PP have lost more than half their seats: "The People's Party is a liberal-conservative, Christian-democraticpolitical party in Spain." To the left of the socialists is one of them rainbow alliance sort of things: "Unidos Podemos (English: "United We Can"), re-styled to its female form Unidas Podemos ahead of the 2019 Spanish general election, is a left-wingelectoral alliance formed by Podemos, United Left, Equo and other left-wing parties in May 2016". But becoming politically correct was a bad move for them: they lost 29 seats.
I get that Simon Bridges is a right winger and therefore tends to be reflexively punitive towards the poor end of town. But the slushies are for the guards not the inmates. He seems to have inverted his own ideology and needs a dog whistling refresher course. Judith could help with that.
And as someone just pointed out on Morning Report, he seems to have forgotten hair straighteners and curved screens as part of the Joyce/Coleman vanity project at the Ministry for Everything
Yep……..and all that's all just the superficial sort of stuff that gets into the media.
Then there's what I'd call the 'James Casson Effect'. Something that's been allowed to become pervasive in a number of Munstries and Departments, especially over the past decade or so – and it's probably the biggest roadblock (at least so far) to what we've been promised from our current Coalition Government.
We get what we deserve though at times eh? The signs and the record was there in plain sight for Ministers to see
The CGT debacle flushed out some anti-boomer sentiment from younger journalists, but one is doing a reality check on that bias:
"Things look a little different once you zoom in a little, where the idea that boomers are exceptionally propertied starts to get a little murkier. According to the Ministry of Social Development, in the 2013 Census, only 60% of those aged 65-69 (boomers, in other words) were owner-occupiers, compared to nearly 52% of those who were aged 40-44. Compare that to the whopping 82% of those aged 65-69 in 2001 – the preceding Silent Generation – who owned their own homes."
"More discouraging statistics abound when you dig deeper. More than 60% of those aged 65 and over rely on superannuation for all or most of their income, meaning they make at the very most $33,000 a year if they’re married, and $21,000 if they’re living alone. Those over 65 are the most likely age group to have persistent low income, and more likely than other age groups to drop into low income territory. 2013 Census data shows only 8.7% of those aged 65 or over at the time got more than $60,000 a year in income, the largest share (25%) receiving between $15,001 and $20,000." https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/29-04-2019/stop-demonising-the-boomers/
Won't surprise anyone here, but popular delusions abound when younger generations lack the time and effort to discover what's really going on. Generalisations gain currency instead, feeding generational bias, whereas fact-based class analysis shows that the old triadic class structure has fractured, and the current fractured social structure provides a more realistic form of wealth and income grouping.
Bernard Hickey has an interesting take on Jacinda dumping the CGT.
One advantage the baby boomer generation had through the 2000s was it was larger and voted at a higher rate. But those electoral advantages are ending, which makes Ardern's complete capitulation for a decade doubly surprising.
Voting rates tend to rise a bit as cohorts age, and that will happen as the bulge of millennials goes through the electoral system and become more numerous.
Put simply, the electoral tailwinds for the 2020, 2023 and 2026 elections are behind any party that appeals to those aged 18-39, and they are the age groups that have been hit hardest by the explosion in housing costs over the last decade. This chart of the demographic layout for the 2026 election shows the contrast with the 2008 chart above: the young will overpower the old in electoral terms.
Hickey goes on to highlight the volatile political landscape developing:
The Greens would argue they are the party to reap this whirlwind, but a party of the nativist right could just as easily grab that support with calls for aggressive redistribution of wealth, along with tough migration controls and heavy state investment in housing and public transport.
Scarily for the Greens, this landscape is tailor-made for a backlash against climate change policies that increase the living costs of the poor.
The surprisingly strong showing of the Finns Party in last week's Finnish elections gives a hint of how volatile this new landscape could be. It opposed both migration and policies aimed at combating climate change.
Agree, all relevant considerations. Shows just how out of touch rightists in Aotearoa have gotten in recent years, too. That pending demographic swing ought to be the primary design criterion in respect of a support party for the Nats.
Rightist here operate in a culture of moderation, or even passive pragmatism, whereas those over in Trumpland are vociferous in a culture of bigotry, denial, racism, you name it. So I think designing a new rightist party here is a different kettle of fish. How to be sensible, principled and future-oriented? That's what I'd design for, if I was with them. You can immediately see the problem eh? People saying "You're kidding. That's way less than 5%!"
With Labour's growing failure to deliver coupled with the lefts focus on race and identity, it reminded me of what Steve Bannon said.
“If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
Bannon was tapping into an old American tradition. As early as the 1680s, powerful white people were serving up racism to assuage the injuries of class, elevating the status of white indentured servants over that of enslaved black people.
Some two centuries later, W. E. B. Du Bois observed that poor white people were compensated partly by a “public and psychological wage”—the “wages of whiteness,” as the historian David Roediger memorably put it.
These wages pit people of different races against one another, averting a coalition based on shared economic interests.
So, Joan C. Williams is a professor and the director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. She does contemporary class analysis (unusual for a law prof):
"I wrote an essay for the Harvard Business Review in which I explained what I (a white, liberal law professor) thought so many of my white, liberal, highly educated peers were failing to see: that middle-income white people had voted for Trump not so much because they liked him (though many did) or because they were racist (though plenty were) but foremost as an expression of class anger. After the essay went viral, I expanded it into a book, White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America."
"All told, I’ve spent a good deal of the past two years talking with progressives about the broken relationship between elite white people and the white working class. (I use the term working class to refer to Americans with household incomes between the 30th and 80th percentiles. This group, which has median earnings of about $75,000, is also commonly referred to as the “middle class.”) Democrats presently have a unique opportunity to appeal to the working class, because their base is newly open to a populist message: Income inequality has gotten so bad that people across the political spectrum, college-educated and non-college-educated alike, are feeling a serious pinch. Bernie Sanders got 72 percent of the votes from Democrats under 30 in the 2016 primaries in part by decrying the rigged economy. In the past three decades, education costs have nearly tripled at public universities and doubled at private ones; at the same time, too many people with a college degree are settling for jobs that don’t require one."
The Pelosi blather stance hasn't contained any signal that the Dems are learning why their voters have been losing enthusiasm for liberal establishment thinking.
“Why not just wait for the white working class to die off?” asked an audience member at last year’s Berkeley Festival of Ideas. I get this question a lot, and I always reply: “Do you understand now why they voted for Trump? Your attitude is offensive, and Trump is their middle finger.”
Answer: no. Who would expect a Dem to understand anything? They even make our Labour folk here seem relatively clued up.
"An important, largely overlooked 2017 study by the Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group identified five distinct types of Trump voters. Two of them—Staunch Conservatives and Free Marketeers, who together account for more than half of Trump voters—are unlikely to ever go for Democrats in substantial numbers. (Free Marketeers may not like Trump’s trade wars, but many cheer his gutting of regulations.) The other two big blocs, American Preservationists and Anti-elites, each include about a fifth of Trump voters, and believe that the economy is rigged in favor of the wealthiest Americans. (The final bloc, the Disengaged, accounted for 5 percent of Trump voters.)"
Such sophisticated usage of identity-politics is rare in political analysis. If it were to replace stereotype-driven over-generalisations, there would be a drop in the banality level of blog commentary.
It is difficult when someone abuses you for doing nothing. Like abuse for an absence without any context or understanding just based on their own sad lives – still hurtful and hateful though imo.
After the murders of our Muslim brothers and sisters in Christchurch I put lots of links and articles up to try and create change. A change for the better where hate and supremacy ideas are discarded, where toxic 'whiteness' and toxic 'masculinity' can be put away to allow non-toxic interactions and connections, to allow others into the space normally reserved for non-others. Some have taken that as an attack on them – if they are toxic then yes you need to change, if not then you don't.
I have been shell shocked by the carnage in Sri Lanka and have really struggled to find a way to talk about it. So much pain.
This link tells some of the stories from the horror over there.
One week ago many dozens of children were killed in Sri Lanka's Easter Sunday attacks. Dressed in their finest clothes for one of the most important church services of the year, this was the first generation in decades to grow up free of violence. Their stories – and the struggle for the surviving children to comprehend the carnage – take the island down a devastatingly familiar path.
A change for the better where hate and supremacy ideas are discarded, where toxic 'whiteness' and toxic 'masculinity' can be put away to allow non-toxic interactions and connections, to allow others into the space normally reserved for non-others. Some have taken that as an attack on them
Absolutely there is no question that Anglo-Europeans have dominated the past 200 years of world history. There is nothing new about this, at all points in our history there always was at least one dominant empire or culture that led the way for a time.
But since the end of WW2 something entirely new has been going on. For most of human history empires endured for centuries or even millenia, but this is no longer true. The American's barely managed 50 years, the Chinese I predict will struggle to match even that … the age of empire is over. It's dying before our eyes. This 'white supremacy' trope you're so obsessed with is already a zombie, the British Empire is long gone, the Americans are like the road runner off the edge of the cliff waiting for gravity to take hold.
There are already more middle class Indians and Chinese than there are white people altogether. Almost 4 billion people have escaped absolute poverty and entered a basic middle class life. Another 4 billion will follow in the next few decades. Twenty years ago places like Panama were desperately undeveloped, now I have on my cellphone pictures taken in a small town supermarket indistinguishable from anything in New Zealand. The world is changing at incredible speed everywhere.
The scientific revolution began with just a relative handful of intellectual giants. People like Newton, Leibniz and Kepler were systemically developing extraordinary ideas at a time when their next door neighbours had barely gotten over burning witches at the stake. For 200 years progress was slow and sporadic, but then from around the middle of the 1800's everything changed. There was a literal explosion of technologies and engineering, resulting in the transformation of human life. The human revolution may have started within a small cultural and elitist confine, but was rapidly extended everywhere.
Now the revolution is global and there is no going back to our old ways. Every nation, every culture has arrived at this unique point in our evolution along their own path. It was often a dark, brutal and tragic journey, but we made it. We are all the children of thousands of generations of men and women who overcame impossible odds to gift to us this moment in time.
Because this is the moment in our story when we cease being children and take up our adult burdens. We are now responsible for our future as a species, and we must now repay our unfathomable debt to the planet who nurtured us thus far. This is the moment when open our inner eyes and seek out the hidden gems in each one of us, when the transcendent connections become visible. This is when we join together as one human race in all of our glorious diversity. There is nothing 9 billion humans cannot achieve.
But this vision will crumble to bitter ashes if we cannot take the first step, we must first learn to trust each other again. Trustworthiness is the foundation of all things, without we will be lost.
"You just didn't care. You don't give a shit about the victims of these massacres, they were nothing to you if they couldn't be used to energise your anger and resentment."
That is what you said to me yesterday. If you think your insincere, toady comments are going to get me to 'repair' with a sack of shit like you white bollox you are sadly mistaken. I can't stand 'white' supremacists mainly because they are so dim.
there is no conflict – bit like when I call you weeze and pooze one two – a play on words if you will, an attempt at wit, biting and direct for sure, to make sure the point is received.
You seem really confused and desperate for friends – maybe stick to what you know – umm lol sorry lol – real world stuff is not your strong point
That you don't recognize the conflict your comments so emphatically portray, is unsurprising…it is why you can flip flop between outright abuse in one comment, then in another seek to signal your humility in offering condolence…
You flat out called others racist on a regular basis…
How are your comments not deeply confused, conflicted…and rank hypocrisy?
flip flop is an interesting one – you may struggle with this but here we go – people can hold ideas in their head that sometimes appear to conflict – this is called dialectical thinking – here's some very basic information for you to learn about this – and I've added the link to an interesting question – see if you can work out why it's relevant one two.
"Dialectical thinking is thinking that approaches insight by reconciling opposites. For example, international peace is a good thing, but nations must protect the interests of citizens — those statements can come into conflict, especially for people who believe in both. The reconciliation may be that nations must cease to be in one world, or it may be that peace is unattainable, or that citizens’ paramount interest is that their nation not go to war, or several other possible statements that allow both statements to be true."
And The Alien loves to get a kick in. A bit of argy bargy gets you all excited apparently.
Coming from you, Ghandi one minute, Dr Evil Mini Me the next, that's more than a little hypocritical, but at least I'm consistent. If I want to stab someone in the back, I always aim for the face so they see it coming.
Anyway, lesson learned, 12 is spelling ‘racist’ correctly now.
Is coming here just a way to fill your time in The Alien? A personal mental fitness test that you undertake cutting and thrusting at other commenters and their opinions. Just an empty exercise which you consider is thinking about politics.
I am here because I can see that politics and the world is unravelling and most of what we have been doing and thinking over the past century has been wrong, as it has led to this present which finds us not ready to think our way to a reasonable future, but to acknowledge what is the actual present.
So amuse yourself child-mind, you have noticed how I cast around for different approaches to life and going-forward which could be helpful. We have to be adaptive, in finding a broad path to follow that all who are serious about living a better way that is practical and sustainable.
Belief in white supremacy is an unusually banal form of conservatism. Multiculturalism made it irrelevant, globalisation left it behind, so anyone still clinging to that belief is delusional at best, sociopathic at worst.
I recently read a book about cultural elites in America. Only some are white, making a strong case that skin colour is incidental to success (regardless of birth advantage). In The Triple Package: What Really Determines Success (2014), Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld identify three components which, in combination, create remarkable success for groups. Implications for political collaboration are obvious!
A superiority complex is the first. Not, as usually understood, in a person, but shared as a key feature of the identity of the group: a "deeply internalised belief".
The second seems almost contradictory: insecurity. It provides a powerful incentive for group motivation. It "runs deep in every one of America's most successful groups".
The third is impulse control (traditionally part of self-discipline). It's "the ability to resist temptation, especially the temptation to give up in the face of hardship or quit instead of persevering at a difficult task."
They document this theory effectively in respect of various groups using social science stats. Also, there are 78 pages of notes prior to the index! "Every one of the premises underlying the theory of the triple package is supported by a well-substantiated and relatively uncontraversial body of empirical evidence." They cite various studies to prove that point.
From the intro: "One of the two authors has written for almost twenty years about successful ethnic minorities all over the world" – that's Amy Chua. "The other has written extensively on how the desire to live in the present has come increasingly to dominate modern Western culture, particularly in America, undermining the country's ability to live for the future." So that's why the US leads the way of climate-change denial.
Globalisation has horrors all its own. The nation state is the unit of political accountability – globalism is a way for feckless politicians to betray their constituents. This is a lot of the reason behind Brexit – high migration into the UK (fully a quarter of the per capita migration into NZ) under EU rules actually causing poorer outcomes for UK citizens.
So where is the accountability for these lousy outcomes? Corporatized governments love to gift cheap migrant labour to corporates in hopes of largess – how are we to contain their sociopathy?
globalism is a way for feckless politicians to betray their constituents.
All forms of governance has it horrors, from the family unit upward. Our present forms of globalisation are manifestly inadequate, but that is only reason to improve them rather than discard them.
It took Europe centuries of bloody strife to get from dozens of tiny duchies and warlord fiefdoms to the nation state entities we have today. You'd better hope we get to a democratically accountable form of world federation much quicker than that.
What saddens me is that we are facing real problems – a backlog of environmental issues that have been left to fester while our self-styled representatives have sold off our dreams to chase the bright elusive butterfly of free market monetarism.
They can't even fess up to having made a total bollocks of everything they've touched, but they're relying on a unified response to these crisies, as if they have some right to our support, these wankers who've sold us out at every opportunity and have been consistently too arrogant to listen when we've tried to help them mitigate their most egregious errors.
It is always interesting to read your comments. My take is that nature will take its course. Everything dies before something new comes. We are the Dinosaur's of our millennium and with the current pollution and obvious unwillingness to do something about this, it will not matter what race or skin color or what the exchange rate of the day is. The damage is so much bigger than all of this. The technology to do some serious work exists but ideology, envy, greed etc is not having it. I doubt we have any time left for philosophy 101, let alone for some old fashion political discussion about the pro and cons of human endeavour. The younger generation senses the urgency but unfortunately, with those very old men running large nations, I fear chances are very very slim to get out of this one.
I fear chances are very very slim to get out of this one.
Objectively, from a purely materialistic perspective I can only agree with you. You make a case for despair that is hard to argue with.
Some people here persistently misread me, imagining that I argue for nothing but the status quo. Quite the opposite is true; I point to the extraordinary transformation in the material aspects of human life this past 200 years as evidence that radical change is not only possible, but that we are living in it right now.
And that while Western civilisation may have been dominant it this process to date, this is nothing like the apex or end point of the narrative. The next phase is nothing less than the transformation of the human heart across the entire planet; everyone knows this.
As a simple matter of personal faith I choose to believe in the unlimited potential of not only each single one of us, but in the as yet unsuspected, untapped potential when we learn how to spiritually connect collectively.
I'm not talking of the trivial case where like-minded people make easy company with each other, but what happens when people who don't like each other, who clash horribly and contend bitterly not only find ways to trust each other, but are able to put into action that deep mystery in Matthew 5:44 "Love thine enemy". Then we will work what would look like miracles.
This is the pivotal point in our human evolution. A dear friend once said to me that religious history to date was primarily about the development of the sanctified individual, but now we had to consider what the sanctified society might look like. We have only the dimmest of ideas, no more than any random person living in 1820 might grasp the nature of our lives in 2020.
I choose optimism and irrational defiance of the odds because it is the only moral option available to me. All other paths lead to death.
RL, I really admire you for your stance. It wont be our call though, China and India polluting the planet at a rate that is/will be irreversible.
We need to look no further than NZ: at the rubbish loads being thrown into the landscape, drink water being used to bath cows, or sucked out of the ground at a rate that will most likely salinate the water table
Yes, we should fight "the dying of the light" just to make sure that any ever so slight sliver of a chance is taken up to get things turned around.
"I fear chances are very very slim to get out of this one."
That's how I see it too. The enormous increases in material wealth, comfort, convenience and security, and the enormous global population increase, have brought us collectively to a precipice.
What needs to be done is obvious – we must back up. Wealthy nations need to accept significantly lower standards of living (and spread (gift) their wealth globally), and nations still in the grip of crippling population growth need to find practical and moral ways to curb reproduction rates (a global one child policy might do the trick, if it could be maintained for a couple of generations – this might also precipitate localised collapses, but it would be worth the risk IMHO).
Neither of these changes will happen on the scale and at the pace needed to avoid toppling over the edge of our precipice – that's if they happen at all!
An alternative response involves continuing on the same path, further ramping up the pace of change and propelling ourselves skywards in the somewhat magical hope that humankind will evolve 'wings' before the 'splat'.
Don't want to be a pessimist – I prefer optimism. But we risk outsmarting ourselves if we try to negotiate with gravity.
I'm with RL re faith in our future but have a problem with "we". I acknowledge holism is best, but I see humanity currently like a waka in which the conservative paddlers are trying to take us one way, and the progressive paddlers are pulling us another way.
You could break it down to past-oriented vs future-oriented. Thinking we will get a consensus on trajectory seems currently unrealistic. Best case scenario is more paddlers will switch to heading for the future.
Innate human nature predisposes most folk to conceive the future in terms of the past – we recycle attitudes & values we are attached to. For the first time ever we collectively must engage a traumatic global process, but aversion to accepting the necessity runs deep.
Things will have to get worse to shift those addicted to complacency, conformity, denial, business as usual etc. Ultimately, though, collective resolution must prevail over despair. When the going gets tough, the tough get going, as the old saying goes. Determination will get us there, regardless how much damage gets done in the process.
As regards the thinking of the paddlers, neither left nor right will prevail. Both/and logic will. Agreement on whatever works, forged under increasing pressure, becomes the only way to survive.
"However, Mr Bridges told Morning Report he never said that and the comments he made were in reference to a regional conference he attended in Hamilton."
"I've come from a regional conference in Hamilton, they delivered a really clear message to me in our conservation". If you read the tea-leaves here, he seems to be sending the signal that conservation is just as viable a path to power as discipline & unity. Not many National Party members realise that the Bluegreens are more than a pet poodle, so he's positioning them as a pathway to power ever so subtly… 😎
The Grauniad, AKA Pravda, AKA Völkischer Beobachter is not merely a dull newspaper, it's a propaganda vehicle, “Assange’s principal media tormentor" and a "collaborator with the secret state."
Part 1 of 3
The night of Assange’s arrest, BBC Newsnight presenter Katie Razzell began in standard ‘impartial’ manner in describing his status: “Out of his hiding place and under arrest”.
‘Hiding place’ is BBC newspeak for ‘political asylum’. The implication was that Julian Assange had hidden in an attempt to evade justice. This was fake news, repeated on the airwaves and across the BBC website.
One of the most notorious examples of Assange-related fake news was the front-page accusation in the Guardian last November that Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaigns manager, had met Assange in the embassy three times. No shred of evidence has ever been produced for this claim, which WikiLeaks and Manafort have both vehemently denied, and the story has been widely regarded as fake from virtually the hour of its publication. Luke Harding, the lead journalist on the story, and his editors Paul Johnson and Katharine Viner, have never apologised or retracted the story; nor have they responded to the many challenges about it. As we have previously noted, the Guardian has a disreputable record in publishing nasty, abusive and derogatory pieces about Assange.
A Guardian editorial on the eve of Assange’s expulsion at least stated that Assange should not be extradited to the US: “[He] has shone a light on things that should never have been hidden”. However, John Pilger was scathing of the paper he called “Assange’s principal media tormentor [and] a collaborator with the secret state”, noting that its editorial had “scaled new weasel heights”. He continued: “The Guardian has exploited the work of Assange and WikiLeaks in what its previous editor called ‘the greatest scoop of the last 30 years’. The paper creamed off WikiLeaks’ revelations and claimed the accolades and riches that came with them.
“With not a penny going to Julian Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, turned on their source, abused him and disclosed the secret password Assange had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing leaked US embassy cables.”.
The editorial misled its readers on why Assange had sought refuge: “When he first entered the Ecuadorian embassy he was trying to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations of rape and molestation. That was wrong”.
As we saw above, this is a grotesque twisting of the facts. Indeed, the Guardian editorial was steeped in sophistry: “the Assange case is a morally tangled web. He believes in publishing things that should not always be published – this has long been a difficult divide between the Guardian and him”.
Pilger demolished the Guardian’s obfuscation: “These ‘things’ are the truth about the homicidal way America conducts its colonial wars, the lies of the British Foreign Office in its denial of rights to vulnerable people, such as the Chagos Islanders, the exposé of Hillary Clinton as a backer and beneficiary of jihadism in the Middle East, the detailed description of American ambassadors of how the governments in Syria and Venezuela might be overthrown, and much more. It is all available on the WikiLeaks site.”
She's a hard road working out which news outlet one can trust.
I have it on fairly good authority that The Guardian is the place to go to find out what the establishment wants you, as a 'leftie', to think.
After groping around in the convoluted cess-pit that is the Jackie Walker persecution and the commentary from the Guardian on the issue…https://witchhuntfilm.org/
Somewhat surprised that Kim Hill passed up the opportunity to put Guardian journalist Freedland on a hot griddle.
Somewhat surprised that Kim Hill passed up the opportunity to put Guardian journalist Freedland on a hot griddle.
I was not at all surprised. She has a history of remaining silent as Grauniad hacks lie to her face. Did you hear her allow the notorious and discredited Luke Harding to chunter on uninterrupted last year?
She has a long and dishonorable record of allowing U.S. government functionaries to smear and ridicule Julian Assange…..
I remember when Freedland was the American correspondent on Kim's Nine to Noon. His book when he got back to Britain was about the virtues of the American political system his country could gain from. Nup.
I got angry listening to the Politics section of RNZ Nine to Noon today when it was revealed the supposed Left spokesman had worked for/ believed in the Rogernomics govt. The guy who tried to tell us the Labour Party preferred Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders. Why don't you put a pillow over my face and stifle me. Mike Williams being cute about that revolutionary govt before him, though he obviously provided all the details about the Left's objection to Rogernomics for Paul Holmes's intelligent column on the matter. Says EVERYTHING about Labour.
And Trotter who could talk to point being forced out of the main media. Says a lot about RNZ also under Richard his-communist-father-a-much-better-man-than-him.
Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis has stamped out any hope Brian Tamaki may have held of winning government funding to deliver his Man Up programme in prisons…
… Tamaki has repeatedly criticised the Government for not funding him to deliver his programme in New Zealand prisons, despite never making a formal application as part of the Corrections tender process.
Davis said there was no verified, independent research showing the programme has achieved success, and lashed out at Tamaki, calling his claims duplicitous.
He said that, despite what Tamaki claims, Man Up has never been shut out of prisons, and has never followed the proper application process.
“If they’re going to lie about the small stuff, how am I going to trust them with the big stuff?”
Hi Marty, A bit of a pedantic question… are you happy about the decision because of the political side of it, i.e. Tamaki is potentially politically toxic?
Don't get me wrong, I am no fan of Tamaki nor fundamentalist anything.
Tamaki has his 'constituents' in prison and as we know there are many ways to skin a cat. By that I mean reaching out and communicating with inmates must take many forms and appearances.
I oppose tamaki, the man up program, toxic christianity, and lying. If prisoners use faith to help them sort stuff out I am all for it – I'm not convinced a person doing tamaki's plan ends up better or worse tbh.
Tamaki has his 'constituents' in prison and as we know there are many ways to skin a cat.
If one of those ways is a "Man Up" programme telling domestic abusers it's their wives' fault for provoking them, it would be better if the cat kept its skin on.
Well said Kelvin Davis. Brian Tamaki is pretty self-serving with double heapings of pudding. And a bit of Christmas holly on the top for the look of the thing.
Israel destroyed the Notre Dame of Gaza – but there was only silence from the West
by TONY GREENSTEIN, 28 April 2019
Since 2009 53 mosques and churches have been vandalised or set fire to in Israel. As is normally the case with attacks on non-Jews, the Israeli Police have not exerted themselves. Only 9 indictments to date have been filed by the police.
What makes this worse is that there are sections of Israeli society who openly justify the destruction of churches and mosques on religious grounds.
Yes. Like the sections of Israeli society in this story… some appear not to like The Daily Blog too much – that's their loss; good thinks happen there too, such as this. How to stamp out other people's sacred places? With glittering balls and booze, that's how.
Government needs “National NZ Port Strategy”
Sunday, 28 April 2019, 1:10 pm
Press Release: Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre
Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre press release- 28- April 2019.
“Government needs “National NZ Port Strategy” so Ports work together not fighting over freight”
A new “National NZ Port Strategy” is needed here in NZ for export of freight.
Today on News hub’s ‘The nation’ show there was a ‘Port discussion’ that was enlightening to us. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/shows/2019/04/exclusive-no-point-investing-in-northport-without-building-rail-link-working-group.html
After watching the panel discussion about the mess our NZ Port issues are about, we now see clearly that the current Government needs a new “National NZ Port Strategy Plan” for NZ Ports to be actively working together instead of fighting over freight, as the current model of ‘independent’ scrapping over freight is damaging both the regions and the loss of residential wellbeing in regions who undercut other Ports to get freight income from capturing ‘lower cost freight’ through their Port because those Ports are now operating at a loss and now forced to sell part of their Port as Napier Port is attempting to do now.
Napier Port are leaving us with a legacy of a residential environmental disaster in their ‘wake.’
History of CEAC meetings with two of our central Port executives; – At both Napier and Gisborne ports.
2016:
Our Committee was invited to the Napier Port boardroom in November 2016 to discuss the massive truck noise and pollution affecting all Napier residents living near the ‘truck network roads’ to and from Napier port, and we sought funding for mitigation for smooth quiet road surfacing and noise barriers and Napier Port said they had no money then.
At that meeting we were sadly advised that sending logs out of NZ was virtually not viable for them, as the Port staff advised us ‘they could not compete with Wellington Port’ who were actually sending their logs out at such a low cost that Napier Port could not afford to compete for freight at those charges.
2011:
In 2011 we brokered a meeting with the Gisborne ‘Eastland Port’ Executives as we were asking them to use rail to move logs to their Port for export rather than using trucks.
The executives also confirmed to us at the meeting that the cost to send each log out of NZ was so low that they made very little money on shipping logs.
So it is now painfully clear now that we need to send a clear message to Government that the whole transportation of our export freight from our NZ Ports is in need of a reset policy.
One that now can offer all forms of ‘land transport’ using rail and road options to make freight costs lower so freight is viable to ship from NZ while giving all Ports adequate funding to offer residential citizens adequate mitigation to lower the transportation effects of road truck freight noise and pollution adversely affecting all those living near busy export road networks to their local port facilities.
Shane Jones, as Regional Development Minister, was also shown on a video clip saying he will be setting up an election policy to change the way the ports in NZ operate “independently” as he said it is not acceptable and needs to change”.
We welcome Shane Jones’ position on this change.
So we seek the labour caucus acceptance to a real Port policy change away from the current conflicting manner that all ports are currently undercutting the charges of freight at the expense of residents and Ports not having any capital to offer residents any mitigation.
All HB/Gisborne residents living near Port bound trucks are now facing a legacy of a residential environmental disaster in their ‘wake’
Business
National weekly rent edges closer to $500
Monday, 29 April 2019, 9:13 am
Press Release: Trademe
New Zealand’s national median weekly hit $495 in March after climbing 5.3 per cent on last year, as every region in the country experienced an annual increase in rent, according to the latest Trade Me Rental Price Index.
Trade Me’s Head of Rentals Aaron Clancy said the country’s rental market was looking very healthy and this was the first time in five months that every region in the country experienced a year-on-year increase. “There’s a high demand for rentals across the country with a significant 28 per cent increase in the number of enquiries compared to March 2018.
No it is not govt policy, Andrea Vance is just stirring, she know's it isn't, and you know it isn't. Hooten of course believes his own spin. Next week Labour will be accused of being flat earthers if a govt MP says they can see for miles and miles.
It’s not easy being a government in the age of the internet and pretending to have power over something that is essentially beyond control, but that doesn’t stop them trying.
The British government is ignoring its previous online mishaps and outlined tough new measures to police the internet, which is all well and good, but all it’s going to do is make Britain a global center for Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
A White Paper last week detailed how the UK wants to bring in a “code of practice” for social networks and internet firms, giving it the power to be able to fine them if they breach it and perhaps even block offending sites.
However I did glace at a program on BBC today about Google power over us and the guy explaining the power of Google takes every letter we place on Google into a large search engine to send to millions to attach their interest of selling to you their items.
The google system uses algorithms to identify what we look at all the time.
Ecuador shows how technology built for China’s political system is now being applied — and sometimes abused — by other governments. Today, 18 countries — including Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates and Germany — are using Chinese-made intelligent monitoring systems, and 36 have received training in topics like “public opinion guidance,” which is typically a euphemism for censorship, according to an October report from Freedom House, a pro-democracy research group.
With China’s surveillance know-how and equipment now flowing to the world, critics warn that it could help underpin a future of tech-driven authoritarianism, potentially leading to a loss of privacy on an industrial scale. Often described as public security systems, the technologies have darker potential uses as tools of political repression.
“They’re selling this as the future of governance; the future will be all about controlling the masses through technology,” Adrian Shahbaz, research director at Freedom House, said of China’s new tech exports.
Of all of the David Icke alternative media view of the world order, he decides to believe the one about Jews being the ones who are descended from "the reptilians" …
Lovetosee the proponents of this cite evidence in Jewish DNA (warning what Jewish DNA, do not have either common Y chromosome or maternal ancestry).
When it comes to the largest companies in the world like those selling cellphones, it is wise to ignore all PR and go to the science. I expect this study will lead to 'debate' rather than change. But there it is.
I can't find the study referred to in the article (Kumiko Nakata is a bona fide fertility researcher). But there's others.
"Cell phone radiation may negatively affect sperm quality in men by decreasing the semen volume, sperm concentration, sperm count, motility, and viability, thus impairing male fertility."
Thanks for putting that up as I was about to after I spotted it, so Wifi causes infertility to as we put up a post two years ago that high frequencies from 'smart meters' also cause cancer and other affects.
Eco Maori worrys about OUR Kaumatua not finding the time to pass there great knowledge of speaking on the Pae Pae and other great Maori culture knowledge on to Te Mokopuna we must never let this knowledge go as that is what some peoples goals to make Maori look so bad that te Mokopuna don't want to have anything to do with OUR GREAT CULTURE .Maori have to do what ever it takes to keep OUR CULTURE Pumping. We must look after our kaumatua and there knowledge there is HEAPS that has already been misplaced or losted if we try hard enough we will find it Kia kaha Whanau.
But historical traumas related to colonisation, cultural and language suppression through assimilation policies along with a move from rural to urban areas, which broke ties with iwi and hapū, had all directly impacted on the length and quality of Māori lives.
"Everything around them was in turmoil," he said.
The flow on effects ares still being felt as well, Edwards said, with some Māori lacking in confidence or ability to fulfil cultural expectations placed on them as they got older, including taking on speaking roles at the marae
But historical traumas related to colonisation, cultural and language suppression through assimilation policies along with a move from rural to urban areas, which broke ties with iwi and hapū, had all directly impacted on the length and
The flow on effects ares still being felt as well, Edwards said, with some Māori lacking in confidence or ability to fulfil cultural expectations placed on them as they got older, including taking on speaking roles at the marae.
Another sobering statistic is the gap between Māori and non-Māori life expectancy, which is about seven years. Life expectancy for Māori females was 77.1 years, when compared to non-Māori females at 83.9 years.
Māori male life expectancy sat at 73 years, with non-Māori men at 80.3 years.
"And I ask, is that a just society, is that a society we can be proud of
Ka kite ano links below P.S I am talking to my WHANAU about this issue of our GREAT kite aronui
I know why simon didn't get rolled I have hinted at that.
Methanthamean is causing heaps of damage to OUR society why is methamphetamine higher in places with high tangata whenua populations its a big problem in Te tairawhiti as well a North land both with 45 % Maori populations.? ? ? ? ??
We must be vigilant on our boarder security as if we get a bad disease that will cost many billions lost income to NZ.
Its sad all the WARS being waged around the world at the minute I have said that it's the tamariki that suffer the most from WAR fools don't GET IT.
I have come to the conclusion that intelligent people under estimate there mahi + the carbon barons money influenceing society that climate change is a hoaxes that has lead to the under estimate of glaciers melt and other facts about climate change .
The beluga whale is a awesome creature we are there Guardians .
Condolences to the people of Mozambican I did not realise that it was the same country hit six weeks ago by a hurricane OUR African cousin are feeling the brunt of human caused climate change Kia kaha people .
That's good that soft plastic recycling in Auckland has resumed its sad that the rest of the country could not be included but is all about being cost effective.
Condolences to John the African American directors Whanau I like his movies I have seen quite a few of them . Ka kite ano P.S had a bit of pressure to deal with lately like water of a ducks back
Gregory you are barking up the wrong tree who can afford those expensive driving lessons you are taking about another point us how much driving do you actually do on NZ Roads not much at all I say it will be a plane ride on most of your journeys Deflecting the road toll road problems from the people WHOM are responsible for it.
Insurance premiums rising it will be a luxury for the wealthy cause by global warming and climate change can you see how the common people are going to suffer this is just one phenomenon .
I have a food allergy if I see kai moana I eat it I just found out why my children did not eat fish when they were younger long story it use to piss me off heaps of fish and only I eat it . the epiepen Pharmac issue I hope Pharmac can come up with a viable solution to the problem. Maybe get someone to come up with a better cheaper design to admit the drugs many ways to solve a problem.
Children living at home till 25 because its to expensive to live in Aotearoa . That's the side effects of having a banker run the country for nine years setting the system up to serve the wealthy it displaces Alot of others and causes a big mess I see this all around the world . ?
We should never stop learning new things when we don't we end up stuck in the PAST like some neanderthal.
I agree with Chris people need to make sure there houseing is safe from the effects of climate change Yea plastic is a big problem for all of Papatuanukue. And I seen it with my own eyes building on land filled in with sand a tsunami or earth quake will make a big mess of these houses . It's cool having a well known person taking about plastic waste issues the Papatuanukue has.
Hi,Before we crack into today’s Webworm, I wanted to acknowledge the fact that Israel is pushing into Rafah. Over 100,000 Palestinians are now attempting to flee the one place that was deemed “safe”.Trouble is, the place they’re fleeing to is already destroyed. Total annihilation is the end goal here.“Israel is ...
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Peter Dunne writes – I am always wary when I hear that the Controller and Auditor-General has commented on or made recommendations to the government about an issue of public policy that does not relate strictly to public expenditure. According to the legislation, the role of the Controller ...
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Macklemore isn’t someone I’d usually think about. Sure I liked his big hit from a few years back, everybody did it was catchy and cool with some memorable lines. But if I was going to think of artists who might speak out on political matters or world events, he wouldn’t ...
Another week goes by in the Luxon government’s efforts to roll back the past 70 years of social progress. The school lunches programme is to be downgraded by $107 million, and women need bother their heads no longer about pay equity, let alone expect ACC to provide adequate sexual violence ...
Brrr, the first cold snap of the year. Hope you’re rugged up nice and warm. Here are some stories that caught our eye this week… This Week on Greater Auckland On Monday, we had a post from a new contributor, Connor Sharp, who dug into the public feedback ...
Almost all of the Wellington City Council’s recommended zoning changes to allow many more apartments and townhouses in its inner-suburbs have been approved.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guest on geopolitics, ...
Open access notablesA Global Increase in Nearshore Tropical Cyclone Intensification, Balaguru et al., Earth's Future:Tropical Cyclones (TCs) inflict substantial coastal damages, making it pertinent to understand changing storm characteristics in the important nearshore region. Past work examined several aspects of TCs relevant for impacts in coastal regions. However, ...
Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result? As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and always answered “yes”, with very few ...
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Alwyn Poole writes – After being elected to Parliament in 2008 the maiden speech of Hipkins was substantially around education policy. He was Labour’s spokesperson for education 2011 – 2017. He was Minister for Education from 2017 until February 2023. This is approximately 88% of the time Labour ...
Eric Crampton writes – A fashion industry group is lobbying for protections. They make the usual arguments and a newer one. None of it makes sense. An industry group says it pumped $7.8 billion into the economy last year – that’s 1.9 percent of New Zealand’s GDP. ...
In December 2006, Fiji's military leader Voreqe Bainimarama overthrew the elected government in a coup. He ruled Fiji for the next 16 years, first as dictator, then as "elected" Prime Minister. But now, he's finally been sent to jail where he belongs. Sadly, this isn't for his real crime of ...
Don't like National's corrupt Muldoonist "fast-track" law? Aotearoa's environmental NGO's - Greenpeace, Forest & Bird, WWF, Coromandel Watchdog, Coal Action Network Aotearoa, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining, and others - have announced a joint march against it in Auckland in June: When: 13:00, 8 June, 2024 Where: Aotea Square, Auckland You ...
Seymour describes sushi as too woke for school meals. There are no fish sushi meals recommended by the School Lunches programme. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: The Government will swap out hot meals for packaged sandwiches to save $107 million on school lunches for poor kids. MSD has pulled ...
I don't mind stealin' bread from the mouths of decadenceBut I can't feed on the powerless when my cup's already overfilled, yeahBut it's on the table, the fire's cookin'And they're farmin' babies, while slaves are workin'The blood is on the table and the mouths are chokin'But I'm goin' hungry, yeahSome ...
The Ardern Government’s chickens came home to roost yesterday with the news that the country is short of natural gas. In 2018, Labour banned offshore petroleum exploration, and industry executives say that the attendant loss of confidence by the industry impacted overall investment in onshore gas fields. Energy Resources Minister ...
Hi,If you’ve been digging through the newly launched Webworm store (orders are being dispatched worldwide as I type!) you’ll have noticed the best model we had was Calvin.This is Calvin.Calvin.Calvin is 7, and is the son of my producer over on Flightless Bird, Rob — aka “Wobby Wob”. Rob also ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Climate change is everywhere. And when something's everywhere it can feel like it's nowhere. So how do we get our heads ...
Its a law like gravity: whenever a right-wing government is elected, they start attacking democracy. And now, after talking to their Republican and Tory and Fidesz chums at the International Democracy Union forum in Wellington, National is doing it here, announcing plans to remove election-day enrolment. Or, to put it ...
Yesterday Winston Peters focussed his attention on the important matter at hand. Tweeting. Like the former, and quite possibly next, orange POTUS, from whom he takes much of his political strategy, Winston is an avid X’er.His message didn’t resemble an historic address this time. In fact it was more reminiscent ...
Buzz from the Beehive A significant decline in natural gas production has given Resources Minister Shane Jones an opportunity to reiterate his enthusiasm for the mining and burning of coal. For good measure, he has praised an announcement from Genesis Energy that it will resume importing coal. He and Energy ...
“Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The political parties are legally obliged to make ...
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Eric Crampton writes – I hadn’t thought about this one until a helpful email showed up in my inbox.It’s pretty obvious that income tax thresholds should automatically index with inflation – whether to anchor the thresholds in percentiles of the income distribution, or to anchor against a real ...
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A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn: Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill (Hūhana Lyndon) The bill would prevent the government from stealing Māori land in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It ...
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A homicide in Ponsonby, a manhunt with a killer on the run. The nation’s leader stands before a press conference reassuring a frightened nation that he’ll sort it out, he’ll keep them safe, he’ll build some new prison spaces.Sorry what? There’s a scary dude on the run with a gun ...
Hi,I know it’s been awhile since there’s been any Webworm merch — and today that all changes!Over the last four months, I’ve been working with New Zealand artist Jess Johnson to create a series of t-shirts, caps and stickers that are infused with Webworm DNA — and as of right ...
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Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
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Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
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The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
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Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The resolution enhances the rights of Palestine to participate in the work of the UN General Assembly while stopping short of admitting Palestine as a full ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
“Instead of following along countries that are investing in death and better ways of killing people faster, we need to invest in life and in making Aotearoa a fair, just and equitable place where everyone has what they need for a dignified life.” ...
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI, TPM MP FOR TAI TOKERAU This Government will not waver in its mission to exterminate Māori. CHRISTOPHER LUXON Oh well look you know I don’t think that hard-working Kiwis want to hear language like that. It’s just really unhelpful rhetoric. My Government is genuinely committed to advancing outcomes ...
The body positivity movement started with women confronting the unrealistic expectations and unrepresentative portrayals of them in media and advertising. Men weren’t part of it … their bodies hadn’t been sexualised to the same extremes and they didn’t really need it. But now that’s changed. And in a warped sort ...
The New Zealand comedy legend takes us through her life in television, including the time she hugged Elton John and the unshakeable legacy of a girl named Lyn. In 1981, Ginette McDonald stood on the stage of Auckland’s St James Theatre and directly addressed Queen Elizabeth II. It was a ...
An essay by Lily Duval from the just-released anthology Otherhood: Essays on being childless, childfree and child adjacent.I was 22 when my friend Alice gave birth in the living room of our pokey Addington flat. She laboured in the blow-up pool for hours. Garish fish swam along the inflated ...
Ella Borrie on the best books about motherhood she’s come across so far. Over the past few years I’ve been drawn to books about motherhood. I’m fascinated by the joys and horrors of becoming a parent. The question of children also feels more pressing than it used to. It’s like ...
Out of gift ideas for mum? You can’t go wrong with a bottle of toilet cleaner and a new squeegee. Emily Writes is the writer and editor of Emily Writes Weekly. This week marks five years since I published a post on The Spinoff about Mother’s Day marketing titled ‘A ...
My husband is posted overseas for 12 months and I’m armed with an expensive, newfangled vibrator. Will I miss him? The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.A few days after my husband leaves, a new sex toy arrives at the front door. Nestled ...
Jaimie Baird’s new book Here Today Gone Tomorrow is a record of four decades of graffiti and street art in Wellington, told through more than 1,200 photographs. He spoke with Joel MacManus about what inspired the book. How did you first get interested in photographing street art? I remember ...
Editor Madeleine Chapman looks back at a busy week where food of all political leanings dominated. Sometimes you’re just going about your week thinking you’ve got a good handle on what might be coming as far as news topics and then someone (usually a politician) says something so ridiculous that ...
In a week of cold rain and frost, the climate in courtroom four upstairs at the Invercargill courthouse was simmering with restrained indignation. At times it felt like the famous Mexican standoff scene from Reservoir Dogs, or, as someone watching the proceedings described it, there was so much throwing of ...
A banner notification alerts me to the fact that I’ve received an Instagram message from @felicity.loves. She always comments on my posts. I shouldn’t have opened the message, but clicked on the notification before rationalising this. OMG! Are you in Wellys? X I debate not replying, but Instagram will inform ...
In Melbourne’s hardscrabble western suburbs where AFL – Aussie rules football – is a state religion, Callum Donaldson has been quietly grafting away, four months into an odyssey that he hopes will take him to another promised land: the NRL. It was a solid 2023 for the softly spoken 20-year-old ...
Pacific Media Watch Television New Zealand Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities in a ceremony at Government House, reports 1News. She has been the Pacific correspondent for 1News since 2002, breaking many ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Tuesday’s budget will respond to the deepening public agitation over Australia’s housing shortages by pouring new money into crisis accommodation for women and children, social housing and infrastructure. A specially-convened national cabinet late Friday ticked ...
By Kaneta Naimatu in Suva Journalists in the Pacific region play an important role as the “eyes and ears on the ground” when it comes to reporting the climate crisis, says the European Union’s Pacific Ambassador Barbara Plinkert. Speaking at The University of the South Pacific (USP) on World Press ...
Aldora Itunu is back in the Black Ferns squad after a three-year absence. The last of her 24 internationals was an underwhelming loss to France (7-29) in Castres to conclude the disastrous 2021 Northern Tour. The powerhouse prop won a Rugby World Cup in 2017 and thought she was done. ...
The fight to control major transport policy and projects in Auckland has burst into the open again, with councillors rejecting Mayor Wayne Brown’s latest attempt to steer things more under his influence. Councillors from the left and right broke ranks on the mayor’s bid to control Auckland Transport more directly ...
Exhausted by the general election campaign, horrified by the twilight zone of coalition negotiations, distracted by the silly season and waiting for the honeymoon to begin, Raw Politics has been in hibernation since October. From today, we’re back. Our weekly political video show and podcast returns for ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk Authorities in the small town of Boulouparis have commemorated Armistice Day on May 8 with a new memorial honouring New Zealand soldiers who were stationed in New Caledonia during World War II. The ceremony took place in the township on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Dehm, Senior lecturer, international migration and refugee law, University of Technology Sydney The High Court unanimously ruled today that the Australian government can keep asylum seekers in immigration detention indefinitely in cases where they do not “voluntarily” cooperate with their own ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Munro, Lecturer, Creative Industries and Digital Media, University of South Australia Twenty-four hours after the release of Macklemore’s pro-Palestine protest song Hind’s Hall on social media on May 7, the video had already notched up over 24 million views. In ...
Failing to anticipate the complexity of the consenting system is being cited as the the current builder's shortcomings, an Infrastructure Commission review says. ...
350 Aotearoa is calling the Environment Select Committee’s decision to allow oral submissions from just 40% of individual, unique submitters who asked to speak to the committee ‘a disgraceful blight to democracy’. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Helal, Assistant Dean (Sustainability), The University of Melbourne Dubai skylineAleksandarPasaric/Pexels Since ancient times, people have built structures that reach for the skies – from the steep spires of medieval towers to the grand domes of ancient cathedrals and mosques. Today ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Musole, PhD Law Student, University of New England Girts Ragelis/ShutterstockRecent trends show Australians are increasingly buying wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. These electronics track our body movements or vital signs to provide data throughout the day, with ...
Papua New Guinea experienced a significant earthquake on 24 March in East Sepik and there has also been recent flooding there and in surrounding provinces. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yousuf Mohammed, Dermatology researcher, The University of Queensland Maridav/Shutterstock You wake up, stagger to the bathroom and gaze into the mirror. No, you’re not imagining it. You’ve developed face wrinkles overnight. They’re sleep wrinkles. Sleep wrinkles are temporary. But as your ...
The Environment Select Committee has just announced that 60 percent of individuals who asked to speak at the hearings will not be heard. This equates to almost 700 people who made individual submissions and more than 1000 more who made a form submission. ...
The Royal New Zealand Ballet is performing Swan Lake around the country. What kind of dream does the ballet sell?Before going to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet perform Swan Lake, I had about as much familiarity with the plot of this ballet as could be expected from having ...
A new poem by Auckland poet Eamonn Tee. High Tide at Local Maxima It is only going to get worse. The streams will be narrow and fickle. The week will bend and buckle like a pot-bellied waist. You will make it to the weekend with one ...
The New Zealand entrepreneur behind beauty business Ethique is gearing up to launch a new eco-venture. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Our thirst for a tasty bevvy is insatiable, but it comes with a hefty plastic price for the planet: 580 billion ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 James by Percival Everett (Mantle, $38) A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from ...
By Kamna Kumar in Suva Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna stressed the importance of media freedom and its link to the climate and environmental crisis at the 2024 World Press Freedom Day event organised by the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme. Under the theme “A Planet for ...
Tara Ward previews a new local TV series offering alternative visions of motherhood. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. A woman is clambering up the side of her two-story house, clinging desperately to a drainpipe. Nearby, her child is perched on the ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) is supportive of the cross-party approach to climate adaptation announced by the Minister of Climate Change today. ...
The Sustainable Business Council (SBC) and Climate Leaders Coalition (CLC) welcome today’s announcement from Government around a bipartisan inquiry into an enduring climate adaptation framework for New Zealand. ...
The Free Speech Union welcomes the decision by the Department of Internal Affairs, and Minister Brooke Van Velden, to abandon proposals to further regulate online speech. ...
Its new building in Wellington will not be nearly big enough for all its records, and it has also run out of money to build its new storage facility in Levin. ...
BusinessNZ is congratulating the Minister of Climate Change for his work in achieving cross-party consensus for a way forward on climate adaptation. ...
Recent research reveals the repeal of smokefree measures is not only bad for our health, but also the economy. The Government has repealed various smokefree measures to ensure it keeps collecting $1.2 billion a year in tobacco taxes, in order to pay for tax cuts already being delivered to ...
The club’s surprisingly good season is built on the desire to prove a random A-League YouTuber wrong… and a few other factors.“There’s no way that Wellington Phoenix play finals this year. I can’t see it happening at all.” Those are the words of Lachlan Raeside, an Australian football content ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By César Albarrán-Torres, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology Apple TV+ As one of billions of bilingual individuals in the world, it disappoints me when a film or TV show with characters of a non-English-speaking background is ...
The under-utilised course is a waste of space, and with a little political will, it could be turned into something better. For the duration of her stay in Wellington, my long-suffering cousin listened to me rant about golf courses. They’re bad for the environment: water intensive and pesticide heavy. They ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Ruppanner, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab, Podcast at MissPerceived, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock A recent report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows US fertility rates dropped 2% in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Corderoy, Medical doctor and PhD candidate studying involuntary psychiatric treatment, School of Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney shop_py/Shutterstock Picture two people, both suffering from a serious mental illness requiring hospital admission. One was born in Australia, the other in Asia. Hopefully, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Treby, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, RMIT University P.j.Hickox, Shutterstock Peatlands store more carbon per square metre than any other ecosystem on Earth. These waterlogged, mossy bogs beat even dense rainforests for their ability to act as carbon reservoirs. Under the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Goss, Adjunct Associate Professor, Health Research Institute, University of Canberra Government spending on health has been growing so rapidly that a decade ago the then health minister Peter Dutton called it “unmanageable” and “unsustainable”. Health spending grew in real terms by ...
New Zealand's largest electricity distributor is warning the country to hurry up with controls around charging electric vehicles or face unnecessary bills running into the billions. ...
New Zealanders have been asked to conserve energy this morning to combat a possible electricity shortfall, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A call to conserve power New Zealand is facing a possible electricity shortfall, with people up ...
Writer Rebecca K Reilly breaks down the national book awards. What are the Ockhams?The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are our annual national awards for books published for adults, and have existed in this form since 2016. There are four categories: Fiction, Poetry, General Non-fiction and Illustrated Non-fiction. There ...
Wellington City Council should keep its 34% ownership share in Wellington International Airport, argue Unions Wellington spokespeople Finn Cordwell and Ashok Jacob. Insanity, as the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Wellington City Council (WCC) is yet again proposing to dispose ...
New Zealand’s largest book publisher has undergone drastic changes this week, leaving its future role in local publishing uncertain. Two of the most recognisable local publishers in New Zealand are among those restructured out of Penguin Random House, it was announced this week. Head of publishing Claire Murdoch will leave ...
In 2021 the Public Interest Journalism Fund launched the Te Rito Journalism project, a $2.4 million initiative to boost diversity in New Zealand’s newsrooms. The initiative was in response to the decades-long shortage of Māori and Pacific journalists in the media industry. It was billed as New Zealand’s ...
The Black Ferns Sevens appeared to be a mile behind Australia at the halfway point of the 2023-24 SVNS international circuit. Winless in three tournaments, a cup quarter-final exit in Perth was one of their worst results. To add insult to injury, talismanic skipper Sarah Hirini had been ruled out ...
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Successive governments have tried, and failed, to count Māori. But with the return of social investment, it’s more important than ever to get good data. The post Government looks for a better way to count Māori appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Experts in financing social investment initiatives say New Zealand is in a prime position to tackle social issues via a social investment approach The post What will Willis’ social investment fund look like? appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Looks Iike Pedro Sanchez has won some sort of victory in the Spanish general election.
"With more than 11 million votes counted, PSOE are projected to get 129 seats, PP 67, Citizens 54 and Podemos 32. The far-right party Vox received strong support in polling before Sunday’s vote, but that has not materialised into as many votes as they had hoped. The anti-immigration, anti-feminist, anti-Catalan party is projected to win 23 seats in the Spanish parliament." https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2019/apr/28/spain-election-turnout-increases-as-voters-head-to-polls-for-third-time-in-four-years-live-updates
PP have lost more than half their seats: "The People's Party is a liberal-conservative, Christian-democratic political party in Spain." To the left of the socialists is one of them rainbow alliance sort of things: "Unidos Podemos (English: "United We Can"), re-styled to its female form Unidas Podemos ahead of the 2019 Spanish general election, is a left-wing electoral alliance formed by Podemos, United Left, Equo and other left-wing parties in May 2016". But becoming politically correct was a bad move for them: they lost 29 seats.
Thank God for Mr Sanchez.
The EU elections desperately needed a left wing signal.
I get that Simon Bridges is a right winger and therefore tends to be reflexively punitive towards the poor end of town. But the slushies are for the guards not the inmates. He seems to have inverted his own ideology and needs a dog whistling refresher course. Judith could help with that.
And as someone just pointed out on Morning Report, he seems to have forgotten hair straighteners and curved screens as part of the Joyce/Coleman vanity project at the Ministry for Everything
limos with heated seats…
Yep……..and all that's all just the superficial sort of stuff that gets into the media.
Then there's what I'd call the 'James Casson Effect'. Something that's been allowed to become pervasive in a number of Munstries and Departments, especially over the past decade or so – and it's probably the biggest roadblock (at least so far) to what we've been promised from our current Coalition Government.
We get what we deserve though at times eh? The signs and the record was there in plain sight for Ministers to see
Once was tim Yes it appears Steven Joyce is not preparing Bridges for 'election material this time.
We wonder who 'Scheming Steven Joyce has in his sights' this time to take over National now?
The CGT debacle flushed out some anti-boomer sentiment from younger journalists, but one is doing a reality check on that bias:
"Things look a little different once you zoom in a little, where the idea that boomers are exceptionally propertied starts to get a little murkier. According to the Ministry of Social Development, in the 2013 Census, only 60% of those aged 65-69 (boomers, in other words) were owner-occupiers, compared to nearly 52% of those who were aged 40-44. Compare that to the whopping 82% of those aged 65-69 in 2001 – the preceding Silent Generation – who owned their own homes."
"More discouraging statistics abound when you dig deeper. More than 60% of those aged 65 and over rely on superannuation for all or most of their income, meaning they make at the very most $33,000 a year if they’re married, and $21,000 if they’re living alone. Those over 65 are the most likely age group to have persistent low income, and more likely than other age groups to drop into low income territory. 2013 Census data shows only 8.7% of those aged 65 or over at the time got more than $60,000 a year in income, the largest share (25%) receiving between $15,001 and $20,000." https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/29-04-2019/stop-demonising-the-boomers/
Won't surprise anyone here, but popular delusions abound when younger generations lack the time and effort to discover what's really going on. Generalisations gain currency instead, feeding generational bias, whereas fact-based class analysis shows that the old triadic class structure has fractured, and the current fractured social structure provides a more realistic form of wealth and income grouping.
Bernard Hickey has an interesting take on Jacinda dumping the CGT.
Hickey goes on to highlight the volatile political landscape developing:
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/04/18/543088/jacinda-ardern-just-did-a-john-key
Agree, all relevant considerations. Shows just how out of touch rightists in Aotearoa have gotten in recent years, too. That pending demographic swing ought to be the primary design criterion in respect of a support party for the Nats.
Indeed. Opposed to the likes of Trump in the States who took advantage of both the growing demographic and wealth disparity.
Rightist here operate in a culture of moderation, or even passive pragmatism, whereas those over in Trumpland are vociferous in a culture of bigotry, denial, racism, you name it. So I think designing a new rightist party here is a different kettle of fish. How to be sensible, principled and future-oriented? That's what I'd design for, if I was with them. You can immediately see the problem eh? People saying "You're kidding. That's way less than 5%!"
With Labour's growing failure to deliver coupled with the lefts focus on race and identity, it reminded me of what Steve Bannon said.
Bannon was tapping into an old American tradition. As early as the 1680s, powerful white people were serving up racism to assuage the injuries of class, elevating the status of white indentured servants over that of enslaved black people.
Some two centuries later, W. E. B. Du Bois observed that poor white people were compensated partly by a “public and psychological wage”—the “wages of whiteness,” as the historian David Roediger memorably put it.
These wages pit people of different races against one another, averting a coalition based on shared economic interests.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-democrats-white-people-problem/573901/
So, Joan C. Williams is a professor and the director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. She does contemporary class analysis (unusual for a law prof):
"I wrote an essay for the Harvard Business Review in which I explained what I (a white, liberal law professor) thought so many of my white, liberal, highly educated peers were failing to see: that middle-income white people had voted for Trump not so much because they liked him (though many did) or because they were racist (though plenty were) but foremost as an expression of class anger. After the essay went viral, I expanded it into a book, White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America."
"All told, I’ve spent a good deal of the past two years talking with progressives about the broken relationship between elite white people and the white working class. (I use the term working class to refer to Americans with household incomes between the 30th and 80th percentiles. This group, which has median earnings of about $75,000, is also commonly referred to as the “middle class.”) Democrats presently have a unique opportunity to appeal to the working class, because their base is newly open to a populist message: Income inequality has gotten so bad that people across the political spectrum, college-educated and non-college-educated alike, are feeling a serious pinch. Bernie Sanders got 72 percent of the votes from Democrats under 30 in the 2016 primaries in part by decrying the rigged economy. In the past three decades, education costs have nearly tripled at public universities and doubled at private ones; at the same time, too many people with a college degree are settling for jobs that don’t require one."
The Pelosi blather stance hasn't contained any signal that the Dems are learning why their voters have been losing enthusiasm for liberal establishment thinking.
“Why not just wait for the white working class to die off?” asked an audience member at last year’s Berkeley Festival of Ideas. I get this question a lot, and I always reply: “Do you understand now why they voted for Trump? Your attitude is offensive, and Trump is their middle finger.”
Answer: no. Who would expect a Dem to understand anything? They even make our Labour folk here seem relatively clued up.
"An important, largely overlooked 2017 study by the Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group identified five distinct types of Trump voters. Two of them—Staunch Conservatives and Free Marketeers, who together account for more than half of Trump voters—are unlikely to ever go for Democrats in substantial numbers. (Free Marketeers may not like Trump’s trade wars, but many cheer his gutting of regulations.) The other two big blocs, American Preservationists and Anti-elites, each include about a fifth of Trump voters, and believe that the economy is rigged in favor of the wealthiest Americans. (The final bloc, the Disengaged, accounted for 5 percent of Trump voters.)"
Such sophisticated usage of identity-politics is rare in political analysis. If it were to replace stereotype-driven over-generalisations, there would be a drop in the banality level of blog commentary.
It is difficult when someone abuses you for doing nothing. Like abuse for an absence without any context or understanding just based on their own sad lives – still hurtful and hateful though imo.
After the murders of our Muslim brothers and sisters in Christchurch I put lots of links and articles up to try and create change. A change for the better where hate and supremacy ideas are discarded, where toxic 'whiteness' and toxic 'masculinity' can be put away to allow non-toxic interactions and connections, to allow others into the space normally reserved for non-others. Some have taken that as an attack on them – if they are toxic then yes you need to change, if not then you don't.
I have been shell shocked by the carnage in Sri Lanka and have really struggled to find a way to talk about it. So much pain.
This link tells some of the stories from the horror over there.
I'm sending love to the synagogue victims too – and to all victims of hate murders.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/28/san-diego-synagogue-shooting-rabbi-wounded
A change for the better where hate and supremacy ideas are discarded, where toxic 'whiteness' and toxic 'masculinity' can be put away to allow non-toxic interactions and connections, to allow others into the space normally reserved for non-others. Some have taken that as an attack on them
Absolutely there is no question that Anglo-Europeans have dominated the past 200 years of world history. There is nothing new about this, at all points in our history there always was at least one dominant empire or culture that led the way for a time.
But since the end of WW2 something entirely new has been going on. For most of human history empires endured for centuries or even millenia, but this is no longer true. The American's barely managed 50 years, the Chinese I predict will struggle to match even that … the age of empire is over. It's dying before our eyes. This 'white supremacy' trope you're so obsessed with is already a zombie, the British Empire is long gone, the Americans are like the road runner off the edge of the cliff waiting for gravity to take hold.
There are already more middle class Indians and Chinese than there are white people altogether. Almost 4 billion people have escaped absolute poverty and entered a basic middle class life. Another 4 billion will follow in the next few decades. Twenty years ago places like Panama were desperately undeveloped, now I have on my cellphone pictures taken in a small town supermarket indistinguishable from anything in New Zealand. The world is changing at incredible speed everywhere.
The scientific revolution began with just a relative handful of intellectual giants. People like Newton, Leibniz and Kepler were systemically developing extraordinary ideas at a time when their next door neighbours had barely gotten over burning witches at the stake. For 200 years progress was slow and sporadic, but then from around the middle of the 1800's everything changed. There was a literal explosion of technologies and engineering, resulting in the transformation of human life. The human revolution may have started within a small cultural and elitist confine, but was rapidly extended everywhere.
Now the revolution is global and there is no going back to our old ways. Every nation, every culture has arrived at this unique point in our evolution along their own path. It was often a dark, brutal and tragic journey, but we made it. We are all the children of thousands of generations of men and women who overcame impossible odds to gift to us this moment in time.
Because this is the moment in our story when we cease being children and take up our adult burdens. We are now responsible for our future as a species, and we must now repay our unfathomable debt to the planet who nurtured us thus far. This is the moment when open our inner eyes and seek out the hidden gems in each one of us, when the transcendent connections become visible. This is when we join together as one human race in all of our glorious diversity. There is nothing 9 billion humans cannot achieve.
But this vision will crumble to bitter ashes if we cannot take the first step, we must first learn to trust each other again. Trustworthiness is the foundation of all things, without we will be lost.
Just pretend words from you – oh great gatekeeper of the status quo – self centred feathering of your own toxic nest – yucky
I expressed myself clearly and sincerely in an attempt to repair the chasm between us. I hoped you might have risen to that.
"You just didn't care. You don't give a shit about the victims of these massacres, they were nothing to you if they couldn't be used to energise your anger and resentment."
That is what you said to me yesterday. If you think your insincere, toady comments are going to get me to 'repair' with a sack of shit like you white bollox you are sadly mistaken. I can't stand 'white' supremacists mainly because they are so dim.
a sack if shit like you white bollox…
And yet you shout rascist at any opportunity while also sending messages of support …out the other side of your face ..
You understand the negative feedback loop your conflicting messages create…right?
there is no conflict – bit like when I call you weeze and pooze one two – a play on words if you will, an attempt at wit, biting and direct for sure, to make sure the point is received.
You seem really confused and desperate for friends – maybe stick to what you know – umm lol sorry lol – real world stuff is not your strong point
That you don't recognize the conflict your comments so emphatically portray, is unsurprising…it is why you can flip flop between outright abuse in one comment, then in another seek to signal your humility in offering condolence…
You flat out called others racist on a regular basis…
How are your comments not deeply confused, conflicted…and rank hypocrisy?
flip flop is an interesting one – you may struggle with this but here we go – people can hold ideas in their head that sometimes appear to conflict – this is called dialectical thinking – here's some very basic information for you to learn about this – and I've added the link to an interesting question – see if you can work out why it's relevant one two.
"Dialectical thinking is thinking that approaches insight by reconciling opposites. For example, international peace is a good thing, but nations must protect the interests of citizens — those statements can come into conflict, especially for people who believe in both. The reconciliation may be that nations must cease to be in one world, or it may be that peace is unattainable, or that citizens’ paramount interest is that their nation not go to war, or several other possible statements that allow both statements to be true."
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-dialectical-thinking-and-critical-thinking
All at an elementary level…you clearly have misunderstood…which is another indicator why you apparently can't recognize your own behaviours…
It's not posaible to reconcile your own behaviour if you don't recognize that a pattern exists…
Jekyll and Hyde is more where you're at, mm…
No that isn't why it is relevant to you one two – try again.
Shitwit mardymardy. Never bite shit.
gave it a go trev, to be fair
He wouldn't – MM can spell racist properly
Why did you join in 1-2. You really are a space-filler here, and a contentious one that I don't look to for authentic comment. Have you another home?
And The Alien loves to get a kick in. A bit of argy bargy gets you all excited apparently.
Coming from you, Ghandi one minute,
Dr EvilMini Me the next, that's more than a little hypocritical, but at least I'm consistent. If I want to stab someone in the back, I always aim for the face so they see it coming.Anyway, lesson learned, 12 is spelling ‘racist’ correctly now.
At times, I feel so close and then my hopes get dashed, in such a cold unthinking way …
Change your login to etc'. and wing it for the win
greywarsshark.
well said 1000%
I couldnt have said it better except others besides The Alien are roaming around here trying to tick off us all with their 'kicks'. like;
James.
Ad
Gosman.
Psyco milt.
ect'.
I feel left out! How disappointing!
You know you've made it when you get on some wet blanket's top five list. 🙄
Is coming here just a way to fill your time in The Alien? A personal mental fitness test that you undertake cutting and thrusting at other commenters and their opinions. Just an empty exercise which you consider is thinking about politics.
I am here because I can see that politics and the world is unravelling and most of what we have been doing and thinking over the past century has been wrong, as it has led to this present which finds us not ready to think our way to a reasonable future, but to acknowledge what is the actual present.
So amuse yourself child-mind, you have noticed how I cast around for different approaches to life and going-forward which could be helpful. We have to be adaptive, in finding a broad path to follow that all who are serious about living a better way that is practical and sustainable.
Belief in white supremacy is an unusually banal form of conservatism. Multiculturalism made it irrelevant, globalisation left it behind, so anyone still clinging to that belief is delusional at best, sociopathic at worst.
I recently read a book about cultural elites in America. Only some are white, making a strong case that skin colour is incidental to success (regardless of birth advantage). In The Triple Package: What Really Determines Success (2014), Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld identify three components which, in combination, create remarkable success for groups. Implications for political collaboration are obvious!
A superiority complex is the first. Not, as usually understood, in a person, but shared as a key feature of the identity of the group: a "deeply internalised belief".
The second seems almost contradictory: insecurity. It provides a powerful incentive for group motivation. It "runs deep in every one of America's most successful groups".
The third is impulse control (traditionally part of self-discipline). It's "the ability to resist temptation, especially the temptation to give up in the face of hardship or quit instead of persevering at a difficult task."
They document this theory effectively in respect of various groups using social science stats. Also, there are 78 pages of notes prior to the index! "Every one of the premises underlying the theory of the triple package is supported by a well-substantiated and relatively uncontraversial body of empirical evidence." They cite various studies to prove that point.
From the intro: "One of the two authors has written for almost twenty years about successful ethnic minorities all over the world" – that's Amy Chua. "The other has written extensively on how the desire to live in the present has come increasingly to dominate modern Western culture, particularly in America, undermining the country's ability to live for the future." So that's why the US leads the way of climate-change denial.
Globalisation has horrors all its own. The nation state is the unit of political accountability – globalism is a way for feckless politicians to betray their constituents. This is a lot of the reason behind Brexit – high migration into the UK (fully a quarter of the per capita migration into NZ) under EU rules actually causing poorer outcomes for UK citizens.
So where is the accountability for these lousy outcomes? Corporatized governments love to gift cheap migrant labour to corporates in hopes of largess – how are we to contain their sociopathy?
globalism is a way for feckless politicians to betray their constituents.
All forms of governance has it horrors, from the family unit upward. Our present forms of globalisation are manifestly inadequate, but that is only reason to improve them rather than discard them.
It took Europe centuries of bloody strife to get from dozens of tiny duchies and warlord fiefdoms to the nation state entities we have today. You'd better hope we get to a democratically accountable form of world federation much quicker than that.
What saddens me is that we are facing real problems – a backlog of environmental issues that have been left to fester while our self-styled representatives have sold off our dreams to chase the bright elusive butterfly of free market monetarism.
They can't even fess up to having made a total bollocks of everything they've touched, but they're relying on a unified response to these crisies, as if they have some right to our support, these wankers who've sold us out at every opportunity and have been consistently too arrogant to listen when we've tried to help them mitigate their most egregious errors.
Perhaps time for a name change to Resigned Logix, I'm tired of hearing about how the world changes over aeons, the get used to it approach.
I'm tired of hearing about how the world changes over aeons, the get used to it approach.
Maybe it was where I wrote above "The world is changing at incredible speed everywhere."
Was that it?
Hi RL
It is always interesting to read your comments. My take is that nature will take its course. Everything dies before something new comes. We are the Dinosaur's of our millennium and with the current pollution and obvious unwillingness to do something about this, it will not matter what race or skin color or what the exchange rate of the day is. The damage is so much bigger than all of this. The technology to do some serious work exists but ideology, envy, greed etc is not having it. I doubt we have any time left for philosophy 101, let alone for some old fashion political discussion about the pro and cons of human endeavour. The younger generation senses the urgency but unfortunately, with those very old men running large nations, I fear chances are very very slim to get out of this one.
Indeed
I fear chances are very very slim to get out of this one.
Objectively, from a purely materialistic perspective I can only agree with you. You make a case for despair that is hard to argue with.
Some people here persistently misread me, imagining that I argue for nothing but the status quo. Quite the opposite is true; I point to the extraordinary transformation in the material aspects of human life this past 200 years as evidence that radical change is not only possible, but that we are living in it right now.
And that while Western civilisation may have been dominant it this process to date, this is nothing like the apex or end point of the narrative. The next phase is nothing less than the transformation of the human heart across the entire planet; everyone knows this.
As a simple matter of personal faith I choose to believe in the unlimited potential of not only each single one of us, but in the as yet unsuspected, untapped potential when we learn how to spiritually connect collectively.
I'm not talking of the trivial case where like-minded people make easy company with each other, but what happens when people who don't like each other, who clash horribly and contend bitterly not only find ways to trust each other, but are able to put into action that deep mystery in Matthew 5:44 "Love thine enemy". Then we will work what would look like miracles.
This is the pivotal point in our human evolution. A dear friend once said to me that religious history to date was primarily about the development of the sanctified individual, but now we had to consider what the sanctified society might look like. We have only the dimmest of ideas, no more than any random person living in 1820 might grasp the nature of our lives in 2020.
I choose optimism and irrational defiance of the odds because it is the only moral option available to me. All other paths lead to death.
RL, I really admire you for your stance. It wont be our call though, China and India polluting the planet at a rate that is/will be irreversible.
We need to look no further than NZ: at the rubbish loads being thrown into the landscape, drink water being used to bath cows, or sucked out of the ground at a rate that will most likely salinate the water table
Yes, we should fight "the dying of the light" just to make sure that any ever so slight sliver of a chance is taken up to get things turned around.
Thank you for holding the torch.
Thanks for droppin in Foreign Waka, and I follow your reasoning closely. This time you are truly prescient.
"I fear chances are very very slim to get out of this one."
That's how I see it too. The enormous increases in material wealth, comfort, convenience and security, and the enormous global population increase, have brought us collectively to a precipice.
What needs to be done is obvious – we must back up. Wealthy nations need to accept significantly lower standards of living (and spread (gift) their wealth globally), and nations still in the grip of crippling population growth need to find practical and moral ways to curb reproduction rates (a global one child policy might do the trick, if it could be maintained for a couple of generations – this might also precipitate localised collapses, but it would be worth the risk IMHO).
Neither of these changes will happen on the scale and at the pace needed to avoid toppling over the edge of our precipice – that's if they happen at all!
An alternative response involves continuing on the same path, further ramping up the pace of change and propelling ourselves skywards in the somewhat magical hope that humankind will evolve 'wings' before the 'splat'.
Don't want to be a pessimist – I prefer optimism. But we risk outsmarting ourselves if we try to negotiate with gravity.
I'm with RL re faith in our future but have a problem with "we". I acknowledge holism is best, but I see humanity currently like a waka in which the conservative paddlers are trying to take us one way, and the progressive paddlers are pulling us another way.
You could break it down to past-oriented vs future-oriented. Thinking we will get a consensus on trajectory seems currently unrealistic. Best case scenario is more paddlers will switch to heading for the future.
Innate human nature predisposes most folk to conceive the future in terms of the past – we recycle attitudes & values we are attached to. For the first time ever we collectively must engage a traumatic global process, but aversion to accepting the necessity runs deep.
Things will have to get worse to shift those addicted to complacency, conformity, denial, business as usual etc. Ultimately, though, collective resolution must prevail over despair. When the going gets tough, the tough get going, as the old saying goes. Determination will get us there, regardless how much damage gets done in the process.
As regards the thinking of the paddlers, neither left nor right will prevail. Both/and logic will. Agreement on whatever works, forged under increasing pressure, becomes the only way to survive.
Infrequent visitor here, but I appreciate your deep trawling for truth.
Really interesting post Redlogix, (gee it’s got me posting and not just reading here!)
A lot in there that I hadn’t thought of but makes sense, really like the point about the age of empires being over.
Certainly lessons from the past but your right, the future will be different to what we think.
RNZ: "The New Zealand Herald yesterday reported that National leader Simon Bridges was expected to deliver a strong message to his caucus tomorrow that the only path to power was through discipline and unity." https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/387990/simon-bridges-responds-to-national-leadership-and-unity-rumours
"However, Mr Bridges told Morning Report he never said that and the comments he made were in reference to a regional conference he attended in Hamilton."
"I've come from a regional conference in Hamilton, they delivered a really clear message to me in our conservation". If you read the tea-leaves here, he seems to be sending the signal that conservation is just as viable a path to power as discipline & unity. Not many National Party members realise that the Bluegreens are more than a pet poodle, so he's positioning them as a pathway to power ever so subtly… 😎
He prolly needs to praxis saying 'conversation' franko.
The Grauniad, AKA Pravda, AKA Völkischer Beobachter is not merely a dull newspaper, it's a propaganda vehicle, “Assange’s principal media tormentor" and a "collaborator with the secret state."
Part 1 of 3
The night of Assange’s arrest, BBC Newsnight presenter Katie Razzell began in standard ‘impartial’ manner in describing his status: “Out of his hiding place and under arrest”.
‘Hiding place’ is BBC newspeak for ‘political asylum’. The implication was that Julian Assange had hidden in an attempt to evade justice. This was fake news, repeated on the airwaves and across the BBC website.
One of the most notorious examples of Assange-related fake news was the front-page accusation in the Guardian last November that Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaigns manager, had met Assange in the embassy three times. No shred of evidence has ever been produced for this claim, which WikiLeaks and Manafort have both vehemently denied, and the story has been widely regarded as fake from virtually the hour of its publication. Luke Harding, the lead journalist on the story, and his editors Paul Johnson and Katharine Viner, have never apologised or retracted the story; nor have they responded to the many challenges about it. As we have previously noted, the Guardian has a disreputable record in publishing nasty, abusive and derogatory pieces about Assange.
A Guardian editorial on the eve of Assange’s expulsion at least stated that Assange should not be extradited to the US: “[He] has shone a light on things that should never have been hidden”. However, John Pilger was scathing of the paper he called “Assange’s principal media tormentor [and] a collaborator with the secret state”, noting that its editorial had “scaled new weasel heights”. He continued: “The Guardian has exploited the work of Assange and WikiLeaks in what its previous editor called ‘the greatest scoop of the last 30 years’. The paper creamed off WikiLeaks’ revelations and claimed the accolades and riches that came with them.
“With not a penny going to Julian Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, turned on their source, abused him and disclosed the secret password Assange had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing leaked US embassy cables.”.
The editorial misled its readers on why Assange had sought refuge: “When he first entered the Ecuadorian embassy he was trying to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations of rape and molestation. That was wrong”.
As we saw above, this is a grotesque twisting of the facts. Indeed, the Guardian editorial was steeped in sophistry: “the Assange case is a morally tangled web. He believes in publishing things that should not always be published – this has long been a difficult divide between the Guardian and him”.
Pilger demolished the Guardian’s obfuscation: “These ‘things’ are the truth about the homicidal way America conducts its colonial wars, the lies of the British Foreign Office in its denial of rights to vulnerable people, such as the Chagos Islanders, the exposé of Hillary Clinton as a backer and beneficiary of jihadism in the Middle East, the detailed description of American ambassadors of how the governments in Syria and Venezuela might be overthrown, and much more. It is all available on the WikiLeaks site.”
http://coldtype.net/Assets19/pdf/ColdType183.May2019.pdf?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_trials_of_julian_assange_coldtype_special_issue_is_now_on_line&utm_term=2019-04-27
She's a hard road working out which news outlet one can trust.
I have it on fairly good authority that The Guardian is the place to go to find out what the establishment wants you, as a 'leftie', to think.
After groping around in the convoluted cess-pit that is the Jackie Walker persecution and the commentary from the Guardian on the issue…https://witchhuntfilm.org/
Somewhat surprised that Kim Hill passed up the opportunity to put Guardian journalist Freedland on a hot griddle.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018692568/jonathan-freedland-the-man-without-shame-has-tremendous-power
Somewhat surprised that Kim Hill passed up the opportunity to put Guardian journalist Freedland on a hot griddle.
I was not at all surprised. She has a history of remaining silent as Grauniad hacks lie to her face. Did you hear her allow the notorious and discredited Luke Harding to chunter on uninterrupted last year?
She has a long and dishonorable record of allowing U.S. government functionaries to smear and ridicule Julian Assange…..
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-hatchet-man-speaks-alex-gibney.html
Rosemary,
"trust nothing you hear or see.".
Only trust your own powerful 'women's premonition.'.
I remember when Freedland was the American correspondent on Kim's Nine to Noon. His book when he got back to Britain was about the virtues of the American political system his country could gain from. Nup.
His book when he got back to Britain was about the virtues of the American political system…
A pamphlet then?
Or perhaps a simple flyer?
I got angry listening to the Politics section of RNZ Nine to Noon today when it was revealed the supposed Left spokesman had worked for/ believed in the Rogernomics govt. The guy who tried to tell us the Labour Party preferred Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders. Why don't you put a pillow over my face and stifle me. Mike Williams being cute about that revolutionary govt before him, though he obviously provided all the details about the Left's objection to Rogernomics for Paul Holmes's intelligent column on the matter. Says EVERYTHING about Labour.
And Trotter who could talk to point being forced out of the main media. Says a lot about RNZ also under Richard his-communist-father-a-much-better-man-than-him.
Why don't you put a pillow over my face and stifle me.
No, no sumsuch, no need for anything that drastic.
Smiles, and maybe even laughter when you close your eyes and picture Mike Williams on a Lime scooter.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12206865
Medialens has consistently, convincingly and exhaustively exposed The Guardian journalists over the past ten years.
Good one.
Hi Marty, A bit of a pedantic question… are you happy about the decision because of the political side of it, i.e. Tamaki is potentially politically toxic?
Don't get me wrong, I am no fan of Tamaki nor fundamentalist anything.
Tamaki has his 'constituents' in prison and as we know there are many ways to skin a cat. By that I mean reaching out and communicating with inmates must take many forms and appearances.
I oppose tamaki, the man up program, toxic christianity, and lying. If prisoners use faith to help them sort stuff out I am all for it – I'm not convinced a person doing tamaki's plan ends up better or worse tbh.
Tamaki has his 'constituents' in prison and as we know there are many ways to skin a cat.
If one of those ways is a "Man Up" programme telling domestic abusers it's their wives' fault for provoking them, it would be better if the cat kept its skin on.
Mighty big 'if' there PM.
What 'if' the program was useful for some inmates and provided support for them to make the changes needed in their life?
I get we aren't supposed to like Tamaki, but we need to be doing something for our growing prison population, and perhaps the 'Bishop' has a way.
Not that much of an "if", really.
Oops.. perhaps not.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/112332984/prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-says-brian-tamaki-going-about-getting-programme-in-prison-the-wrong-way
Well said Kelvin Davis. Brian Tamaki is pretty self-serving with double heapings of pudding. And a bit of Christmas holly on the top for the look of the thing.
Good on Kelvin Davis. And how can you have social services delivered by a dickhead like Tamaki who believes homosexuals are evil?
Man Up sounds like macho bullshit to me.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12093681
Israel destroyed the Notre Dame of Gaza – but there was only silence from the West
by TONY GREENSTEIN, 28 April 2019
Since 2009 53 mosques and churches have been vandalised or set fire to in Israel. As is normally the case with attacks on non-Jews, the Israeli Police have not exerted themselves. Only 9 indictments to date have been filed by the police.
What makes this worse is that there are sections of Israeli society who openly justify the destruction of churches and mosques on religious grounds.
https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/04/should-we-set-fire-to-churches-mosques.html
Yes. Like the sections of Israeli society in this story… some appear not to like The Daily Blog too much – that's their loss; good thinks happen there too, such as this. How to stamp out other people's sacred places? With glittering balls and booze, that's how.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/04/24/guest-blog-lois-griffiths-the-crusades-have-not-ended/
Thanks for that, JO. It's a pity we never hear Lois Griffiths on RNZ any more. She was "let go" after 2005.
Yesterday we sent this report to media.
Government needs “National NZ Port Strategy”
Sunday, 28 April 2019, 1:10 pm
Press Release: Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre
Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre press release- 28- April 2019.
“Government needs “National NZ Port Strategy” so Ports work together not fighting over freight”
A new “National NZ Port Strategy” is needed here in NZ for export of freight.
Today on News hub’s ‘The nation’ show there was a ‘Port discussion’ that was enlightening to us.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/shows/2019/04/exclusive-no-point-investing-in-northport-without-building-rail-link-working-group.html
After watching the panel discussion about the mess our NZ Port issues are about, we now see clearly that the current Government needs a new “National NZ Port Strategy Plan” for NZ Ports to be actively working together instead of fighting over freight, as the current model of ‘independent’ scrapping over freight is damaging both the regions and the loss of residential wellbeing in regions who undercut other Ports to get freight income from capturing ‘lower cost freight’ through their Port because those Ports are now operating at a loss and now forced to sell part of their Port as Napier Port is attempting to do now.
Napier Port are leaving us with a legacy of a residential environmental disaster in their ‘wake.’
History of CEAC meetings with two of our central Port executives; – At both Napier and Gisborne ports.
2016:
Our Committee was invited to the Napier Port boardroom in November 2016 to discuss the massive truck noise and pollution affecting all Napier residents living near the ‘truck network roads’ to and from Napier port, and we sought funding for mitigation for smooth quiet road surfacing and noise barriers and Napier Port said they had no money then.
At that meeting we were sadly advised that sending logs out of NZ was virtually not viable for them, as the Port staff advised us ‘they could not compete with Wellington Port’ who were actually sending their logs out at such a low cost that Napier Port could not afford to compete for freight at those charges.
2011:
In 2011 we brokered a meeting with the Gisborne ‘Eastland Port’ Executives as we were asking them to use rail to move logs to their Port for export rather than using trucks.
The executives also confirmed to us at the meeting that the cost to send each log out of NZ was so low that they made very little money on shipping logs.
So it is now painfully clear now that we need to send a clear message to Government that the whole transportation of our export freight from our NZ Ports is in need of a reset policy.
One that now can offer all forms of ‘land transport’ using rail and road options to make freight costs lower so freight is viable to ship from NZ while giving all Ports adequate funding to offer residential citizens adequate mitigation to lower the transportation effects of road truck freight noise and pollution adversely affecting all those living near busy export road networks to their local port facilities.
Shane Jones, as Regional Development Minister, was also shown on a video clip saying he will be setting up an election policy to change the way the ports in NZ operate “independently” as he said it is not acceptable and needs to change”.
We welcome Shane Jones’ position on this change.
So we seek the labour caucus acceptance to a real Port policy change away from the current conflicting manner that all ports are currently undercutting the charges of freight at the expense of residents and Ports not having any capital to offer residents any mitigation.
All HB/Gisborne residents living near Port bound trucks are now facing a legacy of a residential environmental disaster in their ‘wake’
http://www.scoop.co.nz/?from=top-banner-purotu-1
Business
National weekly rent edges closer to $500
Monday, 29 April 2019, 9:13 am
Press Release: Trademe
New Zealand’s national median weekly hit $495 in March after climbing 5.3 per cent on last year, as every region in the country experienced an annual increase in rent, according to the latest Trade Me Rental Price Index.
Trade Me’s Head of Rentals Aaron Clancy said the country’s rental market was looking very healthy and this was the first time in five months that every region in the country experienced a year-on-year increase. “There’s a high demand for rentals across the country with a significant 28 per cent increase in the number of enquiries compared to March 2018.
Labour wants to impose control over the NZ media
https://twitter.com/avancenz/status/1120933475484176384
No it is not govt policy, Andrea Vance is just stirring, she know's it isn't, and you know it isn't. Hooten of course believes his own spin. Next week Labour will be accused of being flat earthers if a govt MP says they can see for miles and miles.
It may not be Government policy just yet, but it seems it is something the Government is considering.
The media should face the same consequences for lying and inciting violence as MPs do.
How Russia wants to control the internet
Have you Russiagate Truthers heard of the Five Eyes? The NSA?
I've heard of 5 eyes and the NSA but I'm yet to fully grasp your point.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/456667-internet-uk-control-vpn/
It’s not easy being a government in the age of the internet and pretending to have power over something that is essentially beyond control, but that doesn’t stop them trying.
The British government is ignoring its previous online mishaps and outlined tough new measures to police the internet, which is all well and good, but all it’s going to do is make Britain a global center for Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
A White Paper last week detailed how the UK wants to bring in a “code of practice” for social networks and internet firms, giving it the power to be able to fine them if they breach it and perhaps even block offending sites.
Freedom of speech confined within the "code of practice". The global influence of China?
Yes Chairman
I would not be at all surprised there.
However I did glace at a program on BBC today about Google power over us and the guy explaining the power of Google takes every letter we place on Google into a large search engine to send to millions to attach their interest of selling to you their items.
The google system uses algorithms to identify what we look at all the time.
Scary eh?
Bet China are using this system all the time too.
Yes, cleangreen. Big Brother is growing and becoming more technologically advanced.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/technology/ecuador-surveillance-cameras-police-government.html
A week back I thought I was being darkly funny when I suggested outsourcing NZ’s control of the internet to the Chinese.
Naomi Klein was warning of this over a decade ago
American giants like IBM, Honeywell and General Electric are all in on it.
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/05/chinas-all-seeing-eye
The google system uses algorithms to identify what we look at all the time.
Why I use Brave.
Hell I'd vote for him! If nothing else he has balls. Aussie candidate shares social media post claiming world run by Jewish shapeshifting lizards.
https://www.news.com.au/national/federal-election/federal-election-2019-live-on-the-campaign-trail-on-monday-april-29/live-coverage/4c4e7062bfa29b1ca6994ad40a344028
And after David Icke was banned from Australia too
Of all of the David Icke alternative media view of the world order, he decides to believe the one about Jews being the ones who are descended from "the reptilians" …
Lovetosee the proponents of this cite evidence in Jewish DNA (warning what Jewish DNA, do not have either common Y chromosome or maternal ancestry).
WiFi causing the rising infertility? Short term exposure causes declines in sperm motility and raises their death rates.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=12226105
When it comes to the largest companies in the world like those selling cellphones, it is wise to ignore all PR and go to the science. I expect this study will lead to 'debate' rather than change. But there it is.
I can't find the study referred to in the article (Kumiko Nakata is a bona fide fertility researcher). But there's others.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4074720/
And again
"Cell phone radiation may negatively affect sperm quality in men by decreasing the semen volume, sperm concentration, sperm count, motility, and viability, thus impairing male fertility."
http://www.journal-ina.com/article.asp?issn=2394-2916;year=2018;volume=5;issue=1;spage=1;epage=5;aulast=El-Hamd
Wethebleeple;
Thanks for putting that up as I was about to after I spotted it, so Wifi causes infertility to as we put up a post two years ago that high frequencies from 'smart meters' also cause cancer and other affects.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2644196/
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/387843/secret-green-party-donor-to-match-contributions-up-to-25k
They are correct in saying that.
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
https://youtu.be/hlfQVvsNLFk
I see some producers are still trying to set Eco Maori up puppets
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
https://youtu.be/GKSRyLdjsPA
Some people are trying to blame me for their actions
Eco Maori worrys about OUR Kaumatua not finding the time to pass there great knowledge of speaking on the Pae Pae and other great Maori culture knowledge on to Te Mokopuna we must never let this knowledge go as that is what some peoples goals to make Maori look so bad that te Mokopuna don't want to have anything to do with OUR GREAT CULTURE .Maori have to do what ever it takes to keep OUR CULTURE Pumping. We must look after our kaumatua and there knowledge there is HEAPS that has already been misplaced or losted if we try hard enough we will find it Kia kaha Whanau.
But historical traumas related to colonisation, cultural and language suppression through assimilation policies along with a move from rural to urban areas, which broke ties with iwi and hapū, had all directly impacted on the length and quality of Māori lives.
"Everything around them was in turmoil," he said.
The flow on effects ares still being felt as well, Edwards said, with some Māori lacking in confidence or ability to fulfil cultural expectations placed on them as they got older, including taking on speaking roles at the marae
But historical traumas related to colonisation, cultural and language suppression through assimilation policies along with a move from rural to urban areas, which broke ties with iwi and hapū, had all directly impacted on the length and
The flow on effects ares still being felt as well, Edwards said, with some Māori lacking in confidence or ability to fulfil cultural expectations placed on them as they got older, including taking on speaking roles at the marae.
Another sobering statistic is the gap between Māori and non-Māori life expectancy, which is about seven years. Life expectancy for Māori females was 77.1 years, when compared to non-Māori females at 83.9 years.
Māori male life expectancy sat at 73 years, with non-Māori men at 80.3 years.
"And I ask, is that a just society, is that a society we can be proud of
Ka kite ano links below P.S I am talking to my WHANAU about this issue of our GREAT kite aronui
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/103759887/tide-turning-regarding-mori-experiences-of-ageing-academic
Some people still under estimate Eco Maori just blind with HATE.
https://youtu.be/xkVMdwPkEyg
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute .
https://youtu.be/Us-TVg40ExM
Kia ora Newshub.
I know why simon didn't get rolled I have hinted at that.
Methanthamean is causing heaps of damage to OUR society why is methamphetamine higher in places with high tangata whenua populations its a big problem in Te tairawhiti as well a North land both with 45 % Maori populations.? ? ? ? ??
We must be vigilant on our boarder security as if we get a bad disease that will cost many billions lost income to NZ.
Its sad all the WARS being waged around the world at the minute I have said that it's the tamariki that suffer the most from WAR fools don't GET IT.
I have come to the conclusion that intelligent people under estimate there mahi + the carbon barons money influenceing society that climate change is a hoaxes that has lead to the under estimate of glaciers melt and other facts about climate change .
The beluga whale is a awesome creature we are there Guardians .
Condolences to the people of Mozambican I did not realise that it was the same country hit six weeks ago by a hurricane OUR African cousin are feeling the brunt of human caused climate change Kia kaha people .
That's good that soft plastic recycling in Auckland has resumed its sad that the rest of the country could not be included but is all about being cost effective.
Condolences to John the African American directors Whanau I like his movies I have seen quite a few of them . Ka kite ano P.S had a bit of pressure to deal with lately like water of a ducks back
Gregory you are barking up the wrong tree who can afford those expensive driving lessons you are taking about another point us how much driving do you actually do on NZ Roads not much at all I say it will be a plane ride on most of your journeys Deflecting the road toll road problems from the people WHOM are responsible for it.
Kia ora The AM Show
Insurance premiums rising it will be a luxury for the wealthy cause by global warming and climate change can you see how the common people are going to suffer this is just one phenomenon .
I have a food allergy if I see kai moana I eat it I just found out why my children did not eat fish when they were younger long story it use to piss me off heaps of fish and only I eat it . the epiepen Pharmac issue I hope Pharmac can come up with a viable solution to the problem. Maybe get someone to come up with a better cheaper design to admit the drugs many ways to solve a problem.
Children living at home till 25 because its to expensive to live in Aotearoa . That's the side effects of having a banker run the country for nine years setting the system up to serve the wealthy it displaces Alot of others and causes a big mess I see this all around the world . ?
We should never stop learning new things when we don't we end up stuck in the PAST like some neanderthal.
I agree with Chris people need to make sure there houseing is safe from the effects of climate change Yea plastic is a big problem for all of Papatuanukue. And I seen it with my own eyes building on land filled in with sand a tsunami or earth quake will make a big mess of these houses . It's cool having a well known person taking about plastic waste issues the Papatuanukue has.
Ka kite ano P.S – – – – –
Ka pai to Hangi Masters NZ in Auckland Rewi to much we need to keep OUR culture pumping and Kai is a big part of our culture Kia kaha .