I have been doing a bit of number crunching on the election night results to see what happened in the cities.
In Auckland the swing against Labour was coincidentally the same as the swing to the Greens (3.15%). In South Auckland the swing was towards Labour. Mangere was the best with a 10% swing. The other Labour strongholds or marginals preformed reasonably well. The worst swings occurred in National strongholds.
IN Wellington the swing against Labour was 7.44%.
Christchurch was disastrous. I thought that the earthquake was responsible for the 10.63% swing.
But Dunedin was even worse. The swing against Labour was 11.4%.
These figures should improve on specials. But obviously some thought needs to go into what happened.
Dunedin feels politically neglected. Labour have had an automatic two electorates here and have taken them for granted. If Labour doesn’t listen too and work with and for Dunedin constituents far better it will lose another provincial area.
It would be interesting to analyse the reaction of the whole of South Island to Labour.
Things haven’t changed for UF in Dunedin. They have changed markedly for Labour. Who should be concerned? I’m not in denial and I’m not blaming everyone and everything else.
Maybe like Banks Labour wants to rename and rebrand. The South Auckland Party?
Meh. Dunedin North’s David Clark is a good guy but he’s not going to get Pete Hodgson’s 20 years worth of long built popularity overnight. To expect otherwise is not realistic.
This is not about you Pete George, nor is it about your stupid facile observations.
You sound a bit grumpy. Did your tolerance lose the election?
If you look at the Dunedin North electorate vote on it’s own you might have a point, but coupled with National closing right up on Labour’s party vote, National soundly beating Labour for the party vote in Dunedin South and Curran’s diminishing majority and then Labour’s problems here are obvious.
Frinstance in Auckland Labour’s loss was the Green’s gain. The net effect on support for National was neutral. If you add NZFirst’s late surge it appears that National went backward in Auckland. Got an explanation for that?
This is thankfully an MMP system. What matters is the support for each of the parties. Measuring one against another is artificial in the extreme.
And there is also the very low turnout and the effect this had.
“Analysis” might accidentally lead to a “conclusion”, which would then require a specific “action”.
That scares the shit out of pete.
And his opinion on dunedin counts for nothing – if he was at all in touch with his electorate, he would have received more than the second lowest candidate vote, coincidentally beating the candidate for national’s other coalition partner, ACT.
How about finding a way to get through to the Million who didn’t vote. They couldn’t be bothered or why should they vote for some old guy who will just ignore them. These are the ones we need to get motivated.
But Banks has to take the cake. Six months ago he was a Nat and joined ACT.
Within 36 hours of being elected he is talking about joining the Conservatives saying that ACT was “damaged goods” – and who was responsible for that?
One thing appears certain – living in Epsom there might be a lot of wealthy
professionals, but not much intelligence.
What sort of person have they elected to represent them?
We have to give the PM some credit.
He says he voted for the National candidate…
My impression, on hearing Banks talking on Checkpoint last night, was that Banks decided that Act needed a name change and re-branding after talking to Jonkey about confidence and supply arrangements.
This was followed by an interview with Act member (#3 on the list) who had not heard about a move to change the name, and wasn’t really in agreement with it. He was more for re-branding.
I can’t remember who raised the notion of joining with the Conservatives. It might have been the interviewer.
But really, this idea do waka jump and ditch Act smells of National Party manipulations.
From the Stuff article linked above:
National’s lack of viable coalition allies is understood to have been canvassed during a meeting of the caretaker cabinet yesterday morning and sources have noted how well-aligned Mr Banks is to the Conservatives’ more interventionist economic agenda.
After an hour-long meeting with Mr Key yesterday, Mr Banks said: “Given our result on Saturday, we need to talk to as many people as we can about our future, because I want to make sure we are alive and well in 2014.
“Colin Craig is a class New Zealander. His youthful enthusiasm is what the ACT Party needs going forward.”
I also recall that Winston Peters said on TV recently that he has done research and it is clear to him that the Conservative Party was set up by National.
With the return of a conservative government, why was the impending climate disaster, never properly addressed throughout the election campaign by any of the main political contenders?
(and barely touched on by the political minnows either?)
“CLIMATE CHANGE ISN’T THE ISSUE” , Chris Horner, Climate Denier and Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
“The deniers did not decide that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy by uncovering some covert socialist plot. They arrived at this analysis by taking a hard look at what it would take to lower global emissions as drastically and as rapidly as climate science demands. They have concluded that this can be done only by radically reordering our economic and political systems in ways antithetical to their “free market” belief system.
When you challenge a person’s position on an issue core to his or her identity, facts and arguments are seen as attacks, and so are ignored or deflected often in a hostile manner:
“You can believe this is about the climate, and many people do, but it’s not a reasonable belief.”
“The issue isn’t the issue.” The issue, is that “no free society would do to itself what this agenda requires….
Chris Horner
(Chris Horner, is a professional climate change denier at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Horner’s job as a “Senior Fellow” at the Institute involves harassing climate scientists with nuisance lawsuits and Freedom of Information fishing expeditions.)
Environmentalists are like Aztec priests, sacrificing countless people to appease the gods and change the weather.
Marc Morano, editor of the denialists’ go-to website, ClimateDepot.com
Policies to combat global warming are “an attack on middle-class American capitalism.”
“To what extent is this entire movement simply a green Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine?”
Richard Rothschild
And finally:
Climate change is “a stalking horse for National Socialism”
Harrison Schmitt Former Republican Senator
As the denialists say: “The issue.” In fact, it isn’t an issue at all.
Climate change is a message, one that is telling us that many of our culture’s most cherished ideas are no longer viable.
Responding to the climate threat requires strong government action at all levels.
Mainstream political parties like Labour and National (and even the Greens), When it comes to Climate Change, pose the question this way:
How can we reduce emissions while maintaining robust GDP growth?
But……. There is a growing body of economic research on the conflict between economic growth and sound climate policy:
Studies by ecological economist Herman Daly at the University of Maryland, Peter Victor at York University, Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey and environmental law and policy expert Gus Speth.
All raise serious questions about the feasibility of industrialized countries meeting the deep emissions cuts demanded by science (at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050) while continuing to grow their economies at even today’s sluggish rates.
Growth should be reserved only for parts of the world still pulling themselves out of poverty. Meanwhile, in the industrialized world, those sectors that are not governed by the drive for increased yearly profit (the public sector, co-ops, local businesses, nonprofits) should expand their share of overall economic activity, as should those sectors with minimal ecological impacts (such as the caregiving professions). A great many jobs could be created this way. But the role of the corporate sector, with its structural demand for increased sales and profits, has to contract and be rolled back.
When deniers react to evidence of human-induced climate change as if capitalism itself were coming under threat, it’s not because they are paranoid. It’s because they are paying attention.
Responding to climate change requires that we break every rule in the free-market playbook and that we do so with great urgency.
We will need to rebuild the public sphere, reverse privatizations, relocalize large parts of economies, scale back overconsumption, bring back long-term planning, heavily regulate and tax corporations, maybe even nationalize some of them, cut military spending and recognize our debts to the global South.
None of this has a hope in hell of happening unless it is accompanied by a massive, broad-based effort to radically reduce the influence that corporations have over the political process.
In short, climate change supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books, binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative.
It is not opposition to the scientific facts of climate change that drives denialists but rather opposition to the real-world implications of those facts.
There is simply no way to square a belief system that vilifies collective action and venerates total market freedom with a problem that demands collective action on an unprecedented scale and a dramatic reining in of the market forces that are creating and deepening the crisis.
This is the nub of the problem: Mainstream political parties that pay homage to the market economy continue to avoid it (if they can), even discussing climate change. Further in fear of the powerful defenders of the market our political leaders will not progress the concrete measures required to halt climate change.
The only wild card is whether some countervailing popular movement will step up to provide a viable alternative to this grim future.
That means not just an alternative set of policy proposals but an alternative worldview to rival the one at the heart of the ecological crisis—this time, embedded in interdependence rather than hyper-individualism, reciprocity rather than dominance and cooperation rather than hierarchy.
The only wild card is whether some countervailing popular movement will step up to provide a viable alternative to this grim future.
Yes, there needs to be the development of a new narrative that replaces TINA…. still largely underlying most people’s thinking. It’s not possible to introduce such a scary narrative into an election campaign. The narrative needs to be built up over a year or two, and I can’t see any mainstream political party doing this.
Most people come into contact with, even the lefties, seem oblivious to the global crises developing. They act as if life will go on the way it is indefinitely. So we get these disconnects: the people producing evidence of the collapsing environment, resources and global financial system, while many are talking with awe about the expected new electronic gadets and systems that will be on the market in the near future.
Too many people still have their eyes on the latest shiny consumerist stuff, and are avoiding focusing on reality.
Responding to climate change requires that we break every rule in the free-market playbook and that we do so with great urgency.
That just won’t cut it.
‘Every’ rule in the ‘free-market’ rule book could be broken, ie regulated to hell. And the spectre of a command economy arising from that suggestion aside – the dominating factors of profit motive allied with the ‘winner takes all’ competitive nature of the market would ensure that things didn’t drift too far from what we do now….or that they reasserted their dominance over time.
The market needs to be abolished and it’s ‘rule book’ trashed. In doing so, it’s absolutely crucial that we don’t create a command economy in its stead as that means an almost complete loss of political freedoms.
The only way forward that would protect our freedoms and our environment while allowing us to continue to produce and distribute goods and services to any meaningful degree is democracy. But the most basic (and all pervasive) structures that we presently use to organise ourselves and our activities are most assuredly anti-democratic – ie, they thwart and stymie democratic aspirations.
So two things (unless we accept either the prospect life under the dictatorship that would inevitably accompany a command economy, or simply diminishing in tandem with our environment) – abolish the market and act together to create genuinely democratic systems/structures of governance for our societies and the economy.
Well said. Not much I can add really. Our present socio-economic system (Capitalism) is failing badly and we have the evidence to show it and yet the rich and the corporates manage to stand in our way of doing something about it. It doesn’t help that the politicians listen to the rich and the corporates rather than the scientists.
We need to be watching sideshow and his dealing room very carefully over the next few months, the MSM have checked out and wasting time now on irrelevant shit.
the most important issues is our assets being flogged by a party with less than a third of the eligible vote calling it a mandate.
The MP are already showing their lack of morality with the ‘we want to be there but not support asset sales’ WTF it only works one way or the other so cross back to the dark side or be in opposition you chumps. Julian cut sharples up in native affairs on this, what a pathetic sell out he is and lucky to have his seat.
‘the most important issues is our assets being flogged by a party with less than a third of the eligible vote calling it a mandate’
That may superficially seem to be the most important issue but actually the most important issue is preparing for a reduced global oil supply, preparing for hyperinflation or collapse of fiat currencies, and doing something to keep the Earth habitable for humans 40 years from now… all the things politicians continually shy away from.
It’s not as if these are newly discovered predicaments. The warnings go back half a century.
1957 Admiral Rickover:
‘The earth is finite. Fossil fuels are not renewable. In this respect our energy base differs from that of all earlier civilizations. They could have maintained their energy supply by careful cultivation. We cannot. Fuel that has been burned is gone forever. Fuel is even more evanescent than metals. Metals, too, are non-renewable resources threatened with ultimate extinction, but something can be salvaged from scrap. Fuel leaves no scrap and there is nothing man can do to rebuild exhausted fossil fuel reserves. They were created by solar energy 500 million years ago and took eons to grow to their present volume.
In the face of the basic fact that fossil fuel reserves are finite, the exact length of time these reserves will last is important in only one respect: the longer they last, the more time do we have, to invent ways of living off renewable or substitute energy sources and to adjust our economy to the vast changes which we can expect from such a shift.
Fossil fuels resemble capital in the bank. A prudent and responsible parent will use his capital sparingly in order to pass on to his children as much as possible of his inheritance. A selfish and irresponsible parent will squander it in riotous living and care not one whit how his offspring will fare.’
So, how does half a century of near total irrelsponsibilty on behalf of politiclasn and business leaders sit with the next generation?
How impressed with disaster-as-usual politics will the children of this nation be 5 years from now, when it has ‘all turned to custard’?
That’s why we must preserve our sustainable hydro power generation and not let the bankers and investors profit from it…..most people don’t buy the peak oil/ climate change argument but they understand their power bill.
I think that a slight reframing of the argument helps. As soon as you say “peak oil” many people turn off because the thought and implications are too terrifying.
But if you say that Oil is going to go up in price considerably then you hit their pocket and it tends to get their attention.
And if you say that because of this hydro power is going to be more and more strategically important and we don’t want to have it controlled by Australia or Asia or America then they would have to be an idiot not to agree with you.
I appreciate AFKTT’s comments and agree with him but the framing will lose the argument every time with swing voters.
But unless the Left start to inform the populace about reality, and build a unified movement, however you frame it, the swing voters will side with the individualist case, cause they dominate the argument.
The Left needs to take very careful notice of the Occupy movement, because they are teaching and informing and building and will increasingly gain the support of those of us who see those who are engaged in the political “game” as being blinded by strategy and so prepared to neglect truth in fear of the focus group,
Lead! Teach! Be truthful! Capitalize on the platform this unrest is giving you!
My fear is the Left once again moving to the Right in order to try to capture territory from the Right, rather than seeing that there is massive support for a unified and modern Left that puts aside the Cold War narrative and captures the current issues of inequality, financial terrorism and the environment.
A message to Phil Goff.
Show New Zealand one further quality. Show them you can be flexible.
You have just suffered a humiliating defeat, but you also built an image across New Zealand that a lot of people actually liked. Do not resign your leadership, but build on what you have achieved.
(Your predecessor suffered two election defeats in that building process.)
if yur on facebook- leave Phil a message on his wall saying exactly this
I did. I come home from work to find that Phil has caved… I am shocked, and disappointed. Just yesterday, I was assuring my son that PG and AK would not do the predicted thing – but they have! I am very sad.
Hear hear I think Phil should stay. Key is scared of him and he now has the knowledge of how to intimidate him. Also has higher in telligence integrity,empathy and honesty. Everything that Key does not have Phil had a great campaign under extremely trying circumstances and came out strong. STAY! If he does not stay please do not inflict Cunliffe on us. He has already showed his absol lute lack of loyalty
What was a marginal seat that National only just managed to clinch from Harry ‘Do-nothing’ in 2008 is now firmly blue.
In view of all the flags and banners and billboards that were plastered all around the city it goes to show that people were not impressed by Little’s repeated failure to come up with the right answers when questioned. Some people were particularly irritated by his arrogance and talking down to them. New Plymouth has just fought a successful battle to get rid of fluoride in the water. Little’s suggestion that it could be re-imposed by central government if Labour got in went down like a lead balloon, as did his put down of those concerned about takeover of the natural food supply by global corporqations.
I was particualrly unimpressed by the local union representative who refused to accept anything that I said to him about the real world. Even as the Japanese economy continues to implode he told me that NZ needed to be ‘developed’ using funds derived from Japanese investors. There are just too many uninformed fuckwits and people who are ‘away with the fairies’ in the Labour movement at the moment.
Little’s task was made doubly hard by having a leader whom the right rejected on principle and the left remembered as being closely associated with corporate looting, free trade deals etc.
And Labour supporters should never forget that Key gained power in 2008 because so many people were thoroughly sick of the arrogantce of the hypocritical and dicatatorial government of Helen Clark.
My parents voted Labour all their lives, and I should be a Labour supporter. But I’m not because Labour stands for and promotes so much that is wrong with our society.
And I cannot possibly have any respect for anyone who was in power between 2000 and 2008 who IGNORED all the repeated warnings about peak oil and the dire consequences of doing nothing to prepare for it. The NZ economy is nearly 100% dependent on oil, most of which is imported. We are about to become completely ‘screwed’ because the last Labour government was DISHONEST. Had it come clean on the crucial issues of the time when it was firmly in power and commenced strategies to deal with them ‘the cat would be out of the bag’ and could not be put back in by any subsequent government. And we would not be in the mess we are in now.
Labour is presently paying the price for its history of failure to listen and failure to act appropriately, which go right back to the mid-1980s.
National, on the other hand, is just a ‘circus’ run by opportunists who know how ot manipulate the masses.
If I read you right, you are condemning Labour more harshly because Labour could’ve and should’ve known better, and acted more wisely.
While National are just a bunch of manipulative fuckwits who cause massive damage and harm but thats what they do anyways regardless of the decade or the situation.
Your proposition, if I have rendered it correctly, actually makes some kind of sickening sense.
However, we do live in a sick world which is geting sicker by the day. The crux of the problem is that rather than acknowledging that sickness, Labour just wants to perpetuate the system that is making us all sicker by the day. (As do the Greens, of course,)
Labour (for good or bad) has traditionally been a reforming party. They went some way towards this by fronting up with CGT.
However, it’s not enough. We need centrally planned, national initiatives to prepare NZ for the future – eg, no more oil & pubic transport, radically changing our money system (stop producing fiat money and use the issuing of currency to fund some future proofing projects).
(stop producing fiat money and use the issuing of currency to fund some future proofing projects)
fiat currency is money that is valid by government decree. Issuing of currency by government would still be fiat currency.
It’s not fiat currency that is the problem but the fractional reserve banking system which lets private banks print money essentially without limit – and then charge interest on it.
You win the game by playing to the paradigms that are in front of you no matter how tasteless or against your values they may be so if you wanna win learn style over substance Labour and master the catchy soundbite no more blah blah blah as the swingers aint listening.
“While National are just a bunch of manipulative fuckwits who cause massive damage and harm but thats what they do anyways regardless of the decade or the situation.”
Manipulative? In what sense? Cause massive damage and harm? Where and when? Colonial, at least take the time to back up your sweeping statements with some facts, else you’ll just appear to be a ranting nut job.
Manipulative? In what sense? Cause massive damage and harm?
Learn english, dickhead.
Although, rather humourously, nats did and do “cause massive damage and harm” to the unemployed, the poor, children, and every combination thereof via their policies. Not to mention the environment, what with the recent mining announcement and attitudes to “100% pure”..
Colonial, you are therefore arguing that by just saying a whole lot of stuff, much of it plucked from thin air with no basis of fact, Key and English will be removed? Goff and his people tried that, and copped a hiding, so you propose that by doing the same thing again, the result will be different?
This planet is run by money-lenders for the benefit of money-lenders. Acnowledging the reality of climate change (we are on track for a largely uninhabitbale Earth by mid-century) would ruin their financial Ponzi scheme, which is predicated on perpetual growth and perpetual increases in emissions.
Also, corporations have a huge say in how the world is managed (some would say a greater say that most governments). Corporations have few major imperitives, one of the most important being to maximise profits for shareholders. That can only be achieved by economic growth which requires ever increasing use of fossil fuels.
The fact that fossil fuels necessary for global economic growth are no longer available or that catastrophic climate change is on the way is of no interest to investment bankers, the vast majority of whom are scientifically illiterate (as are most elected representatives).
Right now the only imperitive is to prevent the house of cards economic system falling to pieces immediately by using any means possible; energetically that means by deep water drilling, fracking, tar sands, coal-to-liquid-fuels, starving millions of people to death via the use of food-to-fuel schems etc. and financially it means by bailouts, ‘quantitavie easing’, ‘special drawing rights’, ‘stabilty funds’ or whatever euphemism is in vogue this particular month to decsribe creating money out of thin air.
The fact that marlets have risen overnight is no indication that the system has a future. And every day the system continues te operate reduces the life expectancy and quality of life of children living now.
Practically everything you need to know to understand the big picture is here:
AFKTT – I think the earth will be OK mid-century. The climate is always changing. CO2 levels are already very low (if they go below 200 ppm, plants die) and the “greenhouse effect” is misnamed. Climate science is in a parlous state, based on lies and misinformation.
There are real problems to worry about – but so-called climate change is not one of them, neither is concern over a trace, beneficial gas in the atmosphere.
I don’t know how old you are but most under the age of 70 are going to face catastrophe within their natural lifespan. (The ones that won’t will have died.)
If that so-called article is the best you can come up with, we truly are ‘screwed’. Not only does the item simply pose a question but it also makes no mention of climate science! What else would we expect from a corporate source of ‘information’?
I suggest you thoroughly check the following, and related articles on the same site, if you actually want to become informed.
On the other hand, if you prefer to remain in your state of delusional ignorance and want to perish, don’t bother.
‘To borrow a line from Pete Seeger, “When will we ever learn?” If Karl Marx were alive today he would quickly see that television has become the opium of the people, dulling our senses and keeping our minds focused on trivial matters even as the world around us careens further out of control every day. What passes for national news media today is all corporate owned and dedicated to telling us as little as possible, placing virtually nothing in context, and talking to “experts” in thirty second sound bites. What they don’t tell us is often the stuff we really need to know.
Annette you said “I think the earth will be OK mid-century” your words seem sincere but i must ask if you are aware that there is a lot more to this topic than the very real although largely distractionary tactics of Oil consumption and Carbon emissions. Please remember the hard facts . . .
US State and Fedral funding is being funnelled into programmes that officially deny they have anything to do with weather manipulation despite State, Federal, Congessional and Senate documentation stating in plain english these programmes exist for the purpose of weather modification and climate adjustment.
It is a fact being hidden from the World in plain sight. There are seventeen sites known of globally, including one in Australia. Read the literature, watch the videos, chat with the large numbers of informed people working very hard to help everyday people like you and me to understand the implications of the sciences involved. If you prefer the FastFood media watch Jesse Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory show as a credible low impact introduction.
Most importantly look at the volumes of declassified and discovered documentation from the US Government that references the use of HAARP in the study and application of technology for weather manipulation, climate control and other purposes. It is out there, in black and white.
There are encampments of reality all over the place if you choose to read the tracks. I am not here to give co-ordinates to a grand view or dictate what constitues a landmark on your journey.
The walls may be high but here is a gate opened by others, for the first few steps of your journey
google: haarp study weather modification documents
Wow Annette, you are so going to get attacked! I dared to say something similar once, (along with expressing a pro-life view) and I am still be insulted, attacked and sworn at months later. It’s all about conformity here… 🙁
Are you sure the response wasn’t about your bigotry?
Climate change deniers like Annette rightly get flak on this site, just like every other self centred sub-species of rightie who turns up here. But, mainly, it will be her deluded ideas that get attacked, not her.
And, by the way, comments like this don’t help your rep, either. Garner’s not fat and even if he was, it does not alter his ability to do the job he is paid for. And being blonde is not an indicator of a woman’s capacity to do a similar job. It’s actually not about conformity, it’s about respect. If you don’t respect people, don’t expect to them to respect you.
Are you sure the response wasn’t about your bigotry?
Hilarious. My bigotry is in your head (it’s one of your obsessions.)
Climate change deniers like Annette rightly get flak on this site, just like every other self centred sub-species of rightie who turns up here. But, mainly, it will be her deluded ideas that get attacked, not her.
Not as far as I’ve seen so far…
Garner’s not fat and even if he was, it does not alter his ability to do the job he is paid for.
You do keep banging on testerically about my calling people fat, don’t you? Got weight issues yourself? He was bordering on obese when I last saw him (you don’t seem to get that I don’t see TV news, I hear it.)
And being blonde is not an indicator of a woman’s capacity to do a similar job.
No, it’s not. But what would you like me to have called her? A moron? I don’t even know if she’s blonde. She certainly sounds it. I’ll say it slowly for the hard-of-thinking – I used the term “dumb blonde” f-i-g-u-r-a-t-i-v-e- l-y…
It’s actually not about conformity, it’s about respect. If you don’t respect people, don’t expect to them to respect you.
Oh this is your best line yet! Considering the nice line in insults that has been dished out to me for alleged “bigotry” you have the chutzpah of an IDF colonel to bang on about respect! Respect has to be earned, man and I will never respect a hypocritical sneering slimeball like you.
Your bigotry is real, and you’ve confirmed it, remember? Teh gays? Ring any bells?
“He was bordering on obese when I last saw him (you don’t seem to get that I don’t see TV news, I hear it.”
What does the latter part of that sentence mean? Why would I ‘get’ anything about your viewing habits? And if you don’t ‘see’ TV, how do you know Garner is bordering on obese or that another journo is blonde?
Your bigotry is real, and you’ve confirmed it, remember? Teh gays? Ring any bells?
Give it up and accept that I am never going to love teh gays, or say that they’re perfect people. That makes me a bigot only to teh gays themselves. It does not mean that I want to oppress gays! Hang it all, I want to ignore them, not have their sexuality constantly brought up to me as the most important thing about them! I don’t care who has sex with whom, whereas teh gays themselves can’t seem to keep from telling everyone. “Wah, you only disagree with me because I am a poor oppressed gay boy.” My thought – no, I disagree with you, because you’re wrong! 😀 )
What does the latter part of that sentence mean? Why would I ‘get’ anything about your viewing habits? And if you don’t ‘see’ TV, how do you know Garner is bordering on obese or that another journo is blonde?
Do you not bother to read what I say? Do you, as another man admitted on another site only skim what I say? I’ve said often enough that I heard something on the TV news… That should have been a stonking great clue… You’re ignoring (quite deliberately) that I said right above that Garner was bordering on obese when I last saw him and also that I didn’t know whether the girl was blonde, I simply was using the term ‘dumb blonde’ f-i-g-u-r-a-t-i-v-e-l-y. Do learn to read.
Vicky, i would like to say if this site was all about conformity i would have been banned long ago.
IMHO The Standard is a fair, stable environment where information and ideas are shared in a balanced if not always passive manner. What I personally appreciate about the Standard is how when you say something that is fundamentally incorrect, there are usually helpful people who are more than willing to offer you alternatives to your point of view. I have been on both sides of that situation and I for one hope it never changes.
People today are so hungry for the self-assurance of their own beliefs being ‘more right’ than another’s, that full comprehension of any position is all too often sacrificed by attitudes that can only be ascribed to bigotry and ignorance. This is rarely the fault of the person presenting the view.
It is more likely to be the foundation of the information they were exposed to.
What I personally appreciate about the Standard is how when you say something that is fundamentally incorrect, there are usually helpful people who are more than willing to offer you alternatives to your point of view.
Dear Freedom, please don’t be so patronising. Thanks in advance… Obviously, I don’t want people “who are more than willing” offering me alternatives to my point of view, as I don’t agree with them that I am wrong! IMO, VoR is banging his usual drum about how much he hates and despises me, because of what he sees as bigotry, because I seriously don’t want to have to imagine S&M, cock rings and posing pouches before I know if it’s worth the risk of disagreeing with some people… who are so precious that their genitals hurt when they’re contradicted! 😀
This from the person who accuses almost everyone who disagrees with her of being misogynistic, homosexual, middle-aged males who fantasise that some young women possibly have sex for the fun of it (or some combination of a majority of the descriptors).
This from the person who accuses almost everyone who disagrees with her of being misogynistic, homosexual, middle-aged males who fantasise that some young women possibly have sex for the fun of it (or some combination of a majority of the descriptors).
I spend my working day trying to make sense of essays written by learners of English as a second language. The sentences they write generally make more sense than the above. Homosexual men are misogynists, it goes with the territory. That being said, what are you saying about young women – that I say they have sex for fun, or that other people do? It’s a fact that some young women have sex for fun – so what? Why does that bother you?
“Homosexual men are misogynists, it goes with the territory.”
Yep, that’s the stuff right there – a nice wee bit of bigotry from your stunningly planked worldview.
” It’s a fact that some young women have sex for fun – so what? Why does that bother you?”
I was referring to a previous discussion where you asserted that anyone who claimed that (any women enjoyed one night stands for the fun of one night stands) were simply middle-aged men indulging in a fantasy, or words to that effect. I would look it up, but I don’t give a flying fuck.
You’re about due to play the victim because people refuse to tolerate your own intolerance, so bye bye.
I was referring to a previous discussion where you asserted that anyone who claimed that (any women enjoyed one night stands for the fun of one night stands) were simply middle-aged men indulging in a fantasy, or words to that effect. I would look it up, but I don’t give a flying fuck.
You’re about due to play the victim because people refuse to tolerate your own intolerance, so bye bye.
????????????????????????????????????????????????
Obviously you do give a flying fuck, or you wouldn’t keep ranting! I suggest you do in fact look up the discussion you’re talking about, because I don’t remember any such thing!
As for your last sentence, I have no clue what you mean. I am not sure you do. But it would be very good if you’d stop clogging the thread with irrelevancies, ‘kay? Thanks. Bye! 🙂
Seriously? You were arguing [badly] with several individuals and being massively condescending withastonishingly little basis – no recollection? I guess it all just mixed in with the rest.
Not really, it is however pretty damn opinionated and you tend to get some robust argument with a considerable memory. But I seem to remember you held your end up well enough that I didn’t feel the need to intervene.
The only real conformity is that which I and the moderators apply. It concentrates on behavior, is very very heavy handed when I do it (sarcastic if the sprout does it, and very very sudden when Irish does it’ and the others are rather nice), and focuses on newbies to the site or people released from bans. Mostly that concentrates on making sure that people know exactly who runs the site (not them) and that we are intolerant to anything that we think makes the comment section worse (mostly stupid assertions, trolling, and pointless abuse).
There is quite a lot right now because I amnesty many people after the election, the news is about the left parties, and here are few stupid gloaters around – who I rather enjoy being a education to.
I see your point, but even so, you do have to admit that some sins are regarded as unforgiveable here – such as being witty at the expense of some people’s precious ideas about their sex lives! Or, advocating pro-life views – I remember a young woman called something like Bonnie being hounded away, because she dared to express pro-life opinions… That was just shameful! I’d like to point out to the attackers who will be lining up with acid to fling, that being pro-life for me, means opposing abortion, euthanasia, war and capital punishment as well! Which reminds me that when I submitted a guest post on capital punishment, it fell into the event horizon of a black hole. What, opposing capital punishment is not a left idea any more? 🙁
Depends who you wind up in an discussion with – for instance I have very strong views on the opposite side of the fence to you on abortion. But I can’t recall ever having ever expressed them here. I have quite strong views on the use of military force which would probably upset around two thirds of the commentators here. I can remember expressing them once or twice. What I am saying is that on most topics you only get a few people commenting, and they are frequently commenting strongly from several angles. Not worth getting wound up about whoever you are arguing with. Just concentrate on the much larger group of people watching because they will be the ones who are less committed and may be convinced.
We don’t tend to moderate discussions that are arguing about something even if it is getting heated. We’d just step in if we saw a behavioral problem like pointless abuse (which has quite a specific meaning the way that the moderators use it).
Guest posts get pulled and posted when a editor reads one that that they personally like and when the queue isn’t already chocka. Who is puts up the contributions depends on who has time to read it, likes it, copies it into a post, finds a graphic to add, writes an excerpt for the front page, and schedules it. On many days regardless of how good the writing is, no-one will have time. For instance today would be a good day for guest posts – but I haven’t looked at the mail since this morning because of the type of code I’m writing.
Putting up guest posts is quite labour intensive especially if you have to go through all of the steps (that is a broad hint to tell you that it is more likely to happen if most of those steps are done before we read the post). Personally my priority is the stability of the site and moderation. After I run through the moderation these days, answering or writing a few comments or notes, I’m usually on negative time for work. So I often don’t even read contributed posts – especially when I’m cracking through the end of a software project or involved in an election. I guess that others have similar time issues.
actaully plan A was economy crashed and burning would align the people with labour.
Plan B is the far to cunning Key / Joyce crew have abided there time and will now unleash their radical right agenda with there so called mandate…bennies bashed, state assets kissed good bye, more concession and opportunity to the wealthy to get wealthier, look to state sector getting knifed, unions and free worker burnt at the stake to raise company profits, freeing up of resources, selling infrastructure, water and anything not nailed down…3 year before the cycle runs out so the Tories must act and act fast and fuck the peasants, the slaves and anyone not of the elite class..
The Tories have bought out the MP, solidified the right voting block and have great organisation on the ground.
The Fight is not for the left votig block but of the middle voting block that has been captured by smile and wave and ‘trust me’ ‘trust me’ in these tough economic times.
Yeah I know what you are saying but imo screw the mythical middle.
We need to get people living on less than $40,000 pa to get off their asses and vote for Labour. And given that is some 60% of the country I fail to see what the problem for Labour is. Greens and NZ1 can have some of the aspirational middle class vote, fine.
Only 5% of the country earn $90K pa and over. They are the only people who should be voting National.
But how do you solve stupidity? Wellington residents know that massive public sector cuts are coming under National. But they swung to the NATs anyway.
If people really want to vote against their own interests, who are we to stop them?
wellington central went to grant by heaps, good old grant increased his majority but the party vote went westward due to what…poor campaign strategy on not going after the party vote.
you’re saying that people needed to be told to party vote Labour? And in the absence of that voters in Wellington Central conveniently forgot that National has been slashing and burning the public sector and that there is far more to come from the NATs?
Not likely. They liked Grant as an MP, they didn’t want back Labour to be in power, full stop.
My suggestion is to disengage as much as possible. Know where you can get drinkable water. Prepare to produce your own food or be prepared to adopt a hunter-gatherer lifesyle. Be psychologically prepared for the mayhem that will come when oil depletion reaches the critical point of demolishing the global economic system (2013-15?).
I see NWS has been hit hard again. There will soon come a time when the hits come harder and faster than repairs can be organised and the energy needed to carry out repairs won’t be available.
Personally I think the time to peacefully resist has come to an end. However I’m hopeful that I’m wrong and that the right wing will start to wake up before it’s too late. The signs aren’t looking all that good though.
Disengaging from supporting the defunct and destructive system is a good idea, but there needs to be more resistance politically.
This election win, Greens move to mainstream, Labours inevitable ratchet to the Right all lead to the conclusion that there are going to have to be bodies in front of bulldozers!
Two party Democracy, which is essentially where the majority mindset sits – even in our MMP environment – make Politics impotent. Citizens need to stand up or continue to watch the progress of Totalitarianism and Environmental collapse.
And don’t own a farm within 100km of a large population, lest it be ransacked and pillaged..
If this shit goes down (not so bad here cf the US) being stuck a 100km in the middle of nowhere with just a couple of people on a farm is NOT a good idea. You actually want a farm near a hamlet or small town dependent on it. (Your point on being away from very large population centres is valid however).
That way locals will help protect you and your property from marauders and bandits.
these governments should default. or rather, they should pull the same trick as the money printers and simply write new laws to allow them to repay when able to, subject to satisfying their citizens needs first.
the money printers / lenders can just wait in line. near the back.
“But in a way 2008 let the cat out of the bag. We realize now that if money is owed by really important players, even trillions in debts can be made to disappear or renegotiated away. Money is just a social arrangement, a set of promises or IOUs”
In this period debt has two special characteristics: first, sovereign debt from countries with a geopolitical privilege is not to be repaid, but to be continually rolled over;
That’s a realisation I had a few years back. Government debt isn’t there because it has to be but because it allows a permanent guaranteed income for a few from the many. A lot of rich people would have been very upset that NZ was paying down its debt from 2000 to 2008 but very happy that the present NAct government massively increased our deficits for no purpose.
The governments defaulting and writing off the external private debt is actually the only rational move. They won’t be allowed to do this by the banksters though. The only way to get it done would be a revolution by the people against the banks.
But the likes of David Graeber and Seteve Keen are suddenly all over the mainstream media debating the idea of Debt forgiveness and showing historical precedent for it, but we need the dialogue to broaden, we need to continue to educate and inform and learn and we need to push this outside of the closed loop of the blogosphere and out to the public.
Information / propaganda is where the real battle is fought, the Left need to unite, put aside the cold war narrative which weakens them, and inform a populace which will be increasingly looking for answers as the economic crisis deepens.
Superb decision by US judge.
Too many cases brought by government regulators against finance institutions have been resolved by way of settlement in which the finance institution pays a settlement on condition that they did not admit any wrong doing or accepting any liability. But here “come da judge”……
Judge Jed S. Rakoff threw out a $285 million settlement deal between the S.E.C. and Citigroup in which the bank would not admit nor deny wrongdoing in a mortgage derivatives deal.
Rakoff said he would not OK the settlement because he did not know the facts of the case and it was “neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest” for him to do so. – NPR
The S.E.C.’s policy — “hallowed by history, but not by reason,” Judge Rakoff wrote — creates substantial potential for abuse, the judge said, because “it asks the court to employ its power and assert its authority when it does not know the facts.”
Judge Rakoff also refers at one point to Citigroup as “a recidivist,” or repeat offender, which has violated the antifraud provisions of the nation’s securities laws many times. The company knew that the S.E.C.’s proposed judgment – that it cease and desist from violating the antifraud laws – had not been enforced in at least 10 years, the judge wrote.
“An application of judicial power that does not rest on facts is worse than mindless, it is inherently dangerous,” Judge Rakoff wrote in the case, S.E.C. v. Citigroup Global Markets. “In any case like this that touches on the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives, there is an overriding public interest in knowing the truth.” – NY Times
It seems that we’ve been advancing technology despite capitalism rather than because of it.
Also in the late 1980s, we saw the complete flop of the Digital Audio Tape (DAT). A lot of this can be ascribed to the fact that the copyright industry had been allowed to put its politics into the design: the cassette, although technically superior to the analog Compact Cassette, was so deliberately unusable for copying music that people rejected it flat outright. This is an example of a technology that the copyright industry succeeded in killing, even though I doubt it was intentional: they just got their wishes as to how it should work to not disrupt the status quo.
DAT was widely used in the industry for years precisely because it was the best and easiest way to write and rewrite high quality digital audio. It only fell out of favour when powerful processors, large amounts of RAM and bigger hard drives rendered it obsolete as a recording medium in the late 90s.
Even then it was favoured by many as an archival medium and for reliable playback of backing tracks in live settings.
I see new Roundtable head Roger Partridge is spouting the same inanities as Kerr before him. These people don’t even seem to think. They just spout.
Partridge blithely kept stating, in a Press piece today, that regulation should be reduced. He gave no explanation as to why this is helpful to people, nor did he provide any evidence as to how this works, or has worked in the past. But here is some evidence for you Partridge…
Deregulation of the finance sector – led directly to people losing their life savings.
Deregulation of the building sector – led directly to people’s homes rotting and falling apart.
Deregulation of the mining safety sector – led directly to the killing of 29 men at Pike River.
Banks was saying the same thing yesterday. Yet, we are the third easiest country in the world in which to do business. How can that be if we are so bogged down by regulation? Could it be that when business isn’t thriving it’s time to blame the government? Could it be that they don’t know what else to say? They have no other answers!
Business lobbyists whinge like farmers. We could have the least regulated, lowest taxed nation on the planet and they’d still whinge.
I say fuck ’em. Farmers need to be regulated or we end up with cowshit in the drinking water, businesses need to be regulated or we end up as serfs, with lead in the toothpaste and arsenic in the underpants.
It is highly undemocratic to work to remove people’s right to vote and disincentives the poor from participating in politics. National know that the poor are more likely to disengage and actively work to exploit this dynamic…
I watched the two hours of Native Affairs on Maori TV last night. Brilliant. Format and Julian the reason that it runs circles around all other free to air TV. I think that it was the best review of the election I have seen or read or heard and it went well beyond the Maori perspective. Interviews with:
Peta Sharples: grumpy
Hone: Optimistic
Winston: emphatic and dangerous for National
Materia: Succinct and clever
Shane: Best appraisal of Labour now and future
Kelvin: Stiff upper lip
Simon Bridges: Believed to be a future National Leader.
Panel: Mike King surprisingly perceptive, Matt McCartney good points, Sandra Lee explores the angles.
Tried to get a link but can’t. Reruns on Sunday evening?
two little things that have bugged the hell out of me the last 24 hours
1: NZ Herald stating in its map that 100% of the vote has been counted,
2: “If this was First Past the Post and there were 100 MPs, there would be roughly 65 National seats and 35 Labour, ” Mr Key, we are not a two party state despite your wet dreams of being America’s President
Is it just me or does it seem a bit weird that the two parties with the least mandate to be in parliament are the ones Key will give ministerial portfolios to?
Yes Felix I had a little rant to myself this morning about this very issue. Banks speaks for 1% of the population yet he’s a Minister of the Crown?! There’s something not right about that.
or, if they insist on using them they must be obligated to publish the whole poll, including but not limited to;
: the methodology of the poll
: the number of people polled
: the numbers who hang up
: the numbers who choose not to answer a particular question
: the don’t knows for each question
: the areas polled
and most importantly,
: a full and specific list of questions asked
basically they should be regulated to publish the poll and not the spin
Yep have that in place for the entire of the regulated period, with a full ban on media polls and media polls discussion for the 24 hours before E-Day.
I actually think I preferred my suggestion yesterday. Have them poll the policies and not the party, candidates or preferred PM. Then have them link those policies back to the parties that way we might have an informed populace voting rather than a led populace voting.
“I actually think I preferred my suggestion yesterday. Have them poll the policies and not the party, ”
Draco, I would like to point out that my comment above in no way stipulates the poll’s subject
it simply asks for some legitimacy to the public dissemination of the results
Yes, I realised that. That’s why I responded to CV’s post of outright banning. Having it so that they poll on the policies they would then be forced to discuss the policies rather than the parties (hopefully, although I’m sure that they could find some way around it). Your suggestion would complement mine.
Unfortunately factual reporting has been declining worldwide over the last few years… and especially in New Zealand. The continued underreporting of many important issues just one indicator that New Zealand’s mainstream media and their watchdogs are biased.
and labour must invest in micropulse radio stations so that they can have their own broadcasting outlet.
relying on radio skwawkbak and the hair and teeth jobs on teeveennzzzz will never be enough when they are beholden to the money masters.
I heard Banks or Brash describe themselves as Centre Right. Is that right? What would Far Right look like? How far can you lean to the Right before you fall over?
Banks actually described himself and Paul Goldsmith as “Centre Right” telling the electorate of Epsom that a vote for himself would return “Two Centre Right MPs” to government.
He neglected to tell the people of Epsom, that the purpose of his standing was to return the extreme right leader of ACT to parliament.
94 yr old Stéphane Hessel on Occupy Wall Street, lessons from the French resistance, democracy, Middle East, Security: Find the Time for Outrage When Your Values Are Not Respected
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” – Winston Churchill
Exactly, just like ShonKey won’t dispatch what he called in parliament “communism by stealth” the in work tax credit, or Working For Families middle class welfare payment.
Forest & Bird Conservation Advocate Nicola Vallance said the government was taking a closed-door approach with an open-cast coal mine at Denniston. “This will allow Australian-owned Bathurst Resources to dig up over 160 hectares of the Denniston Plateau without an opportunity for the public to have a say about conservation concerns. This would be the biggest open-cast coal mine on New Zealand’s conservation estate,” she said.
I’d imagine, Draco, that the miners would far rather have an open cast mine that go for say, a 2.5km tunnel that goes through a fault line, and cannot be used as an escape route should their be for argument’s sake, a methane explosion. You might recall this example, signed off by the Labour Party. It cost people their lives.
Big oil continues to betray its fundamental disregard for marine wildlife and the many holiday industries that rely on clean beaches and pristine oceanic shelves. Most recently, Chevron released more than 110,000 gallons of oil near Brazilian beaches.
And Brazil’s environmental secretary says the accident was completely avoidable. It seems Chevron “underestimated the pressure” of an underwater reservoir.
Only an accident of the current carried the oil slick away from Brazil’s famed vacation getaways instead of right smack into them. Many Brazilians are outraged.
Brazilian State Environmental Secretary Carlos Minc is saying Chevron should pay $28 million in fines, according to a recent article in the Houston Chronicle. Minc charges Chevron with failing to take appropriate action for nearly ten days after the leak was spotted.
Tell Chevron to pay up and to stop irresponsible drilling in Brazil and everywhere else!
So, Phil Goff and Annette King have in fact gone. A dumb blonde on TV3 (one Rebecca Wright) says “they’ve gotten (sic) the message loud and clear that their time is over”..
I am completely disgusted. Why did Phil satisfy the yapping media by this action? Why (for once) didn’t Labour do the right thing instead of the expected thing? Fatty Garner is as overjoyed as the Wright idiot is gormless, imagining bloodbaths etc. He’s so excited he’s gabbling like a race caller. Yet a another one of his nasty gittish predictions has come true. By contrast National’s bulging caucus room was all sweetness and light and joy he says. Shame.
Duncan Garner was going on like Labour is already having a fight… is he related to Cameron Slater by any chance? I mean both National hacks look similar… or is that just what happens when you talk too much shit?
Hi there. Not sure who you are Vicky32 but I can assure you that Rebecca Wright is no ‘dumb blonde’. Naturally blonde, yes, but so what? Misogynist insults like yours serve no purpose. Dumb? Definitely not. She went after Banks like a Rottweiler over the tea tapes.
And no, I’m not her. But I do know her wonderful family and I found your insults quite offensive.
I particularly liked it how Patrick Gower came to her rescue after Banks made a complete fool of himself going on about suppositions Rebecca Wright was fantasizing about. LOL I wonder how many woman voted for Act?
Hi there. Not sure who you are Vicky32 but I can assure you that Rebecca Wright is no ‘dumb blonde’. Naturally blonde, yes, but so what? Misogynist insults like yours serve no purpose. Dumb? Definitely not. She went after Banks like a Rottweiler over the tea tapes.
Frida, I apologise. I am sorry, I should not have said the things about her that I did.
Cheers for the apology Vicky. I totally get your feelings about the MSM. I share them, but let’s not get personal eh? We’re just lowering ourselves to their level. And Rebecca really isn’t one of the problematic ones 🙂
It’s worse than we thought. While the big boys of Wall Street, the ones we thought were not in danger (JP Morgan and others), were secretly borrowing $1.2 trillion from the Fed.
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse……..
The U.S. jobless rate hasn’t dipped below 8.8 percent since March 2009, 3.6 million homes have been foreclosed since August 2007, according to data provider RealtyTrac Inc., and police have clashed with Occupy Wall Street protesters, who say government policies favor the wealthiest citizens, in New York, Boston, Seattle and Oakland, California.
– Bloomberg
Yes I heard Kathryn Ryan’s US correspondent detailing some of this story just before 10:00am this morning. I had seen some clues around this months ago, but this is now the official confirmation.
BTW the total sum involved is at least $7.7Trillion. .. almost 50% of the entire US annual GDP.
Let’s put this in a NZ context… it’s more or less the equivalent of the Reserve Bank giving NZ$100b to the four big Australian banks at an interest rate of 0.1%… and not telling anyone.
Jürgen Habermas has had enough. The philosopher is doing all he can these days to call attention to what he sees as the demise of the European ideal. He hopes he can help save it — from inept politicians and the dark forces of the market.
[—]
And then he’s really angry again: “I condemn the political parties. Our politicians have long been incapable of aspiring to anything whatsoever other than being re-elected. They have no political substance whatsoever, no convictions.”
The job market is constantly shifting…I would call it musical chairs, or a merry-go-round. People retire, move to a different job or role, new jobs are created, seasonal work becomes available, people leave for personal reaons etc. It is easy to point to the number of unemployed, and say “there are no jobs!” as if the job ‘market’ – for want of a better term – was a fixed and imovable position instead of endlessly fluid. The job market is not a solid concrete wall, it is porous and shifting.
The benefit system provides a safety net for people who find themselves unemployed; a safety net that ensures that they are covered until they can jump back on the carousel. It’s a bus stop until the next bus comes along. Often quite a lot of people will be at the bust stop at any one time, but they are always in preperation for the next bus, and then they catch and it’s someone else’s turn to wait at the bus stop….temporarily.
It is not meant to be a lifestyle choice. Anyone remaining on a benefit for a considerably lengthy period of time is going to suffer as a direct result because they are going to suffer an erosion of their self esteem. Which is why I don’t understand why long-term beneficiaries are seemingly unable to take their turn on the work carousel, but are content to milk the taxpayer while at the same time subsiding into a life missing (the) dignity (that work provides). Labour, as the party of work and workers, should understand this.
There was a question during one of the leaders debates from a person who (apparently) had a degree, but had been unemployed for 2 years, unable to find employment. If I was to be out of job next week, I would back myself to have another one within 2 weeks, and I don’t have a degree. I would take a vacant spot on the carousel. The reality is: there are people who can’t or won’t take a turn themselves – no matter what the disasterous consequences are for themselves. Either they don’t want to work, or there is something about them that ensures that they don’t get past the interview process, or they consider themselves above many different types of work.
What many cannot comprehend, yet try to, is the constant defence by the left of the dug-in, firmly entrenched long term beneficiary who dances down a path that leads eventually to inter-generational welfare depenendance and ‘rogue feral’ status. After all, Labour is the party of state intervention, yet they will not intervene to help those most in need get employed. A carrot and stick approach is needed to save lives, otherwise we are going to see an epedemic of Kahui type scenario’s – if we are not already. The days of 100% employment are gone, but so to should the days of “I can’t get a job, year upon year, decade upon decade”.
[lprent: out of context to the post and the surrounding comment. Moved to OpenMike. ]
There is no need for unemployment but having full employment degrades profits which is why John Key promised to lower wages and why Bill English said that you couldn’t have less than 6% unemployment.
What many cannot comprehend, yet try to, is the constant defence by the left of the dug-in, firmly entrenched long term beneficiary…
We don’t defend them, we try to help them to find their way and also accept that, no matter what we do, there will always be some who cannot be helped. NAct, on the other hand, just rant and rave at people and then punish them for things that aren’t their fault.
I’ll just add that I know a couple of people who “backed themselves” to be back in work within a couple of weeks after being laid off. It didn’t always work out that way, even though they were skilled workers with excellent references – but then the average tory seems to have an inflated sense of their own productive worth, whatever the economy is like.
All the while the right continue to profess their ignorant rhetoric like it’s a mantra that will stop National taking even more taxes from them and distributing it to their already wealthy mates… a position that most right wing supporters will never attain…
It is unlikely. The logistics of updating numerous systems wih spider updates will massively favor centralized hubs compared with dispersed ones. I’ve written and maintained both. In fact this site operates dispersed.
If garenr is pregnant its more likely to be the offspring of fatboy farrar.
you can see why parlaiament wont do anything about fatty foods when garner and farrar live on a diet of sausage rolls and rubber chickens.
Aucklands vote is blue because all these new aspirationals hanging on to plummeting mainstreet real estate prices. The banks aren’t lending to mainstreet.
Someone needs to get real on poor fools who bought rental property thinking that it would be their meal ticket after ten years of work. Housing prices needs to plummet to meet the real new couple/ family market, that’s life
Someone needs to get real on poor fools who bought rental property thinking that it would be their meal ticket after ten years of work. Housing prices needs to plummet to meet the real new couple/ family market, that’s life.
The poor can’t do modern mortgages. Working and non-working and we shaw as hell don’t want to make you and your kids fat paying off a dumb- ass high rent.
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Back in 2010, I wrote about the strange tale of the zombie ants, which do the bidding of their fungal overlords. (They’re not an isolated example; a range of parasites change their hosts’ behaviour. See here and here for example – though as you’ll find, the toxoplasmosis story may be ...
Shouldn't That Be: "Wrong White Crowd"? Rather than apportion guilt, would it not have been wiser for the makers of Land Of The Long White Cloud to accept that the Pakeha of 2019 are not – and never will be – “Europeans”? Just as contemporary Maori are not – and ...
One, Two, Many Truths: With the collapse of “actually existing socialism” in 1991, the universities of the West found themselves saddled with a new mission. With their ideological competitors now soundly defeated they were no longer required to demonstrate the superiority of capitalist values. Their job now was to cement ...
by the Council of Disobedient Women We call on the Council of Trade Unions to show some fortitude and take a stand with your sisters. Unionists know that there is a material world, otherwise workers could simply identify out of poverty. They could declare themselves Well Paid. Why stop ...
I spent some time reading the Regulatory Impact Statement and Bill of Rights Act advice for the government's odious control order scheme today. I am not impressed with either of them. Starting with the RIS, it is built on some pretty questionable assumptions. For example:Unless individuals have been convicted of ...
#NoFly: Walking the talk on climate change, by Shaun Hendy. BWB Texts, 2019. Reviewed by Robert McLachlan In June 2018, Swede Maja Rosén founded We stay on the ground with a pledge not to fly in 2019, and a goal of persuading 100,000 other Swedes to join her. In August, ...
We all know that NZ First is a party of and for old people who hate the young. But they've topped their previous pedophobia with a proposal that all young people be forced to do 100 hours community work:NZ First wants all young people to do 100 hours of community ...
A couple days ago the NZ Herald published a story with the headline, “Science says Bella Hadid is world’s most beautiful woman“, and followed up with the ridiculous statement that Supermodel Bella Hadid has been declared as the world’s most beautiful woman following a scientific study into what constitutes as ...
A Sustainable Proposition: With as much as 18 percent of the electorate declaring itself “undecided” about who to vote for, there is obviously plenty of space for a party like former Green Party member, Vernon Tava's, about-to-be-launched "Sustainable NZ Party" to move into. The most hospitable political territory for such ...
Keir Starmer has hinted that Labour might vote in favour of the Johnson government's shoddy deal, with the proviso that a second referendum is attached:Speaking to BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show, he said: “We will see what that looks like but it makes sense to say that by whatever ...
In 1994, I was the editor for an issue of Planet magazine focused on cannabis, its culture and the prospects for the end of its prohibition. Part of that issue was an interview with 'Ringo', an experienced cannabis dealer.I recently posted my essay from that issue, and I figured it ...
Dr Helen Waite, sports sociologist and former elite athlete, on the invasion of women’s sport by men and the anti-scientific and misogynist ideology used to rationalise it. ...
As Brexit comes to a grisly conclusion (perhaps) people on all sides are saying intemperate and uwise things. Some, like the Daly Mail, have been doing it for years.People as normally level headed as Jon Lansman are calling for automatic deselection of MPs who vote against a (likely) Labour three ...
I've got one source saying more Labour MPs than expected are mulling whether to vote for the deal - including names who were not on the letter to Juncker and Tusk— Emilio Casalicchio (@e_casalicchio) 17 October 2019 I've compiled a list of possible reasons why Labour ...
On Wednesday, the government was loudly telling us that it needed to legislate to allow it to impose "control orders" - effectively a parole regime, but imposed without charge, prosecution, conviction or real evidence - on suspected terrorists because they couldn't be prosecuted for their supposed crimes. Today, it turns ...
On Monday, the Hit and Run inquiry heard from NZDF's former director of special operations, who claimed that the defence Minister knew everything about the Operation Burnham raid. Today, the inquiry heard from that (former) Minister - and it turns out that he didn't know nearly as much as NZDF ...
Yoga gurus and cult leaders – I’ve seen a few. Two weeks ago, I unknowingly joined an alleged new-age cult at the Kāpiti coast, together with a giant kraken and some neatly dressed pensioners who would make any book club proud.They were among the two hundred people of all ages ...
The last decade has seen a trend of increasing weapons availability to police. Assault rifles. Tasers on every hip. Guns in cars. And following the march 15 massacre, pistols on every hip, all over the country. At the same time, its also seen an increase in the abuse of force: ...
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been busy preparing for our summer paper on Science Communication. Looking for something amusing about ‘risk’ in science, I came across this neat xkcd.com cartoon about why so many people come knocking on my door (or phoning me, or emailing me) desperately wanting ...
by John Edmundson The International Socialist Organisation (ISO) have recently reposted a February article, by Romany Tasker-Poland, explaining ISO’s position in the “trans rights” debate. It is available on their website and on their Facebook Page. The article sets out to explain why “socialists support trans rights”. It reads more ...
"Auckland City Mission: 10% of Kiwis experiencing food insecurity", RNZ, 16 October 2019:About half a million people are experiencing food insecurity, according to new research from the Auckland City Mission. Food insecurity, or food poverty, is defined as not having enough appropriate food. The City Mission said over the last ...
Media Statement for Immediate Release 16th October 2019 “Fake News” from Auckland City Council CCOs Board Chairs re pay and performance bonuses for top managers Despite comments from Auckland City Council CCOs Board Chairs re pay and performance bonuses for top managers—Herald Newspaper Tuesday Oct 15th–there is very little evidence ...
Would You Buy A Used Propaganda Video From This Man? Bridges and the National Party’s strategists have discovered that the ideas and attitudes considered acceptable by today’s editors and journalists are no longer enforceable. The rise and rise of the Internet and the social media platforms it spawned means that ...
There is plenty of evidence of the way the business mentality has permeated every level of society since the recrudescence of market liberalism 35 years ago. You only need to think of how citizens in need of help from their government, their state, their country, are now routinely described as ...
John MacCormickOver the last 40 years, New Zealanders – and people in other countries – have experienced big changes in the jobs they do and where they live and work. These changes include: a decline in manufacturing jobs an increase in jobs in ‘information-intensive’ industries (which are better paid ...
Nick Wilson, Leah Grout, Mereana Wilson, Anja Mizdrak, Phil Shoemack, Michael BakerProtecting waterways has the benefits of: (1) protecting water from hazardous microbes; (2) minimising cancer risk and other problems from nitrates in water; (3) avoiding algal blooms that are hazardous to health; (4) protecting mahinga kai uses (cultural ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women In a press release today Massey University announced it has decided to rebrand and reorientate after struggling to be a University for grown-ups. For some time the University has wanted to be a safe play space for wee-woke-misogynists who have been really badly triggered ...
After a brief dalliance with 'hard Revoke' it looks like the Lib Dems are changing ground on on Brexit, with leader Jo Swinson reverting to calling for a second referendum on Johnson's deal.The party has tabled an amendment to the Queen’s speech requesting that any deal brought back from Brussels ...
The government has decided that someone has done Something Bad. But despite their belief, there seems to be no evidence that they have actually broken the law. So the government's solution is to pass a retrospective law allowing them to be punished anyway, on a lower standard of proof. If ...
So, Judith Collins has done a Facebook rant about climate change, peddling the same shit National has been shovelling for the past twenty years: the impacts are overstated, there's no need to do anything about it, and its too hard anyway (oh, and its so unfair that people who peddle ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzThere is a lot of discussion on the benefits of ...
I came across this song quite by accident. If it isn't one of Greta Thunberg's favourites - it should be.Video courtesy of YouTube.This post is exclusive to Bowalley Road. ...
Last month, NZDF's shoddy coverup of what it knew about civilian casualties in Operation Burnham began to fall apart, with the revelation that a report on the matter, which NZDF claimed not to have, had been sitting in an NZDF safe for the past nine years. Yesterday, the man responsible ...
While many imagine that countries like the USA and Europe dominate space activities, in fact India is now a major player on this stage. It launches satellites for its own purposes and also commercially, and has constellations orbiting our planet and returning data of vital importance to that nation in ...
Thanks to a report from the Acting Inspector General of Intelligence and Security following a complaint by Nicky Hager, we have come to find out that the SIS illegally spied on Mr. Hager on behalf of the NZDF after publication of Hager’s 2011 book, Other People’s Wars. The NZDF justified ...
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate. FACT: The HadCRUT3 surface temperature index, produced by the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, shows warming to 1878, cooling to 1911, ...
For the past week, Extinction Rebellion has been peacefully protesting in London to demand action on climate change. The British government's response? Ban their protests:Police have banned Extinction Rebellion protests from continuing anywhere in London, as they moved in almost without warning to clear protesters who remained at the movement’s ...
An essay by Judith Collins MP reported on Carbon News yesterday seems to show an alarming shift in attitude within the National Party. Collins argues against the Zero Carbon Bill, the Paris Agreement, and downplays the magnitude of climate impacts. The Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015 and ratified ...
When they were running for election, Labour promised to overhaul the Employment Relations Act and introduce fair pay agreements to set basic pay and conditions on an industry level, preventing bad employers from undercutting good ones. They followed this up by establishing a working group, which reported back in January ...
A list of indicators of bad science – many of these are found in articles promoted by anti-fluoride activists. Anti-fluoride activists have been pouring money into a scaremongering campaign warning pregnant women not to drink fluoridated water. They claim fluoride will lower the IQ of their future child. Fluoride ...
Nothing Left To Say: Labour's pollster, Stephen Mills, remains swaddled-up in the comforting myths of the 1980s. As if the experience of Roger Douglas’s genuinely radical post-Muldoon policy agenda was literally a once-in-a-lifetime thing – as much as the party could possibly absorb for at least the next 50 years.MEMO ...
The Royal Commission on abuse in care is very significant for the disability community. For many decades last century, thousands of disabled children, and adults who managed to survive, were locked away from families and communities. This was not for anything they had done, but for the perceived threat their ...
With an unfair voting system, uneven electorates and an un-elected upper house, the UK's "democracy" is barely worthy of the name. But now the government wants to make it worse:The government has been accused of suppressing voters’ rights with the potential disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of people after plans ...
Back in the 90's and early 2000's, the building industry was building leaky homes which should never have been granted consent. Now it turns out they've been building dodgy office blocks as well:New imaging technology has revealed hundreds of major buildings nationwide have defective or missing concrete or reinforcing steel. ...
Local body election results were released over the weekend, to joy or despair depending on where you live. In Auckland, Phil Goff trounced John Tamihere, who is muttering darkly about running for Parliament again (but which party would want him?) Wellington is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Weta Workshop, except ...
How could government evolve over the next decades? Reports of democracy’s imminent demise are greatly exaggerated. However, satisfaction with political systems in many countries is low, so there is much to do for governments of all political stripes to improve relevance and trust. Digital technologies are seen as one ...
Two years have now gone by since the Friday afternoon when my university-student son and I headed out of our Barcelona flat to a nearby primary school, designated as a polling station for the vote that was to be held the following Sunday: the referendum on Catalonia’s independence from Spain ...
Overruled: The joint decision of Finance Minister, Grant Robertson (Labour) and his Associate Minister, David Parker (Labour) arguably the two most powerful ministers in Jacinda Ardern’s government, to grant OceanaGold the consents which Land Information Minister, Eugenie Sage (Greens) had earlier denied them, offers bitter proof of how hard fighting ...
More than double the number of people who will vote in this year’s local body elections have tried marijuana or urinated somewhere they shouldn’t have. As local elections look set for the lowest turnout in decades, with many regions falling well short of 40%, the Government is exploring a number ...
A Statement on Abortion Law Reform by the Council of Disobedient Women On the eve of bringing an end to antiquated, anti-women abortion laws Green MP Jan Logie intends to write women out of the Bill. With a stroke of the pen, the woke are aiming for total erasure ...
Musings continue apace about “the experienced businessman!” soon to be taking up a National Party MP position. Or to be more accurate, being parachuted into a seat to shut down their former MP Jamie-Lee Ross, who despite his own shortcomings shed at least some more light on the inner workings ...
The Ugandan government wants to murder gay people:Uganda has announced plans to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. The bill, colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda, was nullified five years ago on a technicality, but the government said on Thursday it plans to resurrect it within weeks. The ...
Hassan Vally, La Trobe UniversityWho doesn’t want to know if drinking that second or third cup of coffee a day will improve your memory, or if sleeping too much increases your risk of a heart attack? We’re invested in staying healthy and many of us are interested in reading ...
Freedom Of Speech? The Säuberung (cleansing by fire) was the work of the German Student Union which, on 10 May 1933, under the watchful eye of the Nazi Reichminister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, consigned 25,000 books to the flames in a ritual exorcism of “un-German thought”. According to the logic of the ...
“There can be no such thing as kaupapa Māori political parties or politics in Aotearoa” (Willie Jackson, Labour Party (2017). Māori TV, General/List Election Special) I begin with that claim because at the time, I was confounded at first that it fell out of Willie Jackson’s mouth, and then ...
New Zealand has prided itself for decades with regard to its lack of pollution, and all will be aware that the ‘100% Pure New Zealand‘ meme is under threat through land, water and air pollution of various causes. There is another type of contamination that the country also faces: light ...
New Zealand’s media is doing its part in Japan, reassuring those in the path of the storm that they won’t miss any rugby while away from their flooded homes. New Zealand sports reporters stationed in Japan for the Rugby World Cup have had the rare and heartwarming opportunity to inform ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones is the only Cabinet member in favour of putting it all on green. As Finance Minister Grant Robertson finds himself with an enormous $7.5 billion surplus, the Government has begun intense, at times contentious conversations about whether to put the money on red or black at ...
by Susanne Kemp At the start of September close to 100,000 school teachers went on strike in Jordan. They demanded a 50% pay rise. A pay rise actually agreed to by the regime back in 2014. In early October, however, in the face of government repression and threats, the teachers’ ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzWhy do people still think climate change isn’t real?David ...
New Zealand First MP Shane Jones has hit back at those who are upset over a change in approach to partnership visas. There has been a specific government directive to stop waiving requirements such as couples needing to have lived together for 12 months - a test Indian couples who have ...
The North Auckland Line rejuvenation kicks off with teams surveying the rail corridor and Northland construction contractors are showing interest in the project.KiwiRail provided an industry briefing for Northland contracting and construction companies about future work opportunities on rejuvenating Northland’s rail lines. The briefing session in Whangarei was held to ...
Journalist Andrew Dickens, reporting from the 2019 New Zealand First Conference, states that the Party once again proved “they are more than a sideshow”. In his op-ed article for NewstalkZB, Mr Dickens said he has always been an admirer of the Party, saying they are “a true centrist party”. “[NZ ...
New Zealand First's potential policy of compulsory community service for ages 15-19 years old has been getting support from those in the industry. A policy remit was passed during their recent Conference in Christchurch, gaining the support of a majority of its membership. Party leader Winston Peters has been talking ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says the Party hopes to decide it’s stance pill testing at music festivals "before the season of concern", with festivals generally held during the summer months. Mr Peters' comments come in an interview with TVNZ's Q+A and follow a remit from the party's youth ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says he has been told to be "alert" to potential cost blowouts for the light rail project in Auckland. Mr Peters said no such concerns were raised with him from ministerial colleagues, including Transport Minister Phil Twyford of the Labour Party. He suggested that ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters Leader of New Zealand First The Benefits of having New Zealand First in the Centre: Security, Experience & Balance 2.00pm, 20th October 2019 Ladies and Gentlemen Thank you all for your warm welcome to this, the party’s 26thConvention. Speaking on behalf of caucus colleagues, it’s great to ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Fletcher Tabuteau is travelling to the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu this week to continue toadvance important bilateral relationships in our region consistent with thePacific Reset. Mr Tabuteau will engage in a range of bilateral meetings and visit New Zealand development ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is predicting a hard Brexit for the United Kingdom, as he believes British Prime Minister Boris Johnson won’t be able to negotiate terms before the October 30 deadline. The Minister, who was one of the first to publicly come out and predict British voters would leave ...
Speaking at the Council of Trade Unions' (CTU) biennial conference, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters told unionists that any future attacks on the Government won't work. "Now, we are being attacked by the union movement in this country. You can have your views but I'm here to say standing ...
We want every New Zealander to be happy, safe, and healthy. To do this, we need to support strong, safe communities, and a robust and efficient health system. ...
Defence Minister Ron Mark has used his powers to overrule a noise complaint ruling against Whenuapai airbase on the grounds of "national security". The Environment Court last month released a ruling in favour of a private developer, declaring the Auckland airbase had to comply with noise restrictions when it performs ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has opened fire against "unreconstructed morons" after NZ First MP Shane Jones was photographed on holiday holding an AR-15 rifle. Mr Peters is defending Mr Jones, telling Magic Talk host Peter Williams that his MP was just having fun "like most people do". "The ...
New Zealand First Deputy Leader and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau was in attendance during the morning blessing of the Rotorua Lakefront development project. Around 60 people gathered on the shores of Lake Rotorua, including city mayor Steve Chadwick and deputy Dave Donaldson. The Lakefront development is a ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones is considering reining in on conversions of farmland to forestry, and also issued a warning to foreign-owned forestry companies that make up nearly 75 per cent of the industry. He said too many foreign companies had not provided enough access for domestic processors to get timber. ...
Speaking to Radio NZ, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the tightening of the parental category visa is a direct result of the Party’s coalition negotiations with the Labour Party. He said the new changes switch the financial onus from the parent moving to New Zealand to the child ...
The Coalition Government is set to cut red tape in the building and construction sector in an effort to allow more houses to be built, including prefabricated houses. The changes will enable the mass factory production of "high quality" buildings, slash the likely number of building inspections for factory produced ...
Since coming into Government, we’ve worked hard to tackle homelessness and make sure everyone has a warm, dry home. And today, on World Homeless Day, we want to report back and update you on our progress so far. ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has hit back at National Party leader Simon Bridges who criticized the Coalition Government’s approach to crime, and said that the latter isn't credible in his attack on the Government over gang recruitment. "We've got as massive drug problem in this country. It is ...
New Zealand Mānuka honey exporters have welcomed an initiative by the Coalition Government to help secure the term “mānuka honey” to be used exclusively by Kiwi exporters, ensuring that our multimillion-dollar industry is protected. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had recently announced that a Provincial Growth Funding of $5.7 ...
Political commentator Mike Hosking has labelled New Zealand First leader Winston Peters as “the voice of reason in a government soft on drugs”, for the Party’s stance on drug testing at music festivals. “If common sense is worth a vote, Winston Peters is quids in,” Mr Hosking said. The Labour ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau has announced Provincial Growth Funding to ensure work opportunities in Turangi and Whanganui, through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi. A fund of $500,000 will go to Rafting NZ in Turangi for a 16-week river guide training course to train ...
Treasury has shown that the Coalition Government has a $7.5 billion surplus, which is $4 billion higher than what was expected in the 2019 Budget unveiled last May. It is also $2 billion higher than the actual surplus unveiled this time last year, and at a size that has not ...
Official Information Act figures released to NZME show there were 350 assaults on officers in the year to the end of June, 79 more than the year before. The increase in attacks have sparked calls for more legal protection for first responders to be enacted. The assaults included officers being ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
We're making progress on tackling the long-term challenges: from homelessness, to strengthening border security, to bringing banking back New Zealand's small towns. ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones has backed the ambitious plan to move Auckland’s port to Northport, at Whangarei harbour, which he says will be the “King Kong of infrastructure”. The plan is part of the recommendations of a six-person independent working group, which has recommended the Ports of Auckland be ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson departs tomorrow for events and meetings in Japan and Vietnam. While in Japan, he will discuss economic and fiscal issues including meeting with the Minister of Finance, Taro Aso, and Minister of Economic and Fiscal Policy, Yasutoshi Nishimura. He will meet with the Minister of Education, ...
The Government’s Housing Dashboard released today confirms record numbers of state houses are under construction and shows the Government build programme is gaining momentum. “After nine years of inaction, and a hands-off attitude from the previous government we’re starting to see things move in the right direction for housing,” says ...
Mr Speaker, I wish to make a ministerial statement relating to the Auckland fire. The Government is closely monitoring the situation with the fire at the NZ International Convention Centre and is thankful that everyone is now safe. Firefighters are doing an incredible job managing the fire and bringing it ...
The Government is investing in ambitious research that will digitise Te Reo, grow the low-carbon protein efficient aquaculture industry, help interpret environmental trends, and large data sets says Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods. The four projects range from teaching Siri to speak Te Reo to crunching large environmental ...
A new education-to-employment brokerage service to strengthen connections between local employers and schools. Funding for more trades focused ‘speed-dating’ events to connect schools with employers. Promotional campaign to raise profile of vocational education. The Government is taking action to increase the number of young people taking up vocational education and ...
A Bill to improve prison security and ensure the fair, safe, and humane treatment of people in prison while upholding public safety has passed its third reading. Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis says the Corrections Amendment Bill makes a number of changes to ensure the Corrections Act 2004 is fit for ...
Minister for Māori Development, Nanaia Mahuta, has selected Arihia Bennett MNZM, Chief Executive Officer of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, as the Te Puni Kōkiri appointed representative on the New Zealand-China Council. The New Zealand-China Council (the Council) was established in 2012 as a New Zealand led and funded organisation ...
Responsibility for processing the small number of Southern Response claims still to be settled will be transferred to EQC by the end of the year. “As claim numbers reduce, it no longer makes sense for the Crown to have two organisations processing the remaining Canterbury claims,” Grant Robertson says. “Since ...
Health Minister David Clark is encouraging Whanganui residents to take up the opportunity for free bowel screening, which can detect cancer early when it’s easier to treat. Over the next two years 12,000 Whanganui locals, aged 60 to 74 will be invited to participate in the National Bowel Screening ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio, heads to Oslo today to represent New Zealand at the sixth Our Ocean Conference, which is being hosted by the Norwegian Government from the 23-24 October. “The Our Ocean Conference mobilises real action on issues like marine plastic pollution and the impacts of ...
Two secondary-school initiatives are being expanded as part of the Government’s plan to see more young New Zealanders take up a trade to help close the skills gap. This includes the largest single increase in Trades Academy places in recent years. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Education Minister Chris ...
Session 4: Pacific Connectivity – Youth, Media and New Opportunities Kia ora tatou katoa and Warm Pacific greetings to one and all. Representatives of Tainui, the local people of the land, or manawhenua – the indigenous peoples of this area – have welcomed you this morning in accordance with ...
The Government today announced its support for a project that could substantially reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions from cattle. The announcement was made as part of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor’s visit to Nelson’s Cawthron Aquaculture Park. The Cawthron Institute will receive $100,000 from the Government’s ...
Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni has welcomed the first reading of the New Zealand Superannuation and Veteran’s Pension Legislation Amendment Bill. “Every New Zealander has a stake in New Zealand Superannuation and Veteran’s Pension,” says Carmel Sepuloni. “They are our most common form of social assistance – nearly 800,000 New ...
Babies in Auckland aged six months and over can receive a free vaccination and children will all have access to vaccines, Associate Minister of Health Julie Anne Genter announced today at Papatoetoe High School. The move comes as part of Government efforts to step up the fight against measles. ...
***Check against delivery*** Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here, and to have the honour of opening this important conference on behalf of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. Let us take the opportunity to acknowledge all the people who have helped make today possible, including our special ...
Police Minister Stuart Nash says the safety of frontline officers and members of the public will be the focus of a new trial of specialist Police response teams in three of our largest urban centres. Police have this morning released details of an initiative to be trialled in Counties Manukau, ...
The Minister of Fisheries is calling for entries for a new public award to celebrate innovation in our seafood sector. “I have established the Seafood Sustainability Awards to recognise and celebrate those throughout industry, tangata whenua and communities who demonstrate outstanding dedication and innovation towards the sustainability of New Zealand’s ...
Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter welcomes leaders in the private sector taking action on closing their gender pay gaps to ensure a fairer workplace for all New Zealanders. Ms Genter today launched a new report, Addressing the gender pay gap and driving women’s representation in senior leadership, from the Champions for ...
Government Ministers today welcomed the release of a marine environment report highlighting the four key issues affecting our oceans, estuaries and coastlines. The release underlines the importance of government proposals to combat climate pollution, ensure clean freshwater, protect biodiversity, make land use more sustainable, and reduce waste and plastic. Environment ...
The Government has approved funding for a new acute mental health facility for Waikato which will provide better care and support to people with mental health and addiction issues. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Health Minister Dr David Clark announced the $100 million project to replace the aging Henry Rongomau ...
The Government is making progress on its goal to integrate te reo Māori into education by 2025, with over 500 teachers and support staff already graduating from Te Ahu o te Reo Māori, Associate Education Minister Kelvin Davis announced today. Kelvin Davis made the announcement at an awards ceremony in Waikanae today, for ...
Statistics Minister James Shaw has welcomed the first release of 2018 Census data. The first release of data today, 23 September, includes key data on population, regional growth, the number of homes and the size of different ethnic groups in New Zealand. Data from the 2018 Census will support the ...
Minister for Statistics James Shaw today announced a public consultation on a proposed algorithm charter for government agencies. The charter has been developed by the Government Chief Data Steward in response to growing calls for more transparency in government use of data. Computer algorithms – procedures or formulas for solving ...
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor, Climate Change Minister James Shaw and visiting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte co-hosted a business roundtable in Auckland this morning focused on working together to address climate change. “The Netherlands is an important partner for New Zealand. We share a strong agricultural history. Sustainable agribusiness and ...
The Government is taking action to build an inclusive economy where more of us receive our fair share at work and businesses can compete on great products and services, not undercutting wages and conditions, Immigration and Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. Two consultations launched today seek feedback ...
The future for New Zealand’s threatened indigenous freshwater fish looks brighter with the passing of the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill in Parliament today said Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage. “Until now, our freshwater fish legislation has been 20 years out of date. We have lacked effective tools to ...
At 1.30pm tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of Kiwis will join about 65 million people around the globe in ShakeOut, the world’s biggest earthquake drill. The annual drill is to remind people of the right action to take during an earthquake which is to Drop, Cover, Hold, and to practise their ...
Kiwis are benefiting from higher wage growth and low inflation under the Coalition Government. Stats NZ data out today shows the rise in the cost of living remains low, as annual Consumers Price Index (CPI) inflation fell to 1.5% in September from 1.7% in June. “The low inflation comes as ...
New Zealand’s economic strength and resilience has been recognised in a major update on the state of the global economy. The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook released overnight shows a reduced global growth forecast over the next two years as issues like the US-China trade war and Brexit take hold. ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little has today introduced a new Bill to prevent terrorism and support the de-radicalisation of New Zealanders returning from overseas. The Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill gives the New Zealand Police the ability to apply to the High Court to impose control orders on New Zealanders who ...
A Bill that proposes targeted changes to simplify the processes for Māori land owners when engaging with the Māori Land Court has had its First Reading today. “The approach taken by the Government is to ensure that the protection of Māori land remains a priority as we seek to improve ...
Let me first thank all the new unionists and members in the room. There is nothing more important to improving people’s working lives than people making the decision to care, to get on board and help, to take up the reins and get involved. Congratulations to you. You bring the ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark has signed a certificate exempting the activity of engine testing at Whenuapai Airbase from the Resource Management Act 1991. The Act gives the Minister of Defence the power to exempt activities for the purposes of national security. The certificate will mean the recent Environment Court ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced New Zealand will join the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action while attending APEC meetings in Chile. The objective of the 39 member Coalition is to share information and promote action to tackle climate change. It was formed in April this year, in ...
Feedback sought– Lyttelton commercial zone parking The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Poto Williams, is seeking feedback on a proposal to remove on-site car parking requirements for new developments in the Lyttelton commercial zone. The proposal, by Christchurch City Council, asks that powers under section 71 of the Greater ...
Hon Minister Poto Williams Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration MEDIA STATEMENT Tuesday 15 October 2019 Feedback sought – Hagley Oval The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Poto Williams, is seeking feedback on a proposal about Hagley Oval. The proposal was developed by Regenerate Christchurch ...
Ladies and gentlemen, NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff, members of respective unions – thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. This might be preaching to the choir, but the importance of trade unions in New Zealand’s historical arch is difficult to understate. And it is my belief that ...
"Let’s start by acknowledging that it has been a huge year. " Police Association Annual Conference James Cook Grand Chancellor Hotel Wellington Nau mai, haere mai. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, ka nui te mihi, ki a koutou katoa. President of the Police Association, Chris Cahill; Members of the Association and ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters and Minister of Defence Ron Mark have announced the New Zealand Government’s decision to again deploy a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 (P-3) maritime patrol aircraft to support the implementation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions imposing sanctions against North Korea. New ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Opposition leader Anthony Albanese has finally seen off John Setka from the ALP, with the militant construction union leader capitulating and quitting the party. Setka, who lost a court case he brought in his fight ...
New Zealanders will almost certainly face a referendum next year on whether to legalise voluntary euthanasia after a make-or-break vote in Parliament cleared the way. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Nationals leader Michael McCormack has admitted his party should have handled better agriculture minister Bridget McKenzie’s bring-forward of the planned dairy code. Some Nationals were furious when McKenzie suddenly sped up the code’s preparation in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra While the drought continues to hit the Nationals’ constituents hard, the party faces a testing terrain on a political level. In this episode of Politics with Michelle Grattan, Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack acknowledges the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy – in the job for for just weeks after moving across from the department of infrastructure last month – has dismissed talk of spending big on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Downie, Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow, Australian National University It’s time we started talking about the principal opponents to action on climate change – fossil fuel industries. If history has taught us anything, it is when oil, gas and coal industries ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jodie Grigg, Research Associate at the National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University My friends are taking ecstasy at raves and music festivals. Is it safe? — Anonymous Key points no drug use, including ecstasy, is 100% safe festivals can present ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Transport Todd Niall (Stuff): Auckland Light Rail: Goff says it’s the Government’s call Richard Harman ...
It isn't the first time Tiwai Point's owners have warned they may close the aluminium smelter, but this Government is unlikely to be handing out financial assistance. ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says APEC will definitely still be held in Auckland in 2021, despite the destruction caused by the fire at the NZ International Convention Centre. ...
The headline said it all. Stats NZ has released 2018 census data on New Zealanders’ commuting habits and, guess what, we love a motorised polluter. “Car streets ahead for travel to work and education” was the heading. It should have been “cars rule, all other options drool”.New cycleways are under construction ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Liu, Chancellors Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Fashion and Textiles Designer, University of Technology Sydney The tech giants Amazon, Google and Facebook have all begun to use machine learning to give you tips on what to wear. Is fashion styling the next field ...
Prime Minister is meeting with officials at the scene of a massive blaze in Auckland's CBD. Watch a live video of a media stand-up with FENZ and the PM. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vanessa Bowden, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Newcastle It is becoming increasingly possible that sea-level rise of a metre or more will occur this century. You might expect this threat to preoccupy coastal homeowners. But many deny the need to act, for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chloe Watfern, Scientia PhD scholar, UNSW At Studio A, on the fourth floor of the Crows Nest community centre, a group of artists is working quietly. An occasional burst of laughter erupts from a corner of the studio. It makes its way ...
In response to Meghan Markle’s admission that she’s finding it a struggle to be a new mother in the media spotlight, columnists across the globe have banded together to launch a charity to support all those women who ‘have it worse’, Emily Writes can exclusively reveal.Meghan Markle – duchess, new ...
Will New Zealand’s largest construction firm have to write off yet more money over the troubled International Convention Centre project?Both Fletcher Building and SkyCity’s share prices have felt the impact of the devastating fire that has raged at Auckland’s half completed convention centre for over a day now. More than ...
The new and spectacular atlas We Are Here is page after page of haunting, hella beautiful visual data, each chapter introduced with an essay. This one, Lost in the Forest, opens the section on people. At some point in the 1990s, one of the creators of this book tried to impress ...
Kassie Hartendorp (Ngāti Raukawa) has been looking to Māori stories and storytellers to learn more about our gender identities before colonisation. There’s a lot to be read between the lines, she writes.Te ao Māori can be a very gendered place to be. In some settings, your gender can tell you ...
The Shouting Valley is a powerful group exhibition at the Gus Fisher Gallery in Auckland that interrogates and gives voice to the people caught between borders. But is the real paradox of this politically charged show the limit of what art can do? Lana Lopesi reviews. “What’s bad about borders?” asked ...
The future of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter is under question again as majority owner, mining giant Rio Tinto, is reviewing the plant's future. ...
There will be another crucial vote for the voluntary euthanasia bill later today - whether or not a referendum will be held at the 2020 general election. ...
It was never intended that state owned enterprises should use their monopoly commercial or regulatory power to stifle competition, yet it is at least arguable that is what has happened says Peter Dunne. ...
Go Bus drivers in South Auckland will continue refusing to collect fares tomorrow as their protest continues with the intent of avoiding disruption to passengers while highlighting the need for fair wage negotiations with their employer, FIRST Union ...
Smoke continues to billow in downtown Auckland 24 hours after fire broke out in the incomplete complex.Shortly after 1pm yesterday came the first reports of a fire on the site of the SkyCity New Zealand International Convention Centre in central Auckland. That brought a massive mobilisation of emergency services, evacuations ...
He Kākano Ahau is a podcast by writer and activist Kahu Kutia (Ngāi Tūhoe) that explores stories of Māori in the city, and weaves together strands of connection. In episode one: the legacy of urban marae Tapu te Ranga.I grew up where the tarseal on the road crumbles away into ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Australians are divided over whether the nation’s universities have too many foreign students, according to the Australian National University’s ANUpoll, released Wednesday. In the polling, 52.8% said the mix between foreign and domestic students was ...
National's leader Simon Bridges says a bill imposing restrictions on people returning after fighting for extremist groups would only keep New Zealanders "half safe". ...
Alex Casey talks to Leigh Hart about the return of Late Night Big Breakfast, the finest morning TV parody show New Zealand has ever made. Late Night Big Breakfast is set to return to TVNZ in 2020 after a five year hiatus, creator and comedian Leigh Hart has confirmed. Filmed in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Gordon, PhD candidate. Sydney University Physics Education Research (SUPER) group, University of Sydney If you want to get good marks in your exams, there’s no substitute for study. So do past exams, go over your notes, read what you need to ...
Otago University academic Chris Brickell wonders whether his new book on LGBT objects ought to be the sort of thing bookshops would want to have on their shelves. ...
South Aucklanders from Mangere to East Tamaki will be riding their Go Bus services to work for free tomorrow morning, as FIRST Union bus drivers opt out of collecting fares for their employer in an industrial action designed to show the wider public ...
What do we make of the Air New Zealand decision to quit the Auckland-Los Angeles-London route? Nothing much as it simply reflects the changing dynamics of the airline industry. Gone are the days when Air NZ took the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 into the fleet and began flying Los Angeles, then ...
Was the SkyCity Convention Centre construction site at higher risk of fire than any other construction site or building? Alex Braae asks the experts.A fire at the SkyCity Convention Centre construction site has continued to burn this morning, after a night of lighting up the Auckland CBD sky.The fire, which ...
Sky City and Fletcher Building see another "material delay" to opening of International Convention Centre as fire still rages. Plan B needed for APEC in November 2021, says Goff ...
First it was KiwiBuild, now it’s Auckland’s light rail that’s looking increasingly shambolic. Jenée Tibshraeny from Interest asks what’s going on, and how thin is that ice that transport minister Phil Twyford is skating on.The Opposition’s latest attack phrase aimed at the government is set to be one of its ...
At last, a break in the clouds for NZ’s dairy farmers : Fonterra suppliers could be looking at a sharp lift in income, as the co-op revises its forecast range for the milk price to $6.55-$7.55 kg/MS.And the signals are strong enough to underpin projections the milk price will rise ...
Members of the Indian community are angry at an immigration policy change making it harder for to bring spouses to NZ - but Shane Jones says anyone not happy should "catch the next flight home." ...
On October 7, New Zealand’s Labour Party-led coalition government announced draconian class-based restrictions on immigration. From February 2020, the government will reopen the Parent Category visa nearly four years after the previous National Party ...
Organise Aotearoa joined a rally held by the Chilean expatriate community on Tuesday outside the Chilean Embassy in Wellington, following widespread repression and brutality against protesters by President Sebastián Piñera’s armed forces. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Shine, Robinson Fellow, University of Sydney Have you ever sat down to complete your morning crossword or Sudoku and wondered about what’s happening in your brain? Somewhere in the activity of the billions of neurons in your brain lies the code ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mehmet Ozalp, Associate Professor in Islamic Studies, Director of The Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation and Executive Member of Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt University The five-day ceasefire negotiated by US Vice President Mike Pence and Turkish President Recep Tayyib ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne The unprecedented blackout of front pages by Australia’s newspaper publishers this week is a highly significant event in Australian political and media history. It represents the completion of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Hansen, Chief of Staff, The Conversation In recent years coconut water has left the palm-treed shores of tropical islands where tourists on lounge chairs stick straws straight into the fruit, and exploded onto supermarket shelves – helped along by beverage giants ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Petterson, Professor of Geology, Auckland University of Technology CC BY-NDClimate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University A Greenpeace video of me plugging a trackless tram that went viral with 4 million hits has caused a few eyebrows to be raised over whether I think light rail is dead. So let me ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Asher, Associate Professor, UNSW Here’s the boldest idea the government’s inquiry into retirement incomes should consider but might not: no longer exempting all of the value of each retiree’s home from the pension assets test. The test would merely exempt part ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tracey Sernack-Chee Quee, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Design, Architecture & Building, University of Technology Sydney 1973 was a remarkable year for Sydney, with the opening of two major cultural icons. The first was the Sydney Opera House. The second, possibly more important ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: In today’s edition: Serious ramifications likely from SkyCity fire, dozens of partnership visas being denied, and yet another police pursuit death.The fire at the SkyCity Convention Centre construction site has continued to burn overnight. Fire crews were forced to abandon the roof, ...
Orange-fronted parakeets will still get protection but some mohua populations miss out as DoC reduces the area of forest being covered by 1080 poison. ...
The main way small countries like New Zealand can lead on climate change is through our ideas. Policies developed here may help other countries with similar issues, writes David Frame. ...
By Rebecca Ananian-Welsh Australians picked up their morning papers yesterday to find heavily blacked-out text instead of front-page headlines. This bold statement was instigated by the “Your Right to Know” campaign, an unlikely coalition of Australian media organisations fighting for press freedom and source protection. A key reform advocated by a ...
Surrounding sites evacuated and one reported hospitalised in serious condition as blaze rips through two floors of the under-construction building in the Auckland CBDLast updated: 6.30pmParts of central Auckland have been brought to a standstill this afternoon after a major fire broke out shortly after 1pm at the Sky City ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phil McManus, Professor of Urban and Environmental Geography: Head of School of Geosciences, University of Sydney In the wake of a shocking ABC report on the dismal end of many racehorses’ lives in slaughterhouses, many Australians are questioning whether the horse racing ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mohiuddin Ahmed, Lecturer of Computing & Security, Edith Cowan University Machines and the internet are woven into the fabric of our society. A growing number of users, devices and applications work together to produce what we now call “big data”. And this ...
After an unusually nasty campaign for their country, Canada has gone to the polls. They’ve decided that Justin Trudeau will continue as prime minister, but just like in New Zealand, he’ll have to work with coalition politics. What’s happened?After a brutal and at times humiliating campaign, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has ...
“The Prime Minister must publicly support an immediate ban on Gay Conversion Therapy . If I was Jacinda I would feel morally obligated to give more confidence on where I stand, when I have asked for, and received, support from that community.” ...
New abortion law marks significant and needed progress for reproductive rights in New Zealand Amnesty International has today made its submission to the Abortion Legislation Committee in Wellington. The rights at stake in the legislation include the rights ...
Open mike 29/11/2011 
Tiwai Point's electricity contract is up for renewal. And as usual, they're sticking their hand out, demanding a government subsidy, and threatening to close if they don't get one:The owners of the aluminium smelter said on Wednesday that there were seeking talks with the Government amid a strategic review which ...5 hours ago
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I have been doing a bit of number crunching on the election night results to see what happened in the cities.
In Auckland the swing against Labour was coincidentally the same as the swing to the Greens (3.15%). In South Auckland the swing was towards Labour. Mangere was the best with a 10% swing. The other Labour strongholds or marginals preformed reasonably well. The worst swings occurred in National strongholds.
IN Wellington the swing against Labour was 7.44%.
Christchurch was disastrous. I thought that the earthquake was responsible for the 10.63% swing.
But Dunedin was even worse. The swing against Labour was 11.4%.
These figures should improve on specials. But obviously some thought needs to go into what happened.
Dunedin feels politically neglected. Labour have had an automatic two electorates here and have taken them for granted. If Labour doesn’t listen too and work with and for Dunedin constituents far better it will lose another provincial area.
It would be interesting to analyse the reaction of the whole of South Island to Labour.
I thought you would comment Pete. I wondered if the UF surge in Dunedin may have been the cause but the party did not do so well there.
Things haven’t changed for UF in Dunedin. They have changed markedly for Labour. Who should be concerned? I’m not in denial and I’m not blaming everyone and everything else.
Maybe like Banks Labour wants to rename and rebrand. The South Auckland Party?
Meh. Dunedin North’s David Clark is a good guy but he’s not going to get Pete Hodgson’s 20 years worth of long built popularity overnight. To expect otherwise is not realistic.
This is not about you Pete George, nor is it about your stupid facile observations.
You sound a bit grumpy. Did your tolerance lose the election?
If you look at the Dunedin North electorate vote on it’s own you might have a point, but coupled with National closing right up on Labour’s party vote, National soundly beating Labour for the party vote in Dunedin South and Curran’s diminishing majority and then Labour’s problems here are obvious.
Um no it is not Pete.
Frinstance in Auckland Labour’s loss was the Green’s gain. The net effect on support for National was neutral. If you add NZFirst’s late surge it appears that National went backward in Auckland. Got an explanation for that?
This is thankfully an MMP system. What matters is the support for each of the parties. Measuring one against another is artificial in the extreme.
And there is also the very low turnout and the effect this had.
I’m not talking about Auckland, I’m talking about Dunedin, this isn’t excuse city.
If Labour were in as much denial here as you are they would be in real trouble.
Pete you keep throwing around “denial”. You should try something doing something else. It is called “analysis”.
“Analysis” might accidentally lead to a “conclusion”, which would then require a specific “action”.
That scares the shit out of pete.
And his opinion on dunedin counts for nothing – if he was at all in touch with his electorate, he would have received more than the second lowest candidate vote, coincidentally beating the candidate for national’s other coalition partner, ACT.
ouch.
Where are your 4 MP’s Pete? I think you need to look in the mirror.
Re-do your figures compared to 2005. The swings in South Auckland etc may just have been a correction to the low 2008 figures.
They probably are although I am sure the decline in the the turnout figure would be really disturbing.
How about finding a way to get through to the Million who didn’t vote. They couldn’t be bothered or why should they vote for some old guy who will just ignore them. These are the ones we need to get motivated.
Are we about to see a record for “Waka jumping”.
Henare made it an art-form. Dunne a close second.
But Banks has to take the cake. Six months ago he was a Nat and joined ACT.
Within 36 hours of being elected he is talking about joining the Conservatives saying that ACT was “damaged goods” – and who was responsible for that?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/6051391/John-Banks-looks-to-Conservatives
One thing appears certain – living in Epsom there might be a lot of wealthy
professionals, but not much intelligence.
What sort of person have they elected to represent them?
We have to give the PM some credit.
He says he voted for the National candidate…
I don’t think even the Nats thought that they could wipe out Banks, ACT and now potentially the conservatives all with one cup of tea.
My impression, on hearing Banks talking on Checkpoint last night, was that Banks decided that Act needed a name change and re-branding after talking to Jonkey about confidence and supply arrangements.
This was followed by an interview with Act member (#3 on the list) who had not heard about a move to change the name, and wasn’t really in agreement with it. He was more for re-branding.
I can’t remember who raised the notion of joining with the Conservatives. It might have been the interviewer.
But really, this idea do waka jump and ditch Act smells of National Party manipulations.
From the Stuff article linked above:
I also recall that Winston Peters said on TV recently that he has done research and it is clear to him that the Conservative Party was set up by National.
I am worried.
With the return of a conservative government, why was the impending climate disaster, never properly addressed throughout the election campaign by any of the main political contenders?
(and barely touched on by the political minnows either?)
“CLIMATE CHANGE ISN’T THE ISSUE” , Chris Horner, Climate Denier and Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Naomi Klein: Capitalism vs. the Climate
Naomi Kline:
“The deniers did not decide that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy by uncovering some covert socialist plot. They arrived at this analysis by taking a hard look at what it would take to lower global emissions as drastically and as rapidly as climate science demands. They have concluded that this can be done only by radically reordering our economic and political systems in ways antithetical to their “free market” belief system.
When you challenge a person’s position on an issue core to his or her identity, facts and arguments are seen as attacks, and so are ignored or deflected often in a hostile manner:
(Chris Horner, is a professional climate change denier at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Horner’s job as a “Senior Fellow” at the Institute involves harassing climate scientists with nuisance lawsuits and Freedom of Information fishing expeditions.)
And finally:
As the denialists say: “The issue.” In fact, it isn’t an issue at all.
Climate change is a message, one that is telling us that many of our culture’s most cherished ideas are no longer viable.
Responding to the climate threat requires strong government action at all levels.
Mainstream political parties like Labour and National (and even the Greens), When it comes to Climate Change, pose the question this way:
But……. There is a growing body of economic research on the conflict between economic growth and sound climate policy:
Studies by ecological economist Herman Daly at the University of Maryland, Peter Victor at York University, Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey and environmental law and policy expert Gus Speth.
All raise serious questions about the feasibility of industrialized countries meeting the deep emissions cuts demanded by science (at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050) while continuing to grow their economies at even today’s sluggish rates.
Growth should be reserved only for parts of the world still pulling themselves out of poverty. Meanwhile, in the industrialized world, those sectors that are not governed by the drive for increased yearly profit (the public sector, co-ops, local businesses, nonprofits) should expand their share of overall economic activity, as should those sectors with minimal ecological impacts (such as the caregiving professions). A great many jobs could be created this way. But the role of the corporate sector, with its structural demand for increased sales and profits, has to contract and be rolled back.
When deniers react to evidence of human-induced climate change as if capitalism itself were coming under threat, it’s not because they are paranoid. It’s because they are paying attention.
Responding to climate change requires that we break every rule in the free-market playbook and that we do so with great urgency.
We will need to rebuild the public sphere, reverse privatizations, relocalize large parts of economies, scale back overconsumption, bring back long-term planning, heavily regulate and tax corporations, maybe even nationalize some of them, cut military spending and recognize our debts to the global South.
None of this has a hope in hell of happening unless it is accompanied by a massive, broad-based effort to radically reduce the influence that corporations have over the political process.
In short, climate change supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books, binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative.
It is not opposition to the scientific facts of climate change that drives denialists but rather opposition to the real-world implications of those facts.
There is simply no way to square a belief system that vilifies collective action and venerates total market freedom with a problem that demands collective action on an unprecedented scale and a dramatic reining in of the market forces that are creating and deepening the crisis.
This is the nub of the problem: Mainstream political parties that pay homage to the market economy continue to avoid it (if they can), even discussing climate change. Further in fear of the powerful defenders of the market our political leaders will not progress the concrete measures required to halt climate change.
The only wild card is whether some countervailing popular movement will step up to provide a viable alternative to this grim future.
That means not just an alternative set of policy proposals but an alternative worldview to rival the one at the heart of the ecological crisis—this time, embedded in interdependence rather than hyper-individualism, reciprocity rather than dominance and cooperation rather than hierarchy.
Meanwhile:
Auckland Occupation under attack
The only wild card is whether some countervailing popular movement will step up to provide a viable alternative to this grim future.
Yes, there needs to be the development of a new narrative that replaces TINA…. still largely underlying most people’s thinking. It’s not possible to introduce such a scary narrative into an election campaign. The narrative needs to be built up over a year or two, and I can’t see any mainstream political party doing this.
Most people come into contact with, even the lefties, seem oblivious to the global crises developing. They act as if life will go on the way it is indefinitely. So we get these disconnects: the people producing evidence of the collapsing environment, resources and global financial system, while many are talking with awe about the expected new electronic gadets and systems that will be on the market in the near future.
Too many people still have their eyes on the latest shiny consumerist stuff, and are avoiding focusing on reality.
That just won’t cut it.
‘Every’ rule in the ‘free-market’ rule book could be broken, ie regulated to hell. And the spectre of a command economy arising from that suggestion aside – the dominating factors of profit motive allied with the ‘winner takes all’ competitive nature of the market would ensure that things didn’t drift too far from what we do now….or that they reasserted their dominance over time.
The market needs to be abolished and it’s ‘rule book’ trashed. In doing so, it’s absolutely crucial that we don’t create a command economy in its stead as that means an almost complete loss of political freedoms.
The only way forward that would protect our freedoms and our environment while allowing us to continue to produce and distribute goods and services to any meaningful degree is democracy. But the most basic (and all pervasive) structures that we presently use to organise ourselves and our activities are most assuredly anti-democratic – ie, they thwart and stymie democratic aspirations.
So two things (unless we accept either the prospect life under the dictatorship that would inevitably accompany a command economy, or simply diminishing in tandem with our environment) – abolish the market and act together to create genuinely democratic systems/structures of governance for our societies and the economy.
+1
Well said. Not much I can add really. Our present socio-economic system (Capitalism) is failing badly and we have the evidence to show it and yet the rich and the corporates manage to stand in our way of doing something about it. It doesn’t help that the politicians listen to the rich and the corporates rather than the scientists.
We need to be watching sideshow and his dealing room very carefully over the next few months, the MSM have checked out and wasting time now on irrelevant shit.
the most important issues is our assets being flogged by a party with less than a third of the eligible vote calling it a mandate.
The MP are already showing their lack of morality with the ‘we want to be there but not support asset sales’ WTF it only works one way or the other so cross back to the dark side or be in opposition you chumps. Julian cut sharples up in native affairs on this, what a pathetic sell out he is and lucky to have his seat.
tc.
‘the most important issues is our assets being flogged by a party with less than a third of the eligible vote calling it a mandate’
That may superficially seem to be the most important issue but actually the most important issue is preparing for a reduced global oil supply, preparing for hyperinflation or collapse of fiat currencies, and doing something to keep the Earth habitable for humans 40 years from now… all the things politicians continually shy away from.
It’s not as if these are newly discovered predicaments. The warnings go back half a century.
1957 Admiral Rickover:
‘The earth is finite. Fossil fuels are not renewable. In this respect our energy base differs from that of all earlier civilizations. They could have maintained their energy supply by careful cultivation. We cannot. Fuel that has been burned is gone forever. Fuel is even more evanescent than metals. Metals, too, are non-renewable resources threatened with ultimate extinction, but something can be salvaged from scrap. Fuel leaves no scrap and there is nothing man can do to rebuild exhausted fossil fuel reserves. They were created by solar energy 500 million years ago and took eons to grow to their present volume.
In the face of the basic fact that fossil fuel reserves are finite, the exact length of time these reserves will last is important in only one respect: the longer they last, the more time do we have, to invent ways of living off renewable or substitute energy sources and to adjust our economy to the vast changes which we can expect from such a shift.
Fossil fuels resemble capital in the bank. A prudent and responsible parent will use his capital sparingly in order to pass on to his children as much as possible of his inheritance. A selfish and irresponsible parent will squander it in riotous living and care not one whit how his offspring will fare.’
So, how does half a century of near total irrelsponsibilty on behalf of politiclasn and business leaders sit with the next generation?
How impressed with disaster-as-usual politics will the children of this nation be 5 years from now, when it has ‘all turned to custard’?
That’s why we must preserve our sustainable hydro power generation and not let the bankers and investors profit from it…..most people don’t buy the peak oil/ climate change argument but they understand their power bill.
Aye TC.
I think that a slight reframing of the argument helps. As soon as you say “peak oil” many people turn off because the thought and implications are too terrifying.
But if you say that Oil is going to go up in price considerably then you hit their pocket and it tends to get their attention.
And if you say that because of this hydro power is going to be more and more strategically important and we don’t want to have it controlled by Australia or Asia or America then they would have to be an idiot not to agree with you.
I appreciate AFKTT’s comments and agree with him but the framing will lose the argument every time with swing voters.
But unless the Left start to inform the populace about reality, and build a unified movement, however you frame it, the swing voters will side with the individualist case, cause they dominate the argument.
The Left needs to take very careful notice of the Occupy movement, because they are teaching and informing and building and will increasingly gain the support of those of us who see those who are engaged in the political “game” as being blinded by strategy and so prepared to neglect truth in fear of the focus group,
Lead! Teach! Be truthful! Capitalize on the platform this unrest is giving you!
My fear is the Left once again moving to the Right in order to try to capture territory from the Right, rather than seeing that there is massive support for a unified and modern Left that puts aside the Cold War narrative and captures the current issues of inequality, financial terrorism and the environment.
Unfortunately, I have no faith….
A message to Phil Goff.
Show New Zealand one further quality. Show them you can be flexible.
You have just suffered a humiliating defeat, but you also built an image across New Zealand that a lot of people actually liked. Do not resign your leadership, but build on what you have achieved.
(Your predecessor suffered two election defeats in that building process.)
if yur on facebook- leave Phil a message on his wall saying exactly this 🙂 0 well off the mine i go 😛
I did. I come home from work to find that Phil has caved… I am shocked, and disappointed. Just yesterday, I was assuring my son that PG and AK would not do the predicted thing – but they have! I am very sad.
Hear hear I think Phil should stay. Key is scared of him and he now has the knowledge of how to intimidate him. Also has higher in telligence integrity,empathy and honesty. Everything that Key does not have Phil had a great campaign under extremely trying circumstances and came out strong. STAY! If he does not stay please do not inflict Cunliffe on us. He has already showed his absol lute lack of loyalty
Cunliffe’s been loyal, you’ve just fallen into the CT MSM trap that he wasn’t propagated by the like of codrington etc.
They’re lining up the attack lines before he’s even got the gig, if he gets it which means they fear him.
In New Plymouth: Young 16,550, Little 12,420:.
What was a marginal seat that National only just managed to clinch from Harry ‘Do-nothing’ in 2008 is now firmly blue.
In view of all the flags and banners and billboards that were plastered all around the city it goes to show that people were not impressed by Little’s repeated failure to come up with the right answers when questioned. Some people were particularly irritated by his arrogance and talking down to them. New Plymouth has just fought a successful battle to get rid of fluoride in the water. Little’s suggestion that it could be re-imposed by central government if Labour got in went down like a lead balloon, as did his put down of those concerned about takeover of the natural food supply by global corporqations.
I was particualrly unimpressed by the local union representative who refused to accept anything that I said to him about the real world. Even as the Japanese economy continues to implode he told me that NZ needed to be ‘developed’ using funds derived from Japanese investors. There are just too many uninformed fuckwits and people who are ‘away with the fairies’ in the Labour movement at the moment.
Little’s task was made doubly hard by having a leader whom the right rejected on principle and the left remembered as being closely associated with corporate looting, free trade deals etc.
And Labour supporters should never forget that Key gained power in 2008 because so many people were thoroughly sick of the arrogantce of the hypocritical and dicatatorial government of Helen Clark.
My parents voted Labour all their lives, and I should be a Labour supporter. But I’m not because Labour stands for and promotes so much that is wrong with our society.
And I cannot possibly have any respect for anyone who was in power between 2000 and 2008 who IGNORED all the repeated warnings about peak oil and the dire consequences of doing nothing to prepare for it. The NZ economy is nearly 100% dependent on oil, most of which is imported. We are about to become completely ‘screwed’ because the last Labour government was DISHONEST. Had it come clean on the crucial issues of the time when it was firmly in power and commenced strategies to deal with them ‘the cat would be out of the bag’ and could not be put back in by any subsequent government. And we would not be in the mess we are in now.
Labour is presently paying the price for its history of failure to listen and failure to act appropriately, which go right back to the mid-1980s.
National, on the other hand, is just a ‘circus’ run by opportunists who know how ot manipulate the masses.
A very interesting outlook.
If I read you right, you are condemning Labour more harshly because Labour could’ve and should’ve known better, and acted more wisely.
While National are just a bunch of manipulative fuckwits who cause massive damage and harm but thats what they do anyways regardless of the decade or the situation.
Your proposition, if I have rendered it correctly, actually makes some kind of sickening sense.
CV,
Yes. That is pretty much what I am saying.
Yes, it is sickening.
However, we do live in a sick world which is geting sicker by the day. The crux of the problem is that rather than acknowledging that sickness, Labour just wants to perpetuate the system that is making us all sicker by the day. (As do the Greens, of course,)
Labour (for good or bad) has traditionally been a reforming party. They went some way towards this by fronting up with CGT.
However, it’s not enough. We need centrally planned, national initiatives to prepare NZ for the future – eg, no more oil & pubic transport, radically changing our money system (stop producing fiat money and use the issuing of currency to fund some future proofing projects).
fiat currency is money that is valid by government decree. Issuing of currency by government would still be fiat currency.
It’s not fiat currency that is the problem but the fractional reserve banking system which lets private banks print money essentially without limit – and then charge interest on it.
Point taken. When I was typing it I had in mind the ability of banks to create money (fractional reserve as you point out).
Converting these banking institutions into old fashioned ‘savings and loans’ outfits will sort out the problem.
That and increasing the supply of interest free government produced money to about 25%.
Yup, spot on.
You win the game by playing to the paradigms that are in front of you no matter how tasteless or against your values they may be so if you wanna win learn style over substance Labour and master the catchy soundbite no more blah blah blah as the swingers aint listening.
Less is more in a tweety world attention span.
“While National are just a bunch of manipulative fuckwits who cause massive damage and harm but thats what they do anyways regardless of the decade or the situation.”
Manipulative? In what sense? Cause massive damage and harm? Where and when? Colonial, at least take the time to back up your sweeping statements with some facts, else you’ll just appear to be a ranting nut job.
Learn english, dickhead.
Although, rather humourously, nats did and do “cause massive damage and harm” to the unemployed, the poor, children, and every combination thereof via their policies. Not to mention the environment, what with the recent mining announcement and attitudes to “100% pure”..
McFlock, another name caller with little of import to say and even less with regards to fact to back it up. My English is just fine thanks.
Thing is I dont care about what you think, my purpose is to get Key and English out of power come 2014.
Colonial, you are therefore arguing that by just saying a whole lot of stuff, much of it plucked from thin air with no basis of fact, Key and English will be removed? Goff and his people tried that, and copped a hiding, so you propose that by doing the same thing again, the result will be different?
Jenny, Carol.
This planet is run by money-lenders for the benefit of money-lenders. Acnowledging the reality of climate change (we are on track for a largely uninhabitbale Earth by mid-century) would ruin their financial Ponzi scheme, which is predicated on perpetual growth and perpetual increases in emissions.
Also, corporations have a huge say in how the world is managed (some would say a greater say that most governments). Corporations have few major imperitives, one of the most important being to maximise profits for shareholders. That can only be achieved by economic growth which requires ever increasing use of fossil fuels.
The fact that fossil fuels necessary for global economic growth are no longer available or that catastrophic climate change is on the way is of no interest to investment bankers, the vast majority of whom are scientifically illiterate (as are most elected representatives).
Right now the only imperitive is to prevent the house of cards economic system falling to pieces immediately by using any means possible; energetically that means by deep water drilling, fracking, tar sands, coal-to-liquid-fuels, starving millions of people to death via the use of food-to-fuel schems etc. and financially it means by bailouts, ‘quantitavie easing’, ‘special drawing rights’, ‘stabilty funds’ or whatever euphemism is in vogue this particular month to decsribe creating money out of thin air.
The fact that marlets have risen overnight is no indication that the system has a future. And every day the system continues te operate reduces the life expectancy and quality of life of children living now.
Practically everything you need to know to understand the big picture is here:
http://www.publishme.co.nz/shop/theeasyway-p-684.html
AFKTT – I think the earth will be OK mid-century. The climate is always changing. CO2 levels are already very low (if they go below 200 ppm, plants die) and the “greenhouse effect” is misnamed. Climate science is in a parlous state, based on lies and misinformation.
Check here – http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2011/11/booker-global-warming-greatest-delusion-in-history/#more-11986 – or read Willis Eschenbach’s letter to Phil Jones that I posted a link to yesterday.
There are real problems to worry about – but so-called climate change is not one of them, neither is concern over a trace, beneficial gas in the atmosphere.
Annette.
I don’t know how old you are but most under the age of 70 are going to face catastrophe within their natural lifespan. (The ones that won’t will have died.)
If that so-called article is the best you can come up with, we truly are ‘screwed’. Not only does the item simply pose a question but it also makes no mention of climate science! What else would we expect from a corporate source of ‘information’?
I suggest you thoroughly check the following, and related articles on the same site, if you actually want to become informed.
On the other hand, if you prefer to remain in your state of delusional ignorance and want to perish, don’t bother.
‘To borrow a line from Pete Seeger, “When will we ever learn?” If Karl Marx were alive today he would quickly see that television has become the opium of the people, dulling our senses and keeping our minds focused on trivial matters even as the world around us careens further out of control every day. What passes for national news media today is all corporate owned and dedicated to telling us as little as possible, placing virtually nothing in context, and talking to “experts” in thirty second sound bites. What they don’t tell us is often the stuff we really need to know.
http://guymcpherson.com/2011/11/global-warming-population-growth-and-food-supplies-when-will-americans-finally-get-it/
Television – the weapon of mass distraction
http://timothywstanley.com/storage/CalvinandHobbesReligionMarxTV.jpg
Hi Annette, you’re back pimping your denier claptrap. Pass the salt.
Annette..
Subscriber to Koch Bros funded Heartland Institute perhaps?
Do you understand the science behind climate change Annette because you’ve made no effort to defend the claptrap you posted here.
I rather suspect you’re just another loud mouth repeater like Delingpole who openly admits that he doesn’t even read any scientific sources and relies on other peoples interpretations.
Annette you said “I think the earth will be OK mid-century” your words seem sincere but i must ask if you are aware that there is a lot more to this topic than the very real although largely distractionary tactics of Oil consumption and Carbon emissions. Please remember the hard facts . . .
US State and Fedral funding is being funnelled into programmes that officially deny they have anything to do with weather manipulation despite State, Federal, Congessional and Senate documentation stating in plain english these programmes exist for the purpose of weather modification and climate adjustment.
It is a fact being hidden from the World in plain sight. There are seventeen sites known of globally, including one in Australia. Read the literature, watch the videos, chat with the large numbers of informed people working very hard to help everyday people like you and me to understand the implications of the sciences involved. If you prefer the FastFood media watch Jesse Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory show as a credible low impact introduction.
Most importantly look at the volumes of declassified and discovered documentation from the US Government that references the use of HAARP in the study and application of technology for weather manipulation, climate control and other purposes. It is out there, in black and white.
There are encampments of reality all over the place if you choose to read the tracks. I am not here to give co-ordinates to a grand view or dictate what constitues a landmark on your journey.
The walls may be high but here is a gate opened by others, for the first few steps of your journey
google: haarp study weather modification documents
Wow Annette, you are so going to get attacked! I dared to say something similar once, (along with expressing a pro-life view) and I am still be insulted, attacked and sworn at months later. It’s all about conformity here… 🙁
Are you sure the response wasn’t about your bigotry?
Climate change deniers like Annette rightly get flak on this site, just like every other self centred sub-species of rightie who turns up here. But, mainly, it will be her deluded ideas that get attacked, not her.
And, by the way, comments like this don’t help your rep, either. Garner’s not fat and even if he was, it does not alter his ability to do the job he is paid for. And being blonde is not an indicator of a woman’s capacity to do a similar job. It’s actually not about conformity, it’s about respect. If you don’t respect people, don’t expect to them to respect you.
Hilarious. My bigotry is in your head (it’s one of your obsessions.)
Not as far as I’ve seen so far…
You do keep banging on testerically about my calling people fat, don’t you? Got weight issues yourself? He was bordering on obese when I last saw him (you don’t seem to get that I don’t see TV news, I hear it.)
No, it’s not. But what would you like me to have called her? A moron? I don’t even know if she’s blonde. She certainly sounds it. I’ll say it slowly for the hard-of-thinking – I used the term “dumb blonde” f-i-g-u-r-a-t-i-v-e- l-y…
Oh this is your best line yet! Considering the nice line in insults that has been dished out to me for alleged “bigotry” you have the chutzpah of an IDF colonel to bang on about respect! Respect has to be earned, man and I will never respect a hypocritical sneering slimeball like you.
Your bigotry is real, and you’ve confirmed it, remember? Teh gays? Ring any bells?
“He was bordering on obese when I last saw him (you don’t seem to get that I don’t see TV news, I hear it.”
What does the latter part of that sentence mean? Why would I ‘get’ anything about your viewing habits? And if you don’t ‘see’ TV, how do you know Garner is bordering on obese or that another journo is blonde?
Do you not bother to read what I say? Do you, as another man admitted on another site only skim what I say? I’ve said often enough that I heard something on the TV news… That should have been a stonking great clue… You’re ignoring (quite deliberately) that I said right above that Garner was bordering on obese when I last saw him and also that I didn’t know whether the girl was blonde, I simply was using the term ‘dumb blonde’ f-i-g-u-r-a-t-i-v-e-l-y. Do learn to read.
Vicky, i would like to say if this site was all about conformity i would have been banned long ago.
IMHO The Standard is a fair, stable environment where information and ideas are shared in a balanced if not always passive manner. What I personally appreciate about the Standard is how when you say something that is fundamentally incorrect, there are usually helpful people who are more than willing to offer you alternatives to your point of view. I have been on both sides of that situation and I for one hope it never changes.
People today are so hungry for the self-assurance of their own beliefs being ‘more right’ than another’s, that full comprehension of any position is all too often sacrificed by attitudes that can only be ascribed to bigotry and ignorance. This is rarely the fault of the person presenting the view.
It is more likely to be the foundation of the information they were exposed to.
Dear Freedom, please don’t be so patronising. Thanks in advance… Obviously, I don’t want people “who are more than willing” offering me alternatives to my point of view, as I don’t agree with them that I am wrong! IMO, VoR is banging his usual drum about how much he hates and despises me, because of what he sees as bigotry, because I seriously don’t want to have to imagine S&M, cock rings and posing pouches before I know if it’s worth the risk of disagreeing with some people… who are so precious that their genitals hurt when they’re contradicted! 😀
This from the person who accuses almost everyone who disagrees with her of being misogynistic, homosexual, middle-aged males who fantasise that some young women possibly have sex for the fun of it (or some combination of a majority of the descriptors).
I spend my working day trying to make sense of essays written by learners of English as a second language. The sentences they write generally make more sense than the above. Homosexual men are misogynists, it goes with the territory. That being said, what are you saying about young women – that I say they have sex for fun, or that other people do? It’s a fact that some young women have sex for fun – so what? Why does that bother you?
“Homosexual men are misogynists, it goes with the territory.”
Yep, that’s the stuff right there – a nice wee bit of bigotry from your stunningly planked worldview.
” It’s a fact that some young women have sex for fun – so what? Why does that bother you?”
I was referring to a previous discussion where you asserted that anyone who claimed that (any women enjoyed one night stands for the fun of one night stands) were simply middle-aged men indulging in a fantasy, or words to that effect. I would look it up, but I don’t give a flying fuck.
You’re about due to play the victim because people refuse to tolerate your own intolerance, so bye bye.
????????????????????????????????????????????????
Obviously you do give a flying fuck, or you wouldn’t keep ranting! I suggest you do in fact look up the discussion you’re talking about, because I don’t remember any such thing!
As for your last sentence, I have no clue what you mean. I am not sure you do. But it would be very good if you’d stop clogging the thread with irrelevancies, ‘kay? Thanks. Bye! 🙂
Seriously? You were arguing [badly] with several individuals and being massively condescending withastonishingly little basis – no recollection? I guess it all just mixed in with the rest.
Not really, it is however pretty damn opinionated and you tend to get some robust argument with a considerable memory. But I seem to remember you held your end up well enough that I didn’t feel the need to intervene.
The only real conformity is that which I and the moderators apply. It concentrates on behavior, is very very heavy handed when I do it (sarcastic if the sprout does it, and very very sudden when Irish does it’ and the others are rather nice), and focuses on newbies to the site or people released from bans. Mostly that concentrates on making sure that people know exactly who runs the site (not them) and that we are intolerant to anything that we think makes the comment section worse (mostly stupid assertions, trolling, and pointless abuse).
There is quite a lot right now because I amnesty many people after the election, the news is about the left parties, and here are few stupid gloaters around – who I rather enjoy being a education to.
I see your point, but even so, you do have to admit that some sins are regarded as unforgiveable here – such as being witty at the expense of some people’s precious ideas about their sex lives! Or, advocating pro-life views – I remember a young woman called something like Bonnie being hounded away, because she dared to express pro-life opinions… That was just shameful! I’d like to point out to the attackers who will be lining up with acid to fling, that being pro-life for me, means opposing abortion, euthanasia, war and capital punishment as well! Which reminds me that when I submitted a guest post on capital punishment, it fell into the event horizon of a black hole. What, opposing capital punishment is not a left idea any more? 🙁
Depends who you wind up in an discussion with – for instance I have very strong views on the opposite side of the fence to you on abortion. But I can’t recall ever having ever expressed them here. I have quite strong views on the use of military force which would probably upset around two thirds of the commentators here. I can remember expressing them once or twice. What I am saying is that on most topics you only get a few people commenting, and they are frequently commenting strongly from several angles. Not worth getting wound up about whoever you are arguing with. Just concentrate on the much larger group of people watching because they will be the ones who are less committed and may be convinced.
We don’t tend to moderate discussions that are arguing about something even if it is getting heated. We’d just step in if we saw a behavioral problem like pointless abuse (which has quite a specific meaning the way that the moderators use it).
Guest posts get pulled and posted when a editor reads one that that they personally like and when the queue isn’t already chocka. Who is puts up the contributions depends on who has time to read it, likes it, copies it into a post, finds a graphic to add, writes an excerpt for the front page, and schedules it. On many days regardless of how good the writing is, no-one will have time. For instance today would be a good day for guest posts – but I haven’t looked at the mail since this morning because of the type of code I’m writing.
Putting up guest posts is quite labour intensive especially if you have to go through all of the steps (that is a broad hint to tell you that it is more likely to happen if most of those steps are done before we read the post). Personally my priority is the stability of the site and moderation. After I run through the moderation these days, answering or writing a few comments or notes, I’m usually on negative time for work. So I often don’t even read contributed posts – especially when I’m cracking through the end of a software project or involved in an election. I guess that others have similar time issues.
So what happens now that the slithery ones are back in the driving seat? Resist and protest? Or succumb and join the party?
Plan B mate, plan B. Which for me is staying in NZ and tackling the issues on other fronts for the next couple of years. Then roll on 2014.
actaully plan A was economy crashed and burning would align the people with labour.
Plan B is the far to cunning Key / Joyce crew have abided there time and will now unleash their radical right agenda with there so called mandate…bennies bashed, state assets kissed good bye, more concession and opportunity to the wealthy to get wealthier, look to state sector getting knifed, unions and free worker burnt at the stake to raise company profits, freeing up of resources, selling infrastructure, water and anything not nailed down…3 year before the cycle runs out so the Tories must act and act fast and fuck the peasants, the slaves and anyone not of the elite class..
The Tories have bought out the MP, solidified the right voting block and have great organisation on the ground.
The Fight is not for the left votig block but of the middle voting block that has been captured by smile and wave and ‘trust me’ ‘trust me’ in these tough economic times.
Yeah I know what you are saying but imo screw the mythical middle.
We need to get people living on less than $40,000 pa to get off their asses and vote for Labour. And given that is some 60% of the country I fail to see what the problem for Labour is. Greens and NZ1 can have some of the aspirational middle class vote, fine.
Only 5% of the country earn $90K pa and over. They are the only people who should be voting National.
But how do you solve stupidity? Wellington residents know that massive public sector cuts are coming under National. But they swung to the NATs anyway.
If people really want to vote against their own interests, who are we to stop them?
wellington central went to grant by heaps, good old grant increased his majority but the party vote went westward due to what…poor campaign strategy on not going after the party vote.
you’re saying that people needed to be told to party vote Labour? And in the absence of that voters in Wellington Central conveniently forgot that National has been slashing and burning the public sector and that there is far more to come from the NATs?
Not likely. They liked Grant as an MP, they didn’t want back Labour to be in power, full stop.
vto.
My suggestion is to disengage as much as possible. Know where you can get drinkable water. Prepare to produce your own food or be prepared to adopt a hunter-gatherer lifesyle. Be psychologically prepared for the mayhem that will come when oil depletion reaches the critical point of demolishing the global economic system (2013-15?).
I see NWS has been hit hard again. There will soon come a time when the hits come harder and faster than repairs can be organised and the energy needed to carry out repairs won’t be available.
And don’t own a farm within 100km of a large population, lest it be ransacked and pillaged..
What’s NWS?
NSW I guess – hit by floods
Hi VTO I think AFKTT is referring to New South Wales which has gotten some more flooding again.
vto.
Apologies. Typing too fast; letters out of order.
NSW.
http://www.ses.nsw.gov.au/news/2011/monday_morning_flood_update
Personally I think the time to peacefully resist has come to an end. However I’m hopeful that I’m wrong and that the right wing will start to wake up before it’s too late. The signs aren’t looking all that good though.
Disengaging from supporting the defunct and destructive system is a good idea, but there needs to be more resistance politically.
+1
This election win, Greens move to mainstream, Labours inevitable ratchet to the Right all lead to the conclusion that there are going to have to be bodies in front of bulldozers!
Two party Democracy, which is essentially where the majority mindset sits – even in our MMP environment – make Politics impotent. Citizens need to stand up or continue to watch the progress of Totalitarianism and Environmental collapse.
The RWNJs will never wake up – they live in a constant state of denial of reality.
If this shit goes down (not so bad here cf the US) being stuck a 100km in the middle of nowhere with just a couple of people on a farm is NOT a good idea. You actually want a farm near a hamlet or small town dependent on it. (Your point on being away from very large population centres is valid however).
That way locals will help protect you and your property from marauders and bandits.
Here’s my two cents on why people are confused about the nature of our National debt:
http://aotearoaawiderperspective.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/italian-job-stealing-2451-8-tons-of-gold-with-style/
money lenders = drug dealers
these governments should default. or rather, they should pull the same trick as the money printers and simply write new laws to allow them to repay when able to, subject to satisfying their citizens needs first.
the money printers / lenders can just wait in line. near the back.
You know our opinions have grown a lot closer over the years haven’t they?:-)
From David Graeber’s “Debt”
“But in a way 2008 let the cat out of the bag. We realize now that if money is owed by really important players, even trillions in debts can be made to disappear or renegotiated away. Money is just a social arrangement, a set of promises or IOUs”
http://janelanaweb.com/trends/david-graeber-the-american-empire-collapse-is-effectively-being-negotiated-both-internationally-and-within/
Yep!
Quoteing article:-
That’s a realisation I had a few years back. Government debt isn’t there because it has to be but because it allows a permanent guaranteed income for a few from the many. A lot of rich people would have been very upset that NZ was paying down its debt from 2000 to 2008 but very happy that the present NAct government massively increased our deficits for no purpose.
The governments defaulting and writing off the external private debt is actually the only rational move. They won’t be allowed to do this by the banksters though. The only way to get it done would be a revolution by the people against the banks.
But the likes of David Graeber and Seteve Keen are suddenly all over the mainstream media debating the idea of Debt forgiveness and showing historical precedent for it, but we need the dialogue to broaden, we need to continue to educate and inform and learn and we need to push this outside of the closed loop of the blogosphere and out to the public.
Information / propaganda is where the real battle is fought, the Left need to unite, put aside the cold war narrative which weakens them, and inform a populace which will be increasingly looking for answers as the economic crisis deepens.
Superb decision by US judge.
Too many cases brought by government regulators against finance institutions have been resolved by way of settlement in which the finance institution pays a settlement on condition that they did not admit any wrong doing or accepting any liability. But here “come da judge”……
http://thesecondalarm.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/parkposter.png?w=450&h=355
We are the 99% is catchy and all, but this is by far the best Occupy slogan that’s out there
+1
+1 Make a great teeshirt slogan!
That’s so encouraging to read. Wonderful wisdom on Judge Jed S. Rakoff’s part. Let’s hope it starts the ball rolling!
It seems that we’ve been advancing technology despite capitalism rather than because of it.
???
DAT was widely used in the industry for years precisely because it was the best and easiest way to write and rewrite high quality digital audio. It only fell out of favour when powerful processors, large amounts of RAM and bigger hard drives rendered it obsolete as a recording medium in the late 90s.
Even then it was favoured by many as an archival medium and for reliable playback of backing tracks in live settings.
Hardly a flop.
I see new Roundtable head Roger Partridge is spouting the same inanities as Kerr before him. These people don’t even seem to think. They just spout.
Partridge blithely kept stating, in a Press piece today, that regulation should be reduced. He gave no explanation as to why this is helpful to people, nor did he provide any evidence as to how this works, or has worked in the past. But here is some evidence for you Partridge…
Deregulation of the finance sector – led directly to people losing their life savings.
Deregulation of the building sector – led directly to people’s homes rotting and falling apart.
Deregulation of the mining safety sector – led directly to the killing of 29 men at Pike River.
Good one Partridge – you’re onto it ….
Banks was saying the same thing yesterday. Yet, we are the third easiest country in the world in which to do business. How can that be if we are so bogged down by regulation? Could it be that when business isn’t thriving it’s time to blame the government? Could it be that they don’t know what else to say? They have no other answers!
It’s part of the RWNJ psyche – when something is going wrong it’s someone else’s fault and not them or anything they said or did.
Business lobbyists whinge like farmers. We could have the least regulated, lowest taxed nation on the planet and they’d still whinge.
I say fuck ’em. Farmers need to be regulated or we end up with cowshit in the drinking water, businesses need to be regulated or we end up as serfs, with lead in the toothpaste and arsenic in the underpants.
Or vice versa.
Low voter turnout
It is highly undemocratic to work to remove people’s right to vote and disincentives the poor from participating in politics. National know that the poor are more likely to disengage and actively work to exploit this dynamic…
National don’t waste time getting the news out to those they like!
Do not recall seeing this on the MSM yesterday, or, come to think of it, in their main Policy docs either
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/80-starting-out-wage-way-ck-105234
I watched the two hours of Native Affairs on Maori TV last night. Brilliant. Format and Julian the reason that it runs circles around all other free to air TV. I think that it was the best review of the election I have seen or read or heard and it went well beyond the Maori perspective. Interviews with:
Peta Sharples: grumpy
Hone: Optimistic
Winston: emphatic and dangerous for National
Materia: Succinct and clever
Shane: Best appraisal of Labour now and future
Kelvin: Stiff upper lip
Simon Bridges: Believed to be a future National Leader.
Panel: Mike King surprisingly perceptive, Matt McCartney good points, Sandra Lee explores the angles.
Tried to get a link but can’t. Reruns on Sunday evening?
two little things that have bugged the hell out of me the last 24 hours
1: NZ Herald stating in its map that 100% of the vote has been counted,
2: “If this was First Past the Post and there were 100 MPs, there would be roughly 65 National seats and 35 Labour, ” Mr Key, we are not a two party state despite your wet dreams of being America’s President
Amazing, disturbing, inspiring pictures from Egypt last week…
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/11/scenes-from-egypts-unfinished-revolution/100194/
Is it just me or does it seem a bit weird that the two parties with the least mandate to be in parliament are the ones Key will give ministerial portfolios to?
Yes Felix I had a little rant to myself this morning about this very issue. Banks speaks for 1% of the population yet he’s a Minister of the Crown?! There’s something not right about that.
Polling affects election outcomes
http://www.3news.co.nz/Did-opinion-polls-influence-the-election/tabid/370/articleID/234528/Default.aspx
Ban media polling and media polling discussion in the immediate run up to election day, I say.
or, if they insist on using them they must be obligated to publish the whole poll, including but not limited to;
: the methodology of the poll
: the number of people polled
: the numbers who hang up
: the numbers who choose not to answer a particular question
: the don’t knows for each question
: the areas polled
and most importantly,
: a full and specific list of questions asked
basically they should be regulated to publish the poll and not the spin
Yep have that in place for the entire of the regulated period, with a full ban on media polls and media polls discussion for the 24 hours before E-Day.
I actually think I preferred my suggestion yesterday. Have them poll the policies and not the party, candidates or preferred PM. Then have them link those policies back to the parties that way we might have an informed populace voting rather than a led populace voting.
“I actually think I preferred my suggestion yesterday. Have them poll the policies and not the party, ”
Draco, I would like to point out that my comment above in no way stipulates the poll’s subject
it simply asks for some legitimacy to the public dissemination of the results
Yes, I realised that. That’s why I responded to CV’s post of outright banning. Having it so that they poll on the policies they would then be forced to discuss the policies rather than the parties (hopefully, although I’m sure that they could find some way around it). Your suggestion would complement mine.
oops , i will pay more attention to the post-number thingys 🙂 (shuffles away quietly)
Corporate Media
Unfortunately factual reporting has been declining worldwide over the last few years… and especially in New Zealand. The continued underreporting of many important issues just one indicator that New Zealand’s mainstream media and their watchdogs are biased.
so did kweewee have a two term agreement in his contract with national?
i have a bet on that he will step down for personal/family reasons within twelve weeks of the election date
and labour must invest in micropulse radio stations so that they can have their own broadcasting outlet.
relying on radio skwawkbak and the hair and teeth jobs on teeveennzzzz will never be enough when they are beholden to the money masters.
I heard Banks or Brash describe themselves as Centre Right. Is that right? What would Far Right look like? How far can you lean to the Right before you fall over?
Banks actually described himself and Paul Goldsmith as “Centre Right” telling the electorate of Epsom that a vote for himself would return “Two Centre Right MPs” to government.
He neglected to tell the people of Epsom, that the purpose of his standing was to return the extreme right leader of ACT to parliament.
Fitch upgrades Australia to AAA
Avg Australian wages up by 4%
Kisckstarter, No – Space NYC
looks like they do great work
94 yr old Stéphane Hessel on Occupy Wall Street, lessons from the French resistance, democracy, Middle East, Security: Find the Time for Outrage When Your Values Are Not Respected
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/10/10/stphane_hessel_on_occupy_wall_street_find_the_time_for_outrage_when_your_values_are_not_respected
Thought for the day:
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” – Winston Churchill
Well, that just proves that Churchill was an idiot – just like all other RWNJs.
I seem to recall that Churchill didnt unpick the NHS when returned to power in 1951.
Exactly, just like ShonKey won’t dispatch what he called in parliament “communism by stealth” the in work tax credit, or Working For Families middle class welfare payment.
Well, that didn’t take long.
More here
NAct, back to destroying our children’s future.
NAct knew about this months ago.
I’d imagine, Draco, that the miners would far rather have an open cast mine that go for say, a 2.5km tunnel that goes through a fault line, and cannot be used as an escape route should their be for argument’s sake, a methane explosion. You might recall this example, signed off by the Labour Party. It cost people their lives.
I’d imagine that you’re an idiot. Labour didn’t design and administer Pike River, that was left to the free-market.
Oh, and I’d prefer it if the coal was left in the ground. We (NZ) don’t need to use it just yet but it may become useful in another century or so.
Further to my post at No 15.
Native Affairs is now available online: “Kowhiri Post Election”
http://www.maoritelevision.com/Default.aspx?tabid=683&pid=12340
The interviews in the first hour are excellent and cast more light that most commentaries.
Chevron, Pay For The Damage You Caused to Brazil’s Beaches!
So, Phil Goff and Annette King have in fact gone. A dumb blonde on TV3 (one Rebecca Wright) says “they’ve gotten (sic) the message loud and clear that their time is over”..
I am completely disgusted. Why did Phil satisfy the yapping media by this action? Why (for once) didn’t Labour do the right thing instead of the expected thing? Fatty Garner is as overjoyed as the Wright idiot is gormless, imagining bloodbaths etc. He’s so excited he’s gabbling like a race caller. Yet a another one of his nasty gittish predictions has come true. By contrast National’s bulging caucus room was all sweetness and light and joy he says. Shame.
Duncan Garner was going on like Labour is already having a fight… is he related to Cameron Slater by any chance? I mean both National hacks look similar… or is that just what happens when you talk too much shit?
lol yeah Garner has def packed the tonnes on. Like this big>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Seen it sideways on tv and fuk hes pregnant with Keys kid
😛
Hi there. Not sure who you are Vicky32 but I can assure you that Rebecca Wright is no ‘dumb blonde’. Naturally blonde, yes, but so what? Misogynist insults like yours serve no purpose. Dumb? Definitely not. She went after Banks like a Rottweiler over the tea tapes.
And no, I’m not her. But I do know her wonderful family and I found your insults quite offensive.
Cheers
I particularly liked it how Patrick Gower came to her rescue after Banks made a complete fool of himself going on about suppositions Rebecca Wright was fantasizing about. LOL I wonder how many woman voted for Act?
Haha yeah not many I suspect!!
toughshit
the gloves are off on the whole lot of them
cant DEeal tell the cow to stfu or dont dish it out
Frida, I apologise. I am sorry, I should not have said the things about her that I did.
Cheers for the apology Vicky. I totally get your feelings about the MSM. I share them, but let’s not get personal eh? We’re just lowering ourselves to their level. And Rebecca really isn’t one of the problematic ones 🙂
Peace
“Bienvenida al Cantri”
Ah, that inefficient socialism strikes again…
Oh, wait.
It’s worse than we thought. While the big boys of Wall Street, the ones we thought were not in danger (JP Morgan and others), were secretly borrowing $1.2 trillion from the Fed.
Yes I heard Kathryn Ryan’s US correspondent detailing some of this story just before 10:00am this morning. I had seen some clues around this months ago, but this is now the official confirmation.
BTW the total sum involved is at least $7.7Trillion. .. almost 50% of the entire US annual GDP.
Let’s put this in a NZ context… it’s more or less the equivalent of the Reserve Bank giving NZ$100b to the four big Australian banks at an interest rate of 0.1%… and not telling anyone.
Habermas, the Last European
Jürgen Habermas has had enough. The philosopher is doing all he can these days to call attention to what he sees as the demise of the European ideal. He hopes he can help save it — from inept politicians and the dark forces of the market.
[—]
And then he’s really angry again: “I condemn the political parties. Our politicians have long been incapable of aspiring to anything whatsoever other than being re-elected. They have no political substance whatsoever, no convictions.”
And they’re off. On demand webcasts of the UN Climate change conference in Durban.
The job market is constantly shifting…I would call it musical chairs, or a merry-go-round. People retire, move to a different job or role, new jobs are created, seasonal work becomes available, people leave for personal reaons etc. It is easy to point to the number of unemployed, and say “there are no jobs!” as if the job ‘market’ – for want of a better term – was a fixed and imovable position instead of endlessly fluid. The job market is not a solid concrete wall, it is porous and shifting.
The benefit system provides a safety net for people who find themselves unemployed; a safety net that ensures that they are covered until they can jump back on the carousel. It’s a bus stop until the next bus comes along. Often quite a lot of people will be at the bust stop at any one time, but they are always in preperation for the next bus, and then they catch and it’s someone else’s turn to wait at the bus stop….temporarily.
It is not meant to be a lifestyle choice. Anyone remaining on a benefit for a considerably lengthy period of time is going to suffer as a direct result because they are going to suffer an erosion of their self esteem. Which is why I don’t understand why long-term beneficiaries are seemingly unable to take their turn on the work carousel, but are content to milk the taxpayer while at the same time subsiding into a life missing (the) dignity (that work provides). Labour, as the party of work and workers, should understand this.
There was a question during one of the leaders debates from a person who (apparently) had a degree, but had been unemployed for 2 years, unable to find employment. If I was to be out of job next week, I would back myself to have another one within 2 weeks, and I don’t have a degree. I would take a vacant spot on the carousel. The reality is: there are people who can’t or won’t take a turn themselves – no matter what the disasterous consequences are for themselves. Either they don’t want to work, or there is something about them that ensures that they don’t get past the interview process, or they consider themselves above many different types of work.
What many cannot comprehend, yet try to, is the constant defence by the left of the dug-in, firmly entrenched long term beneficiary who dances down a path that leads eventually to inter-generational welfare depenendance and ‘rogue feral’ status. After all, Labour is the party of state intervention, yet they will not intervene to help those most in need get employed. A carrot and stick approach is needed to save lives, otherwise we are going to see an epedemic of Kahui type scenario’s – if we are not already. The days of 100% employment are gone, but so to should the days of “I can’t get a job, year upon year, decade upon decade”.
[lprent: out of context to the post and the surrounding comment. Moved to OpenMike. ]
There is no need for unemployment but having full employment degrades profits which is why John Key promised to lower wages and why Bill English said that you couldn’t have less than 6% unemployment.
We don’t defend them, we try to help them to find their way and also accept that, no matter what we do, there will always be some who cannot be helped. NAct, on the other hand, just rant and rave at people and then punish them for things that aren’t their fault.
snap.
I’ll just add that I know a couple of people who “backed themselves” to be back in work within a couple of weeks after being laid off. It didn’t always work out that way, even though they were skilled workers with excellent references – but then the average tory seems to have an inflated sense of their own productive worth, whatever the economy is like.
Post election rant
All the while the right continue to profess their ignorant rhetoric like it’s a mantra that will stop National taking even more taxes from them and distributing it to their already wealthy mates… a position that most right wing supporters will never attain…
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1111/S00970/let-link-maximize-your-new-zealand-business-purchase-or-sale.htm
scavenging scum
DIY search engine takes on Google
Could this be the begging of the end of massive centralised search engine sever farms?
It is unlikely. The logistics of updating numerous systems wih spider updates will massively favor centralized hubs compared with dispersed ones. I’ve written and maintained both. In fact this site operates dispersed.
If garenr is pregnant its more likely to be the offspring of fatboy farrar.
you can see why parlaiament wont do anything about fatty foods when garner and farrar live on a diet of sausage rolls and rubber chickens.
Aucklands vote is blue because all these new aspirationals hanging on to plummeting mainstreet real estate prices. The banks aren’t lending to mainstreet.
Someone needs to get real on poor fools who bought rental property thinking that it would be their meal ticket after ten years of work. Housing prices needs to plummet to meet the real new couple/ family market, that’s life
Someone needs to get real on poor fools who bought rental property thinking that it would be their meal ticket after ten years of work. Housing prices needs to plummet to meet the real new couple/ family market, that’s life.
The poor can’t do modern mortgages. Working and non-working and we shaw as hell don’t want to make you and your kids fat paying off a dumb- ass high rent.