The weather's a little ragged here today, but there's a new cafe in the village – Jacob's Rivery Bakery, and it's wonderful; excellent coffee, vegetarian/vegan'organic food – I especially like the jackfruit "sausage" roll; the staff are super-friendly, vibrant young people, all of whom live in the village and locals have taken to meeting there; by design or accident, for all sorts of impromptu discussions and debates, celebrations and retreats from ordinary life. The decor is "plants", to my eye at least; there are dozens of glossy, well-cared-for pot plants on shelves and stands throughout the cafe, and I feel at home amongst them. The building is the historic post office with postmasters living quarters upstairs. The enormous clock that used to be fixed high on the wall on the street-face of the building sits in the local museum now; I wish they'd put it back up! If ever you are in Riverton, stop off there for a good time, before walking two stores to the north, where you'll discover the Riverton Environment Centre and everything on offer there, including a yarn with one of the volunteers there, a bearded chap who's willing to die in a ditch for the Green Party
A wonderful picture you paint Robert. We live in turbulent times and we should treasure those oasis of order and grace we do have.
One day we will get back home and I'll make a point of visiting Riverton. An old friend of mine once said, tongue in cheek, "New Zealand gets more civilised the further south you go. Somewhere around Mossburn it comes good."
" An old friend of mine once said, tongue in cheek, "New Zealand gets more civilised the further south you go. Somewhere around Mossburn it comes good."
Late last year I was in that area for the first time in quite a while. I was pleasantly surprised to find good pies in Gore. Because I've heard so much about cheese rolls, I had to try them too. All I can say is, what is wrong with people?
a bearded chap who's willing to die in a ditch for the Green Party
Which is more than you can say for the people of Riverton.
Greens took 18 out of 795 total Party-Votes in 2017.
Just be mindful, Robert, Greenies have occasionally been burned as witches in Southland over recent decades. That's after they throw you in the river to see if you float.
Swordfish – I have, though not a witch per se, been singed many times in the past and had my buoyancy tested on more than one occasion by the good burghers of Riverton. Most recently, a minor kerfuffle over some painted-kindling caused crook'd fingers to be pointed toward the ditch-witch in his forest-garden, but that blew over with the first salt-laden sou'wester; I've weathered many squalls such as that, and expect to face more as the mood of the nation deteriorates along with the water quality, and the Federated Farmers find their muddy feet and big-laryxned voices again. Par for the course, for a provocative shaggy greenie who likes to string words together for effect.
Hi Robert. I have posted you in the past of our resident cock blackbird. He has a damaged foot which has bent in on itself. He manages very good and is looking splendid. I am wondering if you know how long these house wild birds survive in their natural environment. We call him pegleg because of his gammy way of walking. Over the seasons he has mated and reared many clutches of chicks in nests in and around our garden. He is very tame and will come when we call and all of our garden birds are fed every other day with fruit and wildbird seed mixed with wholemeal breadcrumbs and fat mixed. Pegleg is at least seven years old now and considering he was fledged in our garden and we never thought he would survive but he finally got airborne and the rest is history!! Is seven a good age for a blackbird in the wild. He looks as glossy and handsome as ever and is nest building with a mate right now.
I would be interested in your knowledge of longevity in blackbirds in the wild.
Oh hi, Whispering Kate – I remember well your blackbird posts and am pleased to hear your male bird is so well. The number 20 popped into my head when I read your question about longevity, but I think that individual might have been coddled (as yours are being by the sound of it I can't really say then, as I read that some only attain 3 or 4 years before they make way for others of their kind. Ours seem to hang around for yonks, but I haven't kept a record. The several that centre their attentions on my garden especially love the worm-farm, not for the worms, but to intervene in their feeding by helping themselves to porridge-left-overs, sweet corn, home-made bread crusts and so on. I hope you get to enjoy your birds for a long time to come!
Thank you Robert. Yes we love our birds. Tui, fantails, kereru wax eyes and then all the blackies, thrushes starlings you name it. They make such a mess in the garden but then they give us such a lot of fun. They love our bird baths, tui dive bomb into them and the starlings bring the entire family – seven sometimes all in the bath together. Twenty sounds amazing and yes our birds are spoiled so who knows how long pegleg will survive considering his gammy leg.
I like Bernie Sanders a whole lot more now that he's fully put his shoulder to electing Joe Biden for President.
As well as his old policy and comms teams pushing the Biden team a long way into their platforms, anders himself is putting his considerable support base out there with new speeches:
The panel events, Sanders' team said, have racked up more than 850,000 views in all, for an average that exceeds 200,000.
With the Trump Republicans attacking the very voting process by actively sabotaging the Post Office, Sanders' motivational energy is going to be critical to replacing the current US regime.
Well that is a welcome spark of good news. Because so far while Biden is clearly the more worthwhile candidate, he's not winning, just like Clinton wasn't winning in 2016.
In normal times you'd have to think the village idiot could beat someone as clearly unsuited to the job as Trump. Yet the fact that the Democrats are not 30 pts ahead and utterly unbeatable right now rings a big fat alarm bell in my mind.
The Democrats always have the real problem that their voter bases is highly diverse, with often conflicting interests. It usually takes an eloquent and charismatic candidate to unify them, and this Biden ain't. If Sanders can help bridge this deficit and build some real unity in the Democrat base, it may just tip the balance.
It's hard to guess how much effect that will have on his base compared to 2016.
There's a solid component of his base that are middle-finger voters attracted by the idea that Bernie was going to stick it to the establishment. They will think Bernie going in to bat for Biden is selling out and they either won't vote or do a burn-it-down vote for Donasaurus Wrecks.
But if he can bring back to Biden a significant chunk of those that peeled off for Stein (or Johnson) or got taken in by the smears against Clinton and just didn't vote, then he'll have done a solid for the US and the rest of the world.
Sanders and team are being a lot more cooperative towards Biden than they were with HRC at this point. And people like OAC get that they can both reform the Democratic party AND back Biden against Trump.
It will take all of Sanders' base and all progressive others to vote, if they are to overcome the electorate border gerrymandering, Fox news dominance, and active polling place discouragement to change this government.
@Ad, "And people like OAC get that they can both reform the Democratic party" she (and you) must be completely deluded, the DNC would rather eat their own babies than offer anything to the progressive wing of that party…that is why they pretty much said (talking in political optics here) shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down, by not inviting her to even speak at the DNC convention…not sure why you can't just admit the DNC is 100% brought and paid for by corporate USA.
But then this shouldn't surprise me whatsoever, I seem to remember you are one of the liberals who think the FBI are now friends of the left, and seriously, you can't get much more delusional than that.
What was there to dislike previously? Apart from the tendency to give the same speech over and over. Plus the damaging mis-characterisation of himself as a 'socialist', instead of a mainstream social democrat reaching back to the true values of America's past?
Uhh, a complete absence of any legislative success of any difficulty or significance, beyond leveraging his vote to get a few nickel-and-dime amendments. Which appears to be related to an apparent inability to compromise or showing any other coalition-building skills.
The short-fingered vulgarian still using songs after their creators told his team "NO". This time it's Cohen's "Hallelujah". They should have asked for "You Want It Darker". Probably they should also have tried to understand the meaning of "Hallelujah" rather than just assuming it was some kind of religiously fervid praise.
You mean the bit about Repugs using it against Springsteen's expressed wishes. or that the song is an expose of things that are fucked up about the US rather than the paean to American greatness that idiot Repugs seem to think it is?
Don't know if anyone else has posted this but supposedly Labour’s internal polling shows Chloe ahead in Auckland Central. And I don’t call 9% a “marginal lead”.
A decent Operator would release this as an internal hit from Chloe's team against Shaw, while he's getting a kicking, letting the members know that there are leadership alternatives.
If the Greens walked over glass and got Gordon Campbell back, or even godhelpthem Russell Norman, they'd be operating harder and tracking at 9 and not fucking up.
I have a soft spot for those who fuck up. I do it myself all the time. Getting over the threshold is good enough for me; they are not ready yet for Cabinet and by “they” I don’t mean individual MPs.
Please keep it civil. It was not clear at all that you were “talking about the gender balanced aspect of the co-leader thing” until you mentioned it @ 7:22 PM.
No, it wasn’t obvious and that comment came further down anyway and was a reply to one of mine, not Ad’s – the nesting of comments has its downsides. It may have been obvious to you but most of us aren’t mind readers and it may help to keep that in mind and avoid acerbic follow-up comments 🙂
There is only one rule – 'I'll do what I want. You don't like it? Take me to court. By the time my second term is coming to an end the hearings will just about be done. If some pardons and commutation of sentences need to be done, so be it.'
What is called for in a world after Covid-19 is a new educational purpose – one that reconnects thinking around environmental wellbeing, social health and economic fairness. There have been many voices calling for change, for the world to be reset – we cannot go back to how things were. Does education need a reset?
No, it needs a revision. The system needs to be made fit for purpose in the ever-changing world we're in. Lange faked that with Tomorrow's Schools in the '80s, but we know not to trust Labour promises.
We are told that if we send our children to school it will help them get a worthwhile job and have a stable and affluent life; that it will help their self-advancement, help them ‘get ahead’. The myth of education as a commodity to be accumulated is widely accepted.
Mythos is powerful in mass psychology, and when combined with bureaucracy it created an education system with awe-inspiring inertia. Guaranteed to defeat progress. Which is why the system never entered the 20th century.
When I passed thro it in the 1950s/60s it was clearly archaic but effective in mass-producing crap (such as mainstreamers, Nat/Lab voters). I encountered Summerhill in 1970 when it was a hot trend & that crystallised my feelings about how education ought to be done – but nowadays the necessity for real progress is more urgent.
we concentrate on the personal; we now find ourselves part of a worldwide phenomenon. Our connection to global economic movements is suddenly more apparent. We have seen millions of people lose their livelihoods in a week, yet we have learned that previously unthinkable legislation to support those in need can be passed easily.
Suitable leadership can still get the right results fast, and Labour deserves credit for proving that point currently. If only it realised that the same cut-through must be applied to the national curriculum! But connecting the dots is so hard for some. 🙄
We have learnt that the encroachment by people on natural environments causes stresses that lead to the increasingly frequent transmission of zoonotic viruses. At least six viruses have transferred to humans since 2000; more are likely on the way.
Consumption of nature producing pandemics is gnosis too deep for most people to learn, I suspect: the causal relations are opaque unless you happen to be a microbiologist. Capitalists working with third-world govts will produce pandemics unless a greater force stops them. Business as usual.
the economic system, focused on short-term gain, is disconnected from its impacts on people and on the environment; and human misuse of the natural environment leads to a fundamental and dangerous disconnection with the symbiotic relationship between humanity and nature.
The control system has a predatory relationship to nature though, and it determines the future via representative democracy. Kids must learn how to collectively defeat the left & right puppets the system uses. It's the only way to escape becoming victims. Therefore an education system fit for the purpose of human survival must be both radical and beyond left and right.
Over 100 years ago Charles Spearman made two monumental discoveries about human intelligence. First, a general factor of intelligence (g) exists: people who score high on one test of intelligence also tend to score high on other tests of intelligence. Second, Spearman found that the g-factor conforms to the principle of the "indifference of the indicator": It doesn't matter what test of intelligence you administer; as long as the intelligence test is sufficiently cognitively complex and has enough items, you can reliably and validly measure a person's general cognitive ability.
Fast forward to 2018, and a new paper suggests that the very same principle may not only apply to human cognitive abilities, but also to human malevolence. New research conducted by a team from Germany and Denmark suggests that a General Dark Factor of Personality (D-factor) exists among the human population, and that this factor conforms to the principle of indifference of the indicator. This is big news, so let's take a look.
[…]
Note: The Dark Core Scale was adapted from the larger test battery. I selected the items on an ad-hoc basis for entertainment purposes, but I do not recommend using the scale to make any sort of diagnosis. For more on the D-factor, go to http://www.darkfactor.org. To take the self-assessment created by the researchers of the dark factor study, go to: http://qst.darkfactor.org.
Miss 15's arsehole rating was off the charts the other day. But she's good now lololz 🙂 Teenagers, dang, it's almost like they can think for themselves 🙂 🙂
Now that significant volumes of end-of-life lithium batteries are becoming a thing, here's a brief look at ventures underway to recycle and recover value from that resource. Featuring JB Straubel, one of Tesla's founders, so it's about real life rather than just lab demonstration possibilities.
It's not the numbers that scare me. It's that sometimes new cases are still being reported as "under investigation". That suggests to me that new transmissions are still going outside the circles of contacts the contact tracers are finding out about. So I struggle with the idea that the outbreak is "contained".
People better be fkn careful and conscientious about masks and distancing and other transmission-reducing behaviour or we're gonna be back into level 3 or 4 in no time. And maybe not just Dorkland, either.
My God, some people are so f*****g stupid! This response from someone in West Auckland ( I think)
“I’m so confused?! Why would someone get a test if they have no symptoms,” asked one reader. “Two weeks ago we were all told to not get a test if you do not have symptoms! Honestly this is an absolute joke.”
Because situations change. And when that happens the responses have to change. Read the newspapers, listen to the news. Get youself informed and then you won't be "confused" and kicking up ballyhoo for the sake of it.
Lemme think, over the last three months I have had close contact (more than 15 minutes within 2 metres) with exactly 2 people. Those were my sons, who have already tested negative (tested because of attending Avondale College). Apart from that, I have walked past people and momentarily been within 2 metres of them (while masked) on maybe 8 grocery shopping trips in that three months. And they still want me to turn up so they can probe my brains?
“If we can’t immediately link these cases to the main cluster then it is very likely we have undetected active cases in the community and once we go to Level 2, spread could kick off again.
Every under investigation has been changed within a couple of days to the cluster ,just this morning minister of health statement we are going to level2, we know where all the positive have come from, almost all from in isolation
That just means that after the fact they have been able to trace it the path back to where it came from. Not that they have determined a reasonably reliable boundary around the risk.
to do an internal link on TS you either need to put the link in a direct line with some text, or you need to use the link tags. I've fixed your comment as it was linking to the post rather than comment (this is the default if the link is put in a line of its own without tags).
They should have delayed opening schools to Wednesday (3 week lockdown minimum – given new information that children retain viral load for 3 weeks).
That allows planning for social distancing at 2.5 and for people to sort out masks (which should be compulsory for children in schools, on school buses and indoor workers and in street queues).
2.5 for mine should include temperature testing for entry to buildings. And expectation people work from home if they can.
I suspect they eased back down a little early because Mof H bungled planning for a regional lockdown by not having pre granted exemptions for business activity.
If they were influenced by the plight of hospitality business and the looming election they had better hope General Luck is back on duty.
Because going back to Level 3 in Auckland, and to 2.5 for the rest if this spreads, will put an end to the Oct 17 election date.
They’re between a rock and a hard place (i.e. damned either way). I believe the (health) risk is higher than last time we came out of L3 and we need more luck this time.
I think they have been too accommodating of media. The Covid updates are a public health announcement – they should not have been contestable, any more than military announcements would have been in time of war.
The place for the kind of malign aggression media displayed, aside from lonely exile on the Auckland or Bounty Islands, was in regular press conferences, not queering the compliance pitch of an emergency public health announcement.
If, as I fear, we develop a growing outbreak in the wake of relaxing restrictions, it should called the “Morrah/O’Brian” outbreak, in honour of its sponsors.
that's a really good idea about separating out the public health announcements and the press conferences. Do the first, have break and do the rest a bit later. Gives people time to settle down too.
yep too soon for me too. At least they could go "no inter regional travel" out of Auckland and maybe the Waikato. South of Taupo seems to be okay.
But if people don't believe it has been beaten then they will stay home as much as possible anyway. So they won't be out spending money. So we will still have a lot of the economic impact plus the potential virus spread as well.
I'm outside Auckland and it has been very quiet although with no local cases people are starting to go out again. I'll be cutting back outings again from tomorrow. If they kept Auckland in I’d slope off for some skiing
Given that cheaper testing (spit on paper stuff is coming) this might be the last really major lockdown that we would need.
PORTLAND, Ore. — A man was shot and killed Saturday as a large group of supporters of President Trump traveled in a caravan through downtown Portland, Ore., which has seen nightly protests for three consecutive months.
The pro-Trump rally drew hundreds of trucks full of supporters into the city. At times, Trump supporters and counterprotesters clashed on the streets, with people shooting paintball guns from the beds of pickup trucks and protesters throwing objects back at them.
A video that purports to be of the shooting, taken from the far side of the street, showed a small group of people in the road outside what appears to be a parking garage. Gunfire erupts, and a man collapses in the street.
The man who was shot and killed was wearing a hat with the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group based in Portland that has clashed with protesters in the past.
Experts in linguistic analysis will be studying this statement for decades to come, I suspect. University theses may even be written on what "stood call the Government didn't intend on doing" actually means.
Jones may complain that a Herald journo mangled what he really said in the interests of postmodernism – but methinks such false modesty from the hat won't persuade many.
That is the thing tho, this school is not going to harm anyone but the Greens, why? Only the Greens had a standing policy for over 9 years to not fund private schools – no matter how green washed the 'building' will be. Jones is dong what he always does, Labour can simply wash their hands in innocence, in the meantime the Green Party is getting not much love from many – other then here…. and i don't think that will be enough.
If i were any more cynical then i am i would suggest that the Green Co Party leader was set up to fail and he rant straight into this. But surely the Co Party leader of the Green would not be so stupid after several years now in Parliament. One would hope.
Nobody onsite here has suggested what ought to have happened instead. That collective failure demonstrates the inadequacy of all sideline commentators. They persist in not factoring in budget decision-making constraints that closed off options for James. The primary one being the pressure of GR's schedule!
Imagine the shitfight which would have erupted if he had rejected that line item: "Green Party rejects funding for Green School! Labour & NZF approved the funding!"
Experts in the psychology of brands wheeled out in the media would declare that the Green brand had been reduced to ideological twaddle by the Greens. Spokespeople for the Green movement would point out that rabid leftists were outnumbered by around a hundred to one in the movement. Since I joined it in 1968 that's always been evident.
So it's clear that the GP has dodged a bullet that may have proved fatal. I predict negative consequences will be minimal. Even leftists have to get real eventually…
Imagine the shitfight which would have erupted if he had rejected that line item: "Green Party rejects funding for Green School! Labour & NZF approved the funding!"
Yep, but that would have been a minor storm dealt with by using the focus to highlight the Greens' education policy. Also, if there were one or two thousand applications for the fund, I doubt that turning down this one would have been a big deal. Plenty of others to choose from.
I do think both sides are essentially right here. The problem is that approving the Green School needed a different process, eg one whereby the school was asked to meet certain conditions around funding that were more aligned with GP values.
Again, what are you taking umbrage with? that i say outright that Shane Jones is Shane Jones and wont be anything else ever and he is not even worth discussing?
I am simply over the constant whinging by people here about this party that is not doing shit, that party not doing shit, while the government is good enough to fuck up on their own.
The school is literally just the another drop bringing the bucket to overflow. People losing their jobs, they are locked in their homes, they are told to be fearful of the unseen enemy and National cause Judith will be worse and then this dumb ass blunder by someone who should now better. – nothing i did. Sorry mate.
Us people here in no where land that are not rabidly partisan or super loyal partisan we vote every three years and only get to hope that it 'will get better' and chances are it will not. It never does.
So we look at the parties and their principles and hope to find something that works for us and vote for that then.
We have been educated on this site so many times about what the Green Party can do or can not do it ain't even funny anymore, and btw, often times it is literally just condescending, cause we can read, and we do read, and sometimes we even vote for them, or Labour. Cause not as bad as the other option.
I already have given him the benefit of the doubt. But you don't get to whine about Shane Jones saying its gonna go forward, and not also lay the blame at the feet of the others Parties involved.
Also, last but least, If the Greens would not have a standing policy of 9 years to not fund private schools – and providing money to build one – 'for the construction only' – is still providing money to a private school, non of this brouhaha would have happened and frankly that is the matter at hand. What in the name of a pandemic will be next on the 'nice to have but not needed anymore policy ' on the chopping block. And this is not a question only to be laid at the feet of the Green Party but also includes Labour and NZ First.
At the end of the day, people like me will go to the polls, hold their nose and put a cross under the name of the person they find the least offensive. Not the person who has a good program for the future but the least offensive – because non of the clowns in government actually have a plan for us living on the margins of society. And the Greens now fall into this category, because if this policy is no more valid, then what next.
And if you don't want to discuss this anymore i suggest you don't post links complaining about Shane Jones who says this will go forward. The Greens – thanks to their Co-Leader – happy or not about it – are Co-responsible for it, as James could have said this should not be included, but he did not. And they now need to shoulder this responsibility.
Nobody onsite here has suggested what ought to have happened instead.
Really? Sorry, I thought I had.
What ought to have happened was that this school submitted their application and had it stand on its own merits without the Green Party lobbying for it:
So according to Hipkins, this wasn't a project that Shaw was merely put in the awkward position of announcing – Shaw explicitly requested it.
So my suggestion of what ought to have happened instead is that Shaw, or whomever in the Greens, had shut the fuck up about this private school in whatever meetings the subject occurred.
Hipkins didn't say he did. Nor has anyone else, except you. Since James specified that he was approving it on the Labour/NZF basis of regional infrastructure development, we can't blame him personally for any Green lobbying that may have been done earlier.
You could be right, but I didn't hear him refer to such lobbying on the Zoom call, so I'll wait & see if anyone else did!
Anyway, I was referring to the other options James may have had at the point in the process where he was faced with an apparent binary option: approve or reject. Weka said the rules stopped him running it by the Green caucus for a collective decision. I've already pointed out why rejection would have produced a worse shitstorm for the Greens.
No, "approving" is not "advocating quite strongly for"
Stuff might have been misrepresenting the subject of the quote, or Hipkins was bullshitting and everyone has since gone with that just to keep the shitfight to a minimum, but that's the available comment.
As for Shaw finding himself in "approve or reject", that's when you kick it upstairs.
Not sure why you are referencing Hipkins here (again), he wasn't involved in decisions afaik and his first response to the question was to say it was nothing to do with him, talk to the relevant ministers.
Lobby is not quite the right word, because it implies that the Green Party from the outside promoted the project above others. Whereas my reading is that Shaw was part of the group that looked at more than a thousand applications, shortlisted them, and in that process he used a climate change and environment lens. The mistake was in not using a broader GP policy lens.
Still afaik, the Green Party didn't have anything to do with, it was Shaw and his Ministry staff.
Lobby might be the wrong word for "advocated quite strongly for", but your lens theory is not inconsistent with Hipkins' account.
Shortlisting things in meetings with people who have different perspectives often involves advocating for one's preferred shortlist items.Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you horse trade. But if you don't advocate, usually your preferred options don't make it to the shortlist.
Budget items, job applicants, even the damned catering menu, sometimes. I'm still quite pleased I got them to include a pepperoni pizza at the last work hobnob.
Yes, it's his job to advocate strongly for projects that are going to help our climate response.
My problem with Hipkins' statement is that afaik the GP wasn't involved. If Hipkins had said Shaw it would have made more sense in terms of getting the public up to speed on what actually happened. I don't blame Hipkins for this, it wasn't his area to comment in, but it's why I don't find that particular statement helpful as a reference point, it just keeps muddying the waters.
Shaw's 30 min explanation and 40 min Q and A (with MD) to the members was important not only for the response to members, but because he basically described the inner workings of govt in ways that are rarely seen. I learned a lot. I wish this was happening regularly.
I can now see why coalitions get so fraught in govt, if parties cannot appraise budget decisions to see if they are inadvertently likely to approve funding for things their policy opposes.
I wonder if the protocols binding the decision-making are in the cabinet manual, or simply agreed ad hoc for each coalition.
If the Greens had not had James in the frame as assoc finance minister, would they have been able to make caucus decisions on budget line items? I doubt it. Yet any funding decision ought to, in principle, be subject to Green caucus assessment. Or is that impractical?
I'm not up with how much say a coalition support party gets, if any, so maybe others are more informed & can elucidate.
I guess he could have had one of his Minister staff run it past GP policy. Not sure if that creates a conflict of interest. Maybe someone else needs to be assigned the role and asked to sign a confidentiality agreement.
I am ok with funding the green school. It's a business that attracts a lot of export dollars and it fits within the fund it got the money from. The perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good.
However, some schools are in shocking disrepair especially in the provinces and Wellington. I know Auckland is growing but there is an extraordinary discrepancy between Auckland high schools and their facilities and what other school around the country have to make do with.
Contrary to some commenters here, I don’t think all the rich are ‘evil bastards’ by default. For me, context is important, i.e. how did they obtain their wealth and what do they do with it. The stereotypical ‘rich bastard’ is such a lazy label to declare one’s hyper-polarised prejudiced position that immediately kills any meaningful conversation.
for the last few weeks here there has been an ongoing campaing maligning 'overseas students' – buying visas to live here, scams, scammers etc and but this is not it?
It is. And frankly if this school wants to show us it is not just a nice to have unschooling project for the failing kids of the very rich then they can come public as to whom their target group is. Cause 24.000 NZD is a lot of cash for most people in this country.
This is not about all rich people are being evil, but most rich people don't pay taxes, do their best to not pay taxes, and their wealth has so far failed to trickle down to any of us. That i think is more the issue.
Young bright people like to acquire new experiences and explore the world. Some study overseas, some become au pairs, some do their OE after graduation. Some love a country they spend time in so much that they would like to stay or come back and then stay. We cannot have that, so much is clear, because some will abuse the system and our hospitality. Who do they think are, freeloading freedom campers in Aotearoa?
I’m all for a wealth tax 🙂 Hit them where it hurts the most, in their pockets, of course. Paying (higher) taxes is the only way they can re-pay their debt to society, obviously. How these taxes ‘trickle down’ to any of us depends on Government.
When they have ‘thieved’ enough [HT to DtB], they should give away all their ill-gotten gains instead of setting up a school to help others as it helped their children, for example. Like this couple did:
I'm not saying they are all "evil" as such. I object to visa buying on many grounds – I'm with Sabine in their failure to contribute to the community as taxpayers or in many other ways.
Nor do I agree with the wealth being used to buy a bigger say in the decision making processes in the community. if they wanted to just come on limited term visa and be heavily constrained as to what they can spend money on locally – no political donations no dragging in under paid staff etc etc . But we are also winding up with this "super grade of people who trot from country to country legally" and who then move on rather than clean up aany mess they help to create. Frankly Repugs from the USA really grind my wheels – it didn't work there so why should we allow them here. It's a bit like taking on all the priviledged leaders of say the old communist USSR.
The early sections of the book set out Sayer’s most interesting arguments: namely, that the wealth of the rich is unearned, and thus amounts to the extraction of value created by others or else simply speculation.
Just because it was legal doesn't mean that it wasn't theft.
Ad – Don't scorn Proudhon. At least his idea was an interesting concept. Nowadays we have sad dumby right-wingers tediously claiming that tax is theft. Oh dear…
I think your generalization may be a bit of a stretch.
Hubbard, of South Canterbury Finance, didn't really fit that model, which is part of the reason he was so easily ripped off by Key and his accomplices.
A level of incontinent greed is certainly abundant among the wealthy, as are a more innocent set of self-justifying assumptions about those who are not rich. But dishonesty is not obligate, merely frequent.
I think your generalization may be a bit of a stretch.
Nope.
To get rich requires economies of scale applied to income. In other words, income from multiple people being fed into one stream. To achieve that requires some sort of mechanism that takes the wealth generated by those people and transfers it to another without the latter doing any work for it. It’s called, in modern parlance, a passive income.I suppose it got its name changed because its original name, rentier income, has some rather negative connotations.
So, shareholders, owners of rental properties, speculators and capitalists in general are all supported by law that allows such theft.
As I was told when I was doing Amway: A person working will never get rich but someone who has many people working for them will.
As I said, the correlation is strong, but there are counter examples. J. K. Rowling became one of the wealthiest persons in Britain without recourse to financial jiggery pokery – she took the Oracle's advice:
If you would have innocent wealth, bring the bones of Hector out of Asia, and build a shrine to him.
I think that it is as much about the $,s from overseas students as anything else too ! I as a tax payer do not support this. Helping a private school for Kiwi kids I can handle … JUST ! Maybe if the access through the education system to become a NZ citizen was clearly and completely closed I might be able to handle that too.
The best chess players in the WORLD (who can play dozens of games blindfold) make mistakes in a game inside 64 squares that they have played for years – and in some cases decades – 20/20 hindsight is so cheap.
I think the horse has been dead for a while – will you please stop flogging it?
I gotta say, it's been fascinating watching all the special pleading, sophistry, pinhead dancing and wilful misrepresentation of critics that's been happening ever since it was the "good guys" that got busted screwing up.
Peter Navarro spending Saturday night on Jeanine Pirro's Fox show floating the possibility that China "intended all along to spread this virus around the world" and that they may have "genetically engineered" or "weaponized" the coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/hnTTYBmpGm
Whew. They're not asking everyone in South and West Auckland to get tested. That never made sense – that's around 500,000 people and testing capacity is only around 70,000 per week. They have yet to update guidelines on who they want to turn up, but I'll guess they will be asking extra hard for people with even the mildest symptoms and/or any conceivable connection to a case to get checked out.
Andre’s sarcasm was in Andre’s comment, not in the article that Andre linked to.
Just as well you’re not talking about the PM being accountable. At least, the PM is taking steps to correct the mistake and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Some fool didn't read or listen to the instruction properly and sent out the wrong message. It would have been either a MoH staffer or a media outlet – or both.
I'm getting sick of these staffers or journos who botch- up and (maybe) put others at risk in the process.
Don't know how you are feeling in Auckland but I'm desperately worried about my income and family.
I guess it's ok for people not working because their life doesn't change with Covid. For those of us still producing it's terrifying and having someone from leafy Wanaka on the wind-up is not helpful.
Uh, IIRC Ad is still living in West Auckland (a Titirangi elite, no less) and Ad's workplace is also messed around with at level 3, and has alluded to disruptions from COVID possibly messing up plans to retire to Wanaka. Ad is sharing the disruption, not indulging in windups from a comfortable safe distance.
The latest Observer Opinium poll has Keir Starmer and Labour level pegging with the Tory government for the first time in over a year. Boris and his government have surrendered a 26 point lead in just over 5 months. Both parties are on 40%.
Not sure about blaming public servants and having an agenda to topple the government without giving some supporting links to this assertion. – Why did not Min Hipkins correct the message during his interview during the morning ? Or that it took until midway thru the PM's 1:00 briefing for a correction to be made when our PM was aware of this during the morning.
A) the media reported it from 5pm, but anyone in govt who was familiar with the particular decision wasn't monitoring the media.
B) the media reported it from 5pm, but anyone in govt who was familiar with the particular decision and was monitoring the media just figured that whatever media report they heard had fucked up the message and (being the weekend) they had no inclination or ability inclination to check the website at the time, and the media getting the message wrong is so routine they forgot about it.
C) the media reported it from 5pm, but anyone in govt who was familiar with the particular decision and was monitoring the media underestimated the fuckage they should give and failed to correct it or call a minister about it. Maybe they thought they could wait until monday, who knows.
Not sure about a govt dept consciously sabotaging – Looking forward to your reasoning to discredit.
Option 4 . The minions at comms once contacted by the media, time ticked by as minions were waiting for seniors(Government Group) to give direction and what actions/statements were to be implemented. Story progressed, and still at the time of the PM's 1:00 statement there was still no action with the oversimplified statement still there.
From the Herald timeline (seriously?This bullshit deserves a timeline? Oh well, what the hell) "contacted" can mean "called someone's cellphone" or "sent email to generic comms@-style email address". The latter can easily be a few hours on the weekend depending on their set-up (helpdesk is dealing with other shit, takes a while to escalate, comms minion looks at email at home, verifies issue, escalatesfor instruction, supervisor goes for placeholder statement while they sort out the web editors, maybe has to drive into office). At which point the issue was resolved within a couple of hours. And everyone pulls finger when Ardern gets asked about it, because before then they didn't know that a journo thought it was a massive fucking crisis.
I don’t think it’s deliberate sabotage Dennis. Just poor grammar really and a lack of clear understanding of what needed to be communicated. And the fact it took as long as it did to get it taken down is probably best explained by the fact it’s the bloody weekend and all those 9-to-5ers couldn’t be reached.
What’s annoying is the way the 4th estate all circle the wagons whenever one of their own comes out the worse for wear after an exchange with the PM. It’s getting bloody tedious.
There's probably some very exhausted public servants out there too, along with politicians and journalists.
The odd cock-up and / or over reaction is going to happen with what they've all been through in the last 6 months. Someone will be having an interesting meeting in the boss's office tomorrow morning, if it hasn't happened already. Shouldn't happen in the best laid plans of mice and men, but naive to think that it's not going to happen.
At one point since the message was reported I thought there was suddenly a battle between the MoH and the Govt over policy. Compounding this feeling was the absence of Ashley Bloomfield today…
I am not sure what all the fuss is about re the information about all Westies and Southies getting tested………….Not a biggie at all and maybe it got people back to the testing station which can't be a bad thing.
Honestly people, it is a harmless mistake. Confused and the likes must be as dim as two planks
No I don’t have it now weka. It came up on my Facebook this morning. The headline did say that everyone in West and South Auckland should get a test. But if you read through to the body of the text it was clear they were primarily concerned about people who were displaying symptoms or had any of the co-morbidities linked to Covid or were somehow connected to the Auckland August Cluster. It was clumsily worded for sure. But let’s be honest, you didn’t exactly need Mensa level comprehension skills to figure it out.
The media shitstorm that’s erupted over it today is just self serving click bait bullshit.
Very pleased to be in a country where the biggest political issue is a poorly worded govt comms headline & the questioning thereof …as opposed to, say, the US whose weak govt, growing political street violence, and raging pandemic is eerily reminiscent of Germany 100 yrs ago
There are times when tikanga needs to be broken for tikanga to survive.I recently gave a presentation on Māori economic history based on my Not in Narrow Seas. Its most important message was that Māori proved to be a very adaptable people continually evolving as new opportunities arose. The European ...
Some of you may remember our blog post "A conundrum: our continued presence on Facebook" in which we detailed our misgivings about and decision to stick with Facebook for the time being. So these latest developments - reposted from the Cranky Uncle homepage - might come as a bit of surprise! ...
Image credit:Quick Data Lessons: Data Dredging Oh dear – another scientific paper claiming evidence of toxic effects from fluoridation. But a critical look at the paper shows evidence of p-hacking, data dredging and motivated reasoning to derive their conclusions. And it was published in a journal shown to be ...
We've had a housing crisis for the past decade, and successive governments have done nothing to solve it. Why not? Bernard Hickey gets it right when he says its all about protecting the rich: The Government is reluctant to push down house prices fearing they'll loses the support of ...
There’s more of the Obama legacy here and Deporter in Chief: Obama chucks out 2,000,000 and Can Trump really deport more people than Obama? and Obama, gay rights and the killing drones ...
My Department Right Or Wrong: Far from “politicians involving themselves in some Corrections matters” being a bad thing, their involvement – along with that of the Ombudsman – constitutes a necessary check upon the unreasonable and unlawful exercise of authority over prison inmates by prison staff. A Corrections Minister who ...
New Zealand is supposed to have a progressive tax system, which taxes people according to their ability to pay. But it turns out that the rich are cheating: The wealthiest New Zealanders pay just 12 per cent of their total income in tax on average, according to research from ...
Ground truths on warming When we think about rapid climate change of the kind we've accidentally unleashed and the warming of Earth systems inherent in the process, we tend to focus on phenomena in order of their immediate tangibility, their drama. Sea ice loss in the Arctic, atmospheric and ocean ...
by Daphna Whitmore The Department of Corrections has called in the police over a pamphlet that supports protests at Waikeria Prison, saying the material might incite another riot. The group People Against Prisons Aotearoa denies it advocates for riots and has said it “encourages persistent, peaceful protest action such as striking from ...
One theme in the literature dedicated to democratic theory is the notion of a “tyranny of the minority.” This is where the desire to protect the interests of and give voice to electoral minorities leads to a tail wagging the dog syndrome whereby minorities wind up having disproportionate influence in ...
I've just lodged my fourth complaint to the Ombudsman for deemed refusal of an OIA request by police this year. That brings their total to four for four - every request I have sent them has not been answered within the legal timeframe, even when they extend it to give ...
Will the health reforms proposed for the Labour Government make the system better or worse? Health commentator Ian Powell (formerly the Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists) gives his analysis of what change is most necessary, and what should be avoided. The review of the Health ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections An off-course polar vortex meandered toward the Mexican border, bringing with it frigid Arctic air rarely seen as far south as Texas. Frozen equipment rendered power generation systems in the state inoperable, forcing grid operators to begin rolling blackouts to customers then left to fend ...
Just as National once produced a “rock star economy” that Grant Robertson rejected as being only for the rich, the Labour Government has produced an economic “bounce back” that leaves out the poor. Branko Marcetic argues for a rise in benefit levels to give the poor a real bounce back. ...
Virginia has voted to abolish the death penalty: State lawmakers gave final approval on Monday to a bill that will end capital punishment in Virginia, a dramatic turnaround for a state that has executed more people than any other. The legislation repealing the death penalty now heads to the ...
Yesterday a New Zealand Judge issued a formal finding that the Department of Corrections had treated prisoners in a cruel, degrading and inhumane manner, illegally detaining them, using excessive force, denying them basic necessities unless they performed degrading rituals of submission first. Some of the conduct appears to be criminal: ...
The Herald reports that there is a "storm brewing for the Climate Change Commission". The "problem"? Polluters are unhappy with its economic projections saying that action will not be as costly as they have previously claimed: Last week a coalition of over a dozen New Zealand business and industry ...
You're Move: What would a genuinely powerful Maori Caucus do? What policies would it insist upon? More to the point, since the single most important question in politics is always “Or you’ll what?”, does the Maori Caucus possess the wherewithal to enforce its demands?THAT LABOUR’S MAORI CAUCUS is potentially powerful ...
This post is a mix of a few recent reports on trends, recent discoveries or developments. Topics covered are the future of work, the geopolitical shift from oil to semiconductors, transition to low carbon futures, disappearing Artic sea ice, and AI in health care. Yesterday’s Gone A Canadian report ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson One of the hottest years in U.S. history, 2020 was besieged by a record number of billion-dollar disasters, led by two of the most dangerous phenomena with links to climate change: wildfires and hurricanes. In its initial U.S. climate summary for 2020, ...
Just because something is bad, doesn’t mean it’s easy to criminalise. Graham Adams argues that the proposed ban on gay conversion therapy is messier than many realise, and he delves into some of the difficulties facing the Government in their promise to legislate. A highly successful petition has inadvertently ...
Story of the Week... Editorial of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... ‘Absolutely ridiculous’: top scientist slams UK government over coalmineExclusive:Prof Sir Robert Watson says backing of ...
Over the weekend we learned that Turkey plans to deport a New Zealand woman and her children who had fled Syria after previously joing the Islamic State. Which means that Andrew Little's tyrannical Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act 2019 - rammed through under all-stages urgency on the basis of an ...
While it has made a lot of noise about inequality, Labour has resolutely avoided reversing the 1990 benefit cuts and improving living standards for the poorest in our society. Meanwhile, 70% of kiwis think they should: A survey has found seven out of 10 New Zealanders believe the government ...
Anti-Philosopher President? Emmanuel Macron and his party’s reaction to the terrorist atrocities committed on French soil targets the very same philosophical movements excited and emboldened by New Zealand’s own terrifying tragedy.IT IS NOT the sort of thought experiment New Zealanders are encouraged to conduct in these culturally sensitive times. Even ...
If Jacinda Ardern or ay of her Auckland-based cabinet ministers stepped outside this weekend, they would have realised that this afternoon’s cabinet decision on whether to move Auckland back to Level 1 has already been made. The residents of our biggest city have voted with their feet.While some places where ...
According to epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker, the decision to end the second Auckland lockdown after just three days was a ‘calculated risk’. The possibility of undetected community transmission cannot be ruled out. In the United States, modelling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that the ...
As I rose for the first time to speak from the Despatch Box in the House of Commons, I had the comfort of seeing that the Despatch Box had on it the inscription “A Gift from the People of New Zealand”. But I was also a little daunted, like so ...
This article is by Laura Biggs, from the Marxist-Feminist blog On the Woman Question. The term ‘sex work’ has come to replace the word ‘prostitution’ in contemporary discussions on the subject. This is not accidental. The phrase ‘sex work’ has been adopted by liberal feminists and powerful lobbyists in a ...
Sometimes it’s smaller, intensive studies that shed light on issues. Just reported results of daily sampling of COVID-19 patients indicate patients with the B.1.1.7 variant first observed in Kent, UK may have a longer infection compared to patients infected with non-B.1.1.7 variants. This is the variant seen in NZ’s most ...
Redline has just passed one million views – as I start writing this we have reached 1,000,015 views. It took us nearly seven years to reach our first 500,000 and just three months short of three years to reach our second 500,000, with 2019 being our best year, with over ...
. . As the rest of the world was perceived to be “going to hell in a handbasket with an out-of-control pandemic; ructions in Europe as Britain copes with “Brexit” chaos; Trumpism in the United States climaxing with the 6 January mob-led coup attempt in Washington’s Capitol; a deadly ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Feb 14, 2021 through Sat, Feb 20, 2021Editor's ChoiceQ&A: Is Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Book a Hopeful Look at the Promise of Technology, or a Cautionary Tale?The Pulitzer Prize-winning ...
Session Thirty-Five. We have had some in-game and out-of-game indication that we are drawing to the end of the Dreamland adventure… which has lasted since the fourth session. Getting back to the Waking World will require some mental adjustment, especially considering that Annalax has spent thirty-odd sessions not ...
A Friend In Need: I have grown up, and grown old, within earshot of New Zealand’s public broadcaster. Through times of peace and plenty, through days of tumult and recrimination, it has been a constant and reliable presence. The calm and authoritative voices of Radio New Zealand kept their fellow ...
This article, authored by Dr Lisa Schipper, Dr Morgan Scoville-Simonds, Dr Katharine Vincent and Prof Siri Eriksen, was originally published on the Carbon Brief website on Feb 10, 2021. It is reposted below in its entirety. Click here to access the original article and comments posted on Carbon Brief. Photo by ...
. . As the rest of the world was perceived to be “going to hell in a handbasket with an out-of-control pandemic; ructions in Europe as Britain copes with “Brexit” chaos; Trumpism in the United States climaxing with the 6 January mob-led coup attempt in Washington’s Capitol; a deadly resurgent ...
by Georgina Blackmore Instead ask the government to separate the two issues caught under the heading of “Conversion Therapy”. 1) Gay Conversion Therapy which is what 99.9% of people believe this petition is about. It is a ban I personally support. 2) Gender Identity Conversion Therapy which doesn’t have any ...
The burning of books has a long history. That it no reason why we should add to it.If you want to get Burning of the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack from the National Library you may have to hurry. It is in the overseas nonfiction section; many books ...
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This is one of those subject matters better suited to a thesis than a blog post, and far smarter people than I have tackled the question in a more detailed and accurate manner. But it’s a question that’s been running around in my brain for a fortnight or so. ...
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James Higham, University of OtagoThe Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s second tourism report urges the government to take advantage of the disruption caused by COVID-19 to transform the tourism industry. Titled “Not 100% – but four steps closer to sustainable tourism”, it builds on commissoner Simon Upton’s 2019 “Pristine, ...
My column over at Newsroom this week points out the fairly obvious. The government can add daily saliva testing for everyone at the border to the existing testing regimen. If daily testing winds up proving the swab tests to be redundant, ditch the swab tests when we find that out. ...
Geoengineering heats up Sorry, that was irresistible. By chance in this edition of New Research are two intriguing papers including different perspectives on the subject of geoengineering, a topic increasingly arousing emotions. Happily both of these papers are open access and free to read. A third article underlines that enthusiasm ...
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Zach St. GeorgeThe first and only time Steve Jackson spoke to Bill Critchfield was in the late 1980s. Critchfield, an authority on the conifers of North America, was at home recovering from a heart attack. Jackson, then a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University, had called looking for advice on how ...
Richelle Butcher, Massey University; Britta Denise Hardesty, CSIRO, and Lauren Roman, CSIROPlastic in the ocean can be deadly for marine wildlife and seabirds around the globe, but our latest study shows single-use plastics are a bigger threat to endangered albatrosses in the southern hemisphere than we previously thought. You ...
On Monday, the US Congress failed to hold former President Donald Trump accountable for inciting an attempted coup against the US constitution. So now someone is doing it privately, in the traditional American way: suing him: Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani, the former president’s personal lawyer, have been accused ...
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We know that when our rural communities do well, all of New Zealand benefits. Labour is committed to supporting our regions so that, together, we can achieve even more. Here are just some of the ways we’re backing rural communities. ...
Government data today shows that the wealthiest New Zealanders aren’t paying their fair share of tax, whilst everyone else chips in, Green Party spokesperson on Finance Julie Anne Genter said today. ...
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The Green Party welcomes the passing of the Local Electorate Act Māori Wards Amendment Bill which ensures Māori have a say on local issues across Aotearoa New Zealand. ...
New UMR research reveals that 69 percent of New Zealanders agree that the government should increase the amount if income support paid to those on low incomes or not in paid work. ...
The Green Party are celebrating the Labour Government bringing forward the timeline to ban conversion therapy, and will push to ensure any draft bill properly protects all of our Rainbow communities. ...
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Attorney-General David Parker today announced the appointment of three new District Court Judges. Two of the appointees will take up their roles on 1 April, replacing sitting Judges who have reached retirement age. Kirsten Lummis, lawyer of Auckland has been appointed as a District Court Judge with jury jurisdiction to ...
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The Labour Government will invest $6 million for 70 additional adult cochlear implants this year to significantly reduce the historical waitlist, Health Minister Andrew Little says. “Cochlear implants are life changing for kiwis who suffer from severe hearing loss. As well as improving an individual’s hearing, they open doors to ...
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The Government has added 1,000 more transitional housing places as promised under the Aotearoa New Zealand Homelessness Action Plan (HAP), launched one year ago. Minister of Housing Megan Woods says the milestone supports the Government’s priority to ensure every New Zealander has warm, dry, secure housing. “Transitional housing provides people ...
A second batch of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines arrived safely yesterday at Auckland International Airport, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says. “This shipment contained about 76,000 doses, and follows our first shipment of 60,000 doses that arrived last week. We expect further shipments of vaccine over the coming weeks,” Chris Hipkins said. ...
The Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Carmel Sepuloni has today announced $18 million to support creative spaces. Creative spaces are places in the community where people with mental health needs, disabled people, and those looking for social connection, are welcomed and supported to practice and participate in the arts ...
Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Minister Andrew Little today welcomed Moriori to Parliament to witness the first reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. “This bill is the culmination of years of dedication and hard work from all the parties involved. “I am delighted to reach this significant milestone today,” Andrew ...
22,400 fewer children experiencing material hardship 45,400 fewer children in low income households on after-housing costs measure After-housing costs target achieved a year ahead of schedule Government action has seen child poverty reduce against all nine official measures compared to the baseline year, Prime Minister and Minister for Child Poverty ...
It’s time to recognise the outstanding work early learning services, kōhanga reo, schools and kura do to support children and young people to succeed, Minister of Education Chris Hipkins says. The 2021 Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards are now open through until April 16. “The past year has reminded us ...
Three new Jobs for Nature projects will help nature thrive in the Bay of Plenty and keep local people in work says Conservation Minister Kiri Allan. “Up to 30 people will be employed in the projects, which are aimed at boosting local conservation efforts, enhancing some of the region’s most ...
The Government has accepted all of the Holidays Act Taskforce’s recommended changes, which will provide certainty to employers and help employees receive their leave entitlements, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Wood announced today. Michael Wood said the Government established the Holidays Act Taskforce to help address challenges with the ...
The Government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and faster than expected economic recovery has been acknowledged in today’s credit rating upgrade. Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) today raised New Zealand’s local currency credit rating to AAA with a stable outlook. This follows Fitch reaffirming its AA+ rating last ...
Tena koutou e nga Maata Waka Ngai Tuahuriri, Ngai Tahu whanui, Tena koutou. Nau mai whakatau mai ki tenei ra maumahara i te Ru Whenua Apiti hono tatai hono, Te hunga mate ki te hunga mate Apiti hono tatai hono, Te hunga ora ki te hunga ora Tena koutou, Tena ...
The Minister of Justice has reaffirmed the Government’s urgent commitment, as stated in its 2020 Election Manifesto, to ban conversion practices in New Zealand by this time next year. “The Government has work underway to develop policy which will bring legislation to Parliament by the middle of this year and ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage and Social Development Hon Carmel Sepuloni today launched a new Creative Careers Service, which is expected to support up to 1,000 creatives, across three regions over the next two years. The new service builds on the most successful aspects of the former Pathways to ...
Overseas consumers eager for natural products in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic have helped boost honey export revenue by 20 percent to $425 million in the year to June 30, 2020, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor says. “The results from the latest Ministry for Primary Industries’ 2020 Apiculture Monitoring ...
Thanks to more than $10-million in new services from the Government, more rangatahi will be able to access mental health and addiction support in their community. Minister of Health Andrew Little made the announcement today while visiting Odyssey House Christchurch and acknowledged that significant events like the devastating earthquakes ten ...
Two month automatic visitor visa extension for most visitor visa holders Temporary waiver of time spent in New Zealand rule for visitor stays Visitor visa holders will be able to stay in New Zealand a little longer as the Government eases restrictions for those still here, the Minister of Immigration ...
The Tourism and Conservation Ministers say today’s report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) adds to calls to overhaul the tourism model that existed prior to COVID19. “The PCE tourism report joins a chorus of analysis which has established that previous settings, which prioritised volume over value, are ...
The Government is providing certainty for the dietary supplements industry as we work to overhaul the rules governing the products, Minister for Food Safety Dr Ayesha Verrall said. Dietary supplements are health and wellness products taken orally to supplement a traditional diet. Some examples include vitamin and mineral supplements, echinacea, ...
The Government is joining the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime (the Budapest Convention), Justice Minister Kris Faafoi and Minister for the Digital Economy and Communications Dr David Clark announced today. The decision progresses a recommendation by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terror attack to accede to ...
Attorney-General David Parker announced today that an appointment round for Queen’s Counsel will take place in 2021. Appointments of Queen’s Counsel are made by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the Attorney-General and with the concurrence of the Chief Justice. The Governor-General retains the discretion to appoint Queen’s Counsel in ...
The new Resurgence Support Payment passed by Parliament this week will be available to eligible businesses now that Auckland will be in Alert Level 2 until Monday. “Our careful management of the Government accounts means we have money aside for situations like this. We stand ready to share the burden ...
A dry run of the end-to-end process shows New Zealand’s COVID-19 vaccination programme is ready to roll from Saturday, when the first border workers will receive the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says. “The trial run took place in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch yesterday afternoon, ahead of the ...
From June this year, all primary, intermediate, secondary school and kura students will have access to free period products, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti announced today. The announcement follows a successful Access to Period Products pilot programme, which has been running since Term 3 last ...
The latest update shows the Government’s books are again in better shape than forecast, meaning New Zealand is still in a strong position to respond to any COVID-19 resurgence. The Crown Accounts for the six months to the end of December were better than forecast in the Half-year Economic and ...
The Department of Conservation’s (DOC) new Heritage and Visitor Strategy is fully focused on protecting and enhancing the value of New Zealand’s natural, cultural and historic heritage, while also promoting a sustainable environmental experience, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “It has been a quarter of a century since DOC first developed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Defence Minister Peeni Henare have announced that New Zealand will conclude its deployment of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) to Afghanistan by May 2021. “After 20 years of a NZDF presence in Afghanistan, it is now time to conclude ...
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. This is a special time in our country. A little over a week ago, it was the anniversary of the signature by Māori and the British Crown of Te Tiriti O Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi), a founding document in ...
The Government is in contact with relevant authorities in Turkey following the arrest of a former Australian and New Zealand dual citizen there, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “Contingency planning for the potential return of any New Zealander who may have been in the conflict zone has been underway for ...
Figures released today by Stats NZ show there was strong growth in median household incomes in 2020, before surveying was halted due to COVID-19. Stats NZ found the median annual household income rose 6.9 percent to $75,024 in the year to June 2020 compared with a year earlier. The survey ...
Legislation will be introduced under urgency today to set up a new Resurgence Support Payment for businesses affected by any resurgence of COVID-19. “Since the scheme was announced in December we have decided to make a change to the payment – reducing the time over which a revenue drop is ...
What’s the best way to get adults reading? Get them reading when they’re children – and there’s no better place to start than the Unity Children’s Bestseller Chart.AUCKLAND1 Sapiens: A Graphic History, Volume 1, The Birth of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari and David Vandermeulen, and illustrator Daniel Casanave (Jonathon ...
"The lab assistants developed various amphetamine habits, Linda in HR started sleeping with her co-workers’ wives, a few of the guys from down in IT went undercover as recruits in local criminal organisations and were instantly murdered": a vision from Wellington writer Jordan Hamel There are nine different incident reports, ...
Rebecca Wadey used to love the wellness industry. Now she doesn’t know who to trust.This story was first published on Ensemble. I love a bit of woo woo.As a former wellbeing editor, I’ve interviewed countless experts on how to achieve a work-life balance and live a life of optimal energy. I’ve ...
What do you get if you mix a little bit of Persona with a little bit of Musou? A whole lot of fun.In general, I’m not a fan of artistic crossovers – more often than not, the new work ends up compromising what made each individual component great – but ...
Linda Burgess, who has just spent a fortune on a ball of fluff, reflects on the animals who have left paw prints on her heart.Childhood pets?I don’t come from a particularly animal-loving family and when I was five or six I had to argue persuasively, plead even, to adopt Rastus ...
By Scott Waide in Lae, Papua New Guinea Sir Michael was a man of many titles. He was father, grandfather and chief. As a tribal leader, he was Sana, the peacemaker. His influence and his reputation extended beyond Papua New Guinea’s border to the Pacific and other parts of the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Howe, Honorary Professor, Department of Sociology, Macquarie University, Macquarie University The Governor General was handed the report of the aged care royal commission on Friday. It will be made public in the coming week. Overlaying its considerations has been Australia’s 909 ...
Michelle Langstone went to meet the revered and feared chef expecting to meet a tyrant. Portraits by Simon Day.You know when Tony Astle is about to tell you a good story by the way his eyes start to gleam with mischief, and how he leans forward to rest his elbows on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Selway, Macquarie University The largest and most destructive earthquakes on the planet happen in places where two tectonic plates collide. In our new research, published today in Nature Communications, we have produced new models of where and how rocks melt in ...
Analysis: The government wants the Reserve Bank to curb house prices, Parliament passes the Māori wards bill, and an MP gets away with a rude word in the House. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Paddy Nixon discuss the week in politics. This week Michelle and Paddy discuss the continued probe into the culture of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Professor of Architecture, University of Adelaide This is the second of two articles on the past and future of the university campus. The “dreaming spires” of Oxford University that Matthew Arnold romanticised in 1865 still have a powerful ...
The finance minister spoke to Auckland businesspeople today on the state of the economy a year after Covid-19 landed, and how he hopes to take on another crisis. Toby Manhire went along.Virtual presentations in place of in-the-flesh speeches have become commonplace in these pandemic days, but it wasn’t Covid that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic O’Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University The government earlier this year released a discussion paper exploring how an Indigenous Voice to government might work. The Voice ...
Immigration New Zealand is standing by its decision to grant a visa to the partner of Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March and says the application was treated "like any other". ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathalie Collins, Academic Director (National Programs), Edith Cowan University Business etiquette has one golden rule: treat others with respect and care. The same is true for encouraging cyber safety at work, on everything from password security to keeping valuable information like tax ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Bryant, Professor & Director of Traumatic Stress Clinic, UNSW Although Australia is now largely COVID-free, the repercussions of the pandemic are ongoing. As the pandemic enters its second year, many people will be continuing to suffer with poor mental health, or ...
Auckland Council has signed off on a new strategy to make it easier to recycle or get rid of inorganic waste, but according to South Auckland community leaders, it doesn’t go far enough.Tucked a few streets back from former prime minister William Massey’s beautiful old homestead in Māngere East is ...
With crowd-friendly dance tunes and affordable drinks, a new dancehall and bar opening tonight is hoping to make going out more accessible for Aucklanders.“In many ways, it’s fucking stupid opening a nightclub in the middle of a global pandemic,” says Sam Walsh, one of the three owners of a new ...
Water New Zealand says the establishment of the new Taumata Arowai board is an important milestone in the journey towards safer drinking water for all New Zealanders. The Minister of Local Government, Nanaia Mahuta has announced that former ...
The PM says there are "many, many people" being treated as contacts of the latest Covid-19 community case, but the government is willing to go further than usual to keep the country at level 1. ...
Listen: This week's Extra Time podcast from RNZ dissects the women's White Ferns' cricket challenge against England, the men's Black Caps vs Australia and the start of Super Rugby The White Ferns have a battle on their hands to fight their way back into their one-day series against England - ...
Our Beehive Bulletin … While Housing Minister Megan Woods was being grilled at Question Time in Parliament about the government’s performance in her portfolio domain, the Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito Williams Sio, was announcing new initiatives to provide housing. Attorney-General David Parker, meanwhile, was announcing the appointments of three ...
Asia Pacific Report Papua New Guineans awoke this morning to great sadness, reports the PNG Post-Courier. As the bells tolled with the sad news of the passing of the much beloved statesman and the founding father of the nation, newsfeeds and social media were abuzz with shock, grief, sadness and ...
In remarks for a Monetary Policy Statement presentation to the Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce today, Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr has elaborated on the direction received from the Minister of Finance, to have regard to house price sustainability ...
Critic's Chair: Guy Somerset watches the first of four documentaries on the allegations against Woody Allen in his years in the Farrow household, and hears the air of truth in the early testimonies against him. Of all the witness statements with the air of truth about them in the first ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Gangland: New Zealand’s Underworld of Organised Crime by Jared Savage (HarperCollins, $37)“It’s hard for me to imagine ...
A poem by New York-based Aotearoa poet Evangeline Riddiford Graham.Gingerbread HouseThe revolution has arrived. We get the email. MeanwhileI am moving deck chairs to make sure you are comfortable in shade. Our neighboursays it like a complaint: We don’t know anyone who is sickor dead. The taxi driver says hospitals ...
Playwright Alex Lodge on being in love with someone who’s from a different world than you.Have you read anything by Kurt Vonnegut Jr? I’m not here to judge you if you haven’t. He’s one of those writers who all the white boys in university say you “have to read” as ...
Asia Pacific Report Indonesian police have asked participants at a protest action against Special Autonomy (Otsus) in Papua to take covid-19 rapid tests at the site of the demonstration in front of the Home Affairs Ministry office in Jakarta this week, reports CNN Indonesia. The protesters refused, saying it was ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter S. Field, Head of Humanities and Creative Arts and Associate Professor of American History, University of Canterbury The idea of “news” is a pretty new thing. So is the concept of “fake news”, as in false or misleading information presented as ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Ritchie, Senior Lecturer in History, Deakin University Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare, former prime minister of Papua New Guinea and a giant of Pacific politics, has died from pancreatic cancer. He was 84. Known as “Mike” to some and “the chief” ...
Last year 320 people were killed on New Zealand’s roads. Alex Braae spoke to the people on the front line of road safety about the plan to turn that around. When the goal is to bring the road toll down to zero deaths a year, there’s no one simple solution. ...
Its 2012 investment prospectus was all suits, cigars, guns, sports cars and models in short skirts, and its consumer advertising was possibly even worse. Did the Moa brand’s misogyny contribute to its huge losses?The middle of the road can wind up being a risky place for a business. Typically a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James B. Dorey, PhD Candidate, Flinders University It’s not often you get to cast your eyes on a creature feared to be long-gone. Perhaps that’s why my recent rediscovery of the native bee species Pharohylaeus lactiferus is so exciting — especially after ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Georgina Heydon, Associate professor, RMIT University The alleged rape of former Liberal Party staffer Brittany Higgins has raised many questions about how sexual assault gets reported. Members of the Morrison government have repeatedly stressed the appropriate response to allegations of sexual assault ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dana M Bergstrom, Principal Research Scientist, University of Wollongong In 1992, 1,700 scientists warned that human beings and the natural world were “on a collision course”. Seventeen years later, scientists described planetary boundaries within which humans and other life could have a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Patfield, Postdoctoral Fellow, Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, University of Newcastle It’s that time of year again when hundreds of thousands of Australian students start university for the first time. Commencing students account for about 40% of the more than 1.6 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Mountain, Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University Australia’s electricity market is unsustainable. Texas shows us why. A week ago Texas experienced a bout of severe weather as arctic air reached deep into the state, driving temperature down to levels that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Stokes, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Deakin University Tim Hart was sitting on his couch one evening in November 2011 when he got an email with the subject line: “I’m watching”. The message that followed was short and to the point ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Edwards, Associate Professor, Sydney School of Health Sciences, University of Sydney Brisbane has just been confirmed as the preferred host for the 2032 Olympics. But Olympic organisers have more immediate concerns in mind — how to safely run the postponed Tokyo ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for February 26. All the latest news from New Zealand, updated throughout the day. Reach me at stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur Members make The Spinoff happen. Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us from ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Reserve Bank put in bind by Robertson move, Bridges clashes with top cop, and critical migrant health workers can’t get families in while new arrivals can.Finance minister Grant Robertson will be requiring the Reserve Bank to consider the impact on ...
There are clues globally that the avalanche threat is escalating in some regions as the planet warms, triggered by greater temperature swings and more intense rain and snow storms. Bob Berwyn reports for Inside Climate News Big dumps of powder snow are a precious gift in the best of times ...
District health board members have been made aware of a new problem with a just-opened Christchurch Hospital building. Oliver Lewis reports. It was two years late and plagued by errors during construction, now a further major issue can be revealed at the new $525 million Christchurch Hospital building, Waipapa. Hundreds ...
As further reports of torture and systemic rape emerge from Xinjiang, the PRC’s propaganda machine is hard at work in New Zealand. Laura Walters looks at why a Chinese New Year performance in Wellington was more than just cultural appropriation State-sponsored appropriation of Uyghur culture has been labelled “disgusting” and “disrespectful” ...
Covid-19 vaccination won’t be enough to save us from hard choices that will need to be made during our second or even third year of living with the coronavirus. Keeping Covid-19 mostly out of New Zealand has been a Herculean feat, drawing praise from around the world. Over the next year, ...
If there’s a time for screaming into the void, 2021 is surely it. Josie Adams shares a baker’s dozen of Aotearoa’s top contenders.When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you, and it’s nice to have company. New Zealand’s geography is perfect for abysses, or abyssoi ...
Jake Millar is an extraordinary young man. The young entrepreneur who convinced the rich and famous to invest millions in his business has now disappeared - and so has the money. Jake Millar was just a teenager in 2015 when he sold his first business to the government for six figures. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Defence Minister Linda Reynolds faces an agonising question. Should she say to Scott Morrison she doesn’t feel up to staying in what is one of the most demanding portfolios in the government? Reynolds broke down ...
SPECIAL REPORT:By Sheldon Chanel in Suva Much of archipelagic Fiji was forced indoors by lockdowns and a nationwide curfew in March last year when the country recorded its first case of covid-19. The quick and decisive action by legislators was successful in helping contain the spread of a highly ...
Asia Pacific Report The indigenous people of West Papua have rejected the extension of special autonomy and the planned expansion of new provinces announced by the central government of Indonesia. The rejection comes from grassroots communities across West Papua and Papuan students who are studying in Indonesia and overseas. Responding ...
The man who led the review into the dysfunctional Tauranga City Council before it was taken over by a commissioner has been appointed to lead the review into Wellington's council. ...
Opposition MPs are questioning whether there had been any special treatment from immigration officials in regards to Ricardo Menéndez March's partner's application. ...
In this week’s episode, host Simon Pound meets Lisa Fong (aka Move It Mama) whose Facebook Live workouts have found a loyal – and huge – audience worldwide.Nearly every morning, thousands of people around New Zealand and the world start their day with a workout led by a mum of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ted Snell, Honorary Professor, Edith Cowan University Review: A Forest of Hooks and Nails, Fremantle Arts Centre for Perth Festival Several years ago, when being shown around an exhibition under preparation with a Nobel prize-winning guest, an academic colleague asked what one ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael McGreevy, Research Associate, Flinders University Less than two decades ago, South Australia generated all its electricity from fossil fuels. Last year, renewables provided a whopping 60% of the state’s electricity supply. The remarkable progress came as national climate policy was gripped ...
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s parents – according to a report in Stuff – delivered some strong mantra to live by. One of them: “Don’t accept, you push back, be provocative, but always be respectful.” But what happens when political opponents don’t accept, push back and – dare we suggest it? – are ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kamaljit K Sangha, Senior Ecological Economist, Charles Darwin University Northern Australia is by far the most fire-prone region of Australia, with enormous bushfires occurring annually across thousands of square kilometres. Many of these vast, flammable landscapes have precious few barriers to slow ...
The weather's a little ragged here today, but there's a new cafe in the village – Jacob's Rivery Bakery, and it's wonderful; excellent coffee, vegetarian/vegan'organic food – I especially like the jackfruit "sausage" roll; the staff are super-friendly, vibrant young people, all of whom live in the village and locals have taken to meeting there; by design or accident, for all sorts of impromptu discussions and debates, celebrations and retreats from ordinary life. The decor is "plants", to my eye at least; there are dozens of glossy, well-cared-for pot plants on shelves and stands throughout the cafe, and I feel at home amongst them. The building is the historic post office with postmasters living quarters upstairs. The enormous clock that used to be fixed high on the wall on the street-face of the building sits in the local museum now; I wish they'd put it back up! If ever you are in Riverton, stop off there for a good time, before walking two stores to the north, where you'll discover the Riverton Environment Centre and everything on offer there, including a yarn with one of the volunteers there, a bearded chap who's willing to die in a ditch for the Green Party
A wonderful picture you paint Robert. We live in turbulent times and we should treasure those oasis of order and grace we do have.
One day we will get back home and I'll make a point of visiting Riverton. An old friend of mine once said, tongue in cheek, "New Zealand gets more civilised the further south you go. Somewhere around Mossburn it comes good."
Also you may enjoy this story.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/424742/lessons-people-can-learn-from-covid-19-lockdown-live-more-lightly-on-the-planet
I hope you will, RedLogix. I'll buy you coffee and introduce you to the native people of the area
" An old friend of mine once said, tongue in cheek, "New Zealand gets more civilised the further south you go. Somewhere around Mossburn it comes good."
Agree with that 200% How bloody true that is.
Late last year I was in that area for the first time in quite a while. I was pleasantly surprised to find good pies in Gore. Because I've heard so much about cheese rolls, I had to try them too. All I can say is, what is wrong with people?
.
Which is more than you can say for the people of Riverton.
Greens took 18 out of 795 total Party-Votes in 2017.
Just be mindful, Robert, Greenies have occasionally been burned as witches in Southland over recent decades. That's after they throw you in the river to see if you float.
Swordfish – I have, though not a witch per se, been singed many times in the past and had my buoyancy tested on more than one occasion by the good burghers of Riverton. Most recently, a minor kerfuffle over some painted-kindling caused crook'd fingers to be pointed toward the ditch-witch in his forest-garden, but that blew over with the first salt-laden sou'wester; I've weathered many squalls such as that, and expect to face more as the mood of the nation deteriorates along with the water quality, and the Federated Farmers find their muddy feet and big-laryxned voices again. Par for the course, for a provocative shaggy greenie who likes to string words together for effect.
Hi Robert. I have posted you in the past of our resident cock blackbird. He has a damaged foot which has bent in on itself. He manages very good and is looking splendid. I am wondering if you know how long these house wild birds survive in their natural environment. We call him pegleg because of his gammy way of walking. Over the seasons he has mated and reared many clutches of chicks in nests in and around our garden. He is very tame and will come when we call and all of our garden birds are fed every other day with fruit and wildbird seed mixed with wholemeal breadcrumbs and fat mixed. Pegleg is at least seven years old now and considering he was fledged in our garden and we never thought he would survive but he finally got airborne and the rest is history!! Is seven a good age for a blackbird in the wild. He looks as glossy and handsome as ever and is nest building with a mate right now.
I would be interested in your knowledge of longevity in blackbirds in the wild.
"15 years possibly"
http://www.tiritirimatangi.org.nz/blackbird
Oh hi, Whispering Kate – I remember well your blackbird posts and am pleased to hear your male bird is so well. The number 20 popped into my head when I read your question about longevity, but I think that individual might have been coddled (as yours are being by the sound of it
I can't really say then, as I read that some only attain 3 or 4 years before they make way for others of their kind. Ours seem to hang around for yonks, but I haven't kept a record. The several that centre their attentions on my garden especially love the worm-farm, not for the worms, but to intervene in their feeding by helping themselves to porridge-left-overs, sweet corn, home-made bread crusts and so on. I hope you get to enjoy your birds for a long time to come!
Thank you Robert. Yes we love our birds. Tui, fantails, kereru wax eyes and then all the blackies, thrushes starlings you name it. They make such a mess in the garden but then they give us such a lot of fun. They love our bird baths, tui dive bomb into them and the starlings bring the entire family – seven sometimes all in the bath together. Twenty sounds amazing and yes our birds are spoiled so who knows how long pegleg will survive considering his gammy leg.
I like Bernie Sanders a whole lot more now that he's fully put his shoulder to electing Joe Biden for President.
As well as his old policy and comms teams pushing the Biden team a long way into their platforms, anders himself is putting his considerable support base out there with new speeches:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/29/politics/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-voting/index.html
The panel events, Sanders' team said, have racked up more than 850,000 views in all, for an average that exceeds 200,000.
With the Trump Republicans attacking the very voting process by actively sabotaging the Post Office, Sanders' motivational energy is going to be critical to replacing the current US regime.
Well that is a welcome spark of good news. Because so far while Biden is clearly the more worthwhile candidate, he's not winning, just like Clinton wasn't winning in 2016.
In normal times you'd have to think the village idiot could beat someone as clearly unsuited to the job as Trump. Yet the fact that the Democrats are not 30 pts ahead and utterly unbeatable right now rings a big fat alarm bell in my mind.
The Democrats always have the real problem that their voter bases is highly diverse, with often conflicting interests. It usually takes an eloquent and charismatic candidate to unify them, and this Biden ain't. If Sanders can help bridge this deficit and build some real unity in the Democrat base, it may just tip the balance.
It's hard to guess how much effect that will have on his base compared to 2016.
There's a solid component of his base that are middle-finger voters attracted by the idea that Bernie was going to stick it to the establishment. They will think Bernie going in to bat for Biden is selling out and they either won't vote or do a burn-it-down vote for Donasaurus Wrecks.
But if he can bring back to Biden a significant chunk of those that peeled off for Stein (or Johnson) or got taken in by the smears against Clinton and just didn't vote, then he'll have done a solid for the US and the rest of the world.
Sanders and team are being a lot more cooperative towards Biden than they were with HRC at this point. And people like OAC get that they can both reform the Democratic party AND back Biden against Trump.
It will take all of Sanders' base and all progressive others to vote, if they are to overcome the electorate border gerrymandering, Fox news dominance, and active polling place discouragement to change this government.
"It will take all of Sanders' base and all progressive others to vote …"
Nice setup – that makes it pretty clear who will be blamed if Biden falls short.
@Ad, "And people like OAC get that they can both reform the Democratic party" she (and you) must be completely deluded, the DNC would rather eat their own babies than offer anything to the progressive wing of that party…that is why they pretty much said (talking in political optics here) shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down, by not inviting her to even speak at the DNC convention…not sure why you can't just admit the DNC is 100% brought and paid for by corporate USA.
But then this shouldn't surprise me whatsoever, I seem to remember you are one of the liberals who think the FBI are now friends of the left, and seriously, you can't get much more delusional than that.
This is all a performance art routine, right?
Best absorbed through the artform of collective interpretive dance.
You didn't watch her nominating Sanders?
"I like Bernie Sanders a whole lot more now .."
What was there to dislike previously? Apart from the tendency to give the same speech over and over. Plus the damaging mis-characterisation of himself as a 'socialist', instead of a mainstream social democrat reaching back to the true values of America's past?
Uhh, a complete absence of any legislative success of any difficulty or significance, beyond leveraging his vote to get a few nickel-and-dime amendments. Which appears to be related to an apparent inability to compromise or showing any other coalition-building skills.
The short-fingered vulgarian still using songs after their creators told his team "NO". This time it's Cohen's "Hallelujah". They should have asked for "You Want It Darker". Probably they should also have tried to understand the meaning of "Hallelujah" rather than just assuming it was some kind of religiously fervid praise.
https://www.salon.com/2020/08/28/leonard-cohens-reps-say-they-specifically-declined-gop-requests-to-use-hallelujah-at-convention_partner/
It never seemed to bother the 'Born in the USA' users.
You mean the bit about Repugs using it against Springsteen's expressed wishes. or that the song is an expose of things that are fucked up about the US rather than the paean to American greatness that idiot Repugs seem to think it is?
Awesome clip, at the trump rally yesterday he used Phil Collins in the Air tonight, Phil Collins don't like trump.
Exactly.
Don't know if anyone else has posted this but supposedly Labour’s internal polling shows Chloe ahead in Auckland Central. And I don’t call 9% a “marginal lead”.
Greens 33 Labour 24 Nats 22
A decent Operator would release this as an internal hit from Chloe's team against Shaw, while he's getting a kicking, letting the members know that there are leadership alternatives.
Decent Operators are hard to come by. They should have imported some from the UK or Oz or hired Hooton.
If the Greens walked over glass and got Gordon Campbell back, or even godhelpthem Russell Norman, they'd be operating harder and tracking at 9 and not fucking up.
I have a soft spot for those who fuck up. I do it myself all the time. Getting over the threshold is good enough for me; they are not ready yet for Cabinet and by “they” I don’t mean individual MPs.
In Labour you don't get into Cabinet without a fuckup on your CV.
"Don't Fuck It Up" would have been a much better campaign slogan.
How is Chloe a leadership alternative to James?
Chlöe wears cool sweatshirts; James wears suits. Appearance and perception are everything. Enough said.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/fashion/122578671/the-story-behind-green-mp-chle-swarbricks-iconic-sweatshirt
Oh God you people.
There's no operators in the Green Party and Chloe isn't trying to replace James Shaw.
Just get a Gin and enjoy your Sunday.
I didn't think you meant that literally, i was just trying to point to your ignorance of how the Party works.
After the last 24 hours, most people on the planet know how the Membership works over a Green leader.
I am talking about the gender balanced aspect of the co-leader thing knob-end.
Please keep it civil. It was not clear at all that you were “talking about the gender balanced aspect of the co-leader thing” until you mentioned it @ 7:22 PM.
Surely it was obvious after i asked in reply to you @3.54pm if she was considering a change of gender identity.
No, it wasn’t obvious and that comment came further down anyway and was a reply to one of mine, not Ad’s – the nesting of comments has its downsides. It may have been obvious to you but most of us aren’t mind readers and it may help to keep that in mind and avoid acerbic follow-up comments 🙂
Hah! You dropped your poker face first.
but is she thinking to change her gender identity?
Cohen's song? Rules?
There is only one rule – 'I'll do what I want. You don't like it? Take me to court. By the time my second term is coming to an end the hearings will just about be done. If some pardons and commutation of sentences need to be done, so be it.'
A couple of educators share their ponderings on the purpose of education in relation to current social context: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/ideasroom/pandemic-shifts-some-education-myths
No, it needs a revision. The system needs to be made fit for purpose in the ever-changing world we're in. Lange faked that with Tomorrow's Schools in the '80s, but we know not to trust Labour promises.
Mythos is powerful in mass psychology, and when combined with bureaucracy it created an education system with awe-inspiring inertia. Guaranteed to defeat progress. Which is why the system never entered the 20th century.
When I passed thro it in the 1950s/60s it was clearly archaic but effective in mass-producing crap (such as mainstreamers, Nat/Lab voters). I encountered Summerhill in 1970 when it was a hot trend & that crystallised my feelings about how education ought to be done – but nowadays the necessity for real progress is more urgent.
Suitable leadership can still get the right results fast, and Labour deserves credit for proving that point currently. If only it realised that the same cut-through must be applied to the national curriculum! But connecting the dots is so hard for some. 🙄
Consumption of nature producing pandemics is gnosis too deep for most people to learn, I suspect: the causal relations are opaque unless you happen to be a microbiologist. Capitalists working with third-world govts will produce pandemics unless a greater force stops them. Business as usual.
The control system has a predatory relationship to nature though, and it determines the future via representative democracy. Kids must learn how to collectively defeat the left & right puppets the system uses. It's the only way to escape becoming victims. Therefore an education system fit for the purpose of human survival must be both radical and beyond left and right.
Anyone else get Bingo after three sentences?
My Mum might have once..
What's your arsehole score?
( 1.49 )
Over 100 years ago Charles Spearman made two monumental discoveries about human intelligence. First, a general factor of intelligence (g) exists: people who score high on one test of intelligence also tend to score high on other tests of intelligence. Second, Spearman found that the g-factor conforms to the principle of the "indifference of the indicator": It doesn't matter what test of intelligence you administer; as long as the intelligence test is sufficiently cognitively complex and has enough items, you can reliably and validly measure a person's general cognitive ability.
Fast forward to 2018, and a new paper suggests that the very same principle may not only apply to human cognitive abilities, but also to human malevolence. New research conducted by a team from Germany and Denmark suggests that a General Dark Factor of Personality (D-factor) exists among the human population, and that this factor conforms to the principle of indifference of the indicator. This is big news, so let's take a look.
[…]
Note: The Dark Core Scale was adapted from the larger test battery. I selected the items on an ad-hoc basis for entertainment purposes, but I do not recommend using the scale to make any sort of diagnosis. For more on the D-factor, go to http://www.darkfactor.org. To take the self-assessment created by the researchers of the dark factor study, go to: http://qst.darkfactor.org.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-dark-core-of-personality/
My dork factor is sky high.
Miss 15's arsehole rating was off the charts the other day. But she's good now lololz 🙂 Teenagers, dang, it's almost like they can think for themselves 🙂 🙂
Now that significant volumes of end-of-life lithium batteries are becoming a thing, here's a brief look at ventures underway to recycle and recover value from that resource. Featuring JB Straubel, one of Tesla's founders, so it's about real life rather than just lab demonstration possibilities.
https://insideevs.com/features/441524/tesla-jb-straubel-future-battery-recycling/
More daily cases than the days leading up to 14/5 when we last entered L2 but Auckland's all set to go to level 2?
It's not the numbers that scare me. It's that sometimes new cases are still being reported as "under investigation". That suggests to me that new transmissions are still going outside the circles of contacts the contact tracers are finding out about. So I struggle with the idea that the outbreak is "contained".
People better be fkn careful and conscientious about masks and distancing and other transmission-reducing behaviour or we're gonna be back into level 3 or 4 in no time. And maybe not just Dorkland, either.
NZGovernment have just put out a request for ALL people in South and West Auckland to take the test.
Andre your closest one is in the New Lynn carpark next to the New Lynn Medical Centre.
Chop chop
Professor Nick Wilson called for Level 2.5 on Q and A on TVNZ this morning.
He said the request for all people in South and West Auckland to take the test shows the governments is not ahead of the cluster.
Professor Wilson called for much better mask use.
1 p.m…..
You beat me to it.
My God, some people are so f*****g stupid! This response from someone in West Auckland ( I think)
Because situations change. And when that happens the responses have to change. Read the newspapers, listen to the news. Get youself informed and then you won't be "confused" and kicking up ballyhoo for the sake of it.
Edit not working:
Addendum to above:
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300094975/coronavirus-everyone-in-south-or-west-auckland-urged-to-take-covid19-test
Btw I'm referring to the 'stupid' not you Ad.
'I'm so confused" – is Merve aka Roger Bridge back on the scene?
Lemme think, over the last three months I have had close contact (more than 15 minutes within 2 metres) with exactly 2 people. Those were my sons, who have already tested negative (tested because of attending Avondale College). Apart from that, I have walked past people and momentarily been within 2 metres of them (while masked) on maybe 8 grocery shopping trips in that three months. And they still want me to turn up so they can probe my brains?
Fuck.
I did it late Friday.
It's fucking disgusting. 🙂
It was negative BTW
Thanks. You're a true inspiration.
You'll be good Andre – person up! ( can't use man up). They will find a brain – worse outcome would be if they didn't.
sigh
Oh well, could be worse I s'pose.
Considering that then West and South Auckland probably need to be maintained at level 3 if not pushed to level 4.
No, they have not requested for everyone to be tested.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300094975/coronavirus-jacinda-ardern-confirms-not-everyone-in-south-or-west-auckland-needs-covid19-test
God the PM just knows how to take all the fun out of a Sunday.
You chose to watch and listen? The liberty that those marchers in the Auckland CBD are so irresponsible about included the right to switch off the TV.
Here's a great song that tells you what to do instead. The late John Prine sung by John Denver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icrM4_4T1qc
Professor Shaun Hendy on the point you make.
Thank you Ed, superb comment from Hendy there and wonderful of you to highlight it.
Every under investigation has been changed within a couple of days to the cluster ,just this morning minister of health statement we are going to level2, we know where all the positive have come from, almost all from in isolation
That just means that after the fact they have been able to trace it the path back to where it came from. Not that they have determined a reasonably reliable boundary around the risk.
There was an excellent comment on the Standard yesterday by SPC. SPC's post referenced two studies about how children spread the virus.
link: https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-29-08-2020/#comment-1746287
Professor Shaun Hendy has asked the Government to reconsider the planned move down to Covid alert level 2.
Professor Michael Baker was on RNZ this morning, calling for the wearing of masks by everyone at secondary schools. He is emphatic on the issue.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018761759/covid-19-update-with-professor-michael-baker
to do an internal link on TS you either need to put the link in a direct line with some text, or you need to use the link tags. I've fixed your comment as it was linking to the post rather than comment (this is the default if the link is put in a line of its own without tags).
eg link: https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-30-08-2020/#comment-1746522
vs
those two links have the same URL, the first goes to the comment, the second reverts back to the post URL.
They should have delayed opening schools to Wednesday (3 week lockdown minimum – given new information that children retain viral load for 3 weeks).
That allows planning for social distancing at 2.5 and for people to sort out masks (which should be compulsory for children in schools, on school buses and indoor workers and in street queues).
2.5 for mine should include temperature testing for entry to buildings. And expectation people work from home if they can.
I suspect they eased back down a little early because Mof H bungled planning for a regional lockdown by not having pre granted exemptions for business activity.
If they were influenced by the plight of hospitality business and the looming election they had better hope General Luck is back on duty.
Because going back to Level 3 in Auckland, and to 2.5 for the rest if this spreads, will put an end to the Oct 17 election date.
They’re between a rock and a hard place (i.e. damned either way). I believe the (health) risk is higher than last time we came out of L3 and we need more luck this time.
Looks like fatigue to me. The government has been ground down by the brute stupidity of media. A win for the virus. Bring out your dead.
My feelings too. They are walking a tight rope I know, but better to follow through in the way they started , and I think tomorrow is too soon.
certainly appears so
yep. Also the economic pressures and Labour being largely unprepared for how to deal with this once the neoliberal model fails.
and, impending election.
I think they have been too accommodating of media. The Covid updates are a public health announcement – they should not have been contestable, any more than military announcements would have been in time of war.
The place for the kind of malign aggression media displayed, aside from lonely exile on the Auckland or Bounty Islands, was in regular press conferences, not queering the compliance pitch of an emergency public health announcement.
If, as I fear, we develop a growing outbreak in the wake of relaxing restrictions, it should called the “Morrah/O’Brian” outbreak, in honour of its sponsors.
that's a really good idea about separating out the public health announcements and the press conferences. Do the first, have break and do the rest a bit later. Gives people time to settle down too.
yep too soon for me too. At least they could go "no inter regional travel" out of Auckland and maybe the Waikato. South of Taupo seems to be okay.
But if people don't believe it has been beaten then they will stay home as much as possible anyway. So they won't be out spending money. So we will still have a lot of the economic impact plus the potential virus spread as well.
I'm outside Auckland and it has been very quiet although with no local cases people are starting to go out again. I'll be cutting back outings again from tomorrow. If they kept Auckland in I’d slope off for some skiing
Given that cheaper testing (spit on paper stuff is coming) this might be the last really major lockdown that we would need.
My worry now is that Aucklanders will bring the virus south, but I haven't been following closely enough to know what the risk is.
Ouch!
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/a-poem-for-james-shaw-1
Here's the right's latest poster boy for toxic masculinity cleaning up graffiti and here he is sucker-punching a young woman.
clearly it was self defense and economic anxiety.
I can't help wondering if he was even arrested a bit quicker cos it was white folks he murdered rather than black.
https://www.wisn.com/article/jacob-blake-friends-id-2-men-killed-in-kenosha-protest-shootings/33826154
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/29/fact-check-video-police-thanked-kyle-rittenhouse-gave-him-water/5661804002/
The USA is rapidly defaulting back to pre-1861 setting as a white supramacist, ultra capitalist, patricarchal theocratic state.
Y'all Queda enters Portland.
And tRump has his Horst Wessel.
PORTLAND, Ore. — A man was shot and killed Saturday as a large group of supporters of President Trump traveled in a caravan through downtown Portland, Ore., which has seen nightly protests for three consecutive months.
The pro-Trump rally drew hundreds of trucks full of supporters into the city. At times, Trump supporters and counterprotesters clashed on the streets, with people shooting paintball guns from the beds of pickup trucks and protesters throwing objects back at them.
A video that purports to be of the shooting, taken from the far side of the street, showed a small group of people in the road outside what appears to be a parking garage. Gunfire erupts, and a man collapses in the street.
The man who was shot and killed was wearing a hat with the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group based in Portland that has clashed with protesters in the past.
https://archive.li/9J0ak (nyt)
I have 1 suggestion and 1 suggestion only for those living in the USA. Get out as soon as you can, especially if you are black, female or LBGT.
They are coming for you. To be any of the above is bascially the same as being a Jew in Germany in the 1930's.
Ace ponticator Shane Jones out-performs Trump:
Experts in linguistic analysis will be studying this statement for decades to come, I suspect. University theses may even be written on what "stood call the Government didn't intend on doing" actually means.
Jones may complain that a Herald journo mangled what he really said in the interests of postmodernism – but methinks such false modesty from the hat won't persuade many.
That is the thing tho, this school is not going to harm anyone but the Greens, why? Only the Greens had a standing policy for over 9 years to not fund private schools – no matter how green washed the 'building' will be. Jones is dong what he always does, Labour can simply wash their hands in innocence, in the meantime the Green Party is getting not much love from many – other then here…. and i don't think that will be enough.
If i were any more cynical then i am i would suggest that the Green Co Party leader was set up to fail and he rant straight into this. But surely the Co Party leader of the Green would not be so stupid after several years now in Parliament. One would hope.
Nobody onsite here has suggested what ought to have happened instead. That collective failure demonstrates the inadequacy of all sideline commentators. They persist in not factoring in budget decision-making constraints that closed off options for James. The primary one being the pressure of GR's schedule!
Imagine the shitfight which would have erupted if he had rejected that line item: "Green Party rejects funding for Green School! Labour & NZF approved the funding!"
Experts in the psychology of brands wheeled out in the media would declare that the Green brand had been reduced to ideological twaddle by the Greens. Spokespeople for the Green movement would point out that rabid leftists were outnumbered by around a hundred to one in the movement. Since I joined it in 1968 that's always been evident.
So it's clear that the GP has dodged a bullet that may have proved fatal. I predict negative consequences will be minimal. Even leftists have to get real eventually…
Zakly!
Yep, but that would have been a minor storm dealt with by using the focus to highlight the Greens' education policy. Also, if there were one or two thousand applications for the fund, I doubt that turning down this one would have been a big deal. Plenty of others to choose from.
I do think both sides are essentially right here. The problem is that approving the Green School needed a different process, eg one whereby the school was asked to meet certain conditions around funding that were more aligned with GP values.
Again, what are you taking umbrage with? that i say outright that Shane Jones is Shane Jones and wont be anything else ever and he is not even worth discussing?
I am simply over the constant whinging by people here about this party that is not doing shit, that party not doing shit, while the government is good enough to fuck up on their own.
The school is literally just the another drop bringing the bucket to overflow. People losing their jobs, they are locked in their homes, they are told to be fearful of the unseen enemy and National cause Judith will be worse and then this dumb ass blunder by someone who should now better. – nothing i did. Sorry mate.
Us people here in no where land that are not rabidly partisan or super loyal partisan we vote every three years and only get to hope that it 'will get better' and chances are it will not. It never does.
So we look at the parties and their principles and hope to find something that works for us and vote for that then.
We have been educated on this site so many times about what the Green Party can do or can not do it ain't even funny anymore, and btw, often times it is literally just condescending, cause we can read, and we do read, and sometimes we even vote for them, or Labour. Cause not as bad as the other option.
I already have given him the benefit of the doubt. But you don't get to whine about Shane Jones saying its gonna go forward, and not also lay the blame at the feet of the others Parties involved.
Also, last but least, If the Greens would not have a standing policy of 9 years to not fund private schools – and providing money to build one – 'for the construction only' – is still providing money to a private school, non of this brouhaha would have happened and frankly that is the matter at hand. What in the name of a pandemic will be next on the 'nice to have but not needed anymore policy ' on the chopping block. And this is not a question only to be laid at the feet of the Green Party but also includes Labour and NZ First.
At the end of the day, people like me will go to the polls, hold their nose and put a cross under the name of the person they find the least offensive. Not the person who has a good program for the future but the least offensive – because non of the clowns in government actually have a plan for us living on the margins of society. And the Greens now fall into this category, because if this policy is no more valid, then what next.
And if you don't want to discuss this anymore i suggest you don't post links complaining about Shane Jones who says this will go forward. The Greens – thanks to their Co-Leader – happy or not about it – are Co-responsible for it, as James could have said this should not be included, but he did not. And they now need to shoulder this responsibility.
Really? Sorry, I thought I had.
What ought to have happened was that this school submitted their application and had it stand on its own merits without the Green Party lobbying for it:
So according to Hipkins, this wasn't a project that Shaw was merely put in the awkward position of announcing – Shaw explicitly requested it.
So my suggestion of what ought to have happened instead is that Shaw, or whomever in the Greens, had shut the fuck up about this private school in whatever meetings the subject occurred.
Clear?
Shaw explicitly requested it
Hipkins didn't say he did. Nor has anyone else, except you. Since James specified that he was approving it on the Labour/NZF basis of regional infrastructure development, we can't blame him personally for any Green lobbying that may have been done earlier.
You could be right, but I didn't hear him refer to such lobbying on the Zoom call, so I'll wait & see if anyone else did!
Anyway, I was referring to the other options James may have had at the point in the process where he was faced with an apparent binary option: approve or reject. Weka said the rules stopped him running it by the Green caucus for a collective decision. I've already pointed out why rejection would have produced a worse shitstorm for the Greens.
No, "approving" is not "advocating quite strongly for"
Stuff might have been misrepresenting the subject of the quote, or Hipkins was bullshitting and everyone has since gone with that just to keep the shitfight to a minimum, but that's the available comment.
As for Shaw finding himself in "approve or reject", that's when you kick it upstairs.
Not sure why you are referencing Hipkins here (again), he wasn't involved in decisions afaik and his first response to the question was to say it was nothing to do with him, talk to the relevant ministers.
Lobby is not quite the right word, because it implies that the Green Party from the outside promoted the project above others. Whereas my reading is that Shaw was part of the group that looked at more than a thousand applications, shortlisted them, and in that process he used a climate change and environment lens. The mistake was in not using a broader GP policy lens.
Still afaik, the Green Party didn't have anything to do with, it was Shaw and his Ministry staff.
Lobby might be the wrong word for "advocated quite strongly for", but your lens theory is not inconsistent with Hipkins' account.
Shortlisting things in meetings with people who have different perspectives often involves advocating for one's preferred shortlist items.Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you horse trade. But if you don't advocate, usually your preferred options don't make it to the shortlist.
Budget items, job applicants, even the damned catering menu, sometimes. I'm still quite pleased I got them to include a pepperoni pizza at the last work hobnob.
Yes, it's his job to advocate strongly for projects that are going to help our climate response.
My problem with Hipkins' statement is that afaik the GP wasn't involved. If Hipkins had said Shaw it would have made more sense in terms of getting the public up to speed on what actually happened. I don't blame Hipkins for this, it wasn't his area to comment in, but it's why I don't find that particular statement helpful as a reference point, it just keeps muddying the waters.
Shaw's 30 min explanation and 40 min Q and A (with MD) to the members was important not only for the response to members, but because he basically described the inner workings of govt in ways that are rarely seen. I learned a lot. I wish this was happening regularly.
I can now see why coalitions get so fraught in govt, if parties cannot appraise budget decisions to see if they are inadvertently likely to approve funding for things their policy opposes.
I wonder if the protocols binding the decision-making are in the cabinet manual, or simply agreed ad hoc for each coalition.
If the Greens had not had James in the frame as assoc finance minister, would they have been able to make caucus decisions on budget line items? I doubt it. Yet any funding decision ought to, in principle, be subject to Green caucus assessment. Or is that impractical?
I'm not up with how much say a coalition support party gets, if any, so maybe others are more informed & can elucidate.
I guess he could have had one of his Minister staff run it past GP policy. Not sure if that creates a conflict of interest. Maybe someone else needs to be assigned the role and asked to sign a confidentiality agreement.
Good one McFlock.
They coulda said, we'll build your school and you can give us a 50% share in it, praxically.
What the hell does "praxically" mean?
Gabby has a naughty habit of naughtily mimicking Dennis…
ah, cheers.
in praxis
It's the constant references to the decaying empire I like.
lol…those go right over my head….but one must be practical.
Praxical?
now there's a word….that may be the next big thing
I am ok with funding the green school. It's a business that attracts a lot of export dollars and it fits within the fund it got the money from. The perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good.
However, some schools are in shocking disrepair especially in the provinces and Wellington. I know Auckland is growing but there is an extraordinary discrepancy between Auckland high schools and their facilities and what other school around the country have to make do with.
Stuff the export dollars they are visa selling to the rich. I'm not interested in that.
Contrary to some commenters here, I don’t think all the rich are ‘evil bastards’ by default. For me, context is important, i.e. how did they obtain their wealth and what do they do with it. The stereotypical ‘rich bastard’ is such a lazy label to declare one’s hyper-polarised prejudiced position that immediately kills any meaningful conversation.
for the last few weeks here there has been an ongoing campaing maligning 'overseas students' – buying visas to live here, scams, scammers etc and but this is not it?
It is. And frankly if this school wants to show us it is not just a nice to have unschooling project for the failing kids of the very rich then they can come public as to whom their target group is. Cause 24.000 NZD is a lot of cash for most people in this country.
This is not about all rich people are being evil, but most rich people don't pay taxes, do their best to not pay taxes, and their wealth has so far failed to trickle down to any of us. That i think is more the issue.
Young bright people like to acquire new experiences and explore the world. Some study overseas, some become au pairs, some do their OE after graduation. Some love a country they spend time in so much that they would like to stay or come back and then stay. We cannot have that, so much is clear, because some will abuse the system and our hospitality. Who do they think are, freeloading freedom campers in Aotearoa?
I’m all for a wealth tax 🙂 Hit them where it hurts the most, in their pockets, of course. Paying (higher) taxes is the only way they can re-pay their debt to society, obviously. How these taxes ‘trickle down’ to any of us depends on Government.
When they have ‘thieved’ enough [HT to DtB], they should give away all their ill-gotten gains instead of setting up a school to help others as it helped their children, for example. Like this couple did:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300089556/philanthropic-kiwi-couple-giving-away-more-than-50-million
Redemption is possible although some will never forgive – once a thief, always a thief.
I'm not saying they are all "evil" as such. I object to visa buying on many grounds – I'm with Sabine in their failure to contribute to the community as taxpayers or in many other ways.
Nor do I agree with the wealth being used to buy a bigger say in the decision making processes in the community. if they wanted to just come on limited term visa and be heavily constrained as to what they can spend money on locally – no political donations no dragging in under paid staff etc etc . But we are also winding up with this "super grade of people who trot from country to country legally" and who then move on rather than clean up aany mess they help to create. Frankly Repugs from the USA really grind my wheels – it didn't work there so why should we allow them here. It's a bit like taking on all the priviledged leaders of say the old communist USSR.
The only way to get rich is through theft.
Book Review: Why We Can’t Afford the Rich by Andrew Sayer
Just because it was legal doesn't mean that it wasn't theft.
The only way to get rich is through theft.
And of course the marxist definition of rich is 'anyone wealthier than me'.
And there you go, making shit up again.
Proto-Marxist Proudhon said:
"La propriété, c'est le vol!" : Property Is Theft!
Though he was referring to property owners who "stole" profits from labourers.
He's not remembered for anything else.
Ad – Don't scorn Proudhon. At least his idea was an interesting concept. Nowadays we have sad dumby right-wingers tediously claiming that tax is theft. Oh dear…
Property Tax = double theft or thieving from the thieves? Bring on a Wealth Tax, I say!
Doesn't mean that he wasn't right.
It's apparent from this thread that 'anyone who can afford to send their kids to a private school' fits the bill however.
Seems a pretty good proxy.
Plenty of private school graduates in the Green Party staff.
I think your generalization may be a bit of a stretch.
Hubbard, of South Canterbury Finance, didn't really fit that model, which is part of the reason he was so easily ripped off by Key and his accomplices.
A level of incontinent greed is certainly abundant among the wealthy, as are a more innocent set of self-justifying assumptions about those who are not rich. But dishonesty is not obligate, merely frequent.
Nope.
To get rich requires economies of scale applied to income. In other words, income from multiple people being fed into one stream. To achieve that requires some sort of mechanism that takes the wealth generated by those people and transfers it to another without the latter doing any work for it. It’s called, in modern parlance, a passive income. I suppose it got its name changed because its original name, rentier income, has some rather negative connotations.
So, shareholders, owners of rental properties, speculators and capitalists in general are all supported by law that allows such theft.
As I was told when I was doing Amway: A person working will never get rich but someone who has many people working for them will.
As I said, the correlation is strong, but there are counter examples. J. K. Rowling became one of the wealthiest persons in Britain without recourse to financial jiggery pokery – she took the Oracle's advice:
If you would have innocent wealth, bring the bones of Hector out of Asia, and build a shrine to him.
Metaphorically, of course.
Ahh, the deserving rich…
We all deserve a second chance in life
…. and the endlessly undeserving poor.
Actually a lot of it is to do with random dumb luck. The really interesting question is what can you do to increase the luck of others?
I think that it is as much about the $,s from overseas students as anything else too ! I as a tax payer do not support this. Helping a private school for Kiwi kids I can handle … JUST ! Maybe if the access through the education system to become a NZ citizen was clearly and completely closed I might be able to handle that too.
The best chess players in the WORLD (who can play dozens of games blindfold) make mistakes in a game inside 64 squares that they have played for years – and in some cases decades – 20/20 hindsight is so cheap.
I think the horse has been dead for a while – will you please stop flogging it?
There's a grouping for you: against masks, the UN, and the government generally: Aotea Square raise the roof!
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/content/tvnz/onenews/story/2020/08/29/protest.html?auto=6185687995001
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmo3HFa2vjg
I gotta say, it's been fascinating watching all the special pleading, sophistry, pinhead dancing and wilful misrepresentation of critics that's been happening ever since it was the "good guys" that got busted screwing up.
Just fun teasing the moisties.
Lucky we didn't let them near serious Ministerial responsibility, or walk with tin snips.
Can't say it's been fun watching otherwise intelligent, politically aware people completely misunderstand how govt works.
Chose your characters…establish a plot…
Those cunning Chinese must have planned meticulously for yankistan to engage in collective fuckwittery. How did they pull that off?
Whew. They're not asking everyone in South and West Auckland to get tested. That never made sense – that's around 500,000 people and testing capacity is only around 70,000 per week. They have yet to update guidelines on who they want to turn up, but I'll guess they will be asking extra hard for people with even the mildest symptoms and/or any conceivable connection to a case to get checked out.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300094975/coronavirus-jacinda-ardern-confirms-not-everyone-in-south-or-west-auckland-needs-covid19-test
And I am guessing no one will be held accountable for the mix up again.
Maybe an emotional junior staffer.
Indeed. As heaven forbid someone senior should take some responsibility
Did you miss Andre's sarcasm or just side step it?
In the linked article?
TBF yes. But it could just be me being thick. Wouldn't be a first.
I am not even talking about her being held accountable.
Andre’s sarcasm was in Andre’s comment, not in the article that Andre linked to.
Just as well you’re not talking about the PM being accountable. At least, the PM is taking steps to correct the mistake and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
… and there I was, just quietly enjoying the whooshing sounds echoing around …
Some fool didn't read or listen to the instruction properly and sent out the wrong message. It would have been either a MoH staffer or a media outlet – or both.
I'm getting sick of these staffers or journos who botch- up and (maybe) put others at risk in the process.
The error was within government somewhere. It was on the Unite Against Covid 19 facebook page, which is a genuine government communication channel.
That advice never seemed right. The PM was pissed off.
Didn't stop Ad getting excited and pushing it right here on this forum though.
Relax. Ad didn't make the screw-up. It was on an official government communication channel.
But he didn't question what was obviously an error. Most reasonably intelligent people would have questioned it, and not said, “chop, chop”.
Why waste a good opportunity for a wind-up and spoil it with expressing skepticism?
I'll get you one day you little scallywag.
Don't know how you are feeling in Auckland but I'm desperately worried about my income and family.
I guess it's ok for people not working because their life doesn't change with Covid. For those of us still producing it's terrifying and having someone from leafy Wanaka on the wind-up is not helpful.
Uh, IIRC Ad is still living in West Auckland (a Titirangi elite, no less) and Ad's workplace is also messed around with at level 3, and has alluded to disruptions from COVID possibly messing up plans to retire to Wanaka. Ad is sharing the disruption, not indulging in windups from a comfortable safe distance.
All true, but a little wind-up in there as well.
So much honesty, you could be a Green Party Co-Leader, one day!
"The criteria remained: anyone with symptoms or links to the cluster should get tested"
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/30-08-2020/live-updates-august-30-government-renews-call-for-all-south-and-west-aucklanders-to-be-tested/
[content removed for breaching quoting rules]
Crikey, thanks for that info Robert and links etc. Much appreciated
The moderation thread, moderator? I'm not sure where/what that is but rest assured, if I did, I'd visit willingly!
The latest Observer Opinium poll has Keir Starmer and Labour level pegging with the Tory government for the first time in over a year. Boris and his government have surrendered a 26 point lead in just over 5 months. Both parties are on 40%.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/29/boris-johnson-faces-tory-wrath-as-party-slumps-in-shock-poll
The tories have well over 4 years to orchestrate a hate campaign against him, no hurry.
Ken Loach calls out Sturmer for his complicity in the persecution of Julian Assange
https://labourheartlands.com/exclusive-ken-loach-calls-out-sir-keir-starmer-what-was-his-dealings-in-the-julian-assange-case/
"I'm getting really sick of guys named Todd…"
That little gem comes at the 13:15 mark…
Adasenya or Costa?
MMA or MMP?
(hmm…)
Defending NZ from crazy British newspaper columnists:
Of New Zealand and Lockdowns: A Reply to Madeline Grant
Amazing. Public servants once again trying to destabilise the govt. Just saw the PM on Newshub say she's "incredibly angry".
Not sure about blaming public servants and having an agenda to topple the government without giving some supporting links to this assertion. – Why did not Min Hipkins correct the message during his interview during the morning ? Or that it took until midway thru the PM's 1:00 briefing for a correction to be made when our PM was aware of this during the morning.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12360705
Seems there's a couple of options:
A) the media reported it from 5pm, but anyone in govt who was familiar with the particular decision wasn't monitoring the media.
B) the media reported it from 5pm, but anyone in govt who was familiar with the particular decision and was monitoring the media just figured that whatever media report they heard had fucked up the message and (being the weekend) they had no inclination or ability inclination to check the website at the time, and the media getting the message wrong is so routine they forgot about it.
C) the media reported it from 5pm, but anyone in govt who was familiar with the particular decision and was monitoring the media underestimated the fuckage they should give and failed to correct it or call a minister about it. Maybe they thought they could wait until monday, who knows.
Not sure about a govt dept consciously sabotaging – Looking forward to your reasoning to discredit.
Option 4 . The minions at comms once contacted by the media, time ticked by as minions were waiting for seniors(Government Group) to give direction and what actions/statements were to be implemented. Story progressed, and still at the time of the PM's 1:00 statement there was still no action with the oversimplified statement still there.
From the Herald timeline (seriously? This bullshit deserves a timeline? Oh well, what the hell) "contacted" can mean "called someone's cellphone" or "sent email to generic comms@-style email address". The latter can easily be a few hours on the weekend depending on their set-up (helpdesk is dealing with other shit, takes a while to escalate, comms minion looks at email at home, verifies issue, escalatesfor instruction, supervisor goes for placeholder statement while they sort out the web editors, maybe has to drive into office). At which point the issue was resolved within a couple of hours. And everyone pulls finger when Ardern gets asked about it, because before then they didn't know that a journo thought it was a massive fucking crisis.
I don’t think it’s deliberate sabotage Dennis. Just poor grammar really and a lack of clear understanding of what needed to be communicated. And the fact it took as long as it did to get it taken down is probably best explained by the fact it’s the bloody weekend and all those 9-to-5ers couldn’t be reached.
What’s annoying is the way the 4th estate all circle the wagons whenever one of their own comes out the worse for wear after an exchange with the PM. It’s getting bloody tedious.
do you have a link to the original? Wouldn't mind seeing the whole thing.
https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+statement+south+and+west+auckland&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjNr9vaw8LrAhUfMbcAHXa_AKwQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=covid+statement+south+and+west+auckland&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzoECCMQJzoCCAA6BggAEAUQHjoGCAAQCBAeOgQIABAYUIE3WNdeYNJlaABwAHgBgAG-AogBpTCSAQgwLjEuMjYuMZgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1nwAEB&sclient=img&ei=4WVLX427KZ_i3LUP9v6C4Ao&bih=631&biw=1280#imgrc=N692TvpLysRwbM
Thos search gives you the link
Important Message
If your in South or West Auckland please have a test
thanks, I know how to use google. Afaik, those aren't the full version eg I've seen a screen shot of the FB post image that isn't on that page.
There's probably some very exhausted public servants out there too, along with politicians and journalists.
The odd cock-up and / or over reaction is going to happen with what they've all been through in the last 6 months. Someone will be having an interesting meeting in the boss's office tomorrow morning, if it hasn't happened already. Shouldn't happen in the best laid plans of mice and men, but naive to think that it's not going to happen.
Didn't stop Ad using it as a troll moment.
At one point since the message was reported I thought there was suddenly a battle between the MoH and the Govt over policy. Compounding this feeling was the absence of Ashley Bloomfield today…
…that is all conspiracy theory stuff though.
Exhausting weekend!
I am not sure what all the fuss is about re the information about all Westies and Southies getting tested………….Not a biggie at all and maybe it got people back to the testing station which can't be a bad thing.
Honestly people, it is a harmless mistake. Confused and the likes must be as dim as two planks
No I don’t have it now weka. It came up on my Facebook this morning. The headline did say that everyone in West and South Auckland should get a test. But if you read through to the body of the text it was clear they were primarily concerned about people who were displaying symptoms or had any of the co-morbidities linked to Covid or were somehow connected to the Auckland August Cluster. It was clumsily worded for sure. But let’s be honest, you didn’t exactly need Mensa level comprehension skills to figure it out.
The media shitstorm that’s erupted over it today is just self serving click bait bullshit.
The spinoff appears to have the text here, the twitter account as printed doesn't support your disparaging comment regarding comprehension.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/30-08-2020/live-updates-august-30-government-renews-call-for-all-south-and-west-aucklanders-to-be-tested/
Precisely. End of story.
It has been a tough weekend in some quarters. Let me recommend Irresistible if you haven't seen it.
And me.
Clint You are so right.
Yes it is…but the distance between the two is closer than you think