage subsidy scheme announced yesterday mean that employers should be passing on the full subsidy to workers, except in the case where the person’s normal income is less than the level of the subsidy. “We still want employers ...
Medical face masks from the national reserve supply are now being distributed to District Health Boards, while at the same time local production is being ramped up. Yesterday more than 640,000 masks were sent to DHBS – that is an immediate two week supply, with more to follow in coming ...
The Government has made modifications to the wage subsidy scheme to ensure people don’t lose their jobs during the national lockdown. These changes will soften the impact of COVID-19 on workers, families and businesses, and position them to exit the lockdown and look to recovery, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. ...
Farmers whose herds were culled in response to the outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis will be able to minimise the tax treatment of their income in some circumstances. Revenue Minister Stuart Nash says Cabinet has agreed to change the law. It means farmers may be eligible to spread their income over ...
A $27 million dollar package, effective immediately, is being provided to social sector services and community groups to ensure they can continue to provide essential support to communities as we stay at home as a nation to stop the spread of COVID-19, Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni announced. “At ...
“The guilty plea today will provide some relief to the many people whose lives were shattered by what happened on March 15,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “These guilty pleas and conviction bring accountability for what happened and also save the families who lost loved ones, those who were injured, ...
The Prime Minister is holding daily press conferences to update New Zealanders on the Government's response to COVID-19. Links to videos and transcripts of these updates below. These transcripts also include All of Government press conferences led by Director Ministry of Health's Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. 25 March: Live update from the Prime ...
Frontline Police numbers have broken through the 10,000 mark for the first time in history as officers step forward to keep the community safe during the COVID19 lockdown. “Two Police graduations in Auckland and Wellington in the past week have been conducted in unprecedented circumstances,” Police Minister Stuart Nash said. ...
Urgent legislation has been passed to support the package of economic and social measures needed to recover from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. “The COVID-19 Response (Taxation and Social Assistance Urgent Measures) Bill will cushion New Zealanders from the worst economic impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak,” said Revenue Minister ...
From tomorrow, Government support for farmers and growers affected by drought will be expanded and extended across the country, with access to Rural Assistance Payments (RAPS) available throughout the North Island, parts of the South Island and the Chatham Islands, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced. “These challenging conditions have ...
Parliament has passed amendments to legislation that give the Secretary of Education stronger powers to act in the fight to limit the spread of COVID-19, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “They are part of a suite of changes passed under the COVID-19 Response (Urgent Management Measures) Legislation Bill,” Chris ...
Canada, Australia, Chile, Brunei and Myanmar have joined forces with New Zealand and Singapore by committing to keep supply chains open and remove any existing trade restrictive measures on essential goods, especially medical supplies, in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker today welcomed ...
Immediate freeze on rent increases Tenancies will not be terminated during the lock-down period, unless the parties agree, or in limited circumstances Tenants who had previously given notice can stay in their if they need to stay in the tenancy during the lock-down period Tenants will still be able to ...
As New Zealand unites to lock-down in the fight against COVID-19, the Finance Minister is urging all businesses and workers to stay connected over the next four weeks. “We understand the extreme pressure many businesses are under right now. I know most business owners think of their workers as family ...
A State of National Emergency has been declared across the country as the Government pulls out all the stops to curtail the spread of COVID-19. “Today we put in place our country’s second ever State of National Emergency as we fight a global pandemic, save New Zealanders’ lives and prevent ...
Mr Speaker I wish to make a Ministerial Statement under Standing Order 347 in relation to the recent declaration of a State of National Emergency. Having considered the advice of the Director Civil Defence Emergency Management, the Minister of Civil Defence declared a State of National Emergency for the whole of ...
People needing to travel on domestic flights, trains and Cook Strait ferries to get home before the country moves into level 4 lock-down tomorrow night will be able to continue using the passenger services until midnight on Friday, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. Domestic passenger services, particularly ferries, have ...
The Government, retail banks and the Reserve Bank are today announcing a major financial support package for home owners and businesses affected by the economic impacts of COVID-19. The package will include a six month principal and interest payment holiday for mortgage holders and SME customers whose incomes have been ...
Assessing the economic impact of Covid-19 requires a new approach to a problem economists have not encountered in modern times, writes Dr Kirdan Lees Covid-19 has presented quite a problem for economists. Containment policies that seek to flatten the Covid-19 curve or eliminate the virus, restrict economic activity. All governments ...
Every day at 1pm New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announces precise figures on the number of confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in the country. He is working on the best information available, and during this week the level of community transmission was put at around ...
Most of New Zealand's MPs are in lockdown just like the rest of us, confined to their neighbourhoods and stuck in their bubbles. Checkpoint called a few to ask them what they're doing. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Deery, Lecturer in Early Childhood Education, University of Melbourne “Stupid coronavirus!” I heard my six-year-old mumble while talking in her sleep. Earlier that day her swimming and basketball lessons were cancelled, a birthday party postponed, and she had to race with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University “Zoombombing” in case you haven’t heard, is the unsavoury practice of posting distressing comments, pictures or videos after gatecrashing virtual meetings hosted by the videoconferencing app Zoom. With hundreds of millions ...
Analysis - A leading epidemiologist says health authorities 'really have no idea' of the extent of community spread, Parliament's Epidemic Response Committee gets its teeth into what's going on during the lockdown and the horrendous economic imp ...
The fifth in our new series of charts, graphics and data visualisations by Chris McDowall, covering the Covid-19 epidemic within New Zealand. We’ll publish the latest set each day on The Spinoff.This work is entirely funded by the generosity of The Spinoff MembersInformation about confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 ...
The Finance Minister says struggling companies will be able to put some debt into hibernation, under new legislation unveiled today. Watch the latest government update here. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Lund, Commissioning Editor, The Conversation Editor’s note: The following is current as at April 3, 2020. Things are changing quickly so best to keep an eye on the latest information from WA Health, as well as the federal government.This article ...
During the challenges associated with lockdown, the Māori Party are congratulating Ngāti Ruanui and South Taranaki on the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling What does the COVID-19 pandemic sound like? For this episode, Dallas Rogers – a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney – asked academic colleagues from all over ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sven Gallasch, Lecturer in Law, Swinburne University of Technology “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion,” wrote Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (published in 1776), “but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the ...
Environment Minister David Parker has directed officials to find ways to fast-track consents for infrastructure and development projects. He says his goal is to help create a pipeline of projects so that some can start immediately once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted “so people can get back into work as fast ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin Spain and Switzerland top cases, countries converging. Chart by Keith Rankin.Spain and Switzerland top cases, countries converging. Chart by Keith Rankin.Of the larger European countries, Italy is now in third place for known cases per person in the population. Spain has overtaken Switzerland for ...
Contact tracing is a crucial part of the Covid-19 puzzle and technology might prove essential to scaling up New Zealand's tracing capacity, Marc Daalder reports With the lockdown reducing physical contact between members of the public and testing ramping up, the only missing piece of the Covid-19 puzzle is contact tracing. ...
Insolvency laws will be temporarily changed to allow troubled companies to trade while technically insolvent Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced changes to the Companies Act to allow companies to put their debts into "hibernation". Robertson said companies facing liquidity problems would have "safe harbour" from their normal insolvency duties ...
Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Ruanui and Te Kaahui o Rauru are celebrating the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South Taranaki Bight. The Court of Appeal found that there ...
Bernard Hickey talks to Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr about a massive spike in US jobless claims, and they talk about an inspiring Kiwi app to fight Covid-19 globally. Guest, Pie Funds chief executive Mike Taylor also joins them to talk about the massive market swings and hopes for recovery. Bernard zooms out ...
Political commentators from the left and right sides of the political divide are questioning the powers being exercised by police during the nation-wide “lockdown”. The Asian Invasion 2019 blog draws attention to the warning sounded by former UK Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption when he challenged Covid-19 actions by British ...
Pacific Media Watch The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) has strongly condemned the shoot-to-kill order by President Rodrigo Duterte this week as a ‘dangerous’ opening to target and kill anyone in a public space. “We are raising the alarm in the international community on President ...
The Reserve Bank looks set to start buying council bonds as well as Government bonds to unfreeze financial markets and allow councils to defer rates and jointly invest in infrastructure with the central Government, Dileepa Fonseka reports In what would be another unprecedented move to calm financial markets and help ...
Four PhD students engaged a clinical psychologist to help them navigate an uncertain time in their studies. They share their findings here.As four PhD students from Massey University’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research we, like many others, can’t stop reading and talking about the unfolding events that have gripped our ...
The SpinoffBy Ashleigh Rushton, Lisa McLaren, Marion Tan & Sara Harrison
Covid-19 testing of the wider population is on the cards as World Health Organisation research shows people are most contagious within their first few days of being infected Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says Covid-19 carriers are highly infectious when they show few signs of carrying the virus. People were ...
Z Energy is the latest company to cut its dividend payout and start talking to its banks about strengthening its finances. Chief executive Mike Bennetts said the company, the largest fuel retailer in the country, had been battered by a range of issues over the past 18 months, and was ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kang, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney Young people in Australia are among the fastest-growing group to contract COVID19. According to the Department of Health, there are now more cases in Australia among people aged 20 – 29 years than any ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Pattinson, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland Getting a good night’s sleep can be difficult at the best of times. But it can be even harder when you’re anxious or have something on your mind – a global pandemic, for example. ...
Journalist and Great Barrier Island resident Lindsay Wright reflects on outer gulf pandemic preparedness. Hardy locals can tough it out but Auckland bach owners and boaties should keep their distance. Aotea Great Barrier, the easternmost island in the Hauraki Gulf, are undergoing a Covid-19-inspired population flood. Great Barrier has scenery that makes ...
The Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand is delighted that the government has moved quickly to provide an initial financial support package for pharmacy. The $15 million package was paid this week to pharmacy contract holders. Pharmaceutical Society president ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening.The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference and are "as of 9am" of the day. There were 71 new cases of Covid-19 in ...
A new poem by Wellington poet and bookseller Ash Davida Jane. washed up! it gets tiring pushing the fire alarm every nightbut things keep catching on fireor sometimes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Foster, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney Our earliest vertebrate (animals with backbones) ancestors laid eggs, but over millions of years of evolution, some species began to give birth to live young. There is a traditional dichotomy in vertebrate reproduction: species ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Foster, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney Our earliest vertebrate (animals with backbones) ancestors laid eggs, but over millions of years of evolution, some species began to give birth to live young. There is a traditional dichotomy in vertebrate reproduction: species ...
Welcome to the second edition of our lockdown Top 10s. A reminder that this chart has nothing to do with sales or launches or the publishing cycle; these are just books the Unity team love – and this week it’s westerns, full of big skies and long rides and showdowns.AUCKLANDAll ...
Wellington Mayor Andy Foster’s plan to cover revenue shortfalls through borrowing without cutting low priority spending is immoral, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . “Businesses and households across the country are meeting financial challenges ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin John Brophy, Emeritus Professor of Creative writing, University of Melbourne “Katrina, I had in mind a prayer, but only this came,” Bruce Dawe wrote to his infant daughter, new-born, in intensive care, her life in the balance, declaring as poets must ...
The shock closure of Bauer NZ – and with it all of the country’s current affairs magazines – is a stark reminder of the fragile state of local media, writes Mel Bunce, the author of a book on the subject.It is a dark week for journalism in New Zealand, with ...
Join Leonie Hayden as she works through the first four weeks of Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy.Rāmere/FridayWe made it to the end of week one e te whānau. It wasn’t that hard! In fact it was… Māori made easy.To end our week of pronunciation practice we’re going to revisit everything we ...
India faces more challenges battling Covid-19 than any other country in the world. With 1.3 billion inhabitants, hundreds of different languages spoken, and an estimated 80% of the workforce daily wage earners currently without jobs, it could be a recipe for disaster.I’ve been living in India for more than three ...
By Sri Krishnamurthi of Pacific Media Watch The Vanuatu government is using the Covid-19 to impose draconian measures and authoritarian rule by end of last month. Wholesale censorship of all Covid-19 related content has been instituted. Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) took the extraordinary step to ...
People with lower credit scores increased their borrowing upon news of the lockdown, while those with higher scores dropped away. March data from the credit-reporting agency Centrix, which runs credit checks on behalf of banks, finance companies, online lenders, and buy now pay later schemes, showed credit inquiries dropped sharply ...
Small business owners say commercial rent relief is desperately needed if they are to survive past the Covid-19 disruptions. While the wage subsidy helped with staff costs, there is currently no government assistance for commercial rent - which typically accounts for 40 percent of a firm's fixed costs. Landlords and ...
SkyCity is making 200 staff redundant as part of cost cutting because of the Covid-19 virus. The casino operator said it had no choice but to cut the size of the workforce given that once business resumes it will be at much reduced level. Chief executive Graeme Stephens said it's ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleo-climate scientist, Australian National University At several points in the history of our planet, increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have caused extreme global warming, prompting the majority of species on Earth to die out. In ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand. Today’s contentMedia Henry Cooke (Stuff): There’s no easy way for Government to save media drowning. But a fast fix is ...
Just after midday a cyclist was killed on a straight road on a clear day, after being hit by a van in North Canterbury. Lucinda Rees from NZ School Speeds is asking for the mandatory cyclist/vulnerable road user passing gap, which is in consultation, ...
By Indra Singh in Suva Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama says that if Fijians continue to disregard the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic directives from authorities, a nationwide 24-hour curfew could be imposed. His comments come as Fiji yesterday recorded its two latest coronavirus cases, taking the total to seven. Bainimarama said ...
In our new series The Lockdown Letters, some of New Zealand’s best writers tell us what they’ve been up to in the days of Covid-19 alert level four. Today, Ōtaki author Renée.Yes, a few cyclists out and about. I remember my first bike bought from Farmers around 1942, five shillings a ...
Internal memos from NZ’s biggest magazine company, which announced its sudden closure yesterday, state they were lobbying to change a ban on publication. But the minister responsible, Kris Faafoi, has doubled down on rejecting that position, calling those internal communications ‘contradictory’ to what they said to him directly.Magazine publishing giant ...
Up to 100,000 foreigners could be seeking to leave the country in coming weeks, now the Government has relaxed domestic travel restrictions for them. ...
The loss of a loved one can be difficult in the best of times. But it’s even more painful when the planes are grounded.Late on Saturday night, three days into New Zealand’s level four lockdown, Harish got a call from his sister in India telling him that his father had ...
Health Minister David Clark has flouted the Government's advice to exercise locally after confirming he drove to a park to go mountain biking on Thursday. ...
Covid-19 cases top 1m; Trump brags he's #1 on Facebook and says he knows about the virus because a 'friend' got it; UK testing scandal grows; Cats more vulnerable to virus than dogsTicking up to a million cases: A gruesome landmark was passed today when we go over one million ...
“So do not fear, I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” Isaiah 41:10 COVID-19 - Lock down: one week on Welcome to the latest Policy Watch ...
Workers at the Port of Lyttelton are resisting the introduction of casual cargo handlers due to concerns about COVID19. RMTU South Island Organizer John Kerr says there is concern about a Lyttelton Port Company (LPC) proposal to "bring in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Strangio, Associate Professor of Politics, Monash University One of Australia’s preeminent historians, Stuart Macintyre, once observed of John Curtin, the Labor Party leader revered for navigating this nation through the dangers of the second world war, that he would have ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Professor of Architecture, University of Adelaide New research the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that SARS CoV 2, which causes the disease known as COVID-19 coronavirus, is more stable on plastic and stainless steel than on cardboard or ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW The Australian government’s JobKeeper wage subsidy, estimated to cost A$130 billion, is a crucial measure to help keep the economy from completely cratering. But, even if COVID-19 is sufficiently under control for the economy to return ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gordon Menzies, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Technology Sydney During this pandemic, our twin health and economic crises require two different types of concern, and they operate differently. For the health crisis, a high level of concern is necessary. Saving lives ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Harriette Richards, University of Melbourne Times of instability and crisis produce increased nostalgia for the past. We long for a time that no longer exists, or never existed. Like melancholy, nostalgia is a sentiment of loss – one that’s particularly familiar to ...
RBNZ bans bank dividends; Who is next after Bauer's shock closure? Vital plan blocked; Commission wins in real estate price fixing case; Softbank walks out WeWorkNo you won’t: The Reserve Bank took the unprecedented step of prohibiting the banks from paying dividends during the coronavirus crisis or redeeming any ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Media reels after horror week, Wellington Council facing massive budget crunch, and highest single day of new Covid-19 cases.It had always been clear that this was going to be a difficult time for the media, with the Covid-19 downturn hitting ...
Former National Finance Ministers Steven Joyce and Bill English question the severity of the Covid-19 lockdown and ask whether the Government has an exit strategy. Andrew Patterson reports. Steven Joyce and Bill English have seen their fair share of financial crises and natural disasters as the last National Government's finance ...
There is no sign the government will tighten quarantine controls for those arriving at the border, in response to calls from the Opposition to quarantine and test everyone. ...
Two new cases of Covid-19 have been identified in Fiji, prompting a lockdown of its capital. Teuila Fuatai reports. Fijian health authorities are scrambling to identify close contacts of its latest two Covid-19 cases. The couple, from Nabua, Suva, appear unrelated to the country’s previous five. Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama ...
Christchurch is a city of contrasts, as some stretch their legs with smiles and others with suspicion. David Williams reports It was no surprise it happened in Christchurch’s student quarter. The smiles of those standing at their gates in Ilam Road broadened as a baby kayak strapped to a skateboard ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level four. The country is shut down, apart from essential services. For updated official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is funded by The Spinoff Members. To support this work, join The ...
How long does it take to recover, how do you know you’ve recovered and can you catch Covid-19 twice? If you’ve had Covid-19 when are you officially recovered? Turns out there’s no test in New Zealand. It's judged by time of onset and last symptoms. How do I tick the ...
The first thing to note about the partying Queenstown backpackers is these acts of youthful rebellion are not an isolated phenomenon. As I write this on April 1, The Guardian is reporting on a group of people in their 20s who took the opportunity to celebrate Spring Break in the ...
Every Friday of lockdown, LockerRoom will share posts from Kiwi sportswomen who've caught our eye with novel ways of keeping on top of their game at home. This week we have Black Ferns making their own training equipment, a Kiwi professional cyclist virtually racing against riders around the world, and ANZ Premiership netballers calling their ...
Steve Braunias pays tribute to the Listener, closed yesterday in the wake of Covid-19's devastation of the economy. This piece to mark the end of the Listener is exactly how I started writing for the Listener: late at night, with instant coffee, in a state of shock. The shock then ...
Suzanne McFadden speaks to two Kiwi 'bubbles' who have unanticipated - but serendipitous - housemates. Sue Bremner has found a silver lining to the brooding cloud of lockdown – it’s meant getting to know the sister who never knew she existed for almost 65 years. Englishwoman Bremner has found herself holed ...
Open mike 29/03/2019 
We must root out the traitors among us! ...3 hours ago
In order to meet our 2050 carbon target and do our bit to avoid making the Earth uninhabitable, New Zealand needs to decarbonise our economy, replacing fossil fuels with electricity in the energy, industrial and transport sectors. The good news is that it will mean cheaper power for all of ...11 hours ago
For those folk who find my other Lock-Down Diary versions too “negative” or otherwise unpalatable… Here’s a photo of a pretty flower, . . Better? Tomorrow’s Sanitised Version: a cute animal video. . . . =fs= ...12 hours ago
As Aotearoa enters week two of lockdown, it’s clear we’re all still working out what our “bubbles” look like and how to stay in them to stop the spread of Covid-19. New to the government’s Covid-19 website is some good guidance for people living in apartment blocks. Recent decades have ...15 hours ago
Yesterday was the day the consequences of the lockdown suddenly got very real for many. Firms have been closing and laying people off since the outset of the quarantine but this has mostly been happening out of the public eye. The mass closure of a number of iconic New Zealand ...16 hours ago
Resuming Normal Service: The Republican Party's nominee for in 1920, Warren Harding, promised the American people: “not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration”. If she wishes to remain our prime minister, then Jacinda Ardern will offer New Zealanders the same.HOW EDUCATED AMERICA snickered when the ...17 hours ago
by Daphna Whitmore A third of the world is under lockdown and a clear assessment of this measure to curb the spread of COVID-19 is urgently needed. With any high-stakes decisions it has to be asked what are we dealing with here? Are the measures warranted? Will they achieve their ...23 hours ago
I haven’t done a huge amount in the last few days. I’m reading The Poppy War and I’ve sort of poked at a couple of games – I started SOMA but I’m a wimp and I quit while in the first room after the brain scan. I might try it ...1 day ago
Much has been written about the importance of discretion in an emergency situation, and the concerns raised by the potential for it to be exercised arbitrarily. Given the quality of the discussion, there seemed little point in adding to it at any length. In particular, I point to the evidence ...1 day ago
46 Articles Physical science of global warming & effects Global response of evapotranspiration ratio to climate conditions and watershed characteristics in a changing environment Greenhouse effect: the relative contributions of emission height and total absorption Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects Climate change induced a ...2 days ago
Image credit: Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ... 3 days ago
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...3 days ago
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...3 days ago
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...5 days ago
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...6 days ago
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...1 week ago
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights: In this legal blog we outline some ...1 week ago
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...1 week ago
Foreign Minister Winston Peters says getting New Zealanders back home and other travellers out of the country is "a nightmare for our embassies, consuls, and staff around the world". Speaking to NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking, the Foreign Minister said that he gave a clear message to people travelling overseas that they ...10 hours ago
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...6 days ago
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The scale of what we face right now is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Overcoming it is our common purpose. ...1 week ago
The Government will be introducing legislation to make changes to the Companies Act to help companies facing insolvency due to COVID-19 to remain viable and keep New Zealanders in jobs. The temporary changes include: Giving directors of companies facing significant liquidity problems because of COVID-19 a ‘safe harbour’ from insolvency ...9 hours ago
Assessing the economic impact of Covid-19 requires a new approach to a problem economists have not encountered in modern times, writes Dr Kirdan Lees Covid-19 has presented quite a problem for economists. Containment policies that seek to flatten the Covid-19 curve or eliminate the virus, restrict economic activity. All governments ...4 hours ago
Every day at 1pm New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announces precise figures on the number of confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in the country. He is working on the best information available, and during this week the level of community transmission was put at around ...4 hours ago
Most of New Zealand's MPs are in lockdown just like the rest of us, confined to their neighbourhoods and stuck in their bubbles. Checkpoint called a few to ask them what they're doing. ...4 hours ago
The fifth in our new series of charts, graphics and data visualisations by Chris McDowall, covering the Covid-19 epidemic within New Zealand. We’ll publish the latest set each day on The Spinoff.This work is entirely funded by the generosity of The Spinoff MembersInformation about confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 ...6 hours ago
During the challenges associated with lockdown, the Māori Party are congratulating Ngāti Ruanui and South Taranaki on the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South ...8 hours ago
Environment Minister David Parker has directed officials to find ways to fast-track consents for infrastructure and development projects. He says his goal is to help create a pipeline of projects so that some can start immediately once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted “so people can get back into work as fast ...8 hours ago
Contact tracing is a crucial part of the Covid-19 puzzle and technology might prove essential to scaling up New Zealand's tracing capacity, Marc Daalder reports With the lockdown reducing physical contact between members of the public and testing ramping up, the only missing piece of the Covid-19 puzzle is contact tracing. ...8 hours ago
Insolvency laws will be temporarily changed to allow troubled companies to trade while technically insolvent Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced changes to the Companies Act to allow companies to put their debts into "hibernation". Robertson said companies facing liquidity problems would have "safe harbour" from their normal insolvency duties ...9 hours ago
Bernard Hickey talks to Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr about a massive spike in US jobless claims, and they talk about an inspiring Kiwi app to fight Covid-19 globally. Guest, Pie Funds chief executive Mike Taylor also joins them to talk about the massive market swings and hopes for recovery. Bernard zooms out ...9 hours ago
Political commentators from the left and right sides of the political divide are questioning the powers being exercised by police during the nation-wide “lockdown”. The Asian Invasion 2019 blog draws attention to the warning sounded by former UK Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption when he challenged Covid-19 actions by British ...9 hours ago
The Reserve Bank looks set to start buying council bonds as well as Government bonds to unfreeze financial markets and allow councils to defer rates and jointly invest in infrastructure with the central Government, Dileepa Fonseka reports In what would be another unprecedented move to calm financial markets and help ...9 hours ago
Covid-19 testing of the wider population is on the cards as World Health Organisation research shows people are most contagious within their first few days of being infected Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says Covid-19 carriers are highly infectious when they show few signs of carrying the virus. People were ...9 hours ago
Z Energy is the latest company to cut its dividend payout and start talking to its banks about strengthening its finances. Chief executive Mike Bennetts said the company, the largest fuel retailer in the country, had been battered by a range of issues over the past 18 months, and was ...9 hours ago
Journalist and Great Barrier Island resident Lindsay Wright reflects on outer gulf pandemic preparedness. Hardy locals can tough it out but Auckland bach owners and boaties should keep their distance. Aotea Great Barrier, the easternmost island in the Hauraki Gulf, are undergoing a Covid-19-inspired population flood. Great Barrier has scenery that makes ...10 hours ago
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference and are "as of 9am" of the day. There were 71 new cases of Covid-19 in ...10 hours ago
Vodafone says its continuing to see significant increases in calls and data on its networks after the first week of level 4 lockdown. ...11 hours ago
People with lower credit scores increased their borrowing upon news of the lockdown, while those with higher scores dropped away. March data from the credit-reporting agency Centrix, which runs credit checks on behalf of banks, finance companies, online lenders, and buy now pay later schemes, showed credit inquiries dropped sharply ...13 hours ago
Small business owners say commercial rent relief is desperately needed if they are to survive past the Covid-19 disruptions. While the wage subsidy helped with staff costs, there is currently no government assistance for commercial rent - which typically accounts for 40 percent of a firm's fixed costs. Landlords and ...13 hours ago
SkyCity is making 200 staff redundant as part of cost cutting because of the Covid-19 virus. The casino operator said it had no choice but to cut the size of the workforce given that once business resumes it will be at much reduced level. Chief executive Graeme Stephens said it's ...13 hours ago
Up to 100,000 foreigners could be seeking to leave the country in coming weeks, now the Government has relaxed domestic travel restrictions for them. ...15 hours ago
Health Minister David Clark has flouted the Government's advice to exercise locally after confirming he drove to a park to go mountain biking on Thursday. ...15 hours ago
Covid-19 cases top 1m; Trump brags he's #1 on Facebook and says he knows about the virus because a 'friend' got it; UK testing scandal grows; Cats more vulnerable to virus than dogs Ticking up to a million cases: A gruesome landmark was passed today when we go over one million ...15 hours ago
RBNZ bans bank dividends; Who is next after Bauer's shock closure? Vital plan blocked; Commission wins in real estate price fixing case; Softbank walks out WeWork No you won’t: The Reserve Bank took the unprecedented step of prohibiting the banks from paying dividends during the coronavirus crisis or redeeming any ...16 hours ago
Former National Finance Ministers Steven Joyce and Bill English question the severity of the Covid-19 lockdown and ask whether the Government has an exit strategy. Andrew Patterson reports. Steven Joyce and Bill English have seen their fair share of financial crises and natural disasters as the last National Government's finance ...17 hours ago
Two new cases of Covid-19 have been identified in Fiji, prompting a lockdown of its capital. Teuila Fuatai reports. Fijian health authorities are scrambling to identify close contacts of its latest two Covid-19 cases. The couple, from Nabua, Suva, appear unrelated to the country’s previous five. Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama ...18 hours ago
Christchurch is a city of contrasts, as some stretch their legs with smiles and others with suspicion. David Williams reports It was no surprise it happened in Christchurch’s student quarter. The smiles of those standing at their gates in Ilam Road broadened as a baby kayak strapped to a skateboard ...18 hours ago
How long does it take to recover, how do you know you’ve recovered and can you catch Covid-19 twice? If you’ve had Covid-19 when are you officially recovered? Turns out there’s no test in New Zealand. It's judged by time of onset and last symptoms. How do I tick the ...19 hours ago
The first thing to note about the partying Queenstown backpackers is these acts of youthful rebellion are not an isolated phenomenon. As I write this on April 1, The Guardian is reporting on a group of people in their 20s who took the opportunity to celebrate Spring Break in the ...19 hours ago
Every Friday of lockdown, LockerRoom will share posts from Kiwi sportswomen who've caught our eye with novel ways of keeping on top of their game at home. This week we have Black Ferns making their own training equipment, a Kiwi professional cyclist virtually racing against riders around the world, and ANZ Premiership netballers calling their ...19 hours ago
Steve Braunias pays tribute to the Listener, closed yesterday in the wake of Covid-19's devastation of the economy. This piece to mark the end of the Listener is exactly how I started writing for the Listener: late at night, with instant coffee, in a state of shock. The shock then ...19 hours ago
Suzanne McFadden speaks to two Kiwi 'bubbles' who have unanticipated - but serendipitous - housemates. Sue Bremner has found a silver lining to the brooding cloud of lockdown – it’s meant getting to know the sister who never knew she existed for almost 65 years. Englishwoman Bremner has found herself holed ...19 hours ago
All the identicons seem to have disappeared since yesterday!? Tried Edge and Chrome.
lprent
All our pretty colours have gone. We need some images to brighten our pages of stark considerations. Helpfully yours, greywarshark.
It’s also a pretty good way of picking commenters I like to read as I scroll down OM.
Fixed. The identicon button was unchecked, though I don’t know why. As far as I know, the identicons don’t slow page loading or have any impact on the way pages look, so I guess it was entirely unintentional. Lprent will put me right in his usual style if I’ve got that wrong 😉
Good fix. I was bit busy.
But probably just an accident.
” New Zealand is on track. One child dies in NZ as a result of abuse every five weeks.
Three children are dead so far in New Zealand this year as a result of domestic violence and it is not even the end of March.
In many cases they get fleeting news coverage and we may not even learn their names.
Names matter. We refuse to speak the name of the mosque murderer in our search for non-violence. We won’t give him any air time – he was not us, says Prime Minister Jacinda Adern. He does not exist.
But he did. He really did! And so do the children that are dying in New Zealand as a result of domestic violence occurring right here. We need to speak their names. We need to be just as outraged by their deaths as we are by the mosque killings.
Yet we keep quiet about them because they are our national shame. We look the other way.
Currently there is an almost obscene celebration of ourselves as New Zealanders.
Adern has carefully crafted a response to a terrorist act in New Zealand so that tables have been completely turned and we have come up smelling of roses.
The message is: ‘This is not us – it is just one individual who lost the plot’.
Adern really is a good leader – she is doing well in protecting our national identity. National identities are important in a global economy.
I think it is wrong that the world’s tallest building (in Dubai) is lit up with an image of Jacinda Adern when our own dying children in New Zealand get limited media coverage.
Frankly, it’s tacky.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12215934
I agree.
And there’s not much more I can add….other than I won’t be celebrating our Our National Day of Unity until we sort this shit out.
So true Rosemary thanks for reminding us.
Blurb on NZ standards from the government on-line:
(How many people are employed in PR and seriously compromising their own integrity by writing this shit with a sure hand?)
Family Life in New Zealand | New Zealand Now
https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/why-choose-nz/family-friendly
Nov 12, 2018 – But rest assured, New Zealand is a great place to bring up children. It’s why so many Kiwis living abroad come back home when it’s time to start nesting. … There are wonderful opportunities for young people to grow up with easy … Families in New Zealand get great support from a range of public services.
Maori have numerous systems going and success. But society is up against television and its content that is probably more anti-social than positive, also drugs – alcohol, mj, other chemicals, lack of meaningful jobs with decent pay,
peer pressure and modelling; also a general lack of respect from ignorant, snooty pakeha and middle-class whites who patronise and judge, is an observation of mine.
There has been action also from the private sector generally, and not all just to get on the money bandwagon from government. Which is how some charter schools see things when bad, but not all charter schools are no good, government should ensure better standards, mentors and overview.
Parents Centre –
https://www.parentscentre.org.nz/lobyingandadvocacy/default.asp
(Not always helped financially by government.)
Helping parents shouldn’t be a vacuum that business jumps in to fill
to sell their product.
https://www.momentumlife.co.nz/stories/why-kids-should-have-chores
About Author: Momentum Life is a leading provider of Life insurance, Funeral insurance and Accident insurance in New Zealand.
https://www.lifetimeincome.co.nz/about-us/news/2017/october/meet-the-grandparents-raising-their-grandchildren/
Life insurance – retirement plans.
Middle class working parent.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/parenting/24-01-2018/working-mothers-make-great-employees-so-stop-being-an-asshole-about-them/
http://www.homeandfamily.net.nz/about/ (120 years in Christchurch)
https://www.theparentingplace.com/our-story/
Ian and Mary Grant (Christian)
https://www.iosis.org.nz/about-us/story/
Baptist Christian – Mangere, Manurewa, Papakura.
There is Thrive – which sounds good but with little information about the people running it, no names. Under Waves Trust, 7 Henderson Valley Road, Henderson.
http://www.thrive.org.nz/contact/
Our Vision
Young parents and their children are able to reach their full potential by being connected and secure within their families and communities.
Our Mission
Thriving young people, parents and families.
Mahi tahi
We are a small team of social workers, support staff and volunteers who are committed to helping young teenage parents and their whānau flourish and thrive.
What we do
We offer a range of innovative one on one wrap around support along with various programmes that are tailored and targetted towards the needs, hopes and aspirations of teen parents.
Our first priority is the wellbeing of you and your unborn or new born baby, pepi. We work in partnership with teen parents to be or new teen parents, by ensuring that your voice is heard and that we speak with you and not for you.
The aim of all that we do is based on working to break through and address any and all of the pressing issues that a young parent, young couple face as they look to strengthen and uphold their new roles as parents to be or new parents.
Our highly skilled staff are there to guide, shape and assist every step of the way. We are have a strong reputation of building and maintaining a solid relationship with teen parents and their baby, pepi through an effective and continuous quality service provision.
WHY?
The team is focused on ensuring that you are given the necessary support, tools, and information that will improve the health and well-being of you and your child. Our commitment is based on teen parents reaching and fulfilling their potential and reaching their goals.
(This is the work and the attitude about the social need, that the government should be showing itself not through a second party.)
Then there is government’s Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children. I wonder how Maori feel they are getting on with their job? Can’t see an overview on that but I imagine there will be one.
I have remembered more info that is valid for this and put it up further along the post.
Substance abuse. I wonder if substance use/abuse is recorded when a death or extreme neglect and abuse are investigated?
Because I’ll bet that in the vast majority of cases alcohol use and abuse and/or legal or illegal drug use are significant factors.
My happy day will be when alcohol use attracts the same degree of social opprobrium as tobacco smoking.
Yes, it is there like an unreliable cat waiting for the right moment to bite you on the ankle. So nice to look at, so innocent a pleasure, and so difficult to know how to protect yourself. I have avoided having that, but others I know have been bitten.
The only thing about smoking is that it has become established. It is stupid not to notice how Prohibition went in the USA – it encouraged crime and now with tobacco becoming hard to obtain because of the price, it has gone up on the Bell curve of effectiveness from pricing to falling effectiveness because of the enhancement of the price raising the intrinsic value of the ciggies.
Hi Rosemary, I agree about the horrific rate we harm our vulnerable.
It is simplistic click bait shenanagins to convolute Prime Minister Arderns response to the Mosque murders, with our harm of our tamariki.
Our leader has already identified child poverty as the one issue she wants to address.
“… simplistic click bait shenanagins…”
Really? When I read Tulloch’s piece it resonated.
“What if we were to form a mass vigil for all the children who have died in New Zealand as a result of child abuse? One candle for every little life. Between 2010 and 2016 that was 66 lives.
What if we demanded an adequate social welfare system within which children and families had wrap around care?
What if we valued children so much in New Zealand that our leader Adern would raise the pay of our teachers in early childhood and schools to demonstrate the value of their work?
But she didn’t. And we looked the other way. We did not call a mass uprising to say we wanted our teachers and schools supported. We did not yell loud enough and say ‘this is not us’.
If the recent death of the child in Maketu doesn’t raise the hairs on your arms in the same way that the spine-chilling hakas did in the aftermath of the shootings it is because we have normalised it.
Another child has died in suspicious circumstances in New Zealand and we are in no position to deny that we are a violent society.”
All this ‘this is not us’ bullshit….I’m over it. It is us. We kill our kids.
I agree we need to be making a huge fuss about it and start doing some serious research into why it is happening. And start to fix it.! There are lots of theories and ideas, of course, but in order to start making the first meaningful steps to stop these tragic happenings we need some serious data and a workable plan.
We have most of the data already.
The new IDI might be able to produce deeper information about relationships and generational issues, but there’s only so far one can go with probabilistic ID linkage between such diverse datasets.
I suspect the main problem is that the numbers of mortality are too low to get real relationships from, and the gap between detecting non-lethal abuse/neglect and identifying it in the morgue is so wide. Even though health professionals are getting better at looking for it, there’d still be a massive underreporting of child injuries resulting from assault – often difficult to tell an arm broken by accident with an arm broken by dragging etc. So we see the ones who turn up dead, but you’d be lucky to see maybe a quarter of assault injuries attributed to something other than accident.
So basically asfar as I can see the main thing we can do is lower family stress by reducing inequality and hardship, throwing more social workers at everyone, and then hoping that the upper-income sociopaths get outed by their kids at school.
Indeed, Rosemary…
There is a twisted sense of self being presented around by ‘Nz’, from what I have observed…
It is nothing new, as you well know…and from the experiences you share here…
The most vulnerable are still treated poorly and seemingly not valued…
Youth suicide rates…
Bullying and abuse (from all sources)…
NZ is not a united country…
It is a severley damaged and deluded one…
“It is a severley damaged and deluded one…”
OOOOOH …. Eric Idle, – my absolute favourite of the Python team !
There’s just something about his eyes, his face shape, his voice , mannerisms that perfectly suited his comic cheeky , cheerful persona, – Life of Brian , – speaking to the Roman guard … ” Nah – I’m only pullin’ your leg ,- its crucifixion really , yeah I know the way , out the door , one cross each, line on the left ”
Hahahaa! – as if hes an old hand at being crucified and its just the same old , same old , humdrum routine …
The guy used to have me in hysterics of laughter 🙂
Monty Python – Crucifixion – YouTube
Hoots ethos must be really feeling threatened, he slips the knife into Winston again over at the fish wrap this morning. 2020 is sure going to be an interesting election.
The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing again and expecting a different result.
Hootz and MSM still trying to drive the nail into Winnie ?
Still haven’t figured out it requires a stake through the heart and earnest prayer.
Mcflock is anti Winnie so you would use a nail gun for sure.
Winnie is legendary and the oldest sitting MP so don’t count him out as you will fail.
Not particularly anti. It’s just that the dude has survived more announcements of his political demise than Christopher Lee turned to dust in all the Hammer Horrors combined.
Big ups to all those attending the service this morning in Hagley Park…
An overly heavy weight fell upon the city, still rebuilding its strength post-eqs. You can almost touch it. It is on people’s faces. It will take time to dissipate.
grim
heavy
burdensome
(of course, the city is a minor bit-part and thoughts and wishes go first and foremost to the victims and their families and communities.)
It was a special event, an involving experience for everyone (& there were many), full of character and community; & a huge credit to all involved in putting together such a good display of NZ values of respect.
Americans must be getting pretty desperate for regime change in Venezuela now.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/28/venezuela-blackout-latest-news-maduro-sniper-prayers
Why does the USA have to poke it’s nose in everywhere, they need to tidy up the shambles they have at home ?
Agreed. American leadership is so shite their citizens are openly embarrassed, and for some time now many travelling pretend to be Canadian to take the heat off.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2201026/stop-telling-people-youre-canada
How’s them eggs for national pride?
Wethe peole,
you must be young saying that.
I am a naturalised Canadian and Kiwi born too.
I went to live in Canada in 1968 when the anti-Vietnam war riots were spreading around the US and US young were dogging the ‘draft’ to go to Vietnam so this is a historical event that happens every time politics changes rapidly,
This time it’s Trump draining the ‘Washington swamp’ finally, so maybe some of the former ‘Washington intelligence staff’ are running away from being tracked as US citizens.
‘..dogging the draft…” 😆
higherstandard
“dodging the draft”‘
Not me, as I did my time in the NZ army in 1964.
But the US kids were leaving US and coming over the border to Toronto where I was then as i bumped into several of them there.
Had some relations here from the UK recently who had been travelling through Asia and Australia, they said any Americans they met would say they are from the State they are from in the USA rather than the USA. Does that tell you something about how they feel about the USA and it’s International Relations ?
‘Cause Venezuela has ‘their’ oil.
Russian troops have landed in Venezuela, no doubt that will making a few waves for trump.
“The arrival of two Russian air force planes carrying nearly 100 Russian troops outside Caracas on Saturday has escalated the political crisis in Venezuela.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/trump-tells-russia-troops-venezuela-190327171525621.html
Cuba had to do the same thing in the 1960’s to protect itself from USA aggression ?
Hooton decay
Admittedly, Matthew is enmeshed in a rather abysmal lot. There is Hosking who daily writes about Hosking and little else.
There is Audrey Young who struggles in later life to know what a Topic is. Whether on Dan’s panel – Or Whatever. Although she is marginally more alive than Johnny Armstrong.
So from the large Herald nursery, only about two writers cut the mustard with Fact and Humour and Balance.
I punished myself today and read a bit of smooth Hooton dated 2004, where he was jacking up National in a bouquet of Flowers and Perfume – and a Brash of bright future. Oh Yeah.
Hooton does nothing but unjack everyone – EXCEPT – his idols – Johnny Key, Frau Bennett and Billy English, each of whom gave New Zealand great wealth. Huge wealth. Incredible wealth. Tax Cuts Tax Cuts Tax Cuts.
National have decided they must get rid of Winston Peters. He is too good to be allowed to stay alive. He is a threat to Simon. Equally a threat to “strange person of power” Papakura Collins. He is the enemy of excessive Wealth.
Not a single Journalist of the Herald has ever written a word about the real people of New Zealand.
The ones who go to work. Often two jobs a day. Both Parents. Struggling to pay for a bit of Fonterra’s bland cheese. Unhoused. Batted around by Dickensian Landlords.
Hooton is in decay. Yes. But he is not the only one who has hated and destroyed the backbone of the real people of this our Nation.
Home ownership keeps dropping. Kiwi paradise of renting forever must be maintain say Bridges. It’s the kiwi way to improvise more and more kiwis.
The Banks are not lending at present and are scared to lend on new building projects as the market may crash ?
The Banks are in the business of making money for their shraeholders, they are not interested in economic growth or looking after New Zealanders.
The NZ Banks are looking after their major shareholders in Australia and the USA.
The Labour Government was stupid selling the BNZ to Fay Richwhite IMHO ?
Michael Fay and David Richwhite infamous!! Yes and they hollowed it out sold shares to the workers in the bank branches complete with loans to buy their shonkey shares!!
Luckily my eldest son needed our signature on the loan and we explained why we thought it was a bad idea. Son was so relieved. No job and a debt was how they left many having unloaded worthless shares.
The bank folded and those people were left paying for fresh air. That pair went to Ireland and did similar over there.
Yep did the same thing to British Rail.
“Not a single Journalist of the Herald has ever written a word about the real people of New Zealand.
The ones who go to work. Often two jobs a day. Both Parents. Struggling to pay for a bit of Fonterra’s bland cheese. Unhoused. Batted around by Dickensian Landlords.”
Oh – so you mean your definition of ‘real people of new zealand’.
Plenty of tea New Zealanders are going perfectly fine and dandy – they are real New Zealanders as well.
James yes agree all the “parasites” working for the overseas banks and corporates who are stripping NZ and it’s workers ?
Sambimbo out, jimbo in.
100% OT. Well expressed.
Horeskin is infatuated with himself and his horeskin ?
Latest NZ scientific climate change report today 29th March 2019.
NZ P.M. Jacinda Ardern needs to read this NZ scientific report released today.
Our NZ climate is now moving out of reach of changing it so this report from senior NZ scientists are warning the Labour coalition Government.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1903/S00049/global-state-of-the-cliate-2018-expert-reaction.htm
SCOOP
Global State of the Climate 2018 – Expert Reaction
Friday, 29 March 2019, 9:17 am
Press Release: Science Media Centre
The physical signs and socio-economic impacts of climate change are accelerating according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
In their 2018 State of the Global Climate report, they say 2018 saw record sea level rise and exceptionally high land and ocean temperatures over the past four years, continuing the warming trend observed over the past two decades.
The statement also covers climate impacts on human populations over the past year, such as at climate hazards, displacements and food security.
The SMC asked experts to comment, feel free to use these comments in your reporting.
Professor James Renwick, climate scientist and Head of the VUW School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, comments:
“The 25th annual State of the Climate report from the WMO is an excellent and accessible summary, but it makes for sobering reading. Carbon dioxide concentrations are at record levels, ocean heat content and sea levels are both at record highs, sea ice extent is well below normal in both hemisphere, glaciers and ice sheets are melting. On and on in the now-familiar litany of all the ways the climate is warming and changing around us. Even more worrying is the range of associated extreme weather events and impacts on human populations. World hunger is on the rise and we are now talking of millions of people displaced as a result of weather and climate extremes.
“Ecosystems are being affected worldwide, on land and in the oceans, where acidification is associated with rising temperatures and loss of dissolved oxygen. The record heat in New Zealand and the Tasman Sea during summer 2017/18 is an example of what we can expect much more of in future years. With no action on climate change, that record warm summer in New Zealand would be counted as a cold summer in another 50 years. The associated increases in climate and weather extremes would displace hundreds of millions and would threaten the fabric of societies everywhere.
“The globe is currently running a temperature of about 1°C above pre-industrial levels. To rein in the warming at no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial, global emissions need to halve by 2030, and go to zero by 2050. Yet, emissions increased to record levels in 2018! Policy-makers must really take on board that climate change is an existential threat to global society, to the global economy, and to all ecosystems on earth. I hope the planned United Nations Climate Action Summit later this year really galvanises action by governments around the world.”
No conflict of interest.
Gregor Macara, climate scientist, National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA), comments:
“In a week that has seen the highest 48-hour rainfall total ever in New Zealand, it seems fitting that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is highlighting the increasing impacts of climate change around the world.
“New Zealand is far from immune and has experienced many of the indicators the WMO has concluded are becoming more pronounced globally.
“These include:
• New Zealand’s hottest ever month in January 2018 when the mean temperature was 20.3°C, a remarkable 3.1°C above average
• At New Zealand climate stations over the past six years, for every record or near-record low monthly mean temperature there have been 12 record or near-record highs.
• A hot March this year – higher temperatures than what it’s usually like in mid to late summer.
• Marine heatwaves over the past two summers – likely a contributor to this week’s wettest 48 hours on record.
• A near record 40-day dry spell in Nelson this summer which included significant wildfires.
• 2018 coming in at NZ’s equal-second warmest year on record .” [High-res graph available here under creative commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)].
No conflict of interest.
Professor Jim Salinger, Visiting Scholar, Penn State University, comments:
“The 25th Anniversary issue shows hastening climate warming globally. This was true for the New Zealand region, a combined land and marine area of 4 million sq. km (the size of the Indian subcontinent), with the warmest year on 150 years of land and sea records.
“It is very alarming that the carbon dioxide levels reaching a highest 406 ppm – up from 280 ppm in the 19th century, and methane jumping unexpectedly by 25 ppb to a record 1850 ppb by 2017.
“The extra 3.7 mm of sea level rise will be very significant for the coast of Australia, and especially New Zealand with its many seaside urban areas and long coasts.
“The record warm summer ending in February 2019 produced the largest ice loss on the Southern Alps glaciers since the regular end of summer snowline surveys started 42 years ago.
“We’ve seen Queensland Groper in the Bay of Islands, Northland, 3000 km out of range, snapper in Milford Sound in Fiordland, and massive mortality in the aquaculture fisheries of the Marlborough Sounds. These are a harbinger of climate in the latter part of the 20th century if we do not take action to reduce emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and the production of greenhouse gases from other sources such as waste and agriculture immediately.”
No conflict of interest.
ends
Science Media Centre NZ
Our aim is to promote accurate, evidence-based reporting on science and technology by helping the media work more closely with the scientific community.
The Science Media Centre is New Zealand’s only trusted, independent source of information for the media on all issues related to science. Thousands of news stories providing context from and quoting New Zealand researchers have been published as a direct result of our work.
Contact Science Media Centre NZ
• Website – http://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz
• Email – smc@sciencemediacentre.co.nz
• Phone – +64 4 499 5476
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• Postal Address – PO Box 598, Wellington 6140
Thanks CG! Would have missed it otherwise
I’m so grateful to see the entire text of the media release faithfully pasted here including the contact details. That newfangled hyperlinking idea will never catch on. Off to scribe some papyrus and summon my faithful carrier pigeon.
Basic science says planetary gas traps heat, so digging up and burning carbon would inevitably increase the temperature globally. Especially if nothing is done to stop the concentration of co2 in the atmosphere. It really does not matter whether we have past the tipping point, we have or we will if nothing changes. So let’s grow the co2 level some more…
So we are running at the cliff, it looks now that we’ve run right off the top…
You know that you don’t need to post the entire thing after the link.
You trying to channel Ed?
Knowing what is relevant seems beyond some folk.
PM Jacinda Ardern was at the Memorial Service this morning, Soon she flies for a one day meeting with China. She will probably read that Report on her way. I’m sure James Shaw will read it as well.
Cleangreen, I know you didn’t mean to make it sound like she is neglectful, but it did rather read that way. Her plate is full.
A terrorist Attack which killed 50 and injured as many more.
A flight to China to salvage relations.
Gun law changes.
A Climate Change Tipping point Report.
A budget being prepared.
The ongoing repairs and replacements needed because of previous neglect.
I so admire this young woman who has taken on that role with such aplomb and sincerity.
She will do her level best for us all, and next election it is to be hoped we vote her a greater mandate to bring in change.
True that Patricia,
I marched on that day and held two banners up saying save rail save a planet.
I am nervous as the murders have shifted the spotlight off the most serious issue we now face for us and our children’s future.
I am 75 so don’t feel personally threatened as my life is now limited but when I look at my 7yr old grandson I almost cry at what he will face going forward so Jacinda must feel this too with a very young Girl under a year old.
We must keep up the pressure for change now.
Yes Cleangreen, at 77 I feel the same. Cheers.
In case you have missed it –
Face book is banning all white nationalist content.
https://www.vox.com/technology/2019/3/27/18284319/facebook-instagram-white-nationalism-ban
Meanwhile:
Twitter is considering labeling Trump tweets that violate its rules:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/28/tech/trump-twitter-rules-label/index.html
Well I guess even that little step is something on the way to cleaning up the garbage tip that these ‘social media’ sites have created over the past decade.
There is still a long way to go.
Well I hope that Twitter applies some consistency and removes the hate speech of Ahmed Bhamji, chairman of the Mt Roskill Masjid E Umar Mosque.
Hate speech and conspiracy theories like his recent rant in Aotea Square have helped radicalize so many, whether Muslim, Jewish, white supremacists or whoever. It has no place in NZ.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/03/jews-outraged-after-mosque-leader-blames-mossad-for-christchurch-attack.html
I’m no fan of Netanyahu and his extremist mates, but that guy’s just really irresponsible. Unless you’ve got solid evidence to suggest Mossad had anything to do with this (and good luck with that), ranting like an unhinged lunatic about Zionist conspiracy theories is just pathetic. He’s just tipping the scales in the other direction, and it’s helping no one, least of all NZ’s Muslim community.
Has there been any evidence of Israeli involvement with the Christchurch Massacre ?
No. Zero evidence. He is just trying to import all the hate and bigotry that prevails in the ME to our country.
it is already here , that is why we have 50 dead in christchurch.
So we call out that rubbish no matter who spouts it. ” It is not welcome here” to quote our Pm.
It is significant that Trump has been identified as symptomatic of what’s wrong with twitter.
Chief Troll. He’s even got the haircut.
And a Trolls orange skin.
Paul Brislenon RNZ says:
Have people seen the film The Cleaners?
It sounds relevant
https://www.nziff.co.nz/2018/auckland/the-cleaners/
A thoroughly unnerving picture of our times, this gripping doco immerses us in the surreal world of the content moderators who decide what we see (or don’t see) on social media.
A thanks on 8.1 – – Thanks CG! Would have missed it otherwise
Soddenleaf
I agree with your point that we have no time here so we need to plan for the event now also. build less use of carbon emissions to slow the rate of destruction.
Yes Climate change updates like mine on 8 should be a subject that stays on the radar every day no matter what else goes on today.
As Climate change is about to kill at random many people who are also innocent in our communities as sea level rise and warming/ melting of our glaciers will flood many regions.
We saw this happen at the Franz Josef Glacier and all the flooding down at properties flooded at Hokitika perhaps from the melting of the glaciers there also?
How much pain and suffering does it take before the Government moves ‘decisively’ now?
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1903/S00049/global-state-of-the-cliate-2018-expert-reaction.htm
We impatiently await James report, and hope like hell we have consensus on real change.
In the interim planting trees is a no brainer – soon as we (I) get some rains to support them…
The heat island effect in cities will only be exacerbated in future unless we take steps now to offset temperatures with the evaporative cooling and shading effect of trees. In addition trees perform many functions to enhance urban living.
Food, shade, shelter, habitat, aesthetic beauty, carbon capture, biodiversity, rain capture and transpiration, air cleaning, oxygen production…
To build resilience in communities we should get started, not wait on governments, though obviously we are… all hands on deck!
I put trees in recently that’ll take nearly a decade to bear food. Trees are a vote for the future. Start now.
Thinking about better outcomes for young children and teenagers and when they become young parents. This is heartening, and should be the norm now but probably not.
This gives an example of the background of the why of NZ’s poor record with parents and children on world statistical tables.
https://www.efworld.org/uploads/files/75555390665357702-susancavebaragwanath.pdf
Dr Susan Baragwanath was the instigator of about 11 schools for teenage mothers, who the careless, condemning conformists with cold-blooded puritan minds were freezing out from society, and this was when the true facts about NZ early sexuality exploration and its effects were known – (by such as Jenny Shipley and the superior types in National Party).
Founder, He Huarahi Tamariki Schools
Dr. Susan Cave Baragwanath believes her fellowship came about because she had a problem, and she could not find anyone in New Zealand to help her solve it. She was a career secondary school teacher and administrator who had taught internationally. When she returned permanently to New Zealand in 1989 after 20 years away, she accepted a position as a deputy principal in one of the country’s poorest schools.
In the first week, she found a 14-year-old girl giving birth to a child in the school toilets. Baragwanath contacted the authorities about her continuing education, and she was told to forget about it. Baragwanath looked up New Zealand’s domestic law; there it was, in black and white, “every child is entitled to have a free basic formal education until the age of 19 years”. The only education available to this student, if she did not return to school (and she couldn’t as there were no childcare facilities), was distance learning. Her family did not own a phone, so she could not call her tutor, and she waited weeks for her school work to be delivered by mail. As a result, she quickly fell out of the system.
The pattern in New Zealand was for teenagers to have multiple pregnancies before age 21 and become state beneficiaries for life. Without proper research and a concrete plan going forward there seemed to Baragwanath no escape from this pattern continuing.
Maori focus:
Maori and teenage parents – Report on research. 2012
Marginalising Māori Parents
by Elizabeth Strickett and Helen Moewaka-Barnes
Massey University
Marginalising Maori Parents – for Massey University
http://www.maramatanga.ac.nz/sites/default/files/12-IN-10%20Web%20ready%20%283%29.pdf
(p.10 gives information about difficulties for young fathers)
https://www.islandchild.org.nz/
This sounds a good initiative.
But if government could push the InZone style with good funding for it, I guess as a charter school with good overview, so that it can be offered to young parents – there would be immediate improvements and a dramatic rise in successful young people handling their lives well, whether they had a job, apart from parenting or not. But some in government might feel that sort of result really isn’t their thing
In the link it says that the doco shown in 2018 can be viewed on tv on demand. So if you can, very good, worth a look.
https://inzoneeducation.org.nz/media-coverage/
Better off fixing up out current schools.
Hopefully the hubs will sort the problem, however they need to be rammed through at all cost.
Check out the “Swamp Monster” in the background!
Talk about draining the swamp. lol
Hi marks for lprent for restoring our colours.
Ahem … t’was I. I’ve turned them back on, and I’m not sure how they came to be off. If there is a technical issue, I’m sure Lprent will let us know. In the mean time, enjoy the rainbow.
Thanks TRP.
A rainbow – couldn’t resist. Need a laugh.
Ha! And here’s a nice note to end the working week on:
Awww thanks for that.
I always remember Sir Paul Reeves being interviewed some years back on Nat Radio on a Sat Morning by Kim Hill and she had a slot then when she would invite some well known person on to give a playlist of their favourite music and to talk about what it meant for them. This was a favourite of his – he particularly like the backing of the Uke and the soft way it was sung. He had first heard it Hawaii IIRC and it was one of his favourite songs. I admit on hearing itI fell for it as well – but I was never able to find it – I just remembered it. I think the singer was a little younger then by the sound of it also – but still beautiful.
Thanks once again. I’ve stored it on my youtube.
Te reo putake “Twas you” Brilliant Cheers.
I pointed out an article on great farming practice in the Kaipara recently, and now, in Southland, a catchment wide initiative involving more than 600 farms.
They’re treating each farm individually (smart!) and collecting massive data as they go on all manner of systems and processes. This is commendable work, and it seems they’ve done their homework.
I hope some of the trial farms involve earthworks and water retention.
But… yay for this initiative.
I also like the links on the side of the page. Get involved – Become a Citizen Scientist – etc.
Good onya whoever set up that page.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/the-vision-is-clear/news/article.cfm?c_id=1504591&objectid=12214443
Blubberboy and friends sure burned through the cash https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12217589
Time to pass the (digital) hat around and present an offer for the blog to the liquidator!
Big spender of OPM ?
Hi Cleangreen
You are Right.
Climate, to some odd people, is an enormous black hole.
One such odd person being the Honourable Simon Bridges and the other his idol, the Honourable Donald Trump.
Neither of whom have ever shown any glimpse of Reality.
The ultimate Goofs in Goofs clothing.
But as long as they can sell today’s youth off into Slums – without hope of housing or a fair slice of Life – Bridges and Trump will have achieved their Monstrous aims.
I took a drive through Panmure the other day. It was Tuesday. Its the Neighbour of expensive Remuera.
Panmure is the sort of filth Simon wants. It is dreadful. Few townships in the entire world could be as sick. Long Live dead head Simon. Long live mexicop Trump.
I don’t know if we’re all extras in an antipodean version of Counterpart but I find myself agreeing with John Armstrong – weird.
Where was the royal family?
\Winston Peters has carved a career out of race baiting immigrants.
But at least he finally has the grace to admit he was wrong to have done so. (sort of)
Maybe, just maybe, Winston Peters has sensed the wind of change blowing through the nation’s psyche.
Jenny I think the media has miss reported Winston on a number of occasions, he has been critical of the quality of the immigrants we are bringing in ie the Christchurch Mosque Shooter and the share number of Asians entering the country when we do not have the housing stock and Infrastructure to support this level of Immigration.
Labour are continuing down this track of bringing in large numbers of Immigrants which is putting pressure on ordinary New Zealanders. ie housing and social services ?