That’s pretty embarrassing for them professionally, Hammer, but no doubt they will have figured that they will always be able to get work as paid shills for the oil industry. Monckton can’t live forever, after all.
Regards, TVoR, Founder and CEO of The Institute for Denial In Our Time (IDIOT) and former micronaut, weather forecaster ( Mmmm, gonna rain today… or … maybe not.) and associate fellow at the University of Burgerology, Shitkicker, Missouri.
Richard Lindzen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen
A real climate scientist Lindzen’s graduate students describe him as “fiercely intelligent, with a deep contrarian streak.”
The rebuttal from the Wall Street Journal that the increasing occurance of extreme weather events witnessed around world is a result of climate change is extremely weak:
…those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.
Compare this insipid bleating to the results in this study published in Reuters and covered by Scientific American.
the idiotes at the wall street journal blew it some years back when they lost focus and started betting on power futures and it ended up falling into the hands of rupert and now its just another rag.
It’s a biased op-ed from a right-wing newspaper. To quote Forbes:
But the most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal in this field is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a comparable (but scientifically accurate) essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down. The National Academy of Sciences is the nation’s pre-eminent independent scientific organizations. Its members are among the most respected in the world in their fields. Yet the Journal wouldn’t publish this letter, from more than 15 times as many top scientists. Instead they chose to publish an error-filled and misleading piece on climate because some so-called experts aligned with their bias signed it. This may be good politics for them, but it is bad science and it is bad for the nation.
Also
Claude Allegre is the first scientist cited. This is from his Wikipedia entry
Claude Allègre
In 1996, Allègre opposed the removal of carcinogenic asbestos from the Jussieu university campus in Paris, describing it as harmless and dismissing concerns about it as a form of “psychosis created by leftists”.[6] The campus’ asbestos is deemed to have killed 22 people and caused serious health problems in 130 others.[7]
A soldier trying out for the elite SAS is in a coma after suffering extreme heat stroke while taking part in a gruelling selection course.
Lieutenant Alexander Teira Cowan, 25, collapsed while running in the Hunua Ranges near the SAS base in South Auckland.
The incident has sparked an inquiry into selection processes for the New Zealand Special Air Service, which has the motto “Who Dares Wins”.
Medics on the scene could not revive Cowan and called St John Ambulance to take him to Middlemore Hospital on Wednesday, where he remains in a coma with possible brain damage.
Speaking from the family home in Bridge Pa, Cowan’s father Monty said he had doubts his son would survive. “He’s pretty crook. I don’t know if he’s going to pull through.
Watching the Australian version of this on tele recently I was struck at how abusive some of these courses can become. Now I fully accept the need and right for the SAS to select the best candidates… and that will inevitably involve putting them through stress testing to ‘weed out the dreamers’. And while that is necessary to a degree; at some point it seems to be stepping over the line and degenerates into some kind of mad macho battle of wills to ‘break’ them.
As some of you here may have noticed, I’m a keen tramper. In my experience requiring a human being to complete battle efficiency training which involved running 8km in under one hour and 12 minutes carrying 35kg. presumably while wearing full battle fatigues over rough terrain in the Hunuas… in the middle of summer is plain nuts.
As the article pointed out the real challenge is mostly mental. There are plenty of smart ways of achieving that rather than risking their lives by physically breaking them.
That’s does not necessarily have to imply a lowering of standards.
The physical side is as important if not more so then the mental. Its one thing to think or believe you can do something and quite another to know or experience it.
As I stated above… I’ve done plenty of the physical stuff. It means I’ve got some idea of what happens when you drive a human body into thermal overload.
On Boxing Day … just a few weeks ago… I did an 6hr tramp up a local peak. In that period I drank 4litres of water and came home 2kg lighter than when I left. That’s a total loss of 6 litres of sweat. The temperature was at least 26 degC and humid.
The last 2 hrs I was dehydrated, overheated and struggling. Badly. The one person I happened to meet on the way down enquired as to my well-being.
Fortunately I was carrying less than 8kg, stripped down to my shorts and I could rest when I needed to. This was nothing to do with how fit I am. I’ve done the exact same tramp in cooler temps and while it’s still a physical challenge (over 16km of steep bush track/sub-alpine tops, and almost 2000m of total elevation gain).. I wasn’t experiencing physiological stress the way I did this last trip.
So you go hard well whoop-de-do and good for you, were you training for selection? Training because you might have to push yourself in a war zone? Training because it may well mean the difference between life and death?
An incident happens and thats regretable but how many incidents happen in training?
Not many but as I’m sure you’re aware things can and will happen in the outdoors so instead of letting some week-end warriors decide what these guys do in thier training I think its best the people that know what they’re doing figure it out
You want to help then go lobby your MP to sort out the rules regarding outdoor pursuits centers
And given that they’ve put one guy near death in hospital it’s fair enough to ask if they really do know what they are doing.
– So how long has selections been run for and only one report of an incident happening, thats pretty good when you consider how many people get hurt or killed in the outdoors.
“at some point it seems to be stepping over the line and degenerates into some kind of mad macho battle of wills to ‘break’ them.”
– Typical of a leftie, don’t understand something so label it “negative”, maybe you think they could use some sensitivity training as well?
Try reading what I said.. Now I fully accept the need and right for the SAS to select the best candidates… and that will inevitably involve putting them through stress testing to ‘weed out the dreamers’.
Where does that say “sensitivity training”?
If there is one thing I’ve learnt from more than 40 years of banging about our mountains it is that the difference between success and failure is mostly mental. When faced with any challenge the crucial thing is NOT how strong or fit you are.. it is how well you use the resources available to you.
I’ve seen slim women out-perform strong men because they had their head screwed on. Equally I recall being rather shocked at discovering one day that technically I was a far better climber than one of this country’s most well-known mountaineers.. but he’s the most remarkably tough minded person I’ve ever met. And that took him places I only ever dreamed about.
And I’ve seen perfectly fit and well people completely lose it because they’ve panicked. Above a certain fitness threshold it’s almost all mental.
And while some real fitness and strength is unquestionably necessary to serve in the SAS… that is always something that can be developed through simple basic training.
But mental toughness, calmness in the face of stress, focus and the ability to be an effective part of a team is much harder to teach. And that is what they should be really selecting for. Pushing candidates to physiological breaking point is just dumbarse.
Pushing candidates to physiological breaking point is just dumbarse.
-and theres your ignorance coming out, these guys need to be pushed to breaking point and beyond because in the course of their duties thats exactly what will happen to them so you find out if they can take it in the selection process rather then out in the field
Its not just running around hills. mountains etc etc its about seeing how they cope, the decisions they make because if they go into live operations then they’ll have to cope with more then terrain and weather
You have experience in the outdoors then put it to good use and lobby your local MP for rules. codes etc for outdoor pursuits centers because they kill and injure more then selection does
There is absolutely nothing intelligent about breaking people physiologically. It’s easy, you just make them cold, or hot, or withdraw water and or food. Or any combination thereof. Any fool can do it.
All you are doing is just doing a simple experiment that has been done before and adds no useful information that we don’t already know. Make a person cold enough and they get hypothermia. A simple predictable set of consequences result.
And if you are operationally relying on men who are physiologically broken .. you have failed already. They simply will not and cannot function effectively.
Its not just running around hills. mountains etc etc its about seeing how they cope, the decisions they make because if they go into live operations then they’ll have to cope with more then terrain and weather
Like the risk of getting killed? You can sneer all you like at ‘runing around the hills’ Mr Medals… but in 15 yrs of serious alpine climbing I almost certainly came closer to dying far more often than any serving soldier ever does in their entire career. Your macho oneupmanship is completely lost on me.
And at the same time I fully respect anyone serving in harms way in our armed services. And I fully understand exactly the level of skill and capability our best SAS soldiers have. But they are human beings, not supermen… and they obey exactly the same physiological limits as any other human being.
And that is what baffles me about these SAS selection courses; I’ve had considerable experience in pushing myself to limits I doubt you have ever thought about…. and I know that everytime you break the body’s limits you fail . In my world there’s nothing clever about that; it’s dumbarse.
And why are you so defensive about this? Are military matters all so very special that us ordinary civilians aren’t allowed to ask questions?
With reference to afewknowthetruth and R. Atack here is another musing about the end days of our oil driven hence Industrial Age. Goodchild reminds us that World production in 2030, only 18 years away will be half what it was in 2005. This fact along with Climate Change are the macro defining realities of this time.
“Most estimates indicate that by 2030, more or less, annual global oil production will be about half of the peak rate. “Half” the oil with occur at the same time as “half” of everything else (water, metals, electricity, etc.) and the general collapse of both a functional economy (with debts already beyond comprehension) and honest government (if we consider, for example, how casually the US dumped its Constitution and replaced it with the Patriot Act). All of these events will be occurring as a synergistic tangle — or, rather, an “anti-synergistic” tangle, centrifugal rather than centripetal. A little pocket calculator will tell you that, for most practical purposes, industrial civilization will be over by that same date of 2030.”
Of course “The Normalcy Bias” which I have too finds this assertion ridiculous though logic tells us otherwise. How can the World we grew up in change like this? Well short answer: It can’t ! the above must be just another doomer hypothesis surely!?
The world didn’t change. The limits were always there but we’ve either never looked for them (Farming in NZ and the resultant polluted rivers and lakes is a good example of this) or ignored them (Peak Oil, Climate Change) when told about them exclaiming that science and “progress” will get us past those limits.
mayor bob parker says the christchurch city council is dysfunctional.
rod oram in the sst says the chch city council is dysfunctional.
so what is the dysfunction?
why are they keeping it to themselves?
is it too esoteric for mere mortals to understand?
I just found this interview from William Rodrigues and Rosie O’Donnell from November 2009 back.
Who is William Rodrigues?
William Rodrigues is a hero. He saved hundreds of people on 911 with his master key and was celebrated as a hero and even invited to the White House. He “became known as “the last man out” as he really was the last man out of the North tower and could only safe his life by diving under a fire engine as the building collapsed in free fall speed.
All that changed when it became evident that what he had to say did not support the official CT. Here is his story
I listened to the interview Trav and tried hard to keep an open mind. William certainly sounded credible and his story has been authenticated by many. The essential truth about the preliminary explosions is the central issue. Prove or disprove and the case becomes credible or not credible. If there were darker forces at work the question about “Why” would need to be answered too. Definitely uneasy about official version versus other stories.
Thanks for making the effort. Here is a link to a study published only this month. Seismic measuring equipment used to study earthquakes measured the seismic activity in New York on 911. It turns out that the seismographs recorded seismic activity not related to the impact of the planes. In fact it turns out the planes had very little seismic impact at all. So where came that energy from?
This is the conclusion the author draws: CONCLUSION
At the times of the planes’ impacts into the Twin Towers and during their collapses, as well as during the collapse of WTC7, seismic waves were generated. To the degree that (1) seismic waves are only created by brief impulses and (2) that low frequencies are associated with an energy (magnitude) that is comparable to a seismic event, the waves recorded at Palisades and analyzed by LDEO undeniably have an explosive origin. Even if the planes’ impacts and the fall of the debris from the Towers onto the ground could have generated seismic waves, their magnitude would have been insufficient to be recorded 34 km away and should have been very similar to one another. As we have shown, they were not.
The types and magnitudes of the seismic signals show significant differences. The greatest differences occur in their propagation speeds, even though their paths were essentially identical under identical conditions. This difference is physically unexplained in the interpretation of the events offered by the LDEO researchers, the 9/11 Commission and NIST. Therefore, we must question their calculations of wave propagation speeds based on their assumption that the wave origins are shown on the video images of impacts and collapses. We can only conclude that the wave sources were independently detonated explosives at other times, thus accounting for the variable discrepancies for each wave origin in relation to the videos.
The composition of the waves is revealing both in terms of the location of the source and the magnitude of the energy transmitted to the ground. The subterranean origin of the waves emitted when WTC1 collapsed is attested by the presence of the P and S body waves along with the Rayleigh surface waves, which are present in all five explosions. The placement of the source locations of the four other explosions is subaerial, attested by the unique presence of Rayleigh waves. The aerial explosions visible on the videos of the upper floors of the Twin Towers do not produce seismic waves 34 km from the source.
There is a factor of ten between the power of the explosions at the time of the plane impacts on the Twin Towers (as well as at the time of the collapse of WTC7) and the strength of those more powerful explosions at the times of their collapses, the subterranean explosion under WTC1 being the one that transmitted the most energy to the ground.
Note as well the degree to which the surface waves are dispersive (i.e., their speed depends upon their frequency). The duration of the recorded signal is not representative of the duration of the signal at the source.
Finally, controlled demolition of the three towers, suggested by the visual and audio witness testimony as well as by observations of video recordings of their collapses, is thus confirmed and demonstrated by analysis of the seismic waves emitted at the moments of the plane impacts and at the moments of the collapses.
Yes. I recall looking at that seismic evidence very early on within the first few days after the event. Intriguing.
I’ve always said that the 9/11 “Truth” movement has struggled because often as not it got side-tracked (deliberately or naively) into chasing lines of enquiry that while superficially appealing, were ultimately less telling than the many more rather prosaic facts around the whole affair.
Some 76 officers, six times as many as took out Osama bin Laden, swooped – a lot more than are deployed against allegedly desperate homegrown criminals, except perhaps for terrorists in Te Urewera.
In an editorial on the Kim Dotcom arrest, the Herald dispenses with the niceties. Referring to Tuhoe awaiting trial over the Urewera raids, as “terrorists in Te Urewera”.
I notice the Herald are not as convinced of the guilt of those charged with white collar crime referring to “alleged internet pirate Kim Dotcom.”
The same for those at South Canterbury charged with “allegedly” defrauding the taxpayer to the tune of $1.7 billion.
Inferring guilt by association, the Herald include “terrorists in Te Urewera”, “desperate home grown criminals”, “Osama bin Laden”, all in the same breathless sentence.
“Some 76 officers, six times as many as took out Osama bin Laden, swooped”
Which is a completely irrelevant comparison to make, because those that took our Osama bin Laden weren’t just your ‘average’ police or even army folk, but the US’ navy seals squad (the best of the best of the best).
Also they had to fly in using stealth helicopters into a foreign country that had no idea they were coming, so they couldn’t exactly bring as many people as they wanted.
Making such ridiculously out of place comparisons really overshadows any message you were trying to convey (as in my case, because I literally haven’t read any more of your post than this).
Ha! I bet that’s the first time a Herald editorial was ever mistaken for the ramblings of a left wing rabble rouser, Lanth. Believe it or not, the ’76 officers’ line is actually from the editorial. Amazing, huh?
Jenny is absolutely tight to highlight this thoroughly racist, ignorant and confused editorial.
because those that took our Osama bin Laden weren’t just your ‘average’ police or even army folk, but the US’ navy seals squad (the best of the best of the best).
All in order to commit a murder! And turn on the patriotic bullsh*t as much as you like, that’s what it comes down to.
There is absolutely nothing intelligent about breaking people physiologically. It’s easy, you just make them cold, or hot, or withdraw water and or food. Or any combination thereof. Any fool can do it.
– No one said it was clever
All you are doing is just doing a simple experiment that has been done before and adds no useful information that we don’t already know. Make a person cold enough and they get hypothermia. A simple predictable set of consequences result.
-Its not an experiment to find out what happens
And if you are operationally relying on men who are physiologically broken .. you have failed already. They simply will not and cannot function effectively.
-The idea is to see how they cope when placed in those situations and how to deal with them so can make decisions without panicking, like the pararescue guys who practice drowning training
I’m not saying it always works of course but it works more then if they didn’t do what they do
Its not just running around hills. mountains etc etc its about seeing how they cope, the decisions they make because if they go into live operations then they’ll have to cope with more then terrain and weather
Like the risk of getting killed? You can sneer all you like at ‘runing around the hills’ Mr Medals… but in 15 yrs of serious alpine climbing I almost certainly came closer to dying far more often than any serving soldier ever does in their entire career. Your macho oneupmanship is completely lost on me.
-What I meant was sunshine I’m guessing you didn’t also have to deal with people trying to shoot you or having to complete a mission,k set up; an observation post, radio in info etc etc
And at the same time I fully respect anyone serving in harms way in our armed services. And I fully understand exactly the level of skill and capability our best SAS soldiers have. But they are human beings, not supermen… and they obey exactly the same physiological limits as any other human being.
-This is true however they can and do get trained to withstand what others can’t
And that is what baffles me about these SAS selection courses; I’ve had considerable experience in pushing myself to limits I doubt you have ever thought about…. and I know that everytime you break the body’s limits you fail . In my world there’s nothing clever about that; it’s dumbarse.
-You spend time in the outdoors for fun, recreation whatever, for these guys its their job, their career, what they’re trained to do but you seem to think that what you do is similar to what the SAS do, it isn’t, what you do is a small part of what they do
And why are you so defensive about this? Are military matters all so very special that us ordinary civilians aren’t allowed to ask questions?
– The problem is with people assuming (like you) they know whats going on and (in a worst case situation) if they ever got into a postion to influence ideas then it could be very bad
The problem is that you go tramping and do various outdoor stuff (and thats all good) but then you read of what they do and think that because it sounds similar to what you do you can then pass judgement
But the reality is that what you do and what you do is very, very different but thats ok I hope I’ve explained why you’re wrong and why you should stick to politics
You haven’t explained why you think SAS soldiers are immune to hyper/hypothermia. Or how their livers have an extra store of glycogen ordinary human beings don’t have so that their brains function when the rest of us have shut down.
Or why you think they can stand naked in a blizzard for hours on end while still happily solving Rubik cubes in 30 sec flat. Or run for an hour in full uniform, over tough ground without generating the excess heat that kills us ordinary ‘weekend warriors’.
Of course not. Soldiers are human beings. And what they do physically in the field is very similar to the demands of an extended alpine journey. Now I do understand that there are a whole bunch of specific skills and tasks that mean from a mental perspective there are many other things going on in an live military operation that are quite different to what I am accustomed to. I get that.
But that is my point; the real requirements of an effective soldier is to be able to perform these many specialised mental tasks.. while under some degree of stress. And stress can be any combination of physical and mental challenges.. I get that too.
But just physically pushing someone until their body breaks tells you nothing and is operational failure. Why go there?
All you have done is hand wave and tell me as an ignorant civilian I cannot possibly understand…
As the article states there were other candidates that didn’t collapse so, hopefully, the inquiry will tell us what happened.
What were the factors that determined why this guy collapsed and the others didn’t.
Was he tired from the night before? (quite possibly)
Was he on (legal) stimulents that could contribute to his collapse? (creatine, caffiene etc etc)
Was he simply not fit enough for the selection process? (unlikely)
Did he have an undiagnosed pre-existing condidtion?
Did he suffer an injury and not tell anyone about it?
What they don’t need is knee-jerk reactions based on opinion.
But frankly it’s my considered, and not uninformed opinion, that someone has misjudged the conditions and pushed too hard.
And I’d strongly suggest unnecessarily so. I still maintain from observation that there has developed in the last few decades or so this very strong hard-man macho mystique around the SAS. A lot of it is rooted in the totally false idea that these guys are some kind of physical supermen. Now while I accept the need for them to be very fit, strong and tough guys, the emphasis on that pure physicality seems to me to have tipped too far.
Take for instance the relatively new sport of chessboxing. Consists of a round of boxing, followed immediately by a set number of chess moves against the same opponent. From what I’ve read it’s an incredibly tough mental challenge. Lots of guys can box, lots do well at chess.. but combining both in quick succession is exceedingly challenging. That’s just an example of the kind of thing I’m thinking of… although I’m certain it’s nothing like a whole answer either.
My final point is this. As we saw with Pike River management; before the explosion they would have told anyone who questioned what was going on, that they were ignorant outsiders who couldn’t possibly comprehend what clever things they were doing and to… butt out.
No chance the SAS have developed a tiny bit of this syndrome too?
Crikey Red. I’m in awe of your outdoor pursuits – no wonder you enjoy the natural world: the tory quicksand and whack-a-mole shifting rubble that you relentlessly boot to touch here must make a 2000m climb seem a doddle….. keep it up but, delilcious and appreciated entertainment – like an informed and knowledgeable lion-tamer herding starving cats. RL for PM!
Feck I’m embarrased.. really. Last weekend I helped a bunch from the local tramping club replace all the windows in one of our older heritage huts. (DOC handed many of these older huts over to various clubs to maintain some years ago.)
Blue Range hut was actually built the year I was born, 1955. It’s good 2 hr grind up about 700m climb of bush track… most people find it’s about right for a full day walk in and out.
Here’s the rub… one of the guys with us helped build the original hut. Yes he’s in his mid-70’s…and he wasn’t any slower than the rest of us. If I can manage as well as him I’ll be delighted. (And he’s still full of stories…even if only half of them are true..)
But you have touched on something important to me ak. My deep love for this country was shaped in those experiences. Not just the fabulous places, but more importantly the extraordinary people. And those people shared a special ethos; if I can put it in a nutshell… we took pride in taking responsibility for ourselves and pushing our limits, but equally we were ALWAYS there for the other person…regardless.
The greatest bushmen this country ever saw were the hunters and Forest Service workers in the post-War era. They created the network of huts and tracks we treasure today. They taught us to replace the firewood you used, to keep the hut spotless and leave it better for the next party than when you found it. They taught us that the party is only as strong as it’s weakest member, that you stuck together regardless of what happened and looked after each other.
Looking back I guess I was hugely privileged to share in that legacy; it saddens me to see how it was stolen from our younger generations. All I can do know is not give up trying to show them what it meant.
Thank you RedLogix, what a wonderful thing you and ‘the tramping club bunch’ are doing. Thank God for people who still have consideration for others- especially our future generations-and the perspicacity (and energy) to put their visions and well thought out actions into practice.
PS I too thought a rethink about “tough” exercises was needed when I read about the unfortunate young man in a coma. I also marvelled at your patient explanations to Chri73 who seemed particularly obtuse and lacking in perspicacity today. However he obviously needed to get some deep seated hang up off his chest and I really think you may have helped. Thus, another thank you for caring for others.
A lovely story that, but yeah, those values might be diminished, but they aren’t dead. I’m relatively young, and my younger friends all practice those values in the hills, so somehow, these are being transferred and taught still. Organisations like the Federated Mountain Clubs and the New Zealand Deerstalkers are pretty consistent as well, which helps.
With DOC cutbacks for backcountry huts looming (something which needs to be challenged) in favour of frontcountry tourism facilities, it will be largely up to the community to maintain older facilities. If we lose them, we lose a massive amount of our heritage.
My biggest is worry is that, on the whole, people in conservation and recreation are white and aging. How we get younger, urban, and other cultures into the outdoors is probably the biggest challenge out there.
The thing about special forces is that they are triathletes as well as soldiers. This incident seems to be an extreme sports training accident, rather than an “experiment” or an attempt to “break” those who can’t perform. It’s exactly like a marathon runner overextending themselves – and they’ve acknowledged the problem, and are investigating what went wrong and how they can prevent it happening again, which is all you can really ask.
and they’ve acknowledged the problem, and are investigating what went wrong and how they can prevent it happening again, which is all you can really ask.
– To be fair thats probably what I should have said
And I’d agree. If it was just bad luck or something specific with that individual then that’s acceptable. Accidents do happen and can be learnt from.
But I would also hope that any internal enquiry had the balls to call it if they found evidence of a systemic screwup as well. Because on the face of it what they were asking these guys to do was in the conditions more than a little risky.
Bernard Hickey isn’t impressed with Jonkey’s ability with numbers and in predicting NZ’s economic and financial future. He isn’t impressed by Key’s attempt to reassure us that selling farmland to foreigners is not a problem in the current global financial context.:
Don’t worry so much, said Key this week, as he justified the sale of our largest privately owned group of dairy farms and foreshadowed heavier foreign borrowing over the next couple of years.
Relax. We can always borrow more and sell some assets. After all, we’ve only sold 1 per cent of our land so far.
Chill. Our foreign creditors will keep lending to us because we are the friendly, smiling borrowers who have everything under control, he crooned.
Hickey puts some of the blame onto the last Labour government, saying foreign debt, selling assets, falling productivity, and limited benefits from exports have all made things worth, but that Key is not the PM to provide the necessary intervention. I tend to agree with Hickey here, though I don’t always agree with all he says. He concludes:
He has presided over a Government that has financed a blowout in its deficits funded by foreign creditors, including the Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund that has bought our bonds, along with Kim Dotcom.
Key campaigned to extend a programme of state asset sales that would lead to significant portions ending up in foreign hands.
The only way to end our addiction to overspending is to throw out the enablers of foreign borrowing and selling assets to foreign interests.
The proportion of our national income that has to be siphoned off to foreign creditors and asset-owners has risen from 2 per cent of GDP in the early 1970s to about 8 per cent now.
Eventually we will not be allowed to borrow more and will not have anything left to sell. Who will reassure us and enable us then?
I’m not sure why Kimdortom gets a mention here though?
Thanks ropata. You are so right, this link about a culture of impunity in NZ is an absolute Must Read. Have been trying to express much of what Pablo says for a long time.
“The Best Oylmpic cheat of them all was Marion Jones. She had it all: five medals from Sydney, the believability of an actress, the confidence to stare out her doubters, and this extraordinary helpful facility at the right moment to generate tears.”
Hmmmm
How about a joker who won 6 gold medals across glamour track and field events, who was an American icon, who cashed in with widespread endorsements through his achievements, who carefully groomed a ‘mom and apple pie’ image, who condemned a rival runner when that person was found to have used banned steriods in 1988, but who himself 3 times (apparently) tested positive for banned stimulants but was never banned from competition.
I’ve put together a feed site for some leftwing blogs… probably not recommended for dialup. Let me know if there’s any other websites that should be added.
The EU bans Iranian oil imports, to take effect from July 1 giving member states time to sort out alternative oil sources in an orderly fashion.
Pretty obvious what Iran is going to do in response, right? Yep, move to end oil exports to the EU right now. In a move which places even more economic pressure on the likes of Greece, Italy and Spain.
New Zealanders are uncomfortable with the high level of influence corporate lobbyists have in New Zealand politics, and demands are growing for greater regulation. A recent poll shows 62 per cent of the public support having a two-year cooling off period between ministers leaving public office and becoming lobbyists and ...
This is a guest post by accessibility and sustainable transport advocate Tim Adriaansen It originally appeared here. A friend calls you and asks for your help. They tell you that while out and about nearby, they slipped over and landed arms-first. Now their wrist is swollen, hurting like ...
Floating offshore wind turbines offer incredible opportunities to capture powerful winds far out at sea. By unlocking this wind energy potential, they could be a key weapon in our arsenal in the fight against climate change. But how developed are these climate fighting clean energy giants? And why do I ...
Over the past two or three weeks, a procession of Maori iwi and hapu in a series of little-noticed appearances before two Select Committees have been asking for more say for Maori over resource management decisions along the co-governance lines of Three Waters. Their submissions and appearances run counter ...
The decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue war crimes arrest warrants for the Russian President and the Russia Children Ombudsman may have been welcomed by the ideologically committed but otherwise seems to have been greeted with widespread cynicism (see Situation in Ukraine: ICC judges issue arrest warrants ...
Let’s say you’re clasping your drink at a wedding, or a 40th, or a King’s Birthday Weekend family reunion and Drunk Uncle Kevin has just got going.He’s in an expansive frame of mind because we’re finally rid of that silly girl. But he wants to ask an honest question about ...
National Party leader Christopher Luxon may be feeling glum about his poll ratings, but he could be tapping into a rich political vein in describing the current state of education as “alarming”. Luxon said educational achievement has been declining, with a recent NCEA pilot exposing just how far it has ...
Way Beyond Reform: Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer have no more interest in remaining permanent members of “New Zealand’s” House of Representatives than did Lenin and Trotsky in remaining permanent members of Tsar Nicolas II’s “democratically-elected” Duma. Like the Bolsheviks, Te Pāti Māori is a party of revolutionaries – not reformists.THE CROWN ...
Buzz from the Beehive Auckland was wiped off the map, when Education Minister Jan Tinetti delivered her speech of welcome as host of the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers “here in Tāmaki Makaurau”. But – fair to say – a reference was made later in the speech to a ...
Morning mate, how you going?Well, I was watching the news last night and they announced this scientific report on Climate Change. But before they got to it they had a story about the new All Blacks coach.Sounds like important news. It’s a bit of a worry really.Yeah, they were talking ...
Always a bailout: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the Government would fully guarantee all savers in all smaller US banks if needed. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: No wonder an entire generation of investors are used to ‘buying the dip’ and ‘holding on for dear life’. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen ...
Wealthy vested interests have an oversized influence on political decisions in New Zealand. Partly that’s due to their use of corporate lobbyists. Fortunately, the influence lobbyists can have on decisions made by politicians is currently under scrutiny in Guyon Espiner’s in-depth series published by RNZ. Two of Espiner’s research exposés ...
Yesterday afternoon it rained and traffic around the region ground to a halt, once again highlighting why it is so important that our city gets on with improving the alternatives to driving. For additional irony, this happened on the same day the IPCC synthesis report landed, putting the focus on ...
The Beginning: Anti-Co-Governance agitator, Julian Batchelor, addresses the Dargaville stop of his travelling roadshow across New Zealand . Fascism almost always starts small. Sadly, it doesn’t always stay that way. Especially when the Left helps it to grow.THERE IS A DREADFUL LOGIC to the growth of fascism. To begin with, it ...
Hi,From an incredibly rainy day in Los Angeles, I just wanted to check in. I guess this is the day Trump may or may not end up in cuffs? I’m attempting a somewhat slower, less frenzied week. I’ve had Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s new record on non-stop, and it’s been a ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
RNZ has been shining their torch into corners where lobbyists lurk and asking such questions as: Do we like the look of this?and Is this as democratic as it could be?These are most certainly questions worth asking, and every bit as valid as, say:Are weshortchanged democratically by the way ...
RNZ has continued its look at the role of lobbyists by taking a closer look at the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff Andrew Kirton. He used to work for liquor companies, opposing (among other things) a container refund scheme which would have required them to take responsibility for their own ...
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has left for Beijing for the first ministerial visit to China since 2019. Mahuta is to meet China’s new foreign minister Qin Gang where she might have to call on all the diplomatic skills at her command. Almost certainly she will face questions on what role ...
TL;DR:The Opportunities Party’s Leader Raf Manji is hopeful the party’s new Teal Card, a type of Gold card for under 30s, will be popular with students, and not just in his Ilam electorate where students make up more than a quarter of the voters and where Manji is confident ...
When I was a kid New Zealand was actually pretty green. We didn’t really have plastic. The fruit and veges came in a cardboard box, the meat was wrapped in paper, milk came in a glass bottle, and even rubbish sacks were made of paper. Today if you sit down ...
Looking back through the names of our Police Ministers down the years, the job has either been done by once or future party Bigfoots – Syd Holland, Richard Prebble, Juduth Collins, Chris Hipkins – or by far lesser lights like Keith Allen, Frank Gill, Ben Couch, Allen McCready, Clem Simich, ...
Chris Trotter writes – The Crown is a fickle friend. Any political movement deemed to be colourful but inconsequential is generally permitted to go about its business unmolested. The Crown’s media, RNZ and TVNZ, may even “celebrate” its existence (presumably as proof of Democracy’s broad-minded acceptance of diversity). ...
Four out of the five people who have held the top role of Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff since 2017 have been lobbyists. That’s a fact that should worry anyone who believes vested interests shouldn’t have a place at the centre of decision making. Chris Hipkins’ newly appointed Chief of ...
Feedback on Auckland Council’s draft 2023/24 budget closes on March 28th. You can read the consultation document here, and provide feedback here. Auckland Council is currently consulting on what is one of its most important ever Annual Plans – the ‘budget’ of what it will spend money on between July ...
by Molten Moira from Motueka If you want to be a woman let me tell you what to do Get a piece of paper and a biro tooWrite down your new identification And boom! You’re now a woman of this nationSpelled W O M A Na real trans woman that isAs opposed ...
Buzz from the Beehive New Zealand Education Minister Jan Tinetti is hosting the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers for three days from today, welcoming Education Ministers and senior officials from 18 Pacific Island countries and territories, and from Australia. Here’s hoping they have brought translators with them – or ...
Let’s say you’ve come all the way from His Majesty’s United Kingdom to share with the folk of Australia and New Zealand your antipathy towards certain other human beings. And let’s say you call yourself a women’s rights activist.And let’s say 99 out of 100 people who listen to you ...
James Shaw gave the Green party's annual "state of the planet" address over the weekend, in which he expressed frustration with Labour for not doing enough on climate change. His solution is to elect more Green MPs, so they have more power within any government arrangement, and can hold Labour ...
RNZ this morning has the first story another investigative series by Guyon Espiner, this time into political lobbying. The first story focuses on lobbying by government agencies, specifically transpower, Pharmac, and assorted universities, and how they use lobbyists to manipulate public opinion and gather intelligence on the Ministers who oversee ...
Nick Matzke writes – Dear NZ Herald, I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland. I teach evolutionary biology, but I also have long experience in science education and (especially) political attempts to insert pseudoscience into science curricula in ...
James Shaw has again said the Greens would be better ‘in the tent’ with Labour than out, despite Labour’s policy bonfire last week torching much of what the Government was doing to reduce emissions. File Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The Green Party has never been more popular than in some ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah Wesseler Poor air quality is a long-standing problem in Los Angeles, where the first major outbreak of smog during World War II was so intense that some residents thought the city had been attacked by chemical weapons. Cars were eventually discovered ...
Yesterday I was reading an excellent newsletter from David Slack, and I started writing a comment “Sounds like some excellent genetic heritage…” and then I stopped.There was something about the phrase genetic heritage that stopped me in tracks. Is that a phrase I want to be saying? It’s kind of ...
Brian Easton writes – Two senior economists challenge some of the foundations of current economics. It is easy to criticise economic science by misrepresenting it, by selective quotations, and by ignoring that it progresses, like all sciences, by improving and abandoning old theories. The critics may go ...
This week marks the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War. While it strongly opposed the US-led invasion, New Zealand’s then Labour-led government led by Prime Minister Helen Clark did deploy military engineers to try to help rebuild Iraq in mid-2003. With violence soaring, their 12-month deployment ended without being renewed ...
After seventy years, Auckland’s motorway network is finally finished. In July 1953 the first section of motorway in Auckland was opened between Ellerslie-Panmure Highway and Mt Wellington Highway. The final stage opens to traffic this week with the completion of the motorway part of the Northern Corridor Improvements project. Aucklanders ...
National’s appointment of Todd McClay as Agriculture spokesperson clearly signals that the party is in trouble with the farming vote. McClay was not an obvious choice, but he does have a record as a political scrapper. The party needs that because sources say it has been shedding farming votes ...
Rays of white light come flooding into my lounge, into my face from over the top of my neighbour’s hedge. I have to look away as the window of the conservatory is awash in light, as if you were driving towards the sun after a rain shower and suddenly blinded. ...
The columnists in Private Eye take pen names, so I have not the least idea who any of them are. But I greatly appreciate their expert insight, especially MD, who writes the medical column, offering informed and often damning critique of the UK health system and the politicians who keep ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Mar 12, 2023 thru Sat, Mar 18, 2023. Story of the Week Guest post: What 13,500 citations reveal about the IPCC’s climate science report IPCC WG1 AR6 SPM Report Cover - Changing ...
Buzz from the Beehive The building of financial capability was brought into our considerations when Social Development and Employment Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced she had dipped into the government’s coffers for $3 million for “providers” to help people and families access community-based Building Financial Capability services. That wording suggests some ...
Do you ever come across something that makes you go Hmmmm?You mean like the song?No, I wasn’t thinking of the song, but I am now - thanks for that. I was thinking of things you read or hear that make you stop and go Hmmmm.Yeah, I know what you mean, ...
By the end of the week, the dramas over Stuart Nash overshadowed Hipkins’ policy bonfire. File photo: Lynn GrieveasonTLDR: This week’s news in geopolitics and the political economy covered on The Kākā included:PM Chris Hipkins’ announcement of the rest of a policy bonfire to save a combined $1.7 billion, but ...
When word went out that Prime Minister Chris Hipkins would be making an announcement about Stuart Nash on the tiles at parliament at 2:45pm yesterday, the assumption was that it was over. That we had reached tipping point for Nash’s time as minister. But by 3pm - when, coincidentally, the ...
Two senior economists challenge some of the foundations of current economics. It is easy to criticise economic science by misrepresenting it, by selective quotations, and by ignoring that it progresses, like all sciences, by improving and abandoning old theories. The critics may go on to attack physics by citing Newton.So ...
Photo by Walker Fenton on UnsplashIt’s that time of the week again when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kaka for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on Riverside (we’ve moved from Zoom) for our chat about the week’s news with ...
In a nice bit of news, my 2550-word deindustrial science-fiction piece, The Dream of Florian Neame, has been accepted for publication at New Maps Magazine (https://www.new-maps.com/). I have published there before, of course, with Of Tin and Tintagel coming out last year. While I still await the ...
And so this is Friday, and what have we learned?It was a week with all the usual luggage: minister brags and then he quits, Hollywood red carpet is full of twits. And all the while, hanging over the trivial stuff: existential dread, and portents of doom.Depending on who you read ...
When I changed the name of this newsletter from The Daily Read to Nick’s Kōrero I was a bit worried whether people would know what Kōrero meant or not. I added a definition when I announced the change and kind of assumed people who weren’t familiar with it would get ...
There was a time when a political party’s publicity people would counsel against promoting a candidate as queer. No matter which of two dictionary meanings the voting public might choose to apply – the old meaning of odd, strange, weird, or aberrant, or the more recent meaning of gay, homosexual ...
Photo by Joakim Honkasalo on UnsplashIt’s that time of the week for an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session for paying subscribers about the week that was for the next hour, including:PM Chris Hipkins announcement of the rest of a policy bonfire to save a combined $1.7 billion, but which blew up ...
Even though concern over the climate change threat is becoming more mainstream, our governments continue to opt out of the difficult decisions at the expense of time, and cost for future generations. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Now we have a climate liability number to measure the potential failure of the ...
Thomas Cranmer writesLike it or not, the culture wars have entered New Zealand politics and look set to broaden and intensify. The culture wars are often viewed as an exclusively American phenomenon, but the reality is that they are becoming increasingly prominent in countries around the world, ...
Here’s an analogy for the Stuart Nash saga. If people are to be forgiven for their sins,Catholic dogma requires two factors to be present. There has to be a sincere act of confession about what has been done, but also a sincere act of contrition, which signals a painful ...
Here’s an analogy for the Stuart Nash saga. If people are to be forgiven for their sins,Catholic dogma requires two factors to be present. There has to be a sincere act of confession about what has been done, but also a sincere act of contrition, which signals a painful ...
Human Destabilisers: Russia now has a new strategic weapon – migratory waves of unwelcome human-beings. Desperate people with different coloured skins and different religious beliefs arriving at, or actually breaching, the national borders of Russia’s enemies can wreak as much havoc, culturally and politically, as a hypersonic missile exploding in the ...
Hi,After Webworm contributor Hayden Donnell wrote his latest piece, ‘RIP to Millennials Killing Everything’, he delivered this exciting and important bonus content.It will make more sense if you’ve read his piece.David. Read more ...
Hi,Before we get to Hayden’s column — RIP to Millennials Killing Everything — a quick observation.There was a day last week where it had suddenly reached 10pm and I hadn’t eaten all day. Hunger had suddenly gripped me with a panicky all-consuming force, so I jumped onto Uber Eats and ...
We add some of the CMIP6 models to the updateable MSU comparisons. After my annual update, I was pointed to some MSU-related diagnostics for many of the CMIP6 models (24 of them at least) from Po-Chedley et al. (2022) courtesy of Ben Santer. These are slightly different to what ...
In a memorable Pulp Fiction scene, Vincent inadvertently shoots their backseat passenger in the head. This leads our heroes Jules and Vincent to express alarm about their predicament.We're on a city street in broad daylight here!says Vincent. We gotta get this car off the roads. You know cops tend to ...
Primary, secondary and kindergarten teachers are all on strike today, demanding higher pay and an end to systematic understaffing. While the former is important - wages should at least keep up with inflation - its the latter which is the real issue. As with the health system, teachers have been ...
So the teachers are on strike, marching across Aotearoa today to press their demands for better pay and working conditions.Children remained in bed this brisk morning, many no doubt quite pleased about a day off school. Parents perhaps taking the day off to look after the kids, or working from ...
After the Cold War the consensus among Western military strategists was that the era of Big Wars, defined as peer conflict between large states with full spectrum military technologies, was at an end, at least for the foreseeable future. The … Continue reading → ...
Dairy giant Fonterra has posted a 50% lift in net profit to $546m, doubled its interim dividend, and is proposing a return of capital of 50c a share, injecting a note of optimism into the nation’s dairy industry. Fonterra’s strong performance is against a backdrop of market volatility. It ...
Buzz from the Beehive The bothersome economic news today is that New Zealand’s GDP fell by 0.6% in the December quarter, weaker than market forecasts of a fall of around 0.2% and much weaker than the Reserve Bank’s assumption of a 0.7% rise. This followed the even-more-bothersome news yesterday that ...
Ouch: Hipkins’ policy bonfire has resulted in an expensive self-administered removal of a Budgetary foot with an explosive device. File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Bonfires can be dangerous things when they get out of control. They also create a lot of smoke and heat and burn the grass. ...
* Dr Bryce Edwards writes – I teach a first-year course at Victoria University of Wellington about government and the political process in New Zealand. In “Introduction to Government and Law”, students learn there are rules preventing senior public servants from getting involved in big political debates – as we ...
I teach a first year course at Victoria University of Wellington about government and the political process in New Zealand. In “Introduction to Government and Law”, students learn there are rules preventing senior public servants from getting involved in big political debates – as we have recently witnessed with Rob ...
An issue of integrity has claimed the first ministerial scalp in Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ premiership. Police Minister Stuart Nash lasted mere weeks in the role after admitting in a radio interview this morning that he had called Police Commissioner Andrew Coster to ask him if police were going to ...
For some time now we’ve known that the cost and completion timeframe for the City Rail Link would increase. Yesterday we finally learned by just how much. Costs City Rail Link Ltd (CRL Ltd) today confirms it has submitted a formal funding request to its Sponsors – the Crown and ...
The Government’s decision to back peddle on lowering speed limits is hitting potholes. At this stage, although it is part of the Government’s reprioritisation efforts to free up money to alleviate cost of living increases, the speed limit change looks unlikely to do that. And it appears that it ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised in their State of the Planet speech today. ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party after the election must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised today. ...
You will never truly understand, from the pictures you’ve seen in the newspapers or on the six o-clock news, the sheer scale of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Gabrielle. ...
We’re boosting incomes and helping ease cost of living pressures on Kiwis through a range of bread and butter support measures that will see pensioners, students, families, and those on main benefits better off from the start of next month. ...
The error Labour Ministers made by stopping work on a beverage container return scheme will be reversed by the Greens at the earliest opportunity as part of the next Government. ...
“Cabinet needs to do better - and today has shown exactly why we need Green Ministers in cabinet, so we can prioritise action to cut climate pollution and support people to make ends meet,” says Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson. ...
Biggest increase in food prices for over three decades shows the need for an excess profit tax on corporations to help people put food on the table. ...
The Green Party has today launched a submission guide to help Aucklanders give crucial input and prevent potentially disastrous Auckland Council budget proposals. ...
With calls growing for inquiries and action on bank profits, the Greens say the Government has all the information it needs to act now and put a levy on banks. ...
As large parts of Aotearoa recover from two of the worst climate disasters we have ever experienced, it would be a huge mistake for the Government to deprioritise climate action from future transport investments, the Green Party says. ...
The Green Party is celebrating the signing of a historic United Nations Ocean Treaty, and calls on the new Oceans and Fisheries Minister to urgently step up protection for Aotearoa’s oceans. ...
$2.9 million convertible loan for Scapegrace Distillery to meet growing national and international demand $4.5m underwrite to support Silverlight Studios’ project to establish a film studio in Wanaka Gore’s James Cumming Community Centre and Library to be official opened tomorrow with support of $3m from the COVID-19 Response and Recovery ...
Transport Minister Michael Wood has today launched the first national EV (electric vehicle) charging strategy, Charging Our Future, which includes plans to provide EV charging stations in almost every town in New Zealand. “Our vision is for Aotearoa New Zealand to have world-class EV charging infrastructure that is accessible, affordable, ...
Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment Priyanca Radhakrishnan has today launched the Love Better campaign in a world-leading approach to family harm prevention. Love Better will initially support young people through their experience of break-ups, developing positive and life-long attitudes to dealing with hurt. “Over 1,200 young kiwis told ...
Hon Rino Tirikatene, Minister for Courts, welcomes the Ministry of Justice’s appointment of Dr Garry Clearwater as New Zealand’s first Chief Clinical Advisor working with the Coroners Court. “This appointment is significant for the Coroners Court and New Zealand’s wider coronial system.” Minister Tirikatene said. Through Budget 2022, the Government ...
The Government via the Cyclone Taskforce is working with local government and insurance companies to build a picture of high-risk areas following Cyclone Gabrielle and January floods. “The Taskforce, led by Sir Brian Roche, has been working with insurance companies to undertake an assessment of high-risk areas so we can ...
E te huia kaimanawa, ko Ngāpuhi e whakahari ana i tau aupikinga ki te tihi o te maunga. Ko te Ao Māori hoki e whakanui ana i a koe te whakaihu waka o te reo Māori i roto i te Ao Ture. (To the prized treasure, it is Ngāpuhi who ...
113,400 exits into work in the year to June 2022 Young people are moving off Benefit faster than after the Global Financial Crisis Two reports released today by the Ministry of Social Development show the Government’s investment in the COVID-19 response helped drive record numbers of people off Benefits and ...
The Government’s priority to keep New Zealand at the cutting edge of food production and lift our sustainability credentials continues by backing the next steps of a hi-tech vertical farming venture that uses up to 95 per cent less water, is climate resilient, and pesticide-free. Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor visited ...
E nga mana, e nga iwi, e nga reo, e nga hau e wha, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou kātoa. Warm Pacific greetings to all. It is an honour to host the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers here in Tāmaki Makaurau. Aotearoa is delighted to be hosting you ...
The new renal unit at Taranaki Base Hospital has been officially opened by the Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall this afternoon. Te Huhi Raupō received around $13 million in government funding as part of Project Maunga Stage 2, the redevelopment of the Taranaki Base Hospital campus. “It’s an honour ...
Defence Minister Andrew Little has marked the arrival of the country’s second P-8A Poseidon aircraft alongside personnel at the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s Base at Ohakea today. “With two of the four P-8A Poseidons now on home soil this marks another significant milestone in the Government’s historic investment in ...
Aotearoa New Zealand will provide further humanitarian support to those seriously affected by last month’s deadly earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria, says Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta. “The 6 February earthquakes have had devastating consequences, with almost 18 million people affected. More than 53,000 people have died and tens of thousands more ...
Migrant communities across New Zealand are represented in the new Migrant Community Reference Group that will help shape immigration policy going forward, Immigration Minister Michael Wood announced today. “Since becoming Minister, a reoccurring message I have heard from migrants is the feeling their voice has often been missing around policy ...
Construction has begun on major works that will deliver significant safety improvements on State Highway 3 from Waitara to Bell Block, Associate Minister of Transport Kiri Allan announced today. “This is an important route for communities, freight and visitors to Taranaki but too many people have lost their lives or ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has today appointed Ginny Andersen as Minister of Police. “Ginny Andersen has a strong and relevant background in this important portfolio,” Chris Hipkins said. “Ginny Andersen worked for the Police as a non-sworn staff member for around 10 years and has more recently been chair of ...
Six further bailey bridge sites confirmed Four additional bridge sites under consideration 91 per cent of damaged state highways reopened Recovery Dashboards for impacted regions released The Government has responded quickly to restore lifeline routes after Cyclone Gabrielle and can today confirm that an additional six bailey bridges will ...
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta departs for China tomorrow, where she will meet with her counterpart, State Councillor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang, in Beijing. This will be the first visit by a New Zealand Minister to China since 2019, and follows the easing of COVID-19 travel restrictions between New Zealand and China. ...
Education Ministers from across the Pacific will gather in Tāmaki Makaurau this week to share their collective knowledge and strategic vision, for the benefit of ākonga across the region. New Zealand Education Minister Jan Tinetti will host the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers (CPEM) for three days from today, ...
A vital transport link for communities and local businesses has been restored following Cyclone Gabrielle with the reopening of State Highway 5 (SH5) between Napier and Taupō, Associate Minister of Transport Kiri Allan says. SH5 reopened to all traffic between 7am and 7pm from today, with closure points at SH2 (Kaimata ...
Internal Affairs Minister Barbara Edmonds has thanked generous New Zealanders who took part in the special Lotto draw for communities affected by Cyclone Gabrielle. Held on Saturday night, the draw raised $11.7 million with half of all ticket sales going towards recovery efforts. “In a time of need, New Zealanders ...
The Government has announced funding of $3 million for providers to help people, and whānau access community-based Building Financial Capability services. “Demand for Financial Capability Services is growing as people face cost of living pressures. Those pressures are increasing further in areas affected by flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle,” Minister for ...
Minister of Education, Hon Jan Tinetti, has announced appointments to the Board of Education New Zealand | Manapou ki te Ao. Tracey Bridges is joining the Board as the new Chair and Dr Therese Arseneau will be a new member. Current members Dr Linda Sissons CNZM and Daniel Wilson have ...
Fifteen ākonga Māori from across Aotearoa have been awarded the prestigious Ngarimu VC and 28th (Māori) Battalion Memorial Scholarships and Awards for 2023, Associate Education Minister and Ngarimu Board Chair, Kelvin Davis announced today. The recipients include doctoral, masters’ and undergraduate students. Three vocational training students and five wharekura students, ...
High Court Judge Jillian Maree Mallon has been appointed a Judge of the Court of Appeal, and District Court Judge Andrew John Becroft QSO has been appointed a Judge of the High Court, Attorney‑General David Parker announced today. Justice Mallon graduated from Otago University in 1988 with an LLB (Hons), and with ...
The economy has continued to show its resilience despite today’s GDP figures showing a modest decline in the December quarter, leaving the Government well positioned to help New Zealanders face cost of living pressures in a challenging global environment. “The economy had grown strongly in the two quarters before this ...
Aucklanders now have more ways to get around as Transport Minister Michael Wood opened the direct State Highway 1 (SH1) to State Highway 18 (SH18) underpass today, marking the completion of the 48-kilometre Western Ring Route (WRR). “The Government is upgrading New Zealand’s transport system to make it safer, more ...
This section contains briefings received by incoming ministers following changes to Cabinet in January. Some information may have been withheld in accordance with the Official Information Act 1982. Where information has been withheld that is indicated within the document. ...
Aotearoa New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta reaffirmed her commitment to working together with the new Government of Fiji on issues of shared importance, including on the prioritisation of climate change and sustainability, at a meeting today, in Nadi. Fiji and Aotearoa New Zealand’s close relationship is underpinned by the Duavata ...
The Government is delivering a coastal shipping lifeline for businesses, residents and the primary sector in the cyclone-stricken regions of Hawkes Bay and Tairāwhiti, Regional Development Minister Kiri Allan announced today. The Rangitata vessel has been chartered for an emergency coastal shipping route between Gisborne and Napier, with potential for ...
The Government will progress to the next stage of the NZ Battery Project, looking at the viability of pumped hydro as well as an alternative, multi-technology approach as part of the Government’s long term-plan to build a resilient, affordable, secure and decarbonised energy system in New Zealand, Energy and Resources ...
This morning I was made aware of a media interview in which Minister Stuart Nash criticised a decision of the Court and said he had contacted the Police Commissioner to suggest the Police appeal the decision. The phone call took place in 2021 when he was not the Police Minister. ...
The Government’s sharp focus on trade continues with Aotearoa New Zealand set to host Trade Ministers and delegations from 10 Asia Pacific economies at a meeting of Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) Commission members in July, Minister for Trade and Export Growth Damien O’Connor announced today. “New Zealand ...
$25 million boost to support more businesses with clean-up in cyclone affected regions, taking total business support to more than $50 million Demand for grants has been strong, with estimates showing applications will exceed the initial $25 million business support package Grants of up to a maximum of $40,000 per ...
80 per cent of 2021 Resident Visas applications have been processed – three months ahead of schedule Residence granted to 160,000 people 84,000 of 85,000 applications have been approved Over 160,000 people have become New Zealand residents now that 80 per cent of 2021 Resident Visa (2021RV) applications have been ...
The Government continues to invest in New Zealand’s burgeoning space industry, today announcing five scholarships for Kiwi Students to undertake internships at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. Economic Development Minister Stuart Nash congratulated Michaela Dobson (University of Auckland), Leah Albrow (University of Canterbury) and Jack Naish, Celine Jane ...
The Lead Coordination Minister for the Government’s Response to the Royal Commission’s Report into the Terrorist Attack on the Christchurch Mosques travels to Melbourne, Australia today to represent New Zealand at the fourth Sub-Regional Meeting on Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Security. “The Government is committed to reducing the threat of terrorism ...
The health and safety practices at our nation’s ports will be improved as part of a new industry-wide action plan, Workplace Relations and Safety, and Transport Minister Michael Wood has announced. “Following the tragic death of two port workers in Auckland and Lyttelton last year, I asked the Port Health ...
Bikes, electric bikes and scooters will be added to the types of transport exempted from fringe benefit tax under changes proposed today. Revenue Minister David Parker said the change would allow bicycles, electric bicycles, scooters, electric scooters, and micro-mobility share services to be exempt from fringe benefit tax where they ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta will hold bilateral meetings with Fiji this week. The visit will be her first to the country since the election of the new coalition Government led by Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sitiveni Rabuka. The visit will be an opportunity to meet kanohi ki ...
The Government is introducing the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill to ensure the recovery and rebuild from Cyclone Gabrielle is streamlined and efficient with unnecessary red tape removed. The legislation is similar to legislation passed following the Christchurch and Kaikōura earthquakes that modifies existing legislation in order to remove constraints ...
Ahead of tax season, Avast , a leading digital security and privacy brand of Gen ™ (NASDAQ: GEN), is warning New Zealanders of increased scam activity as cybercriminals prey on taxpayers' vulnerability during a time when they are expecting their tax ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards. Political Roundup: The Beehive’s revolving door and corporate mateship New Zealanders are uncomfortable with the high level of influence corporate lobbyists have in New Zealand politics, and demands are growing for greater regulation. A recent poll shows 62 per cent of the public support having a ...
In the year ended June 2022, 1 in 4 households that were renting were spending more than 40 percent of their disposable income on housing costs, compared with 1 in 5 households that were paying a mortgage, according to figures released by Stats NZ ...
Child poverty rates for the year ended June 2022 were unchanged compared with the previous year, according to figures released by Stats NZ today. “Child poverty statistics have not changed compared with last year,” general manager social and ...
The former broadcaster Liz Gunn, who has become a vocal figure within the anti-vaccination movement in New Zealand, has appeared in court today after an alleged airport altercation earlier this year. Gunn pleaded not guilty to charges of assault, trespass and resisting arrest over the incident at Auckland International Airport. ...
You don’t need to go to wildlife sanctuaries to see native birds, bugs and reptiles.This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof brought to you by Electric Kiwi – sign up here. Recently I wrote a feature for New Zealand Geographic on weeds – it turns out, a ...
Rental costs have hit a record high, according to new statistics released this morning. Trade Me has reported that the national median rent was up to $600 in February – a jump of 4%, or $25, when compared with the same month in 2022. It’s not unusual to see rent ...
The Free Speech Union welcomes the decision by Immigration New Zealand to not suspend Kellie-Kay Keen-Minshull's NZeTA and to allow her entry into the country, says Jonathan Ayling, Chief Executive of the Free Speech Union. “The Free Speech Union envisions ...
HeartLandNZ represents provincial New Zealand, the heart of the nation, the men and women, workers, contractors, businesses and farmers in the successful primary production sector. For over 30 years these voters have been economically ...
This week, Hera Lindsay Bird ponders whether it’s better to leave a party too early or too late.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to [email protected]Dear Hera,How can you tell when something is over? A recurring theme through my life is sticking around way past the due date. There have been ...
National’s new education policy will focus on the first eight years of education – primary and intermediate – in an effort to prepare students for high school. The opposition will formally unveil their policy later today – coincidentally (or likely not) in the prime minister’s electorate of Upper Hutt. Erica ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yen Ying Lim, Associate Professor, Monash University ShutterstockDementia is an umbrella term to describe a progressive neurological condition that affects people’s cognitive abilities, such as memory, language and reasoning. Alzheimer’s is the most common form, but other common ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Green, Host + Producer, The Conversation A comparison between two views of the same coral reef on Kiritimati, taken by University of Victoria scientists.Danielle Claar, Kristina Tietjen/University of Victoria Earlier this week, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graham Edgar, Senior Marine Ecologist, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania Graham Edgar/Reef Life Survey, Author provided Marine heatwaves are damaging reef ecosystems around Australia, but while the tropical north has received the lion’s share of the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Burch, Lecturer in Accounting, University of Tasmania Shutterstock One of the priorities of the federal government’s sweeping Universities Accord is to improve employment conditions in higher education. This is long overdue. Australia’s university sector once set the standard for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Davies, PhD Candidate, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University Image: David Kelly, Author provided Australia is in the grip of a housing crisis, with low-income households hit hardest by rising rents and falling vacancy rates. Social housing tenants were ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristie Patricia Flannery, Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Francisco V. Coching’s Rendition of Gabriela Silang Charging on a Mount, 1986 (Ayala Museum). It was around this time of year back in 1763 that Filipino rebels ...
The government’s planning to roll out dozens of new electric vehicle charging stations across the country in new “hubs” that would operate similar to existing petrol stations. The “charging our future” strategy has set a target of bringing in new hubs ever 150 to 200 kilometres along the state highways, ...
This morning we bring you an exclusive on The Spinoff from Dylan Cleaver. Wellington rugby stalwart, one-game All Black and former New Zealand First MP Tutekawa Wyllie has had his probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) condition recognised and compensated for by the ACC after a five-year campaign. CTE is a brain ...
New Zealand joins countries around the world by banning TikTok on government-issued devices as the US threatens an outright ban on the popular social media app, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Big building supply companies have fended off competition by wrapping desirable blocks of land in legal constraints on generations of NZers, alarming the Commerce Commission into issuing a far-reaching warning. Jonathan Milne reports. ...
The Green Party is announcing Teall Crossen as their candidate for the Nelson Whakatū electorate. Teall is an environmental barrister and activist with two decades of experience advocating for the rights of people and nature in the Courts in Aotearoa, ...
NZ Rugby wants to triple the number of female rugby referees - starting with the rise of Natarsha Ganley to Super Rugby honours, and handing a whistle to an Aupiki star player in a new scholarship. Suzanne McFadden writes. Natarsha Ganley loves rules. So during the week, she's on the lookout for ...
Exclusive: All Black turned NZ First MP Tutekawa Wyllie and his wife Margaret have won a landmark battle that could open the floodgates for rugby-related head injury claims. Dylan Cleaver reports.Wellington rugby stalwart, one-game All Black and former New Zealand First MP Tutekawa Wyllie has had his probable chronic ...
Do the results in Mt Albert, Wellington Central and Christchurch East amount to thumbing noses at head office, or are they a sign of party strength?Across three Labour selection contests in three high-profile electorates over the last fortnight, candidates have succeeded from local foundations in seeing off rivals considered ...
Unlike other countries around the world, New Zealand has no regulations about lobbying. Is change needed to ensure greater transparency about who's influencing our decision-makers? If you want to know who lobbies the Australian government on behalf of Air New Zealand, you simply go to an online register, type ...
Cyclone Gabrielle’s hammering of Hawkes Bay has ignited fears in Southland of bridges failing and farmland flooding through “mismanagement” of accumulated gravel Southland farmer Barry Taylor is frustrated gravel is being allowed to build up beneath a bridge on one of the country’s key tourist routes despite his years of ...
This week's anti-trans rally is straight out of the right-wing playbook With strange and toxic prescience, a subject from the new study Histories of Hate:The Radical Right in Aotearoa New Zealand has leapt from the pages of the book into a major news story this week. The ...
More than half of Aotearoa may need to be in native ngahere (bush) to merely blunt future worsening storms, but without such revolutionary change, Aotearoa could descend into a spiral of social, ecological, and economic damage Much of our land is without any trees, or is without the right trees, ...
Loading...(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. ...
Opinion - There's plenty of research supporting lowering the voting age to 16. Public debate and the law just need to catch up, Claire Breen writes. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation’s politics team. In this podcast Michelle and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jingdong Yuan, Associate Professor, Asia-Pacific security, University of Sydney Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to Moscow this week has been more about reiterating China and Russia’s shared interests, and less about any concrete pathway towards ending the war in Ukraine. While a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Treena Clark, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Indigenous Research Fellow, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney This May, Wiradjuri woman Denni Francisco and her label Ngali will be the first Indigenous designer to have a solo show at Australian Fashion Week. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Treena Clark, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Indigenous Research Fellow, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney This May, Wiradjuri woman Denni Francisco and her label Ngali will be the first Indigenous designer to have a solo show at Australian Fashion Week. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Robinson, Associate Professor in Housing and Communities, University of Tasmania Shutterstock Thousands of children end up being homeless in Australia without a parent or guardian. In 2021-22, 12,812 children (aged 10-17) were on their own when they sought help ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Robinson, Associate Professor in Housing and Communities, University of Tasmania Shutterstock Thousands of children end up being homeless in Australia without a parent or guardian. In 2021-22, 12,812 children (aged 10-17) were on their own when they sought help ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra There has been a lot of talk about the risk of financial contagion following the collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank. Perhaps too much talk. While the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra There has been a lot of talk about the risk of financial contagion following the collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank. Perhaps too much talk. While the ...
A Pacific elder and former secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum says Pacific leaders need to sit up and pay closer attention to AUKUS and the Indo-Pacific strategy and China’s response to them. Speaking from Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, Dame Meg Taylor said Pacific leaders were being sidelined ...
The government says it should have details on which weather-hit areas are high risk within three weeks, and can then make decisions about rebuilding. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carly Tozer, Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO Dean Lewins/AAPLa Niña and El Niño are well-known terms in Australia these days. Linked to them are certain expectations: we expect wet conditions in La Niña and dry conditions in El Niño. These ...
Promoters say The Game has pulled out of his upcoming appearance at two legs of a new New Zealand hip-hop festival, continuing the Compton rapper’s sketchy attendance record in Aotearoa. In an announcement made on Facebook today, promoters Room Service say The Game, real name Jayceon Taylor, has “last-minute commitments” ...
Counter-protests are planned for this weekend as a controversial anti-trans campaigner speaks in two New Zealand cities. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull will be allowed into the country after Immigration NZ said the threshold to stop her had not been reached. In a tweet, Rainbow Greens, the group that released an open letter ...
We asked workers at some of our favourite food establishments to show us what they eat when the rush is over.This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter The Boil Up. Last week was Work Week on The Spinoff, dedicated to unpacking our relationship with the world ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards. Political Roundup: Who will drain Wellington’s lobbying swamp? Wealthy vested interests have an oversized influence on political decisions in New Zealand. Partly that’s due to their use of corporate lobbyists. Fortunately, the influence lobbyists can have on decisions made by politicians is currently under scrutiny in ...
65 percent of Kiwis surveyed admit they would have no idea what to do if their identity was stolen Norton, a leading consumer Cyber Safety brand of Gen, today announced the New Zealand launch of Norton™ 360 Platinum, which leverages the company's ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Breen, Professor of Law, University of Waikato Getty Images There might have been pragmatic political reasons behind the government throwing voting-age legislation onto its recent policy bonfire, but it remains a sadly wasted opportunity. The announcement reversed former ...
ANALYSIS:By Bevin Veale, Massey University The impending arrival of Kelly-Jean Keen-Minshull — aka Posie Parker — has put the spotlight on the tension between free speech and protecting vulnerable communities in Aotearoa New Zealand. In particular, it raises questions about Immigration New Zealand’s role in limiting who can visit ...
Wairoa has ready-to-go projects that could be accelerated to quickly get people back into homes following Cyclone Gabrielle, Minister Willie Jackson was told on a visit to Wairoa today. Tātau Tātau o Te Wairoa is seeking a Government commitment ...
A new report published by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union exposes the bad decision-making that led to a 61% cost blowout in Auckland’s City Rail Link and shows that the costs of the project now significantly outweigh any benefits. ‘The City Rail Link: ...
Immigration NZ has today confirmed that the controversial anti-trans campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull will be allowed into New Zealand for her speaking events this week. You can read our report here – and the full statement from Immigration NZ’s Richard Owen to the media is below: “I can confirm that ...
Immigration NZ says it knows some people will be unhappy, but ultimately the threshold to bar Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull from New Zealand hasn’t been reached.The British anti-transgender campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, also known as Posie Parker, will be allowed into New Zealand this weekend, Immigration NZ has confirmed.Keen-Minshull’s ability to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Stevens, Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Adelaide Antarctica is an icy place today, but the ice extended even further during past ice ages. The question of how and where life survived on land in the icy continent, through the ages, has ...
Like a Tongan Cool Runnings, with trumpets instead of bobsleds, Red, White & Brass is a feel-good movie based on an incredible true story. First-time film producer Halaifonua Finau tells Sela Jane Hopgood how he got it made.In 2016, promising new Tongan producer Halaifonua Finau was sitting in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Thomas Gleeson, Doctoral Candidate, Australian National University Luz Rovira / Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND In the 19th century, Charles Darwin was one of the first to notice something interesting about domesticated animals: different species often developed similar changes when compared ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katharine Kemp, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney New research reveals serious privacy flaws in fertility apps used by Australian consumers – emphasising the need for urgent reform of the Privacy Act. Fertility apps provide a number ...
The Fiji Times “The University of the South Pacific (USP) has been and continues to be a bedrock for regionalism. A resource owned by the region; for the region and a precious institution that needs to be protected in line with the vision of our forebearers.” This was the message ...
By Claudia Tally in Port Moresby A Papua New Guinean family who have been renting a property from the National Housing Corporation for the past 46 years have been served with a 24-hour eviction notice by a different owner who had obtained an eviction notice from the Port Moresby District ...
Auckland mayor Wayne Brown’s plans to cut back on spending could see the council quit Local Government NZ, the group that represents councils across the country. Stuff’s Todd Niall has reported that $400,000 would be saved by the move, with mayor Brown reportedly wanting to direct that money into other ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frederic Gachon, Associate Professor, Physiology of Circadian Rhythms, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland Gregory Pappas/Unsplash Some of us love to be tucked up in bed by a particular time every night, ensuring a certain number of hours ...
The government has launched campaign to help young people navigate break-ups with the long-term aim of preventing family violence, believed to be the first of its kind. ...
The government has launched campaign to help young people navigate break-ups with the long-term aim of preventing family violence, believed to be the first of its kind. ...
Sports can be hugely beneficial for children but there are still many barriers for trans kids wanting to play, writes researcher Julia de Bres.There’s been a lot of talk recently about trans athletes in high performance sport, much of which derives from a broader anti-trans project rather than a ...
A new documentary follows Amber Clyde, skateboarder and founder of Girls Skate NZ, as she works to rebuild her confidence in the sport while juggling solo motherhood.Amber Clyde remembers being bullied as the only girl at the skate park in Birkenhead – but these days all the same bullies ...
After dedicating years to helping young women find their confidence in skateboarding, Amber Clyde must teach herself how to get back on the board after the birth of her second child. But balancing the realities of being a solo Mum with running her own business means that her time is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arthur Immanuel Crichton, PhD candidate, Flinders University Relative of _Chunia pledgei_ named _Ektopodon serratus_ (top left), with _Wakaleo oldfieldi_.Reconstruction of the early Miocene Kutjumarpu faunal assemblage by Peter Schouten, CC BY-SA Imagine a vast, lush forest dominated by giant flightless birds ...
Good morning:
The “Anthropogenic Global Warming” story takes a hit – this time from the Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html
Good to see Dr Chris de Freitas get an honourable mention too.
[Pull another ‘dump and run’ like this and you will be put into moderation…RL]
That’s pretty embarrassing for them professionally, Hammer, but no doubt they will have figured that they will always be able to get work as paid shills for the oil industry. Monckton can’t live forever, after all.
Regards, TVoR, Founder and CEO of The Institute for Denial In Our Time (IDIOT) and former micronaut, weather forecaster ( Mmmm, gonna rain today… or … maybe not.) and associate fellow at the University of Burgerology, Shitkicker, Missouri.
16 concerned scientists debunk global warming. These scientists include:
http://floppingaces.net/most_wanted/16-concerned-scientists-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#comment-357641
How well did the Wall Street Journal do at predicting the GFC, and that is in the area of their expertise.
(From the link supplied by Hammer above)
The rebuttal from the Wall Street Journal that the increasing occurance of extreme weather events witnessed around world is a result of climate change is extremely weak:
Compare this insipid bleating to the results in this study published in Reuters and covered by Scientific American.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=refile-flooding-is-biggest-climate
Click to EditDelete
the idiotes at the wall street journal blew it some years back when they lost focus and started betting on power futures and it ended up falling into the hands of rupert and now its just another rag.
Slashdot geeks take apart the WSJ quite effectively …
Also
Herald
Watching the Australian version of this on tele recently I was struck at how abusive some of these courses can become. Now I fully accept the need and right for the SAS to select the best candidates… and that will inevitably involve putting them through stress testing to ‘weed out the dreamers’. And while that is necessary to a degree; at some point it seems to be stepping over the line and degenerates into some kind of mad macho battle of wills to ‘break’ them.
As some of you here may have noticed, I’m a keen tramper. In my experience requiring a human being to complete battle efficiency training which involved running 8km in under one hour and 12 minutes carrying 35kg. presumably while wearing full battle fatigues over rough terrain in the Hunuas… in the middle of summer is plain nuts.
Who the hell approved this nonsense?
Its only nonsense to you, to me its selecting the best the NZ armed forces has to offer and training them to be even better.
You lower the standard (insert whatever pun you feel appropriate here) and testing then you lower the caliber of the soldier.
Once thats lowered then you put those soldiers at greater risk when they’re called on to do the hard tasks they’re expected to carry out.
As the article pointed out the real challenge is mostly mental. There are plenty of smart ways of achieving that rather than risking their lives by physically breaking them.
That’s does not necessarily have to imply a lowering of standards.
Crap
The physical side is as important if not more so then the mental. Its one thing to think or believe you can do something and quite another to know or experience it.
Stick to politics.
As I stated above… I’ve done plenty of the physical stuff. It means I’ve got some idea of what happens when you drive a human body into thermal overload.
On Boxing Day … just a few weeks ago… I did an 6hr tramp up a local peak. In that period I drank 4litres of water and came home 2kg lighter than when I left. That’s a total loss of 6 litres of sweat. The temperature was at least 26 degC and humid.
The last 2 hrs I was dehydrated, overheated and struggling. Badly. The one person I happened to meet on the way down enquired as to my well-being.
Fortunately I was carrying less than 8kg, stripped down to my shorts and I could rest when I needed to. This was nothing to do with how fit I am. I’ve done the exact same tramp in cooler temps and while it’s still a physical challenge (over 16km of steep bush track/sub-alpine tops, and almost 2000m of total elevation gain).. I wasn’t experiencing physiological stress the way I did this last trip.
When did you last push yourself that hard chris?
Do you want a medal? I have three.
So you go hard well whoop-de-do and good for you, were you training for selection? Training because you might have to push yourself in a war zone? Training because it may well mean the difference between life and death?
An incident happens and thats regretable but how many incidents happen in training?
Not many but as I’m sure you’re aware things can and will happen in the outdoors so instead of letting some week-end warriors decide what these guys do in thier training I think its best the people that know what they’re doing figure it out
You want to help then go lobby your MP to sort out the rules regarding outdoor pursuits centers
I think its best the people that know what they’re doing figure it out
And given that they’ve got one guy near death in hospital it’s fair enough to ask if they really do know what they are doing.
As for your sarcasm… you asked if I knew what hyperthermia was and if I had experienced it. I gave you a factual response.
I really do believe you have three medals….Arsehatery and Double Bar I dare say.
And given that they’ve put one guy near death in hospital it’s fair enough to ask if they really do know what they are doing.
– So how long has selections been run for and only one report of an incident happening, thats pretty good when you consider how many people get hurt or killed in the outdoors.
“at some point it seems to be stepping over the line and degenerates into some kind of mad macho battle of wills to ‘break’ them.”
– Typical of a leftie, don’t understand something so label it “negative”, maybe you think they could use some sensitivity training as well?
Try reading what I said.. Now I fully accept the need and right for the SAS to select the best candidates… and that will inevitably involve putting them through stress testing to ‘weed out the dreamers’.
Where does that say “sensitivity training”?
If there is one thing I’ve learnt from more than 40 years of banging about our mountains it is that the difference between success and failure is mostly mental. When faced with any challenge the crucial thing is NOT how strong or fit you are.. it is how well you use the resources available to you.
I’ve seen slim women out-perform strong men because they had their head screwed on. Equally I recall being rather shocked at discovering one day that technically I was a far better climber than one of this country’s most well-known mountaineers.. but he’s the most remarkably tough minded person I’ve ever met. And that took him places I only ever dreamed about.
And I’ve seen perfectly fit and well people completely lose it because they’ve panicked. Above a certain fitness threshold it’s almost all mental.
And while some real fitness and strength is unquestionably necessary to serve in the SAS… that is always something that can be developed through simple basic training.
But mental toughness, calmness in the face of stress, focus and the ability to be an effective part of a team is much harder to teach. And that is what they should be really selecting for. Pushing candidates to physiological breaking point is just dumbarse.
Pushing candidates to physiological breaking point is just dumbarse.
-and theres your ignorance coming out, these guys need to be pushed to breaking point and beyond because in the course of their duties thats exactly what will happen to them so you find out if they can take it in the selection process rather then out in the field
Its not just running around hills. mountains etc etc its about seeing how they cope, the decisions they make because if they go into live operations then they’ll have to cope with more then terrain and weather
You have experience in the outdoors then put it to good use and lobby your local MP for rules. codes etc for outdoor pursuits centers because they kill and injure more then selection does
There is absolutely nothing intelligent about breaking people physiologically. It’s easy, you just make them cold, or hot, or withdraw water and or food. Or any combination thereof. Any fool can do it.
All you are doing is just doing a simple experiment that has been done before and adds no useful information that we don’t already know. Make a person cold enough and they get hypothermia. A simple predictable set of consequences result.
And if you are operationally relying on men who are physiologically broken .. you have failed already. They simply will not and cannot function effectively.
Its not just running around hills. mountains etc etc its about seeing how they cope, the decisions they make because if they go into live operations then they’ll have to cope with more then terrain and weather
Like the risk of getting killed? You can sneer all you like at ‘runing around the hills’ Mr Medals… but in 15 yrs of serious alpine climbing I almost certainly came closer to dying far more often than any serving soldier ever does in their entire career. Your macho oneupmanship is completely lost on me.
And at the same time I fully respect anyone serving in harms way in our armed services. And I fully understand exactly the level of skill and capability our best SAS soldiers have. But they are human beings, not supermen… and they obey exactly the same physiological limits as any other human being.
And that is what baffles me about these SAS selection courses; I’ve had considerable experience in pushing myself to limits I doubt you have ever thought about…. and I know that everytime you break the body’s limits you fail . In my world there’s nothing clever about that; it’s dumbarse.
And why are you so defensive about this? Are military matters all so very special that us ordinary civilians aren’t allowed to ask questions?
Purple hearts, Chris? Given the discussion it would be ironic if they were for shedding blood.
Um no I never served in the US armed forces.
My mistake. Your spelling (center, caliber) made me think you were a seppo.
Fair call, spelling is not my strong point
Terrible old jokes revisited:
When I quit my job as a human cannonball, they said I’d be hard to replace … because you don’t often meet men of my calibre.
Is it going to be another…round of bad jokes
Some jokes are explosive.
And some I just can’t get fired up about.
With reference to afewknowthetruth and R. Atack here is another musing about the end days of our oil driven hence Industrial Age. Goodchild reminds us that World production in 2030, only 18 years away will be half what it was in 2005. This fact along with Climate Change are the macro defining realities of this time.
“Waking In The Half World”
refer link: http://www.countercurrents.org/goodchild280112.htm
“Most estimates indicate that by 2030, more or less, annual global oil production will be about half of the peak rate. “Half” the oil with occur at the same time as “half” of everything else (water, metals, electricity, etc.) and the general collapse of both a functional economy (with debts already beyond comprehension) and honest government (if we consider, for example, how casually the US dumped its Constitution and replaced it with the Patriot Act). All of these events will be occurring as a synergistic tangle — or, rather, an “anti-synergistic” tangle, centrifugal rather than centripetal. A little pocket calculator will tell you that, for most practical purposes, industrial civilization will be over by that same date of 2030.”
Of course “The Normalcy Bias” which I have too finds this assertion ridiculous though logic tells us otherwise. How can the World we grew up in change like this? Well short answer: It can’t ! the above must be just another doomer hypothesis surely!?
The world didn’t change. The limits were always there but we’ve either never looked for them (Farming in NZ and the resultant polluted rivers and lakes is a good example of this) or ignored them (Peak Oil, Climate Change) when told about them exclaiming that science and “progress” will get us past those limits.
mayor bob parker says the christchurch city council is dysfunctional.
rod oram in the sst says the chch city council is dysfunctional.
so what is the dysfunction?
why are they keeping it to themselves?
is it too esoteric for mere mortals to understand?
I just found this interview from William Rodrigues and Rosie O’Donnell from November 2009 back.
Who is William Rodrigues?
William Rodrigues is a hero. He saved hundreds of people on 911 with his master key and was celebrated as a hero and even invited to the White House. He “became known as “the last man out” as he really was the last man out of the North tower and could only safe his life by diving under a fire engine as the building collapsed in free fall speed.
All that changed when it became evident that what he had to say did not support the official CT. Here is his story
I just don’t know. I went in to work that morning and when asked about the events my first response was, “who burnt the Reichstag?”
Yep!
I listened to the interview Trav and tried hard to keep an open mind. William certainly sounded credible and his story has been authenticated by many. The essential truth about the preliminary explosions is the central issue. Prove or disprove and the case becomes credible or not credible. If there were darker forces at work the question about “Why” would need to be answered too. Definitely uneasy about official version versus other stories.
Hi Ianmac,
Thanks for making the effort. Here is a link to a study published only this month. Seismic measuring equipment used to study earthquakes measured the seismic activity in New York on 911. It turns out that the seismographs recorded seismic activity not related to the impact of the planes. In fact it turns out the planes had very little seismic impact at all. So where came that energy from?
This is the conclusion the author draws:
CONCLUSION
At the times of the planes’ impacts into the Twin Towers and during their collapses, as well as during the collapse of WTC7, seismic waves were generated. To the degree that (1) seismic waves are only created by brief impulses and (2) that low frequencies are associated with an energy (magnitude) that is comparable to a seismic event, the waves recorded at Palisades and analyzed by LDEO undeniably have an explosive origin. Even if the planes’ impacts and the fall of the debris from the Towers onto the ground could have generated seismic waves, their magnitude would have been insufficient to be recorded 34 km away and should have been very similar to one another. As we have shown, they were not.
The types and magnitudes of the seismic signals show significant differences. The greatest differences occur in their propagation speeds, even though their paths were essentially identical under identical conditions. This difference is physically unexplained in the interpretation of the events offered by the LDEO researchers, the 9/11 Commission and NIST. Therefore, we must question their calculations of wave propagation speeds based on their assumption that the wave origins are shown on the video images of impacts and collapses. We can only conclude that the wave sources were independently detonated explosives at other times, thus accounting for the variable discrepancies for each wave origin in relation to the videos.
The composition of the waves is revealing both in terms of the location of the source and the magnitude of the energy transmitted to the ground. The subterranean origin of the waves emitted when WTC1 collapsed is attested by the presence of the P and S body waves along with the Rayleigh surface waves, which are present in all five explosions. The placement of the source locations of the four other explosions is subaerial, attested by the unique presence of Rayleigh waves. The aerial explosions visible on the videos of the upper floors of the Twin Towers do not produce seismic waves 34 km from the source.
There is a factor of ten between the power of the explosions at the time of the plane impacts on the Twin Towers (as well as at the time of the collapse of WTC7) and the strength of those more powerful explosions at the times of their collapses, the subterranean explosion under WTC1 being the one that transmitted the most energy to the ground.
Note as well the degree to which the surface waves are dispersive (i.e., their speed depends upon their frequency). The duration of the recorded signal is not representative of the duration of the signal at the source.
Finally, controlled demolition of the three towers, suggested by the visual and audio witness testimony as well as by observations of video recordings of their collapses, is thus confirmed and demonstrated by analysis of the seismic waves emitted at the moments of the plane impacts and at the moments of the collapses.
Yes. I recall looking at that seismic evidence very early on within the first few days after the event. Intriguing.
I’ve always said that the 9/11 “Truth” movement has struggled because often as not it got side-tracked (deliberately or naively) into chasing lines of enquiry that while superficially appealing, were ultimately less telling than the many more rather prosaic facts around the whole affair.
Like they finally got Al Capone on tax evasion …
Innocent until proven Maori.
In an editorial on the Kim Dotcom arrest, the Herald dispenses with the niceties. Referring to Tuhoe awaiting trial over the Urewera raids, as “terrorists in Te Urewera”.
I notice the Herald are not as convinced of the guilt of those charged with white collar crime referring to “alleged internet pirate Kim Dotcom.”
The same for those at South Canterbury charged with “allegedly” defrauding the taxpayer to the tune of $1.7 billion.
Inferring guilt by association, the Herald include “terrorists in Te Urewera”, “desperate home grown criminals”, “Osama bin Laden”, all in the same breathless sentence.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10781891
“Some 76 officers, six times as many as took out Osama bin Laden, swooped”
Which is a completely irrelevant comparison to make, because those that took our Osama bin Laden weren’t just your ‘average’ police or even army folk, but the US’ navy seals squad (the best of the best of the best).
Also they had to fly in using stealth helicopters into a foreign country that had no idea they were coming, so they couldn’t exactly bring as many people as they wanted.
Making such ridiculously out of place comparisons really overshadows any message you were trying to convey (as in my case, because I literally haven’t read any more of your post than this).
Ha! I bet that’s the first time a Herald editorial was ever mistaken for the ramblings of a left wing rabble rouser, Lanth. Believe it or not, the ’76 officers’ line is actually from the editorial. Amazing, huh?
Jenny is absolutely tight to highlight this thoroughly racist, ignorant and confused editorial.
All in order to commit a murder! And turn on the patriotic bullsh*t as much as you like, that’s what it comes down to.
There is absolutely nothing intelligent about breaking people physiologically. It’s easy, you just make them cold, or hot, or withdraw water and or food. Or any combination thereof. Any fool can do it.
– No one said it was clever
All you are doing is just doing a simple experiment that has been done before and adds no useful information that we don’t already know. Make a person cold enough and they get hypothermia. A simple predictable set of consequences result.
-Its not an experiment to find out what happens
And if you are operationally relying on men who are physiologically broken .. you have failed already. They simply will not and cannot function effectively.
-The idea is to see how they cope when placed in those situations and how to deal with them so can make decisions without panicking, like the pararescue guys who practice drowning training
I’m not saying it always works of course but it works more then if they didn’t do what they do
Its not just running around hills. mountains etc etc its about seeing how they cope, the decisions they make because if they go into live operations then they’ll have to cope with more then terrain and weather
Like the risk of getting killed? You can sneer all you like at ‘runing around the hills’ Mr Medals… but in 15 yrs of serious alpine climbing I almost certainly came closer to dying far more often than any serving soldier ever does in their entire career. Your macho oneupmanship is completely lost on me.
-What I meant was sunshine I’m guessing you didn’t also have to deal with people trying to shoot you or having to complete a mission,k set up; an observation post, radio in info etc etc
And at the same time I fully respect anyone serving in harms way in our armed services. And I fully understand exactly the level of skill and capability our best SAS soldiers have. But they are human beings, not supermen… and they obey exactly the same physiological limits as any other human being.
-This is true however they can and do get trained to withstand what others can’t
And that is what baffles me about these SAS selection courses; I’ve had considerable experience in pushing myself to limits I doubt you have ever thought about…. and I know that everytime you break the body’s limits you fail . In my world there’s nothing clever about that; it’s dumbarse.
-You spend time in the outdoors for fun, recreation whatever, for these guys its their job, their career, what they’re trained to do but you seem to think that what you do is similar to what the SAS do, it isn’t, what you do is a small part of what they do
And why are you so defensive about this? Are military matters all so very special that us ordinary civilians aren’t allowed to ask questions?
– The problem is with people assuming (like you) they know whats going on and (in a worst case situation) if they ever got into a postion to influence ideas then it could be very bad
The problem is that you go tramping and do various outdoor stuff (and thats all good) but then you read of what they do and think that because it sounds similar to what you do you can then pass judgement
But the reality is that what you do and what you do is very, very different but thats ok I hope I’ve explained why you’re wrong and why you should stick to politics
I apoligise for the errors in my typing, the edit function doesn’t seem to be working (but it might just be at my end)
It didn’t work for me either.
You haven’t explained why you think SAS soldiers are immune to hyper/hypothermia. Or how their livers have an extra store of glycogen ordinary human beings don’t have so that their brains function when the rest of us have shut down.
Or why you think they can stand naked in a blizzard for hours on end while still happily solving Rubik cubes in 30 sec flat. Or run for an hour in full uniform, over tough ground without generating the excess heat that kills us ordinary ‘weekend warriors’.
Of course not. Soldiers are human beings. And what they do physically in the field is very similar to the demands of an extended alpine journey. Now I do understand that there are a whole bunch of specific skills and tasks that mean from a mental perspective there are many other things going on in an live military operation that are quite different to what I am accustomed to. I get that.
But that is my point; the real requirements of an effective soldier is to be able to perform these many specialised mental tasks.. while under some degree of stress. And stress can be any combination of physical and mental challenges.. I get that too.
But just physically pushing someone until their body breaks tells you nothing and is operational failure. Why go there?
All you have done is hand wave and tell me as an ignorant civilian I cannot possibly understand…
As the article states there were other candidates that didn’t collapse so, hopefully, the inquiry will tell us what happened.
What were the factors that determined why this guy collapsed and the others didn’t.
Was he tired from the night before? (quite possibly)
Was he on (legal) stimulents that could contribute to his collapse? (creatine, caffiene etc etc)
Was he simply not fit enough for the selection process? (unlikely)
Did he have an undiagnosed pre-existing condidtion?
Did he suffer an injury and not tell anyone about it?
What they don’t need is knee-jerk reactions based on opinion.
Fair enough. Those would be my thoughts too.
But frankly it’s my considered, and not uninformed opinion, that someone has misjudged the conditions and pushed too hard.
And I’d strongly suggest unnecessarily so. I still maintain from observation that there has developed in the last few decades or so this very strong hard-man macho mystique around the SAS. A lot of it is rooted in the totally false idea that these guys are some kind of physical supermen. Now while I accept the need for them to be very fit, strong and tough guys, the emphasis on that pure physicality seems to me to have tipped too far.
Take for instance the relatively new sport of chessboxing. Consists of a round of boxing, followed immediately by a set number of chess moves against the same opponent. From what I’ve read it’s an incredibly tough mental challenge. Lots of guys can box, lots do well at chess.. but combining both in quick succession is exceedingly challenging. That’s just an example of the kind of thing I’m thinking of… although I’m certain it’s nothing like a whole answer either.
My final point is this. As we saw with Pike River management; before the explosion they would have told anyone who questioned what was going on, that they were ignorant outsiders who couldn’t possibly comprehend what clever things they were doing and to… butt out.
No chance the SAS have developed a tiny bit of this syndrome too?
Crikey Red. I’m in awe of your outdoor pursuits – no wonder you enjoy the natural world: the tory quicksand and whack-a-mole shifting rubble that you relentlessly boot to touch here must make a 2000m climb seem a doddle….. keep it up but, delilcious and appreciated entertainment – like an informed and knowledgeable lion-tamer herding starving cats. RL for PM!
Feck I’m embarrased.. really. Last weekend I helped a bunch from the local tramping club replace all the windows in one of our older heritage huts. (DOC handed many of these older huts over to various clubs to maintain some years ago.)
Blue Range hut was actually built the year I was born, 1955. It’s good 2 hr grind up about 700m climb of bush track… most people find it’s about right for a full day walk in and out.
Here’s the rub… one of the guys with us helped build the original hut. Yes he’s in his mid-70’s…and he wasn’t any slower than the rest of us. If I can manage as well as him I’ll be delighted. (And he’s still full of stories…even if only half of them are true..)
But you have touched on something important to me ak. My deep love for this country was shaped in those experiences. Not just the fabulous places, but more importantly the extraordinary people. And those people shared a special ethos; if I can put it in a nutshell… we took pride in taking responsibility for ourselves and pushing our limits, but equally we were ALWAYS there for the other person…regardless.
The greatest bushmen this country ever saw were the hunters and Forest Service workers in the post-War era. They created the network of huts and tracks we treasure today. They taught us to replace the firewood you used, to keep the hut spotless and leave it better for the next party than when you found it. They taught us that the party is only as strong as it’s weakest member, that you stuck together regardless of what happened and looked after each other.
Looking back I guess I was hugely privileged to share in that legacy; it saddens me to see how it was stolen from our younger generations. All I can do know is not give up trying to show them what it meant.
Thank you RedLogix, what a wonderful thing you and ‘the tramping club bunch’ are doing. Thank God for people who still have consideration for others- especially our future generations-and the perspicacity (and energy) to put their visions and well thought out actions into practice.
PS I too thought a rethink about “tough” exercises was needed when I read about the unfortunate young man in a coma. I also marvelled at your patient explanations to Chri73 who seemed particularly obtuse and lacking in perspicacity today. However he obviously needed to get some deep seated hang up off his chest and I really think you may have helped. Thus, another thank you for caring for others.
A lovely story that, but yeah, those values might be diminished, but they aren’t dead. I’m relatively young, and my younger friends all practice those values in the hills, so somehow, these are being transferred and taught still. Organisations like the Federated Mountain Clubs and the New Zealand Deerstalkers are pretty consistent as well, which helps.
With DOC cutbacks for backcountry huts looming (something which needs to be challenged) in favour of frontcountry tourism facilities, it will be largely up to the community to maintain older facilities. If we lose them, we lose a massive amount of our heritage.
My biggest is worry is that, on the whole, people in conservation and recreation are white and aging. How we get younger, urban, and other cultures into the outdoors is probably the biggest challenge out there.
That made my day Peter. It might even do for a couple of weeks….
The thing about special forces is that they are triathletes as well as soldiers. This incident seems to be an extreme sports training accident, rather than an “experiment” or an attempt to “break” those who can’t perform. It’s exactly like a marathon runner overextending themselves – and they’ve acknowledged the problem, and are investigating what went wrong and how they can prevent it happening again, which is all you can really ask.
and they’ve acknowledged the problem, and are investigating what went wrong and how they can prevent it happening again, which is all you can really ask.
– To be fair thats probably what I should have said
And I’d agree. If it was just bad luck or something specific with that individual then that’s acceptable. Accidents do happen and can be learnt from.
But I would also hope that any internal enquiry had the balls to call it if they found evidence of a systemic screwup as well. Because on the face of it what they were asking these guys to do was in the conditions more than a little risky.
Well no I disagree (surprise) because for the amount of guys that go through selection there doesn’t seem to be many incidents
However if something is found that makes selection safer without compromising their standards then I’m all for it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surviving_the_Cut
(not that I’m suggesting anyone look this up and then download the programs if interested because that would be bad)
Well said Chris 73 🙂
Perhaps NZ should disband the SAS. We are too small a country to need a band of unaccountable assassins roaming the hills on secret missions.
… that civilians couldn’t “possbily” comprehend.
NB: Edit problems here too (FF9,W7)
We definitely need the SAS. And a beefed up defensively oriented military force.
Bernard Hickey isn’t impressed with Jonkey’s ability with numbers and in predicting NZ’s economic and financial future. He isn’t impressed by Key’s attempt to reassure us that selling farmland to foreigners is not a problem in the current global financial context.:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10781864
Hickey puts some of the blame onto the last Labour government, saying foreign debt, selling assets, falling productivity, and limited benefits from exports have all made things worth, but that Key is not the PM to provide the necessary intervention. I tend to agree with Hickey here, though I don’t always agree with all he says. He concludes:
I’m not sure why Kimdortom gets a mention here though?
Dotcom got preferential treatment from Immigration because he bought $10 mill of govt bonds.
Uh, so he got preferential treatment and we got to pay him interest on the loan he gave NZ? Why does that not sound right.
Kiwipolitico (Pablo) exposes the levels of corruption and cronyism in the elite of NZ society.. MUST READ
http://www.kiwipolitico.com/2012/01/a-culture-of-impunity/
Thanks ropata. You are so right, this link about a culture of impunity in NZ is an absolute Must Read. Have been trying to express much of what Pablo says for a long time.
dont forget stephen joyce who said before the lection that broadband internet would allow for faster (nudge nudge wink wink ) downloads.
Great to hear John Key announce on TV1 News just now that we have a ‘”trans-Tasman employment market”.
Finally we get the Australian wages….no?
Piece in the SST today, B11, states:
“The Best Oylmpic cheat of them all was Marion Jones. She had it all: five medals from Sydney, the believability of an actress, the confidence to stare out her doubters, and this extraordinary helpful facility at the right moment to generate tears.”
Hmmmm
How about a joker who won 6 gold medals across glamour track and field events, who was an American icon, who cashed in with widespread endorsements through his achievements, who carefully groomed a ‘mom and apple pie’ image, who condemned a rival runner when that person was found to have used banned steriods in 1988, but who himself 3 times (apparently) tested positive for banned stimulants but was never banned from competition.
Someone to rival Marion Jones?
Leftwing blog
I’ve put together a feed site for some leftwing blogs… probably not recommended for dialup. Let me know if there’s any other websites that should be added.
Thanks Jackal. Oxygen for real human beings and social justice.
The EU bans Iranian oil imports, to take effect from July 1 giving member states time to sort out alternative oil sources in an orderly fashion.
Pretty obvious what Iran is going to do in response, right? Yep, move to end oil exports to the EU right now. In a move which places even more economic pressure on the likes of Greece, Italy and Spain.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/27/us-iran-sanctions-oil-idUSTRE80Q0GW20120127