Compromised as he is over Jamal Khoshoggi’s abduction and murder, President Trump who doesn’t give a damn about human rights anyway, will say nothing, to save Lu Guang’s life.
I wonder whether New Zealand’s Prime MInister will say anything?
Or will she in an echo of Trump keep her silence too?
As far as I am concerned Trump has done us all a favour, as you have rightly pointed out, we (NZ) trade with countries that abuse human rights as a matter of course, so do most other countries, Trumps only point of difference is that he doesn’t seem to bother to hide the fact that he (like NZ) puts trade before humans rights…so you could well argue that he is a more honest politician in this regard than Jacinda Ardern.
Our trade might have tripled with China, but since they bought the farms and industry and assets, a better indication is our borrowing which has escalated in that time… we are a more debt filled country now in our fake rockstar economy and our social spending is also escalating. So on a practical level we seem to be worse off.
What sort of society/government fears, murders or abducts journalists and artists?
About Lu Guang
“Lu won first prize in the prestigious World Press Photo contest for a series on poor Chinese villagers who became infected with HIV after selling their own blood to eke out a living.
His photos tackle gritty subjects like pollution and industrial environmental destruction — issues traditionally avoided by the Chinese press because they risk punishment for exposing societal problems that the government may consider sensitive.
But Lu never had problems with the police before, according to Xu, who added that she was not aware of any photo projects he had planned for his Xinjiang trip.
“He has a strong sense of social responsibility,” she said. “He believed, after confronting the faces of the destitute, that there were things that people should know. At the very least, he believed that (his photos) might motivate them to help others, to trigger change and make things better.”
We were chatting the other day about the number 11 and its recurrence in important events.
The selection of the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month to end World War 1. Remember this was an armistice. The timing was chosen. It was not a coincidence.
The selection of 9/11 to attack New York and Washington.
So my curiosity was piqued when I saw this in the news.
“Strange seismic waves were picked up circling the globe on November 11. Now seismologists are trying to figure out why.
Seismic sensors first picked up the event originating near an island between Madagascar and Africa. Then, alarm bells started ringing as far away as Chile, New Zealand and Canada.
Hawaii, almost exactly on the other side of the planet, also picked up the ‘event’.
Nobody knows what it was.
Meteorite? Submarine volcano? Nuclear test?”
The Puysegur Trench has hosted volcanism in the past. The Solander Islands, southwest of Stewart Island are volcanic in origin. The Puysegur Trench denotes the subduction zone where the Australian Plate goes under the Pacific Plate and would have been the source of magma for the Solander Islands.
I’m afraid that, unless your pseudonym is false and you really should be called “Descendant of Methuselah” you are unlikely to manage to last long enough to see it.
Apparently it takes about 7,000 years on average to go through the process. If it isn’t winding down at the moment we aren’t likely to be around long enough to see the effects.
Shame really. While it is taking place things would probably get quite interesting although cosmic rays would probably be a bit of a nuisance. It is the Earth’s magnetic field that deflects them and stops the ozone layer being stripped away. According to this article the field would decline before the flip takes place. https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100358
I do like to see someone taking a long view though. Personally I am worried about the fact that the sun will, in a few million years, swell to the point that it will engulf the earth. We should be doing something about it NOW.
What on earth are you talking about you imbecile?
I would have to say that your comment proves only that you are quite incapable of reading yourself. Certainly you haven’t been able to read or understand what I wrote.
Can you not recognise tongue in cheek comments like mine when you see them?
Actually there is an error in what I wrote. It should be a few billion years in the last paragraph, not a few million. There we can safely leave doing anything about it until Monday. We don’t have to start over the weekend.
Good to see Stuff keeping the Climate Change story at the front of their news.
‘Māori are among the most vulnerable to climate change.
“When it comes to climate change it’s like the poorest people in the world are going to be hit the hardest first and that’s a lot of us.”
“The proportion of the world’s people vulnerable to heat-related death and disease continues to grow because of human-caused climate change, a new report says.
“Climate change is a medical emergency,” said Renee Salas, a doctor of emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-author of the report published by British medical journal the Lancet.
In 2017, about 157 million more people were exposed to heat wave events globally than in 2000, the report said. “
Yes Ed, and reading the enlightening posts has given me two more ideas for mitigation of personal actions. As they say, small but significant changes add up.
CanTeen the charity for AYA (Adolescent and Young Adult) cancer patients is being decimated, with the majority of its Youth Workers being made redundant. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12168670
This is a catastrophe for young cancer sufferers in New Zealand particularly those in the regions where localised psycho-social services will be eradicated, with only the three main centres retaining specialist workers. The charity owns a multi-million dollar building in Auckland. AYA cancer disproportionately affects Maori and Pacifica.
Let’s hope you don’t know any young person who develops cancer, particularly if they live in Otago, Southland, Hawkes Bay, Hamilton or Taranaki.
What an ignorant opinionated fool you are.
CanTeen provides vital community services throughout NZ and has done for 30 years. It raises millions annually through donations from the public and via the support of a few NZ corporate sponsors, but receives no government funding. The threatened future budgetary shortfall is risibly small – and could be easily fixed.
Axing the regional service network, slashing staff and out-sourcing services to Australia is a panic measure from a desperate board. Perhaps their intention is to create a public response!
The effect on young Kiwis who are diagnosed with cancer, their whanau and our communities will be significant.
In the absence of government funded services then the best option is to show that the government needs to support them. Creating a charity may help that in the short term with the understanding that the charity is going away once full government support is implemented.
Yes and after 30 years of CanTeen you might think the need for full government support should be readily apparent. In the absence of that support, ‘going away’ isn’t a viable option – not so long as “cancer disrupts the lives of 10 more young people each day”.
Source: https://www.canteen.org.nz
Don’t know how actively CanTeen have advocated for public funding. Clearly they haven’t been successful in getting it. But, with an estimated 97,000 not-for-profit organisations registered in this country, there’s quite a lot of competition for funding from any source.
Plus 1000. Giving jobs to trusts and charities on behalf of central and local government using central and local government money reduces the accountability and democracy.
No argument in principle. Very tenable philosophically. But…
Pragmatically, the sole provider of a vital community service (made without government funding) is compelled to drastically curtail its regional operations due to an anticipated funding shortfall.
Specialist skills and expertise built up over 30 years will be lost in all but the three main urban centres where redundancies will also occur.
Not sure that young cancer sufferers care too much about how we fund the support care they and their communities deserve. As long as it’s available – and that’s the real issue here!
Most of the possibilities I came up with while trying to puzzle it out were rude and crude. Some of them didn’t even need the F to be part of the rude and crude. But I’m still curious whether I actually got it on my list, or whether it’s something different again.
It is truly amazing what a great man can achieve simply by paying his staff starvation wages in tech based sweat shops. If only Kiwi businesses could learn to exploit their workers so keenly, the NZ elite too could gather more money than they could spend in 100 life times.
@crashcart, look at the headlines, a lot of businesses in NZ already pay their staff starvation wages… the government just gives a slap on the wrist a few hours community service in most cases, or nothing at all… so our country is probably already worse than the US.. we are operating far worse in NZ than Amazon which probably has better regulation than NZ who just waves people into NZ to work as slaves and then after a few years the tax payer can pay their workers welfare top ups.
This government has provided more inspectors and the repayments to workers and heavy fines for bad employer practices have increased. Also employers are losing the right to use immigrant workers for significant periods.
Businesses flouting the rules will be pinged. Some of your statements are framed to implicate this Government. That is sad.You are giving no credit for efforts made. Granted it is still slow, but it is snowballing.
The are working too slow. Giving the drug smuggler residency and only giving one year not to bring in Burger King fast food migrant workers is a joke after the are caught underpaying staff !
As is allowing employers to bring in migrant workers for fast food, cafes, petrol stations , liquor stores etc in the first place! No wonder jobseeker allowances is on the rise.
Guess what, the minimum waged migrant workers are adding to the welfare burden when they get residency often for a fake job as we don’t need people in those areas.
If you can’t work out that adding in drug smugglers and minimum waged workers into NZ is going to be a massive social burden on the country in the future, something is wrong!
Yes Labour better than Natz, but defiantly making a lot of wrong calls on TPPA and immigration and giving corporate welfare to construction to keep the said minimum waged workers able to keep coming in.
Rather than John and Bills low wage culture here, I’d like to see an alternate high skills, high wage culture here under the new government.
With all the crap going on in the US, NZ could be poised to actually get more tech started in NZ as a legitimate high skills outsourcer for example.
Because unlike the third world which does not necessarily work with all the corruption etc, NZ offers a decent high skills alternative (getting worse with the 100% criminal drive) and there are decent skills in NZ that could be utilised to grow that area, not the low waged fast ‘obese’ food and liquor store and drug expansions, that occurred under the Natz and still growing under labour.
Sorry @ savenz, I agree with most of what you say, but so often your outrage is misdirected. More than that, you don’t ever seem to respond to anything that points stuff and things that could hold water: possibly/maybe/maybe I should consider/yes even…..
Yes, they are working too slow. Patricia Bremner rightly states that numbers have been increased and you say not fast enough. (Agreed – we even had am overpaid ‘Stu’ assuring us about 4 weeks before the election – from memory on RNZ although I have the link somehere – that we had sufficient Labour Inspectors)
You say not fast enough.
That not only shows a lack of appreciation of how mammoth immigration policy, its failings, worker exploitation, public service incompetence, cosy little arrangements, etc etc etc actually is, but it also shows that where blame is being directed is completely arse about face.
AS I was travelling Norf today, I stumbled on a ZB whilst scanning the bands and there was a Nafe – maybe it was some rural programme on the soon to be defunct RadioLive.
Nafe (he who never inhaled from the Kapiti Coast) was lamenting the shortages of farming workers as it relates to immigrants on the one hand, woilst on the other doing his best to point out under this Minister (Mr I L-G) scumbags have been allowed to thrive.
Nafe should be careful. That was almost like a confession as to how Immigration Munsters of Her Madge under the previous junta were able to interfere in those ‘operational matters’.
…. Jeez, I’m actually getting fucking sick about talking/letalone thinking about it all.
Christ……maybe on the way back I’ll discover something different from a comfy little Mora Panel and Lackwit Larry deluding himself that he’s representing the voice of the peeeepill
IMO the Chinese and Vietnamese sweatshop workers who make our electronic goods get treated better than the workers at Amazon. That is why I don’t use them.
Amazon’s Alexa probably won’t admit there was a murder in her home, but the data she stores on the company’s servers might tell a different story.
An Amazon Echo, the device that houses the company’s Alexa AI, in the kitchen of a Farmington, N.H., home is at the heart of a double murder trial. Earlier this month, a judge ordered partial records of that device be released.
Prosecutors believe there may be recordings of the stabbings of two women from January 2017. Amazon has not yet said if it would release the information.
“I think this is the beginning of the ‘internet of evidence’ where lots of pieces of smart devices are going to show up in criminal prosecutions,” Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, author of The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement, told Day 6.
World’s richest man Jeff Bezos added US$6.28 billion ($9.1b) to his fortune after his company, Amazon, recorded its biggest shopping day in customer history.
That is what we call unearned income and is thus a great example of how these rich people are huge bludgers.
The Guardian’s latest attack by their resident ‘Russia hysteria’ scribe Luke Harding on Julian Assange is coming unstuck, Wikileaks is threatening legal action and apparently offering to take a bet with The Guardian of a million dollars if they can show any proof…something Harding doesn’t seem to deem necessary in much of his writings.
Jeanette Saxby, Cannabis Clinician, Dip T, B.Ed, Drug and alcohol Counselling, Post Grad D Heal Sci. Response to last dinosaur standing Bob McCoskrie’s re-run of the antique scaremongering stance.
There are some serious drug issues in Amsterdam- I’ve been offered every drug possible when walking around the tourist areas (normal Amsterdam may well be very different) but I was shocked how easy it was to get anything you may want.
That is a more recent occurance since right wing govt in the Netherlands has restarted the war on Drugs it has made the Drug trade profitable again Rotterdam the biggest port in Europe is the through point where a large % of Drugs are shipped higher prices from recriminalizing help increase trade.
Nice one. I tore Bob’s ‘facts’ a new one yesterday.
See Helius Therapeutics is trolling for NZ strains to own now. Offering a ‘genetics fee’ and possible royalties.
The so called ownership of genetic material is offensive to me. Those handing in strains hand in the work of all who’ve gone before them, none of whom planned to created materials for millionaires enterprises. Legal and moral are in this instance mutually exclusive. We’re talking thousands of years of selective breeding somehow captured in legalese today.
Watch carefully as big money players attempt to shove local small to medium players out of the market before they even start. Watch skilled caregivers and herbalists get caught in legal battles with companies who think they own the genes because some other schmuck sold them a clone.
Local and sustainable. The alternative is adding international shipping, packaging, advertising budgets, executive budgets, travel, hotels, dinners, international regulations, market surveys etc etc. Meantime the planet…
Patients should not be paying for millionaires lifestyles or the destruction of the earth. Especially for a herbal product. The bulk of our medicines are plant extracts exploited by industry, yet herbalists have been denigrated as idiot hippies the whole time.
Big Pharma is a planetary problem, a thief and fraudulent exploiter. Don’t be fooled.
Yes I have long shared your concern re genetic engineering & copyright law application. Owning new variations on nature’s evolutionary themes seems wrong. I prefer law based on the commons to law based on private property rights. It’s more traditional, even if less influential in our society.
However I see a significant public interest in respect of quality control. Some folks are vulnerable to excess intake – particularly those with mental health problems. That’s where the rationale for reliable dosage specification comes from. So along with right to grow & own your own & share it with others, I see a place for regulated commercial providers. To design against Big Pharma controlling the market, we could use the community trust model that has prevailed in parts of Auckland for many years. If only community providers were licensed, industrial manufacture would remain small-scale & local. Would small business providers be included?
It is a bit of a minefield trying to make sense of what is real concern and what is propaganda spread by businessmen wanting to take the market for themselves. Much of the research on quality control and medical applications of various cannabinoid ratios and dosage has already been done. The testing of said ratios to fit local strains to products could be done in local labs there’s no magic juju to it.
There is a huge body of cannabis literature already available and it will continue to grow. This is where some of the money needs to go. Adding our bit.
A local independent research and regulatory organisation would be brilliant. One that services all NZ cannabis businesses, and business in turn support the research from their sales. Recreational product, should that happen, should support both research on medicinal applications, but also counseling and rehabilitation services. External oversight of the R&D arm to root out cronyism/corruption, and price gouging of patients or exploitation of suppliers.
Turn it into it’s own self-sustaining ecosystem.
This could be a huge boon to the economy directly through incomes to locals and indirectly through reduction in healthcare expenditure. We don’t need big pharma at all in this matter.
No, don’t assume that. I’m neither Maori nor GE activist. If you’re fishing for a common principle applying, I doubt I can help. Perhaps it’s worth noting that they claim in respect of Treaty rights, and those specified derive from chiefs and traditional domains and practices, a Maori version of the commons derived from their tribal hierarchy & mana. I’d reserve judgment on any consequent court decision until that became available…
NZ has never had the drive, the vision, to go beyond immediate gratification. As soon as something has been developed we sell it offshore or a largeish shareholding.
If someone far sighted tried something they would probably be denigrated in Parliament, a commie or something. We should have bought back the kiwi boot polish brand but no. It’s not as good having your brand bandied around if people don’t connect it with our country and we want to keep a good image. Or did – 100% Pure would make an honest man blush. Ergo we aren’t honest men?
Which might be interesting under wider trade agreements. Could be we are called to account by somebody for bad advertising. Could be some company calls itself kiwi and sells its stuff to us.
I know this is another James windup, but I will bite just for the fun of it Amazon the company who avoids paying tax subsidised by the government, ALL governments around the world as their employees have to have food stamps to top up their wages. Amazon who does not have the overheads like the high street outlets like local taxes avoiding paying ANY tax. Amazon along with other predatory parasitical outfits like Wall Mart who have destroyed the traditional Ma & Pa high street trader in small town America and other counties inluding New Zealand. But I suppose that is THE MARKET working though I class it as GREED that is going to destroy this place.
Lovely outfit
Rather ironic I was in my favourite electrical store the other day and I saw this not needed bit of gimmicky Christmas rubbish that was supplied by Amazon
Funny that I thought Amazon does not have to pay any tax whereas this shop would have to pay tax wages and rates etc selling this gizmo and anyone buying would have to pay GST and no doubt it was manufactured in some sweat shop in Asia paying min wages
rather then tell him what he knows and does not care about, simply go to and buy all your gifts this year and any other year of local Kiwi Artists? Of local Kiwi Tradies, in the locally own bookshop, and the likes.
I don’t get it, i never bought of Amazon, nor Trade me, my eyes glaze over when i just look at that stuff, but yet, i miss nothing in my life.
And considering the environmental effects, the cost of unemployment to me the tax payer, no Amazon is not cheaper, it is more expensive. But maybe James does not pay taxes and thus does not care.
But yeah, in the power down thingy, why not buy all your feasts ingredients locally produced, get your ham from the local butcher rather then the supermarket, get your gifts of any of the many markets, give vouchers for the local tailor / seemstress to those that have a thing for frocks, and scour the recycle centres for knick knack that the kids may enjoy.
So much more satisfying then ordering shit online in order to be cheap n nasty.
“simply go to and buy all your gifts this year and any other year of local Kiwi Artists? Of local Kiwi Tradies, in the locally own bookshop, and the likes.”
Been there, done that, and I agree 200% with the rest of your post
One of our joys is the photogaphy we do, not only for trying to get excellence yet to be achieved in our photography but visiting some of the wild and great places we go to and the bird life and flowers and bush and so on Not bloody Shopping Malls.
I saw on the nutters club the other week a funny that sums it up
i had a panic attack once in a Mall. Went there with my friend and absolutely lost it. The security had to help me get outside, cause i wuz paniking. t’was funny. Not.
Renewable generation installation has accelerated to such an extent it is on track to provide almost 80 per cent of the electricity market by 2030, according to research from consultancy Green Energy Markets.
This is how real change happens; the price for renewables is putting the fossil fuels out of business. Scientists, researchers, engineers and business striving for the next market opportunity; capitalism certainly has it’s sucky aspects, but when it works it delivers what is says on the tin.
You need a transition period. The “pain” you talk about would be large scale unemployment, if all thermal stations were simply shut down in say 1 or 2 years.
New generation capacity can’t be built that quickly. And a fair bit of the new capacity has to be baseload, either geothermal or hydro. You are talking ten year from the initial decision to build to actual generation.
We the people will be eradicated problem solved.
More effecient Solar cells and batteries are the answer.
Graphene and NaCl batteries being developed that are more environmentally manufactured as well as practical these new technologies will mean much faster charging 7 times the time for holding a charge up to 1200 km on 1 charge but even more exciting is much lighter cheaper cars with graphene being the body / battery/and solar cells. Being lighter stronger easier to build.
Gas = delay. Get on with it. Fonterra’s excuse for continuing to burn dirty lignite coal at their Hedgehope factory, is that there’s no gas available. There is wood waste though…
Converting an existing coal plant to gas is usually a substantial re-engineering and rebuild task. Big enough that it is very likely cheaper to simply install an equivalent amount of renewables capacity.
In some areas, building new renewables is cheaper than the marginal operating cost of existing coal plants. It won’t be long before the same is true of natural gas plants. 10 or 20 years ago, gas appeared to make sense as a lower-emission bridge to a zero-emission future. Now it’s clearer it’s just a dummy bridge to nowhere.
The major thermal plant in NZ, being Huntly is co-gen, already able to burn gas.
If you want an immediate (anything less than a 5 year shutdown of Huntly), you loose 1000 MW from the system. Neither wind or photovoltaic can substitute. You need something that can run at night and in bad weather conditions, and able to push 1000 MW into the grid. Basically geothermal or hydro.
That is why the govt is not following your advice. They know for at least 10 years (probably more) thermal is a necessary part of the the generating system.
Has anyone suggested a means of reducing national usage as a permanent thing not the repeated ‘cut down now as the water is low’ message we keep getting? Aren’t there a myriad of small things that might be done to help. does the government have data on the efficacy of the following:
Regulate new appliances, public education, solar subsidies, passive heating and cooling systems, etc?
What about techniques for groundwater replenishment to build resilience against drought and the subsequent power issues?
I didn’t actually suggest shutting Huntly. Although if the govt ever actually did ask my opinion, yes, I would consider it a high priority.
Huntly was originally designed to be able to burn either gas or coal right from the beginning. As such, the original 1000MW of generation sacrificed the efficiency gains possible from combined cycle operation and runs on the same crappy thermal efficiency available from coal. Because the gas is burned in the same temperature limited boilers as when it’s operating on coal. It’s only the more recent addition of an additional combined cycle unit (where the gas is burned to drive a turbine, then the turbine exhaust passes through a boiler to heat steam) that’s significantly better than coal from an emissions perspective. But that new unit can’t run on coal.
There’s an easy way to shut down Huntly with negligible risk to security of supply: stop exporting huge quantities of electricity for a tiny return (compared to the price we’re charged here) in the form of shiny bars from Tiwai point. Then maybe market forces will take over and the aluminium companies will do the right thing and build solar farms to take advantage of the extremely good solar energy resource right where a lot of the bauxite is actually mined. As an extra bonus, transport costs would come down too, since half the weight of the alumina shipped around the world to get refined is the oxygen that has to be removed from the aluminium.
And just to get ahead of the cries of “jobs, jobs, it’s worth it for the jobs”, the whole Southland employment thing is just a convenient pressure point to allow foreign companies to continue rorting us all. We’d be much smarter to do the right thing for the country as a whole, and deal with employment issues in Southland as a separate issue.
Well, Tiwai does use about 600MW, and directly and indirectly employs 3,000 well paid people. Plus Meridian has a long term supply contract they can’t just break. So that is also at least ten years away, if even then.
In short NZ needs about 1000mw of new baseload generation. If it is to be renewable it has to be geothermal or hydro. Meridian has a proposed 500mw canal project for the north side of the Waitaki river below Benmore. Planned 15 years ago, but on hold ever since. It would take 10 years to build. Conceptually similar to the canal project already in existence around Twizel. Fairly limited environmental effects compared to major dams.
Yeah, the Waitaki is one I’ve had heated discussions about, with other environmentally concerned types. While I’m not completely in favour, on balance it’s one I support.
Adding pumped hydro storage is another option for improving supply security, flexibilty, and taking better advantage of intermittent renewables.
For a large part of its run, the Waikato runs through fairly degraded land. While most of the soils around there around unsuitable for dams, it would be very surprising if there weren’t at least a few sites suitable for new lakes above existing ones. Let alone possible sites around places like around the lake on the Moawhango on Defence land near Waiouru, around Lake Taupo, etc etc.
That might also improve flexibility for running the existing hydro plants on the Waikato. As I understand it, very little of the lake capacity along the river is significantly used for storage, those stations are primarily operated as run-of-the-river controlled by the gates at Taupo.
Cost of building Dams not financially viable any more Clyde Dam was another National Party f/up original price $500 million double the 2 low dam proposal ended up costing $2.5 billion life span 60yrs silting will make it inefficient by then. National sold Clyde for a fraction of its cost effectively subsidising Contact energy. Solar and Batteries don’t require massive infrastructure to deliver power are the best long-term solution.
Make a good argument why that’s in the country’s best interest and I’ll probably agree with you. Hell, even a mediocre argument will probably do the trick.
That is why the govt is not following your advice. They know for at least 10 years (probably more) thermal is a necessary part of the the generating system.
OMG, you mean that it might take central planning?
As I say – power generation and reticulation is a natural monopoly and such must be a government service.
There are bats here. So far, they’re not falling, due to the heat. Forest clearance has destroyed most of them however. One way or another, we’ll finish the blighters off! We were visited by a bat-researcher last week. She knows bats like no one I’ve ever met. She even bought bat soft-toys and puppets in for our grandchildren to play with – ready for anything, was Batwoman!
We’ve got a few problems atm here in Darwin with CC, like this article say and we have noticed the decline in our sea mammals while fishing in habour and other areas. Also on top of this our local turtle population is slowly declining as the sandy beaches where they laid their eggs is heating up causing the eggs to produce more females turtles than males one.
Can you start an in group called the Ninja Turtles and weave some loose grass mats that are supported on poles to cover and form shade over their favourite areas, them have guards over them till the breeding seas on is over?
“Unfortunately, following the release of the review I, like most people, am even more confused. And even less confident in the minister’s actions.” Labour pretends to believe in transparency, then obfuscates to make the situation as obscure as possible.
Could it be that whoever does political management for Labour has gone on holiday early? This missing person clearly doesn’t want the public to know why the Minister made his decision, nor why he has changed his mind. Otherwise he would have told us, right? Was he set up by a Nat-leaning public servant? If yes, then the traditional left/right collusion has to be applied to cover that up, I presume. I’d rather Labour informed us of the facts instead of prevaricating.
Sooner that drug smuggler get deported the better. A proportion of Kiwis will be paying good money to tourist in the EU, it is a joke that he doe’s ‘not feel safe there’ but was a ‘bit homesick’ so went back for a day. Hmmm, I can think of a few other reasons a convicted drug smuggler might enter a country for a day… and now we have to pay for his prison stays, get rid of him ASAP and use those resources on people in this country less privileged who get nothing and need the resources he is currently bludging off our country for.
SaveNZ
Remember Thiel he made $30million off the taxpayer through the stupidity of steven joyce and a clause in a partnership betw Thiel and the national govt. Has he even been to NZ? What taxes is he paying? He’s a bludger that nats let in after 12 days.
He didn’t even get his certificate in NZ that allowed him to live here. He’s your bludger.
Key is the alleged ‘crim’ who technically assaults a young female without her consent and gets away with it. He’s now bludging off New Zealanders’ taxes and attacking the current Government through his banking position.
Multi-millionaires and billionaires are the bludgers throughout the world, including NZ.
When they are forced to pay the taxes they should be paying, then those without will be able to live in a country that offers them so many free services for their education, health and welfare and all the jobs that come with that.
Sroubek is just a person that is being used to try and destroy a government. The real bludgers are sitting in the opposition seats in parliament using their extensive financial and international/domestic sources – other bludgers on the public purse – to screw our democracy over.
It was a standard clause in all the contracts that the New Zealand Investment Fund went into after it was founded in 2002.
Very silly clause of course and it was removed from all their new deals in 2015.
It was certainly something that Joyce should have spotted when he took over responsibility for their fund in 2009. However perhaps you should still enquire of the people who set up the fund in 2002 what the hell they thought they were doing.
That is irrelevant of course and Joyce has to be held responsible. He had been in the role for a year or so when the deal was made and he should have spotted the effect of such a clause earlier.
It is exactly the same as the fiasco of the Census, where James Shaw has to be held responsible, or Immigration where Lees-Galloway is at fault for his current mess. They are in the job and the mistakes made after this long are all theirs to take the blame for. Just as Joyce couldn’t really blame the preceding Government for the Thiel deal they can’t say that they aren’t responsible for the stuff ups by the current CoL.
I expect you will call on Shaw and Lees-Galloway to take responsibility and do what Joyce has done and leave Parliament. Time for them to resign from Parliament wouldn’t you agree?
alwyn 13.1.1.1.1
30 November 2018 at 3:04 pm
Alwyn,
I spent half an hour writing my reply to you yesterday and the internet went down as I clicked to send.
Since it’s you, I won’t bother to write it up so beautifully again.
Suffice to say that in 2002 after the horrors of Act’s douglas and richardson, we were all looking to a better future under a less ideological government that had realised the damage wrought by the chicago boys global takeover. We were beginning to trust in government and business to work together on behalf of all of us – even you.
Unfortunately, in 2004, NZ got key, stalking a suitable place to engineer his entrance to politics. In Helensville – how convenient. Although, didn’t he roll some worthy nat’s promised place to get that candidacy? Dirty politics began then and hasn’t stopped.
English went through “line by line, cutting waste” he told us that himself – but waste to him was education, health, transport, etc. When he came to the NZIF clause he did nothing. He, key and joyce knew it would be handy for some future abuse.
The secretive Waitemata Trust was started in 2005 to finance the party’s campaign or was it just for key and the people of Dirty Politics. I don’t know. Who donated Alwyn? Was it key? USA for a job he was here to do? That question has yet to be answered?
Enter joyce (and the generous media works loan to him by taxpayers – did he pay it back?) and his very generous package to thiel ending in a loss to taxpayers in nat’s time. The nats couldn’t wait to use that clause for their gain, not KIWIS’ benefit.
The more moral and ethical members of national (and I’m being kind here) would be turning in their graves to see the carcass that is national 2018. Politics is one thing, Alwyn, but corruption is another.
Greed has no conscience; it has no morals; it has no sense of what is right and wrong. It just wants and does not care how it gets its wants. I guess you already know that Alwyn.
As for Lees- Galloway and Shaw leaving parliament – seriously? LOL
They are two of the finer features of our parliamentary lineup. If you suggest they are not, that must put nats into negative. But good to see you have a sense of humour in your hour of need, dear.
I really do think that you shouldn’t have bothered.
Almost everything you have written is wrong.
1. Douglas was a Labour MP until 1990, when he first retired. He was only an ACT MP from 2008 to 2011 and was not in the house for the 12 years preceding 2002.
2. Richardson was never an ACT MP. She was in the National Party and had retired in 1994.
3. Key became an MP in 2002, not 2004.
4. Your remarks about English are total rubbish. You should be ashamed of yourself.
5. The Waitemata Trust was anything but secretive and it certainly wasn’t started in 2005. It was entirely legal.
6. There was no loan to Media Works in what most people understand the term to mean. They were like any other broadcasting organisation allowed to pay of their licence over time rather than in a single payment covering 20 odd years of a licence.
7. Nothing went to Joyce. He didn’t work for them then and hadn’t for years. He had no ownership of the business at all at the time.
8. The Crown didn’t lose from their investment in Xero. They didn’t make as much as they might have but that isn’t a “loss”.
9. Thiel may have made money but National certainly didn’t.
At least I see that you have retained your sense of humour though. When you can finish with such a wonderful joke as “They are two of the finer features of our parliamentary lineup” I couldn’t help but crack up laughing.
As I thought Alwyn, you’re not too good on the finer nuances are you. The Hollow Men was all about national’s politics of deception.
1. Douglas had an epiphany on mt pelerin and decided to let the markets rule. That has never been a true Labour value. Even Lange finally realised what douglas and co were up to. Labour was thrown out in 1990 – and I have always seen that decade as the biggest nat/extreme right set up I have ever seen. (politics of deception)
2 Hollow Men. pg 52 CIS breakfast6 Aug 2004 guest list included richardson, kerr, judd, 2 act mps, hide, franks, banks, Mcleod, gibbs, friedlander (so called Independent editor McManus). The only national mp present was don brash and this was his political peer group. (politics of deception and self interest)
3. Apology. I was going to take your word for it until you became a denier about English. So I had to double check. Yes you were right (but we already knew that). 2004 was when I saw the photo of key in a magazine (North and South, perhaps?); a photo which led me to think – yep, he’s probably going to be pm and then the rot really will set in. The eyes showed a sociopathic tendency, masked by the smile which didn’t reach the eyes. Eyes show the soul of a person. It was not a good day when I saw his face. Helensville was a safe national seat. That was a dirty race too. Apparently, boag engineered key in and got rid of sitting mp brian neeson. Sadly, of course, it just gave the dirty politics of nz more time to destroy our political system (politics of deception and – betrayal – Neeson’s word)
4. english had to pay back housing money obtained from the taxpayers’ purse. he swallowed dead rats to get into government to pursue a course of market driven plans. While publically helping workers to survive the 2007 gfc he was removing most of their working rights, pay and conditions and welcomed in a low wage economy for everyone except ceos. he and key should have been drummed out of the country for their policies. Instead they brought a whole new low to the practice of bestowing knighthoods, once considered a real honour when applied to people like Sir Ed, now just a sad joke. Key brought them back so he could get one; there was never any honour in that, just his personal gain. (politics of self interest)
Mental health under english languished and went backwards. Mid to late 90s http://werewolf.co.nz/2017/08/bill-english-the-forgotten-history/ Read the whole piece and stop talking nonsense about english; he’s a market ideologue, but he was just better at being deceptive with his true plans than brash was. That’s not a compliment by the way, although I can’t help feeling you would admire that, Alwyn.
he and key refused to accept and act on the mounting crisis of infrastructure and housing for our own people never mind the politically motivated increase in immigration and tourism which brought it all to breaking point and jokes starting with cars being a roof over the heads of the poor and even the working poor.
And there is so much more for him and you to be ashamed of if you support him. (politics of bad policies for party backers)
5. Waitemata trust – http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0609/S00262.htm
‘The National Party has admitted that its use of secret trusts violates the intent of electoral law and must now reveal the big money backers behind the Waitemata Trust, Labour Strategist Pete Hodgson said today.
‘Over 92 per cent of National’s 2005 election spend-up was financed through blind trusts. Around two-thirds of National’s funding – or $1.2 million – was laundered through the National Party operated Waitemata Trust under the name of Robert Browne.
‘Gerry Brownlee admitted this morning that this violates the intent of the law, but unfortunately current legislation is powerless to stop it. We have always relied on the good will of parties to not abuse the system, but it appears that we can’t afford to do that any longer.
But they did nothing.
Oh yes Alwyn, yet another example of trust being abused, by your very own nats, Alwyn. A gentleman’s handshake was once all that was required. Until we realized that the gentlemen of the 1980s 90s and 2010s would happily bite the hand that made them rich. So no, maybe not illegal, just shabby, secretive, underhanded and so nat Dirty Politics.
6 and 7. When government allows a private business to have an advantage it wouldn’t have in a pure market economy, which key, english and joyce love, they are just betraying their own ‘leave it to the market’ belief. And that is ever only when it advantages them or their friends.
‘Nothing went to joyce.’ I don’t care whether joyce worked for them or still owned them or not. You are well aware of the group think of business that says ‘I’ll give you this from the taxpayers’ pocket or I’ll arrange to override the usual cut off point for payment and you help me out when I need something.’ The person in the street wouldn’t get that perk.
It’s politely called networking by people who are looking for jobs but business favours for those that work in a small group of self-interested people. Back to page 52 of The Hollow Men. (Politics of self interest)
8 and 9. When the crown hands money over to business it should be with the same outcome – equal profit if it goes well; share the loss if it doesn’t. Thiel is a billionaire. To me that is a crime that he made $30 from his small outlay and the people of New Zealand got about $2m from their larger initial outlay. The taxpayers of New Zealand are helping the thiels to become richer, with absolutely no real benefit to New Zealanders.
The fact that you think this is okay demonstrates perfectly that the rot of key english and joyce is an acceptable part of politics, your type of politics.
Wrong again Alwyn. When the wealthy make money from the taxpayer with nats help, they always remember. Very expensive campaign dinners e.g. with peter talley, for large donations.
And now we come to Lees-Galloway and Shaw. I know you think it’s hilarious that I have some faith in the goodness of these two people, whereas I have none in the aforementioned self-interested ideologues key, english, joyce, etc, but that comforts me somewhat in that I judged you correctly from the start. We are at opposite poles, politically and that makes me feel so much better. Thanks for that.
@patricia bremner, nope and he should be, likewise anyone else whose stupidity comes into question and they effectively lose public money, give away assets like water, and then shrug it off. Stupidity is not an excuse.
Sroubek is not being used to destroy a government, he’s highlighting what is wrong with our immigration. If then government want to keep justifying why he such a good catch for NZ and why we need to have him here, then they do so at their peril. The average Joe, knows the EU is a pretty safe place to go back to, if Iain and the immigration department don’t know that, then they are looking like fools for believing the guy over the safety of the public of NZ and public good of NZ. He’s costing a fortune to have here for example, and we have kids going blind due to a lack of resources here? That is what the issue is, don’t make it about the Natz, or politics, something is wrong with immigration in NZ, and this case is just highlighting it.
‘ don’t make it about the Natz, or politics, something is wrong with immigration in NZ, and this case is just highlighting it.’
Of course it’s about the nats.
Of course it’s about politics.
And I totally agree that immigration processes need to be overhauled and both officials and MPs protected from dirty politics.
I just don’t like seeing a perfectly good MP being attacked for political gain. I demand New Zealanders’ right to a corruption-free parliament.
I equate corruption with dirty politics because one or more persons stand to gain something they don’t deserve.
I’m all for cancelling Thiels citizenship on the grounds that he did not do what he said he was going to do when his citizenship was granted.
The point should be that it takes 20 years for someone to get residency here, not 2 -5 years because if it takes longer then it means that a clearer picture of someones life and if they actually want to stay here long term, as well as their character, and if they earn enough money here, to pay for the freebies they get as citizens like health care etc.
At present, the Kiwi’s seem to be supporting far too many migrants with dodgy deals aka Thiel, prison stays aka Sroubek and truckloads of fake workers with exploitive migrants employers, and now we hear that that lonely migrants once they get residency/citizenship can just get online and marry someone from overseas whose about to retire, after a couple of weeks chatting online!
If you can’t work out that seems to be a death sentence for NZ as a welfare country if that is allowed to continue… Kiwi’s pay taxes for their own health and welfare, and housing, they shouldn’t and can’t subsidise the world who have no reciprocal health care, no superannuation, no social welfare in their country, few human rights…
Dotcom was firstly a person with outstanding technical and business skills that never had a day in prison, bought money and employment to NZ and was targeted by Hollywood for a copywrite case which should have be sorted out in civil court with Hollywood paying the money if they lost (which they eventually did as it was proven false that Dotcom’s company breached copywrite laws). As far as I am aware has never budged off our country for welfare.
Sroubek is a career criminal wanted in multiple countries and came to NZ on a false passport, screwed over everybody he comes into contact with by the sounds of it, has been in NZ jail for years, has court orders against his wife, his victim in hiding, hangs out with gangs in NZ…etc etc Has already cost millions in welfare with prison stays, legal aid, and criminal justice and keeping some of his victims in hiding and who knows what else.
One seems to be falsely accused for political purposes and if there are victims they are billionaire in Hollywood (the rich and the Natz, with John Banks donations) and one (Sroubek) is already convicted and guilty but the immigration minister and cronies want NZ to support the low life the rest of his life by the sounds of it and the victims (who are generally poor) of his crimes get their noses rubbed into it.
Time to have, anyone is NZ who is convicted of a serious criminal act, be deported straight away! They seem to be recruiting criminals as residents in NZ for the 100% Pure Criminal NZ campaign.
“One seems to be falsely accused for political purposes …”
So true. National is using and abusing the system for political gain. You have also made false statements in your para “Sroubek is a career criminal wanted in multiple countries ….”
ianmac You are referring to savenz at 13.2 – just to be definite. Are you thinking that when the appeal is on or over, a lot of matters that show a different picture will come to light? Or are you saying that the publication of supposed bad behaviours and crimes which are not proved means that we are trying the case in the public arena unfairly?
Yes grey. Ref to 13.2 where he writes false or exaggeration;
“career criminal wanted in multiple countries…”
“screwed over everybody he comes into contact with ”
“has court orders against his wife,”
“his victim in hiding”
“hangs out with gangs in NZ”
“cost millions in welfare with prison stays, legal aid,”
“keeping some of his victims in hiding”
Most of that is untrue or just spin from the Opposition. Strip it down to the known truth and you have a simple crook who has done wrong but not the Mr Big he has been built up to seem.
Even if he is the ‘simple crook’ he’s still be bludging off NZ in the prisons for the past few years, possibly on legal aid, not exactly what many kiwi’s think are a good criteria for migration here. That we know!
Yes i think we make a stronger case for being a post where things are nutted out reasonably rather than where people go nutty and make multiple allegations as a rant. If the matters are not definitely known and someone feels like expressing freely perhaps we can sign with /rant as we do with /sarc.
The stuff we hear gets beyond belief sometimes and if we are going to go OTT it is better we indicate rather than come up with a list of questionable things as ianmac has extracted. I don’t know what is true about this guy, and if I can’t get a grasp of the facts here I might as well give up and go straight to The Civilian that makes such a good job of mashing the news with creative juices that it’s a feast.
He’s wanted in Czech and NZ, aka multiple countries , I’m assuming he was wanted before they convicted him in NZ and apparently want to try him in Czech too. He fled on a fake passport. Well that sounds like multiple crimes to me and those are just the ones we know about. Apparently more dirt, like protection orders for example have been hinted at.
He arrived roughly around the same time as me in NZ and I was surprised after I had to go through my residency application, that someone with such a well-known legal history – easily available on the internet even – succeeded the “good character” test.
Q. If youre granted residency whilst in jail are you really saying that you have the liberty of NZ while in jail. How can he argue he has lost anythingwhen the minister changes his mind? Judge should throw out any case.
Q. if he’s from the eu while can he claim he’d be harmed in Czech?
Q. has he done good? is he a political activist? no…
@satty,
Suspended sentence and teenager are the salient words.
Most of these teenage hackers are a help to society showing up security flaws before people who want to do serious harm actually do so, ahem like the alleged Russians who hacked into the US elections or people who hack into NSA and show how insecure the info is!
Maybe Dotcom considered too highly skilled and smart and entrepreneurial , our prized immigrant by policy seems to be a cafe worker, farm hand, aged care worker or SME drug importers as people our government and immigration department feels comfortable with.
Our government is spending a fortune trying to get rid of someone who can make hundreds of millions again and again with IT, while fighting and granting residency to a drug importer?
Well I know which one, I would think could be less of a burden and create wealth in NZ and one who will destroy wealth by helping addicting people to drugs.
I was puzzled by your friend Brigette Morten. She does not seem to have a grasp of english language. Try this for clarity Dennis :
“Mr Lees-Galloway will not be able to provide regain the public’s confidence in judgement on immigration cases.” What exactly does that sentence mean Dennis ?
Neither did she point out to us why the previous Minister of Immigration (National) appeared not to have handed out well researched criteria in the Karel Sroubek case. Namely the case for residency / citizenship in New Zealand. Rememember too, that Sroubek also uses an Alias.
The National Party are notoriously sloppy in all aspects of their administration. Even to the extent of providing Chinese friends support in serious domestic crime.
I seriously doubt that the previous Minister of Immigration or his lackadaisical staff gave a damn about anything. Consider the horrible crisis in excessive immigration and lack of housing and infrastructure.
All of which was publicly and profoundly denied by Paula Bennett and Billy English when they came to power. He being the Pm – her being his little Deputy. What a mess and a muddle Dennis. Their stupidity will take years to fix.
Not my friend. She’s a pr consultant. I presume RNZ published her appraisal because half their listeners are equally conservative as half the country. I agree re lack of proof-reading & editing from her & RNZ. I see that stuff all the time online nowadays. It’s like nobody has the time or inclination to get it right anymore. I also agree re National’s performance in office. In that respect, I disagree with Labour’s perennial attempt to out-perform them in their race to the bottom.
It’s obvious that you don’t understand the meaning of the idiom “read between the lines” and why it is used.
Read between the lines means – look for or discover a meaning that is implied rather than explicitly stated.
The idiom is often used when it’s not possible to provide comprehensive details, due to confidentiality, prejudicial or legal requirements and/or obligations.
Yep Dennis. Note that puzzled Brigitte was “Brigitte Morten is a senior consultant for Silvereye. Prior to that she was a senior ministerial adviser to the Minister of Education in the previous National-led government, and an adviser and campaign director for Australia’s Liberal Party.”
So should we believe that she is just spinning National’s line? Heck yes. Credible? Nah.
Yes, fair enough Ian. But her spin wouldn’t get much traction in public opinion without Labour’s failure to provide the public with relevant info & accountability.
True Dennis, but I gather there are some details that the Minister is not yet able to publish because of the Appeal coming up in a few years time. Hard to know how hard to push back against the mighty Negative Opposition Machine.
Oh, okay. Yes, rumours will flourish as long as the system ensures that the public cannot be informed. If that’s why Labour aren’t forthcoming, understandable.
Why is it so hard just to say that ILG made a mistake and made the PM look gullible (y’know read between the lines and all) when she has already said that he’d made a mistake
In answers to questions in Parliament today, Winston Peters, answering on behalf of the Prime Minister, said Iain Lees-Galloway was ‘setting out, having made only one mistake in a year, to fix it up’.”
Well it’s definitely interesting that he conceded the point. Unwise for a lawyer to jump straight to verdict and ignore due process, huh?!
“She put it down to process and said it was now about getting the system right for future decisions.” But she failed to specify how the process was mishandled, or who got it wrong. Stop being contemptuous of the public, Jacinda! Not a good look.
True. Maybe Iain might have made a better decision but the mountain created by the Opposition has exaggerated the significance for cynical political advantages. I don’t really support the Czech but hate the hypocritical witch hunt.
The guy is in prison until about 2022 so in the interim no special differences can be achieved. An appeal was going to happen anyway.
No extra costs except to the credibility of Opposition
‘Elizabeth Magie based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants.’
I wished I’d never checked it out on Wiki. Not only am I now personally financially responsible for keeping Wiki on track, but I discovered that even a game attracts greed in real life.
Unfortunately it’s the only game in town other wise you go bankrupt.
Life is like a sports game play by the rules push the rules to the limit sure but if you break the rules you loose.
DJ Ward Power less perverts with erectile dysfunction and inability to connect with women targeted by Cambridge analytical to be potential Trump supporters or is that impotential!
I have no idea what your talking about. Have they purchased blue pill data searches from Google?
I’m wondering why you think a person who can’t get an erection is automatically a Trump Supporter. You will get statistical bias from men fleeing the left due to Radical Feminism, but I thought medical conditions like this were indiscriminate.
I’m not supprised young and old men can’t connect with women. After decades of denigration, discriminatory persecution, and institutionalised cultural bias, generational observation, that males are a bit confused about getting erections let alone how to get permission. “Don’t do it” goes the subconscious.
The idiot was standing on a street corner bellowing into a megaphone complaining about how she didn’t have freedom of speech and vowing to stay there until she had her Twitter account restored.
But she got cold, was busting for a pee, and left without her account being restored.
omfg, Laura Loomer literally handcuffed herself to the front door of Twitter (HQ) & she's wearing a Star of David & trying to claim she was banned from Twitter (the platform) b/c she's Jewish, not b/c she spews violent Islamophobia.And she's defending anti-Semite Gavin McInnes. pic.twitter.com/Iyw0aQaxME— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) November 29, 2018
lol police inform Laura Loomer that Twitter isn't pressing charges and she can stay chained to their door as long as she wants— Joe Perticone (@JoePerticone) November 29, 2018
three parties in coalition, so they pragmatically work around their conflicting ideologies. so imagine to my surprise Moro describes Nats as being less ideologicall, is he saying tgeir brain dead decisions are empty headed, like their neolib tax principle of uniformity arent based in a structured fiscal idealism, or is he ignorant of tgeir pure faith ideology of markets. Is Moro a moron or a protector of pure ideological party nasty nats?
It’s called The International Democrat Union – john key is or was chair of one of the worst neo groups ever, unless you consider the bilderbirgers, their whole agenda based around destroying anything good globally. They are described as centre right – a lie.
The only socialism they do is socialising private expense and privatising public assets.
It also reminds me of: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which uses a good word – socialist – to remove rights, or they change a good symbol to an evil one – The word “swastika” is derived from the Sanskrit “su” meaning “well” and “asti” meaning “being.”
national used to mean around the country. It has a less savoury meaning now.
I’ve just received my latest copy of the “The New Zealand Railway Observer” and I notice this in editorial.
KiwiRail is looking at replacing the DX and sub-classes and representatives from two North America locomotive manufacturers have visited the South Island, studying operating conditions. It appears the 2016 decision of having a standardised fleet of DL locomotives from China is no longer the case especially given the issues with Chinese built locomotives since 2016.
It also says if the current EF locomotives are maintain with an optimum level of maintenance they can still out perform the new Chinese built DL’s.
A nice wee article on the geotechnical investigations on the Mardsen Point branch on pg 213 and a photo of the Auckland City Rail Link tunnel under Albert St on pg214.
Thanks for that interesting little bit of information. I must say that locomotives etc are outside my area of interest/expertise but I am not surprised if the DLs are going to be replaced.
I had never heard of “The New Zealand Railway Observer” so Googled it. For any one else in the same position, here is a link to their website with info about their publications etc. I enjoyed looking at the site.
Well it’s look like to me that the DL’s from China won’t setting foot on the South Island rail network anytime soon from the looks of it and if they KiwiRail does go down the road of having two classes of mainline/ branchline Diesel Locomotives, does that mean Hillside Workshops reopens in the near future as I can’t see them building a new Railway Workshop CHCH?
There was also an interesting article on the Development and Change on the Wellington Suburban Network from 2016 to the present as well.
‘ does that mean Hillside Workshops reopens in the near future’
I hope so. This is all about a change returing to the balance of the 3 legged stool. Workers, Government, Employers. We need some grunt back in NZ to fight the corruption, to fight the greed.
Yes, I hope so as well and I hope this current Government remains in office for at least 3 terms with some medium to long term plans. Unlike the “No Mates Party” who had a very short view on a lot things that involve them and theirs lining their pockets to make a quick buck at the expense of everyone else while bullshiting to the average voter at the same time.
Brexit update: “The number of Conservative MPs against the deal currently floats at around 93, according to the latest BBC tally. This only includes those who have explicitly stated they don’t support it. Total opposition, including Tory MPs who have yet to publicly declare their position, is said to be well over 100.” https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46386172
“There are 315 Tory MPs in Parliament – not counting two who are currently suspended – and they have splintered off into a bewildering array of factions over Brexit.” Georgia Roberts, BBC analyst, identifies that the Tories have split into nine tribes, and provides a description of each. Here’s a summary:
1. Ardent Brexiteers: “They are only a handful in number, but given Mrs May’s increasingly slim parliamentary majority – with the DUP also opposed to her deal – this troublesome tribe could prove numerous enough to sink her deal.”
2. ‘No Dealers’/WTO terms: “These Conservatives argue that a no-deal Brexit – where the UK would leave the EU on WTO trading terms – is better than the deal Mrs May has put on the table and the only option left in the face of what they view as an inevitable defeat in parliament… despite this small group of advocates, a no-deal Brexit is not likely to get a majority of MPs in Parliament behind it.”
3. ‘Advanced FTA’/’Super Canada’: “Vocally-supported by the likes of Boris Johnson and former Brexit Secretary David Davis, who both resigned in July over Mrs May’s Chequers blueprint, this group of mostly European Research Group members have been arguing for a Canada-style free trade agreement”
4. ‘Norway Plus’/European Free Trade Area (EFTA): “Conservatives such as George Freeman are claiming this proposal enjoys cross-party support and is “the only sensible way to deliver the EU referendum result”. Indeed, it’s rumoured some cabinet ministers are willing to get on board with this option if the draft agreement falls in the Commons.”
5. Prime minister’s deal: “The Conservatives who openly support the prime minister’s deal are mainly made up of loyal government ministers. The trouble is, there currently still aren’t enough of them to get the prime minister’s deal through Parliament”.
6. Renegotiated deal: “The bulk of this tribe are made up of MPs who have serious concerns about the backstop proposals for Northern Ireland.”
7. Pragmatists: “These are the Conservatives who despite their distaste for the deal, are supporting it through gritted teeth.”
8. Remainers: “Many privately support another referendum, but have yet to join the handful of Tory MPs who openly back the People’s Vote campaign… If the prime minister’s deal is rejected, a large group of MPs currently keeping quiet could come out to publicly support another referendum, aligning themselves with many Labour MPs.”
9. People’s Vote: “This option is being sold as the only way to solve the current impasse in Parliament… The People’s Vote campaign’s march in Westminster recently attracted hundreds of thousands of supporters.”
This ongoing display of Tory factionalism could even be a sign that diversity trending towards multiculturalism is gradually supplanting obedience as a cultural determinant of conservative politics in the UK.
1 Irrelevant, it was voted for by the public.
2 Should have been the first option, you can’t negotiate with control freaks.
3 A possibility but see 2
4 A possibility but see 2
5 Its a no Brexit May doing no Brexit.
6 Result of 5
7 Tow the May Party line, no Brexit.
8 The anti democracy club.
9 The I didn’t like the result, try agian, see 8.
If the UK is stupid enough to continue down this path of piss poor deal May hasn’t managed to put together or the no deal Norwegian option the UK’s economy will slide further into koas, Putin will have achieved his goal of weakening both the UK and Europe. But already the UK financial sector has been damaged “£800 billion pounds of financial business set to go to Frankfurt.
May’s backers will abandon her its just when is that going to happen.
I liked the security dog. And where there is gold [water] mining waiting to be
found and tapped, who can resist? Is there an iron-bound agreement that the water will not be made available to dairy farmers and diary farmers (in case the bounders try to get their way because of a common mispelling.)?
You could have a situation that the urban areas are fully supplied with water and there is extra. The extra could be sold to Cow Farmers so people in urban areas get cheaper water. The Cow Farmer paying a proper premium above operating and financing costs. If it’s a bad year and only the urban areas can be supplied, the Cow Farmers get no water from the project.
Will grape growers be OK then? Highly efficient in providing food for the needy, and socially aceptable alcoholism.
What about a new rice farm? Good for methane production.
Amazing how people think.
The democracy wining over greed comment.
The democratic process to make a decision.
Allowing the voice of the opposed to be heard.
The decision makers voted in to decide the outcome.
The debate and vote on a decision based on the arguments.
Democracy involves at least half of people not having there view supported.
You could say that even though the opposers lost, democracy did win over greed, as democracy would reject a purely greed based project like this. The public good factor must have been high.
Why are we seeing so much focus on the immigration case of the ex- of a National Party guy?
Given the speed of decisions and the ability to access information I’m sure there is a lot of advocacy that could be done to make our system better. Why are they removing counters and making people whose first language is in all likelihood not English deal with an irritating phone system?
More gotcha, less focus on making stuff actually work.
In the space of a few minutes Jim Mora quoted Kiwiblog, followed by Bob “Whacker” McCoskrie’s Family Fist. He seemed to pretend they were serious organizations. The Panel, RNZ National, Friday 30 November 2018
Jim Mora, Andrew Clay, Ali Jones, Ali Ventura
Horrified, I sent him the following hurry-up:
Kiwiblog?!!?? Bob McCoskrie?!! WTF?
Dear Jim,
You first quoted the extreme right wing Kiwiblog, then in the very next breath you quoted the even more extreme Bob McCoskrie. Ali Jones reacted the way that any sensible listener would have: “What a load of RUBBISH!”
What’s next? Are you going to approvingly quote the complacent right wing New York Times opinionist David Brooks, or some mad article from the Daily Telegraph, or the so-called “Sensible Sentencing Trust”, as you so often do?
Have you thought of quoting someone who actually writes in a thoughtful and balanced manner? Gordon Campbell perhaps?
You have a duty, surely, to assemble a credible and serious hour of broadcasting. Kiwiblog and Family First are anything but credible and serious.
I realized that Chris. Actually, I don’t think she made him more right wing than he already was. It’s not that he’s right wing, it’s that he’s deeply complacent, and conformist. Note the three publications that he cited in that reply to me (24.2.1, just below this): the New York Times, the Grauniad and the Atlantic. He seemed to imply that those de facto government mouthpieces are some sort of counterweight to the outright lunacy of Kiwiblog and Family Fist.
I don’t think the kiwiblog platform is extreme right wing or the content of its posts. The comments within kiwiblog does involve extreme points of view. The anti Semites, hmmm. Racists, warmongers, climate deniers, religous zealots etc.
DPF is often accused of being a Lefty. Think about that Morrisey.
Since your complaint didn’t express broadcasting rules being broken I can guess what happened to it.
On some of the posts it is often, some he is congratulated often.
Calling him extreme right wing was wrong. If you do call a person extreme right wing, who is, how is a person supposed to differentiate the difference. If Morrisey picked out comments and argued that it was wrong to put that point of view forward then his email would have had substance.
Morrisey put forward his comment but most are aware of Morriseys dislike of Bob over a certain issue, and kiwiblog because he is wrongly nearly always automatically downvoted.
It could be Jim Mora has some right wing points of view, or was highlighting the right wing point of view. Plenty of people wish to hear those views, not just the point of view Morrisey holds.
If the media only presented my point of view for example, it would be a North Korean style media dictatorship. The same applies to the substance of Morriseys email and the result if it was complied with.
You are only permitted to talk about views I agree with!
I believe it’s also an in joke on the right. As I recall, Cameron Slater used to call DPF a lefty back when Whaleoil and Kiwiblog were double teaming on dirty politics. (Whaleoil would post the attacks, then Kiwiblog would talk about the attacks Whaleoil posted. Nudge, nudge, wink wink.)
The bias you describe is a “righty”. Which was my point. Might have got my explanation for my view of DPF wrong but I don’t prescribe to the term extreme right wing for DPF. Individual issues maybe but he can have some balance to his thinking at times.
@ Te reo putake
Just as the left can tear itself apart, so can the right. Whale oil is despised by many on the right especially on DPF’s site. It’s the enemy of my enemy is my freind thing. There may be cooperation but there’s certainly some 2 camp dynamics.
Perhaps a better plan might be tackling climate change, sorting out or welfare system, making human rights meaningful and allowing free tertiary education for all? There might even be other better plans.
Newspapers you’ve got to love to hate them, they are so worthy.
Front page of Nelson Mail –
A complete page on a lost cat. ‘The great moggy mix-up.’
Top headers.
Comedian Dai Henwood. Booze ban no joke. Handmaids sequel: Modern America inspires author (to what?)
Bottom advertisement –
1 Bedroom Apartments at Stillwater Gardens Retirement Village
(They must have a stagnant duckpond there that you can gaze at while you rock in your old rocking chair, while supplied with health pills, possibly only 12 a day.)/sarc (Quite possible, some people are on horrendous doses.)
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
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NZ has diplomatic relations and trade deals with both these regimes, both from different imperial blocs.
The Saudi authorities abduction and murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has been mirrored by Chinese authorities abduction of photographer Lu Guang
Prominent Chinese photographer taken by police, wife says
Yanan Wang – AP News, November 28, 2018
NZ has diplomatic relations and trade deals with both these regimes, each from different imperial blocs.
Compromised as he is over Jamal Khoshoggi’s abduction and murder, President Trump who doesn’t give a damn about human rights anyway, will say nothing, to save Lu Guang’s life.
I wonder whether New Zealand’s Prime MInister will say anything?
Or will she in an echo of Trump keep her silence too?
Because trade is more important.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/reports/trade-with-china-nearly-tripled-in-past-decade
The war on journalism
Donald Trump put a $110-billion price on Jamal Khashoggi’s life
Tim Fernholz – October 16, 2018
I wonder what price tag our government will put on Lu Guang’s life?
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/11/photographer-lu-guang-disappears-in-xinjiang/
about 26.1 billion
As far as I am concerned Trump has done us all a favour, as you have rightly pointed out, we (NZ) trade with countries that abuse human rights as a matter of course, so do most other countries, Trumps only point of difference is that he doesn’t seem to bother to hide the fact that he (like NZ) puts trade before humans rights…so you could well argue that he is a more honest politician in this regard than Jacinda Ardern.
Our trade might have tripled with China, but since they bought the farms and industry and assets, a better indication is our borrowing which has escalated in that time… we are a more debt filled country now in our fake rockstar economy and our social spending is also escalating. So on a practical level we seem to be worse off.
Definitely a ‘rockstar economy’.
It’s dropping like a rock at the speed of a shooting star.
Like a hotel TV into a swimming pool full of tequila many storeys below ..
Thanks for that link, Jenny. Terrible.
What sort of society/government fears, murders or abducts journalists and artists?
About Lu Guang
“Lu won first prize in the prestigious World Press Photo contest for a series on poor Chinese villagers who became infected with HIV after selling their own blood to eke out a living.
His photos tackle gritty subjects like pollution and industrial environmental destruction — issues traditionally avoided by the Chinese press because they risk punishment for exposing societal problems that the government may consider sensitive.
But Lu never had problems with the police before, according to Xu, who added that she was not aware of any photo projects he had planned for his Xinjiang trip.
“He has a strong sense of social responsibility,” she said. “He believed, after confronting the faces of the destitute, that there were things that people should know. At the very least, he believed that (his photos) might motivate them to help others, to trigger change and make things better.”
https://apnews.com/eb9c11440b944d5a8f548841c95704d1
We were chatting the other day about the number 11 and its recurrence in important events.
The selection of the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month to end World War 1. Remember this was an armistice. The timing was chosen. It was not a coincidence.
The selection of 9/11 to attack New York and Washington.
So my curiosity was piqued when I saw this in the news.
“Strange seismic waves were picked up circling the globe on November 11. Now seismologists are trying to figure out why.
Seismic sensors first picked up the event originating near an island between Madagascar and Africa. Then, alarm bells started ringing as far away as Chile, New Zealand and Canada.
Hawaii, almost exactly on the other side of the planet, also picked up the ‘event’.
Nobody knows what it was.
Meteorite? Submarine volcano? Nuclear test?”
Fascinating.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12168640
It certainly is fascinating. I’m liking the ‘new volcano’ theory. We’ve never listened in on one before…
And it’s happened exactly eleven times since eventyleven eddy. Coincidence? I think not.
11!
Line up, line up, get yur numbers read here!
http://www.michellebuchanan.co.nz/numerology-readings/
11 Na
http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table
Then there’s elevenses.
NZH – 29.11 – 2+9 =11
Whatever event the article was actually about, the event was ‘significant’ …
Numbers and Symbols ‘rule the world’
Flight11 on 9/11….
Flight 11 had 11 Crew 89 pax
92 = 11 hit tower 1 110s
Flight numbers
11 = 11
93 = 12
175 = 13
77 = 14
Sequenced
The Puysegur Trench has hosted volcanism in the past. The Solander Islands, southwest of Stewart Island are volcanic in origin. The Puysegur Trench denotes the subduction zone where the Australian Plate goes under the Pacific Plate and would have been the source of magma for the Solander Islands.
That theory’s got legs!
Nothing to worry about. It’s just a byproduct of Oumuamua using the Earth as a resonant focusing antenna to communicate its findings back home.
I’m just waiting for the rotation of the earth’s magnetic field – hoping it happens in my lifetime. It’s apparently well overdue.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/earth-magnetic-field-flip-north-south-poles-science/
I’m afraid that, unless your pseudonym is false and you really should be called “Descendant of Methuselah” you are unlikely to manage to last long enough to see it.
Apparently it takes about 7,000 years on average to go through the process. If it isn’t winding down at the moment we aren’t likely to be around long enough to see the effects.
Shame really. While it is taking place things would probably get quite interesting although cosmic rays would probably be a bit of a nuisance. It is the Earth’s magnetic field that deflects them and stops the ozone layer being stripped away. According to this article the field would decline before the flip takes place.
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100358
I do like to see someone taking a long view though. Personally I am worried about the fact that the sun will, in a few million years, swell to the point that it will engulf the earth. We should be doing something about it NOW.
Alwynger God your an idiot I have read the NG article which proves you can’t read. Sucked in by DOS’s head line bit of tongue n cheek.
What on earth are you talking about you imbecile?
I would have to say that your comment proves only that you are quite incapable of reading yourself. Certainly you haven’t been able to read or understand what I wrote.
Can you not recognise tongue in cheek comments like mine when you see them?
Actually there is an error in what I wrote. It should be a few billion years in the last paragraph, not a few million. There we can safely leave doing anything about it until Monday. We don’t have to start over the weekend.
Good to see Stuff keeping the Climate Change story at the front of their news.
‘Māori are among the most vulnerable to climate change.
“When it comes to climate change it’s like the poorest people in the world are going to be hit the hardest first and that’s a lot of us.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/108755375/mori-are-among-the-most-vulnerable-to-climate-change
“The proportion of the world’s people vulnerable to heat-related death and disease continues to grow because of human-caused climate change, a new report says.
“Climate change is a medical emergency,” said Renee Salas, a doctor of emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-author of the report published by British medical journal the Lancet.
In 2017, about 157 million more people were exposed to heat wave events globally than in 2000, the report said. “
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/108979464/extreme-climate-change-heat-medical-emergency-making-tens-of-millions-sick
Yes Ed, and reading the enlightening posts has given me two more ideas for mitigation of personal actions. As they say, small but significant changes add up.
CanTeen the charity for AYA (Adolescent and Young Adult) cancer patients is being decimated, with the majority of its Youth Workers being made redundant. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12168670
This is a catastrophe for young cancer sufferers in New Zealand particularly those in the regions where localised psycho-social services will be eradicated, with only the three main centres retaining specialist workers. The charity owns a multi-million dollar building in Auckland. AYA cancer disproportionately affects Maori and Pacifica.
Article says a number of redundancy’s but enough says the majority of its youth workers will be made redundant.
Sounds like spin and bullshit to me.
“
The organisation believes there are more cost-effective ways it can deliver its services and multiple opportunities to support more young people.”
So it sounds like it’s going to be all good. Just need to trim some fat.
“More cost-effective ways” ie replace culturally-aware, experienced locally-based NZ Youth Workers with an Australian online contact service.
Spin spin spin
James, Could you please clarify who you believe is “spinning”?
You
Let’s hope you don’t know any young person who develops cancer, particularly if they live in Otago, Southland, Hawkes Bay, Hamilton or Taranaki.
What an ignorant opinionated fool you are.
That’s shocking, Enough if you are right… sad, normal under Natz, but under a Labour/Green government?
CanTeen provides vital community services throughout NZ and has done for 30 years. It raises millions annually through donations from the public and via the support of a few NZ corporate sponsors, but receives no government funding. The threatened future budgetary shortfall is risibly small – and could be easily fixed.
Axing the regional service network, slashing staff and out-sourcing services to Australia is a panic measure from a desperate board. Perhaps their intention is to create a public response!
The effect on young Kiwis who are diagnosed with cancer, their whanau and our communities will be significant.
Charities are highly inefficient. Far better to simply have the government ensure that those services are available.
Agreed, especially given their abundance in NZ, but in the absence of government funded services……..?
In the absence of government funded services then the best option is to show that the government needs to support them. Creating a charity may help that in the short term with the understanding that the charity is going away once full government support is implemented.
Yes and after 30 years of CanTeen you might think the need for full government support should be readily apparent. In the absence of that support, ‘going away’ isn’t a viable option – not so long as “cancer disrupts the lives of 10 more young people each day”.
Source: https://www.canteen.org.nz
I agree with that but has CanTeen been actively pushing for government provision of the services?
Or has it, as seems more likely, been simply operating as a charity, getting donations and telling people that they do Good Work?
Don’t know how actively CanTeen have advocated for public funding. Clearly they haven’t been successful in getting it. But, with an estimated 97,000 not-for-profit organisations registered in this country, there’s quite a lot of competition for funding from any source.
And those 97,000 charities are getting the necessary funding and so it can be assumed that we can afford it. Just need a little more tax to cover it.
The big one though is how many of those charities are unnecessarily in competition with each other and thus producing high levels of inefficiency.
Plus 1000. Giving jobs to trusts and charities on behalf of central and local government using central and local government money reduces the accountability and democracy.
No argument in principle. Very tenable philosophically. But…
Pragmatically, the sole provider of a vital community service (made without government funding) is compelled to drastically curtail its regional operations due to an anticipated funding shortfall.
Specialist skills and expertise built up over 30 years will be lost in all but the three main urban centres where redundancies will also occur.
Not sure that young cancer sufferers care too much about how we fund the support care they and their communities deserve. As long as it’s available – and that’s the real issue here!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12168616
God I love amazon.
I wish that they would open dist centres in NZ.
We buy most of our stuff via amazon and save a fortune over locally – and the range is better.
The high st isn’t dead – but it needs to change and adapt.
DNFTT
FWIC
http://fwic.ca/
Edit: that said, why is james a getting away with astroturfing anti workers right crap on this site.
I’m not. I’m commemoration the news and like other kiwis i use it a lot.
NZ needs to change and adapt to this new model.
Funny, I’d never picked you as a guy keen on paying more tax to subsidise big business. Each to their own I guess.
http://fortune.com/2017/07/16/amazon-postal-service-subsidy/
https://www.independent.co.uk/money/tax/revealed-amazon-earns-more-through-government-grants-than-it-pays-in-tax-8617919.html
https://theintercept.com/2018/04/19/amazon-snap-subsidies-warehousing-wages/
He right-wing which means, by default, that he’s in favour of high profits through government subsidy.
Just so long as its ‘legal’ of course.
Nothing new about serfhood.
Ok, you’ve stumped me. The first five pages of google results and the urban dictionary weren’t any help. What is FWIC?
Something rude and crude Andre. Cheers.
Most of the possibilities I came up with while trying to puzzle it out were rude and crude. Some of them didn’t even need the F to be part of the rude and crude. But I’m still curious whether I actually got it on my list, or whether it’s something different again.
It is truly amazing what a great man can achieve simply by paying his staff starvation wages in tech based sweat shops. If only Kiwi businesses could learn to exploit their workers so keenly, the NZ elite too could gather more money than they could spend in 100 life times.
@crashcart, look at the headlines, a lot of businesses in NZ already pay their staff starvation wages… the government just gives a slap on the wrist a few hours community service in most cases, or nothing at all… so our country is probably already worse than the US.. we are operating far worse in NZ than Amazon which probably has better regulation than NZ who just waves people into NZ to work as slaves and then after a few years the tax payer can pay their workers welfare top ups.
http://business.scoop.co.nz/2018/10/08/labour-inspectorate-chorus-report-alarming-not-surprising/
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/366712/whistleblower-exposed-exploitation-of-migrant-workers
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/313420/nz%27s-first-people-trafficking-conviction
This government has provided more inspectors and the repayments to workers and heavy fines for bad employer practices have increased. Also employers are losing the right to use immigrant workers for significant periods.
Businesses flouting the rules will be pinged. Some of your statements are framed to implicate this Government. That is sad.You are giving no credit for efforts made. Granted it is still slow, but it is snowballing.
The are working too slow. Giving the drug smuggler residency and only giving one year not to bring in Burger King fast food migrant workers is a joke after the are caught underpaying staff !
As is allowing employers to bring in migrant workers for fast food, cafes, petrol stations , liquor stores etc in the first place! No wonder jobseeker allowances is on the rise.
Guess what, the minimum waged migrant workers are adding to the welfare burden when they get residency often for a fake job as we don’t need people in those areas.
If you can’t work out that adding in drug smugglers and minimum waged workers into NZ is going to be a massive social burden on the country in the future, something is wrong!
Yes Labour better than Natz, but defiantly making a lot of wrong calls on TPPA and immigration and giving corporate welfare to construction to keep the said minimum waged workers able to keep coming in.
Rather than John and Bills low wage culture here, I’d like to see an alternate high skills, high wage culture here under the new government.
With all the crap going on in the US, NZ could be poised to actually get more tech started in NZ as a legitimate high skills outsourcer for example.
Because unlike the third world which does not necessarily work with all the corruption etc, NZ offers a decent high skills alternative (getting worse with the 100% criminal drive) and there are decent skills in NZ that could be utilised to grow that area, not the low waged fast ‘obese’ food and liquor store and drug expansions, that occurred under the Natz and still growing under labour.
SaveNZ I agree with a great deal you say.
But a Government who found they had convinced Winston to come on board, a party part of a coalition who had never been in Government. WOW!
To expect all to be solved in 14 months… it isn’t going to happen.
I feel proud they have made a list of what they want to improve and are working through it.
Why don’t you count the successes then list the “Please don’t forget”… as you say… “Better than the Nats” Cheers.!!
Sorry @ savenz, I agree with most of what you say, but so often your outrage is misdirected. More than that, you don’t ever seem to respond to anything that points stuff and things that could hold water: possibly/maybe/maybe I should consider/yes even…..
Yes, they are working too slow. Patricia Bremner rightly states that numbers have been increased and you say not fast enough. (Agreed – we even had am overpaid ‘Stu’ assuring us about 4 weeks before the election – from memory on RNZ although I have the link somehere – that we had sufficient Labour Inspectors)
You say not fast enough.
That not only shows a lack of appreciation of how mammoth immigration policy, its failings, worker exploitation, public service incompetence, cosy little arrangements, etc etc etc actually is, but it also shows that where blame is being directed is completely arse about face.
AS I was travelling Norf today, I stumbled on a ZB whilst scanning the bands and there was a Nafe – maybe it was some rural programme on the soon to be defunct RadioLive.
Nafe (he who never inhaled from the Kapiti Coast) was lamenting the shortages of farming workers as it relates to immigrants on the one hand, woilst on the other doing his best to point out under this Minister (Mr I L-G) scumbags have been allowed to thrive.
Nafe should be careful. That was almost like a confession as to how Immigration Munsters of Her Madge under the previous junta were able to interfere in those ‘operational matters’.
…. Jeez, I’m actually getting fucking sick about talking/letalone thinking about it all.
Christ……maybe on the way back I’ll discover something different from a comfy little Mora Panel and Lackwit Larry deluding himself that he’s representing the voice of the peeeepill
IMO the Chinese and Vietnamese sweatshop workers who make our electronic goods get treated better than the workers at Amazon. That is why I don’t use them.
Just stay away from Alexa, James, she’s a dodgy piece of equipment.
Meh – I have nothing to hide.
Have about 5 – 6 of them scattered around the house.
I’m ok with the privacy issues.
Best be careful though, Jimmy.
Amazon’s Alexa probably won’t admit there was a murder in her home, but the data she stores on the company’s servers might tell a different story.
An Amazon Echo, the device that houses the company’s Alexa AI, in the kitchen of a Farmington, N.H., home is at the heart of a double murder trial. Earlier this month, a judge ordered partial records of that device be released.
Prosecutors believe there may be recordings of the stabbings of two women from January 2017. Amazon has not yet said if it would release the information.
“I think this is the beginning of the ‘internet of evidence’ where lots of pieces of smart devices are going to show up in criminal prosecutions,” Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, author of The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement, told Day 6.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode-417-alexa-as-murder-witness-k-tel-s-legacy-brexit-and-gibraltar-havana-s-mystery-hater-and-more-1.4916536/alexa-who-did-it-what-happens-when-a-judge-in-a-murder-trial-wants-data-from-a-smart-home-speaker-1.4916556
That is what we call unearned income and is thus a great example of how these rich people are huge bludgers.
It was suitably named Black Friday. Half price day. So they buy twice the junk.
My point was that $9b didn’t come from anything he did. He just sat back and raked in the profits.
I have no problem in paying the authors.
Then we could tax the buggers jimbo.
Australian Govt logging company clear felling protected forest.
The Guardian’s latest attack by their resident ‘Russia hysteria’ scribe Luke Harding on Julian Assange is coming unstuck, Wikileaks is threatening legal action and apparently offering to take a bet with The Guardian of a million dollars if they can show any proof…something Harding doesn’t seem to deem necessary in much of his writings.
‘WikiLeaks launches legal fund to sue Guardian for Manafort report
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/418756-wikileaks-launches-legal-fund-in-effort-to-sue-guardian-over
Guardian Pushes Fake News on Assange
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsaJS8MMtsQ
And just for your entertainment this old favorite featuring Harding and Arron Mate’
…enjoy.
Where’s the ‘Collusion’?
+1 Adrian
“In the Netherlands where cannabis use has been de facto legal, since the 1970s, youth use is half or less than it is here in New Zealand.” https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/11/29/guest-blog-jeanette-saxby-to-the-editor-of-stuff/
Jeanette Saxby, Cannabis Clinician, Dip T, B.Ed, Drug and alcohol Counselling, Post Grad D Heal Sci. Response to last dinosaur standing Bob McCoskrie’s re-run of the antique scaremongering stance.
There are some serious drug issues in Amsterdam- I’ve been offered every drug possible when walking around the tourist areas (normal Amsterdam may well be very different) but I was shocked how easy it was to get anything you may want.
You must look like an addict jimbo. Meat sweats maybe.
lol
“meat sweats”
Lordy!
I can smell’im from here!
That’d be the unregulated ‘free-market’ that you like wouldn’t it?
That is a more recent occurance since right wing govt in the Netherlands has restarted the war on Drugs it has made the Drug trade profitable again Rotterdam the biggest port in Europe is the through point where a large % of Drugs are shipped higher prices from recriminalizing help increase trade.
Nice one. I tore Bob’s ‘facts’ a new one yesterday.
See Helius Therapeutics is trolling for NZ strains to own now. Offering a ‘genetics fee’ and possible royalties.
The so called ownership of genetic material is offensive to me. Those handing in strains hand in the work of all who’ve gone before them, none of whom planned to created materials for millionaires enterprises. Legal and moral are in this instance mutually exclusive. We’re talking thousands of years of selective breeding somehow captured in legalese today.
Watch carefully as big money players attempt to shove local small to medium players out of the market before they even start. Watch skilled caregivers and herbalists get caught in legal battles with companies who think they own the genes because some other schmuck sold them a clone.
Local and sustainable. The alternative is adding international shipping, packaging, advertising budgets, executive budgets, travel, hotels, dinners, international regulations, market surveys etc etc. Meantime the planet…
Patients should not be paying for millionaires lifestyles or the destruction of the earth. Especially for a herbal product. The bulk of our medicines are plant extracts exploited by industry, yet herbalists have been denigrated as idiot hippies the whole time.
Big Pharma is a planetary problem, a thief and fraudulent exploiter. Don’t be fooled.
Yes I have long shared your concern re genetic engineering & copyright law application. Owning new variations on nature’s evolutionary themes seems wrong. I prefer law based on the commons to law based on private property rights. It’s more traditional, even if less influential in our society.
However I see a significant public interest in respect of quality control. Some folks are vulnerable to excess intake – particularly those with mental health problems. That’s where the rationale for reliable dosage specification comes from. So along with right to grow & own your own & share it with others, I see a place for regulated commercial providers. To design against Big Pharma controlling the market, we could use the community trust model that has prevailed in parts of Auckland for many years. If only community providers were licensed, industrial manufacture would remain small-scale & local. Would small business providers be included?
It is a bit of a minefield trying to make sense of what is real concern and what is propaganda spread by businessmen wanting to take the market for themselves. Much of the research on quality control and medical applications of various cannabinoid ratios and dosage has already been done. The testing of said ratios to fit local strains to products could be done in local labs there’s no magic juju to it.
There is a huge body of cannabis literature already available and it will continue to grow. This is where some of the money needs to go. Adding our bit.
A local independent research and regulatory organisation would be brilliant. One that services all NZ cannabis businesses, and business in turn support the research from their sales. Recreational product, should that happen, should support both research on medicinal applications, but also counseling and rehabilitation services. External oversight of the R&D arm to root out cronyism/corruption, and price gouging of patients or exploitation of suppliers.
Turn it into it’s own self-sustaining ecosystem.
This could be a huge boon to the economy directly through incomes to locals and indirectly through reduction in healthcare expenditure. We don’t need big pharma at all in this matter.
I assume that you and Bleepie were opposed to, and spoke out against, the WAI 262 claim to the Waitangi Tribunal did you Dennis?
After all a significant part of that was basically a claim to the ownership of genetic material wasn’t it?
http://www.henryhughes.com/Site/news/Waitangi-Tribunal-Report-on-flora-and-fauna-WAI-262.aspx
No, don’t assume that. I’m neither Maori nor GE activist. If you’re fishing for a common principle applying, I doubt I can help. Perhaps it’s worth noting that they claim in respect of Treaty rights, and those specified derive from chiefs and traditional domains and practices, a Maori version of the commons derived from their tribal hierarchy & mana. I’d reserve judgment on any consequent court decision until that became available…
IMO, that’s been true of capitalism for thousands of years.
Nobody should. In fact, we need to make it so that the world doesn’t have millionaires.
Yes I agree, so we should support Hikurangi.
NZ has never had the drive, the vision, to go beyond immediate gratification. As soon as something has been developed we sell it offshore or a largeish shareholding.
If someone far sighted tried something they would probably be denigrated in Parliament, a commie or something. We should have bought back the kiwi boot polish brand but no. It’s not as good having your brand bandied around if people don’t connect it with our country and we want to keep a good image. Or did – 100% Pure would make an honest man blush. Ergo we aren’t honest men?
Which might be interesting under wider trade agreements. Could be we are called to account by somebody for bad advertising. Could be some company calls itself kiwi and sells its stuff to us.
Legitimate work for the drug smuggler and a career path for him, if only we can get rid of him back to the EU and out of bludging off NZ’ers.
James @5
I know this is another James windup, but I will bite just for the fun of it Amazon the company who avoids paying tax subsidised by the government, ALL governments around the world as their employees have to have food stamps to top up their wages. Amazon who does not have the overheads like the high street outlets like local taxes avoiding paying ANY tax. Amazon along with other predatory parasitical outfits like Wall Mart who have destroyed the traditional Ma & Pa high street trader in small town America and other counties inluding New Zealand. But I suppose that is THE MARKET working though I class it as GREED that is going to destroy this place.
Lovely outfit
Rather ironic I was in my favourite electrical store the other day and I saw this not needed bit of gimmicky Christmas rubbish that was supplied by Amazon
Funny that I thought Amazon does not have to pay any tax whereas this shop would have to pay tax wages and rates etc selling this gizmo and anyone buying would have to pay GST and no doubt it was manufactured in some sweat shop in Asia paying min wages
AND cyber monday netted Bebos of amazon 9 BILLION
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12168616
rather then tell him what he knows and does not care about, simply go to and buy all your gifts this year and any other year of local Kiwi Artists? Of local Kiwi Tradies, in the locally own bookshop, and the likes.
I don’t get it, i never bought of Amazon, nor Trade me, my eyes glaze over when i just look at that stuff, but yet, i miss nothing in my life.
And considering the environmental effects, the cost of unemployment to me the tax payer, no Amazon is not cheaper, it is more expensive. But maybe James does not pay taxes and thus does not care.
But yeah, in the power down thingy, why not buy all your feasts ingredients locally produced, get your ham from the local butcher rather then the supermarket, get your gifts of any of the many markets, give vouchers for the local tailor / seemstress to those that have a thing for frocks, and scour the recycle centres for knick knack that the kids may enjoy.
So much more satisfying then ordering shit online in order to be cheap n nasty.
“simply go to and buy all your gifts this year and any other year of local Kiwi Artists? Of local Kiwi Tradies, in the locally own bookshop, and the likes.”
Been there, done that, and I agree 200% with the rest of your post
One of our joys is the photogaphy we do, not only for trying to get excellence yet to be achieved in our photography but visiting some of the wild and great places we go to and the bird life and flowers and bush and so on Not bloody Shopping Malls.
I saw on the nutters club the other week a funny that sums it up
“How do you milk sheep?
“Bring out a new i PAD”
i had a panic attack once in a Mall. Went there with my friend and absolutely lost it. The security had to help me get outside, cause i wuz paniking. t’was funny. Not.
From the good news dept:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-30/renewables-now-heading-for-80-per-cent-of-electricity-market/10567838
This is how real change happens; the price for renewables is putting the fossil fuels out of business. Scientists, researchers, engineers and business striving for the next market opportunity; capitalism certainly has it’s sucky aspects, but when it works it delivers what is says on the tin.
Meanwhile in Texas, natural gas prices fall so low that producers have had to pay someone to take it away …
https://247wallst.com/energy-economy/2018/11/27/hub-price-for-permian-basin-natural-gas-briefly-turned-negative-monday/
Ain’t markets wonderful.
Natural gas is a much cleaner energy option than Coal. You can reduce emissions significantly if all Coal fired power was converted to natural gas.
This argument is true and false.
It’s like giving heroin addicts methadone. Best to just take the pain and get clean.
You need a transition period. The “pain” you talk about would be large scale unemployment, if all thermal stations were simply shut down in say 1 or 2 years.
New generation capacity can’t be built that quickly. And a fair bit of the new capacity has to be baseload, either geothermal or hydro. You are talking ten year from the initial decision to build to actual generation.
Hence why I said part of the argument is true Wayne.
We need to be careful to do it right, not to milk the profits. there is a planet at stake.
I think where gas is proximal to coal that is going to be used as there are not alternatives in place…
Then, as an INTERIM measure, gas. Meanwhile alternative infrastructure is built as the problem has not been eradicated.
We the people will be eradicated problem solved.
More effecient Solar cells and batteries are the answer.
Graphene and NaCl batteries being developed that are more environmentally manufactured as well as practical these new technologies will mean much faster charging 7 times the time for holding a charge up to 1200 km on 1 charge but even more exciting is much lighter cheaper cars with graphene being the body / battery/and solar cells. Being lighter stronger easier to build.
Gas = delay. Get on with it. Fonterra’s excuse for continuing to burn dirty lignite coal at their Hedgehope factory, is that there’s no gas available. There is wood waste though…
Or we could decide to use the huge amount of hydro siphoned off for Tiwai as baseload. Ah, I see someone already raised that below.
Converting an existing coal plant to gas is usually a substantial re-engineering and rebuild task. Big enough that it is very likely cheaper to simply install an equivalent amount of renewables capacity.
In some areas, building new renewables is cheaper than the marginal operating cost of existing coal plants. It won’t be long before the same is true of natural gas plants. 10 or 20 years ago, gas appeared to make sense as a lower-emission bridge to a zero-emission future. Now it’s clearer it’s just a dummy bridge to nowhere.
The major thermal plant in NZ, being Huntly is co-gen, already able to burn gas.
If you want an immediate (anything less than a 5 year shutdown of Huntly), you loose 1000 MW from the system. Neither wind or photovoltaic can substitute. You need something that can run at night and in bad weather conditions, and able to push 1000 MW into the grid. Basically geothermal or hydro.
That is why the govt is not following your advice. They know for at least 10 years (probably more) thermal is a necessary part of the the generating system.
Has anyone suggested a means of reducing national usage as a permanent thing not the repeated ‘cut down now as the water is low’ message we keep getting? Aren’t there a myriad of small things that might be done to help. does the government have data on the efficacy of the following:
Regulate new appliances, public education, solar subsidies, passive heating and cooling systems, etc?
What about techniques for groundwater replenishment to build resilience against drought and the subsequent power issues?
I didn’t actually suggest shutting Huntly. Although if the govt ever actually did ask my opinion, yes, I would consider it a high priority.
Huntly was originally designed to be able to burn either gas or coal right from the beginning. As such, the original 1000MW of generation sacrificed the efficiency gains possible from combined cycle operation and runs on the same crappy thermal efficiency available from coal. Because the gas is burned in the same temperature limited boilers as when it’s operating on coal. It’s only the more recent addition of an additional combined cycle unit (where the gas is burned to drive a turbine, then the turbine exhaust passes through a boiler to heat steam) that’s significantly better than coal from an emissions perspective. But that new unit can’t run on coal.
There’s an easy way to shut down Huntly with negligible risk to security of supply: stop exporting huge quantities of electricity for a tiny return (compared to the price we’re charged here) in the form of shiny bars from Tiwai point. Then maybe market forces will take over and the aluminium companies will do the right thing and build solar farms to take advantage of the extremely good solar energy resource right where a lot of the bauxite is actually mined. As an extra bonus, transport costs would come down too, since half the weight of the alumina shipped around the world to get refined is the oxygen that has to be removed from the aluminium.
And just to get ahead of the cries of “jobs, jobs, it’s worth it for the jobs”, the whole Southland employment thing is just a convenient pressure point to allow foreign companies to continue rorting us all. We’d be much smarter to do the right thing for the country as a whole, and deal with employment issues in Southland as a separate issue.
Well, Tiwai does use about 600MW, and directly and indirectly employs 3,000 well paid people. Plus Meridian has a long term supply contract they can’t just break. So that is also at least ten years away, if even then.
In short NZ needs about 1000mw of new baseload generation. If it is to be renewable it has to be geothermal or hydro. Meridian has a proposed 500mw canal project for the north side of the Waitaki river below Benmore. Planned 15 years ago, but on hold ever since. It would take 10 years to build. Conceptually similar to the canal project already in existence around Twizel. Fairly limited environmental effects compared to major dams.
Yeah, the Waitaki is one I’ve had heated discussions about, with other environmentally concerned types. While I’m not completely in favour, on balance it’s one I support.
Adding pumped hydro storage is another option for improving supply security, flexibilty, and taking better advantage of intermittent renewables.
For a large part of its run, the Waikato runs through fairly degraded land. While most of the soils around there around unsuitable for dams, it would be very surprising if there weren’t at least a few sites suitable for new lakes above existing ones. Let alone possible sites around places like around the lake on the Moawhango on Defence land near Waiouru, around Lake Taupo, etc etc.
That might also improve flexibility for running the existing hydro plants on the Waikato. As I understand it, very little of the lake capacity along the river is significantly used for storage, those stations are primarily operated as run-of-the-river controlled by the gates at Taupo.
Cost of building Dams not financially viable any more Clyde Dam was another National Party f/up original price $500 million double the 2 low dam proposal ended up costing $2.5 billion life span 60yrs silting will make it inefficient by then. National sold Clyde for a fraction of its cost effectively subsidising Contact energy. Solar and Batteries don’t require massive infrastructure to deliver power are the best long-term solution.
Or we could just cut Auckland off anders. We can deal with breakdown of civil order issues as a separate issue.
Make a good argument why that’s in the country’s best interest and I’ll probably agree with you. Hell, even a mediocre argument will probably do the trick.
The needs of the many outweigh the convenience of the few, agree away.
And the conversion took years.
That is an outright lie.
Both wind and photovoltaic can substitute.
OMG, you mean that it might take central planning?
As I say – power generation and reticulation is a natural monopoly and such must be a government service.
And still far more polluting and far more expensive than any renewable generation.
Nuclear, it’s the clear favourite now. Even environmentalist groups are getting behind and a quick stopgap solution.
Though China is doing pretty well on the fusion front:
https://www.popsci.com/chinas-experimental-fusion-reactor-hits-major-milestone
You can see why the Aussies are moving fast. Their yard is on fire.
So pleased they have something to celebrate. Going to have to rethink agriculture next.
Crops burning in the sun. Bats falling from trees. Temps > 40 C.
lets cut down some more trees.
There are bats here. So far, they’re not falling, due to the heat. Forest clearance has destroyed most of them however. One way or another, we’ll finish the blighters off! We were visited by a bat-researcher last week. She knows bats like no one I’ve ever met. She even bought bat soft-toys and puppets in for our grandchildren to play with – ready for anything, was Batwoman!
We’ve got a few problems atm here in Darwin with CC, like this article say and we have noticed the decline in our sea mammals while fishing in habour and other areas. Also on top of this our local turtle population is slowly declining as the sandy beaches where they laid their eggs is heating up causing the eggs to produce more females turtles than males one.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-30/darwin-harbour-dolphin-population-decline-worries-scientist/10157960
Can you start an in group called the Ninja Turtles and weave some loose grass mats that are supported on poles to cover and form shade over their favourite areas, them have guards over them till the breeding seas on is over?
” the sandy beaches where they laid their eggs is heating up ”
It’s the unforseen circumstances that will sink us.
And it could all have been done faster and all without the dead-weight loss of profit or the sucky aspects.
Capitalism slows down the necessary changes so as to protect the rich. It also entrenches those sucky aspects so as to protect the rich.
Women ah, who cares about their rights.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-30/teacher-recorded-her-boss-sexually-harassing-her-but-is-jailed/10568940
high time to roll up our sleeves save the planet.
I was very impressed with Alan Savory and Watson too WtB. These are the sort of things to inspire us to action.
Brigitte Morten also remains puzzled: “The investigation into the handling of the Karel Sroubek immigration case was meant to provide clarity on what led Immigration Minister Iain Less-Galloway to making the decision to grant him residency.”
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/377159/pm-s-xmas-gift-an-immigration-portfolio-to-someone-else
“Unfortunately, following the release of the review I, like most people, am even more confused. And even less confident in the minister’s actions.” Labour pretends to believe in transparency, then obfuscates to make the situation as obscure as possible.
Could it be that whoever does political management for Labour has gone on holiday early? This missing person clearly doesn’t want the public to know why the Minister made his decision, nor why he has changed his mind. Otherwise he would have told us, right? Was he set up by a Nat-leaning public servant? If yes, then the traditional left/right collusion has to be applied to cover that up, I presume. I’d rather Labour informed us of the facts instead of prevaricating.
Sooner that drug smuggler get deported the better. A proportion of Kiwis will be paying good money to tourist in the EU, it is a joke that he doe’s ‘not feel safe there’ but was a ‘bit homesick’ so went back for a day. Hmmm, I can think of a few other reasons a convicted drug smuggler might enter a country for a day… and now we have to pay for his prison stays, get rid of him ASAP and use those resources on people in this country less privileged who get nothing and need the resources he is currently bludging off our country for.
SaveNZ
Remember Thiel he made $30million off the taxpayer through the stupidity of steven joyce and a clause in a partnership betw Thiel and the national govt. Has he even been to NZ? What taxes is he paying? He’s a bludger that nats let in after 12 days.
He didn’t even get his certificate in NZ that allowed him to live here. He’s your bludger.
Key is the alleged ‘crim’ who technically assaults a young female without her consent and gets away with it. He’s now bludging off New Zealanders’ taxes and attacking the current Government through his banking position.
Multi-millionaires and billionaires are the bludgers throughout the world, including NZ.
When they are forced to pay the taxes they should be paying, then those without will be able to live in a country that offers them so many free services for their education, health and welfare and all the jobs that come with that.
Sroubek is just a person that is being used to try and destroy a government. The real bludgers are sitting in the opposition seats in parliament using their extensive financial and international/domestic sources – other bludgers on the public purse – to screw our democracy over.
Take your blinders off. You’re not a horse.
Was Joyce ever made responsible?
It was a standard clause in all the contracts that the New Zealand Investment Fund went into after it was founded in 2002.
Very silly clause of course and it was removed from all their new deals in 2015.
It was certainly something that Joyce should have spotted when he took over responsibility for their fund in 2009. However perhaps you should still enquire of the people who set up the fund in 2002 what the hell they thought they were doing.
That is irrelevant of course and Joyce has to be held responsible. He had been in the role for a year or so when the deal was made and he should have spotted the effect of such a clause earlier.
It is exactly the same as the fiasco of the Census, where James Shaw has to be held responsible, or Immigration where Lees-Galloway is at fault for his current mess. They are in the job and the mistakes made after this long are all theirs to take the blame for. Just as Joyce couldn’t really blame the preceding Government for the Thiel deal they can’t say that they aren’t responsible for the stuff ups by the current CoL.
I expect you will call on Shaw and Lees-Galloway to take responsibility and do what Joyce has done and leave Parliament. Time for them to resign from Parliament wouldn’t you agree?
alwyn 13.1.1.1.1
30 November 2018 at 3:04 pm
Alwyn,
I spent half an hour writing my reply to you yesterday and the internet went down as I clicked to send.
Since it’s you, I won’t bother to write it up so beautifully again.
Suffice to say that in 2002 after the horrors of Act’s douglas and richardson, we were all looking to a better future under a less ideological government that had realised the damage wrought by the chicago boys global takeover. We were beginning to trust in government and business to work together on behalf of all of us – even you.
Unfortunately, in 2004, NZ got key, stalking a suitable place to engineer his entrance to politics. In Helensville – how convenient. Although, didn’t he roll some worthy nat’s promised place to get that candidacy? Dirty politics began then and hasn’t stopped.
English went through “line by line, cutting waste” he told us that himself – but waste to him was education, health, transport, etc. When he came to the NZIF clause he did nothing. He, key and joyce knew it would be handy for some future abuse.
The secretive Waitemata Trust was started in 2005 to finance the party’s campaign or was it just for key and the people of Dirty Politics. I don’t know. Who donated Alwyn? Was it key? USA for a job he was here to do? That question has yet to be answered?
Enter joyce (and the generous media works loan to him by taxpayers – did he pay it back?) and his very generous package to thiel ending in a loss to taxpayers in nat’s time. The nats couldn’t wait to use that clause for their gain, not KIWIS’ benefit.
The more moral and ethical members of national (and I’m being kind here) would be turning in their graves to see the carcass that is national 2018. Politics is one thing, Alwyn, but corruption is another.
Greed has no conscience; it has no morals; it has no sense of what is right and wrong. It just wants and does not care how it gets its wants. I guess you already know that Alwyn.
As for Lees- Galloway and Shaw leaving parliament – seriously? LOL
They are two of the finer features of our parliamentary lineup. If you suggest they are not, that must put nats into negative. But good to see you have a sense of humour in your hour of need, dear.
I really do think that you shouldn’t have bothered.
Almost everything you have written is wrong.
1. Douglas was a Labour MP until 1990, when he first retired. He was only an ACT MP from 2008 to 2011 and was not in the house for the 12 years preceding 2002.
2. Richardson was never an ACT MP. She was in the National Party and had retired in 1994.
3. Key became an MP in 2002, not 2004.
4. Your remarks about English are total rubbish. You should be ashamed of yourself.
5. The Waitemata Trust was anything but secretive and it certainly wasn’t started in 2005. It was entirely legal.
6. There was no loan to Media Works in what most people understand the term to mean. They were like any other broadcasting organisation allowed to pay of their licence over time rather than in a single payment covering 20 odd years of a licence.
7. Nothing went to Joyce. He didn’t work for them then and hadn’t for years. He had no ownership of the business at all at the time.
8. The Crown didn’t lose from their investment in Xero. They didn’t make as much as they might have but that isn’t a “loss”.
9. Thiel may have made money but National certainly didn’t.
At least I see that you have retained your sense of humour though. When you can finish with such a wonderful joke as “They are two of the finer features of our parliamentary lineup” I couldn’t help but crack up laughing.
As I thought Alwyn, you’re not too good on the finer nuances are you. The Hollow Men was all about national’s politics of deception.
1. Douglas had an epiphany on mt pelerin and decided to let the markets rule. That has never been a true Labour value. Even Lange finally realised what douglas and co were up to. Labour was thrown out in 1990 – and I have always seen that decade as the biggest nat/extreme right set up I have ever seen. (politics of deception)
2 Hollow Men. pg 52 CIS breakfast6 Aug 2004 guest list included richardson, kerr, judd, 2 act mps, hide, franks, banks, Mcleod, gibbs, friedlander (so called Independent editor McManus). The only national mp present was don brash and this was his political peer group. (politics of deception and self interest)
3. Apology. I was going to take your word for it until you became a denier about English. So I had to double check. Yes you were right (but we already knew that). 2004 was when I saw the photo of key in a magazine (North and South, perhaps?); a photo which led me to think – yep, he’s probably going to be pm and then the rot really will set in. The eyes showed a sociopathic tendency, masked by the smile which didn’t reach the eyes. Eyes show the soul of a person. It was not a good day when I saw his face. Helensville was a safe national seat. That was a dirty race too. Apparently, boag engineered key in and got rid of sitting mp brian neeson. Sadly, of course, it just gave the dirty politics of nz more time to destroy our political system (politics of deception and – betrayal – Neeson’s word)
4. english had to pay back housing money obtained from the taxpayers’ purse. he swallowed dead rats to get into government to pursue a course of market driven plans. While publically helping workers to survive the 2007 gfc he was removing most of their working rights, pay and conditions and welcomed in a low wage economy for everyone except ceos. he and key should have been drummed out of the country for their policies. Instead they brought a whole new low to the practice of bestowing knighthoods, once considered a real honour when applied to people like Sir Ed, now just a sad joke. Key brought them back so he could get one; there was never any honour in that, just his personal gain. (politics of self interest)
Mental health under english languished and went backwards. Mid to late 90s http://werewolf.co.nz/2017/08/bill-english-the-forgotten-history/ Read the whole piece and stop talking nonsense about english; he’s a market ideologue, but he was just better at being deceptive with his true plans than brash was. That’s not a compliment by the way, although I can’t help feeling you would admire that, Alwyn.
he and key refused to accept and act on the mounting crisis of infrastructure and housing for our own people never mind the politically motivated increase in immigration and tourism which brought it all to breaking point and jokes starting with cars being a roof over the heads of the poor and even the working poor.
And there is so much more for him and you to be ashamed of if you support him. (politics of bad policies for party backers)
5. Waitemata trust – http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0609/S00262.htm
‘The National Party has admitted that its use of secret trusts violates the intent of electoral law and must now reveal the big money backers behind the Waitemata Trust, Labour Strategist Pete Hodgson said today.
‘Over 92 per cent of National’s 2005 election spend-up was financed through blind trusts. Around two-thirds of National’s funding – or $1.2 million – was laundered through the National Party operated Waitemata Trust under the name of Robert Browne.
‘Gerry Brownlee admitted this morning that this violates the intent of the law, but unfortunately current legislation is powerless to stop it. We have always relied on the good will of parties to not abuse the system, but it appears that we can’t afford to do that any longer.
But they did nothing.
Oh yes Alwyn, yet another example of trust being abused, by your very own nats, Alwyn. A gentleman’s handshake was once all that was required. Until we realized that the gentlemen of the 1980s 90s and 2010s would happily bite the hand that made them rich. So no, maybe not illegal, just shabby, secretive, underhanded and so nat Dirty Politics.
6 and 7. When government allows a private business to have an advantage it wouldn’t have in a pure market economy, which key, english and joyce love, they are just betraying their own ‘leave it to the market’ belief. And that is ever only when it advantages them or their friends.
‘Nothing went to joyce.’ I don’t care whether joyce worked for them or still owned them or not. You are well aware of the group think of business that says ‘I’ll give you this from the taxpayers’ pocket or I’ll arrange to override the usual cut off point for payment and you help me out when I need something.’ The person in the street wouldn’t get that perk.
It’s politely called networking by people who are looking for jobs but business favours for those that work in a small group of self-interested people. Back to page 52 of The Hollow Men. (Politics of self interest)
8 and 9. When the crown hands money over to business it should be with the same outcome – equal profit if it goes well; share the loss if it doesn’t. Thiel is a billionaire. To me that is a crime that he made $30 from his small outlay and the people of New Zealand got about $2m from their larger initial outlay. The taxpayers of New Zealand are helping the thiels to become richer, with absolutely no real benefit to New Zealanders.
The fact that you think this is okay demonstrates perfectly that the rot of key english and joyce is an acceptable part of politics, your type of politics.
Wrong again Alwyn. When the wealthy make money from the taxpayer with nats help, they always remember. Very expensive campaign dinners e.g. with peter talley, for large donations.
And now we come to Lees-Galloway and Shaw. I know you think it’s hilarious that I have some faith in the goodness of these two people, whereas I have none in the aforementioned self-interested ideologues key, english, joyce, etc, but that comforts me somewhat in that I judged you correctly from the start. We are at opposite poles, politically and that makes me feel so much better. Thanks for that.
@patricia bremner, nope and he should be, likewise anyone else whose stupidity comes into question and they effectively lose public money, give away assets like water, and then shrug it off. Stupidity is not an excuse.
SaveNZ 13.1.1.1.2
30 November 2018 at 3:11 pm
You just described john key, steven joyce, bill english.
‘Was Joyce ever made responsible?’
I’m still laughing, Patricia Bremner.
Sroubek is not being used to destroy a government, he’s highlighting what is wrong with our immigration. If then government want to keep justifying why he such a good catch for NZ and why we need to have him here, then they do so at their peril. The average Joe, knows the EU is a pretty safe place to go back to, if Iain and the immigration department don’t know that, then they are looking like fools for believing the guy over the safety of the public of NZ and public good of NZ. He’s costing a fortune to have here for example, and we have kids going blind due to a lack of resources here? That is what the issue is, don’t make it about the Natz, or politics, something is wrong with immigration in NZ, and this case is just highlighting it.
‘ don’t make it about the Natz, or politics, something is wrong with immigration in NZ, and this case is just highlighting it.’
Of course it’s about the nats.
Of course it’s about politics.
And I totally agree that immigration processes need to be overhauled and both officials and MPs protected from dirty politics.
I just don’t like seeing a perfectly good MP being attacked for political gain. I demand New Zealanders’ right to a corruption-free parliament.
I equate corruption with dirty politics because one or more persons stand to gain something they don’t deserve.
I’m all for cancelling Thiels citizenship on the grounds that he did not do what he said he was going to do when his citizenship was granted.
The point should be that it takes 20 years for someone to get residency here, not 2 -5 years because if it takes longer then it means that a clearer picture of someones life and if they actually want to stay here long term, as well as their character, and if they earn enough money here, to pay for the freebies they get as citizens like health care etc.
At present, the Kiwi’s seem to be supporting far too many migrants with dodgy deals aka Thiel, prison stays aka Sroubek and truckloads of fake workers with exploitive migrants employers, and now we hear that that lonely migrants once they get residency/citizenship can just get online and marry someone from overseas whose about to retire, after a couple of weeks chatting online!
If you can’t work out that seems to be a death sentence for NZ as a welfare country if that is allowed to continue… Kiwi’s pay taxes for their own health and welfare, and housing, they shouldn’t and can’t subsidise the world who have no reciprocal health care, no superannuation, no social welfare in their country, few human rights…
Bizarre comparison with Dotcom.
Dotcom was firstly a person with outstanding technical and business skills that never had a day in prison, bought money and employment to NZ and was targeted by Hollywood for a copywrite case which should have be sorted out in civil court with Hollywood paying the money if they lost (which they eventually did as it was proven false that Dotcom’s company breached copywrite laws). As far as I am aware has never budged off our country for welfare.
Sroubek is a career criminal wanted in multiple countries and came to NZ on a false passport, screwed over everybody he comes into contact with by the sounds of it, has been in NZ jail for years, has court orders against his wife, his victim in hiding, hangs out with gangs in NZ…etc etc Has already cost millions in welfare with prison stays, legal aid, and criminal justice and keeping some of his victims in hiding and who knows what else.
One seems to be falsely accused for political purposes and if there are victims they are billionaire in Hollywood (the rich and the Natz, with John Banks donations) and one (Sroubek) is already convicted and guilty but the immigration minister and cronies want NZ to support the low life the rest of his life by the sounds of it and the victims (who are generally poor) of his crimes get their noses rubbed into it.
Time to have, anyone is NZ who is convicted of a serious criminal act, be deported straight away! They seem to be recruiting criminals as residents in NZ for the 100% Pure Criminal NZ campaign.
“One seems to be falsely accused for political purposes …”
So true. National is using and abusing the system for political gain. You have also made false statements in your para “Sroubek is a career criminal wanted in multiple countries ….”
ianmac You are referring to savenz at 13.2 – just to be definite. Are you thinking that when the appeal is on or over, a lot of matters that show a different picture will come to light? Or are you saying that the publication of supposed bad behaviours and crimes which are not proved means that we are trying the case in the public arena unfairly?
Yes grey. Ref to 13.2 where he writes false or exaggeration;
“career criminal wanted in multiple countries…”
“screwed over everybody he comes into contact with ”
“has court orders against his wife,”
“his victim in hiding”
“hangs out with gangs in NZ”
“cost millions in welfare with prison stays, legal aid,”
“keeping some of his victims in hiding”
Most of that is untrue or just spin from the Opposition. Strip it down to the known truth and you have a simple crook who has done wrong but not the Mr Big he has been built up to seem.
Even if he is the ‘simple crook’ he’s still be bludging off NZ in the prisons for the past few years, possibly on legal aid, not exactly what many kiwi’s think are a good criteria for migration here. That we know!
Yes i think we make a stronger case for being a post where things are nutted out reasonably rather than where people go nutty and make multiple allegations as a rant. If the matters are not definitely known and someone feels like expressing freely perhaps we can sign with /rant as we do with /sarc.
The stuff we hear gets beyond belief sometimes and if we are going to go OTT it is better we indicate rather than come up with a list of questionable things as ianmac has extracted. I don’t know what is true about this guy, and if I can’t get a grasp of the facts here I might as well give up and go straight to The Civilian that makes such a good job of mashing the news with creative juices that it’s a feast.
@ianmac, suggest you read what is in the media… and it’s based on his court appearances not made up by the Natz…
Smuggler travelled twice to Czech Republic, but told court it was too dangerous to go home
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/108288945/Smuggler-travelled-twice-to-Czech-Republic-but-told-court-it-was-too-dangerous-to-go-home
He’s wanted in Czech and NZ, aka multiple countries , I’m assuming he was wanted before they convicted him in NZ and apparently want to try him in Czech too. He fled on a fake passport. Well that sounds like multiple crimes to me and those are just the ones we know about. Apparently more dirt, like protection orders for example have been hinted at.
Seriously, Kim Dotcom “… never had a day in prison…”? He was/is well known in Germany under Kim Schmitz. Wikipedia is going to help you here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom
He arrived roughly around the same time as me in NZ and I was surprised after I had to go through my residency application, that someone with such a well-known legal history – easily available on the internet even – succeeded the “good character” test.
Key let people buy into NZ.
Q. If youre granted residency whilst in jail are you really saying that you have the liberty of NZ while in jail. How can he argue he has lost anythingwhen the minister changes his mind? Judge should throw out any case.
Q. if he’s from the eu while can he claim he’d be harmed in Czech?
Q. has he done good? is he a political activist? no…
Exactly when did he get here coz is English suss.
@satty,
Suspended sentence and teenager are the salient words.
Most of these teenage hackers are a help to society showing up security flaws before people who want to do serious harm actually do so, ahem like the alleged Russians who hacked into the US elections or people who hack into NSA and show how insecure the info is!
Do you want to put this teenager in prison 2???
11-year-old hacks replica of Florida state website, changes election results
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2018/08/13/11-year-old-hacks-replica-florida-election-site-changes-results/975121002/
Yes I agree. Dotcom should not be compared with Sroubek who has been well treated, Dotcom villified.
Maybe Dotcom considered too highly skilled and smart and entrepreneurial , our prized immigrant by policy seems to be a cafe worker, farm hand, aged care worker or SME drug importers as people our government and immigration department feels comfortable with.
Our government is spending a fortune trying to get rid of someone who can make hundreds of millions again and again with IT, while fighting and granting residency to a drug importer?
Well I know which one, I would think could be less of a burden and create wealth in NZ and one who will destroy wealth by helping addicting people to drugs.
Something is wrong here.
Hi Dennis Frank
I was puzzled by your friend Brigette Morten. She does not seem to have a grasp of english language. Try this for clarity Dennis :
“Mr Lees-Galloway will not be able to provide regain the public’s confidence in judgement on immigration cases.” What exactly does that sentence mean Dennis ?
Neither did she point out to us why the previous Minister of Immigration (National) appeared not to have handed out well researched criteria in the Karel Sroubek case. Namely the case for residency / citizenship in New Zealand. Rememember too, that Sroubek also uses an Alias.
The National Party are notoriously sloppy in all aspects of their administration. Even to the extent of providing Chinese friends support in serious domestic crime.
I seriously doubt that the previous Minister of Immigration or his lackadaisical staff gave a damn about anything. Consider the horrible crisis in excessive immigration and lack of housing and infrastructure.
All of which was publicly and profoundly denied by Paula Bennett and Billy English when they came to power. He being the Pm – her being his little Deputy. What a mess and a muddle Dennis. Their stupidity will take years to fix.
Not my friend. She’s a pr consultant. I presume RNZ published her appraisal because half their listeners are equally conservative as half the country. I agree re lack of proof-reading & editing from her & RNZ. I see that stuff all the time online nowadays. It’s like nobody has the time or inclination to get it right anymore. I also agree re National’s performance in office. In that respect, I disagree with Labour’s perennial attempt to out-perform them in their race to the bottom.
It is easy
You just have to “read between the lines” apparently
Well that is what the leader of NZ’s most “open and transparent govt ever” said
It’s obvious that you don’t understand the meaning of the idiom “read between the lines” and why it is used.
Read between the lines means – look for or discover a meaning that is implied rather than explicitly stated.
The idiom is often used when it’s not possible to provide comprehensive details, due to confidentiality, prejudicial or legal requirements and/or obligations.
Then why say read between the lines and not, I can’t talk about it?
Semantics.
Would be semantics if there was actually any really really amazingly secret reasons to make such a stupid decision in what she was talking about.
In the end there wasn’t even anything that required confidentiality
Yep Dennis. Note that puzzled Brigitte was “Brigitte Morten is a senior consultant for Silvereye. Prior to that she was a senior ministerial adviser to the Minister of Education in the previous National-led government, and an adviser and campaign director for Australia’s Liberal Party.”
So should we believe that she is just spinning National’s line? Heck yes. Credible? Nah.
Yes, fair enough Ian. But her spin wouldn’t get much traction in public opinion without Labour’s failure to provide the public with relevant info & accountability.
True Dennis, but I gather there are some details that the Minister is not yet able to publish because of the Appeal coming up in a few years time. Hard to know how hard to push back against the mighty Negative Opposition Machine.
Oh, okay. Yes, rumours will flourish as long as the system ensures that the public cannot be informed. If that’s why Labour aren’t forthcoming, understandable.
Why is it so hard just to say that ILG made a mistake and made the PM look gullible (y’know read between the lines and all) when she has already said that he’d made a mistake
Is the PM wrong?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/108976779/prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-says-immigration-minister-iain-leesgalloway-staying-put
In answers to questions in Parliament today, Winston Peters, answering on behalf of the Prime Minister, said Iain Lees-Galloway was ‘setting out, having made only one mistake in a year, to fix it up’.”
Well it’s definitely interesting that he conceded the point. Unwise for a lawyer to jump straight to verdict and ignore due process, huh?!
“She put it down to process and said it was now about getting the system right for future decisions.” But she failed to specify how the process was mishandled, or who got it wrong. Stop being contemptuous of the public, Jacinda! Not a good look.
True. Maybe Iain might have made a better decision but the mountain created by the Opposition has exaggerated the significance for cynical political advantages. I don’t really support the Czech but hate the hypocritical witch hunt.
The guy is in prison until about 2022 so in the interim no special differences can be achieved. An appeal was going to happen anyway.
No extra costs except to the credibility of Opposition
Akshully, at the end of the day…
The case was reviewed, a decision has been made, no one is resigning.
Look, another car, woof woof.
Well said Fireblade.
https://monopoly.hasbro.com/en-us/product/monopoly-game-cheaters-edition:020C27CB-55DA-442A-B73B-B5C3CED8FCDA
Monopoly has morphed for Xmas. You are now encouraged to cheat to get all the money and all the property. Says it all about New Zealand in the 21stC.
I’d love to know where it is sold in large numbers and how many over the Xmas period
and whether it matches my expectations?
It is a pity that no one remembers why Monopoly was created. It really does drive the lesson home quite well.
Thanks for reminding me, I think…
‘Elizabeth Magie based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants.’
I wished I’d never checked it out on Wiki. Not only am I now personally financially responsible for keeping Wiki on track, but I discovered that even a game attracts greed in real life.
Unfortunately it’s the only game in town other wise you go bankrupt.
Life is like a sports game play by the rules push the rules to the limit sure but if you break the rules you loose.
That does it! I’m going back to playing tiddlywinks. In my tiddlywinks world everyone is a winner.
PS -great name Tricledrown.
Great news. It sounds like the Mueller probe has finally got the leader. A prosecution has entered the system.
Mueller for prosecutorial misconduct, for attempting to force a witness to lie with a threat of prosecution. Prison time LOL.
You’ve been watching Faux News, haven’t you?
DJ Ward Power less perverts with erectile dysfunction and inability to connect with women targeted by Cambridge analytical to be potential Trump supporters or is that impotential!
I have no idea what your talking about. Have they purchased blue pill data searches from Google?
I’m wondering why you think a person who can’t get an erection is automatically a Trump Supporter. You will get statistical bias from men fleeing the left due to Radical Feminism, but I thought medical conditions like this were indiscriminate.
I’m not supprised young and old men can’t connect with women. After decades of denigration, discriminatory persecution, and institutionalised cultural bias, generational observation, that males are a bit confused about getting erections let alone how to get permission. “Don’t do it” goes the subconscious.
The idiot was standing on a street corner bellowing into a megaphone complaining about how she didn’t have freedom of speech and vowing to stay there until she had her Twitter account restored.
But she got cold, was busting for a pee, and left without her account being restored.
ROFL!!!! I needed that! Thanks.
three parties in coalition, so they pragmatically work around their conflicting ideologies. so imagine to my surprise Moro describes Nats as being less ideologicall, is he saying tgeir brain dead decisions are empty headed, like their neolib tax principle of uniformity arent based in a structured fiscal idealism, or is he ignorant of tgeir pure faith ideology of markets. Is Moro a moron or a protector of pure ideological party nasty nats?
One person’s pragmatic is another’s bowing to Winston’s demands every 2 minutes
National is the most socialist party, well, after Act that is. socialism for the few.
Yes Soddenleaf, and guess what?
They’ve even got an associated union!
It’s called The International Democrat Union – john key is or was chair of one of the worst neo groups ever, unless you consider the bilderbirgers, their whole agenda based around destroying anything good globally. They are described as centre right – a lie.
The only socialism they do is socialising private expense and privatising public assets.
It also reminds me of: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which uses a good word – socialist – to remove rights, or they change a good symbol to an evil one – The word “swastika” is derived from the Sanskrit “su” meaning “well” and “asti” meaning “being.”
national used to mean around the country. It has a less savoury meaning now.
I’ve just received my latest copy of the “The New Zealand Railway Observer” and I notice this in editorial.
KiwiRail is looking at replacing the DX and sub-classes and representatives from two North America locomotive manufacturers have visited the South Island, studying operating conditions. It appears the 2016 decision of having a standardised fleet of DL locomotives from China is no longer the case especially given the issues with Chinese built locomotives since 2016.
It also says if the current EF locomotives are maintain with an optimum level of maintenance they can still out perform the new Chinese built DL’s.
A nice wee article on the geotechnical investigations on the Mardsen Point branch on pg 213 and a photo of the Auckland City Rail Link tunnel under Albert St on pg214.
Thanks for that interesting little bit of information. I must say that locomotives etc are outside my area of interest/expertise but I am not surprised if the DLs are going to be replaced.
I had never heard of “The New Zealand Railway Observer” so Googled it. For any one else in the same position, here is a link to their website with info about their publications etc. I enjoyed looking at the site.
http://railsoc.org.nz/
Well it’s look like to me that the DL’s from China won’t setting foot on the South Island rail network anytime soon from the looks of it and if they KiwiRail does go down the road of having two classes of mainline/ branchline Diesel Locomotives, does that mean Hillside Workshops reopens in the near future as I can’t see them building a new Railway Workshop CHCH?
There was also an interesting article on the Development and Change on the Wellington Suburban Network from 2016 to the present as well.
‘ does that mean Hillside Workshops reopens in the near future’
I hope so. This is all about a change returing to the balance of the 3 legged stool. Workers, Government, Employers. We need some grunt back in NZ to fight the corruption, to fight the greed.
Yes, I hope so as well and I hope this current Government remains in office for at least 3 terms with some medium to long term plans. Unlike the “No Mates Party” who had a very short view on a lot things that involve them and theirs lining their pockets to make a quick buck at the expense of everyone else while bullshiting to the average voter at the same time.
This will help nearly 600,000 New Zealanders.
Visiting the doctor is set to get cheaper from this weekend.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/108994004/free-gp-visits-for-13-yearolds-and-cheaper-doctor-visits-for-community-service-card-holders
that plus the reduced cost for people on a benefit can only be good for the country.
Prevention is the best medication.
Brexit update: “The number of Conservative MPs against the deal currently floats at around 93, according to the latest BBC tally. This only includes those who have explicitly stated they don’t support it. Total opposition, including Tory MPs who have yet to publicly declare their position, is said to be well over 100.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46386172
“There are 315 Tory MPs in Parliament – not counting two who are currently suspended – and they have splintered off into a bewildering array of factions over Brexit.” Georgia Roberts, BBC analyst, identifies that the Tories have split into nine tribes, and provides a description of each. Here’s a summary:
1. Ardent Brexiteers: “They are only a handful in number, but given Mrs May’s increasingly slim parliamentary majority – with the DUP also opposed to her deal – this troublesome tribe could prove numerous enough to sink her deal.”
2. ‘No Dealers’/WTO terms: “These Conservatives argue that a no-deal Brexit – where the UK would leave the EU on WTO trading terms – is better than the deal Mrs May has put on the table and the only option left in the face of what they view as an inevitable defeat in parliament… despite this small group of advocates, a no-deal Brexit is not likely to get a majority of MPs in Parliament behind it.”
3. ‘Advanced FTA’/’Super Canada’: “Vocally-supported by the likes of Boris Johnson and former Brexit Secretary David Davis, who both resigned in July over Mrs May’s Chequers blueprint, this group of mostly European Research Group members have been arguing for a Canada-style free trade agreement”
4. ‘Norway Plus’/European Free Trade Area (EFTA): “Conservatives such as George Freeman are claiming this proposal enjoys cross-party support and is “the only sensible way to deliver the EU referendum result”. Indeed, it’s rumoured some cabinet ministers are willing to get on board with this option if the draft agreement falls in the Commons.”
5. Prime minister’s deal: “The Conservatives who openly support the prime minister’s deal are mainly made up of loyal government ministers. The trouble is, there currently still aren’t enough of them to get the prime minister’s deal through Parliament”.
6. Renegotiated deal: “The bulk of this tribe are made up of MPs who have serious concerns about the backstop proposals for Northern Ireland.”
7. Pragmatists: “These are the Conservatives who despite their distaste for the deal, are supporting it through gritted teeth.”
8. Remainers: “Many privately support another referendum, but have yet to join the handful of Tory MPs who openly back the People’s Vote campaign… If the prime minister’s deal is rejected, a large group of MPs currently keeping quiet could come out to publicly support another referendum, aligning themselves with many Labour MPs.”
9. People’s Vote: “This option is being sold as the only way to solve the current impasse in Parliament… The People’s Vote campaign’s march in Westminster recently attracted hundreds of thousands of supporters.”
This ongoing display of Tory factionalism could even be a sign that diversity trending towards multiculturalism is gradually supplanting obedience as a cultural determinant of conservative politics in the UK.
“Meaningful vote” on it in 11 days:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-46390097
1 Irrelevant, it was voted for by the public.
2 Should have been the first option, you can’t negotiate with control freaks.
3 A possibility but see 2
4 A possibility but see 2
5 Its a no Brexit May doing no Brexit.
6 Result of 5
7 Tow the May Party line, no Brexit.
8 The anti democracy club.
9 The I didn’t like the result, try agian, see 8.
👍 well done 😄
Toe, dud4, toe the line.
If the UK is stupid enough to continue down this path of piss poor deal May hasn’t managed to put together or the no deal Norwegian option the UK’s economy will slide further into koas, Putin will have achieved his goal of weakening both the UK and Europe. But already the UK financial sector has been damaged “£800 billion pounds of financial business set to go to Frankfurt.
May’s backers will abandon her its just when is that going to happen.
Cinny!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/108983010/supporters-opponents-of-waimea-dam-make-lastminute-arguments-on-project
Look, can you put a stop to this nonsense?
🙂
I liked the security dog. And where there is gold [water] mining waiting to be
found and tapped, who can resist? Is there an iron-bound agreement that the water will not be made available to dairy farmers and diary farmers (in case the bounders try to get their way because of a common mispelling.)?
You could have a situation that the urban areas are fully supplied with water and there is extra. The extra could be sold to Cow Farmers so people in urban areas get cheaper water. The Cow Farmer paying a proper premium above operating and financing costs. If it’s a bad year and only the urban areas can be supplied, the Cow Farmers get no water from the project.
Will grape growers be OK then? Highly efficient in providing food for the needy, and socially aceptable alcoholism.
What about a new rice farm? Good for methane production.
Amazing how people think.
The democracy wining over greed comment.
The democratic process to make a decision.
Allowing the voice of the opposed to be heard.
The decision makers voted in to decide the outcome.
The debate and vote on a decision based on the arguments.
Democracy involves at least half of people not having there view supported.
You could say that even though the opposers lost, democracy did win over greed, as democracy would reject a purely greed based project like this. The public good factor must have been high.
Why are we seeing so much focus on the immigration case of the ex- of a National Party guy?
Given the speed of decisions and the ability to access information I’m sure there is a lot of advocacy that could be done to make our system better. Why are they removing counters and making people whose first language is in all likelihood not English deal with an irritating phone system?
More gotcha, less focus on making stuff actually work.
Who are you talking about?
In the space of a few minutes Jim Mora quoted Kiwiblog, followed by Bob “Whacker” McCoskrie’s Family Fist. He seemed to pretend they were serious organizations.
The Panel, RNZ National, Friday 30 November 2018
Jim Mora, Andrew Clay, Ali Jones, Ali Ventura
Horrified, I sent him the following hurry-up:
Kiwiblog?!!?? Bob McCoskrie?!! WTF?
Dear Jim,
You first quoted the extreme right wing Kiwiblog, then in the very next breath you quoted the even more extreme Bob McCoskrie. Ali Jones reacted the way that any sensible listener would have: “What a load of RUBBISH!”
What’s next? Are you going to approvingly quote the complacent right wing New York Times opinionist David Brooks, or some mad article from the Daily Telegraph, or the so-called “Sensible Sentencing Trust”, as you so often do?
Have you thought of quoting someone who actually writes in a thoughtful and balanced manner? Gordon Campbell perhaps?
You have a duty, surely, to assemble a credible and serious hour of broadcasting. Kiwiblog and Family First are anything but credible and serious.
Yours in concern at the standard of your program,
Morrissey Breen
Northcote Point
We shouldn’t expect too much from our Jimbo – he’s married to Mary Lambie ffs.
I don’t mind him cozying up to his wife. What I do mind is his cozying up to scum like Chris (“Haw Haw”) Trotter, Caitlin Cherry and Stephen Franks….
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/an-unusually-inane-and-depraved-edition.html
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/10/jim-moras-light-chat-gets-ugly-and.html
I was simply referring to Lambie’s rabid right-wingery and that if she’s married to Jim his attitudes aren’t surprising.
I realized that Chris. Actually, I don’t think she made him more right wing than he already was. It’s not that he’s right wing, it’s that he’s deeply complacent, and conformist. Note the three publications that he cited in that reply to me (24.2.1, just below this): the New York Times, the Grauniad and the Atlantic. He seemed to imply that those de facto government mouthpieces are some sort of counterweight to the outright lunacy of Kiwiblog and Family Fist.
I’m sure jimmoara’s public apology for not consulting you is being penned as we read, morsissey, quite possibly by you.
In fact, Baggers, the great man deigned to send this writer, i.e., moi, the following response:
I don’t think the kiwiblog platform is extreme right wing or the content of its posts. The comments within kiwiblog does involve extreme points of view. The anti Semites, hmmm. Racists, warmongers, climate deniers, religous zealots etc.
DPF is often accused of being a Lefty. Think about that Morrisey.
Since your complaint didn’t express broadcasting rules being broken I can guess what happened to it.
“DPF is often accused of being a Lefty”
By a few extreme libertarian nutjobs, maybe, but never “often”.
On some of the posts it is often, some he is congratulated often.
Calling him extreme right wing was wrong. If you do call a person extreme right wing, who is, how is a person supposed to differentiate the difference. If Morrisey picked out comments and argued that it was wrong to put that point of view forward then his email would have had substance.
Morrisey put forward his comment but most are aware of Morriseys dislike of Bob over a certain issue, and kiwiblog because he is wrongly nearly always automatically downvoted.
It could be Jim Mora has some right wing points of view, or was highlighting the right wing point of view. Plenty of people wish to hear those views, not just the point of view Morrisey holds.
If the media only presented my point of view for example, it would be a North Korean style media dictatorship. The same applies to the substance of Morriseys email and the result if it was complied with.
You are only permitted to talk about views I agree with!
“On some of the posts it is often, some he is congratulated often.”
So it might be more fitting for you to say that DPF is *sometimes* accused of being a lefty. I’d say ‘seldom’, but you do you.
I believe it’s also an in joke on the right. As I recall, Cameron Slater used to call DPF a lefty back when Whaleoil and Kiwiblog were double teaming on dirty politics. (Whaleoil would post the attacks, then Kiwiblog would talk about the attacks Whaleoil posted. Nudge, nudge, wink wink.)
Indeed, te reo. That’s some mightily impressive parsing of those louts and their ridiculous modus operandi.
The bias you describe is a “righty”. Which was my point. Might have got my explanation for my view of DPF wrong but I don’t prescribe to the term extreme right wing for DPF. Individual issues maybe but he can have some balance to his thinking at times.
@ Te reo putake
Just as the left can tear itself apart, so can the right. Whale oil is despised by many on the right especially on DPF’s site. It’s the enemy of my enemy is my freind thing. There may be cooperation but there’s certainly some 2 camp dynamics.
You must be blind as well as tonedeaf.
It looks to me that keeping off twitter would be a good thing for a New Years Resolution if there isn’t a better plan already.
Perhaps a better plan might be tackling climate change, sorting out or welfare system, making human rights meaningful and allowing free tertiary education for all? There might even be other better plans.
Newspapers you’ve got to love to hate them, they are so worthy.
Front page of Nelson Mail –
A complete page on a lost cat. ‘The great moggy mix-up.’
Top headers.
Comedian Dai Henwood. Booze ban no joke. Handmaids sequel: Modern America inspires author (to what?)
Bottom advertisement –
1 Bedroom Apartments at Stillwater Gardens Retirement Village
(They must have a stagnant duckpond there that you can gaze at while you rock in your old rocking chair, while supplied with health pills, possibly only 12 a day.)/sarc (Quite possible, some people are on horrendous doses.)