Open mike 29/06/2010

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, June 29th, 2010 - 43 comments
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43 comments on “Open mike 29/06/2010 ”

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  1. Bored 1
    29 June 2010 at 6:47 am

    I see Banks has been caught out on expenditure, how richly ironic.

  2. Pascal's bookie 2
    29 June 2010 at 7:18 am

    I’ve discussed this whole issue with Jennings and I no longer feel there’s anything to be gained by posting more detail on the TV3 website. Clearly there are people here determined to tarnish my reputation. As the country’s leading political commentator, I’m not going to let that happen. Honest journalism must prevail in this country.

    http://brianedwardsmedia.co.nz/2010/06/incident-on-an-air-new-zealand-flight/#comment-6958

    So yeah then. let’s unpack that shall we?

    According to Garner:

    i)-Garner is the country’s leading political comentator (citation needed)
    ii)-Questions and criticisms directed at Garner can therefore only be based on a desire to tarnish Garner’s reputation. (see i)
    iii)Attacks on Garner are attacks on the ideal of honest journalism, irrespective of any things Garner does.

    Garner is simply too important to our democratic infrastructure to be questioned. If Garner is tarnished, we shall not survive. He is too good to FAIL.

    • ianmac 2.1
      29 June 2010 at 12:17 pm

      Would he pass in National Standards for journalists?:

      High self image/ego= Excellent
      Ability to accept criticism= failed
      Quality fair reporting= failed
      Quality of written statements in reply= failed
      Ability to inspire= failed
      Passion for persuit= Excellent

      This pupil will be held back a year and Remedial work will be attempted.

  3. Armchair Critic 3
    29 June 2010 at 7:23 am

    Newmont pays no royalties for digging its huge hole in the ground in Waihi. Not a bean. Who would have thought?
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/business/3862197/Historic-licence-saves-mining-giant
    How much was mining worth to the economy again, Gerry?

    • uke 3.1
      29 June 2010 at 8:56 am

      I wonder if Newmont pay a bond against post-extraction environmental clean-up costs?

      They have created a huge hole and toxic tailings dam.

      From Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse”, I understand that in the US many mining companies, once they had extracted ore, used to bankrupt themselves to save the cost of a clean-up. Eventually legislation was passed to require bonds to be paid to the govt before mining in the case of such eventualities.

      • Margaret 3.1.1
        29 June 2010 at 10:54 am

        I understand the cleanup from mining has to come out of the royalities paid to the Government, that is why is is a nonsense to allow mining, there is nothing left for NZ after the cleanup.

        Heard on the radio this morning the mine in Waihi has never paid royalities nor does it have to.

        How about that?

        • uke 3.1.1.1
          29 June 2010 at 11:25 am

          Margaret, it’s nuts.

          Mining & oil-gas extraction seem to be sectors still operating according to 19thC-style rules of plunder.

          • Draco T Bastard 3.1.1.1.1
            29 June 2010 at 11:29 am

            Probably closer to 17th c and NACT wants to take us back there for everything else as well.

      • prism 3.1.2
        29 June 2010 at 12:24 pm

        That’s interesting about going bankrupt. It’s the same shameless approach that builders here used after building dodgy buildings, speculators particularly.

        I was sorry to hear years ago, how Albania was taken to the cleaners by shoddy business scams which they had never before experienced, after they had emerged from the communist blanket. But look what’s happened in NZ, the scams that continue, we haven’t reason to respect our financial system and even the political system can be compared to a leaky building with toxic aspects when the covers are lifted.

    • marsman 3.2
      29 June 2010 at 11:24 am

      Poor Newmont,they have to pay both company tax and royalties according to their spokesperson. What planet do those people live on. They get FREE gold from us surely NZ should be getting at least 60% if not more of their income.

      • Armchair Critic 3.2.1
        29 June 2010 at 9:17 pm

        As I understand it they pay royalties for their Favona mine, which is an underground mine, but not for the nearby Martha mine, which is a dirty great open cast pit – soon to be filled with water.

  4. vto 4
    29 June 2010 at 9:16 am

    I see Central Plains Water resource consents have been appealed. And on solid grounds by large entities, including one of the original instigators, the Chistchurch City Council.

    City Council on the grounds of polluting future water supplies for the city and taking too much water and not leaving enough for us to drink.

    Ngai Tahu on not sure what yet – aint been sent the notice of appeal copy. I think it is quite fundamental due to the fact the commissioners allowed CPW to completely change the scheme from a storage one to a run-of-river one midway through the process. Which is brilliant because the entire thing may be thrown out. Good.

    Gravel extractors on the basis of changed ground water levels altering their take volumes.

    I think there were others too. This is good. The CPW scheme is not right for a whole bunch of reasons …

    Oh yes, even CPW has appealed due to not being allowed to take water in the cheapest possible manner. They are only able to take it in 12 hour stints from the Waimak to help preserve some of the rivers natural state and this requires them to spend a further $7m on more water storage.

    I also see last night one of the new Ecan commissars David Caygill being interviewed by some rural commentator from Southland. The commentator was almost gobbing in Caygills mouth with excitement over how, apparently, farmers are now happy because “ecan is cooperating at last” (into which you can read “ecan is doing what farmers want”). It was quite pathetic and Caygill looked entirely uncomfortable.

    • joe90 4.1
      29 June 2010 at 9:58 am

      The CPW scheme is not right for a whole bunch of reasons

      Reason number eleventyseven…….Mothers ‘need alert’ over high nitrate levels

      • Rosy 4.1.1
        29 June 2010 at 11:47 am

        alert over high nitrate levels – that’s appalling! This alone demonstrates the problems Ecan had with balancing water allocation to farming and water quality in Canterbury. And a general lack of priority on degradation of the environment.

      • vto 4.1.2
        29 June 2010 at 12:19 pm

        FFS, how the farmers and their organisations like Federated Farmers and the National Pary can ignore this stuff and just keep threatening small babies and entire communities is beyond me.

        It is bloody disgusting.

        • grumpy 4.1.2.1
          29 June 2010 at 1:49 pm

          You have the cart in front of the horse VTO. A friend just lost 2 horses to Nitrate poisoning last week. This situation arose through lack of action by the “old” ECAN. The Commissioners are likely to move to fix what was clearly beyond the old organisation.

          • vto 4.1.2.1.1
            29 June 2010 at 2:00 pm

            Well perhaps some “parts” of ecan may be fixed but the Great Canterbury Water Larceny is moving at a great rate and will result in significantly greater water takes and corresponding significantly greater nitrate levels.

            I fail to see how pouring more water onto the land will result in less pollutants being shat onto that same land. Aint seen any convincing arguments or schemes to show this would result. I keep my eyes wide open for anything along these lines but there just aint nothing there……. someone prove me wrong….. please…..

            I suspect the cart and horse are running alongside each other.

            • grumpy 4.1.2.1.1.1
              29 June 2010 at 2:51 pm

              I can understand why people have linked the changes at ECAN to dairying and increased irrigation but I don’t think they all have to go together.

              There is a problem with the level of dairy farming that there already is on the Canterbury Plains and I don’t think many people actually want more – it should never have got to this stage.

              There is a problem with ECAN’s attitude. Their “scientific” knowlege has proved deficient in every hearing and that failure has led to dairying booming as ECAN’s major tool – it’s understanding of Canterbury’s groundwater has proved wrong.

              I actually have just obtained an irrigation consent – it is for “arable and pastoral – non dairy”. That distinction needs to be made.

              We have not seen the true colours of the Commissioners yet, I like to think they will be more effective than the idiots they replaced.

              Oh, and by the way – it was the Commissioners who instructed staff to turn up to the public meeting on Dunsandel’s water supply – after inaction from the previous Council.

              • vto …
                29 June 2010 at 3:31 pm

                Understood grumpy. I will continue to take matters with large granules of salt until improvements are seen though.

                I sincerely hope the commissioners do the right thing – by the environment.

                .. until my next rant then………

  5. Lee Paterson 5
    29 June 2010 at 9:24 am

    I saw the satirical article on the Pandas from China, but seriously…
    $14M to rent a Panda from China for 10 years?
    What message does this send?
    Have we not got something better to spend our money on other than sucking up to China?

    Please, give them the kiwis for free, by all means – have something at the China end that means they owe us some kudos, but don’t get wrapped up this.

    • Janice 5.1
      29 June 2010 at 9:56 am

      Emperor John has decreed that there shall be pandas (like there shall be a cycleway) and so all the sycophants will lower trousers and bend over to make pandas possible. To hell with other priorities, a photo op with pandas smiling and waving is just what is needed to distract the masses.

      • Bored 5.1.1
        29 June 2010 at 10:00 am

        Bikes or pandas, cycleways or zoos?

        • ianmac 5.1.1.1
          29 June 2010 at 12:22 pm

          Remember that National Standards over-riding Educational professions decision is John’s baby, and Herceptin over-riding the Medical decision is also John’s baby.

        • Jenny 5.1.1.2
          29 June 2010 at 8:09 pm

          Could pandas and cycle ways, be an update of the Roman Bread and circuses?

          Bread and circuses – Wikepedia:

          “Bread and circuses” (from the Latin: panem et circenses) is a metaphor for a simplistic means of appeasement. In the case of politics, the phrase is used to describe the creation of public approval, not through exemplary or excellent public policy, but through the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace.

      • uke 5.1.2
        29 June 2010 at 10:04 am

        “the sycophants will lower trousers and bend over to make pandas possible”

        Thanks for the image, Janice!

  6. jcuknz 6
    29 June 2010 at 10:26 am

    Following on from Croc’s post about fractured seafloor in the Gulf of Mexico …. seems to be that they refine petrol and other light substances from crude … so to repair the damage they need to work out how to refine crude out of seawater? Rather than picking it up off the beaches and putting it in a landfill somewhere.

    • prism 6.1
      29 June 2010 at 12:30 pm

      Brilliant, jcuknz would go right to the problem. Have yet to look up yesterday’s link on story about BP going far down and then horizontal in the far north. I pray its a hoax. Notice how much PR we are getting about Brazilians who have managed nine years without a major disaster.

  7. uke 7
    29 June 2010 at 11:21 am

    Paul Krugman on the impending “Third Depression”:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html

    He makes a particularly telling statement about the conservative politics of austerity, that “imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times”.

    One from the John Key-Rodney Hide-Roger Kerr manual that.

  8. BLiP 8
    29 June 2010 at 12:31 pm

    Financial advisers and politicians – especially Act Party members – are regarded as among the least trustworthy people in New Zealand, a survey has found.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10655152

  9. ianmac 9
    29 June 2010 at 12:35 pm

    http://brianedwardsmedia.co.nz/2010/06/incident-on-an-air-new-zealand-flight/ at 12:34

    Duncan Garner June 29th, 2010 at 12:34

    Brian

    At 19.07 someone posts as me. That is not me. I do not call or acknowledge myself as the country’s “leading political commentator’ and I did not post that comment.

    Cheers
    Duncan

    • hateatea 10.1
      29 June 2010 at 2:16 pm

      The one where they got HUGE tax decreases not the one I live on with a miniscule increase in my widows benefit but 2.5% more on EVERYTHING. I don’t have any expendable income now once core living costs are paid so I don’t know where the extra will come from in my case. Certainly very difficult to save for the future or Christmas, birthdays and health crises.

      I foresee more and more people living in extended family situations because they can no longer afford to be independent while John and his friends will continue to heat and cool their mansions, swim in their pools, send their children to private schools and have overseas holidays. Shame about the working poor and those who find themselves on benefit through no fault of their own.

      • uke 10.1.1
        29 June 2010 at 2:31 pm

        “Shame about the working poor and those who find themselves on benefit through no fault of their own.”

        Except perhaps with those who voted National or deliberately stayed home and didn’t vote Labour. There’s more than a few NZ working folk with pretty skewed perspective on who best looks after their interests. (Key and Bennett are examples of this type who “made it”.) NZers can be a depressing lot to contemplate sometimes.

      • Lanthanide 10.1.2
        29 June 2010 at 4:16 pm

        With likely steeply rising energy prices during the next decade or two, this is going to happen anyway. Better it starts sooner than later, IMO.

        *Not* living with your extended family is an aberration from the historical norm, one which will be reversed.

        • prism 10.1.2.1
          29 June 2010 at 4:27 pm

          The historical norm saw people dying at earlier ages than now. Retired who go from 65 to 100 living with their children will have spent a third of their lives doing so. And what a punishment that will be if they haven’t brought their children up to be pleasant, socialised citizens. Didn’t a child in the USA get a divorce from her parents? Bit young, but the ties that bind can choke.

    • pollywog 10.2
      29 June 2010 at 3:38 pm

      This from that linked article…

      PM warns companies over ETS price rises
      Meanwhile, Mr Key is warning power companies not to use the Emissions Trading Scheme as an excuse for raising power prices.

      …or what John ? I’ve already got my warning saying Contact energy are gonna increase my monthly power bill by about 10%

      it doesn’t matter if the price of power doesn’t go up, the fact is, my bill has gone up, so what the fuck are you gonna do about it ?

      Impotent warnings and telling me to shop around aint gonna cut it fella and neither is no pissant taxcut.

      I thought you said i should be no worse off. Well guess what John ? I fucking well am !!!

      Thanks mate. So I guess you’re gonna warn retailers not to gouge a little bit more outta me by increasing their prices when the GST hike kicks in too. ?

      Cheers bro. Good to know you got my back. I guess that’s to accompany the shirt you’re ripping off me as well.

      By the way, you know how even the sun shines on a dog’s ass someday ? Well, make the most of your day in the sun cos people are gonna wake up soon and see you’re just a shadow of the man we thought you were and you’ll be out on your ass so fast it’ll make your head spin.

      IMHO

  11. Rosy 11
    30 June 2010 at 7:02 pm

    In parliament today National were congratulating themselves on their tough measures against criminals. Today the Guardian published a piece decrying the ‘bang ’em up’ policies of the last couple of decades – by the Tory Justice secretary Ken Clarke of all people http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/30/clarke-prison-sentencing-justice-jail The Conservatives are looking for a “rehabilitation revolution”

    He says that “for as long as I can remember” the political debate on law and order has been reduced to a competition over whether a government has spent more public money and locked up more people for longer than its predecessor. It now costs more to put someone in prison £38,000 than it does to send a boy to Eton.

    He said: “The consequence is that more and more offenders have been warehoused in outdated facilities and we spend vast amounts of public money on prison. But no proper thought has been given to whether this is really the best and most effective way of protecting the public against crime.”

    Clarke will point out that prison is the necessary punishment for many offenders, but he questions whether “ever more prison for ever more offenders” always produces better results for the public. He provides his own answer by observing that the record prison population and the crime rate in England and Wales are now among the highest in Western Europe.

    He says that just locking people up without actively seeking to change them is “what you would expect of Victorian England” and he notes that reoffending rates among the 60,000 prisoners given short sentences has reached 60% and rising.

    “This does not surprise me. It is virtually impossible to do anything productive with offenders on short sentences. And many of them end up losing their jobs, their homes and their families during their short time inside,”

  12. The Voice of Reason 12
    30 June 2010 at 8:55 pm

    Excellent debate in the House tonight on the committee stages of the Courts (remote participation) Bill. Hone Harawira gave as good a defence of the right to face your accuser as you could ever wish to see. Not kidding, a great speech.

    The bill would allow video appearances by defendants, rather than transporting them to court. Sounds common sense in the new age of austerity, but it means a right hundreds of years old* is about to be abolished in NZ. The right to see your accuser. Actually, two rights. The right for the accuser to see you also goes.

    As Hone said, decisions will be made as if it was a video game. No body language, no whispered questions from defendant to defence lawyer, no physical connection to justice between the parties.

    Astonishing.

    *
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_Clause

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