‘Landlords are failing to meet their legal obligation to to disclose how much insulation is in their rental properties when they sign up new tenants, the Building and Construction Minister says.’
I read somewhere that one of the Scandinavian countries does fines as a % of taxable income. E.g a speeding ticket is three days’ income.
Can do similar to landlords: have a range of fine scales for various violations, from one week to 52 weeks’ rent, with the option of tenants having the right to zero-notice end to the lease if the infraction is for something with a max fine of over, say, 1 month’s rent.
Sounds on to it.
Double it for two rentals, treble for three…
Can’t see our property owning parliamentarians of either hue doing anything about it though.
I doubt many landlords would disclose P usage in the rental properties to the Council as it will appear on their LIM Reports about 5 years ago in real estate circles it was suggested 35% of rental properties in West Auckland showed evidence of P contamination.
P is a bigger problem than what most people actually realise and it is destroying families and communities. Evidently there is a new drug available in India called Crocodile which is 10 x more addictive than P and it makes the skin go green and wrinkly, I guess serious P users & dealers can’t wait to get there hands on it ?
any rental in NZ will show signs of P. Literally. Even high end properties would if tested show signs of P, Coke, la Marie Jeanne, and any other drugs.
Before i moved to West AKL i lived central and i can guarantee you that those well to do, soon to be doctors or lawyers use the same drugs to stay awake then the bogan in West AKL.
Go test all housing for P and be amused.
Crocodile has been making the rounds of Russia for years now, you can youtube that shit.
I believe that most P testing on housing is/was a sham that has helped the outgoing government remove housing nz tenants making way for state housing sales.
It has also helped carpet firms etc with sales and testing companies with an income.
With changed standards will they retest all the houses people were kicked out of?
$30 million spent by Housing NZ testing houses without researching appropriate guidelines first. Feels like an exploit to me, making out it’s all good now because they’ve changed guidelines.
Hundreds of people kicked out of housing nz properties, many given a black mark against their name as a result.
The precursors for this insipid drug come from Asia, too many high brows making money for the issue to be resolved with the current mob in power. Must be frustrating for many police atm, no wonder their moral is so low. Change the government
New Zealand sheeple are being farmed for rent & tax free capital gains. NatCorp ™ have been pimping our people and taonga around the world and found lots of buyers.
Forty of the boat builders behind the remarkable vessel which Emirates Team New Zealand sailed to America’s Cup glory were recently made redundant.
One former employee said he was “disgusted” that the company that built the boat, Southern Spars, had let him go after years of highly-specialised work.
AND found this too
BUT oracle boat builders got 17.25m from NZ!!!!!
America’s Cup team Oracle’s New Zealand-based boat builders get government grant
The company that builds the America’s Cup boats for Team New Zealand’s arch rivals Oracle has been awarded a $17.25 million grant by the New Zealand government.
So here we are again giving an American company $$ to exploit NZ ingenuity.
Pretty much sums up the whole short sighted approach by this Nats govt. MBIE seems to use the Callaghan Innovation Growth Grant as a pot of cash to disseminate to their friends and enablers without any real method of maintaining the innovation in NZ to benefit NZers in the long term.
The fund needs to lock in a return for the investment, surprise, surprise – just like banks or other investors handing over cash would demand. Currently it seems a good idea is bankrolled and ASAP the owners sell off shore – where’s the gain for NZ?? Or Fronterra once again get a check from this govt for R and D ( biggest company in the country and sucking on the tax payers still).
Ooh ooh (hopping around on one foot) shot myself in the foot again. Damn! We are just simple Kiwis who foul our own nest and self-mutilate so often it is no wonder that NZ is like a dead man walking.
The zombie nation, don’t let us get near you other citizens of the world or we will give your economies the kiss of death. Too late, Roger Douglas has already been on the talking head circuit telling gummints round the world how to ease the pearls out of the peoples’ oyster without immediately killing them.
The company that builds the America’s Cup boats for Team New Zealand’s arch rivals Oracle has been awarded a $17.25 million grant by the New Zealand government.
It comes in the form of a three-year research and development grant from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to Warkworth boat building company Core Builders Composites.
The company, which is reportedly owned by Oracle Racing, is headed up by Kiwis Mark Turner and Tim Smyth and has been based in New Zealand since 2010.
The business specialises in sailing technology and built the AC72 catamarans which Oracle used in 2013 when they defended their America’s Cup title, beating Team New Zealand in San Francisco.
The news comes in the same week that Prime Minister John Key reiterated the government would be unlikely to help fund Team New Zealand’s next America’s Cup campaign after a challenger series mooted for Auckland was scrapped.
Although a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle Racing, Core Builders Composites is a New Zealand company providing services to the American team and receives the grant as it has committed to furthering research and development in New Zealand.
Core Builders Composites was one of three companies to receive the Callaghan Innovation Growth Grant and must now commit $300,000 and spend at least 1.5 percent of its revenue on research and development as well as well as maintain or increase their spending in that area of the business over a three-year period.
Any truth in a story doing the rounds on Facebook about Paula Bennett claiming the DPB while in a relationship renting out her house while receiving a sudsidy from hnz to pay for a mortgage.
While living in a relationship in another house doing drugs a Drunken behaviour abusing children.
Any truth to Seymour having a clue about economics? He believes that food retail is competitive having only two companies in the marketplace. He’s a authoritarian, he apes all the rhetoric around libertarianism, free marketneo-lib but supports charter schools! He wants govt to tell poorer citizens what to teach yet supports the outsourcing of govt to a few boardrooms coz govt can’t be trusted.
IF (and that is a big IF) these allegations are PROVED to be true, then it would be a hell of a scalp. But as I said before, there has to be 100% proof here.
Can someone give this its own post r0b? It’s the main feature for today and the rest of the hunting season till the elections.
(I’m talking about the post Americas Cup debacle with people being sacked, and rorts and subsidies, grants to the sailing and business mates in other countries especially USA, our friends.)
Subject: Re: The Clear Water Action Plan
From Robert Atac
To Gareth Morgan
Date Today 09:14
Hi Gareth
I think you know a lot more than you let on,but maybe not?
It is very confusing, your public statements have mentioned our inaction on climate change clash with say your past promotion of Kiwisaver for one thing, and your political goals?
@405ppm CO2 and nearly 2 ppm CH4 humans are very much in the same position the dynasors were in when they saw the Syberian traps forming astroid flying through the atmosphere, except the they had a few thousand more years to get use to the fact that they were going extinct, as it took something like 10,000 years of constant volcanic action to do what humans have done in about 200 years.
Your constant promotion of growth is just compounding the situation, not that it matters for everything that is alive now as ‘we’ can not make the situation any worse.
Then there is the 440 neculer power plants, that will need upto 50 years of power inputs to prevent all of then going ‘Fuckashima’ dumping ton and tons of radiation into the atmosphere – causing the atmosphere to total burnoff.
You have got to spend a few hours listening to or reading professor Guy McPherson’s statements and summery of the true situation humans and the rest of life is in
I’m a 4th for dropout, so what would I know? But I have been following all this stuff for the past 18 years with an average of at least 2 hours a day reading about our future, and humans reaction to the truth, I can see you now looking like the 3 monkeys hear,see,say nothing. I know you will prove me right by you not telling the truth to the pig ignorant masses.
This system is a heat engine, even if all 7.3 billion of us went back to running around naked and living in caves it wouldn’t change the position we are locked into.
About the only thing the global ‘leaders’ could do to reduce future suffering (apart from mass sterlisation, or maybe including) is to stock pile sucide pills, I’m sure that would go down like a cup of cold sick.
I know these are just ‘movies’ but maybe it will help you get your head around what Guy and all the pear reviewed info he supplies is showing
The Road, 22After.Com, and for a resonably good depiction of why you are looking like a primate – Blind Spot
You are saying a lot of good things,but alas I think you are 200 years to late if not several thousand years, as this shirt storm has been on the cards since the first day we planted our first carrot 😉
On election day I will be tossing myself off, as George Carlin says, then at least I will have something to show for my efforts.
If any humans are alive in the next 10 – 20 years they will be radioactive canables.
Good luck with all you time wasting.
Regards Robert Atack
0274 301 574 http://Www.oilcrash.com
Robert Atack
Sincerely meant, and wisely said. There is no way to say anything in a calm or cool and decisive manner that will penetrate the frothy coffee miasma that rolls around in the heads of people who have houses and are earning enough money to have cars, travel, holidays and go to concerts. That is what is important to think about these days. So keep on shouting, someone might look up from their handheld life organisers and hear you.
And the fact that we can’t get a well-thought-out euthanasia, right to die when you want to, agreement passed into law is the biggest bell of those on the Joker’s cap that is this NZ government’s answer to the magic, all-knowing hat of JKRowling;s imagination. If only we could have a wise Sorting Hat as in Harry Potter.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA3dbvRCui0
And what a great sort of People’s Parliament if it went like this and despite all the extras that magic adds, there is more decorum and better procedures and results than we have now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQZFWA2KDbw
Some real magic is needed from our imaginative brains to produce a better reality that matches the fictions that we can conjure up for art.
Happy Thursday to you to robert, bright and cherry this morning as usual Please less on tossing off as this raises disturbing imagery but again this is your contribution to population control and not diluting the world collective iq with your progeny so a gold star for you in this regard
Yeah sorry about the spelling mistakes- bottom of the form is English way back then, and currently one finger typing on a Samsung note thingie
But it does show you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to see the naked king.
My spelling is shit mate. I was trying to help because I know you believe. Morgan won’t be able to get it and as you know the politicans are pretty well mostly like the band on the titanic. I don’t agree with a lot of your conclusions but I do admire your tenacity. Kia kaha.
While the country is carrying on about Barclay, news emerges about the Tongaririo National park, the jewel in the country’s national park crown, being included in a treaty settlement. Which will see the new iwi owners/guardians set an entry fee.
An entry fee. No doubt the likes of marty mars will come in and carry on about iwi land rights and confiscation and so on, but we need to realise that Tongariro was GIFTED to the Crown so ALL NEW ZEALANDERS could use it.
This is wrong.
Very wrong.
It would be shameful for this to be waved through by Labour, New Zealand First and the Greens.
FFS Millsy, this is Maori land, if it’s part of a treaty settlement all well and good and if the Iwi who oversee it charge a fee for people to enjoy the land that is also their absolute right to do so.
Yeah.. I’m sure it was gifted so thousands of tourists could come and walk over what the iwi find sacred each and every day. At least they get some appropriate say in the management of it now.
“Which will see the new iwi owners/guardians set an entry fee.”
You do realise that DOC routinely charges fees for access to tracks on conservation estate?
In this case the hapū want to reduce tourism numbers. Looks like the state has been remiss in its management up until now.
If you want to have a go at someone, have a go at successive govt and NZers that insist on treating nature as a commodity and have pushed tourism numbers without regard for the impacts. Tourism is an extractive industry, this is just one of the consequences. Push back against that, because IME Māori are generally more than happy to share fairly where they are able to.
I understand that the track Tongariro Crossing is a pigs sty at the moment with rubbish and human filth everywhere caused by the overwhelming numbers of tourists. The track cannot cope with the number of visitors, like sometimes up to 3000 a day when the track can only take about 600 The local iwi is doing it’s best to clean the track up removing rubbish and filth as much as possible.
Good on them for charging, I also think it is about time more areas have to have a charge to see them to cope with the excessive numbers of tourists we have now.
Try and visit some of the small villages in the UK and you will be charged a fee to get in by the National Trust
It is about time something like a National Trust was set up in this country before the excessive number of tourists ruin this once great place.
Yep, and it’s a real shame it is coming to this because NZers shouldn’t be being pushed out of their own landscapes in order for someone to make tourism dollars. See my comment above, I’m not blaming Māori, I’m blaming people who think industrial tourism is a good thing.
Even under the most hopeful of predictions on sea level rise, lowlying homes in Dunedin are gone. If I was an owner of one of these homes, I’d be thinking of selling up soon, as its only a matter of time before their value will drop to almost nothing. No-one is going to take a 30 year mortgage on a property that will barely survive past its term. And it won’t be long before insurances will go up or be unavailable for such properties. Same goes for other vulnerable properties around New Zealand.
too late,
the netherlands have infrastructure in place several hundreds years old and they have always been forward thinking and forward building.
We however are still discussing if forcing landlords to upgrade their leaky moldy – not fit for dogs as per the SPCA – dwellings with 1! heating source and maybe some insulation. Cause that would hurt the landlord financially and rents would go up and and and and and
we are nowhere near the dutch model, not because we could not, but because we don’t want to. And i include all parties in that comment. The left can’t get its shit together if its life depends on it, and the right does not give a flying fuck so as long as they have theirs and will be right.
In saying that, i am waiting for the day were some solemn looking dudes in suits tell us that we must bail out the ‘homewoners’ that bought coastal McMansions cause they are underwater now and blahblablabaslblablabalblabal
because the will is not there.
someone else is gonna pay to fix the shit in a few years, and it ain’t gonna be them.
this is why we can’t have nice things. We want cheap shit that looks fancy.
Not sure about that – the Netherlands might have substantially different geology.
Sth Dn is basically on sandy marshland – dig down a foot in some places and you hit groundwater, non-salty simply because it’s runoff that percolates through pushing the saltwater aside. Or as one study put it: “Recent drilling investigations have characterised a sandy aquifer in hydraulic communication with the sea, including tidal fluctuations of the water table in proximity to the ocean.”
Dykes won’t work alone, and even constant pumping might be pissing into the wind depending on the extent of the “hydraulic communication”.
Not saying it couldn’t be done, it just might be cheaper and easier to relocate folks or give them canoes.
How many times can we ‘afford’ to relocate folks? Giving them canoes would not be an option as one would only make money once and that is not a good business model.
If you plan it properly, they only need to be relocated once.
Basically, what Dunedin does to resolve the south dunedin issue has as much to do with climate-change-associated global migration, or even NZ migration, as local weather has to do with climate.
“…it just might be cheaper and easier to relocate folks or give them canoes.”
Cheapest and easiest to just let the residents fend for themselves. Since it’s apparently not a high-income area and the locals are skilled in dealing with adversity through long experience, that’s probably what will happen. Unlike the snowflakes at places like Omaha, who will probably get all the protection the state can throw at them, poor dears.
“Cheapest and easiest to just let the residents fend for themselves. Since it’s apparently not a high-income area and the locals are skilled in dealing with adversity through long experience,”
I’m curious what you mean there. You mean they will find themselves some other land and build new houses themselves? Thought not. You mean they will engineer some solution on site to prevent the water from rising underneath them each time there is a big rain? Do you realise that South Dunedin has a lot of elderly and people with disabilities?
That was a cynical extrapolation of current government trends of withdrawing assistance from those that genuinely need it in favour of coddling the wealthy.
hang on,
surely Nationals Bennett would be happy to spend tax money to get homeless people rehomed and pay mega accomodation supplements to the owners of the buildings to compensate them for not being able to sell their underwater houses.
tbh, while I think that something needs to be done about that situation fairly, I also think it’s one of our lesser worries. We have plenty of space and can rehouse people. And we can sort out some assistance for that. But worrying about the mortgage in the face of CC that will cause massive upheavals globally and locally is like worrying if one has a cushion on the life boat off the titanic. Sorry, that’s a bit harsh, but it’s not like this is new in any way at all. We’ve been talking about sea level rise for a long time. Did people think it wouldn’t happen within the lifetime of their mortgage and they could pass the problem on to someone else?
More of a concern is how fast CC will hit things like our ability to grow food, and what will happen when we get a confluence of GFC, CC and Peak Oil.
@ Weka
More of a concern is how fast CC will hit things like our ability to grow food, and what will happen when we get a confluence of GFC, CC and Peak Oil.
many of us will die of preventable diseases and things tooth infections or a breech position cause a. we can’t afford the medical care, b. we are to far away from any medical care. This to me is what is the most frightening aspect. That due to lack of money, and access to medical services small things can go out of hand very quickly and will go very deadly. humans don’t need much to die – we are fragile that way.
i don’t think that trade etc will disappear, but it will be rationed and if many of us would be honest with themselves there literally is no reasons why rations would be wasted on us. Be that food, fuel, or transportation.
our communities will be more dangerous with the lack of lights. Dark streets make for good muggins.
sexual violence and domestic violence will be ‘domestic issues’ and no one will do much about it. cause thats just how it is and several different religious text will support such a system.
religion will replace law and secular government in regions where the government has opted out (this is what we are seeing in certain of the red states)
and so on and so on
but until such time, be sure for the same people who want to do nothing because we are making money to make a killing on all our demise.
I am forever grateful for not having had children. We are leaving them with nothing but misery.
Are you talking about NZ or globally? I’m not so worried about the health stuff in NZ. Yes there will be people affected by medical and surgical shortages, some quite badly, but we know from Cuba that reduction in the economy/standard of living improved general health across the board because people were forced to eat differently and move more.
We have botanical medicines to deal with infection, combined with modern hygiene to prevent the worst of things that are seen in the past. A bigger concern for me is if we get slacker on biosecurity and end up with things like Lyme Disease here. I expect warmer climate will bring more tropical illness up north too. But its not like we are doing to lose our modern knowledge about how to manage those things at the basic level.
Not trying to minimise what individuals will face, but putting that alongside the shit that individuals already face. I’m in two minds about whether places will get less safe. I think that largely depends on what we do in the next decade or so in terms of restoring community. This is why I don’t give a shit about Labour not being what lefties want enough, the most important thing is to change the government so that the rest of society can get on with doing the right thing.
And i am not talking about medical and surgical shortages, i am talking about living isolated or of the main drag with no pharmacy and no resident doctor where a child in a breech position – if you can’t get someone qualified most likely will kill the mother or the child. Or if you scratch yourself with a nail you die of blood poisoning.
It is the very little things that we overlook and simplify, yet they are the silent issues. And if you can’t afford the cost, or there is no one there to assist, well you are shit outta luck. Up until very long ago dying in childbirth was a normal risk associated with childbirth. If you look at Texas which has done a good job of closing clinics in rural areas (especially women clinics) you will see that mortality rates are up for mothers and children as the women simply home birth maybe with a mid wife, or a doula or maybe just with a woman whom herself has birthed alone at home.
The shit we are putting up with now is simply because we still have not quite grasped just how easy we are to kill as humans. No shelter in a cold area? freeze. No food? starve. No water? dehydrate. To hot? heat stroke, these are things that already kill our homeless and poor, elderlies and very young every year. And we are happy to put up with it so long as it is others – and it makes for riveting TV news. Yet, as the tower fire in London showed us we are already rationing our resources. And the poor – not us yet – are the ones who get nothing much of substance. We only get concerned if it is us. but if you want to know what we would look like without container ships landing every week bringing in our food, our medicine, our building tools and so on? Crime, Prostitution, slavery/bondage are all used in order to stay alive in many countries and why should this not happen to us? Cause we are special?
.
As for parties being left or not, i never cared. I generally vote left as this is where some of the concerns that i have are addressed. simple as that. If the left would be called Pink Fuzzy Bears i would vote for the Pink Fuzzy Bears. My issue with the ‘left’ is generally that they don’t work well among their fractions. that many of the left vote against their self interest in order to promote this party or that party even if they are destined to loose, i still posit that Fucking Dunne should have been done and send packing last time around – alas the left could not get its act together. Sad! really.
But am i worried about what will happens when/if we have a societal collapse? No. If i am lucky i be dead when it happens, if i am lucky i will die quickly and painlessly and if i am to live for hecks sake i will have to do what people do today – suck it up and carry on. Cause at the end of the day, that is literally all we can do, now in our current society and in what ever society we have when our civilization has gone bust like so many before us.
Get yourself healthy; drink clean water, sleep deeply and well, eat good food, generate well-being amongst your nearest and dearest then spread the love…those other things? Take them as they come.
It was used as a incendiary munition. An important distinction.
Now folks this is being led by NZ, and they are killing civilians. If this is what Key meant by getting some guts. Then God help us all. This is what the rabbit hole looks like.
Oh, and here is the piece where they admit they are using it in civilian areas.
The screening effect referred to in the final link would be a very specific effect.
I imagine the intended effect is effectively a narrow line of bright light that is used to prevent ISIS actually seeing the fleeing civilians. The bright white light is being used to destroy night vision of the ISIS fighters (by that I don’t mean actually used on the ISIS fighters). The effect is that the ISIS fighters cannot see what is happening beyond the bright white line of light.
So not a use on civilians, or ISIS fighters to kill or injure them, as adam purports.
Come on Wayne you were minister of defense, I’m sure you were briefed on the differences in use of white phosphorus? If not, you should really put a complaint to parliamentary services.
And in this case it was used as incendiary munitions. I agree in all probability it was used as makers and/or flairs as you said. However my case is simple, the media have asked if it was used as a munition, and the gen. responded that it was. So once again if you take the time to read and understand the uses of white phosphorus then you get why I’m saying that firing this stuff at civilians is nasty.
But then again, you don’t want to have to face the fact that our defense forces have broken the mandate we were suppose to operate under in the middle east. Not only broken it, but gone as far as burning civilians to death with a pretty awful munition. It’s not a banned munition, I get that. But anything which burns straight through flesh is a terror weapon, and to use older language – evil.
Ok, let’s go with that best-case scenario, where they dropped WP onto an urban war zone without immediately hitting any civilians or combatants. You’re still left with the problem of fragments of WP not being immediately consumed, but lying in wait for weeks until people return to the area.
That’s the other part of the problem of WP: not just that it’s an indiscriminately-burny weapon that is particularly gross and painful, but that also it lurks like an IED until it’s disturbed and burns someone’s foot off.
So White Phosphorous can be legally used in warfare these days doesn’t appear to be a particularly nice product especially if it is used on civilians, what about the Geneva Convention Rules ?
If the primary purpose of the weapon is to burn or poison people, it’s illegal. If it has some other primary purpose and poisoning or burning is incidental or additional to that, then it’s legal. Hence “blinding ISIS NVDs” rather than “intentionally burning ISIS fighters cajun-style”.
I’ve heard urban myths of protocols for some weapons (variously .50 cal or WP) that were restricted to use against equipment and vehicles, so tactical commanders would order their employment against “helmets and webbing” to stick precisely within the word of the law.
Basically, WP is as legally obscure as the vision of people it’s dropped in front of. If you’re dropping it on open fields to cover an advance, and it’s well short of enemy emplacements, there’s not much wrong with that. But dropping it in a city (via artillery or aircraft) basically assumes that sooner or later someone, probably a civilian, will be screaming in agony for an extended period of time.
I have read the article that is referenced. I know Gen McAslan, having met him professionally on a number of occasions. I understand enough of military operations to know how white phosphorus munitions would be used in these circumstances. It was once a standard source of white light in various munitions used by the NZDF.
That is why I am confident it was not used against civilians or ISIS. So while it was obviously “used as a munition” it was not used to target people.
And that is really the key point. Even Adam seems to accept that in his post at 12.1.1.1.2. I imagine there will be some sort of cleanup plan when the Iraqis troops actually take control.
It’s the key legal point. But I’m sure many people imagined that various armies had a plan to clean up minefields and DU from various battlefields in the last 80 years, and look how that turned out.
I see Little and Labour have offered working people and good employers new policy positions.
See Scoop today.
Can’t say they are the same as Nats !!!
Gives people a real difference to vote for.
I don’t know, the price does seem high, but it includes power, water and internet in a semi-self contained separate building. Looks not bad to me and I would probably call that tiny housing.
“Tiny housing” to me is intentionally designed or converted fit for purpose.
Given the scale (looking at the outside table and chairs) and the loft space for sleeping, I would think that the roof is most likely uninsulated, and ventilation would be poor.
It would more than likely be an illegal occupancy, and a poor substitute for a bedroom in a reasonable house.
I would understand that it might appeal to some though, but is this the quality we should deliver for $215/wk?
The maximum sleepout area of 10m2 should be increased to at least 20m2, so that rentals of this kind can be better utilised and built. Local government would be better placed to address this, and failed to do so in the Unitary Plan.
Uninsulated and poorly ventilated, are you thinking in the summer it would be too hot?
In terms of tiny housing, it does look converted fit for purpose to me albeit not perfectly. But then I’m used to people living in much more basic conditions in house trucks, containers, caravans, yurts etc. I agree there is a quality issue for the price, and there will be issues there I don’t understand about the Auckland climate.
There was one on twitter a while back, single room in a house that was a converted porch, glass on three walls, enough room for a single bed and a cupboard from memory, lots of windows. Near varsity. $90/wk. Some on twitter were saying how terrible it was, while others, myself included, were thinking it didn’t look too bad 😉 Having lived in small spaces like that on low incomes, I looked at the pictures and immediately figured out how to make it better in the winter/summer etc. I wouldn’t live in a space like that now, but when I was 20? Sure, it seems ok. So my expectations start lower I think.
More of problem for me is the pushing more people into smaller overall spaces e.g. the infill building going on. It’s one thing to live in a small space, it’s another to go outside and be crowded there as well (e.g. building 4 houses on a section seems insane to me, where will you plant the trees 😉 ). I guess some people like that, but each time it just brings me back to the limits of growth.
I was thinking more of the mould and dampness that would likely occur from sleeping in such a small space. The problem with some tiny houses on trailers is the loft space has such a small space that people are just glad to get mattresses on them, and don’t think about the fact that mattresses on a solid surfaces sweat and become damp very easily.
As for the porch for $90 – it is something I would have looked at in my 20’s as well. For me it was the $215, and the permission to use the kitchen for “heavy cooking” if required. No mention of shared space in the actual house ie. sitting room, the requirement for four weeks rent for bond and one week in advance.
Also, I have graphic memories of living in Southall, London where there were a lot of jimmy rigged sheds and houses in backyards being used for accommodation. A slippery slope, that got worse over time. Have no idea what that is like now. So that may very well be colouring my view.
Well it’s a sad indictment that I’m relatively complacent about it. I think for some people it would be fine but as we know the problem with the shortage is that people are being forced into situations that were meant for people of difference circumstances. Like you I would love to see some good tiny home options being on offer for the people that are suited to them.
I think there would be lots of rooms for rent around, that by the time you’ve put a bed in you have less floor space available than this tiny house. They’ve wisely used the floor space.
All it needs is a water supply and sink, some sort of fuel stove and a composting toilet and its good to go.
I think there’s at least 3 windows so ventilation should be ok. Also you can’t tell with the ceiling because it’s lined, but there could well be insulation – it looks pretty decently built too and well presented so they’re more likely to have thought of it.
I agree though up to 20 square metre building without a permit should be allowable. That would allow more flexibility with the design and you wouldnt be jamming everything into every spare little space.
Nah NZF & Winston highly unlikely to go with Labour however could be an option if NZF can’t stitch a deal together with Labour or the Greens. NZF will be a major player in this coming Election ?
yes, which is a very good reason to not vote for them. If NZF spits the dummy over an actual left wing govt (which is quite possible IMO) they will go with National. Either way there is no way to know which means that voting NZF is not a vote to change the govt. It’s roulette.
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
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Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
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Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
Sir Robert devoted his life to disability rights after living in institutions in his younger years, says Kaihautū Tika Hauātanga | Disability Rights Commissioner Prudence Walker. ...
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By Dale Luma in Port Moresby “We want grants and not concessional loans,” is the crisp message from Papua New Guinea businesses directly affected by the Black Wednesday looting four months ago. The businesses, which lost millions after the January 10 rioting and looting, say they need grants as part ...
Happy May Day. Join a union. Q: What’s worse than a staff break room where the only place to sit and have a cup of tea is on a teetering stack of old pornography magazines? A: Your boss replacing the magazine stacks with chairs that are “heartily encrusted with ...
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A Koi Tū discussion paper released today proposes sweeping changes to New Zealand’s media industry. The principal’s key author, Gavin Ellis, explains how journalists have a key role to play in making others value their role in society. This is an abridged version of a piece first published on knightlyviews.com ...
The Government’s spending cuts are again targeting support for Māori with proposed reform of the agency charged with advising on Māori wellbeing and development. ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Usmar, Lecturer in Critical Media Literacies, Auckland University of Technology Getty Images With the coalition government’s ban of student mobile phones in New Zealand schools coming into effect this week, reaction has ranged from the sceptical (kids will just get ...
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Six charged over Hillsborough disaster.
Wonder how long the families of Pike River will wait.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11883345
Manslaughter by gross neglect
The brighter future….
‘Landlords are failing to meet their legal obligation to to disclose how much insulation is in their rental properties when they sign up new tenants, the Building and Construction Minister says.’
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/334058/landlords-told-to-come-clean-on-rental-insulation
wow – so you’re putting up a comment that is positive for Nick Smith – righto
$4000 fine will hardly dent landlords pockets – what should happen ed?
for me I’d add maybe a zero to the fines for their first offence and maybe keep adding zeros until they comply of get out of the landlording business.
I read somewhere that one of the Scandinavian countries does fines as a % of taxable income. E.g a speeding ticket is three days’ income.
Can do similar to landlords: have a range of fine scales for various violations, from one week to 52 weeks’ rent, with the option of tenants having the right to zero-notice end to the lease if the infraction is for something with a max fine of over, say, 1 month’s rent.
something to roll around the noggin for a while.
Sounds on to it.
Double it for two rentals, treble for three…
Can’t see our property owning parliamentarians of either hue doing anything about it though.
Widespread failure to disclose P contamination as well. Must preserve rental income and property values. Doesn’t matter if tenants die
Landlords omitting P history to protect property values
I doubt many landlords would disclose P usage in the rental properties to the Council as it will appear on their LIM Reports about 5 years ago in real estate circles it was suggested 35% of rental properties in West Auckland showed evidence of P contamination.
P is a bigger problem than what most people actually realise and it is destroying families and communities. Evidently there is a new drug available in India called Crocodile which is 10 x more addictive than P and it makes the skin go green and wrinkly, I guess serious P users & dealers can’t wait to get there hands on it ?
any rental in NZ will show signs of P. Literally. Even high end properties would if tested show signs of P, Coke, la Marie Jeanne, and any other drugs.
Before i moved to West AKL i lived central and i can guarantee you that those well to do, soon to be doctors or lawyers use the same drugs to stay awake then the bogan in West AKL.
Go test all housing for P and be amused.
Crocodile has been making the rounds of Russia for years now, you can youtube that shit.
I believe that most P testing on housing is/was a sham that has helped the outgoing government remove housing nz tenants making way for state housing sales.
It has also helped carpet firms etc with sales and testing companies with an income.
With changed standards will they retest all the houses people were kicked out of?
$30 million spent by Housing NZ testing houses without researching appropriate guidelines first. Feels like an exploit to me, making out it’s all good now because they’ve changed guidelines.
Hundreds of people kicked out of housing nz properties, many given a black mark against their name as a result.
The precursors for this insipid drug come from Asia, too many high brows making money for the issue to be resolved with the current mob in power. Must be frustrating for many police atm, no wonder their moral is so low. Change the government
Asian house farmers getting Government Subsidies renting houses to New Zealanders, free market zombie economics or neoliberalism ?
New Zealand sheeple are being farmed for rent & tax free capital gains. NatCorp ™ have been pimping our people and taonga around the world and found lots of buyers.
i bet you would have to close every motel and hotel in nz if you tested them,
This left a sour taste.
Finished won and dumped!!!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11883219
Forty of the boat builders behind the remarkable vessel which Emirates Team New Zealand sailed to America’s Cup glory were recently made redundant.
One former employee said he was “disgusted” that the company that built the boat, Southern Spars, had let him go after years of highly-specialised work.
AND found this too
BUT oracle boat builders got 17.25m from NZ!!!!!
So here we are again giving an American company $$ to exploit NZ ingenuity.
Pretty much sums up the whole short sighted approach by this Nats govt. MBIE seems to use the Callaghan Innovation Growth Grant as a pot of cash to disseminate to their friends and enablers without any real method of maintaining the innovation in NZ to benefit NZers in the long term.
The fund needs to lock in a return for the investment, surprise, surprise – just like banks or other investors handing over cash would demand. Currently it seems a good idea is bankrolled and ASAP the owners sell off shore – where’s the gain for NZ?? Or Fronterra once again get a check from this govt for R and D ( biggest company in the country and sucking on the tax payers still).
Ooh ooh (hopping around on one foot) shot myself in the foot again. Damn! We are just simple Kiwis who foul our own nest and self-mutilate so often it is no wonder that NZ is like a dead man walking.
The zombie nation, don’t let us get near you other citizens of the world or we will give your economies the kiss of death. Too late, Roger Douglas has already been on the talking head circuit telling gummints round the world how to ease the pearls out of the peoples’ oyster without immediately killing them.
Cool rant
marty mars
TQ I thought it went rather well.
from the 2015 article in dv’s link
“How about a Callaghan grant for Southern Spars?”
How do feel about giving taxpayer money away to foreign-owned companies?
http://www.southernspars.com/company/
Any truth in a story doing the rounds on Facebook about Paula Bennett claiming the DPB while in a relationship renting out her house while receiving a sudsidy from hnz to pay for a mortgage.
While living in a relationship in another house doing drugs a Drunken behaviour abusing children.
Any truth to Seymour having a clue about economics? He believes that food retail is competitive having only two companies in the marketplace. He’s a authoritarian, he apes all the rhetoric around libertarianism, free marketneo-lib but supports charter schools! He wants govt to tell poorer citizens what to teach yet supports the outsourcing of govt to a few boardrooms coz govt can’t be trusted.
IF (and that is a big IF) these allegations are PROVED to be true, then it would be a hell of a scalp. But as I said before, there has to be 100% proof here.
We’re keeping an eye on it, but not inclined to move first. Aspects of it look fake.
Can someone give this its own post r0b? It’s the main feature for today and the rest of the hunting season till the elections.
(I’m talking about the post Americas Cup debacle with people being sacked, and rorts and subsidies, grants to the sailing and business mates in other countries especially USA, our friends.)
I’ll note your suggestion to others, though it’s not a topic I feel strongly enough about to follow up myself.
Subject: Re: The Clear Water Action Plan
From Robert Atac
To Gareth Morgan
Date Today 09:14
Hi Gareth
I think you know a lot more than you let on,but maybe not?
It is very confusing, your public statements have mentioned our inaction on climate change clash with say your past promotion of Kiwisaver for one thing, and your political goals?
@405ppm CO2 and nearly 2 ppm CH4 humans are very much in the same position the dynasors were in when they saw the Syberian traps forming astroid flying through the atmosphere, except the they had a few thousand more years to get use to the fact that they were going extinct, as it took something like 10,000 years of constant volcanic action to do what humans have done in about 200 years.
Your constant promotion of growth is just compounding the situation, not that it matters for everything that is alive now as ‘we’ can not make the situation any worse.
Then there is the 440 neculer power plants, that will need upto 50 years of power inputs to prevent all of then going ‘Fuckashima’ dumping ton and tons of radiation into the atmosphere – causing the atmosphere to total burnoff.
You have got to spend a few hours listening to or reading professor Guy McPherson’s statements and summery of the true situation humans and the rest of life is in
I’m a 4th for dropout, so what would I know? But I have been following all this stuff for the past 18 years with an average of at least 2 hours a day reading about our future, and humans reaction to the truth, I can see you now looking like the 3 monkeys hear,see,say nothing. I know you will prove me right by you not telling the truth to the pig ignorant masses.
This system is a heat engine, even if all 7.3 billion of us went back to running around naked and living in caves it wouldn’t change the position we are locked into.
About the only thing the global ‘leaders’ could do to reduce future suffering (apart from mass sterlisation, or maybe including) is to stock pile sucide pills, I’m sure that would go down like a cup of cold sick.
I know these are just ‘movies’ but maybe it will help you get your head around what Guy and all the pear reviewed info he supplies is showing
The Road, 22After.Com, and for a resonably good depiction of why you are looking like a primate – Blind Spot
You are saying a lot of good things,but alas I think you are 200 years to late if not several thousand years, as this shirt storm has been on the cards since the first day we planted our first carrot 😉
On election day I will be tossing myself off, as George Carlin says, then at least I will have something to show for my efforts.
If any humans are alive in the next 10 – 20 years they will be radioactive canables.
Good luck with all you time wasting.
Regards Robert Atack
0274 301 574
http://Www.oilcrash.com
Robert Atack
Sincerely meant, and wisely said. There is no way to say anything in a calm or cool and decisive manner that will penetrate the frothy coffee miasma that rolls around in the heads of people who have houses and are earning enough money to have cars, travel, holidays and go to concerts. That is what is important to think about these days. So keep on shouting, someone might look up from their handheld life organisers and hear you.
And the fact that we can’t get a well-thought-out euthanasia, right to die when you want to, agreement passed into law is the biggest bell of those on the Joker’s cap that is this NZ government’s answer to the magic, all-knowing hat of JKRowling;s imagination. If only we could have a wise Sorting Hat as in Harry Potter.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA3dbvRCui0
And what a great sort of People’s Parliament if it went like this and despite all the extras that magic adds, there is more decorum and better procedures and results than we have now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQZFWA2KDbw
Some real magic is needed from our imaginative brains to produce a better reality that matches the fictions that we can conjure up for art.
Happy Thursday to you to robert, bright and cherry this morning as usual Please less on tossing off as this raises disturbing imagery but again this is your contribution to population control and not diluting the world collective iq with your progeny so a gold star for you in this regard
Wake up: http://dieoff.org/
Or, continue to keep your head in the sand
Not sure why you mentioned that you were a fourth form dropout – that and the spelling mistakes probably means he won’t take you seriously.
Yes Marty Dear
Why are you poking your nose in – you’re likely to find out trying to provoke me isn’t such a great idea, for you…
Yeah sorry about the spelling mistakes- bottom of the form is English way back then, and currently one finger typing on a Samsung note thingie
But it does show you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to see the naked king.
My spelling is shit mate. I was trying to help because I know you believe. Morgan won’t be able to get it and as you know the politicans are pretty well mostly like the band on the titanic. I don’t agree with a lot of your conclusions but I do admire your tenacity. Kia kaha.
Going to type all my raves in word first from now on
Sorry everyone I do try eg that last rant took me about 60 min to type
While the country is carrying on about Barclay, news emerges about the Tongaririo National park, the jewel in the country’s national park crown, being included in a treaty settlement. Which will see the new iwi owners/guardians set an entry fee.
An entry fee. No doubt the likes of marty mars will come in and carry on about iwi land rights and confiscation and so on, but we need to realise that Tongariro was GIFTED to the Crown so ALL NEW ZEALANDERS could use it.
This is wrong.
Very wrong.
It would be shameful for this to be waved through by Labour, New Zealand First and the Greens.
FFS Millsy, this is Maori land, if it’s part of a treaty settlement all well and good and if the Iwi who oversee it charge a fee for people to enjoy the land that is also their absolute right to do so.
You should pay and at the gate at the start of your street too.
Get onto brash he might make it part of their push.
Yeah.. I’m sure it was gifted so thousands of tourists could come and walk over what the iwi find sacred each and every day. At least they get some appropriate say in the management of it now.
“Which will see the new iwi owners/guardians set an entry fee.”
You do realise that DOC routinely charges fees for access to tracks on conservation estate?
In this case the hapū want to reduce tourism numbers. Looks like the state has been remiss in its management up until now.
If you want to have a go at someone, have a go at successive govt and NZers that insist on treating nature as a commodity and have pushed tourism numbers without regard for the impacts. Tourism is an extractive industry, this is just one of the consequences. Push back against that, because IME Māori are generally more than happy to share fairly where they are able to.
https://www.maoritelevision.com/news/latest-news/native-affairs–warning-tongariro-tourists
I understand that the track Tongariro Crossing is a pigs sty at the moment with rubbish and human filth everywhere caused by the overwhelming numbers of tourists. The track cannot cope with the number of visitors, like sometimes up to 3000 a day when the track can only take about 600 The local iwi is doing it’s best to clean the track up removing rubbish and filth as much as possible.
Good on them for charging, I also think it is about time more areas have to have a charge to see them to cope with the excessive numbers of tourists we have now.
Try and visit some of the small villages in the UK and you will be charged a fee to get in by the National Trust
It is about time something like a National Trust was set up in this country before the excessive number of tourists ruin this once great place.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/02/tongariro-crossing-struggling-to-cope-with-hordes-of-tourists.html
Yep, and it’s a real shame it is coming to this because NZers shouldn’t be being pushed out of their own landscapes in order for someone to make tourism dollars. See my comment above, I’m not blaming Māori, I’m blaming people who think industrial tourism is a good thing.
Agree 2000%
This hurts but yeah
Ralph Nader’s view. All a bit depressing.
https://theintercept.com/2017/06/25/ralph-nader-the-democrats-are-unable-to-defend-the-u-s-from-the-most-vicious-republican-party-in-history/
Application here ?
Following the global pandemic of liberalism in the 80’s ,peaking in the early 1990’s we can see the aftermath.
Wellington the rustbelt years.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/travelling–light/sets/72157624758199920/with/4911888512/
neoliberalism peaked in the 90s?
Even under the most hopeful of predictions on sea level rise, lowlying homes in Dunedin are gone. If I was an owner of one of these homes, I’d be thinking of selling up soon, as its only a matter of time before their value will drop to almost nothing. No-one is going to take a 30 year mortgage on a property that will barely survive past its term. And it won’t be long before insurances will go up or be unavailable for such properties. Same goes for other vulnerable properties around New Zealand.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/scientists-in-antarctica-painting-bleak-picture-low-lying-nz-coastal-communities
At first glance, south Dunedin may be suitable for a Netherlands-style solution. Roughly a quarter of their land is below sea level.
too late,
the netherlands have infrastructure in place several hundreds years old and they have always been forward thinking and forward building.
We however are still discussing if forcing landlords to upgrade their leaky moldy – not fit for dogs as per the SPCA – dwellings with 1! heating source and maybe some insulation. Cause that would hurt the landlord financially and rents would go up and and and and and
https://www.jlgrealestate.com/2014/02/18/floating-houses/
we are nowhere near the dutch model, not because we could not, but because we don’t want to. And i include all parties in that comment. The left can’t get its shit together if its life depends on it, and the right does not give a flying fuck so as long as they have theirs and will be right.
In saying that, i am waiting for the day were some solemn looking dudes in suits tell us that we must bail out the ‘homewoners’ that bought coastal McMansions cause they are underwater now and blahblablabaslblablabalblabal
Even after the leaky building crisis we are still building leaky homes-absolute muppets in Government and Local Councils ?
because the will is not there.
someone else is gonna pay to fix the shit in a few years, and it ain’t gonna be them.
this is why we can’t have nice things. We want cheap shit that looks fancy.
Not much point in upgrading houses that are going to drown.
Not sure about that – the Netherlands might have substantially different geology.
Sth Dn is basically on sandy marshland – dig down a foot in some places and you hit groundwater, non-salty simply because it’s runoff that percolates through pushing the saltwater aside. Or as one study put it: “Recent drilling investigations have characterised a sandy aquifer in hydraulic communication with the sea, including tidal fluctuations of the water table in proximity to the ocean.”
Dykes won’t work alone, and even constant pumping might be pissing into the wind depending on the extent of the “hydraulic communication”.
Not saying it couldn’t be done, it just might be cheaper and easier to relocate folks or give them canoes.
How many times can we ‘afford’ to relocate folks? Giving them canoes would not be an option as one would only make money once and that is not a good business model.
If you plan it properly, they only need to be relocated once.
Basically, what Dunedin does to resolve the south dunedin issue has as much to do with climate-change-associated global migration, or even NZ migration, as local weather has to do with climate.
Yep the area is going under eventually.
Mums old whare at ocean grove might be okay but will be pretty hard to get to I’d say.
“…it just might be cheaper and easier to relocate folks or give them canoes.”
Cheapest and easiest to just let the residents fend for themselves. Since it’s apparently not a high-income area and the locals are skilled in dealing with adversity through long experience, that’s probably what will happen. Unlike the snowflakes at places like Omaha, who will probably get all the protection the state can throw at them, poor dears.
council seems to be beginning to pull finger on the issue re:district plan.
“Cheapest and easiest to just let the residents fend for themselves. Since it’s apparently not a high-income area and the locals are skilled in dealing with adversity through long experience,”
I’m curious what you mean there. You mean they will find themselves some other land and build new houses themselves? Thought not. You mean they will engineer some solution on site to prevent the water from rising underneath them each time there is a big rain? Do you realise that South Dunedin has a lot of elderly and people with disabilities?
That was a cynical extrapolation of current government trends of withdrawing assistance from those that genuinely need it in favour of coddling the wealthy.
hang on,
surely Nationals Bennett would be happy to spend tax money to get homeless people rehomed and pay mega accomodation supplements to the owners of the buildings to compensate them for not being able to sell their underwater houses.
tbh, while I think that something needs to be done about that situation fairly, I also think it’s one of our lesser worries. We have plenty of space and can rehouse people. And we can sort out some assistance for that. But worrying about the mortgage in the face of CC that will cause massive upheavals globally and locally is like worrying if one has a cushion on the life boat off the titanic. Sorry, that’s a bit harsh, but it’s not like this is new in any way at all. We’ve been talking about sea level rise for a long time. Did people think it wouldn’t happen within the lifetime of their mortgage and they could pass the problem on to someone else?
More of a concern is how fast CC will hit things like our ability to grow food, and what will happen when we get a confluence of GFC, CC and Peak Oil.
@ Weka
More of a concern is how fast CC will hit things like our ability to grow food, and what will happen when we get a confluence of GFC, CC and Peak Oil.
many of us will die of preventable diseases and things tooth infections or a breech position cause a. we can’t afford the medical care, b. we are to far away from any medical care. This to me is what is the most frightening aspect. That due to lack of money, and access to medical services small things can go out of hand very quickly and will go very deadly. humans don’t need much to die – we are fragile that way.
i don’t think that trade etc will disappear, but it will be rationed and if many of us would be honest with themselves there literally is no reasons why rations would be wasted on us. Be that food, fuel, or transportation.
our communities will be more dangerous with the lack of lights. Dark streets make for good muggins.
sexual violence and domestic violence will be ‘domestic issues’ and no one will do much about it. cause thats just how it is and several different religious text will support such a system.
religion will replace law and secular government in regions where the government has opted out (this is what we are seeing in certain of the red states)
and so on and so on
but until such time, be sure for the same people who want to do nothing because we are making money to make a killing on all our demise.
I am forever grateful for not having had children. We are leaving them with nothing but misery.
Agree with a lot of that. Your last line not so much.
forever the optimist -not.
Are you talking about NZ or globally? I’m not so worried about the health stuff in NZ. Yes there will be people affected by medical and surgical shortages, some quite badly, but we know from Cuba that reduction in the economy/standard of living improved general health across the board because people were forced to eat differently and move more.
We have botanical medicines to deal with infection, combined with modern hygiene to prevent the worst of things that are seen in the past. A bigger concern for me is if we get slacker on biosecurity and end up with things like Lyme Disease here. I expect warmer climate will bring more tropical illness up north too. But its not like we are doing to lose our modern knowledge about how to manage those things at the basic level.
Not trying to minimise what individuals will face, but putting that alongside the shit that individuals already face. I’m in two minds about whether places will get less safe. I think that largely depends on what we do in the next decade or so in terms of restoring community. This is why I don’t give a shit about Labour not being what lefties want enough, the most important thing is to change the government so that the rest of society can get on with doing the right thing.
NZ and globally.
And i am not talking about medical and surgical shortages, i am talking about living isolated or of the main drag with no pharmacy and no resident doctor where a child in a breech position – if you can’t get someone qualified most likely will kill the mother or the child. Or if you scratch yourself with a nail you die of blood poisoning.
It is the very little things that we overlook and simplify, yet they are the silent issues. And if you can’t afford the cost, or there is no one there to assist, well you are shit outta luck. Up until very long ago dying in childbirth was a normal risk associated with childbirth. If you look at Texas which has done a good job of closing clinics in rural areas (especially women clinics) you will see that mortality rates are up for mothers and children as the women simply home birth maybe with a mid wife, or a doula or maybe just with a woman whom herself has birthed alone at home.
The shit we are putting up with now is simply because we still have not quite grasped just how easy we are to kill as humans. No shelter in a cold area? freeze. No food? starve. No water? dehydrate. To hot? heat stroke, these are things that already kill our homeless and poor, elderlies and very young every year. And we are happy to put up with it so long as it is others – and it makes for riveting TV news. Yet, as the tower fire in London showed us we are already rationing our resources. And the poor – not us yet – are the ones who get nothing much of substance. We only get concerned if it is us. but if you want to know what we would look like without container ships landing every week bringing in our food, our medicine, our building tools and so on? Crime, Prostitution, slavery/bondage are all used in order to stay alive in many countries and why should this not happen to us? Cause we are special?
.
As for parties being left or not, i never cared. I generally vote left as this is where some of the concerns that i have are addressed. simple as that. If the left would be called Pink Fuzzy Bears i would vote for the Pink Fuzzy Bears. My issue with the ‘left’ is generally that they don’t work well among their fractions. that many of the left vote against their self interest in order to promote this party or that party even if they are destined to loose, i still posit that Fucking Dunne should have been done and send packing last time around – alas the left could not get its act together. Sad! really.
But am i worried about what will happens when/if we have a societal collapse? No. If i am lucky i be dead when it happens, if i am lucky i will die quickly and painlessly and if i am to live for hecks sake i will have to do what people do today – suck it up and carry on. Cause at the end of the day, that is literally all we can do, now in our current society and in what ever society we have when our civilization has gone bust like so many before us.
Get yourself healthy; drink clean water, sleep deeply and well, eat good food, generate well-being amongst your nearest and dearest then spread the love…those other things? Take them as they come.
Just in case you missed it, our military is in charge whilst munitions grade white phosphorous is pored down on civilian populations in northern Iraq.
What a great country we are, is this what getting guts was.
Are superpose to stomach our military burning civilians to death, thanks national, it’s quite sickening how low you can take us.
Link pls?
NZ is only supposed to be there to train local troops (and defend themselves as necessary)
I put this up yesterday.
Brig. Gen. Hugh McAslan (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11824303) has said that we are using white phosphorus on civilian targets.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/wp.htm
It was used as a incendiary munition. An important distinction.
Now folks this is being led by NZ, and they are killing civilians. If this is what Key meant by getting some guts. Then God help us all. This is what the rabbit hole looks like.
Oh, and here is the piece where they admit they are using it in civilian areas.
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/06/13/532809626/u-s-led-coalition-has-used-white-phosphorous-in-fight-for-mosul-general-says
The screening effect referred to in the final link would be a very specific effect.
I imagine the intended effect is effectively a narrow line of bright light that is used to prevent ISIS actually seeing the fleeing civilians. The bright white light is being used to destroy night vision of the ISIS fighters (by that I don’t mean actually used on the ISIS fighters). The effect is that the ISIS fighters cannot see what is happening beyond the bright white line of light.
So not a use on civilians, or ISIS fighters to kill or injure them, as adam purports.
I suspect that you’re talking out your arse and Making Shit Up to defend possible indefensible actions.
+ 1 nothing worse that a know it all who doesn’t know it all at all – that’s you wayne.
Come on Wayne you were minister of defense, I’m sure you were briefed on the differences in use of white phosphorus? If not, you should really put a complaint to parliamentary services.
And in this case it was used as incendiary munitions. I agree in all probability it was used as makers and/or flairs as you said. However my case is simple, the media have asked if it was used as a munition, and the gen. responded that it was. So once again if you take the time to read and understand the uses of white phosphorus then you get why I’m saying that firing this stuff at civilians is nasty.
But then again, you don’t want to have to face the fact that our defense forces have broken the mandate we were suppose to operate under in the middle east. Not only broken it, but gone as far as burning civilians to death with a pretty awful munition. It’s not a banned munition, I get that. But anything which burns straight through flesh is a terror weapon, and to use older language – evil.
The wall of white light is no justification for using such a terrible chemical weapon such as white phosphorus. What a sick species we are!
Ok, let’s go with that best-case scenario, where they dropped WP onto an urban war zone without immediately hitting any civilians or combatants. You’re still left with the problem of fragments of WP not being immediately consumed, but lying in wait for weeks until people return to the area.
That’s the other part of the problem of WP: not just that it’s an indiscriminately-burny weapon that is particularly gross and painful, but that also it lurks like an IED until it’s disturbed and burns someone’s foot off.
So White Phosphorous can be legally used in warfare these days doesn’t appear to be a particularly nice product especially if it is used on civilians, what about the Geneva Convention Rules ?
Short answer “yes with an if”, long answer “no with a but”.
If the primary purpose of the weapon is to burn or poison people, it’s illegal. If it has some other primary purpose and poisoning or burning is incidental or additional to that, then it’s legal. Hence “blinding ISIS NVDs” rather than “intentionally burning ISIS fighters cajun-style”.
I’ve heard urban myths of protocols for some weapons (variously .50 cal or WP) that were restricted to use against equipment and vehicles, so tactical commanders would order their employment against “helmets and webbing” to stick precisely within the word of the law.
Basically, WP is as legally obscure as the vision of people it’s dropped in front of. If you’re dropping it on open fields to cover an advance, and it’s well short of enemy emplacements, there’s not much wrong with that. But dropping it in a city (via artillery or aircraft) basically assumes that sooner or later someone, probably a civilian, will be screaming in agony for an extended period of time.
I have read the article that is referenced. I know Gen McAslan, having met him professionally on a number of occasions. I understand enough of military operations to know how white phosphorus munitions would be used in these circumstances. It was once a standard source of white light in various munitions used by the NZDF.
That is why I am confident it was not used against civilians or ISIS. So while it was obviously “used as a munition” it was not used to target people.
And that is really the key point. Even Adam seems to accept that in his post at 12.1.1.1.2. I imagine there will be some sort of cleanup plan when the Iraqis troops actually take control.
WP was George Bush’s way of making sure no child is left behind.
It’s the key legal point. But I’m sure many people imagined that various armies had a plan to clean up minefields and DU from various battlefields in the last 80 years, and look how that turned out.
I see Little and Labour have offered working people and good employers new policy positions.
See Scoop today.
Can’t say they are the same as Nats !!!
Gives people a real difference to vote for.
Now our defense force – or arm of the state which kills people. Is arming the gangs.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/94028743/new-zealand-defence-force-rules-out-national-investigation-into-missing-weapon-parts
One bedroom flatshare for $215/wk in Onehunga, artfully described as a “tiny house”, in realspeak it would called an uninsulated playhouse.
Will be interesting to see how long the listing remains there.
I don’t know, the price does seem high, but it includes power, water and internet in a semi-self contained separate building. Looks not bad to me and I would probably call that tiny housing.
“Tiny housing” to me is intentionally designed or converted fit for purpose.
Given the scale (looking at the outside table and chairs) and the loft space for sleeping, I would think that the roof is most likely uninsulated, and ventilation would be poor.
It would more than likely be an illegal occupancy, and a poor substitute for a bedroom in a reasonable house.
I would understand that it might appeal to some though, but is this the quality we should deliver for $215/wk?
The maximum sleepout area of 10m2 should be increased to at least 20m2, so that rentals of this kind can be better utilised and built. Local government would be better placed to address this, and failed to do so in the Unitary Plan.
Uninsulated and poorly ventilated, are you thinking in the summer it would be too hot?
In terms of tiny housing, it does look converted fit for purpose to me albeit not perfectly. But then I’m used to people living in much more basic conditions in house trucks, containers, caravans, yurts etc. I agree there is a quality issue for the price, and there will be issues there I don’t understand about the Auckland climate.
There was one on twitter a while back, single room in a house that was a converted porch, glass on three walls, enough room for a single bed and a cupboard from memory, lots of windows. Near varsity. $90/wk. Some on twitter were saying how terrible it was, while others, myself included, were thinking it didn’t look too bad 😉 Having lived in small spaces like that on low incomes, I looked at the pictures and immediately figured out how to make it better in the winter/summer etc. I wouldn’t live in a space like that now, but when I was 20? Sure, it seems ok. So my expectations start lower I think.
More of problem for me is the pushing more people into smaller overall spaces e.g. the infill building going on. It’s one thing to live in a small space, it’s another to go outside and be crowded there as well (e.g. building 4 houses on a section seems insane to me, where will you plant the trees 😉 ). I guess some people like that, but each time it just brings me back to the limits of growth.
I was thinking more of the mould and dampness that would likely occur from sleeping in such a small space. The problem with some tiny houses on trailers is the loft space has such a small space that people are just glad to get mattresses on them, and don’t think about the fact that mattresses on a solid surfaces sweat and become damp very easily.
As for the porch for $90 – it is something I would have looked at in my 20’s as well. For me it was the $215, and the permission to use the kitchen for “heavy cooking” if required. No mention of shared space in the actual house ie. sitting room, the requirement for four weeks rent for bond and one week in advance.
Also, I have graphic memories of living in Southall, London where there were a lot of jimmy rigged sheds and houses in backyards being used for accommodation. A slippery slope, that got worse over time. Have no idea what that is like now. So that may very well be colouring my view.
Well it’s a sad indictment that I’m relatively complacent about it. I think for some people it would be fine but as we know the problem with the shortage is that people are being forced into situations that were meant for people of difference circumstances. Like you I would love to see some good tiny home options being on offer for the people that are suited to them.
I think there would be lots of rooms for rent around, that by the time you’ve put a bed in you have less floor space available than this tiny house. They’ve wisely used the floor space.
All it needs is a water supply and sink, some sort of fuel stove and a composting toilet and its good to go.
I think there’s at least 3 windows so ventilation should be ok. Also you can’t tell with the ceiling because it’s lined, but there could well be insulation – it looks pretty decently built too and well presented so they’re more likely to have thought of it.
I agree though up to 20 square metre building without a permit should be allowable. That would allow more flexibility with the design and you wouldnt be jamming everything into every spare little space.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/94230206/peters-set-to-announce-shane-jones-candidacy-in-whangarei-for-nz-first
This could be interesting come September!
well that 100% kills any should i vote winston thoughts, fuck shane jones
no thanks
Up here in the North it could unseat National, potentially, I suspect
unseat one candidate and give the nats the next two elections in a nzf nat gov , remember who put jones on the gravy train after he shit on labour?
Nah NZF & Winston highly unlikely to go with Labour however could be an option if NZF can’t stitch a deal together with Labour or the Greens. NZF will be a major player in this coming Election ?
yes, which is a very good reason to not vote for them. If NZF spits the dummy over an actual left wing govt (which is quite possible IMO) they will go with National. Either way there is no way to know which means that voting NZF is not a vote to change the govt. It’s roulette.
That’s a very good description of it – roulette
This confirmed yet? Feels liek every year we’re told THIS year will be the year Shane Jones returns to politics, like anyone remembers or cares.
Well, that is a really radical difference, 75c extra on the minimum wage. Under National it would probably get there on 1 April next year anyway.
All those 85 foreign interns will no doubt be hittting the streets claiming nirvana has finally arrived. Not that they get paid.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Petty, Wayne.
Petty.
Here’s a Petty song for Wayne.
I Won’t Back Down. Seems right for him.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUTXb-ga1fo