“Universal” welfare programmes effectively make EVERYBODY a beneficiary…
One looks forward to the Herald editor steadfastly refusing to accept universal superannuation turning them into a beneficiary after they’re 65, and instead returning the money to the government…
The future is all unknowable claim these intellectual giants, so why bother preparing for it (other than by implementing libertarianism, naturally). #pffft
Someone could possibly remind us of the link to use so you don’t have to go to whaleoil or kiwiblog? I thought there was one but haven’t noted it.
Incidentally an email from Scoop Gordon Campbell now overall Editor and two new Trustees Jeremy Rose and Jan River of Public Good Aotearoa NZ. Great news in every sense.
Did you notice this in the Stuff piece?
“Economist Brian Easton has written that, with a universal income, either “the required tax rates are horrendous or the minimum income is so low” it won’t eliminate poverty”.
If you have Brian, who is fairly much of the left, saying your ideas are barmy you are really in trouble.
My prediction is that in a couple of months Labour will simply stop talking about it and quietly drop the whole scheme. Pity really.
Labour have thrown the dice on UBI…lets see if it gives them some traction, or becomes a liability come the serious debates in 2017.
Which ever way one looks at a UBI, it can’t be done without a major rehash of the tax system in NZ. Money does not grow on tree’s (although I imagine more than 1 commentator here would say it does!! all that’s required is a printing press).
Oh common bm if it was the greens you would be here telling us how it proves the greens are , insert meme of the week here.
Robinson points out that the tpu are not to be taken seriously and leaves unspoken the fact that they are tools for the right.
As a democracy we need an effective opposition to try and hinder the Government from doing dumb things,and Labour is the best bet we have.
We dont see the Greens fulfilling that role, Winston’s not really doing it either, so while we may not vote Labour, we do care about its role in our democracy.
The Nats recovered from the low 20s and I expect that Labour will recover from its time in the 20s also.
Growth: 2-3% per year over the next several years.
Jobs: Unemployment fallen to 5.3%
Infrastructure: Fibre Broadband, Roads of National Significance, Christchurch Rebuild.
Unfortunately Stuart your comment is without foundation.
I partially agree with you about the debt though – I am sure the government could have limited their spending over the last 7 years to minimize how much debt they incurred.
Your advise about labour is always wrong. Actually never seen when you have been right. You jump on the band wagon of us who criticise the labour party with child like glee. But never in a constructive manor, unless it is to support some right wing nut job inside the labour party. It’s a bore.
and your fake pathos about the labour party is sickening.
You and yours just don’t want people to do better, are you opposed to helping the poor? Are you opposed to a society that thinks all it’s members are worth something?
To make them sleep easier I’d suggest introduction of a TPPA or Tax on Property Profit Actualised AKA CGT; it must be the TPU’s equivalent of a ‘nocturnal emission’.
“Quoting Obama’s declaration that “it is time, now, for us to leave the past behind,” the man who shaped Cuba during the second half of the 20th century writes that “I imagine that any one of us ran the risk of having a heart attack on hearing these words from the President of the United States.”
Castro then returns to a review of a half-century of US aggression against Cuba. Those events include the decades-long US trade embargo against the island; the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack and the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner backed by exiles who took refuge in the US.
He ends with a dig at the Obama administration’s drive to increase business ties with Cuba.”
I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be but it would be nice to have actual study on it. Oh, here’s one:
he findings from the 84 in-depth interviews provided information on residents’ perceptions and experiences of living in medium density housing. the findings afforded us the opportunity to assess how effectively the outcomes of smart growth policies have met the expectations,
aspirations, and needs of this group of intensive housing residents.
Seems that it’s probably the same in NZ as in Australia.
Just wondering what Matthew Hooton will do once he becomes part of the precariat. Does he have any skills other than speaking with a forked tongue? What could he retrain as?
Good to hear the left wing guy challenging his bullshit on Nine to Noon.
Good to hear the left wing guy challenging his bullshit on Nine to Noon.
I agree, weka. Stephen Mills actually seemed to have thought about what he was going to say today, and to have worked out that Hooton needs to be challenged constantly.
I was concerned, however, that Hooton still does the great majority of the talking, and still gets away with the most outrageous statements.
Still, a much better performance from Stephen Mills. He’s given Hooton a hard time in the past….
Key-Sucker Audrey Young still picking over the corpse of her darling’s flag fuck up. Presumably to impress that there’s something essentially rum in the result. No Audrey. Your darling Man-Child’s vanity fucked him up. You as well need to grow up. As a journalist you’re an irresponsible disgrace.
Reposting this excellent doco (50mins) on Glyphosate that TMM posted the other day. Glyphosate is the most common weed killer used in farming, and it’s also used globally and domestically for preparing fields for crop production. Basically we eat plant material that comes into contact with a poison:
It’s deactivated almost immediately when it hits soil colloids and that’s why it’s used for preparing land for planting crops. You can plant the next day or even the same day,
This seems to be at odds with the documentary, that glyphosate isn’t deactivated at all.
You would do well as a spokesperson for the manufacturer Monsanto, who can’t seem to put up a good case for it being safe other than it’s been in use for 40 years. Then let the state and any other not for profit organisation do all the fact finding for you on the actual risks.
The half-life of glyphosate ranges from several weeks to years, but averages two months. In water, glyphosate is rapidly dissipated through adsorption to suspended and bottom sediments, and has a half-life of 12 days to ten weeks. Glyphosate by itself is of relatively low toxicity to birds, mammals, and fish, and at least one formulation sold as Rodeo® is registered for aquatic use.
Some surfactants that are included in some formulations of lyphosate, however, are highly toxic to aquatic organisms, and these formulations are not registered for aquatic use.
Further to the above its not difficult to find many studies that confirm that Round Up as sold by Monsanto is more toxic than was once thought. Here is one reviewed in Scientific American
Until now, most health studies have focused on the safety of glyphosate, rather than the mixture of ingredients found in Roundup. But in the new study, scientists found that Roundup’s inert ingredients amplified the toxic effect on human cells—even at concentrations much more diluted than those used on farms and lawns.
One specific inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself – a finding the researchers call “astonishing.”
It’s hardly astonishing, given that glyphosate works by suppressing an enzyme that’s found in plants but not animals. The list of things more deadly to human embryonic cells than glyphosate would be a very, very long one that included some really-not-very-toxic-at-all stuff on it.
If you were to read the studies further you would see:
““This clearly confirms that the [inert ingredients] in Roundup formulations are not inert,” wrote the study authors from France’s University of Caen. “Moreover, the proprietary mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death [at the] residual levels” found on Roundup-treated crops, such as soybeans, alfalfa and corn, or lawns and gardens.
The research team suspects that Roundup might cause pregnancy problems by interfering with hormone production, possibly leading to abnormal fetal development, low birth weights or miscarriages.”
“The authorizations for using these Roundup herbicides must now clearly be revised since their toxic effects depend on, and are multiplied by, other compounds used in the mixtures,” Seralini’s team wrote.
The EPA’s classification of Roundup was initially done in 1993 and hasn’t been reviewed since. The study quoted above was done in 2009. I would not place a great deal of reliance on the EPA’s assessment at this stage. Particularly as most of the research was conducted by the chemical industry and in particular Monsanto itself:
But the EPA’s exoneration — which means that the agency will not require additional tests of the chemical’s effects on the hormonal system — is undercut by the fact that the decision was based almost entirely on pesticide industry studies. Only five independently funded studies were considered in the review of whether glyphosate interferes with the endocrine system. Twenty-seven out of 32 studies that looked at glyphosate’s effect on hormones and were cited in the June review — most of which are not publicly available and were obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request — were either conducted or funded by industry. Most of the studies were sponsored by Monsanto or an industry group called the Joint Glyphosate Task Force. One study was by Syngenta, which sells its own glyphosate-containing herbicide, Touchdown.
No.
1. Less toxic than many other things != non-toxic.
2. Just about everything’s lethal in a big enough dose.
Re the studies claiming glyphosate is dangerous, is that the same Seralini whose study claiming that GMOs caused tumours in rats had to be withdrawn because it was so bad? The EU says: “To date, more than 800 studies have been conducted along with evaluations carried out by regulatory authorities across the world, all of which have confirmed the safety of glyphosate.”
“To date, more than 800 studies have been conducted along with evaluations carried out by regulatory authorities across the world, all of which have confirmed the safety of glyphosate.”
That is not what the concern is about – talk about shifting goal posts!
The problem is with the mixture of glyphosate and POEA. Few of the so-called “independent” reviews consider this. Certainly not the regulatory authorities who take their “research” from the manufacturers and then those outside the states who take their research from the EPA. It’s all a big back scratching exercise. No wonder people are turning off, and doubting “scientific” regulatory authorities when their research is so compromised. It’s like asking the Koch Bros to give a dissertation on Global Warming!
Then to cite 800 studies – well they would not all have been done in the past year would they. And Roundup has been around for a few years now – but its only in the recent past that people have begun to wonder if some of the things they are experiencing now might not be connected with this product. I myself used Roundup extensively on the farm for a number of years and before that Paraquat – before it was taken off the market because of its toxicity. oh and the EU approved the use of it 2004!
So, yeah, shifting goalposts. Apparently, glyphosate isn’t anything to worry about, but polyoxyethyleneamine is. I wouldn’t know enough about it to comment, but if that is the situation maybe people could stop wittering on about glyphosate?
And when it comes to “compromised” research that can’t be trusted, you really couldn’t find a better example than anti-GMO activist Gilles-Eric Seralini. After the rat-tumours propaganda fiasco, any research with his name on it is worthless.
Almost all of the criticism against the Seralini research was from researchers primarily funded by the Industry, and that includes the regulatory bodies which (as I have previously pointed out) rely heavily on Industry funded research. If the critics of Serelini really wanted to prove their point then they would repeat the research with greater numbers of animals, rats less susceptible to cancer, and controls which they were happy with. They may not like the results however.
Roundup weed-killer – glyphosate – is “probably carcinogenic,” according the World Health Organization. The decision was laid out in an analysis in The Lancet Oncology.
And who am I to argue with that.
Glyphosate is also one of the most commonly used garden herbicides, as well as the most commonly used in agriculture. It is sold under different names but everyone knows it as Roundup.
With our she’ll be right attitude here in NZ we tend to use it with wild abandon at the sight of the tiniest of weeds, not knowing or understanding just how toxic it is. I mean, it’s sold on supermarket shelves so it must be safe right?
Our local council seems to love Monsanto too. It sprays council berms, gutters and parks liberally and excessively.
As well as being a health risk it’s also largely unnecessary. You can pull weeds out of the ground. For free! Or if you have tough weeds on a paved patio you can sprinkle the weeds with the cheapest table salt you can buy and pour boiling water over and your weeds die almost instantly. I’ve done this successfully in the past. Or for large scale weeding you can purchase a hand held weed burner, powered by a gas cannister.
Good tips Rosie, I have been thinking about this a bit lately. I don’t get why people would want to liberally go around and poison weed spray over everything around their house (I have seen it a couple of times recently). After all it is just going to come back in a few months, and you’ve created a possible health risk, changed soil conditions and had an effect on the insect life too.
I also see it with councils where they spray along fencelines and edges of tracks. Most of it is unnecessary, unless there is something like a blackberry infestation growing across a track its a good idea. But spraying fencelines again and again to create some scorched earth at the bottom of it is crazy, especially with a toxic chemical.
I have tried a salt and vinegar spray before on blackberry, with dishwashing liquid to make it stick to the leaves, but it didn’t really work, only a small amount of the leaves browned off. So I might look into that gas torch idea. Thanks.
Blackberry is particularly hard to get rid of and even Roundup won’t be effective. Good luck with the gas torch. Heavy duty herbicides such as Tordon and Scrub Cutter are used on blackberry. Even though 2,4,D is banned in NZ, a variant of this chemical is used in the manufacture of these two herbicides. You need full PPE to apply this stuff, but I wouldn’t go near it myself.
Tordon was used aerially on gorse on a farm near us a few years ago. There were two breaches of the regional council’s rules. One was a lack of notification to nearby residents and the other was a breach of the 300 metre buffer zone. The helicopter pilot dumped this crap, literally, over our neighbourhood, as people were walking up the street to the bus stop and cycling to work in the morning rush. Despite the evidence people gathered, it took a massive effort to get the regional council to act. The pilot ended up with a “please don’t do this again” note. We really do have such a lazze faire approach to agrichemical safety in this country.
Final point. I used to work in the organic food industry in the 90’s, 2000’s. I remember visiting a supplier’s apple orchard. As well as the air being alive with bee’s and butterflies due to the lack of pesticides there was a marked difference in the quality of the soil around his tree’s compared to the soil around the tree’s of his neighbours. His neighbour was a supplier of conventionally grown apples to the supermarkets. Despite it being a dry time of the year, the soil on the organic orchard retained it’s structure and a bit more moisture, where as the soil of the roundup sprayed tree bases were crumbly and in large chunks. It looked dead.
The health of the different soils were in stark contrast. And the neighbour had all that extra cost too.
Basically we eat plant material that comes into contact with a poison
It comes into contact with dirt and the excretions of a wide variety of different creatures, too. If you’re going to panic about stuff you can’t see that is entering the sacred temple of your body, the risk of microbiological contamination offers far better material than whatever traces of herbicide might still be on there.
“the risk of microbiological contamination offers far better material than whatever traces of herbicide might still be on there.”
Only if you are microbe-phobic.
The issue is what humans have evolved with. We’re actually pretty good at living alongside microbes and dirt, with some notable exceptions, because we have millions of years of co-evolution (those that best fit survived). The number of chemicals we are exposed to now is massively higher than pre-industrial revolution, and science is still not so good at studying culmulative effect, multiple variables, and individual response.
We know that some herbicides are dangerous (which is why we’ve banned them), so unless you are arguing that Glyphosate-based herbicides are a special class of chemicals with zero side effects (would love to see that), we’re talking a matter of degrees. A big part of the problem is that PR has been a major driver of information (Monsanto are the new tobacco companies), so you have conflicting ideas about what the problem might be, let alone what it actually is. Fortunately there does seem to be much more non-industry research being done now to present a more comprehensive picture of what the issue are.
The thing about evolution is that the microbes also evolve, and quicker than we do. You’re far more likely to get sick from microbial life forms in your food than from glyphosate, which is pretty much never found in quantities that have a chance of being harmful to humans (and that’s not because big government and Monsanto have prevented anyone testing the levels remaining in food, it’s because there’s been plenty of testing and the results show no threat).
We do know that some herbicides are dangerous and have banned them, which is one of the main reasons glyphosate is so ubiquitous – it works and is (relatively) safe. If it wasn’t, it would be among those banned herbicides. This is a subject like vaccination, in which anti-science irrationalists convince themselves that the lack of evidence something is harmful doesn’t trump their gut instinct that it just has to be.
And why is it in the documentary they show evidence that the chemical can change gene structures and destroy good gut bacteria. In studies with rats they found feeding them human tolerable amounts of glyphosate that the rats grew large tumors. And why were several farmers finding that their livestock were having lower reproductive rates and higher birth defects when their stock was being fed glyphosate based feed?
The industry response is that these trials/tests didn’t follow some proper scientific process, so they should be ignored. Industry don’t seem to want to conduct their own trials with matching conditions – funny that! You’re the one sounding like the science irrationalist I’m afraid.
The thing is, those studies really don’t follow proper scientific process. Actual scientists do study this stuff – and come up with results like “glyphosate, the main ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, does not accumulate in mother’s breast milk.” (Washington State University study).
The WSU study was a scientific one conducted by a biological scientist who is “an executive committee member for the International Society for Research in Human Milk and Lactation and a national spokesperson for the American Society for Nutrition.”
The German study claimed to have been carried out by the Green Party is mentioned on globalresearch.ca, an anti-globalisation activist site, and a detox nutter site, with the study itself not available. The American study that prompted it was carried out by “anti-GMO activist group Moms Across America with “Sustainable Pulse,” an online “news service” published by anti-GMO campaigner and organic food entrepreneur Henry Rowlands.” (academicsreview.org, in a piece aptly titled “Debunking pseudo science “lab testing” health risk claims about glyphosate (Roundup)”).
The thing is, those studies really don’t follow proper scientific process…The WSU study was a scientific one…
It is a non-peer reviewed study done in conjunction with Monsanto. The authors have since published a paper specifically on their quantification method ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4743594/ ) but not on the methodology of their overall study, which was presented as a report at a conference.
“The thing is, those studies really don’t follow proper scientific process…
The WSU study was a scientific one…”
The WSU study is a non-peer reviewed report presented at a conference and done in conjunction with Monsanto. The authors have now published a paper specifically on their quantification method but not on the methodology of the overall study.
I find it interesting that you’ve avoided that evidence that does look like proper science and that the World Health Organisation thinks it’s a carcinogen. This should be swept aside because we have nothing to worry about right?.. Wouldn’t best practice be, lets stop it’s use until we find out what it’s doing and what it’s effects are. Maybe that’s the approach that countries like Sri Lanka and some in Europe who have banned it already, will go down.
The list of things the WHO thinks “probably causes cancer” is a very long one and is of little value in the absence of the info “what level of risk” and “at what dose.” For example, they think red meat “probably causes cancer,” ie some studies have shown a slight increase in risk if you eat lots of it. This comes under the heading of “Big Whoop.”
A useful rule of thumb when considering how credible studies about glyphosate are, is to figure out whether the people carrying out the studies are anti-GMO activists or not. Activism and science are about as compatible as religion and science – ie, not very. Both the articles you’ve linked to are anti-GMO activism – one is featured on an anti-GMO activist web site and the other involves Gilles-Eric Seralini, whose reputation hasn’t survived his rat-tumours propaganda exercise.
A quote from Oscar Wilde who is still amusing and satirical. Sincerity
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
I’d quote but it was just a selection of inane BS comments from off of Facebook seemingly selected to show that there’s no support for becoming a republic.
Really, if they want to report on the public’s feeling of becoming a republic then the should be doing a poll. Like this:
The poll, by Curia Market Research, was commissioned by New Zealand Republic. It shows support for a New Zealand Head of State has risen to 44%. Support from people aged 18-30 is at now at 66%. Support for using the next British Monarch as our next head of state has fallen to 46%.
Yeah, we won’t be staying part of the British monarchy for much longer.
Looks like it’s a matter of time. When Liz goes I expect it will become an issue. I really hope we don’t do it soon though, can you imagine National running the process?
What makes you think using a UBI to stick it to the elderly isn’t Grants plan? I have certainly seen plenty of comments which argue a UBI is a good way to smuggle in and restructure the entire tax system which appears to be popular with the commentariat on here.
I think it’s better that Labour don’t start commenting on this. They don’t have a policy, and I’m guessing they haven’t done to much more work on a UBI other than the report they commissioned. They put the report out for discussion. That’s what is happening. I’d like to see a whole range of people grapple with this before Labour get too involved. Let people hash it out.
We all know they haven’t formulated a policy on this yet. However, they have been quick to totally rule things out. Like the 50% tax rate.
With talk of replacing benefits, coupled with a UBI rate centered around $200 a week and the possibility of a capital tax, a number of pensioners and home owning low income earners are becoming rather concerned.
Therefore, to put an end to their concern and keep the discussion on track, if they have ruled this out they should inform us.
It’s a total waste of time having the public hash things out when they have (if that is the case) been totally ruled out.
Labour wanted to have this debate, the least they can do is partake a little more. Keeping us all up to date with what has and hasn’t been ruled out as the discussion moves forward.
And by partaking, it also acknowledges the discussion is being heard. It only takes a brief comment, like good points made to achieve this.
An Emmerson cartoon that the Herald kept off the digital version until today.I have been chuckling since Saturday and was about to copy and post today when it appeared. Here you are Standardistas have a laugh.
…”Meanwhile, London Mayor Boris Johnson has chosen to speak out, despite the silence of his country’s prime minister.
Praising the “ruthless clarity” of Russian President Vladimir Putin in aiding the Syrian government’s removal of “maniac” Islamic State jihadists from Palmyra, Johnson said that Moscow has made the West look “ineffective.”
“If reports are to be believed, the Russians have not only been engaged in airstrikes against Assad’s opponents, but have been seen on the ground as well. If Putin’s troops have helped winkle the maniacs from Palmyra, then (it pains me to admit) that is very much to the credit of the Russians. They have made the West look ineffective; and so now is the time for us to make amends, and to play to our strengths,” Johnson wrote in his column for the Telegraph.
Johnson went on to note the archaeological and historical significance of the city, much of which has been destroyed by Islamic State.
“The victory of Assad is a victory for archaeology, a victory for all those who care about the ancient monuments of one of the most amazing cultural sites on Earth,” Johnson wrote….
Good on you Little for not shying away from Hooton’s vicious attacks. Hooton claims he doesn’t know what he (Little) is talking about and says – he ought to demand an apology but doesn’t think he’ll bother. You bet he won’t bother because anyone who listens to the RNZ political spot on a Monday morning or reads his media opinions knows how true it is.
And anyone who dares to stand up to Hooton is painted as an idiot/crazy/mad and deranged according the maddest/craziest and most deranged “commentator” in the country.
Please do a post someone so we can all verbally attack him with relish.
So Little says hooton is part of the problem and hooton responds by calling the leader of the second biggest political party an idiot, there by proving Little right. Your a fucking moron hooton.
And anyone who dares to stand up to Hooton is painted as an idiot/crazy/mad and deranged according the maddest/craziest and most deranged “commentator” in the country.
Hooton doesn’t need “standing up to”. He is a political commentator who says things some people don’t agree with. No more, no less. Disagreeing with him, easily done through any of the the myriad of social media available, isn’t “standing up” to him in the sense of implying courage and determination in the face of threats and pressure. Not need to over-egg it.
And calling him names doesn’t help either. Is he really the most “deranged” commentator in the country? If you think that, you need to get out more.
Tinshed. It was Hooton who recently called someone “deranged”. He has also used the words “idiot”, “mad” and “crazy” to describe various opposition politicians. I was using his own words against him with some accuracy – as anyone who has listened to him on radio and elsewhere could testify.
You need to learn to read text more carefully.
And for your edification, Hooton is a verbal bully who needs to be stood up to.
I note that nothing has been said today about the death threats received by Paula Bennett on Facebook. Andrew Little has indicated that while he does not condone, of course, such comments, given the difficult economic times combined with the harsh rhetoric of commentators like Matthew Hooton, such aggressive actions are, to some degree, a factor in such threats. Is that the view shared by most people? I would have thought threatening to kill a Cabinet Minister was pretty serious stuff and required not only Police action, but unequivocal rejection and condemnation by all. Violence, or threats of violence, have no place in political discourse.
Someone called Mike Hosking a moron on Twitter that got a lot of media attention. Someone told his psychiatrist he wanted to bomb John Key & was imprisoned. Helen Clark had an axe through her window. Dildos, meringues, buckets of mud. The hoi polloi are getting restless. Hooton thrives on hatred.
See my comment @ 19 Tinshed. Read the link because Andrew Little made it clear there was no justification for that type of aggressive behaviour. He then goes on to say he has observed an upsurge in such behaviour in recent years and he believed it was partly in response to the struggle so many NZers are experiencing because of harsh government actions.
And in case there is an attempt to “blame the behaviour on Labour”, he pointed out that the kind of vicious commentary some right wing PR commentators indulge in is also adding to the problem. (I paraphrase)
He is correct on both counts.
Edit: My last sentence @19 is tongue in cheek. I’m not encouraging “aggressive” action be taken against Hooton as some rwnj might try to claim.
My issue with the factors you raise – that Little condemned the behaviour and then went on to observe that harsh government actions makes such behaviour understandable, is that it reeks of victim-blaming. It is kinda of like having a bob each way – violence is unacceptable but I understand why people are violent. I suspect that many people hear is only the second part – times are hard, so violence is understandable. I am not sure that is the right response to threats to kill politicians.
So Tinshed you’re saying that a political leader is not allowed to reflect on what might be causing the behaviour? That is precisely what Andrew Little should be doing when it is appropriate. And it is appropriate to point out the treatment meted out to so many people by this government is what is behind the increase in the behaviour. It is also appropriate to point out the aggressive verbal attacks by right wing commentators also plays a role in the behaviour. Matthew Hooton in particular is a purveyor of hatred.
What I observe is that no-one here really condemns the implied violence directed at Paula Bennett, but instead finds reasons for the behaviour elsewhere. Matthew Hooton is just a political commentator who most here disagree with. He doesn’t publish death threats, yet those that do seem to get a free pass. I find it odd that some commentators here seem so eager to criticise Matthew Hooton as a purveyor of hate, yet are much less inclined to condemn the violence directed at National Party Cabinet ministers. I believe Andrew Little also falls into that category. You may see this as Little merely “reflecting” on what he sees, but I see it differently. Violence has no place in our political discourse and must be unreservedly denounced.
Violence has no place in our political discourse and must be unreservedly denounced.
Well, I call dubbing opposition politicians mad/stupid/ idiots/deranged as being a form of violent political discourse. Especially when they are patently untrue. So how about you reserve some of your ‘denouncing’ for Matthew Hooton.
And what about the violence directed and Labour and Green politicians eh? There’s plenty of it but they tend not to make too much of a fuss about it.
Well, I call dubbing opposition politicians mad/stupid/ idiots/deranged as being a form of violent political discourse.
With respect, from someone who also said,and I quote, I was using his own words against him with some accuracy – as anyone who has listened to him on radio and elsewhere could testify.. What you seem to be saying is that it is OK to call Hooton mad/stupid/idiots/deranged because a) he used these words to describe other people b) they are true when describing him, but should anyone else uses the very same adjectives to describe opposition politicians then they are engaging in political violence. Sorry, I don’y see that way and suggest you are demonstrating a double standard.
Hooton says the one thing he was ashamed about “when you read it in the cold light of day” was the bit where the blogger Cactus Kate (real name Cathy Odgers) asks for Hager’s home address, so she can pass it on to wealthy Chinese clients angered by a study Hager co-authored about tax havens: “Chop chop for Nicky, ” wrote Odgers. Hooton gave her Hager’s street name (but not number)
There’s other stuff that never makes it into political discourse. Like how many suicides, mental health issues, domestic violence and regular violent incidents happen each year that can be linked to the effect of WINZ policies and culture? But then again maybe it’s more important we talk about Bennett instead..
The streets of London have seen an increase in bike riders and a decrease in car commuters. According to an article published by the BBC, the number of cyclists during rush hour will outnumber cars within the new few years.
According to Transport for London, over the last decade and a half car drivers have decreased by almost 50% – from 137,000 in 2000 to 64,000 in 2014 – while the number of cyclists has tripled from 12,000 to 36,000. The authority touts the statistics as “a feat unprecedented in any major city.”
More bad news for supporters of the status quo and good news for the rest of us.
1 of a series on TPP Beware of TPP’s Investor–State Dispute Settlement Provision
By Joseph Stiglitz | 03.28.16
,blockquote>The alleged goal of ISDS is to increase security for investors in states without an adequate “rule of law.” But the fact that the U.S. is insisting on the same provisions in Europe, where legal safeguards are as strong as they are in the U.S., suggests another motive: the desire to make it harder to adopt new financial regulations, environmental laws, worker protections, and food and health safety standards. http://rooseveltinstitute.org/beware-tpps-investor-state-dispute-settlement-provision/
Also well worth a read from a study by Krzysztof J. Pelc
Using newly released data covering 696 investment disputes, I
assess some of the central claims about ISDS. I argue that the regime has indeed undergone a major shift: a majority of claims deal not with direct takings by low rule of law countries, but with regulation in democratic states. The result of this shift towards indirect expropriation affects firms’ incentives:claimants may gain even when they lose a challenge, if litigation can deter governments’ regulatory ambitions. The result, as I show, is an increase in the number of cases, accompanied by a precipitous decrease in their legal merit. Investors bringing indirect expropriation claims also appear far less likely to settle, and more likely to publicize the dispute,
consistently with theoretical expectations.
This short blog post and the linked PDF document is the result of a collaborative effort by Anne-Marie Blackburn, Dana Nuccitelli, Bärbel Winkler, Ken Rice and John Cook. When the climate change (mis)information briefs pushed by David Legates and others started to make the rounds in January 2021 we wondered whether ...
A part of this morning's transport announcement which hasn't got a lot of attention yet: biofuels are back: “Our Government has agreed in principle to mandate a lower emitting biofuel blend across the transport sector. Over time this will prevent hundreds of thousands of tonnes of emissions from cars, ...
After almost twenty years of ignoring the Māori vote, National may run in the Māori seats again: A former National MP is excited the party could stand a candidate in the Māori electorate seats for the first time since 2002. One News reported last night that National's leader Judith ...
If one stubbornly clings to the Elimination strategy (I don’t support it, but that will have to wait for another occasion) then try to get it right. You need secure borders. We have attempted this with a very large measure of success. It has not been perfect as the Covid-19 Response ...
Diaspora: perception departs from reality In this collection of articles are two papers currently captivating the attention of people following the science and emergence of climate change, especially the rapid variety we've accidentally unleashed and which is now unfolding around us. The synthesis and review article Earth's Ice Imbalance by Slater ...
The ultra-rich have done very, very well out of the pandemic. Globally, the wealth of the ten richest people rose by US$540 billion last year, enough money to pay for the pandemic in its entirity. And in New Zealand, local billionaire Graeme Hart saw his wealth increase by almost NZ$3.5 ...
Postmodernism has long been looked upon as an indecipherable ideology and a source of amusement. In 1996 Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University, had a hoax article published in ‘Social Text’ an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. In ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Anew study in Nature Sustainability incorporates the damages that climate change does to healthy ecosystems into standard climate-economics models. The key finding in the study by Bernardo Bastien-Olvera and Frances Moore from the University of California at Davis: The models have been underestimating the ...
In a recent interview with RNZ (14th of January), NZ Council of Civil Liberties Chair Thomas Beagle, in response to Simon Bridges condemnation of the post-Trump Twitter purge of local far Right and other accounts, said the following: “Cos the thing about freedom of expression is that it’s not just ...
Let’s be clear: if Trump is not politically killed off once and for all, he will become a MAGA Dracula, rising from the dead to haunt US politics for years to come and giving inspiration to his wretched family of grifters and thousands of deplorables well into the next decade. ...
Since its demise as an imperial power, and especially its deindustrialisation under Thatcher, the UK's primary economic engine has been its role as a money laundry, using its network of overseas territories as tax havens to enable rich people around the world to steal from the societies they live in. ...
Last month OMV quit the Great South Basin and surrendered its offshore exploration permits outside of Taranaki. This month, Australian-owned Beach Energy has done the same: Beach Energy Resources New Zealand has decided to abandon all of its oil and gas exploration permits off the South Island coast, including ...
The new Northland case has been linked to the South African strain of Covid-19, one of a number of new, more contagious Covid variants. Here’s how they emerge and why. Let’s start with the basics. The genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for Covid-19 is a strand of RNA ...
MARVIN HUBBARD, US citizen by birth, New Zealand citizen by choice, Quaker and left-wing activist, has been broadcasting his show, "Community or Chaos", on Otago Access Radio for the best part of 30 years. On 24 November last year, I spoke with him about the outcome of the 2020 General ...
This is a guest blog post by Daniel Tamberg, Potsdam, co-founder and director of SCIARA GmbH. The non-profit organisation SCIARA is developing and operating a flexible software platform for scientific simulation games that allows thousands of players to explore, design and understand possible climate futures together. Decision-makers in politics, business, ...
Yesterday's Gone: Cold shivers are running up and down the spines of conservatives everywhere. Donald Trump may have gone, but all the signs point to there being something much more momentous in the wind-shift than a simple return to the status quo ante. A change is gonna come. ONE COULD ...
Is it possible to live and let live in the post-Trump era? The online campaign to vilify Christopher Liddell, ex-White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant to Trump, makes for an interesting case study. Liddell is a New Zealander whose illustrious career in corporate America once earned him plaudits ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 17, 2021 through Sat, Jan 23, 2021Editor's Choice12 new books explore fresh approaches to act on climate changeAuthors explore scientific, economic, and political avenues for climate action ...
This discussion is from a Twitter thread by Martin Kulldorff on 20 December 2020. He is a Professor at Harvard Medical School specialising in disease surveillance methods, infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety. His Twitter handle is @MartinKulldorff #1 Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single ...
The Treasury forecasts suggest the economy is doing better than expected after the Covid Shock. John Kenneth Galbraith was wont to say that economic forecasting was designed to make astrology look good. Unfair, but it raises the question of the purpose of economic forecasts. Certainly the public may treat them ...
Q: Will the COVID-19 vaccines prevent the transmission of the coronavirus and bring about community immunity (aka herd immunity)? A: Jury not in yet but vaccines do not have to be perfect to thwart the spread of infection. While vaccines induce protection against illness, they do not always stop actual ...
Joe Biden seems to be everything that Donald Trump was not – decent, straightforward, considerate of others, mindful of his responsibilities – but none of that means that he has an easy path ahead of him. The pandemic still rages, American standing in the world is grievously low, and the ...
Keana VirmaniFrom healthcare robots to data privacy, to sea level rise and Antarctica under the ice: in the four years since its establishment, the Aotearoa New Zealand Science Journalism Fund has supported over 30 projects.Rebecca Priestley, receiving the PM Science Communication Prize (Photo by Mark Tantrum) Associate Professor ...
Nothing more from me today - I'm off to Wellington, to participate in the city's annual roleplaying convention (which has also eaten my time for the whole week, limiting blogging despite there being interesting things happening). Normal bloggage will resume Tuesday. ...
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weaponscame into force today, making the development, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons illegal in international law. Every nuclear-armed state is now a criminal regime. The corporations and scientists who design, build and maintain their illegal weapons are now ...
"Come The Revolution!" The key objective of Bernard Hickey’s revolutionary solution to the housing crisis is a 50 percent reduction in the price of the average family home. This will be achieved by the introduction of Capital Gains, Land, and Wealth taxes, and by the opening up of currently RMA-protected ...
by Daphna Whitmore Twitter and Facebook shutting down Trump’s accounts after his supporters stormed Capitol Hill is old news now but the debates continue over whether the actions against Trump are a good thing or not. Those in favour of banning Trump say Twitter and Facebook are private companies and ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Democrats now control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives for the first time in a decade, albeit with razor thin Congressional majorities. The last time, in the 111th Congress (2009-2011), House Democrats passed a carbon cap and trade bill, but it died ...
Session thirty-three was highly abbreviated, via having to move house in a short space of time. Oh well. The party decided to ignore the tree-monster and continue the attack on the Giant Troll. Tarsin – flying on a giant summoned bat – dumped some high-grade oil over the ...
Last night I stayed up till 3am just to see then-President Donald Trump leave the White House, get on a plane, and fly off to Florida, hopefully never to return. And when I woke up this morning, America was different. Not perfect, because it never was. Probably not even good, ...
Watching today’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the United States’ 46th president, there’s not a lot in common with the inauguration of Donald Trump just four destructive years ago. Where Trump warned of carnage, Biden dared to hope for unity and decency. But the one place they converge is that ...
Dan FalkBritons who switched on their TVs to “Good Morning Britain” on the morning of Sept. 15, 2020, were greeted by news not from our own troubled world, but from neighboring Venus. Piers Morgan, one of the hosts, was talking about a major science story that had surfaced the ...
Sara LutermanGrowing up autistic in a non-autistic world can be very isolating. We are often strange and out of sync with peers, despite our best efforts. Autistic adults have, until very recently, been largely absent from media and the public sphere. Finding role models is difficult. Finding useful advice ...
Doug JohnsonThe alien-like blooms and putrid stench of Amorphophallus titanum, better known as the corpse flower, draw big crowds and media coverage to botanical gardens each year. In 2015, for instance, around 75,000 people visited the Chicago Botanic Garden to see one of their corpse flowers bloom. More than ...
Getting to Browser Tab Zero so I can reboot the computer is awfully hard when the one open tab is a Table of Contents for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and every issue has more stuff I want to read. A few highlights: Gugler et al demonstrating ...
Michael Cowling, CQUniversity AustraliaWe’ve probably all been there. We buy some new smart gadget and when we plug it in for the first time it requires an update to work. So we end up spending hours downloading and updating before we can even play with our new toy. But ...
Timothy Ford, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Charles M. Schweik, University of Massachusetts AmherstTo mitigate health inequities and promote social justice, coronavirus vaccines need to get to underserved populations and hard-to-reach communities. There are few places in the U.S. that are unreachable by road, but other factors – many ...
Israel chose to pay a bit over the odds for the Pfizer vaccine to get earlier access. Here’s The Times of Israel from 16 November. American government will be charged $39 for each two-shot dose, and the European bloc even less, but Jerusalem said to agree to pay $56. Israel ...
Orla is a gender critical Marxist in Ireland. She gave a presentation on 15 January 2021 on the connection between postmodern/transgender identity politics and the current attacks on democratic and free speech rights. Orla has been active previously in the Irish Socialist Workers Party and the People Before Profit electoral ...
. . America: The Empire Strikes Back (at itself) Further to my comments in the first part of 2020: The History That Was, the following should be considered regarding the current state of the US. They most likely will be by future historians pondering the critical decades of ...
Nathaniel ScharpingIn March, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to shut down major cities in the U.S., researchers were thinking about blood. In particular, they were worried about the U.S. blood supply — the millions of donations every year that help keep hospital patients alive when they need a transfusion. ...
Sarah L Caddy, University of CambridgeVaccines are a marvel of medicine. Few interventions can claim to have saved as many lives. But it may surprise you to know that not all vaccines provide the same level of protection. Some vaccines stop you getting symptomatic disease, but others stop you ...
Back in 2016, the Portuguese government announced plans to stop burning coal by 2030. But progress has come much quicker, and they're now scheduled to close their last coal plant by the end of this year: The Sines coal plant in Portugal went offline at midnight yesterday evening (14 ...
The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: As anybody with the intestinal fortitude to brave the commentary threads of local news-sites, large and small, will attest, the number of Trump-supporting New Zealanders is really quite astounding. IT’S SO DIFFICULT to resist the temptation to be smug. From the distant perspective of New Zealand, ...
RNZ reports on continued arbitrariness on decisions at the border. British comedian Russell Howard is about to tour New Zealand and other acts allowed in through managed isolation this summer include drag queen RuPaul and musicians at Northern Bass in Mangawhai and the Bay Dreams festival. The vice-president of the ...
As families around the world mourn more than two million people dead from Covid-19, the Plan B academics and their PR industry collaborator continue to argue that the New Zealand government should stop focusing on our managed isolation and quarantine system and instead protect the elderly so that they can ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 10, 2021 through Sat, Jan 16, 2021Editor's ChoiceNASA says 2020 tied for hottest year on record — here’s what you can do to helpPhoto by Michael Held on Unsplash ...
Health authorities in Norway are reporting some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine. Is this causally related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are the things to consider. According to the news there have been 23 deaths in Norway shortly after vaccine administration and ...
Happy New Year! No, experts are not concerned that “…one of New Zealand’s COIVD-1( vaccines will fail to protect the country” Here is why. But first I wish to issue an expletive about this journalism (First in Australia and then in NZ). It exhibits utter failure to actually truly consult ...
All nations have shadows; some acknowledge them. For others they shape their image in uncomfortable ways.The staunch Labour supporter was in despair at what her Rogernomics Government was doing. But she finished ‘at least, we got rid of Muldoon’, a response which tells us that then, and today, one’s views ...
Grigori GuitchountsIn November, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, made an attention-grabbing announcement: More than 30 of its most prestigious journals, including the flagship Nature, will now allow authors to pay a fee of US$11,390 to make their papers freely available for anyone to read ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, and Benjamin Santer Imagine a major climate change law passing the U.S. Congress unanimously? Don’t bother. It turns out that you don’t need to imagine it. Get this: The Global Change Research Act of 1990 was passed ...
“They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”WHO CAN FORGET the penultimate scene of the 1956 movie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The wild-eyed doctor, stumbling down the highway, trying desperately to warn his fellow citizens: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”Ostensibly science-fiction, the movie ...
TheOneRing.Net has got its paws on the official synopsis of the upcoming Amazon Tolkien TV series. It’s a development that brings to mind the line about Sauron deliberately releasing Gollum from the dungeons of Barad-dûr. Amazon knew exactly what they were doing here, in terms of drumming up publicity: ...
Since Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953, US presidents have joined an informal club intended to provide support - and occasionally rivalry - between those few who have been ‘leaders of the free world’. Donald Trump, elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and a constant mocker of his predecessors, ...
For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Zero emission buses, cleaner cars and environmentally-friendly biofuels will soon be hitting New Zealand’s roads, as the Government delivers on its election promise to make our transport network more sustainable. ...
The Green Party is already delivering on its commitment for cleaner, climate-friendly transport through our Cooperation Agreement with the Government. ...
A growing public housing waiting list and continued increase of house prices must be urgently addressed by Government, Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson said today. ...
Prudence Steven QC, barrister of Christchurch has been appointed as an Environment Judge and District Court Judge to serve in Christchurch, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. Ms Steven has been a barrister sole since 2008, practising in resource management and local government / public law. She was appointed a Queen’s ...
The Government is delivering on its first tranche of election promises to take action on climate change with a raft of measures that will help meet New Zealand’s 2050 carbon neutral target, create new jobs and boost innovation. “This will be an ongoing area of action but we are moving ...
The Government is investing up to $10 million to support 30 of the country’s top early-career researchers to develop their research skills. “The pandemic has had widespread impacts across the science system, including the research workforce. After completing their PhD, researchers often travel overseas to gain experience but in the ...
A Waitomo-based Jobs for Nature project will keep up to ten people employed in the village as the tourism sector recovers post Covid-19 Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “This $500,000 project will save ten local jobs by deploying workers from Discover Waitomo into nature-based jobs. They will be undertaking local ...
Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw spoke yesterday with President Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. “I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak with Mr. Kerry this morning about the urgency with which our governments must confront the climate emergency. I am grateful to him and ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Hon Nanaia Mahuta today announced three diplomatic appointments: Alana Hudson as Ambassador to Poland John Riley as Consul-General to Hong Kong Stephen Wong as Consul-General to Shanghai Poland “New Zealand’s relationship with Poland is built on enduring personal, economic and historical connections. Poland is also an important ...
Work begins today at Wainuiomata High School to ensure buildings and teaching spaces are fit for purpose, Education Minister Chris Hipkins says. The Minister joined principal Janette Melrose and board chair Lynda Koia to kick off demolition for the project, which is worth close to $40 million, as the site ...
A skilled and experienced group of people have been named as the newly established Oranga Tamariki Ministerial Advisory Board by Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis today. The Board will provide independent advice and assurance to the Minister for Children across three key areas of Oranga Tamariki: relationships with families, whānau, and ...
The green light for New Zealand’s first COVID-19 vaccine could be granted in just over a week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today. “We’re making swift progress towards vaccinating New Zealanders against the virus, but we’re also absolutely committed to ensuring the vaccines are safe and effective,” Jacinda Ardern said. ...
The Minister for ACC is pleased to announce the appointment of three new members to join the Board of ACC on 1 February 2021. “All three bring diverse skills and experience to provide strong governance oversight to lead the direction of ACC” said Hon Carmel Sepuloni. Bella Takiari-Brame from Hamilton ...
The Government is investing $9 million to upgrade a significant community facility in Invercargill, creating economic stimulus and jobs, Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson and Te Tai Tonga MP Rino Tirikatene have announced. The grant for Waihōpai Rūnaka Inc to make improvements to Murihiku Marae comes from the $3 billion set ...
[Opening comments, welcome and thank you to Auckland University etc] It is a great pleasure to be here this afternoon to celebrate such an historic occasion - the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This is a moment many feared would never come, but ...
The Government is providing $3 million in one-off seed funding to help disabled people around New Zealand stay connected and access support in their communities, Minister for Disability Issues, Carmel Sepuloni announced today. The funding will allow disability service providers to develop digital and community-based solutions over the next two ...
Border workers in quarantine facilities will be offered voluntary daily COVID-19 saliva tests in addition to their regular weekly testing, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. This additional option will be rolled out at the Jet Park Quarantine facility in Auckland starting on Monday 25 January, and then to ...
The next steps in the Government’s ambitious firearms reform programme to include a three-month buy-back have been announced by Police Minister Poto Williams today. “The last buy-back and amnesty was unprecedented for New Zealand and was successful in collecting 60,297 firearms, modifying a further 5,630 firearms, and collecting 299,837 prohibited ...
Upscaling work already underway to restore two iconic ecosystems will deliver jobs and a lasting legacy, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “The Jobs for Nature programme provides $1.25 billion over four years to offer employment opportunities for people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the COVID-19 recession. “Two new projects ...
The Government has released its Public Housing Plan 2021-2024 which outlines the intention of where 8,000 additional public and transitional housing places announced in Budget 2020, will go. “The Government is committed to continuing its public house build programme at pace and scale. The extra 8,000 homes – 6000 public ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has congratulated President Joe Biden on his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States of America. “I look forward to building a close relationship with President Biden and working with him on issues that matter to both our countries,” Jacinda Ardern said. “New Zealand ...
A major investment to tackle wilding pines in Mt Richmond will create jobs and help protect the area’s unique ecosystems, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor says. The Mt Richmond Forest Park has unique ecosystems developed on mineral-rich geology, including taonga plant species found nowhere else in the country. “These special plant ...
To further protect New Zealand from COVID-19, the Government is extending pre-departure testing to all passengers to New Zealand except from Australia, Antarctica and most Pacific Islands, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “The change will come into force for all flights arriving in New Zealand after 11:59pm (NZT) on Monday ...
Bay Conservation Cadets launched with first intake Supported with $3.5 million grant Part of $1.245b Jobs for Nature programme to accelerate recover from Covid Cadets will learn skills to protect and enhance environment Environment Minister David Parker today welcomed the first intake of cadets at the launch of the Bay ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The New Zealand public sector and judiciary has again been ranked the least corrupt in the world. The 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released today by global anti-corruption organization Transparency International ranks New Zealand first equal ...
New Zealand is again ranked first equal with Denmark in the Transparency International annual index of perceived levels of public sector corruption. Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier has welcomed New Zealand’s position in the 2020 index. He says New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Kaufman, Research Fellow, Vaccine Uptake Group, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute The federal government’s A$23.9 million COVID-19 vaccination information campaign, launchedyesterday, aims to reassure the public about vaccine safety and effectiveness. It will also provide information about the vaccine rollout. We’ve ...
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he’s joined by Hongi Luo, brand director at TikTok.In terms of cultural reach and impact, the ...
After Covid devastated its 2020, Basement Theatre comes roaring into 2021 with its Summer Season. Here’s the rundown of shows in-store, with some comments from programmer Nisha Madhan.Pre-FringeLust IslandWhen’s it on: February 2-6, 8pmWho’s involved: The women of improv troupe Hearthrobs (McKenzie’s Daughters, Salem Bitch Trials), including Brynley Stent, Alice ...
The whānau of Te Ahikaiata Turei supported by Māori and non-Māori staff at Unitec will take back a portrait of the Tūhoe leader who led the establishment of Te Noho Kotahitanga Marae and the values that brought the institute back from the brink of ...
A poll across the Early Childhood Education community found 93% in favour of pausing the ‘lunchbox rules’, or the Ministry of Education’s new Food Safety/choking changes to the Licensing Criteria, which came into effect on 25 January. “The message ...
Cycling advocates are calling for the transformation of urban transport, as New Zealand races to cut carbon. The Climate Change Commission will release its initial advice on Sunday 31 January. “Bikes and e-bikes are perfect for many local trips, ...
Three Ministers, led by the PM, joined in chorus today to warble about a bunch of measures aimed at helping to meet New Zealand’s 2050 carbon neutral target, create new jobs and boost innovation. Mind you, the measures mentioned seem to be more matters of decisions yet to be made ...
Michelle Kidd defines her role at Auckland’s specialist family violence court as te kaiwhakatere – the navigator. It’s a one-of-a-kind job, helping guide defendants through the court system. And there’s no one better suited to it than Whaea Michelle.First published November 24, 2020.Whaea Michelle is part of Frame, a series of short ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sallie Yea, Associate professor & Principal Research Fellow, La Trobe University Each year, thousands of men and boys labour under extremely exploitative conditions on commercial fishing vessels owned by Taiwanese, Chinese and South Korean companies. The Taiwanese fleet, which operates in all ...
Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis believes the Crown should maintain responsibility for the care and protection of at-risk and vulnerable children, regardless of their race. Moreover, he is confident his all-Maori team of advisers will not be taking race into account as they help to improve Oranga Tamariki’s care and protection of ...
It’s easy to sacrifice John Banks. It’s a lot harder for brands, sports organisations and government to truly stop funding racism. Are they willing to try?Yesterday John Banks, the former Auckland mayor and MP, became subject to one of the fastest firings in media history when audio covering his approving ...
A community is outraged after Auckland Council granted consent for a row of trees planted by local kids to be removed along a revitalised waterway in South Auckland, reports Justin Latif. An Auckland Council decision to give contractors the all-clear to chop down 12 mānuka and kānuka trees shading Māngere’s Tararata ...
Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu hopes that the recent changes to Oranga Tamariki leadership present an opportunity for a long overdue paradigm shift that will place whānau at the heart of the child welfare sector. Pouārahi Helen Leahy says that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rice, Professor of Management, University of New England Elon Musk is now the world’s richest person, edging out previous title holder Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. His rocketing fortune is due to the booming share price of Tesla, the maker of electric vehicles ...
There are now three returnees who contracted the virus in the Auckland isolation facility then left into the community while positive. These are some of the questions that need to be resolved. At 10.20pm last night the Ministry of Health confirmed that the two cases they’d been treating as probable ...
Having a hard time remembering to scan in on the NZ Covid Tracer app when you’re out and about? Get this song stuck in your head and you’ll never forget again.Learn the lyrics:Aotearoa, it’s time to get scanning!I mean if you think about it, it never really wasn’t time we ...
We conclude our week-long examination of New Zealand writer Roderick Finlayson with a review of his stories by John Newton Roger Hickin’s Cold Hub Press is one of the small miracles of contemporary New Zealand publishing. Over the last decade, on what can only be a shoe-string budget, the ...
Thursday 28th January, AUCKLAND: Drive Electric, the not-for-profit with one mission – making electric vehicle uptake in New Zealand mainstream, welcomes the announcement by the Government today as a sign of what’s to come through 2021, and we are confident ...
The Government announced today key policy decisions on the proposed clean car policies. The MIA has stated on many occasions that we support well thought out and constructive policies that will lead to an increased rate in the reduction of CO2 emissions from ...
Get wild, get cultured, get fed and then get to bed: the essential guide to a perfect few days in the southern city. There’s one thing that preoccupies the staff of The Spinoff almost as much as arranging popular food items into arbitrary lists, and that’s Dunedin. A quite remarkable ...
John Banks’ racist exchange with a Magic Talk listener on Tuesday was the latest in nearly 50 years of talkback controversies. Donna Chisholm has the receipts.John Banks axed over Māori ‘stone age culture’ comments on Magic Talk1972: On Radio I, sports talkback host Tim Bickerstaff launches a “Punch a Pom ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission.Two new community Covid-19 cases have been identified as the more infectious South African variant, but Auckland Mayor Phil Goff sayit would be "premature to go into lockdown now". The two new cases of Covid-19 identified in the ...
Today, for the second time in two months Dunedin climate protectors have locked themselves to the railway tracks outside the Dunedin Railway station to stop the KiwiRail coal train from Bathurst Resources’ Takitimu mine in Southland to Fonterra’s ...
KiwiRail STOP Hauling COAL Today, for the second time in two months Dunedin climate protectors have locked themselves to the railway tracks outside the Dunedin Railway station to stop the KiwiRail coal train from Bathurst Resources’ Takitimu mine ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Dunn, Associate professor, University of Sydney The government is rolling out a new public information campaign this week to reassure the public about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, which one expert has said “couldn’t be more crucial” to people actually getting ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therese O’Sullivan, Associate Professor, Edith Cowan University The COVID vaccine rollout has placed the issue of vaccination firmly in the spotlight. A successful rollout will depend on a variety of factors, one of which is vaccine acceptance. One potential hurdle to vaccine ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bernard Walker, Associate Professor in Organisations and Leadership, University of Canterbury Kiwis know what it’s like when life throws curveballs. We’ve had major quakes, floods, fires, an eruption, a terrorist attack and now a pandemic. In those situations, it’s the ability to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Irwin, Emeritus professor, Murdoch University While we continue to be occupied with the COVID pandemic, another life-threatening disease has emerged in northern Australia, one that’s cause for considerable alarm for the millions of dog owners around the country. This disease — ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cath Ferguson, Academic, Edith Cowan University Almost half of Australian adults struggle with reading. Similar levels of struggling readers are reported in the United Kingdom and United States. This does not mean all struggling readers are illiterate. It means they often struggle ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abbas Shieh, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Design, Islamic Azad University The industrial revolution transformed cities, resulting in places of residence and work becoming more distant than ever before. This spatial segregation is still largely embedded in the design of our ...
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http://m.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11612925
The tax payers Unions opinion on the ubi.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/editorials/78314101/editorial-labours-universal-basic-income-idea-deserves-consideration
A more considered version, the affect on at home carers would be huge , and in MHO that’s how you sell the idea.
Herald editorial concludes a UBI would be dangerous socialism: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11612852
Emphasis mine, wording unchanged.
Panic stations! 😀
pearls clutched!
“Universal” welfare programmes effectively make EVERYBODY a beneficiary…
One looks forward to the Herald editor steadfastly refusing to accept universal superannuation turning them into a beneficiary after they’re 65, and instead returning the money to the government…
Nobody is forcing any millionnaires to claim Super ..
Righties add to the misinformation about Labour’s proposal (warning: contains Farrar and Hooten): http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2016/03/hooton_on_the_future_of_work.html
The future is all unknowable claim these intellectual giants, so why bother preparing for it (other than by implementing libertarianism, naturally). #pffft
Someone could possibly remind us of the link to use so you don’t have to go to whaleoil or kiwiblog? I thought there was one but haven’t noted it.
Incidentally an email from Scoop Gordon Campbell now overall Editor and two new Trustees Jeremy Rose and Jan River of Public Good Aotearoa NZ. Great news in every sense.
Donotlink is borked at the moment for some reason. Trustworthy alternative suggerstions welcome.
Using this at the mo
http://archive.li/
link to the sewer piece
http://archive.li/jDc3q
Thanks.
Did you notice this in the Stuff piece?
“Economist Brian Easton has written that, with a universal income, either “the required tax rates are horrendous or the minimum income is so low” it won’t eliminate poverty”.
If you have Brian, who is fairly much of the left, saying your ideas are barmy you are really in trouble.
My prediction is that in a couple of months Labour will simply stop talking about it and quietly drop the whole scheme. Pity really.
“Pity really”
Why?
You have to admit its got people talking about important things instead of the flag.
Labour have thrown the dice on UBI…lets see if it gives them some traction, or becomes a liability come the serious debates in 2017.
Which ever way one looks at a UBI, it can’t be done without a major rehash of the tax system in NZ. Money does not grow on tree’s (although I imagine more than 1 commentator here would say it does!! all that’s required is a printing press).
Labour are fools for mentioning the UBI, honestly, it’s as if they’ve forgotten how to be a political party.
This is not the path a major party should be going down, this is the sort of thing the Greens should be doing.
Seriously, where’s the damage control?
Oh common bm if it was the greens you would be here telling us how it proves the greens are , insert meme of the week here.
Robinson points out that the tpu are not to be taken seriously and leaves unspoken the fact that they are tools for the right.
Greens are a 10% party you’d expect them to promote more radical ideas.
Labour is supposed to be the foundation party of the left coalition, their role is to provide stability not wackiness.
Yes, dear, we really want your advice about the left should be doing 🙄
It’s very cute, you would almost think he cares about Labour.. almost.
Or cares about the left, lol.
or cares.
Some of us do nearly care about the NZLP.
As a democracy we need an effective opposition to try and hinder the Government from doing dumb things,and Labour is the best bet we have.
We dont see the Greens fulfilling that role, Winston’s not really doing it either, so while we may not vote Labour, we do care about its role in our democracy.
The Nats recovered from the low 20s and I expect that Labour will recover from its time in the 20s also.
From the moran who worships the party that created $120 billion worth of debt without creating growth, jobs, or infrastructure.
Hmmm
Growth: 2-3% per year over the next several years.
Jobs: Unemployment fallen to 5.3%
Infrastructure: Fibre Broadband, Roads of National Significance, Christchurch Rebuild.
Unfortunately Stuart your comment is without foundation.
I partially agree with you about the debt though – I am sure the government could have limited their spending over the last 7 years to minimize how much debt they incurred.
Oh do be quite BM.
Your advise about labour is always wrong. Actually never seen when you have been right. You jump on the band wagon of us who criticise the labour party with child like glee. But never in a constructive manor, unless it is to support some right wing nut job inside the labour party. It’s a bore.
and your fake pathos about the labour party is sickening.
You and yours just don’t want people to do better, are you opposed to helping the poor? Are you opposed to a society that thinks all it’s members are worth something?
And the RWNJ come in to tell the Left how they should act and why what we’re doing is all so bad.
Wonder what they’re afraid of.
The TPU study authored by Jim Rose, the guy who frequently bombards the Green facebook page with his writings to get his point across. Hmm credible…
To make them sleep easier I’d suggest introduction of a TPPA or Tax on Property Profit Actualised AKA CGT; it must be the TPU’s equivalent of a ‘nocturnal emission’.
Interesting.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/78321021/fidel-castro-to-barack-obama-we-dont-need-your-presents
“Quoting Obama’s declaration that “it is time, now, for us to leave the past behind,” the man who shaped Cuba during the second half of the 20th century writes that “I imagine that any one of us ran the risk of having a heart attack on hearing these words from the President of the United States.”
Castro then returns to a review of a half-century of US aggression against Cuba. Those events include the decades-long US trade embargo against the island; the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack and the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner backed by exiles who took refuge in the US.
He ends with a dig at the Obama administration’s drive to increase business ties with Cuba.”
The problem with Gallipoli is that it promotes Edwardian concepts of war as a purifying force for the nation.
What happens if Erdogan starts selling the ocean views to ISIS veterans ?
Useful discussion of Indias very large scale Job Guarantee scheme in practice.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=33238
What were you thinking, dear Sue? http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/78322250/labour-mp-sue-moroney-slammed-for-meanspirited-lockwood-flag-attack
Register of Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests of Members of Parliament
Clearly the Farrar/Slater/Lusk talking point du jour. Managed to generate 2 damning opinion pieces on Stuff politics already.
I look forward to National MPs receiving the same hysterical scrutiny of their twitter feeds.
Looks like she didnt bow and scrape to the rich like everyone is expected to in John Key’s (and to a lesser extent, Helen Clark’s) NZ.
You wont catch me paying fealty to the rich.
Something for the RWNJs, who keep telling us that people want more sprawl, to think about:
Isn’t it truly amazing how the RWNJs are almost always wrong in their beliefs.
You neglect to mention this is not a NZ study.
I bet it would be different here.
Isnt it truly amazing that LWI’s are almost always 1/2 quoting something trying to make it fit their own personal agenda.
/sarc
I thought it was pretty obvious.
I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be but it would be nice to have actual study on it. Oh, here’s one:
Seems that it’s probably the same in NZ as in Australia.
How different do you think it would be?
Do you think NZers are lazier than the overseas sample?
hah, if they were lazier then they’d be demanding high density housing because it’s cheaper.
I really do love Samantha Bee
Just wondering what Matthew Hooton will do once he becomes part of the precariat. Does he have any skills other than speaking with a forked tongue? What could he retrain as?
Good to hear the left wing guy challenging his bullshit on Nine to Noon.
Good to hear the left wing guy challenging his bullshit on Nine to Noon.
I agree, weka. Stephen Mills actually seemed to have thought about what he was going to say today, and to have worked out that Hooton needs to be challenged constantly.
I was concerned, however, that Hooton still does the great majority of the talking, and still gets away with the most outrageous statements.
Still, a much better performance from Stephen Mills. He’s given Hooton a hard time in the past….
Certainly Mills performed to a much higher standard than he has on some recent programs….
Key-Sucker Audrey Young still picking over the corpse of her darling’s flag fuck up. Presumably to impress that there’s something essentially rum in the result. No Audrey. Your darling Man-Child’s vanity fucked him up. You as well need to grow up. As a journalist you’re an irresponsible disgrace.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11612563
Audrey
Oh dear! “What went wrong?!” Audrey asks, plaintively… well, she’ll have to find her navel before she can do any gazing. I don’t envy her that task.
Reposting this excellent doco (50mins) on Glyphosate that TMM posted the other day. Glyphosate is the most common weed killer used in farming, and it’s also used globally and domestically for preparing fields for crop production. Basically we eat plant material that comes into contact with a poison:
It’s also interesting the reassurance we get from the media from the likes of a New Zealand weed scientist “expert”:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/295040/glyphosate-ban-would-change-farming
This seems to be at odds with the documentary, that glyphosate isn’t deactivated at all.
Yes but it’s reactivated by the formula in the chemtrails.
You would do well as a spokesperson for the manufacturer Monsanto, who can’t seem to put up a good case for it being safe other than it’s been in use for 40 years. Then let the state and any other not for profit organisation do all the fact finding for you on the actual risks.
From the Weeds Control Methods Handbook pdf
So the RNZ “expert” was basically talking bull shit.
Further to the above its not difficult to find many studies that confirm that Round Up as sold by Monsanto is more toxic than was once thought. Here is one reviewed in Scientific American
It’s hardly astonishing, given that glyphosate works by suppressing an enzyme that’s found in plants but not animals. The list of things more deadly to human embryonic cells than glyphosate would be a very, very long one that included some really-not-very-toxic-at-all stuff on it.
🙄
Ok so I’m sure you would be happy to drink it.
If you were to read the studies further you would see:
““This clearly confirms that the [inert ingredients] in Roundup formulations are not inert,” wrote the study authors from France’s University of Caen. “Moreover, the proprietary mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death [at the] residual levels” found on Roundup-treated crops, such as soybeans, alfalfa and corn, or lawns and gardens.
The research team suspects that Roundup might cause pregnancy problems by interfering with hormone production, possibly leading to abnormal fetal development, low birth weights or miscarriages.”
“The authorizations for using these Roundup herbicides must now clearly be revised since their toxic effects depend on, and are multiplied by, other compounds used in the mixtures,” Seralini’s team wrote.
The EPA’s classification of Roundup was initially done in 1993 and hasn’t been reviewed since. The study quoted above was done in 2009. I would not place a great deal of reliance on the EPA’s assessment at this stage. Particularly as most of the research was conducted by the chemical industry and in particular Monsanto itself:
Ok so I’m sure you would be happy to drink it.
No.
1. Less toxic than many other things != non-toxic.
2. Just about everything’s lethal in a big enough dose.
Re the studies claiming glyphosate is dangerous, is that the same Seralini whose study claiming that GMOs caused tumours in rats had to be withdrawn because it was so bad? The EU says: “To date, more than 800 studies have been conducted along with evaluations carried out by regulatory authorities across the world, all of which have confirmed the safety of glyphosate.”
“To date, more than 800 studies have been conducted along with evaluations carried out by regulatory authorities across the world, all of which have confirmed the safety of glyphosate.”
That is not what the concern is about – talk about shifting goal posts!
The problem is with the mixture of glyphosate and POEA. Few of the so-called “independent” reviews consider this. Certainly not the regulatory authorities who take their “research” from the manufacturers and then those outside the states who take their research from the EPA. It’s all a big back scratching exercise. No wonder people are turning off, and doubting “scientific” regulatory authorities when their research is so compromised. It’s like asking the Koch Bros to give a dissertation on Global Warming!
Then to cite 800 studies – well they would not all have been done in the past year would they. And Roundup has been around for a few years now – but its only in the recent past that people have begun to wonder if some of the things they are experiencing now might not be connected with this product. I myself used Roundup extensively on the farm for a number of years and before that Paraquat – before it was taken off the market because of its toxicity. oh and the EU approved the use of it 2004!
So, yeah, shifting goalposts. Apparently, glyphosate isn’t anything to worry about, but polyoxyethyleneamine is. I wouldn’t know enough about it to comment, but if that is the situation maybe people could stop wittering on about glyphosate?
And when it comes to “compromised” research that can’t be trusted, you really couldn’t find a better example than anti-GMO activist Gilles-Eric Seralini. After the rat-tumours propaganda fiasco, any research with his name on it is worthless.
Almost all of the criticism against the Seralini research was from researchers primarily funded by the Industry, and that includes the regulatory bodies which (as I have previously pointed out) rely heavily on Industry funded research. If the critics of Serelini really wanted to prove their point then they would repeat the research with greater numbers of animals, rats less susceptible to cancer, and controls which they were happy with. They may not like the results however.
Roundup weed-killer – glyphosate – is “probably carcinogenic,” according the World Health Organization. The decision was laid out in an analysis in The Lancet Oncology.
And who am I to argue with that.
Glyphosate is also one of the most commonly used garden herbicides, as well as the most commonly used in agriculture. It is sold under different names but everyone knows it as Roundup.
With our she’ll be right attitude here in NZ we tend to use it with wild abandon at the sight of the tiniest of weeds, not knowing or understanding just how toxic it is. I mean, it’s sold on supermarket shelves so it must be safe right?
Our local council seems to love Monsanto too. It sprays council berms, gutters and parks liberally and excessively.
As well as being a health risk it’s also largely unnecessary. You can pull weeds out of the ground. For free! Or if you have tough weeds on a paved patio you can sprinkle the weeds with the cheapest table salt you can buy and pour boiling water over and your weeds die almost instantly. I’ve done this successfully in the past. Or for large scale weeding you can purchase a hand held weed burner, powered by a gas cannister.
Good tips Rosie, I have been thinking about this a bit lately. I don’t get why people would want to liberally go around and poison weed spray over everything around their house (I have seen it a couple of times recently). After all it is just going to come back in a few months, and you’ve created a possible health risk, changed soil conditions and had an effect on the insect life too.
I also see it with councils where they spray along fencelines and edges of tracks. Most of it is unnecessary, unless there is something like a blackberry infestation growing across a track its a good idea. But spraying fencelines again and again to create some scorched earth at the bottom of it is crazy, especially with a toxic chemical.
I have tried a salt and vinegar spray before on blackberry, with dishwashing liquid to make it stick to the leaves, but it didn’t really work, only a small amount of the leaves browned off. So I might look into that gas torch idea. Thanks.
Blackberry is particularly hard to get rid of and even Roundup won’t be effective. Good luck with the gas torch. Heavy duty herbicides such as Tordon and Scrub Cutter are used on blackberry. Even though 2,4,D is banned in NZ, a variant of this chemical is used in the manufacture of these two herbicides. You need full PPE to apply this stuff, but I wouldn’t go near it myself.
Tordon was used aerially on gorse on a farm near us a few years ago. There were two breaches of the regional council’s rules. One was a lack of notification to nearby residents and the other was a breach of the 300 metre buffer zone. The helicopter pilot dumped this crap, literally, over our neighbourhood, as people were walking up the street to the bus stop and cycling to work in the morning rush. Despite the evidence people gathered, it took a massive effort to get the regional council to act. The pilot ended up with a “please don’t do this again” note. We really do have such a lazze faire approach to agrichemical safety in this country.
Final point. I used to work in the organic food industry in the 90’s, 2000’s. I remember visiting a supplier’s apple orchard. As well as the air being alive with bee’s and butterflies due to the lack of pesticides there was a marked difference in the quality of the soil around his tree’s compared to the soil around the tree’s of his neighbours. His neighbour was a supplier of conventionally grown apples to the supermarkets. Despite it being a dry time of the year, the soil on the organic orchard retained it’s structure and a bit more moisture, where as the soil of the roundup sprayed tree bases were crumbly and in large chunks. It looked dead.
The health of the different soils were in stark contrast. And the neighbour had all that extra cost too.
Basically we eat plant material that comes into contact with a poison
It comes into contact with dirt and the excretions of a wide variety of different creatures, too. If you’re going to panic about stuff you can’t see that is entering the sacred temple of your body, the risk of microbiological contamination offers far better material than whatever traces of herbicide might still be on there.
“the risk of microbiological contamination offers far better material than whatever traces of herbicide might still be on there.”
Only if you are microbe-phobic.
The issue is what humans have evolved with. We’re actually pretty good at living alongside microbes and dirt, with some notable exceptions, because we have millions of years of co-evolution (those that best fit survived). The number of chemicals we are exposed to now is massively higher than pre-industrial revolution, and science is still not so good at studying culmulative effect, multiple variables, and individual response.
We know that some herbicides are dangerous (which is why we’ve banned them), so unless you are arguing that Glyphosate-based herbicides are a special class of chemicals with zero side effects (would love to see that), we’re talking a matter of degrees. A big part of the problem is that PR has been a major driver of information (Monsanto are the new tobacco companies), so you have conflicting ideas about what the problem might be, let alone what it actually is. Fortunately there does seem to be much more non-industry research being done now to present a more comprehensive picture of what the issue are.
The thing about evolution is that the microbes also evolve, and quicker than we do. You’re far more likely to get sick from microbial life forms in your food than from glyphosate, which is pretty much never found in quantities that have a chance of being harmful to humans (and that’s not because big government and Monsanto have prevented anyone testing the levels remaining in food, it’s because there’s been plenty of testing and the results show no threat).
We do know that some herbicides are dangerous and have banned them, which is one of the main reasons glyphosate is so ubiquitous – it works and is (relatively) safe. If it wasn’t, it would be among those banned herbicides. This is a subject like vaccination, in which anti-science irrationalists convince themselves that the lack of evidence something is harmful doesn’t trump their gut instinct that it just has to be.
Uh, then why is it being found in German mother’s breast milk in far greater levels than what is regulated for humans?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/intolerable-levels-of-monsantos-glyphosate-roundup-found-in-breast-milk/5459080
And why is it in the documentary they show evidence that the chemical can change gene structures and destroy good gut bacteria. In studies with rats they found feeding them human tolerable amounts of glyphosate that the rats grew large tumors. And why were several farmers finding that their livestock were having lower reproductive rates and higher birth defects when their stock was being fed glyphosate based feed?
The industry response is that these trials/tests didn’t follow some proper scientific process, so they should be ignored. Industry don’t seem to want to conduct their own trials with matching conditions – funny that! You’re the one sounding like the science irrationalist I’m afraid.
The thing is, those studies really don’t follow proper scientific process. Actual scientists do study this stuff – and come up with results like “glyphosate, the main ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, does not accumulate in mother’s breast milk.” (Washington State University study).
The WSU study was a scientific one conducted by a biological scientist who is “an executive committee member for the International Society for Research in Human Milk and Lactation and a national spokesperson for the American Society for Nutrition.”
The German study claimed to have been carried out by the Green Party is mentioned on globalresearch.ca, an anti-globalisation activist site, and a detox nutter site, with the study itself not available. The American study that prompted it was carried out by “anti-GMO activist group Moms Across America with “Sustainable Pulse,” an online “news service” published by anti-GMO campaigner and organic food entrepreneur Henry Rowlands.” (academicsreview.org, in a piece aptly titled “Debunking pseudo science “lab testing” health risk claims about glyphosate (Roundup)”).
hi pm,
i would like to point you in the direction of you-tube and dr don huber and what he has to say about glyphosate.
very reasonable man making some uncomfortable points.
The thing is, those studies really don’t follow proper scientific process…The WSU study was a scientific one…
It is a non-peer reviewed study done in conjunction with Monsanto. The authors have since published a paper specifically on their quantification method ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4743594/ ) but not on the methodology of their overall study, which was presented as a report at a conference.
“The thing is, those studies really don’t follow proper scientific process…
The WSU study was a scientific one…”
The WSU study is a non-peer reviewed report presented at a conference and done in conjunction with Monsanto. The authors have now published a paper specifically on their quantification method but not on the methodology of the overall study.
Ok, so the breast milk study is looking dubious. Here’s a couple of other studies that looks like “proper scientific process” to me, but what would I know.
http://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-015-0056-1
http://www.gmoevidence.com/dr-jayasumana-glyphosate-leads-to-5-fold-increase-in-deadly-kidney-disease-risk/
I find it interesting that you’ve avoided that evidence that does look like proper science and that the World Health Organisation thinks it’s a carcinogen. This should be swept aside because we have nothing to worry about right?.. Wouldn’t best practice be, lets stop it’s use until we find out what it’s doing and what it’s effects are. Maybe that’s the approach that countries like Sri Lanka and some in Europe who have banned it already, will go down.
The list of things the WHO thinks “probably causes cancer” is a very long one and is of little value in the absence of the info “what level of risk” and “at what dose.” For example, they think red meat “probably causes cancer,” ie some studies have shown a slight increase in risk if you eat lots of it. This comes under the heading of “Big Whoop.”
A useful rule of thumb when considering how credible studies about glyphosate are, is to figure out whether the people carrying out the studies are anti-GMO activists or not. Activism and science are about as compatible as religion and science – ie, not very. Both the articles you’ve linked to are anti-GMO activism – one is featured on an anti-GMO activist web site and the other involves Gilles-Eric Seralini, whose reputation hasn’t survived his rat-tumours propaganda exercise.
Keep poisons out of our ecosystem thanks.
How do you propose to do that? Our ecosystem is full of stuff that’s poisonous to one thing or another.
And humans being the smartasses that they are, think that we can just pour into that mix with no effect.
A quote from Oscar Wilde who is still amusing and satirical.
Sincerity
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Little cops a fair amount of flak for republic referendum suggestion
I’d quote but it was just a selection of inane BS comments from off of Facebook seemingly selected to show that there’s no support for becoming a republic.
Really, if they want to report on the public’s feeling of becoming a republic then the should be doing a poll. Like this:
Yeah, we won’t be staying part of the British monarchy for much longer.
Looks like it’s a matter of time. When Liz goes I expect it will become an issue. I really hope we don’t do it soon though, can you imagine National running the process?
You’re trying to give me nightmares aren’t you?
Actually, there was that constitution review that National launched a couple of years ago and seems to have sunk without a ripple.
Quite safe for at least the next 10 years. And probably 20.
Hang on, I don’t think she’ going to live to 110. 😯
10 maybe, won’t be 20.
I see Grant has totally ruled out Labour having a policy of a tax rate of 50 per cent.
I also see Labour are following the debate on a UBI with interest.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/78316664/taxpayers-union-rubbishes-universal-basic-income-idea
Lets hope they are following the debate on The Standard (Hickey on the UBI).
It would be good to see him put to rest the concern Labour want to stick it to the elderly (and some) through the introduction of a capital tax.
lol no-one is going to do anything to the elderly other than kiss their arses while they remain registered voters.
Labour were going to stick it to them last time.
They also wanted a CGT.
Leaving some concerned Labour may use the UBI as a backdoor to do it again.
Therefore, it would be good if Grant could put this concern to bed.
What makes you think using a UBI to stick it to the elderly isn’t Grants plan? I have certainly seen plenty of comments which argue a UBI is a good way to smuggle in and restructure the entire tax system which appears to be popular with the commentariat on here.
Seeing how quickly he came out to put the 50% tax rate to bed, yet no comment to date on this, you could well be right.
Moreover, we all know the party is still captured by the right within.
The ball is now in your court Grant. Your silence (Grant) only affirms the suspicion.
GR2020
I think it’s better that Labour don’t start commenting on this. They don’t have a policy, and I’m guessing they haven’t done to much more work on a UBI other than the report they commissioned. They put the report out for discussion. That’s what is happening. I’d like to see a whole range of people grapple with this before Labour get too involved. Let people hash it out.
We all know they haven’t formulated a policy on this yet. However, they have been quick to totally rule things out. Like the 50% tax rate.
With talk of replacing benefits, coupled with a UBI rate centered around $200 a week and the possibility of a capital tax, a number of pensioners and home owning low income earners are becoming rather concerned.
Therefore, to put an end to their concern and keep the discussion on track, if they have ruled this out they should inform us.
It’s a total waste of time having the public hash things out when they have (if that is the case) been totally ruled out.
Labour wanted to have this debate, the least they can do is partake a little more. Keeping us all up to date with what has and hasn’t been ruled out as the discussion moves forward.
And by partaking, it also acknowledges the discussion is being heard. It only takes a brief comment, like good points made to achieve this.
This is very descriptive
Reminds me of a mad man Howling at the moon
he’s not mad, he’s FURIOUS
What does? Looking in the mirror?
An Emmerson cartoon that the Herald kept off the digital version until today.I have been chuckling since Saturday and was about to copy and post today when it appeared. Here you are Standardistas have a laugh.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/news-cartoons/news/article.cfm?c_id=500814&objectid=11611763
The Shroud of Key
heh!
The bloke in 23B may not have been too happy but mate, ponyboy would be beside himself thinking he’d done died and gone to heaven!.
Dante Ramos Verified account
@danteramos
Congrats to the ponytailed young woman in seat 22B. You’ve invented a whole new way to be awful at 35,000 feet.
She’s bloody lucky they don’t allow siccors on planes, I’d chop half that thing off.
At least Boris Johnson is speaking out:
‘Russia questions UK silence on retaking Palmyra from ISIS’
https://www.rt.com/uk/337442-russia-slams-uk-palmyra/
…”Meanwhile, London Mayor Boris Johnson has chosen to speak out, despite the silence of his country’s prime minister.
Praising the “ruthless clarity” of Russian President Vladimir Putin in aiding the Syrian government’s removal of “maniac” Islamic State jihadists from Palmyra, Johnson said that Moscow has made the West look “ineffective.”
“If reports are to be believed, the Russians have not only been engaged in airstrikes against Assad’s opponents, but have been seen on the ground as well. If Putin’s troops have helped winkle the maniacs from Palmyra, then (it pains me to admit) that is very much to the credit of the Russians. They have made the West look ineffective; and so now is the time for us to make amends, and to play to our strengths,” Johnson wrote in his column for the Telegraph.
Johnson went on to note the archaeological and historical significance of the city, much of which has been destroyed by Islamic State.
“The victory of Assad is a victory for archaeology, a victory for all those who care about the ancient monuments of one of the most amazing cultural sites on Earth,” Johnson wrote….
Since there is no Daily Review I’ll put this here:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11613375
Good on you Little for not shying away from Hooton’s vicious attacks. Hooton claims he doesn’t know what he (Little) is talking about and says – he ought to demand an apology but doesn’t think he’ll bother. You bet he won’t bother because anyone who listens to the RNZ political spot on a Monday morning or reads his media opinions knows how true it is.
And anyone who dares to stand up to Hooton is painted as an idiot/crazy/mad and deranged according the maddest/craziest and most deranged “commentator” in the country.
Please do a post someone so we can all verbally attack him with relish.
So Little says hooton is part of the problem and hooton responds by calling the leader of the second biggest political party an idiot, there by proving Little right. Your a fucking moron hooton.
And anyone who dares to stand up to Hooton is painted as an idiot/crazy/mad and deranged according the maddest/craziest and most deranged “commentator” in the country.
Hooton doesn’t need “standing up to”. He is a political commentator who says things some people don’t agree with. No more, no less. Disagreeing with him, easily done through any of the the myriad of social media available, isn’t “standing up” to him in the sense of implying courage and determination in the face of threats and pressure. Not need to over-egg it.
And calling him names doesn’t help either. Is he really the most “deranged” commentator in the country? If you think that, you need to get out more.
Yes … ‘deranged’ was a poor word choice. I would have gone with ‘devious’.
Tinshed. It was Hooton who recently called someone “deranged”. He has also used the words “idiot”, “mad” and “crazy” to describe various opposition politicians. I was using his own words against him with some accuracy – as anyone who has listened to him on radio and elsewhere could testify.
You need to learn to read text more carefully.
And for your edification, Hooton is a verbal bully who needs to be stood up to.
Are you a FAYBEEYUN? ARE YOU?
“#degrowth means contraction of accumulatn, capitalism, exploitatn & predation; point is to chlnge concept of accumulation itself” Latouche
https://mobile.twitter.com/KTrebeck/status/714678397813841920
I note that nothing has been said today about the death threats received by Paula Bennett on Facebook. Andrew Little has indicated that while he does not condone, of course, such comments, given the difficult economic times combined with the harsh rhetoric of commentators like Matthew Hooton, such aggressive actions are, to some degree, a factor in such threats. Is that the view shared by most people? I would have thought threatening to kill a Cabinet Minister was pretty serious stuff and required not only Police action, but unequivocal rejection and condemnation by all. Violence, or threats of violence, have no place in political discourse.
[edited for minor clarification]
Someone called Mike Hosking a moron on Twitter that got a lot of media attention. Someone told his psychiatrist he wanted to bomb John Key & was imprisoned. Helen Clark had an axe through her window. Dildos, meringues, buckets of mud. The hoi polloi are getting restless. Hooton thrives on hatred.
See my comment @ 19 Tinshed. Read the link because Andrew Little made it clear there was no justification for that type of aggressive behaviour. He then goes on to say he has observed an upsurge in such behaviour in recent years and he believed it was partly in response to the struggle so many NZers are experiencing because of harsh government actions.
And in case there is an attempt to “blame the behaviour on Labour”, he pointed out that the kind of vicious commentary some right wing PR commentators indulge in is also adding to the problem. (I paraphrase)
He is correct on both counts.
Edit: My last sentence @19 is tongue in cheek. I’m not encouraging “aggressive” action be taken against Hooton as some rwnj might try to claim.
@Anne
My issue with the factors you raise – that Little condemned the behaviour and then went on to observe that harsh government actions makes such behaviour understandable, is that it reeks of victim-blaming. It is kinda of like having a bob each way – violence is unacceptable but I understand why people are violent. I suspect that many people hear is only the second part – times are hard, so violence is understandable. I am not sure that is the right response to threats to kill politicians.
So Tinshed you’re saying that a political leader is not allowed to reflect on what might be causing the behaviour? That is precisely what Andrew Little should be doing when it is appropriate. And it is appropriate to point out the treatment meted out to so many people by this government is what is behind the increase in the behaviour. It is also appropriate to point out the aggressive verbal attacks by right wing commentators also plays a role in the behaviour. Matthew Hooton in particular is a purveyor of hatred.
@Anne
What I observe is that no-one here really condemns the implied violence directed at Paula Bennett, but instead finds reasons for the behaviour elsewhere. Matthew Hooton is just a political commentator who most here disagree with. He doesn’t publish death threats, yet those that do seem to get a free pass. I find it odd that some commentators here seem so eager to criticise Matthew Hooton as a purveyor of hate, yet are much less inclined to condemn the violence directed at National Party Cabinet ministers. I believe Andrew Little also falls into that category. You may see this as Little merely “reflecting” on what he sees, but I see it differently. Violence has no place in our political discourse and must be unreservedly denounced.
Violence has no place in our political discourse and must be unreservedly denounced.
Well, I call dubbing opposition politicians mad/stupid/ idiots/deranged as being a form of violent political discourse. Especially when they are patently untrue. So how about you reserve some of your ‘denouncing’ for Matthew Hooton.
And what about the violence directed and Labour and Green politicians eh? There’s plenty of it but they tend not to make too much of a fuss about it.
@Anne
With respect, from someone who also said,and I quote, I was using his own words against him with some accuracy – as anyone who has listened to him on radio and elsewhere could testify.. What you seem to be saying is that it is OK to call Hooton mad/stupid/idiots/deranged because a) he used these words to describe other people b) they are true when describing him, but should anyone else uses the very same adjectives to describe opposition politicians then they are engaging in political violence. Sorry, I don’y see that way and suggest you are demonstrating a double standard.
Nope. You are being wilfully dumb. Not worth ‘discoursing’ with you.
Over and out.
He’s a fixer.
Hooton says the one thing he was ashamed about “when you read it in the cold light of day” was the bit where the blogger Cactus Kate (real name Cathy Odgers) asks for Hager’s home address, so she can pass it on to wealthy Chinese clients angered by a study Hager co-authored about tax havens: “Chop chop for Nicky, ” wrote Odgers. Hooton gave her Hager’s street name (but not number)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/68984535/matthew-hooton-and-dirty-politics-anatomy-of-the-vast-rightwing-conspiracy
Hi Tinshed,
The words ‘acceptable’ and ‘understandable’ are quite different.
If you reject the understandability of violence then you are elevating violence to some kind of mystical phenomenon.
Do you really think that the possibility of understanding violence is that hopeless?
So, rather than the traditional bloodbath, polite political discourse is going to bring change in the 21st century?.
/
joe90
I am not sure that the means of political change are as stark as you suggest.
Thirty years ago we were told there is no alternative and ever since it’s been all down hill for an awful lot of people.
I doubt our children will pursue polite political discourse and wait another thirty years.
There’s other stuff that never makes it into political discourse. Like how many suicides, mental health issues, domestic violence and regular violent incidents happen each year that can be linked to the effect of WINZ policies and culture? But then again maybe it’s more important we talk about Bennett instead..
Bicycling Triples In London While Driving Halves
More bad news for supporters of the status quo and good news for the rest of us.
Well-written and engaging blog post featured by Russell Brown by “Six”, a trans-female living rough in the Auckland CBD: http://publicaddress.net/speaker/her-outdoors/
1 of a series on TPP
Beware of TPP’s Investor–State Dispute Settlement Provision
By Joseph Stiglitz | 03.28.16
,blockquote>The alleged goal of ISDS is to increase security for investors in states without an adequate “rule of law.” But the fact that the U.S. is insisting on the same provisions in Europe, where legal safeguards are as strong as they are in the U.S., suggests another motive: the desire to make it harder to adopt new financial regulations, environmental laws, worker protections, and food and health safety standards.
http://rooseveltinstitute.org/beware-tpps-investor-state-dispute-settlement-provision/
Also well worth a read from a study by Krzysztof J. Pelc
http://politics.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/42486/frivolity.pdf
i see someone wants to shoot paula bennett i wonder why what could the evil bitch have done ?????shes quite a wide not exactly slim