Open mike 29/04/2024
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The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/350259858/andrew-tates-trial-charges-rape-and-human-trafficking-can-start-romanian-court
Excellent news to start the day on,
Paula BennettChair of Pharmac. Payback for sourcing millions of donors money for election? All the old crony’s lining up for plush jobs. The fish is rotting. Stinks to high heaven.
Looks like good planning by Luxon to keep her engaged in Wellington on governance, rather than entertaining a run at the Auckland mayoralty.
I had heard a whisper that Simon Bridges was entertaining a run at the Auckland mayoralty. No idea if it's true or not. But, if he is, then making sure there are not two Right pollies splitting the vote is politics 101.
Not sure how being a less than stellar Minister shows you might make a good mayor. Except in his own mind maybe.
Good planning by Luxon? Nah. By someone behind the scenes maybe.
No doubt all of those sick people need to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
No need for them to suckle on the public teat and waste hard working kiwi's money on all this expensive medicine nonsense.
Not just that. Seymour the Minister in charge as well, he with an extremely neo-liberal agenda, and who knows how much 'influence' by big pharma. Things are bad enough already, but between the two of them, we should all be extremely worried where this is headed.
Paula Bennett Chair off Pharmac! Payment for her wonderful fund raising for last election? The fish is rotting… Something stinks.
And just like that- coincidence?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350259986/nz-politics-live-govt-announces-63b-pharmac-budget
That $1.7 billion increase is over 4 years. Assuming this is carefully spent by Pharmac on drugs that have the best overall effectiveness on health outcomes this is good news.
Of course the "Labour left an unfunded Pharmac deficit of $1.7 billion" is complete rubbish. I'm sick of this government telling lies like this.
Surely if they could find $1.7 billion for Pharmac they could have found $3 billion for a desperately needed efficient ferry service between the islands (including provision for rail) that would have had utility over 50 years?
New and expensive cancer drugs are part of the coalition agreement with ACT – twenty of them I believe. My partner has just finished six months of chemo (he is fine). The chemo suite in Nelson Hospital currently operates four days a week and will be going to five days once these new drugs are funded his chemo nurse told him. These are drugs that give people an extra few months.
That’s why David Seymour is Associate Health Minister – Pharmac.
Wow..1.7 billion to Pharmac, let’s see… hmmm..to my mathematically challenged brain that’s a whopping .3% per year or so increase in the budget or as the senior health professional in Chch said, enough to keep the lights on for a few more days. After 75 years I’ve never known a NZ Government to run on so much bullshit.
Our CoC government firmly believes in getting landLord wealth back on track.
God that's awful reading.
more of that obsessive women's rights stuff.
A social worker who was harassed by her employer and her professional body over he gender critical social media has been awarded 58,000 GBP by a tribunal judge. Her lawyer states this is unprecedented.
Also of note is the judge's words on freedom of expression and political belief,
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/social-worker-suspended-gender-critical-views-awarded-58000-2b7c337n7
sans paywall https://archive.is/UTJ4h#selection-2987.0-3001.214
That's yet another in a long line of cases that gender critical people, often women, have won.
Commentary from a UK lawyer,
https://twitter.com/legalfeminist/status/1784687053717774449
Meade's crowdfunder has an explanation of what she had been saying on SM.
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/unlawful-discrimination-by-soc/
But the article is hilarious. I just love this bit:
The relevant law has not changed since 2014 I believe. What actually happened is that this council uncritically accepted what ideologues told them the law was (even when it clearly was not) and then changed all their processes and policies to comply with a law that only existed in the imagination of activists. And now they have to pay up $$$
Every HR department in the UK should be holding an emergency meeting right now.
One would hope so.
What worries me is that both those organisations will have lawyers, and what where they thinking?
I really wish someone had kept a running list of all the cases.
Well maybe SexMatters, UK might have it?
They kept a log of academics being targeted – between Oct 2015-April 2023 https://sex-matters.org/resources/academics-targeted/
the first case I remember is from November 2019, about a doula who lost her job, from Doula U.K., for stating "only women can have babies".
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2250551/birth-coach-hounded-out-of-profession-by-transgender-activists-for-claiming-only-women-can-have-babies/
thanks, I hadn't seen that list before. It has a couple of useful links in it to other lists too. I have a feeling there might be an Australian academics website for anonymous stories.
And that's just the academics. The others like Fair Cop, and what happened to Marian Millar?
Then there are all the ones we never hear about.
"what happened to Marian Millar? "
28 Oct 2021
"the Scottish prosecutors dropped the case against her" [Marian Millar]
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/28/scottish-prosecutors-drop-transphobia-case-against-marion-millar
Also this response from the Chief executive of Social Work England.
"Colum Conway, chief executive of Social Work England, said the regulator was considering the judgement."
How come he can hold on to his job when they get the workings of the law so wrong. He couldn't even be bothered to apologise to her.
Poll results out tonight TV1
https://twitter.com/MaikiSherman/status/1784779696590512433
I don't think it will. Got me hooked though, lol.
Melissa Lee has been in the house for 18 odd years and that's all she can do. Bugger me, I can be that incompetent for half the money.
I think I've not said for a while our managerial class are like a penectomy or a mastectomy, you know the bit they cut off, staved of blood and dying.
Get that image out of your head.
"Melissa Lee has been in the house for 18 odd years"
That is 18 years on a good salary, a nice pension on leaving parliament.
Better still a job that doesn't asks for any qualifications, experience, knowledge, nor carry any accountability.
I know it gives any and every person the ability to become a MP, but still the absent of accountability is an invitation to "do what you like", as we now see with the Fast Track Act
Fast track to civil disobedience.
I'm in.
Wonder what plum(s) she'll pick up on leaving the House? Maybe an unripe damson or two, but nothing as ripe and succulent as Pullya's, I'll bet.