Open mike 29/12/2022

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 29th, 2022 - 60 comments
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60 comments on “Open mike 29/12/2022 ”

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  1. PsyclingLeft.Always 1
    29 December 2022 at 7:15 am

    Local dairy representatives say the SmokeFree 2025 Bill could wipe out the industry following an already challenging year.

    Dairy and Business Owners Group chairman Sunny Kaushal said 50 percent of dairy revenue comes from selling tobacco.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/481590/say-hello-to-ciggie-houses-dairies-say-smoking-bill-will-backfire

    Old Sunny …has some problems….one being this. IMO I dont see any downside to trying to prevent smoking..and all its associated Health problems.

    Action for Smokefree 2025 is a leading independent campaign voice for tobacco control measures in New Zealand.

    Its chair, professor Robert Beaglehole, said there are about 5000 preventable smoking deaths each year.

    "The poor have been left behind with inequalities in smoking rates unchanged over the last decade.

    "Almost one-third of the life expectancy gap between Māori and Pākehā is due to cigarette smoking."

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/481590/say-hello-to-ciggie-houses-dairies-say-smoking-bill-will-backfire

    whinge on.."Sunny" . Maybe the Nacts will listen.

    • DB Brown 1.1
      29 December 2022 at 8:12 am

      Having it less visible, less tolerated – is HUGELY helpful to quitting. Smoking is an insidious evil addiction and the claws dig in so deep.

      This Sunny character has already proven he's full of it and out to cause trouble for the government. As for the rest of us – puff away, you are merely a profit point to pricks such as these.

      Petty wee man.

      • Visubversa 1.1.1
        29 December 2022 at 8:44 am

        I notice that Sunny is not waving his shroud over the people who are fatally harmed by tobacco consumption. When your business model relies on selling a highly addictive product that kills about 50% of those who consume it – you can't complain about regulations.

    • millsy 1.2
      29 December 2022 at 9:13 am

      Sunny will not be happy until we have summary executions for ram raiders.

      I'm probably going to be banned for saying this, but a lot of these migrants seem to bring over some of their attitudes from their home country, ie no due process, police brutality, support for the death penalty, 'no work no eat' etc and so on.

      [You seem to be obsessed by executions, death penalty, and police brutality & violence. You copped a one-month ban for this quite recently and this is a behavioural issue on this forum. You are brave & honest (or stupid?) enough to show your true colours and nail them to the mast for everyone to see. However, you are skating on nano-thin ice with your insinuations about immigrants in general and about Mr Kaushal in particular. You also seem to ignore the fact that many immigrants come here for a better life and/or to escape the rules (and brutality) in their home countries. I could not see any hint or reason for this in the link. Therefore, you may want to retract and apologise. In any case, this is your warning – Incognito]

    • weston 1.3
      29 December 2022 at 10:04 am

      Once upon a time NZ was a fairly tolerant place at least within the working class people observed each others indulgences and excesses i think with more kindness than they do today although there seemed to be a general acceptance that those who over did it would pay the price !

      Why do you imagine PLA that your opinion is worth more than Sunny Kaushal's ?presumably he's an elected representative and its his job to represent his industry no ?If he sayes that the new rules around the sale and distribution of tobacco are flawed he's probably right !! Prohibition type thinking is already seeing tobacco smuggling into NZ from overseas countries where it is dirt cheap so what has been gained ?

      Its a ' no brainer ' that future governments will have to spend ever increasing amounts countering black market sales of tobacco imo a total waste of time and money and an occurrence which was totally predictable .

      Rather than denigrating and demeaning men who are simply doing their jobs and if you havnt got anything new, original or extra meaningfull on the subject why dont you just try minding your own damn business ?

      /

      • Jilly Bee 1.3.1
        29 December 2022 at 10:44 am

        Weston, I recall before Sunny jumped ship into the bosom of the National Party, he was a firm believer in having cigarettes and tobacco banned from dairies because of the harm to his dairy owners from robberies. Perhaps Chris Bishop has had a word in his ear.

        • Incognito 1.3.1.1
          29 December 2022 at 11:06 am

          An Indian community leader [Sunny Kaushal] in Auckland is calling for a ban on the sale of cigarettes as dairy robberies reach "epidemic" levels.

          …

          He [Sunny Kaushal] said the Government already had a plan for New Zealand to be smokefree by 2025, but called for it to be in put in place now.

          "The Government should stop the sale of cigarettes in New Zealand," Kaushal said.

          "We need to put a ban on this."​

          https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/104901370/call-for-ban-on-cigarette-sales-as-dairy-owners-live-in-fear-of-robberies

          That was a few years back but you know that a week is a long time in politics and people have short memories. Quite possibly Mr Kaushal asked for a light and saw it …

      • Patricia Bremner 1.3.2
        29 December 2022 at 11:09 am

        Weston, Those that over did it would suffer…… You forget secondary smoke, butts dropped in the street and drains. I was a smoker. It took me years to break the addiction.

        PLA's opinion is worth more than Sunny's. Peddling poison, then moaning about restrictions is akin to the speeding driver moaning about being in court after causing an accident. Selfish to the inth degree.

      • DB Brown 1.3.4
        29 December 2022 at 11:31 am

        Where's your evidence of this tobacco smuggling operation/s hmmm. You know you can import whole leaf, or simply grow it, right?

        • Cricklewood 1.3.4.1
          29 December 2022 at 11:56 am

          https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2022/09/investigation-finds-black-market-tobacco-being-sold-online-out-of-homes-to-avoid-taxation.html

          Easy to grow but reasonably tricky to ferment and dry it etc so it's more user freindly.

          Cigarettes are coming in from Asia it's relatively low risk high reward atm as it's an excise tax issue rather than a criminal one currently.

          • DB Brown 1.3.4.1.1
            29 December 2022 at 12:38 pm

            I stand corrected. Thanks.

            Don't tell the smokers but… curing it is far easier than an industry who wants you to think it's very hard would have you believe.

            I'm an ex-smoker, and for quite some time I grew tobacco. After the withdrawal from all the other chemicals in cigarettes, pure tobacco was rather nice. I craved the shop stuff for about a week though, as the formaldehyde et al. jitters left my system.

            From home grown, to a vape, to stopped. Took LONG YEARS. Couple of years off it all now. Cravings finally stopped except in very high stress.

            • Sacha 1.3.4.1.1.1
              29 December 2022 at 12:50 pm

              I did not know it needed to be treated other than by drying. What substances did you use?

              • DB Brown …
                29 December 2022 at 1:22 pm

                Moral dilemma!

                A long slow drying process really helps. So what you do is get a darning needle and nylon and thread the leaves then string them up so that they're just touching each other, and the humid micro-climate surrounding each leaf overlaps. NZ is helpful here in that we're often very humid to begin with, but otherwise you can raise humidity by having a lot of living plants in the room.

                A better way is to dry them in piles, but you have to remember to flip them every day religiously. being non religious, I hang them… to be safe.

                And… sunlight. A bit of indirect sunlight so the leaves are perpendicular to north and a wee bit of light hits each leaf edge each day. This helps break down all the chlorophyll I’m not sure how or why but it’s faster.

                If it's yellow or green in places it's not done. Brown it, right through.

                A friend sprayed whiskey and other nonsense on his, never saw the need for it, gimmicks for market. If you like a flavor, go for it.

      • PsyclingLeft.Always 1.3.5
        29 December 2022 at 1:19 pm

        My….Opinion, is that Mr Sunny sees what he wants. To profit. From a proven harmful, and extremely addictive drug.

        You say….

        Once upon a time NZ was a fairly tolerant place at least within the working class people observed each others indulgences and excesses i think with more kindness

        Yea about that. Maybe my Opinion touched your own nicotine nerve? Anyway. For all those poor Hospo workers, and the children of smokers..who had no choice….but to suffer. Until things changed. For the better.

        Second hand smoke………..

        https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/secondhand-smoke/health.html

        Before indoor smoking bans were widely in place in New Zealand, it was estimated that about 350 people died every year because of exposure to second-hand smoke.21

        Children can get particularly sick if they breathe in second-hand smoke because their lungs are smaller, they have a faster breathing rate and their immune systems are still developing. 22 They also often have no way of getting away from the smoke.

        https://www.smokefree.org.nz/smoking-its-effects/second-hand-smoke

        So…stick your "kindness" aye.

    • Patricia Bremner 2.1
      29 December 2022 at 12:18 pm

      devil classic. lol

    • Mike the Lefty 2.2
      29 December 2022 at 2:35 pm

      Now if you were a REAL man your car would be using 98 octane.

      No wonder you are called smalldick.

      • Incognito 2.2.1
        29 December 2022 at 2:54 pm

        A real man has a dick.

        • woodart 2.2.1.1
          29 December 2022 at 4:07 pm

          a real man(or woman) drives thoughtfully and sensibly on the road and gos motor-racing with the cars listed .

        • alwyn 2.2.1.2
          29 December 2022 at 5:50 pm

          "A real …"

          In the current climate where you are anything you claim to be that sounds very very old-fashioned doesn't it?

        • francesca 2.2.1.3
          29 December 2022 at 7:00 pm

          What are you, a Filthy transphobe ,?

          • Incognito 2.2.1.3.1
            29 December 2022 at 7:54 pm

            Nope, I am much worse than you can even imagine, although your imagination seems rather limited and conditioned with a fixed path signposted by and roped off with red flags.

            The joke passed you by big time and you completely missed or misread the context of the thread. Quite possibly because you reacted to a couple of trigger words that activated your reptilian brain.

            Just for you, the unspoken and not included words in my comment that set you off were, of course, “… not is a dick” and the emphasis in both cases is on the verb.

            PS before you start shooting off your lazy labels you may want to ask yourself if your target has shown to deserve those labels, in your opinion, of course. In this case, I am quite keen on your justification if you have anything to offer at all, and I would like to hear of comments of mine that you think would fit the label. As it stands, your comment is nothing but an insult and personal attack on another commenter.

            • Francesca 2.2.1.3.1.1
              29 December 2022 at 9:24 pm

              Oh for goodness sake you took me seriously??

              Such a defensive lengthy response too. ,

              • Incognito …
                29 December 2022 at 9:40 pm

                Yes, of course I did! You call others “wanker” too. I cannot read minds.

                It was not defensive, I was fucking annoyed and tried not to let rip angry

                Never mind, let’s move on.

    • joe90 2.4
      29 December 2022 at 8:13 pm

      He initiated a scrap with a 19 year old, had a day to think about it and came up with this. Pathetic.

      https://twitter.com/Cobratate/status/1608212791009374208

  3. Joe90 3
    29 December 2022 at 9:38 am

    Cheaper now than at the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Genius.

    “Info almost gone unnoticed, at the end of December 2022 the price of gas (EUR/MWH) on the international markets fell below the price of gas at the end of December 2021”

    “Vladimir Putin, Nobel Prize in Economics in 2022”

    https://twitter.com/G_Yakovleff/status/1608085598564237314

  4. adam 4
    29 December 2022 at 11:32 am

    Ouch, killing prisoners now.

    I'll stick to my line that the Ukrainians leaders are not the best people. One war crime (the invasion of Ukrainian) never justifies war crimes.

    https://www.newsweek.com/us-colonel-training-zelensky-forces-accuses-soldiers-war-atrocities-1769784

    • millsy 4.1
      29 December 2022 at 5:08 pm

      The war in Ukraine is going to devolve into something similar to the Balkans in the 1990's, with both sides trying to out war crime the other.

      • woodart 4.1.1
        29 December 2022 at 6:24 pm

        hope not. dont think the average Ivan has the heart to fight on foriegn territory. defending the motherland is vastly different to loseing yr life on spurious purposes.

        • millsy 4.1.1.1
          29 December 2022 at 6:48 pm

          Probably why the war seems to be more and more outsourced to the private sector, ie Wagner Group, Chechens, etc.

    • Stephen D 6.1
      29 December 2022 at 4:26 pm

      Always liked Willie.

      He gave a very thoughtful and reasoned speech at a Marja Lubeck fundraiser some years ago. It was held at the Ōrewa Rotary club, where Don Brash made his infamous address. Willie’s was a very good rebuttal.

      Well written, well argued, and witty.

      • millsy 6.1.1
        29 December 2022 at 5:10 pm

        Willie is ex-Alliance. One of the few old school lefties in the cabinet, alongside Wood (whose wife was also involved with that party at the student politics level.

    • DB Brown 7.1
      29 December 2022 at 3:11 pm

      What changed for China on 0 Covid? From replies to the tweet:

      "Shorter quarantine for foreigners. Basically foreign business interests and rich Chinese wanted to be able to come and go more easily and everyone paid the price."

      Sounds familiar to the wishes of a certain overly-shrill crowd in NZ.

      Zero covid as a policy would have worked great if the world cooperated instead of all these petulant children we have/had as leaders.

      We only needed to shut the whole place down for a few weeks, but no, years later (and likely stuck with it forever)…

      We could do it today. Lockdown the planet, three weeks. But of course not, the economy! The nazis! The pearls!

      • Nic the NZer 7.1.1
        29 December 2022 at 5:17 pm

        It wouldn't be 3 weeks, not even close. China had about as effective a lockdown policy as could be hoped and after several months had plenty of cases in China. New Zealand achieved elimination in a few months with many advantages over land locked countries and a much smaller population.

        • weka 7.1.1.1
          29 December 2022 at 5:49 pm

          China had far more cases to deal with too by the time we all knew how bad covid was.

        • DB Brown 7.1.1.2
          29 December 2022 at 7:07 pm

          It's the life cycle of the disease. We know how to eliminate, humans are the problem. Jumping out of windows, over fences, etc.

          When the disease runs out of hosts to infect it's all over. But we simply couldn't do it.

          It'd need a massive concerted effort make sure the whole world has three weeks supplies and lock it down. Everyone.

          But, humans…

          • Rosemary McDonald 7.1.1.2.1
            29 December 2022 at 7:26 pm

            It'd need a massive concerted effort make sure the whole world has three weeks supplies and lock it down. Everyone.

            I'm trying to think of a time, in the history of humans, when this has been done.

            Of course you're joking(?)….but you do sound so serious.

            Perhaps you have some epidemiological/pandemic control evidence to support your certitude?

            • DB Brown 7.1.1.2.1.1
              30 December 2022 at 6:16 am

              I'm not joking I'm stating the obvious. Of course in the real world we do not cooperate, and some asshole jumping the fence is an almost insurmountable risk to the idea.

              Without a host the disease dies. Reservoirs, as in other species, may also be a problem – if we had documented evidence they spread covid in any significant manner.

              "There is no evidence that animals play a significant role in spreading SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to people. There have been a few reports of infected mammalian animals spreading the virus to people during close contact, but this is rare. These cases include farmed mink in Europe and the United States, white-tailed deer in Canada, pet hamsters in Hong Kong, and a cat in Thailand. In most of these cases, the animals were known to be first infected by a person who had COVID-19."

              Certainly pays to be cautious.

              https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/animals.html

              The hardest logistics of a total population lockdown is of course hospitals. That I haven't even begun to ponder as people are so absolutely shit at understanding common sense or behaving rationally a proper go at elimination will never occur.

          • pat 7.1.1.2.2
            29 December 2022 at 7:43 pm

            and reservoirs.

  8. joe90 8
    29 December 2022 at 7:48 pm

    Poot’s cleaning up the place.

    Another high-ranking Russian officer has died suddenly. As reported by RBC, General Alexei Maslov, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces of the Russian Federation and later RU military representative to NATO, passed away unexpectedly on Christmas day, Sunday, December 25.

    The 70-year-old died at Burdenko Main Military Hospital in Moscow. Maslov had worked at the tank manufacturing company, Uralvagonzavod. They are one of the largest main battle tank manufacturers in the world.

    […]

    In a rather coincidental turn of events, Vladimir Putin had been scheduled to visit the city of Nizhny Tagil on December 24, one day before Maslov’s death. This trip was cancelled at the last minute.

    […]

    [Maslov’s] death followed that of Alexander Buzakov, the General Director of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, Admiralty Shipyards. The 67-year-old died ‘suddenly’ on Saturday 24. Among other things, the company produced carriers for ‘Kalibr’ cruise missiles.

    https://euroweeklynews.com/2022/12/27/general-alexei-maslov-second-sudden-death-of-high-ranking-russian-military-officers-in-48-hours/