If you are still needing a reason to vote Green, here is evidence of why we need to act on climate change urgently.
What do we want to leave for our children and grandchildren?
“Southern Alps snow, ice vanishing
Retreating glaciers and uncovered rocks evidence of swift change in climate with implications for sea level.
A third of the permanent snow and ice on the Southern Alps has vanished in less than four decades, according to an analysis of aerial surveys.
In an article published on Australian website The Conversation, three Kiwi researchers describe the story of the alps’ disappearing ice as very dramatic.
The analysis, by climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger, Otago University Professor Emeritus Blair Fitzharris and glaciologist Dr Trevor Chinn, follows on from a paper published by Dr Chinn last year documenting the retreat of our postcard glaciers.”
Compared with the now unstoppable collapse of the West Antartic Ice Sheet, the ice disappearing from the Southern Alps is piffling. And there is nothing the Greens can do about either even if they had a 100% majority in Parliament so you might as well vote National, grab your share of the money-go-round and party while you still can.
There are things that can be done to mitigate disasters.
For example I live in a coastal area and yet there are still people building substantial houses and businesses within metres of a coastline that has issues with eroding storm damage . People who invest their money into buildings and businesses on the coastline complain bitterly about RMA regulations yet are the first to go crying to Council to fix the problem when a storm occurs. This type of behaviour costs Councils a lot of time and money and I repeat: the people conducting themselves in such ways are the same people who are not prepared to create distance between the shoreline and their buildings from the outset. It is bloody ridiculous.
“There are things that can be done to mitigate disasters.” – Blue leopard.
Go tell it to the President.
US President B. M. Obama, 14/6/2014
“[S]ince this is a very educated group, you already know the science. Burning fossil fuels release carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide traps heat. Levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere are higher than they’ve been in 800,000 years. …
We know the trends. The 18 warmest years on record have all happened since you graduates were born. We know what we see with our own eyes. Out West, firefighters brave longer, harsher wildfire seasons; states have to budget for that. Mountain towns worry about what smaller snowpacks mean for tourism. Farmers and families at the bottom worry about what it will mean for their water. In cities like Norfolk and Miami, streets now flood frequently at high tide. Shrinking icecaps have National Geographic making the biggest change in its atlas since the Soviet Union broke apart.
So the question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science, accumulated and measured and reviewed over decades, has put that question to rest. The question is whether we have the will to act before it’s too late. For if we fail to protect the world we leave not just to my children, but to your children and your children’s children, we will fail one of our primary reasons for being on this world in the first place."
“As part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy to continue to expand safe and responsible domestic energy production, BOEM…today announced that the bureau will offer more than 21 million acres offshore Texas for oil and gas exploration and development in a lease sale that will include all available unleased areas in the Western Gulf of Mexico Planning Area.”
You shouldn’t solely base your views on what America is doing. They are screwed politically just now.
We are a much smaller country with a different political system (namely our voting system). We have more opportunity to get a shift happening. The more countries, such as ourselves, that take rational stances toward the problem – the more pressure there will be on America and other more captured countries to make a shift.
“The more countries, such as ourselves, that take rational stances toward the problem – the more pressure there will be on America and other more captured countries to make a shift.”
Er, yeah. Like Europe’s Green powerhouse Germany, now importing coal from the USA to burn for power generation so it can abandon nice ‘clean’ nuclear.
But my original point in response to the thread starter was that voting Green in New Zealand isn’t going to make any difference to the loss of snow and ice on the Southern Alps as that problem doesn’t originate in New Zealand.
“The more countries, such as ourselves, that take rational stances toward the problem – the more pressure there will be on America and other more captured countries to make a shift.”
And exactly how many countries are taking that rational stance? China, India, the EU, Australia.
The hot air emanating from politicians about tackling Global Warming is just adding to the problem.
Great article you linked to there. It was really informative, thanks.
Yes your original point was that voting Greens wasn’t going to make any difference to the snow and ice loss on the Southern Alps and I responded by saying that having a Greener approach works on many different levels for example as it stands the RMA, which has really good guidelines for mitigating disaster, is being undermined by our current government. This means that people are less likely to be personally affected by the very real issues that are likely to arise in the not so distant future due to climate and pollution issues. Their behaviour and attitudes, therefore, don’t change and this not only means any sea-level rise will cause more disruption than it needs to, it also lowers peoples’ awareness of the issue and drops any pressure for change on a larger scale.
I am not too informed about what countries are taking strong actions on the issue of climate change (hopefully someone who is will jump in … Jenny? I am vaguely aware of perhaps Scandinavian countries, maybe the Netherlands? doing well with greener technology) – it is a pity to hear that about Germany re coal – however that article does indicate that they haven’t given up and perhaps see the use of coal as a way of avoiding nuclear power while they certainly sound like they are investing a lot into finding alternatives. So it is not like they have given up on their aim.
When countries become successful with Greener technologies – they are bound to catch on. We have an opportunity to be part of that process. Moreso than larger countries.
One thing for sure – simply following those countries that are captured by big money and are accordingly not making sincere efforts in that regard certainly won’t address the issue. Nor will defeatism.
Your logic is flawed Tom, if you really believe nothing can be done – Then you should have not commented here, and should be sniffing coke off Keys ass.
I don’t believe nothing CAN be done. I strongly suspect nothing WILL be done, until it is far too late to prevent disaster. After all, we are already locked in to a 2 – 5’c temperature rise and a minimum 15ft sea-level rise and what has actually been done to ameliorate worse?.
However I’m sorry my expressed opinion disturbed the harminious circle-wank you clearly come here for and won’t waste my time putting up alternative views that might frighten the horses, as I don’t come to The Standard to be insulted.
There are others that express similar concerns on the Standard that you have, Tom – I hope you don’t get completely put off commenting here. I enjoy a variety of opinions as I am sure others do too.
I don’t think that staying down at 2C by the end of the century has about as much hope of happening as a icicle has of surviving the night in hell. Pretty much on track for about 4C or higher and I’d be assuming something closer to 15 metres sea level rise than 5 metres after the WAIS starts getting undercut and lubricated. I suspect from the previous deglaciation evidence, that once it starts, it is very fast emptying the basin area of ice and a bit slower after that.
But those are pretty minor provided you don’t live in the tropics, on an atoll or in a coastal plain like Bangladesh. They take time enough for people to adapt.
It is the rapid weather pattern shifts that are going to be much more problematic. Those will impact directly on to food production. They will do so much earlier than sea level rises or heat prostration. Most people fail to understand exactly how reliant we as a civilization are on the settled weather of the current interglacial in our farming practices.
I dont normally warm to much to Latta, but I thought that program last night was excellant if you still vote National after watching this program you have to be a loaf short of a picnic.
I am not usually a fan of Nigel Latta either but this time he made a great job of presenting the realities of the huge difference between the haves and the havenots. Since Key English are in denial about this, no doubt they will be very angry little boys. TVNZ please explain! http://tvnz.co.nz/nigel_latta/video
I was impressed with Nigel Latta’s show – very good indeed. I also share others’ misgivings of Mr Latta – but this show is really something else. Exciting to witness something so informative on TV.
Just saw this and although so, so, many worthy topics of discussion it is imo important and shocking
Director Ridley Scott’s new biblical blockbuster, Exodus: Gods and Kings, has come under fire for “whitewashing” African history, casting four white leads to tell a story of Israelites and Egyptians.
I am SICK of politicians claiming we should treat everyone the same “under the law” and that is why Maori shouldn’t get Maori seats of whatever. The TREATY of Waitangi is (arguably I know) a legal document. It is “under the law”
A partnership agreement made when Maori were 99% of the population and the british 1%. NOW that our dominance is assured, it’s a piece of law, an agreement that group, and others don’t want any more.
Many of us white folk seem to choose to forget the incredible generosity of the Maori folk back in 1840. Im not to sure that it was 99/1 but there were certainly way more Maori being generous than there were English receiving it at the time.
No doubt, there was an area of misunderstanding between the parties, as to what the other interpreted it to mean (each side interpreting it by their own culture) but that did not excuse the wrongs that were subsequently done to the Maori people.
When you do a wrong, you need to put it right. Hence the Waitangi Tribunal.
contra proferentum my friend. its all allowed for under the law.
Contra proferentem (Latin: “against [the] offeror”),[1] also known as “interpretation against the draftsman”, is a doctrine of contractual interpretation providing that, where a promise, agreement or term is ambiguous, the preferred meaning should be the one that works against the interests of the party who provided the wording.[2] The doctrine is often applied to situations involving standardized contracts or where the parties are of unequal bargaining power, but is applicable to other cases.[3] However, the doctrine is not directly applicable to situations where the language at issue is mandated by law, as is often the case with insurance contracts and bills of lading.[4] wiki
+11111 Tracey – I was not happy when Dame Susan Devoy was appointed Race Relations Commissioner. She did say though that she had a bit of catching up/reading to do about what had gone before, but she certainly has ripped into the ACT leader’s comments and rightly so.http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11301500
Goodness me, first Nigel Latta and now Dame Susan – whoever next.
I imagineshe has learned stuff, like facts, since taking up the position. Previously she, like others only tuned into shallow rhetoric and thought it was “true”
You’ll have to point out to me in the Treaty where is says anything about Maori seats. The Maori Representation Act 1867 was a bribe to Crown loyalists during the land wars and now seem only to exist to prop up National and maybe get Kim Dotcom influence in Parliament.
Oh I do like listening to jamie Whyte. He is so articulate and you always know what he stands for. The people of Epsom must be jumping up and down with joy at having him represent them in parliament. /sarc.
The people of Epsom must be saying oh fuuuucccckkkkkkk. Oh why, do we have these fools foisted on us by TricKey.
Whtye is on the ACT list, and he will get into parliament if any red buttons are found and pushed.
Unfortunately even the richest people are seeing that National no longer is representing their interests. Wealth can be undermined, by boardrooms, by market failures but also by governments undermine the society that underwrites the whole economy.
Why would a wealthy person want to support others to get wealthy, cheat on their taxes, get incentives than undermine their consumers buying power, etc, etc. Its just dumb to want tax cuts, its socialism for the rich, an easy rich for those who are supposed to make their wealth by hard work, or harder risk taking.
National is corrupted by its neo-liberal ideological heart. I still can’t find an example of this high minimum wages causes job loses ideal, the closest I can find is a slave economy, where slave owners raise the amount of money they give the slaves. The slaved then buy themselves out of slavery and push up the unemployment numbers.
i have to wonder then Gosman why the pathetic racially divisive idiot is then given airtime anywhere on the TeeVee or my wireless,
The 7 Maori electorates, in my opinion, being a physical manifestation of Tinorangatiratanga, would suggest that until such time as Maori enrolled to vote in such electorates agree to not have them they will be a major feature of our political landscape…
just like they understand the rule of law, contract law and property rights 🙂
for a party that is chock full of crims, doesnt want to honour legal contracts and wants to remove property rights from a group of people, they have some funny policies
ACT’s Whyte is in some ways correct, Maori do have a legal privilege here in Aotearoa/New Zealand,
Its called the Treaty of Waitangi and the only racial problem ever created from the existence of this legal privilege was in fact the ignoring of its provisions once the colonials got the upper hand militarily over the tribal Maori nations…
Interesting that the Treaty is considered a “race” based document. It is between the chiefs and tribes of NZ and the Crown. The former are the owners of property and property rights allowing usage over the same. It just so happens that these “owners” and “sellers” happened to be Maori, the “buyers” non Maori. Under British law we are talking property rights that are inherited by through genealogical linkage. Is that “race” based?
Watch out. Auckland home owners, surely, could argue that they have special treasure in the liveability of Auckland and so stop the councils from raising the building heights.
There was a lilt in his voice, an inflection that screamed out loud and clear his class position: there was an assumed authority that underlined the former. In short a privileged prat. He sounded like Don Brash Mark 2.
His logic on race was quite precise: which all goes to prove that a logical argument can be made for anything in isolation. That in a nutshell is where ACT are, ideologically logical in isolation of any facts or realities that challenge their dogma.
I hope someone takes the time soon, live, to destroy Unclecousin’s facile conceit that his sophistry qualifies as philosophy, while he splutters and rages like the lying entitled wretch he is.
How fascinating. You appear to regard people with Don Brash’s “class position” as being privileged prats.
Presumably you regard David Cunliffe as being a “privileged prat” also. After all Don’s father was a Presbyterian Minister and David’s an Anglican one. Both apparently favoured the Labour Party. Hard to see any difference really.
One would have to say they come from the same class, wouldn’t one?
@ alwyn 3.10
How fascinating. That you have not noticed that people from the same class can behave in a variety of ways. There is a general behaviour that people adopt within a class system, with extremes at the fringes. So David Cunliffe can be different from Don Brash on that basis.
Then within each church referred to there are differing attitudes to achieving righteousness. If Don’s parents were Calvinists and David’s were from the liberal side of the Anglican church they would be quite different in their outlooks, though they would be aware of the attitudes likely coming from those positions. The Anglicans have a broad church – the Presbyterians inclined to be more demanding to be worthy of heaven.
The whole core of the rich prick class brought in by Thatcher, was of a socialist party for the rich, and privatizism for the everyone else. They’re the rich so they can cheat on their taxes, and force our taxes up while screaming how we aren’t paying enough.
ACT is not a libertarian party. Its a socialist elite party. Nearest thing a western country comes to a communist politburo. Always dictating how others aren’t shaping up.
Can you perhaps tell me how the class they come from is different?
Just what class do you think each one was born into if it isn’t the same one?
Claiming say that the Presbyterian church is a higher class than the Anglican which in turn is higher than The Salvation Army which is higher than the Baptist doesn’t really cut it.
Brash became a commercial – a blind servant of mammon – 2nd class. Cunliffe seems to subscribe to a notion of public service that resembles to some degree the synthetic ideals of Hutcheson. As an accountant Brash may have had some virtue, as a statesman he had none. You might also consider Brash’s degree (Canterbury?) vs Cunliffe’s (Harvard?).
I suppose I could consider Don Brash’s degrees, since you have no idea.
Canterbury BA and MA in Economics. That’s economics, not accounting.
ANU PhD. That is a more highly rated University than any of the NZ ones.
Cunliffe has one economics qualification I suppose. A diploma from Massey.
Doesn’t really seem much does it?
Did Brash learn his racism at ANU? The university at which someone gets their qualifications has very little to do with how well they do in their chosen career. I’ve seen many examples of this.
But I have, greywarbler, I have. It was ennui who appears to regard peoples behaviour as being due to the class into which they were born. If you are born in one class he seems to think your behaviour is pre-ordained.
I think that Don and Dave were born into a very similar class background. It didn’t really matter though. Whatever class Don came from I think he would always have been successful and would have contributed greatly to New Zealand, particularly as he did from his time as Reserve Bank Governor. David Cunliffe on the other hand was always going to be a prat.
I will take your word for the religious attitudes of the various churches. I regard all those who profess to believe in a god as being idiots. You are allowed to take the easy way out and say, as Helen Clark did, that you are an agnostic, or come out and say you are an atheist. Anything else is for people who believe in fairies.
Greywarbler – in defence of some Presbyterian friends I have, it is also a fairly broad church. Standard Calvinism is pretty rigid stuff, but my friends (one a reverend) have been in favour of “worldly” things like gay marriage and marijuana legalisation for years. My impression was that it was broader than the Anglicans, with some of the more traditional Anglicans being able to swap easily to Catholicism.
@ Murray Olsen 1.43
Trying to classify religions as I did was a mistake. I remember now one interesting book by I think, a chap Greenwood, which referred to the high Anglican church and its rites being so near Catholicism, setting its style apart from the practice of the major part of the church. Actually there are some quite good crime stories that weave religious practices and styles in and it is a fascinating theme within the genre.
And alwyn I think you are looking down on the goings on of pollies, while I am the reverse, looking up. And I see Don Brash as a prat who probably got too much praise at school for being precise and clever while never learnign much about actual human behaviour, and David Cunliffe as being successful, highly trained, experienced and yet human-oriented, less statistical and theory biased and more ground-based than Brash.
I don’t like fervent idealists and theory based, utopian followers whether its in economic theory squeezing life to comply, or socially based humanitarian ones who announce the world belongs to the people in fervent tones, or knock-it-all-down and rebuild fresh and new stirrers, or religious ones whose hymn is I Did it my Way, and there is no other, and anyway it is the next life that counts. A pox on all their houses.
John Key says that water quality is not that bad, all it means is that we can’t swim in some rivers on some days.
Show us the money John. It’s your policy, so you should understand the costs by now. Tell us which rivers and which days. Or is it more like which catchments and which months or seasons?
Paul Fish & Game are so unimpressed that they have (collectively as a Council that is) called for Nick Smith’s resignation – the resignation of their very own Minister.
And these are sensible calm rational people (the f&g folk that is, not smith of course)
Fantastic cartoon by Murdoch in the Press this morning showing Nick Smith at a restaurant refusing a glass of water “strained lovingly through cows” while he eats fish.
Someone described this as not the “rock star economy” but the “pollution economy”, which is most apt. John Key’s pollution economy.
Given the newspaper rage aimed at Mr Cunliffe about the Liu affair, does it seem strange that newspapers seem to have almost avoided the clean water/Smith issue?
From my wireless, RadioNZ National, 550+ pack out the hall at the Rotorua InternetMana roadshow, the sniff of 5% of the vote for InternetMana i had last week just got as pungent as that from one of the many mud-pools up there in Waiariki,
Those numbers say to me Annette Sykes will be the new Member of Parliament for that electorate, the tangi for the Maori Party begins….
“someone” should not have put Curtis in the media mix till he had at least fronted the event. Always easier to let a cat out of the bag than add one.
I don’t know the inside story here yet, but do know that there are a number of whanau still split along Mana/Māori Party lines that take it seriously which is why Hone was still reaching out for some kind of rapprochement last year.
Curtis is just doing a nice turn of supporting his bollocks with a fence rail.
And now for the next act… surprise surprise folks … (drum roll) … bring you hands together for Simon Bridges…… (applause) … our latest LIAR from John Key’s government.
Yesterday Bridges admitted spending $240,000 on oil execs in NZ for the rugby world cup
The result?… is this … “Only one of those companies had so far been granted a petroleum exploration permit but had committed to spending almost $20 million here,”
BUT folks here is the clanger, the lie, the deceit and the dishonesty that you have all been waiting for …… I give you again …. Siiiimmon Bridgeessssss…. (applause) …
“But Energy Minister Simon Bridges defended the spending: “the sums expended were very modest …. and has resulted in billions of dollars of international investment in New Zealand.”
…. ta daa
$20million the reality
$billions the liar claims.
Simon Bridges please take your place alongside all the other liars in your government….
(the audience is nearly all gone at this point …)
Yep, six oil companies, that’s a 40 grand piss up, accommodation, and, you can just about bet with certainty free tickets to the rugby for each of those oil companies, only one of which has taken up the right to explore here, all paid for by us the taxpayers,
i wonder if that was one executive per company that such largesse was bestowed upon by Slippery’s National Government, if so, the expense would suggest that they got flown around the country on one very long drunken tour of our rugby stadia,
Meanwhile, those of us living life within the small means brushed our way as crumbs off of the table got to watch ‘live’ from the big screens at the pub…
I’m pretty sure these three companies will make investment decisions on factors other than sychophantic governments. A nice presentation to the Boards would have done the trick if NZ had solid investment potential. I’ keen toknow whhether thre other three companies are established players or cowboy companies. Also if any of them operate here already, or have up sticks and left.
The oil and gas sector currently earns the Government about $800m in royalties and taxes each year which are used to fund roads, schools and hospitals.
Yes, let’s point out what taxes are for, while somehow implying that if not for oil exploration we’d not have roads, schools and hospitals.
Yes clever clogs, well aware of the place of the mining and oil sector in NZ …. but you missed the deception. The point of the comment was not the place of oil and mining, it was the dishonesty of Simon Bridges…. can you see it here?
“the sums expended were very modest …. and has resulted in billions of dollars of international investment “
i was just about to indulge in my favorite breakfast when i read that, 2 toasts, i each with a swipe of marmite and peanut butter, both then lashed with guacamole,
Think i might wait for your image of Banks indulging in His dogs dinner to fade…
That’s my standard munch at breakfast Chooky, laugh, six months ago i had never even made guacamole now its become a staple replacing butter or margarine which are both off the menu here,(and strangely enough not missed at all),
i have just moved to supplying myself with milk for $1.20 a liter via buying in the skim milk powder and purchasing a couple of liter bottles with screw top lids which resemble the milk bottles of my hugely misspent youth,(takes all of five minutes to mix, and is best accomplished by mixing half the liter and then leaving overnight for the froth from the shaking to dissipate),
Soy milk which tastes yummy has been put through my testing regime and found wanting in a number of areas including cost,(anyone thinking of shifting to obtaining their milk via powder should buy the kilo pack as there is no savings involved from buying the smaller packages)…
Well you could put your sign out as a local breakfast cafe as far as i am concerned! …breakfast is the meal of the day i enjoy most i think ( probably because i havent eaten for a while….food tastes so much better on an empty stomach)
Lolz, i have a breakfast menu, including a couple of slices of one of the poor little piggies rear end that is the ultimate in Delish, works as dinner as well…
…you won’t be arguing with Phillip over breakfast then!
..once when I was in an isolated fish and chip shop with my 8 year old son a Mongrel Mob looking guy walked in and my 8 year old red head said “Mum, what do people taste like?”….the Mongrel Mob guy looked interested ….I said “I dont know but your sister would!”…there was the teenage daughter cool as a cucumber …she would have scared any Mongrel Mob!…the guy smiled ever so slightly…I said “I have heard people taste a bit like bacon that is why they were called ‘long pig’ ”
Maybe some NACTS will come knocking at your door and you could have them in for breakfast
Just watched BamBam on the Whitehouse Lawn “givin them damned godless Ruskies” a tongue lashing. Absolute pity about the whole thing was that nothing he said could be backed up by solid evidence, it was all be implication. What the limp rag Uncle Tom was announcing was more sanctions against Russia on behalf of US corporate energy and agricultural corporates. The Russians of course are better placed because they don’t have to rely upon “faith” in the Greenback..they have the real oil and gas that Europe so desperately needs. Merkel wont risk German wealth just to help out a US oil company that cant supply her industry.
Somehow I think the whole issue is going to blow up in our faces with much higher oil prices: the timing is such a pit because along with the drop in dairy receipts, pressure on petrol prices might just have given Key and his cronies a massive electoral headache.
To say that Obama doesnt care is pretty harsh. To say that on the important stuff, he doesnt actually have much of a say, would be far more accurate.
The things he did push, like ObamaCare (he promised “You can keep your existing plan”) may or may not have been a good policy move, but its upsetting a bunch of his middle income voters who already had an existing plan and couldnt keep it, despite the promise.
Those who got cover for the first time, were overwhelmingly likely to support the Democratic nominee in any case.
Laila Harre is standing in Helensville for the Internet/Mana Party.
Hopefully, this will encourage Prime Minister John Key to participate in Helensville electorate candidate debates.
I look forward to voters who support candidates who are members of political parties, giving them their PARTY vote, and giving me their ELECTORATE vote as the (fiercely) Independent MP for Helensville.
So, Slippery the Prime Minister has spun the roulette wheel and bet the ‘House’ on Winston Peters, that’s some gamble from the money trader who in His former life always got to play the game with the deck having been previously stacked by the bigger money boys on the floors of the ‘trading house’ above,
There’s a huge prospect in play here where NZFirst and Colon’s Conservatives become entwined in a lose/lose battle for party vote %’s each chiseling not only votes from each other but crucially nibbling at the soft rump of the National Governments own party vote,
A minus for NZFirst in September will be the loss of support from those who in election 2011 voted for that party solely on the basis that Slippery the PM ruled Peters out of inclusion in a National coalition, and, in the chess game of MMP politics voted as a ‘check’, which incidently nearly became ‘check-mate’, to ensure National as all the media polls were suggesting at the time, could not ‘Govern alone’,
Unfortunately this ‘tactical vote’ which helped NZFirst re-enter the Parliament in 2011 cannot be measured, but, my opinion says, a 3% Conservative vote along with the loss of that 2011 ‘tactical vote’ will see NZFirst fall again, as the party did in 2008, agonizing short of the 5%,
If Anette Sykes wins Waiariki, and, last nights standing room only InternetMana meeting in that electorate has me giving Her a 70/30 advantage over the dying Maori Party’s Flavell there, then Nationals chances of forming a third term Government look even more remote,
Kick ACT from Epsom and/or Dunne from Ohariu and it becomes virtually impossible for the Tory’s to gain that third term,
The left? despite the media polls, looking good, by that i mean looking GOOD, Labour 33%, Greens 12%, InternetMana 5%, not too big an ask at all i would suggest….
i always seen you as confused Puckish, add to that conflicted and we await the addition of a few more words beginning with the consonant C, above four letters please, and we may have you described to a T as opposed to simply describing you in simpler form via C with few other letters added….
(Condensed springs to mind as an addition to confused/conflicted)…
In 2006 Weissglass was just as frank about Israel’s policy towards Gaza’s 1.8 million inhabitants: ‘The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.’ He was not speaking metaphorically: it later emerged that the Israeli defence ministry had conducted detailed research on how to translate his vision into reality, and arrived at a figure of 2279 calories per person per day – some 8 per cent less than a previous calculation because the research team had originally neglected to account for ‘culture and experience’ in determining nutritional ‘red lines’
The regularity of Israel’s perceived need to use force is illustrated by the notorious expression, “mowing the lawn,” that one of its military officers used to describe strategy toward Gaza. It is reminiscent of the advice that Thrasybulus gave Periander of Corinth, recounted in Herodotus. Walking through a field, Thrasybulus broke off the tallest ears of grain by way of showing Periander’s envoy the best way to rule violently. The envoy couldn’t figure out his meaning, but Periander, the prototype of the ancient tyrant, understood immediately on hearing the envoy’s report. The analogy showed that violence could not be a one-time affair. New stalks would grow up. It would remain necessary to keep lopping off the top ones—i.e. mowing the lawn.
Twelve days after the shoot-down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, your administration still has issued no coordinated intelligence assessment summarizing what evidence exists to determine who was responsible – much less to convincingly support repeated claims that the plane was downed by a Russian-supplied missile in the hands of Ukrainian separatists.
Your administration has not provided any satellite imagery showing that the separatists had such weaponry, and there are several other “dogs that have not barked.” Washington’s credibility, and your own, will continue to erode, should you be unwilling – or unable – to present more tangible evidence behind administration claims. In what follows, we put this in the perspective of former intelligence professionals with a cumulative total of 260 years in various parts of U.S. intelligence:
What the professional’s think of the ‘evidence’ against Russia can only be termed scathing. They’re particularly nasty in their condemnation of Senator Kerry.
I just read on another blog a post by someone complaining about Key’s WWI speech yesterday, and was pleased to see someone felt the same as I did. Other pollies spoke with emotion and as this person said, from the heart. But John Key read his speech without any emotion or emphasis. He looked bored and he sounded it and as if it was all just too tiring and bothersome. I felt it was insulting that he didn’t take the time to familiarize himself with the material someone else had written for him. I can only think the subject was just not important enough to him personally. Our veterans weren’t worth the bother of him learning his speech and speaking with the level of commitment the commemoration deserved. Why are so many blinded by this fake?
Don’t take it personally. He’s always like that. There is nothing warm or genuine about him, he’s just going through the motions. Enter room, shake hands with Important Person One, smile, shake hands with Important Person two, smile. Give canned speech written by someone else. Wait until applause dies down. Move away for media standup. Exit. Move on to next event.
As to why so many are blinded, there is a lot that power, money and superficial charm can convince people to overlook.
..the Israeli government has gone mad …it is hell of a PR for Israelis around the world …they are beginning to look more and more like the Nazi government…they will be called to account by history and future generations for crimes against humanity ….and the rest of the world had better not look on and do nothing about it!…because we also will be called to account!
Daniel Barenboim is one Israeli who has spoken out
I met Mirak Smisek several times ….a New Zealand potter of repute, an a opponent of the Nazis and a refugee from Nazi torn Europe …and he told me that it is art that will save us…it was art that gave him hope and art that helped him transcend the evil he had witnessed
Yep it really grates when the right of the party side with the Herald to tell us there is no bias to see and to move along when we spend so much time detailing the concerns. Their choice is a dead giveaway. If the Herald wanted a debate it would select a leftie not an apologist for the right.
I also wish Quin would get his stuff right. The comment about how Labour is only going for the missing million has been replied to on numerous occasions but he still trots out the wrong line …
Just remember that after the next election and you’re scrambling around for excuses as to why Labour did so badly you were told time and time again whats wrong with Labour
I’ll tell you what I have had a gut full of – people who are so lacking in respect that they think they can turn the Labour Party into a vehicle for whatever suits them. For God’s sake, this guy cites the opinion of Shane Jones, who has decamped to work for National. Having taken a glance at other headlines of Quin’s, I assume he is one of the eighties’ influx of aspiring “young men of the city” who sought a vehicle for themselves under Douglas’s wing. And Josie and her ilk appear to think the party exists to allow nice, talented people like themselves to retain a foothold among the political/media elite. To these people I say, read the party’s bloody principles, and try to refrain from dissembling to yourself as you do so! You would not become a priest because the Catholic church could do with more atheists. You would not join the Greens to contribute a much-needed voice in favour of fracking. Why do you think it is OK to do this kind of thing to Labour?
Labours a broad church so i’m guessing their views are valid otherwise why would you have the likes of Mallard, Cosgrove, Goff , King etc etc still hanging around
About six weeks before Helen Clark finally cemented her grip on NZ Labour – one which she maintains to this day, even in absentia – I had finally convinced Phil Goff to topple her.
Phil Quin was someone who tried to get rid of Helen Clark prior to her gaining the government for 9 years.
Perhaps that is why he is an ex Labour adviser?
Not someone’s advice who I would listen to.
It is about time those further right (centrists) created a new party. As it stands it appears that the ‘right-wing’ faction of Labour are pissing on our chances of a decent left-wing government gaining power. Those who are ‘centrists’ in the party need to realise that Labour have very much been presenting themselves to appeal to the centre whilst still attempting to appeal to those further left too. It is ultraistic to push Labour’s current stance any other way. I wish those right-wing /’centrist’ types connected to Labour would stop their squawking and get real.
[Additionally in his article Quin cited, amongst other things, the Dong Liu saga as ‘mismanaged’ by Labour – omitting to mention the story was fictitious and yet propagated by our media. There has been no apology for that nonsense. The problem there was Labour took the story seriously – how were they to know that the media would grab something so unsubstantiated and report it as fact? I think most people who followed that story were truly shocked by how lacking in facts that story was.]
Interesting BL. So according to Quin Helen’s reign and the fifth Labour Government was an abject disaster for the party and we should be led by Shane Jones, no doubt with Josie Pagani as deputy.
It is certainly looking like that although I think it is important to acknowledge the many Labourites who are loyal and are working diligently. Those loyal people need to speak firmly to the ones that are wrecking things for Labour and tell them in no uncertain terms how unacceptable their behaviour is.
i think Richard is flailing, sadly, in the wrong place at the wrong time, it really is too late in the piece for us to be attempting to exploit that which we see as not quite right in the policy arena,
The 3 years just passed were the times to be talking thus, with the campaign proper having overtaken such concerns the vote itself now becomes the imperative,
i like these numbers, for me they have a certain resonance, an inevitability if you will, Labour 33%, Greens 12%, InternetMana 5%, my little gaze into the crystal ball of the 2014 election…
A dreadful comment on Radionz this morning about the ballooning tragedy and the defects of the CAA. They knew lots about the guy, binge drinker, marijuana smoker, incidents. But they all know each other, and cosset each other apparently. The CAA put hot air balloons low on the dangerous list! They are not only not doing their job properly, they are under their own control and espouse apparently, that stupid, irresponsible free market crap about businesses should control and regulate themselves.
And they are one of these pseudo-government entities that are free to operate as they wish without control, oversight or discipline from government.
It is time that we demanded a complete overhaul and sacking of these pompous, diseased shits. The disease of arrogant position, so that they feel no shame when accidents occur, just throwing excuses, statistics and technical jargon in everyone’s eyes when actually the source of the fault is quite obvious to the naive, unpropagandised enquirer. And a Royal Commission to establish the fault properly. These so and so’s in CAA should be jailed and fined as well. The interview with David Still sets out the situation well.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon
Balloon death families call for government to act ( 12′ 43″ )
09:08 David Still’s daughter Alexis was one of 10 passengers who died in a hot air balloon crash in Carterton in 2012, along with pilot Lance Hopping. He says the Civil Aviation Authority failed to act despite repeated complaints about Hopping prior to the accident, and he’s calling for the government to force change upon the aviation safety regulator.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport
CAA failed to take action over balloon pilot complaints ( 3′ 11″ )
08:23 An inquest has been told several complaints had been made to the Civil Aviation Authority about the pilot of a hot-air balloon which crashed in Wairarapa in 2012 killing all 11 people on board.
Preventable accidents in NZ –
Crash survivors sue Ansett for $3 million – Tony Stickley – NZ … http://www.nzherald.co.nz/tony-stickley/news/article.cfm?a_id=143...
Dec 23, 1999 – … Dash-8 flight which smashed into a hill while trying to land at Palmerston North in June 1995. Two passengers and one crew member died in the tragedy. … The airline had also made a deliberate decision not to replace faulty landing gear, … on flying the plane, said Mr Miles, the captain was helping the co-pilot lower the …
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=192796
As evidence would show, this was not as alarming as it may sound. Landing gear problems on the Dash-8s had become so frequent that pilots had stopped reporting them to Ansett.
But what Captain Sotheran and First Officer Brown had failed to notice was that their aircraft was perilously close to the foothills of the Tararua Ranges, to the east of Palmerston North.
Interestingly, i gather the market response is that now that business will fail, and others will see their failure, due to deaths, and do stuff to avoid people dying… But look how many have to die
Job interview at 2pm.
Only a fixed term contract through January 31st 2015, but a bit of breathing space from Mr Wolf when he comes a knocking.
Don’t know what to say about my last employment when asked, but I’ll burn that bridge when I’ve crossed it.
I went with honesty being the best policy. Whether it works or not is out of my hands now.
I was happy enough with my performance. I’ll just have to keep my trotters crossed.
Labour had some concerns about the proposals, but agreed to back the bill into law because it felt urgent measures were needed to relieve house prices. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/election-2014/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503581&objectid=11301094
And many wonder what the difference between Nat and Lab are ? Well for developers IMO they allow for profits to increase as they transfer costs to the rate payer, and I defie anyone to prove anything different.
If anyone has any ideas that transferring council contributions to rate payers will reduce the price of property, they are misguided. The price we pay for a house is “market driven” not as cost plus basis.
If you look to the last major building industry crisis, leaky homes, developers took profits, shut down the company, avoided any liability and have had NO legislation aimed at them… Builders, yes. Designers? Yes. Developers no, and this govt wants to give them more money, less regulation and still no tightening of liability.
And they get full support from Labour. Next year when rates have increased it is not all the fault of our local govt, they have been given a hospital pass from Wellington.
Many of the services that are to now be funded by “other ” sources like libraries, sports grounds, community facilities, there are vast amounts that have been already collected by council & to be spent in the future, but under the LTCCP are deferred., part of the reason is the squeeze on councils increasing debt. Also talking of the LTCCP , councils spent huge resources, $ and time in preparing these and in one wee stroke all the work and planning of funding and timing has been undone. What a waste
Now that Stephen Joyce has confirmed that he will be nationalising Novopay from Talent2, can some one tell me whether Michelle Boag is a shareholder in Talent2?
This expensive re–look at the 4 decades old Crewe murders is only significant for more arse covering and fingers in ears from the blue bellies. They do manage to find space to retry the case and smear pardoned and compensated Arthur Thomas again and let one early suspect off the hook.
RIP to those who perished in the Wairarapa ballooning tragedy, it could be said that to be the passenger of a balloon pilot so affected is even worse,
Obviously, at some point in the future when the Parliament comes to look at the decriminalization/legalization of that particular substance such concerns as how to address the use of such vis a vis employment/public safety issues will have to be an inherent part of such Legislation,
The recent ‘running aground’ of a Tranzrail passenger train at the Melling station here in Wellington has been attributed to either a too high speed limit rounding the bend into that particular end of the line station and/or the Marijuana use of the driver…
“in the future when the Parliament comes to look at the decriminalization/legalization of that particular substance such concerns as how to address the use of such vis a vis employment/public safety issues”
Not to make light of that shocking preventable tragedy, but a literacy test might be a start.
i laughs,(but only quietly up my sleeve), gee Alien for once i am a little disappointed in the Wiki,
my Collins English ‘book of words’ is far more descriptive and explanatory when the words puckering up are considered previous to a reference to condyloma,
i am of course far to polite to go into the minute detail here, and besides, its dinner time…
David Cunliffe’s facebook page just sent a message:
“Multinationals must pay their fair share of tax, just like ordinary working people. Labour will ’embed’ IRD auditors in corporations that have a history of tax avoidance #forabetterNZ”
Yes, just like a political commissionar in the old soviet union. All decisions will be then be able to be vetoed if they don’t meet certain “National interest” criteria.
Unions will get no more of a ‘free pass’ on tax than any New Zealand-based business or other organisation currently does.
This policy is an additional tax enforcement strengthening measure and not the removal of all tax enforcement for everyone other than some errant multinationals.
Puckish, David Cunliffe as far as i know does not collect taxes, the IRD involve themselves in that activity,
i see no suggestion from you or the Labour Party that Trade Unions will be absolved from taxes by altering of the current Legislation which makes your comment somewhat deserving of a multiple lettered epithet starting with the consonant, (you choose)…
Those right-wing hacks/commenters are so irrational…and yet they are the type to trust that ‘markets players are rational’ – you couldn’t make this stuff up.
People such as the writer of this article apparently fall outside the expected group of low income folk, people in debt or worried about immigration status, etc.
I think this group who just don’t want their details bought and sold for business gain is growing.
Anyone got a good reason for the roll to be published at all? I can’t see why and I bet the turnout would go through the roof if voters were allowed to remain anonymous, just as the vote they cast is.
Anyone got a good reason for the roll to be published at all?
Not that I know of.
That said, it was possibly an idea that someone had that people would be able to look at the role and see if there were people on it that shouldn’t be. It may have worked if communities stayed below about 1000 people and everyone knew everyone else. Won’t work in any community above that size though.
And these days we have better options to ensure that people are registered where they should be without having to make the role publicly available.
It’s up to the EC to decide who should and should not be on the roll, not the public. So at the moment you have to register by paper, or online using RealMe. Even using RealMe you have to open an account then go to a postshop and have your photo taken.
Even after all of this I cannot see a reason for publishing unless the EC have been given a directive to fund themselves by selling voters’ information to third parties.
Ie, user pays, even when voting, a basic right in any democracy.
News from my wireless, RadioNZ National, the Government has announced it will establish a private company to take over the Education Payroll from Novopay,
Novopay is said to be paying the Government an undisclosed amount as penalty payment for a system that still fails to fulfill its expectations,
Gee only how many years too late and the ‘problems’ in the system will still have to be addressed by this ‘private company’…
From, I think, the same item on Checkpoint Stephen Joyce admitted that the taxpayer was picking up the larger share of the tab because there was “blame on both sides”. The Ministry had, apparently, bungled some things too. He didn’t mention who the negligent Minister was who has just cost us this coin.
Then, when asked if this was a case of the public sector being better than the private sector Joyce said words to the effect of ‘not at all, it simply happens that the government holds one side of the contract in this case and is taking over’.
But I thought that governments and their bureaucracies just can’t do this sort of stuff. Wouldn’t they be the last type of organisation you’d therefore turn to for a safe pair of hands in this kind of situation?
Aren’t things like payrolls just too tricky by half for them to get their heads around. The private sector, on the other hand …
Do we need another Henare voted into Parliament? The last one was bad enough. Is it not time for labour supporters to start voting for greens and other candidates in electorates? Labour activist here and elsewhere, keep begging the left not to split the vote. The gall to ask people to hold there noses and vote for some Tory scum in red clothing.
How about all those so called supporters of working people advise/aid/direct, or just be honest about some of the candidates that the labour party have put up. Phil Goff, Stuart (I think your grandfather is rolling in his grave) Nash, I’m sure others can be added to this list.
These are the evil shits we need to remove, the elephant in the room – how much longer labour people, how much longer you going to push the dead donkey?
Why do labour supporters keep putting up with these scum?
In the interests of working people any chance we can have an honest debate about the dead chaff in Labour who are hell bent on losing this election? Or am I going to get called a right wing troll – stupid or some other slagging off? Are the labour faithful going to go into fits of there own self-righteousness, and cling to any old Tory wannabe?
You say you like David Cunliff, yet he keeps being treated like shit. Labour have finally put up a leader who will make a bloody decent PM. And it is these MP wannabes who seem to me the happiest to poop in their own nest. Quite frankly, it reeks of the politics of self interest.
Everyone is accusing Jamie Whyte from the Act Party of being a racist.
Hypothetically speaking, if his partner was black, like I mean black black, would that change anything?
[lprent: Everybody? Don’t be a fool. There are usually thousands of people reading this site every day and a few hundred commenting. I guess you can’t count or have the common neolib inflationary view that expands the few fools in Act into a “movement”. I’d suggest that if you’re going to indulge in hyperbole, that you don’t do it about this site. That draws my attention to the dickheads doing it because I will answer for the site.
I really hate wasting time on peewees who measure their dicks using a magnifying glass for that extra size inflation. Read the policy. ]
No. Notwithstanding his personal family situation, to claim Maori are unjustly privileged is unhelpful to New Zealand, and racist. We intend to be different to African and American history here.
In addition, to describe someone as black is one thing, silverbullet, but to then describe someone as “black black” is…
Go put your Stalinist comrade uniform on – oh hang on, you are already wearing it.
[lprent: I suggest that you read the policy. You appear to be wearing a troll uniform. Lets be nice and imagine that it is like this…
This is your one warning about being a dickhead jerking off on our site. Engage with the conversation or leave before I have to toss you off the site. Leading up to an election, I really can’t be bothered being tolerant of mindless fools who try to imagine that they are sophisticated smartarses. ]
If any current NZ leader could be compared to Stalin it is John Key. Figuratively, the similarities between Key’s rejuvenation drive to the great purge in the 1920’s are alarming.
Your Far Left ideology is grounded in the philosophy of Marxism, with its “class consciousness”, “class conflict” and some future “workers paradise” type utopia.
Seeing as you asked silverbullet, NO, racism is not confined within one racial grouping, a white male for instance with an African American partner could for instance express hatred for Maori and rightly be labeled a racist,
The term racist does not presuppose that there is hatred of all the races other than that of the racist, the racist might only be so concerning one race other than his own to be a racist…
Seriously? Its always been about white vs the rest. So it does bring into question hypothetically that Whyte really is racist if he is married to someone of African descent and has kids too…
I’m really sorry this exchange didn’t go the way you planned, and that’s left you arguing against a case that no-one seems to be making, but what’s happening here is obvious. Jamie Unclecousin is attacking maori so racists will vote for ACT.
Now that might be a racist thing to do, or it might just be a selfish stupid short-sighted evil nasty cynical divisive corrosive thing to do. But either way, it has nothing to do with his wife, just as it had nothing to do with Don Brash’s wife when he pulled the exact same stunt 10 years ago.
What we do know is that no good can come of it. It will make some people in our society angry about other people in our society. It will hurt people. It will hurt race relations. And it will not achieve a single positive thing.
“tough on crime” is their main clarion call in Epsom, despite the Govt, of which they were a part, until their only member committed… a crime… tells us crime is falling and we are safer than ever.
So
Tough on crime
2.Maori are too privileged
AND they will get a seat in parliament… Over 17% of their sitting MPs have committed crimes…People of Epsom worship at the later of money
Just heard on the TV that we’ve paid x millions to Talent2 for the Novapay fuckup and that we’re then going to paying another nine million over the next six years as well. Wish I could get a job like that – paid for fucking it up, paid to be fired from it and then 6 year multi-million dollar redundancy package.
@ Weepus beard 6.55
“Where is the minister of Education in all of this?She has learned when to keep her mouth shut.”
These words by Graham Nash have substance and they say what we are all thinking here! And we need to rouse them and ourselves and follow our dreams during the day and night – dreams for a happy, functioning society. I think there might be an odd word in it.
From musixmatch
“Teach Your Children”
You, who are on the road must have a code that you can live by.
And so become yourself because the past is just a good bye.
Teach your children well, their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams, the one they fix, the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.
And you, of the tender years can’t know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth, they seek the truth before they can die.
Teach your parents well, their children’s hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams, the one they fix,the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.
This extract from Chris Trotter’s reply to Phil Quin referred to in Puddleglum 6.45 carries forward my comment about the necessity for igniting the dream. I fear that the generations since 1984 have been unable to imbibe enough of that message from their parents, and certainly not from school or any other formal or informal education. One reason they may not feel like voting.
The people whose precarious position of privilege vis-a-vis the working poor and beneficiaries renders them unashamedly reluctant to redistribute even a little of the wealth they have “worked for”.
Beneath a superficial “concern” for the disadvantaged, these voters conceal a visceral contempt for the poor. They are terrified of being forced to share their resources with the “underserving” and will have absolutely no truck with any political party which suggests that, as citizens, they have a moral obligation to put an end to inequality and poverty. –
See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/07/30/the-40-percent-solution-chris-trotter-responds-to-phil-quin/#sthash.0TbWppqF.dpuf
I have to admit that I am stunned that there is still such a thing as a ‘Labour Right’ that extends so far to the right that its apparent members (Pagani, Quin, Jones) are essentially pushing an economic approach that actively undermines the welfare of just those people that Labour Parties around the world were set up to represent and advance.
How on earth is such an economic policy orientation part of any ‘Labour’ approach?
You can thank the Post Modernists for the meaningless of language these days, they are after all the bastard children of ‘Progressive’ Left Neo Marxist ideology.
I think you need to distinguish between postmodernism as an intellectual current and postmodernity as a hypothesised economic, social and cultural transformation of modernity.
The latter is exemplified by ‘late consumer capitalism’ and all of its attendant industries (marketing, advertising, media, design, etc.) and the emergence of a supposedly new social class (highly educated, high income, usually employed in the industries just mentioned) for whom ‘cultural capital’ is an additional boasting right (on top of other forms of capital).
To be honest, I think it is postmodernity (or the cultural and economic conditions that that term usually refers to) that is responsible for any loss of meaning in our use of language. That loss of meaning is present in managerialism-speak, marketing-speak, neoliberalism-speak (which is increasingly commerce-speak) and, sadly, political-speak.
This morphing flexibility in linguistic meaning comes very close, of course, to old-fashioned lying – semantic relativism taken to its logical conclusion.
For me that logical conclusion is forever epitomised by John Key’s one-time reference to ‘the dynamic environment’ to explain why the meaning of his words change over time (or something like that).
By comparison, I think the influence of postmodernist theorists over the actual loss of meaning in everyday practice is infinitesimal.
I’m afraid your ‘silverbullet’ just missed what should have been its real target.
@Puddleglum 7.42
Your comment on ‘the dynamic environment’ and changes in meaning reminds me of something that Thomas Belmonte wrote and I think called it protean, about the changing, sometimes conflicting and changing beliefs of people rather lost in a changing society. He was impressed how people could be Catholic and Communist at the same time etc.
I looked up protean and came on this psycholgist who has done work on Nasties and their psychology and the Holocaust. Then he has posited two streams of people management – one called totalism and has presented proteanism as being the opposite.
Indeed. I made a similar remark at 21.1.1.2. The broad church concept is meaningful where someone like, say, Damien O’Connor, is concerned, beavering away on behalf of the West Coast. He is often considered to be of the right of the party, but he still able to say he sees social justice and regional development as his missions. However, the people you list seem to want to remain in the Labour Party while casting aside everything it stands for.
The real schism in the Labour Part is between the traditional working class and the academic Identity Politics crowd – the latter having a strangle hold on the Labour Party which is a shadow of its former self.
No, the most significant parting of the ways will always be when one faction believes that it should be serving the interests of the powerful and entrenched rather than the powerless, dispossessed and marginalised.
Clever justifications for serving powerful interests (trickle-down, etc.) will never resolve that betrayal, I’m afraid.
I have no problems with someone like O’Connor being ‘Labour’. And I’m even enough of a pragmatist to accept that some in the Labour caucus would want to make some sort of ‘truce’ or compromise with the ‘neo-liberal consensus’.
What I really can’t fathom is people who are not satisfied with ‘accommodating’ neoliberalism but seem bent on actively extending its reach and pushing it further into our social and economic arrangements – just because that’s what National is doing and ‘Ooo, look how popular National are!’.
It’s just mind-boggling that someone wishing to do that would even want to be in the Labour Party.
I just wish that when the media went for people who can talk intelligently on the Labour Party they would choose people that I knew! Mike Williams can do it. He has a grassroots understanding of the party.
Pagani and Quin cannot. Honest I have been heavily involved in the party for the past 15 years and I have not met either of them. I met John Pagani but this does not qualify him as someone who can talk intelligibly on the party.
There are people who come and go at the “upper” level but they have no comprehension about what is happening at the activist level.
Pagani and Quin cannot. Honest I have been heavily involved in the party for the past 15 years and I have not met either of them. I met John Pagani but this does not qualify him as someone who can talk intelligibly on the party
I know exactly what you mean. I’ve met John Pagani once and wasn’t that impressed. His campaigning felt like it was out of the ark (mind you most of the MPs are worse). Never met the other two that I am aware of. And I’ve been to the majority of the conferences and congresses in one capacity or another over the last 25 years which is where you’d expect to meet Labour party people. I still do even though I’m in the media room rather than the remit floor.
That is truly horrible that the people commenting in the media as though they are informed about Labour – or as though they are insiders – may not be even actively involved in the Party – that really is terrible to hear.
Why can’t the media find more informed voices to comment on these political current affairs? (Not really a question – more of a plea).
Basically because damn near everyone who is suitable is also actively working during the day for a variety of private and public organisations and volunteering at night. Generally companies like my current employers have contract clauses that limit how much time I can take during paid hours and conflict of interest clauses that limit me in the rest. I also have many claims on my “free” time.
It takes time to write articles, prep for interviews and panels, or anything else.
Hell the one interview I have ever done involved me in a 3 hour hole in the middle of my working day driving from Albany to Newmarket, doing a segment, and then going back to work. I then worked 3 hours extra that day, which interfered with the volunteer work for the rest of the week as I caught up.
The people who are left over to become talking heads are those who aren’t particularly actively involved, those developing careers as talking heads, or who are semi-retired.
For everyone else who works a lot, the whole thing is a confounded nuisance.
Well written from Chris Trotter, thanks for the link as i forget sometimes to cast an eye over the daily offering from that direction,
40% as far as the vote goes is totally unnecessary in the enviroment of MMP, these numbers, Labour 33%, Greens 12%, InternetMana 5%, are hardly wildly optimistic, they do tho shout out 50% at the September vote…
I have a little anecdote. Talking to an older woman with health problems. Mentioned that it was very hard for unemployed and mentioned the recent comment that people are required to apply for 5 jobs a day and may still have their benefit withdrawn.
She said that was awful but she couldn’t cope with it, she needed to just manage and carry on quietly. I said well don’t vote for National will you. But I like John Key she said, he seems nice, (or something of that nature). She said with a smile, is that the end of the lecture. We smiled and went on with our day.
greywarbler …that is very depressing when you meet idiots like that…however after her encounter with you this timid soul may change her vote once she gets in the voting booth
Interesting you should say that, because i had a similar, but more disturbing experience. The person I was talking to was a 50 plus year old primary school teacher who said that she would be voting National because she said, she likes key! I was very surprised that she was so naive. I try to change her reasoning, but she actually was peeved with me and did not want to discus the issue.
Shows that lots of people have been fooled and conned so very easily by the smiling assassin!
Nats know this. No wonder they have chosen #Team Key as their slogan.
People are in pretty bad, sad political/enlightened state in modern NZ!
@ Chooky 10.54 and Clemgeopin
“that is very depressing when you meet idiots like that”
Trouble is she is not an idiot. But I think one of many NZs who want to leave the pollies to govern, as that being their job, and have never been taught how fragile democracy is, and our firm opinions are (not firm at all – able to be changed fast with a propaganda campaign.) To many NZs, having an interest in politics is a hobby, it is akin to stamp collecting, or it is for go-getters who are pushing their wheelbarrow not for ordinary people.
Then there are those who can hardly bring themelves to complain about anything apart from blocks to whatever is dear to their heart. What right do we have to disagree with the confident con men and fabulists who tell us all they want us to know, and are never guilty of wrongdoing, at worst whatever – was a little mistake – just a tiny, teeny one. We all have a little cringe built-in. We have got confused, don’t have a dream for NZ, don’t have even a workable vision – given up on pollies substance and just see the candy floss. Poem for today’s pollies, there for us at election time with hearts on sleeves, and then after the election – a different story.
W. H. Mearns – Antigonish
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away
When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
“It’s not just radicalised Islamists – what about foreign fighters who flock to the IDF?
Is the Government interested in UK citizens who have been fighting in Israeli uniform in Gaza in the past couple of weeks?…
Let me be frank. Dozens of British supporters of Israel do serve in the Israeli army. The same applies for Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. And they don’t necessarily gravitate to being war criminals. This may not be what an Arab would say – and it is certainly not what Israelis would suggest. But there is plenty of evidence – from 1982 in Lebanon, from 1996 in Qana, from 2008-9 in Gaza and again in Gaza these past two weeks – that individual Israeli soldiers and pilots have committed acts which, under international law, are war crimes…
It will hit you sooner or later, what goes on in Ukraine, in Middle and Near East, and many other parts of the world, New Zealand is not insulated and will be affected.
After Ukips success in the UK and EU elections NZ polictions are trying to jump on the bandwagon but NZ has only a limited number of racist so it will be slim pickings for Winnie the poo ,in reading whyte supremacist and Crazy Colon Craig.
Some readers may remember that I mentioned last year that I was applying for NZ citizenship. I filled out the paperwork and had my original citizenship interview in February. Everything went well until they discovered that, because I had spent five months in the US in 2017, I had not ...
by Deirdre O’Neill It is becoming quite acceptable for certain sections of the left to declare that people like me – women who are ‘gender critical’ – should not be allowed in leftist or anarchist spaces. Leaving aside the arrogance and implicit authoritarianism of this claim, its lack of critical ...
There is an article in The Conversation, written by Jeremy P. Shapiro (Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University), about what he sees as the psychologically-based underpinnings of three main matters that seem to vex people all around the planet. The article is titled “The Thinking ...
. . Blogger Martyn Bradbury has won his case against unreasonable search and surveillance against the NZ Police; and subsequent Police attempts to produce evidence in secrecy, in a closed Court. His case highlights a disturbing growing trend in Aotearoa New Zealand for State power to be used against ...
The Committee of Disobedient Women has intercepted an email from Dr Emma Eejut, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Massey University to the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Jan Thomas. Dear Jan, Thank you for your courageous move. I think 10 pages of blether** should tie any of the students game enough to try holding ...
That's the only response to the findings of the Ombudsman's investigation into LGOIMA practices at the Christchurch City Council:My investigation identified serious concerns about the Council’s leadership and culture, and its commitment to openness and transparency. In particular, Council staff raised concerns with me about various methods employed by some ...
NZ First seems to be nakedly trying to enrich itself from public office:A powerful New Zealand First figure helped establish a forestry company that then pushed for money from two key funding streams controlled by a New Zealand First Minister. An RNZ investigation has found Brian Henry, lawyer for Winston ...
Behrouz Boochani is an award winning author and journalist. He is also a refugee, who for the past six years has been detained in Australia's offshore gulag on Manus Island, and in Papua New Guinea. But last night, with the cooperation of the WORD Christchurch festival and Amnesty International, he ...
Different Strokes: If a multicultural immigration policy imposes no obligation on immigrant communities to acknowledge and ultimately embrace their host nation’s most cherished traditions and values, then how is that nation to prevent itself from being reduced to a collection of inward-looking and self-replicating ethnic and cultural enclaves?THE COALITION GOVERNMENT’S ...
Protective Zone: Reading the rules and guidelines released by Massey University, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that its governing body considers the whole concept of free speech a disruptive threat to the orderly imparting of orthodox academic knowledge.IN TRUE ORWELLIAN fashion, Massey University has announced its commitment to ...
Farmers held a hate-march on Parliament today, complete with MAGA hats, gun-nut signs, and gendered insults. While supposedly about a grab-bag of issues - including, weirdly, mental health - it was clear that the protest was about one thing, and one thing only: climate change. And specifically, forestry "destroying" rural ...
The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security released their annual report today, and I've been busy reading through it. In amongst the usual review of what they've been doing all year, there's a few interesting bits. For example, a discussion on "agency retention and disposal of information", which points out that ...
Recently more than 150 post-graduate students and young scientists presented an open letter to the Green Party via The Spinoff, encouraging them to reconsider their position on genetic modification. Their target is tackling climate change issues.[1] Can any party continue to be dismissive about genetic modification (GM) contributing to ...
by Deirdre O’Neill Under Thatcher and then Blair and continuing up until our contemporary moment, the working class has seen its culture slowly and progressively destroyed. The change from an industrial society to a service society produced a marked shift in focus from the working class as the backbone of ...
Since 2013, the Australian government has detained refugees without trial in Pacific gulags, where they are abused, tortured, and driven to suicide. The policy is not just an abuse of human rights and possible crime against humanity; it has also had a corrosive effect on the states Australia uses as ...
It seems fair to say that we currently live in a problematic political moment in world history. Democracies are in decline and dictatorships are on the rise. Primordial, sectarian and post-modern divisions have re-emerged, are on the rise or have been accentuated by political evolutions of the moment such as ...
Last month, Greenpeace head Russel Norman surrendered his speaking slot at an EPA conference to student climate activist Sorcha Carr, who told the EPA exactly what she thought of them. It was a bold move, which confronted both regulators and polluters (or, as the EPA calls them, "stakeholders") with the ...
The core principle supposedly underlying New Zealand's electoral finance regime is transparency: parties can accept large donations from rich people wanting to buy policy, but only if they tell the public they've been bought. Most parties abide by this, so we know that TOP was wholly-owned by Gareth Morgan, and ...
Today is a Member's Day, probably the second-to-last one of the year, and its a big one, with the Third Reading of David Seymour's End of Life Choice Bill. last Member's Day it was reported back from committee, after MPs voted narrowly to make it subject to a (rules TBA) ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzThe growth of the human population over the last 70 ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women In her excellent oral submission to the Abortion reform select committee on 31st October on behalf of Otago University’s Department of Public Health, historian and public health researcher Hera Cook stated: “We would ask that the committee not use the term ‘pregnant persons’ and ...
by Don Franks In 1957, E M Forster wrote, of his greatest work: “The India described in ‘A Passage to India’ no longer exists either politically or socially. Change had begun even at the time the book was published ( 1924) and during the following quarter of a century it ...
The Referendums Framework Bill was due back from select committee today. But there's no report on it. Instead, the bill has been bounced back to the House under Standing order 29593) because the Committee didn't bother to produce one. They probably tried. But given the membership of the committee (which ...
Two years into New Zealand’s Labour-led government, the long-delayed Zero Carbon Bill became law on 7 November. Passed essentially unanimously, the lengthy public debates and political manoeuvring faded away until the final passage was even anticlimactic: Flipping through the @nzstuff@DomPost I was starting to wonder if I’d dreamt ...
Now the Zero Carbon Bill is law, what's next? Obviously, the ETS changes currently before select committee are going to be the next battleground. But we're also going to get a good idea of where we're going, and if the progress the Zero Carbon Act promises is good enough, during ...
Grant PearceThe effects of the current Australian bushfires in New South Wales and Queensland (and also again in California) are devastating and far-reaching. To date, the fires have resulted in several lives being lost and many homes and properties destroyed. Here in New Zealand, the impacts have been only ...
A passing comment in a post the other day about the labour force participation rates of older people prompted me to pull down the fuller data and see what we could see about various participation rates over the decades since the HLFS began in 1986. As it happens, the ...
Distract And Divert: The rise of what we have come to call “Identity Politics” represents the ideological manifestation of the ruling class’s objective need to destroy class politics, and of the middle-class’s subjective need to justify their participation in the process.THE RELIEF of the ruling class can only be imagined. ...
"I saw a newspaper picture,From the political campaignA woman was kissing a child,Who was obviously in pain.She spills with compassion,As that young child'sFace in her hands she gripsCan you imagine all that greed and avariceComing down on that child's lips?" ...
Dr Matt Boyd, Prof Michael Baker, Prof Nick WilsonThe Global Health Security Index which considers pandemic threats has just been published. Unfortunately, NZ scores approximately half marks (54/100), coming in 35th in the world rankings – far behind Australia. This poor result suggests that the NZ Government needs to ...
The Zero Carbon Act is inadequate, with a weak methane target designed to give farmers a free ride. But it turns out it could have been worse: Climate Change Minister James Shaw was so desperate to get National on board, he wanted to gut that target, and leave it in ...
The Herald reprints an Australian story on a couple of tragic deaths in Bali from drinking cocktails that had methanol in them. The story argues that methanol is likely the result of home distillation. But what the young tourists were experiencing was far from a hangover. They’d consumed a toxic cocktail ...
Last month, the police announced a trial of specialist roaming armed units, which would drive round (poor, brown) areas in armoured SUVs, armed to the teeth. When they announced the trial, they told us it was about having armed police "ready to attend major incidents at any time if needed". ...
Spain went to the polls today in the second elections this year, after the Socialists (who had come to power in a confidence vote, then gone to the polls in April) rejected the offer of a coalition with the left-wing PoDemos, and instead decided to gamble n a better outcome ...
A couple of days ago I attended (and spoke at) the University of Waikato’s “LearnFest” event. There were lots of talks and sessions on very diverse aspects of teaching, mostly at tertiary level. One was by Myra Williamson from Te Piringa Faculty of Law here at Waikato, on Contract Cheating ...
There will be a transit of Mercury – the planet Mercury will pass across the face of the Sun – taking place at sunrise in New Zealand on Tuesday, 12th November. It was by observing such an event 250 years ago that James Cook and his scientist colleagues were able ...
Since becoming the world’s first openly transexual mayor and member of parliament, Georgina Beyer has been recognised as a trailblazer for trans rights. Daphna Whitmore talks with her about where she sees the current trans movement We start out talking about legislation the government put on hold that would have ...
If FFNZ really put their faith in “Top Medical Journals” they would now be amending their billboards to recognise new research results. Image from FFNZ but updated to agree with the latest research. ...
National Messiah? Chris Luxon identifies himself as an evangelical Christian. If he is genuine in this self-characterisation, then he will take every opportunity his public office provides to proselytise on behalf of his faith. He will also feel obliged to bear witness against beliefs and practices he believes to be ...
I'm going to make a Reckless Prediction™ that the Tories have 'topped out' in the 'poll of polls' / Britain Elects multipoll tracker at about 38%, and in the next week we will start to see Labour creep up on them.In fact, we might just be seeing the start of ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women Lizzie Marvelly: “I may have missed this… has @afterellen gone all terf-y? Or am I reading something incorrectly? “ https://twitter.com/LizzieMarvelly/status/1191840059105742849 After Ellen is a lesbian website that is unashamedly pro-lesbian, as you’d expect. So why is Ms Marvelly so bothered about lesbians having their ...
Did you know there once was a time when it was illegal to be a gypsy (aka Romani) in Britain?That was between 1530, when the Egyptians Act was passed, and 1856, when it was repealed.Amongst other things, the act forbade the entry of 'Egyptians' into England, ordered those already there ...
Some days I sit and think, “what will I write…?” What do you say when you get to 1000 posts? Maybe you just start where you are, diverge to where this all began, then offer a collection of reader’s favourite posts, and a few of your own? (And throw in ...
Counter-Puncher: The “activists” and “radicals” (his own words) from the Indian community who took such strong exception to Shane Jones’ remarks about Immigration NZ’s treatment of arranged marriages, may end up bitterly regretting their intervention. Jones is not the sort of person who turns the other cheek to his critics.SHANE ...
In the spirit of Remember, remember the fifth of November, let's keep this in mind FOREVER.
Oh dear. Extraordinary interview on PM with Andrew Bridgen and @EvanHD just now. Bridgen was defending Jacob Rees Mogg’s Grenfell comments. Evan asked him if JRM had meant to say he would have left ...
Collision Course? In conditions of ideological white-out, the international bankers’ “Woop-Woop! Pull Up!” warning may have come too late to save global capitalism.WHAT DOES IT MEAN when international bankers are more willing to embrace radical solutions than our politicians and their electors? At both the International Monetary Fund and the ...
Pertussis (whooping cough) is a conundrum. It is a disease that was described hundreds of years ago and the bacteria that causes it (Bordetella pertussis) isolated in 1906. We have had vaccines for about 80 years but this disease is defiant in the face of human immunity. I wanted to ...
The Zero Carbon Bill has just passed its third reading, uanimously. In the end, National supported it - but we all know they'll turn around and gut it the moment they regain power. Meanwhile, I guess ACT's David Seymour didn't even bother to show up. I am on record as ...
Dr Lindsay Robertson, Dr Jerram Bateman, Professor Janet HoekMembers of the public health community hold divergent views on how access to vaping products or electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) products should be arranged. Some believe ENDS should be as widely available as smoked tobacco and argue for liberal ...
When the Police were trying to cover up for the National Party over Dirty Politics, they went all-in with their abuses of power. They illegally search Nicky Hager's house, violating his journalistic privilege and invading his privacy. They unlawfully acquired Hager's bank records. They did the same to left-wing blogger ...
Last month, in response to a wave of protests by Extinction Rebellion, the British government purported to ban their protests from the whole of London. It was a significant interference with the freedoms of expression and assembly, and another sign of the country's decline into tyranny. But now, a court ...
Last year, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security reported on significant problems with the intelligence warrant system. While they were unwilling to declare any warrant "irregular" (meaning unlawful) due to the recent law change, they were also not willing to give the system a clean bill of health. Now, they've ...
The National Party has come out in support of encouraging greater vaccination uptake. But it sure isn’t the way I’d do it. National’s suggested docking the benefits of those on benefit whose kids aren’t keeping up with their vaccinations. Some in National have suggested extending that to payments under Working ...
Feeding The Flames: It is simply not enough to demand an end to “corruption”, or “inequality”, or the overbearing influence of the authorities in Beijing. These are just “lowest common denominator” demands: the sort of slogans that pull people onto the streets. They are not a plan.WHERE’S THE PLAN? Across ...
The labour market statistics have been released, and unemployment has risen to 4.2%. There are 115,000 unemployed - 11,000 fewer than when Labour took office. In that time the minimum wage has gone up by $2 an hour, which shows that the right's fears about increases causing unemployment are simply ...
The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has called for submissions on Andrew Little's tyrannicalTerrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill. Normally I encourage participation in the democratic process. I am not doing so in this case. Instead, I encourage all of you to boycott this submissions process, and to post ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzIf tiny concentrations of carbon dioxide can hold enough heat ...
Aviation is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and within it, one of the fastest sources is elite travel: billionaires flitting around the world in their private jets, spewing excessive pollution into the atmosphere just so they can avoid mixing with us dirty peasants. But in ...
That's what we face if we don't stop climate change, according to a warning from 11,000 scientists:The world’s people face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless there are major transformations to global society, according to a stark warning from more than 11,000 scientists. “We declare clearly and unequivocally ...
by Phil Duncan Here’s just a few of the kind of threats issued day in and day out against gender-critical women – feminists, marxists, etc – overwhelmingly by MEN (albeit men identifying as women). “Kill all Terfs”. “Shoot a Terf today”. “All terfs deserve to be shot in the head”. ...
This is the third of the synopses of parts of the opening chapter of John Smith’s Imperialism in the 21st Century (New York, Monthly Review Press, 2016). The synopsis and commentary below is written by Phil Duncan. Unlike the humble cup of coffee and t-shirt that we looked at in ...
Tom MooreTraditionally a food source and cutting tool, freshwater mussels/kākahi are now widely valued as water filters that help clean our waterbodies and maintain ecosystem health throughout Aotearoa. The improvement they provide in water quality can make it easier for other animals to live in streams and rivers, as ...
And to think he gave all the potential goodwill away with that moronic, cult-like statement (repeated ad nauseam by many National hardliners) that Key is quite simply “the greatest PM we ever had”…Installation complete: this was nothing ...
The Zero Carbon Bill is back in the House today for its second reading. While this isn't the final stage, its still effectively D-Day for the bill. Because today, at around 5pm, is when we're going to find out if it has a majority, whether National will support it or ...
Winston Peters is in court today, suing a bunch of former Minister and civil servants over their pre-election leak of his superannuation repayment. He's characterised the leak as malicious, and said that it is repugnant that his information was passed on to Ministers to use for political advantage. And he's ...
Murray CoxDo I have to finish my favourite genome? That’s an often-asked question. Geneticists generally strive to produce high-quality genomes that sequence every last gene, making full use of the state-of-the-art technologies coming on stream. Sequencing DNA means determining the order of the four chemical building blocks – called ...
Transformative Politics: The idea is to turn each recipient into an unwitting accomplice in their own transformation. From interested observer to hyped-up activist, sharing our messages promiscuously with ‘friends’. You’ll be part of an ever-expanding circulatory system, Jennifer, for the ideas that will win us the election.”JENNIFER SKITTERED her chair ...
The boycott is a fundamental tool of protest. By choosing who we buy from, we can send a message, and hopefully change corporate behaviour. Historically, boycotts have been effective, for example over apartheid in South Africa and Israel, in forcing divestment from Myanmar, and in ending bus segregation in the ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First backs the public to decide on the End of Life Choice Bill via a referendum at the 2020 General Election. The Bill, with New Zealand First’s referendum provision incorporated, passed its final reading in Parliament this evening. New Zealand First Spokesperson for ...
Darroch Ball, Spokesperson for Justice New Zealand First is proud that a key Coalition Agreement commitment which will provide for a more transparent and effective criminal justice system has been realised. Legislation to establish the Criminal Cases Review Commission, an independent body focused on identifying and responding to possible miscarriages of ...
"Today we have made a choice that will leave a legacy... I hope that means that future generations will see that we, in New Zealand, were on the right side of history." - Jacinda Ardern, Third Reading of the Zero Carbon Bill ...
Darroch Ball, New Zealand First List MP A Member’s bill has been proposed that would provide income tax exemptions for all New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel while on operational deployment overseas. The Income Tax (Exemption for Salary or Wages of NZDF Members on Active Deployment) Amendment Bill proposed by New Zealand First ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First is proud to have brought common sense to the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, which passed its final reading in Parliament today. Party Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters says months of hard work went into negotiating a balanced ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First has listened to calls to recognise paramedics as registered health professionals under the Health Practitioners’ Competence Assurance Act (the Act).Today, the Coalition Government announced plans for paramedics to be registered as health practitioners under the Act, and the establishment of a ...
We began the week by commemorating the New Zealand Wars and celebrating a major increase in the number of teachers. Then, we were busy supporting offenders into work and getting our rail back on track after years of underinvestment. And that's just the start! ...
In October I was sworn in as the Mayor of Lower Hutt.It’s the privilege of my life to serve Hutt people as their Mayor. There is something really special to be able to serve the community where I was raised, and where I live. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Racing Racing Minister Winston Peters met with Korea Racing Authority Chairperson Nak Soon Kim in Seoul today to discuss closer cooperation between the New Zealand and Korean horse racing industries. As part of the visit to the Seoul Racecourse, Mr Peters witnessed ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing $10 million to establish Otago as the centre of New Zealand’s creative digital industry over the next ten years, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “The initiative will bring us closer to the vision of ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF)’s skills and employment programme will help young Otago people into long-term forestry careers, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. Te Ara Mahi will invest $63,000 in the 2020 school year to support eight 17 and 18 ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) will support local plans to revitalise and stimulate economic development opportunities in Otago, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. The four Regional Economic Development Ministers have approved an in-principle investment of $19.9 million towards the region’s ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First is pleased to have received the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) report on the Coalition Government’s Mycoplasma bovis eradication efforts, which shows significant progress in the fight against the disease. New Zealand First Spokesperson for Primary Industries, Mark Patterson, says the report’s findings ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development Hon David Parker, Minister for Trade and Export Growth The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing to support economic growth opportunities for Otago’s engineering and manufacturing sectors, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones and Trade and Export Minister David Parker announced today. Almost $20 million ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters and his South Korean counterpart, Kang Kyung-wha, discussed in Seoul today opportunities to work more closely in the Pacific and the situation on the Korean Peninsula. Mr Peters and Minister Kang confirmed New Zealand and the ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development Hon Nanaia Mahuta, Minister for Māori Development The three marae in the historic Parihaka Pa complex in Taranaki have been upgraded to high speed broadband with the support of the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Connecting the ...
Hon Ron Mark, Minister of Defence Minister of Defence Ron Mark will today launch the Advancing Pacific Partnerships 2019 Defence Assessment during a speech at Te Papa. The Assessment outlines how Defence will partner with our Pacific Island neighbours and invest in Pacific regional security architecture. The Plan aligns with the Coalition ...
A new Provincial Growth Fund investment could create about 80 new jobs in Gisborne over the next two years, turning a local small business into a “beacon of employment” in the process. Regional Economic Development Parliamentary Under-Secretary Fletcher Tabuteau said the PGF’s Te Ara Mahi funding stream would provide $1.6m ...
The Government has delivered on its promise to the over one million New Zealanders who now rent to make it fairer and more secure, Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing) Kris Faafoi has announced today. Both renters and landlords will benefit from the suite of practical changes to the Residential ...
The Government is asking the food industry to step up work to tackle obesity including reducing sugar, fat and salt in their products, better information for consumers, and tighter restrictions on advertising to children. Health Minister David Clark and Food Safety Minister Damien O’Connor have responded to a ...
ew, modern emergency department and outpatient facilities at Queenstown’s Lakes District Hospital mean better emergency care for the growing tourist mecca’s visitors and locals, says Health Minister David Clark. Today Dr Clark officially opened the hospital’s redeveloped Emergency Department and Outpatient facilities. The new facilities include: • An extended Emergency Department ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter says today’s release of sexual and reproductive health data reinforces the significance of the Government’s commitment to providing free or very low-cost contraception. The Ministry of Health today published statistics from the Ministry of Health’s 2014/15 Health Survey. “It is important people can make ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced that at the request of the Samoan Government, New Zealand will be providing further support to Samoa as it faces a worsening measles outbreak. “In response to a request from the people of Samoa, New Zealand is providing 3000 measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) ...
“The new Disability Action Plan 2019–2023 moves us towards the inclusive and accessible New Zealand that this government has committed to,” Minister for Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni announced today. “The Action Plan was designed by disabled people, their family and supporters, the disability sector and government agencies. It will ensure ...
Third Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting 14 November 2019 Joint Statement 1. Defence Ministers Ron Mark and Dr Ng Eng Hen today conducted their third annual Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting in Singapore. 2. Building on the Enhanced Partnership signed between both countries in May this year, this annual meeting ...
A Bill to improve the court system’s response to sexual violence has passed its first reading in Parliament today. Justice Minister Andrew Little says the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill will reduce the trauma sexual violence complainants experience in court, while maintaining defendants’ fundamental rights and making sure the trial process ...
Streamlined payment practices are a step closer for Kiwi businesses with the formal launch of New Zealand’s e-Invoicing framework. Small Business Minister Stuart Nash says the government has now established the structure to enable automated and direct data exchange between the accounting systems of buyers and sellers. “The move to ...
Another 51 quarantine officers and four new biosecurity detector dog teams will help protect New Zealand from invasive pests and diseases this summer, says Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor. “The Government is delivering on its commitment to strengthen New Zealand’s biosecurity system and support our valuable primary sector “New Zealand’s flora, fauna ...
A new report has found New Zealand’s space sector contributed $1.69 billion to the economy in the last financial year and employs 12,000 people, Minister for Economic Development Phil Twyford announced today. The report by Deloitte was commissioned by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and shows New Zealand ...
Judge Coral Shaw has been appointed as the new Chair of the Royal Commission into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions, Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin announced today. "Judge Shaw, who is currently one of the inquiry commissioners, is extremely well qualified for the ...
The Government has confirmed its third major mental health facility upgrade since the Budget, this time at Palmerston North Hospital. The Prime Minister and Health Minister today visited MidCentral DHB to announce that $30 million has been allocated to upgrade its acute mental health facility. It follows earlier announcements in ...
The roll out of the National Bowel Screening Programme has reached the halfway mark, with 10 out of 20 District Health Boards now part of the programme. MidCentral DHB, which covers Palmerston North, Manawatu and surrounding districts, this week became the latest to DHB to offer free bowel screening to ...
The Government welcomes PHARMAC’s decision to fund a vaccine to protect young people from meningococcal disease from 1 December this year. “Meningococcal disease is a serious threat which people at higher risk should be protected from,” says Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter. “The combined pharmaceutical budget was increased by ...
Groups involved with innovative fisheries research projects are encouraged to apply for government support in the latest funding round from the Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures programme. Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash says the SFF Futures funding is designed to be flexible enough to support small or large projects across a ...
The Government has fixed an issue affecting how Immigration New Zealand has processed visa applications for culturally arranged marriages, which will now see a consistent process applied which ensures people with legitimate arranged marriages can visit New Zealand while also preventing any rorting of the system. Earlier this year Immigration ...
The Royal Commission into the Attacks on Christchurch Mosques will report back on 30 April 2020 to give it more time to hear submissions and consider information, Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin announced today. The Royal Commission was originally scheduled to report back to Government by 10 December 2019. “There has ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Washington DC today to attend a ministerial meeting focused on defeating ISIS, and to continue pursuing New Zealand’s trade opportunities. Mr Peters will participate in a meeting of Foreign and Defence Ministers from key countries contributing to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. ...
The recently crowned Bird of the Year, the hoiho/yellow eyed penguin, is getting a much needed helping hand alongside more than 168 other community conservation projects announced Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage today. 168 community conservation projects throughout New Zealand are benefiting from $8 million in government grants, including $500,000 ...
Controls on assault rifles and semi-automatic firearms are to be broadened to include some types of pistols, under changes to a bill currently making its way through Parliament. Police Minister Stuart Nash has tabled a Supplementary Order Paper to the Arms Legislation Bill, which is currently before a Select Committee ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark will travel to Singapore today to conduct a counterpart visit and to co-chair the third annual Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting with his counterpart, Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen. “Singapore is one of our most important defence partners in the region, and our ...
Nelson’s Salisbury School is to be rebuilt, creating a modern and suitable learning environment for students at the residential special school, Education Minister Chris Hipkins and Associate Education Minister Tracey Martin announced today. The school for girls aged 8-15, in Richmond, was earmarked for closure by National until the process ...
The panel undertaking a comprehensive review of the Resource Management Act has identified the main issues to be addressed and options for reform and is calling for feedback to inform its final report. In July the Government announced the comprehensive review of the resource management system, including the RMA - ...
An important safety valve has been added to New Zealand’s criminal justice system with the third reading of the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill today. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) will investigate claimed miscarriages of justice. “We’ve seen how our justice system can very occasionally get things spectacularly wrong, ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters welcomes the tabling of the Racing Industry Transition Agency (RITA) 2019 Annual Report in Parliament today. He says the 2019 Annual Report marks the point when New Zealand’s racing industry’s decline was arrested and a turnaround started. RITA’s 2019 Annual Report recorded an industry net profit ...
The New Zealand Government is today sending 21 firefighters to help fight the ongoing catastrophic Australian bushfires. “The fires in Australia are in some of the toughest, most challenging conditions ever,” says Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin. “As of yesterday morning, there were 100 active bushfire-related incidents across Queensland and ...
More frontline support for schools through a new education agency, as part of a redesigned Ministry of Education More support for principals and school boards including through a new centre of leadership and local leadership advisor roles New independent disputes panels for parents and students Management of school property ...
The Government’s reform of the Tomorrow’s Schools system is a watershed moment in education and an opportunity to create meaningful change for ākonga Māori and their whānau, Associate Education Minister Kelvin Davis said today. “Last year through Kōrero Mātauranga | Education Conversation, Māori teachers, parents, ākonga, whānau, hapū and iwi ...
Infrastructure Minister is welcoming the first of many updated project pipelines from the newly established New Zealand Infrastructure Commission today. The New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, Te Waihanga, has released an expanded pipeline of major capital projects – another crucial step towards delivering better infrastructure outcomes. “The first iteration of the ...
Tougher gun laws designed to improve public safety through firearms prohibition orders are proposed in a new document released for public input. Police Minister Stuart Nash says firearms prohibition orders (FPOs) would give new powers to Police to ensure high-risk individuals come nowhere near firearms. “We have already prohibited the ...
Andy Coupe has been confirmed as TVNZ’s new Board Chair. “Mr Coupe has strong commercial and capital markets experience and TVNZ has benefited from his technical knowledge of business and finance, as well as his extensive governance experience,” the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Kris Faafoi said. Andy ...
Associate Minister of Transport Julie Anne Genter today officially opened a separated pathway, following the completion of the Kaiwharawhara Stream bridge, which will improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians along Hutt Road. The $6.8m Hutt Road project provides a separated path for cycling and pedestrians, the replacement of informal parking ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today announced the appointment of career diplomat Si’alei van Toor as New Zealand’s next Ambassador to Russia. “I’m pleased to appoint Ms van Toor to this position. She brings a wealth of experience to the role having previously served as Senior Trade Adviser to the ...
The Treasury’s 2019 Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) will be released on Wednesday December 11, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Coalition Government will publish the 2020 Budget Policy Statement at the same time, outlining the priorities for Budget 2020. Further details on arrangements for the release will ...
A new initiative to better support small businesses through hands-on mentoring and advice has been launched by the Minister for Small Business. The first event in the Kiwi Business Boost series of regional workshops and online tools has been launched in Wairoa by Stuart Nash. “The Business Boost initiative combines ...
The latest Quarterly Connectivity Report shows that more and more New Zealanders are moving to Ultra-fast Broadband (UFB), with Rolleston having the highest uptake at 74 per cent, as at the end of September. “This means that nearly three quarters of Rolleston’s households and businesses have moved to ultra-fast services. ...
The passing of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill will help ensure a safe planet for our kids and grandkids, the Minister for Climate Change James Shaw said today. The landmark legislation which provides a framework to support New Zealanders to prepare for, and adapt to, the effects ...
The review of Oranga Tamariki practice around the planned uplift of a Hastings baby in May shows significant failings by the Ministry and that the planned and funded changes to shift from a child crisis service to a proper care and protection service need to be accelerated, Children’s Minister Tracey ...
Education Minister Chris Hipkins has wished students the best of luck for this year’s NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship exams which start tomorrow. Around 140,000 students will have participated in 119 NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship exams by the end of the exam period on 3 December. “I want to ...
Tim Costley National’s new candidate in Otaki Local party members have selected Tim Costley as National’s candidate in Ōtaki for the 2020 General Election. Mr Costley is replacing retiring MP Nathan Guy, who is standing down after five terms. ...
“Compelling research out of the UK reaffirms vaping’s life-saving role. Here’s hoping our Government’s pending legislation reflects vaping’s increasingly documented health benefits for smokers,” say Ben Pryor, co-owner of the largest Kiwi-owned ...
Government has announced a raft of changes to the Residential Tenancies Act. The Minister has said he does not want to be seen to unduly punishing landlords. These changes do more than punish landlords however. They will punish anyone living next ...
Democracy under Fire on Firearms Law Reform - COLFO SUNDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2019 The Government supposedly wants to “hear from all New Zealanders” about firearms law reform – unless you happen to be a licenced firearms owner. ...
From Monday 18 November New Zealand women are working for free until the end of the year because of the gender pay imbalance between men and women. ...
Award-winning investigative team Stuff Circuit is releasing its most hard-hitting documentary yet, exposing a secret the NZ Defence Force doesn’t want Kiwis to know. ...
The government has announced a suite of practical changes to the Residential Tenancies Act in its bid to make renting fairer and more secure. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happening?A number of changes to the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) has just been announced by associate minister of housing Kris ...
US Trumpian Inspired Rhetoric From Anti-Trans Group Not a Good Fit with Nz Society Trans-rights support groups around the country have been dismayed by recent divisive and repellent comments by Stand Up For Women (SUFW), a group calling itself feminist ...
Sam Brooks reviews the third season of The Crown, a show that can’t decide whether it wants to humanise the monarchy or tear it all down.This review contains very mild spoilers for world history, 1964-1977.Three seasons in, there’s no doubt that The Crown is the, well, crown jewel in Netflix’s ...
An easy, flavour-packed noodle recipe from Bounty – Cooking With Vegetables, the new cookbook from national food education charity the Garden to Table Trust.The fresh flavours of these noodles are less complex than many Thai dishes, as the simple spice paste uses just a few ingredients. If you’d rather not ...
Part 2: In this excerpt from the evidence of Sir Maarten Wevers in the High Court case of Winston Peters over his superannuation leak, the former head of the Prime Minister's Department explains what ministers should be told by public servants ...
In this excerpt from the evidence of Sir Maarten Wevers in the High Court case of Winston Peters over his superannuation leak, the former head of the Prime Minister's Department summarises our governing arrangements. ...
With the 2020 cannabis referendum fast approaching, New Zealanders have a unique opportunity to let the government know what they want from drug reform. It will then be up to our policy makers to decide whether drug reform will focus on changing outcomes for those struggling under historically racist policy.By ...
It breaks my heart to think of young queer and trans people seeing this sign, and thinking there are no spaces where they will ever belong, writes Hadassah Grace. The first time I ventured into a gay bar, I vowed never to go back.It was a vulnerable time in my life. ...
It breaks my heart to think of young queer and trans people seeing this sign, and thinking there are no spaces where they will ever belong, writes Hadassah Grace. The first time I ventured into a gay bar, I vowed never to go back.It was a vulnerable time in my life. ...
Hayden Donnell looks for inspiration and innovation on how to house the city’s future.Auckland Council’s Unitary Plan has enabled a building boom. More than 14,600 building consents were issued in the city in the year to September. Despite that, houses remain extremely expensive and out-of-reach for many first home buyers. ...
Simon Shepherd: David Seymour's euthanasia bill passed this week, and next week he will be putting the finishing touches on his next bill. Is he just a very hard-working politician or is this the longest one-person election campaign known to mankind? ...
Simon Shepherd: It's Transgender Awareness Week, the same week a feminist group, Speak Up For Women, has brought Megan Murphy from Canada to speak in New Zealand. Murphy is a radical feminist who believes trans women aren't women, views that have ...
As a follow-up to our post about police station office hours for the public and in the cause of balance, we bring positive news – or rather, we are passing on the positive news which the police delivered in a press statement, It’s all about the productivity gains achieved – it ...
Books editor Catherine Woulfe follows Wellington author Lawrence Patchett into his extraordinary story of heat and humanity and history repeating. The Burning River begins like the best kind of yarn. “Someone had been there. Someone strange. In the centre of his camp, a new circle of sooted rocks. A campfire, with ...
SPECIAL REPORT: By Philip Cass in BrisbaneMelanesian Media Freedom Forum – Day two –The second day of the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum began with praise for the work of young Pacific journalists by Professor David Robie and ended with a warning that threats to journalism in the ...
In this special episode of The Real Pod, brought to you by Nando’s, we chat to the champions of My Restaurant Rules NZ 2019.In the afterglow of Rustic Kitchen’s historic win on My Restaurant Rules NZ, Duncan and Alex got on the blower with Tyson and Denise. Then we forgot ...
Hannah Kronast attends a women’s empowerment panel focused on the huge disparities in training and employment within science and technology. In the far back left-hand corner of a women’s equality and empowerment event, a male stuck up his hand. “What can men do to help?” he asked.It was at a panel ...
Our recent Spinoff Art survey provided a snapshot on gender equality in the local art scene, but it wasn’t the full story. Anna Knox continues the conversation by asking some gallery owners and directors for their responses to our findings.The Spinoff’s survey of gender bias in visual arts found that ...
Based on their study of trans wellbeing Aotearoa, the research team at Counting Ourselves find six data points that highlight the strength of our trans and non-binary community.Last month the first comprehensive national survey on transgender health and wellbeing in Aotearoa was published by the academics and researchers at Counting ...
The SpinoffBy Dr Jaimie Veale, Jack Byrne and Ahi Wi-Hongi
Ten thousand years ago, roasted hares and figs were flat-layed on Levantine flax leaves. Now, we drape prosciutto over strawberries on computer desks. Josie Adams mourns the death of the platter.Three days ago I stumbled on an accidental recreation of a 1950s platter: a giant ham, a cake that was ...
India’s decision not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership promoted by China is politically significant. But its impact on trade and prosperity is more nuanced, as Bloomberg explains.It avoids some market opening on both sides (India to agriculture; others to services) that would have been economically beneficial. But ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra [embedded content]University of Canberra Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Geoff Crisp discusses the the week in politics the government’s response to the bush fires as well as the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action. They also talk about ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The proposed acquisition of infant formula producer Bellamy’s Australia Ltd by China Mengniu Dairy Company Limited has been given approval by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Strict, legally enforceable conditions, have been set by the treasurer, which ...
The Council of Trade Unions (CTU) is condemning the All Saints Day evening raid on 31 October. With the arrest of over 60 union organisers, human rights defenders and activists in the Philippines province of Negros. The 16th of November is an international ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Assistant professor, University of Canberra What’s happening? Suddenly, at the level of central banks, Australia is regarded as an investment risk. On Wednesday Martin Flodén, the deputy governor of Sweden’s central bank, announced that because Australia and Canada were “not ...
SPECIAL REPORT: By Philip Cass in Brisbane Opening session – Day OneThe problems of operating in the Pacific and the impact of online news and the emergence of ‘citizen journalists’ were common concerns for all delegates to this week’s Melanesian Media Freedom Forum.The forum, held at Griffith ...
Standoff between protesters and the police at Yeung Uk Road, Hong Kong. Image by Studio Incendo – 20190825 Tsuen Wan March. CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81751531.The recent surge in social protests world-wide is quantitatively and qualitatively different than in previous ages. The advent of individualised mass communications technologies and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is going to start asking internet service providers to block certain offshore gambling websites. The decision follows former New South Wales premier ...
The Zero Carbon Act (ZCA) is over a week old, but it’s still being heavily debated and analysed. After all, depending on who you listen to, it’s the most significant new law of the year, of this Government, or even of some people’s lifetime. And it deals with a giant ...
Green MP and refugee Golriz Ghahraman was there last night when the former Manus Island detainee and acclaimed writer arrived in New Zealand.Last night, quietly and without fanfare a small group made up of human rights activists, literary folk, and just two journalists, came together at Auckland Airport to welcome ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sandra D’urso, Researcher, The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne To perform an exit is not as simple as it sounds. In fact, exiting a situation can be almost impossible for some. Exit Strategies is a new production by indie performer and theatre ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niro Kandasamy, Tutor, University of Melbourne Sri Lanka’s presidential election on Saturday comes at a critical time for the country. The government has been in turmoil since President Maithripala Sirisena sacked the prime minister last year and replaced him with former strongman ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Hansen, Chief of Staff, The Conversation If you have kids, chances are you’ve worried about their presence on social media. Who are they talking to? What are they posting? Are they being bullied? Do they spend too much time on it? ...
New Zealand Police has won a prestigious World Class Policing Award for its ‘more street than station approach’ Mobility programme, which has saved millions of hours of officers’ time. ...
SEA-Unite SkyCity workers are expected to strike this weekend after 50 called in sick with symptoms linked to smoke inhalation from the convention centre fire. ...
In a powerful rebuff to critics who question whether the prime minister is willing to use her political capital, this morning she powerfully demonstrated her commitment to New Zealand culture.For two years, my professional life has been devoted to winning respect for the lowbrow, beaten-up, off-brand artefacts that truly define ...
MPs and staffers will likely begin moving out of their Bowen House offices over the next six months, so the building can undergo earthquake strengthening work. ...
The party that sold off the BNZ, NZ Rail, Petrocorp, Postbank, the Shipping Corporation, Air New Zealand, the State Insurance Office, the Tourist Hotel Corporation and a host of other New Zealand assets is at it again – with the assistance of its coalition ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trent Penman, Associate professor, University of Melbourne As sure as night follows day, this week’s bushfires prompted inevitable debate about whether fire authorities should have carried out more hazard reduction burning, and whether opposition from conservationists prevented this. There are two key ...
A new poem by writer and performer Freya Daly Sadgrove.TURDUCKEN I blow my body around like the huge clump of brown hairthat I once saw blowing up Cuba StreetI follow its movements with interestI put a video of it on the internet my favourite bragis that a groundskeeper ...
PHARMAC has backed down on a controversial drug brand switch affecting patients with epilepsy and mental health conditions after three people died following the change. ...
Tara Ward reviews Goodnight Kiwi, a new series that features well-known New Zealanders reading bedtime stories to kids. It’s strange to think that New Zealand television wasn’t always the 24-hour, infomercial-tastic extravangza that it is today. Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, our televisions used to go dark every night at ...
FIRST Union members at Countdown have ratified a new agreement that will set their supermarket team on a path towards a living wage, and significantly raise the pay of 15,000 workers across the country. ...
13 moments that prove the music awards are so much > than all other award showsBENEE cleaned up, every performance was somewhere between an eight and a ten, there was an unfeasible quantity of award presenter awkwardness and many nights ended very late. The music awards are over 50 and ...
While the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights Commission are examining whether New Zealand laws properly balance the issues of freedom of speech and hate speech (whatever that might be), taxpayers are helping to finance Chinese propaganda. Hateful propaganda, we suggest. The Screen Production Grant has handed a $243,000 subsidy to a ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Media Peter Thompson (Stuff): A new model for public media – but have the old ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (Viking Penguin $35)“Olive struggles to figure herself out, and has an urgent ...
After more than seven months of trying to end a tenancy to protect neighbours, a Rotorua property manager has finally received approval from the High Court to end the tenancy. ...
We agree with the Ombudsman Peter Boshier in his new report on councils QUOTE ; “leaders, officials lack of action to "ensure an approach is adopted that is consistent with openness and transparency" Un-quote. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1911/S00186/chief-ombudsman-new-report-wakeup-call-for-council-leaders.htm ...
Māori food systems are rich with potential, and whānau-based food producers across the country are looking to traditional ways to ensure their communities thrive in the future. Alice Neville reports from the Eat New Zealand Food Hui.In recent years there has been much talk – in food business, hospitality, tourism ...
Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) commends the Government’s proposal to take school zoning responsibilities out of the hands of school boards and principals and instead have these taken up by a new Education Service Agency. ...
SINGAPORE, Nov 15, 2019 - (ACN Newswire) - Global BioLife Inc, the U.S. subsidiary of Singapore eDevelopment Ltd (SeD), will present its 3F Antimicrobial Fragrance as a new method to prevent and treat Tuberculosis at the ASM Biothreats Conference, ...
The National Party is calling for the Auditor General to investigate a bid for tax payer money made by a forestry company set up by a senior New Zealand First figure; and an award-winning author detained on Manus Island by Australia for six years has touched down in Auckland ...
Responding to news that the Screen Production Grant handed a $243,000 subsidy to a propaganda film produced by Chinese state-owned enterprises, New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director Louis Houlbrooke says: “Taxpayers have all been made complicit ...
The campaign to take more colour coded bins into the regions has been developed by The Packaging Forum which promotes recycling under the Government’s Love NZ brand and The Auckland Litter Prevention Steering Group which manages the Be a Tidy Kiwi ...
Shane Jones calls protesting farmers 'rednecks' following rowdy march on Parliament; and top council staff 'manipulated' reports to hide bad news from councillors and public. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jodie Bradby, Professor of Physics, Australian National University There’s a lot of uncertainty in a research career. Most funding – and most jobs – are doled out by the project, or in chunks of a few years at a time. Recently, however, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Technology Sydney The Australian government has indicated that “diaspora communities” are crucial to Australia’s public diplomacy mission to promote the country abroad. It has also identified online and social media as essential ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bright, Senior Lecturer of Addiction, Edith Cowan University For many parents whose teenage children are completing Year 12, this time of year means mixed emotions. Parents might feel proud, exhausted and excited. And as young people start heading to schoolies and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heiko Timmers, Associate Professor of Physics, School of Science, UNSW Canberra, UNSW Much is made of the “next generation” of nuclear reactors in the debate over nuclear power in Australia. They are touted as safer than older reactors, and suitable for helping ...
Open mike 30/07/2014 
Open mike is your post.
Some readers may remember that I mentioned last year that I was applying for NZ citizenship. I filled out the paperwork and had my original citizenship interview in February. Everything went well until they discovered that, because I had spent five months in the US in 2017, I had not ...7 hours ago
by Deirdre O’Neill It is becoming quite acceptable for certain sections of the left to declare that people like me – women who are ‘gender critical’ – should not be allowed in leftist or anarchist spaces. Leaving aside the arrogance and implicit authoritarianism of this claim, its lack of critical ...8 hours ago
There is an article in The Conversation, written by Jeremy P. Shapiro (Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University), about what he sees as the psychologically-based underpinnings of three main matters that seem to vex people all around the planet. The article is titled “The Thinking ...1 day ago
. . Blogger Martyn Bradbury has won his case against unreasonable search and surveillance against the NZ Police; and subsequent Police attempts to produce evidence in secrecy, in a closed Court. His case highlights a disturbing growing trend in Aotearoa New Zealand for State power to be used against ...2 days ago
That's the only response to the findings of the Ombudsman's investigation into LGOIMA practices at the Christchurch City Council:My investigation identified serious concerns about the Council’s leadership and culture, and its commitment to openness and transparency. In particular, Council staff raised concerns with me about various methods employed by some ...2 days ago
Different Strokes: If a multicultural immigration policy imposes no obligation on immigrant communities to acknowledge and ultimately embrace their host nation’s most cherished traditions and values, then how is that nation to prevent itself from being reduced to a collection of inward-looking and self-replicating ethnic and cultural enclaves?THE COALITION GOVERNMENT’S ...2 days ago
Recently more than 150 post-graduate students and young scientists presented an open letter to the Green Party via The Spinoff, encouraging them to reconsider their position on genetic modification. Their target is tackling climate change issues.[1] Can any party continue to be dismissive about genetic modification (GM) contributing to ...3 days ago
by The Council of Disobedient Women In her excellent oral submission to the Abortion reform select committee on 31st October on behalf of Otago University’s Department of Public Health, historian and public health researcher Hera Cook stated: “We would ask that the committee not use the term ‘pregnant persons’ and ...5 days ago
6 days ago
If FFNZ really put their faith in “Top Medical Journals” they would now be amending their billboards to recognise new research results. Image from FFNZ but updated to agree with the latest research. ... 1 week ago
And to think he gave all the potential goodwill away with that moronic, cult-like statement (repeated ad nauseam by many National hardliners) that Key is quite simply “the greatest PM we ever had”…
Installation complete: this was nothing ... 2 weeks ago
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First backs the public to decide on the End of Life Choice Bill via a referendum at the 2020 General Election. The Bill, with New Zealand First’s referendum provision incorporated, passed its final reading in Parliament this evening. New Zealand First Spokesperson for ...3 days ago
"Today we have made a choice that will leave a legacy... I hope that means that future generations will see that we, in New Zealand, were on the right side of history." - Jacinda Ardern, Third Reading of the Zero Carbon Bill ...1 week ago
The Government has delivered on its promise to the over one million New Zealanders who now rent to make it fairer and more secure, Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing) Kris Faafoi has announced today. Both renters and landlords will benefit from the suite of practical changes to the Residential ...6 hours ago
Tim Costley National’s new candidate in Otaki Local party members have selected Tim Costley as National’s candidate in Ōtaki for the 2020 General Election. Mr Costley is replacing retiring MP Nathan Guy, who is standing down after five terms. ...2 hours ago
Green Party MP Gareth Hughes first entered Parliament in 2010. ...6 hours ago
The government has announced a suite of practical changes to the Residential Tenancies Act in its bid to make renting fairer and more secure. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happening?A number of changes to the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) has just been announced by associate minister of housing Kris ...8 hours ago
Many fund managers are overconfident and the public buy the illusion. ...11 hours ago
Part 2: In this excerpt from the evidence of Sir Maarten Wevers in the High Court case of Winston Peters over his superannuation leak, the former head of the Prime Minister's Department explains what ministers should be told by public servants ...13 hours ago
In this excerpt from the evidence of Sir Maarten Wevers in the High Court case of Winston Peters over his superannuation leak, the former head of the Prime Minister's Department summarises our governing arrangements. ...13 hours ago
New Zealand's coroners learnt lessons of cultural competency and communication from March 15. ...13 hours ago
As a follow-up to our post about police station office hours for the public and in the cause of balance, we bring positive news – or rather, we are passing on the positive news which the police delivered in a press statement, It’s all about the productivity gains achieved – it ...1 day ago
SPECIAL REPORT: By Philip Cass in Brisbane Melanesian Media Freedom Forum – Day two – The second day of the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum began with praise for the work of young Pacific journalists by Professor David Robie and ended with a warning that threats to journalism in the ...1 day ago
"I rang the ambulance service then went to the shed": a new short story by a master of the form, Oamaru writer Owen Marshall. ...2 days ago
India’s decision not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership promoted by China is politically significant. But its impact on trade and prosperity is more nuanced, as Bloomberg explains. It avoids some market opening on both sides (India to agriculture; others to services) that would have been economically beneficial. But ...2 days ago
Phil Goff warns of further city centre chaos as City Rail Link project enters stage three. ...2 days ago
PHARMAC has backed down on a controversial drug brand switch affecting patients with epilepsy and mental health conditions after three people died following the change. ...2 days ago
The National Party is calling for the Auditor General to investigate a bid for tax payer money made by a forestry company set up by a senior New Zealand First figure; and an award-winning author detained on Manus Island by Australia for six years has touched down in Auckland ...2 days ago
Shane Jones calls protesting farmers 'rednecks' following rowdy march on Parliament; and top council staff 'manipulated' reports to hide bad news from councillors and public. ...2 days ago
If you are still needing a reason to vote Green, here is evidence of why we need to act on climate change urgently.
What do we want to leave for our children and grandchildren?
“Southern Alps snow, ice vanishing
Retreating glaciers and uncovered rocks evidence of swift change in climate with implications for sea level.
A third of the permanent snow and ice on the Southern Alps has vanished in less than four decades, according to an analysis of aerial surveys.
In an article published on Australian website The Conversation, three Kiwi researchers describe the story of the alps’ disappearing ice as very dramatic.
The analysis, by climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger, Otago University Professor Emeritus Blair Fitzharris and glaciologist Dr Trevor Chinn, follows on from a paper published by Dr Chinn last year documenting the retreat of our postcard glaciers.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11301095
“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children”
+100…
Compared with the now unstoppable collapse of the West Antartic Ice Sheet, the ice disappearing from the Southern Alps is piffling. And there is nothing the Greens can do about either even if they had a 100% majority in Parliament so you might as well vote National, grab your share of the money-go-round and party while you still can.
http://time.com/96173/antarctic-glacier-loss-is-unstoppable-study-says
There are things that can be done to mitigate disasters.
For example I live in a coastal area and yet there are still people building substantial houses and businesses within metres of a coastline that has issues with eroding storm damage . People who invest their money into buildings and businesses on the coastline complain bitterly about RMA regulations yet are the first to go crying to Council to fix the problem when a storm occurs. This type of behaviour costs Councils a lot of time and money and I repeat: the people conducting themselves in such ways are the same people who are not prepared to create distance between the shoreline and their buildings from the outset. It is bloody ridiculous.
“There are things that can be done to mitigate disasters.” – Blue leopard.
Go tell it to the President.
US President B. M. Obama, 14/6/2014
“[S]ince this is a very educated group, you already know the science. Burning fossil fuels release carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide traps heat. Levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere are higher than they’ve been in 800,000 years. …
We know the trends. The 18 warmest years on record have all happened since you graduates were born. We know what we see with our own eyes. Out West, firefighters brave longer, harsher wildfire seasons; states have to budget for that. Mountain towns worry about what smaller snowpacks mean for tourism. Farmers and families at the bottom worry about what it will mean for their water. In cities like Norfolk and Miami, streets now flood frequently at high tide. Shrinking icecaps have National Geographic making the biggest change in its atlas since the Soviet Union broke apart.So the question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science, accumulated and measured and reviewed over decades, has put that question to rest. The question is whether we have the will to act before it’s too late. For if we fail to protect the world we leave not just to my children, but to your children and your children’s children, we will fail one of our primary reasons for being on this world in the first place."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/14/1307018/-President-Obama-s-remarks-at-UC-Irvine-commencement-ceremony
US President B. M. Obama, 17/7/2014
“As part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy to continue to expand safe and responsible domestic energy production, BOEM…today announced that the bureau will offer more than 21 million acres offshore Texas for oil and gas exploration and development in a lease sale that will include all available unleased areas in the Western Gulf of Mexico Planning Area.”
http://www.boem.gov/press07172014a
Do you wonder that I’ve given up?
You shouldn’t solely base your views on what America is doing. They are screwed politically just now.
We are a much smaller country with a different political system (namely our voting system). We have more opportunity to get a shift happening. The more countries, such as ourselves, that take rational stances toward the problem – the more pressure there will be on America and other more captured countries to make a shift.
“The more countries, such as ourselves, that take rational stances toward the problem – the more pressure there will be on America and other more captured countries to make a shift.”
Er, yeah. Like Europe’s Green powerhouse Germany, now importing coal from the USA to burn for power generation so it can abandon nice ‘clean’ nuclear.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/on_the_road_to_green_energy_germany_detours_on_dirty_coal/2769
But my original point in response to the thread starter was that voting Green in New Zealand isn’t going to make any difference to the loss of snow and ice on the Southern Alps as that problem doesn’t originate in New Zealand.
“The more countries, such as ourselves, that take rational stances toward the problem – the more pressure there will be on America and other more captured countries to make a shift.”
And exactly how many countries are taking that rational stance? China, India, the EU, Australia.
The hot air emanating from politicians about tackling Global Warming is just adding to the problem.
@ Tom Bradford
Great article you linked to there. It was really informative, thanks.
Yes your original point was that voting Greens wasn’t going to make any difference to the snow and ice loss on the Southern Alps and I responded by saying that having a Greener approach works on many different levels for example as it stands the RMA, which has really good guidelines for mitigating disaster, is being undermined by our current government. This means that people are less likely to be personally affected by the very real issues that are likely to arise in the not so distant future due to climate and pollution issues. Their behaviour and attitudes, therefore, don’t change and this not only means any sea-level rise will cause more disruption than it needs to, it also lowers peoples’ awareness of the issue and drops any pressure for change on a larger scale.
I am not too informed about what countries are taking strong actions on the issue of climate change (hopefully someone who is will jump in … Jenny? I am vaguely aware of perhaps Scandinavian countries, maybe the Netherlands? doing well with greener technology) – it is a pity to hear that about Germany re coal – however that article does indicate that they haven’t given up and perhaps see the use of coal as a way of avoiding nuclear power while they certainly sound like they are investing a lot into finding alternatives. So it is not like they have given up on their aim.
When countries become successful with Greener technologies – they are bound to catch on. We have an opportunity to be part of that process. Moreso than larger countries.
One thing for sure – simply following those countries that are captured by big money and are accordingly not making sincere efforts in that regard certainly won’t address the issue. Nor will defeatism.
Your logic is flawed Tom, if you really believe nothing can be done – Then you should have not commented here, and should be sniffing coke off Keys ass.
“..and should be sniffing coke off Keys ass…”
heh..!
I don’t believe nothing CAN be done. I strongly suspect nothing WILL be done, until it is far too late to prevent disaster. After all, we are already locked in to a 2 – 5’c temperature rise and a minimum 15ft sea-level rise and what has actually been done to ameliorate worse?.
However I’m sorry my expressed opinion disturbed the harminious circle-wank you clearly come here for and won’t waste my time putting up alternative views that might frighten the horses, as I don’t come to The Standard to be insulted.
There are others that express similar concerns on the Standard that you have, Tom – I hope you don’t get completely put off commenting here. I enjoy a variety of opinions as I am sure others do too.
I don’t think that staying down at 2C by the end of the century has about as much hope of happening as a icicle has of surviving the night in hell. Pretty much on track for about 4C or higher and I’d be assuming something closer to 15 metres sea level rise than 5 metres after the WAIS starts getting undercut and lubricated. I suspect from the previous deglaciation evidence, that once it starts, it is very fast emptying the basin area of ice and a bit slower after that.
But those are pretty minor provided you don’t live in the tropics, on an atoll or in a coastal plain like Bangladesh. They take time enough for people to adapt.
It is the rapid weather pattern shifts that are going to be much more problematic. Those will impact directly on to food production. They will do so much earlier than sea level rises or heat prostration. Most people fail to understand exactly how reliant we as a civilization are on the settled weather of the current interglacial in our farming practices.
Nigel Latta on the ‘The New Haves And Have Nots’
Good to see a discussion about inequality
http://tvnz.co.nz/nigel-latta/s1-ep4-video-6025283
I dont normally warm to much to Latta, but I thought that program last night was excellant if you still vote National after watching this program you have to be a loaf short of a picnic.
I am not usually a fan of Nigel Latta either but this time he made a great job of presenting the realities of the huge difference between the haves and the havenots. Since Key English are in denial about this, no doubt they will be very angry little boys. TVNZ please explain!
http://tvnz.co.nz/nigel_latta/video
+100 Nigel Latta is a good guy
Just keep him away from all that “darklands” nonsense.
lol +1 agree!
Some very interesting responses to his programme on face book. Like what Paula Benefit wrote in the Vic Uni magazine in 1996
I was impressed with Nigel Latta’s show – very good indeed. I also share others’ misgivings of Mr Latta – but this show is really something else. Exciting to witness something so informative on TV.
Thanks Nigel Latta and the team that made it.
whyte doing his race-baiting rant on tvnz..
..the man is unintelligible….
..he makes shearer look like a lucid speaker/wordsmith…
..and every appearance whyte makes..
..just confirms how much of an odious-oink he actually is…
Yep odious describes him well.
Just saw this and although so, so, many worthy topics of discussion it is imo important and shocking
http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/10324082/Racist-casting-claim-for-Ridley-Scotts-Exodus
check out this tweet – it really is blatant and it is also rewriting history
https://twitter.com/TheeSouthside/status/493509410288041985/photo/1
I am SICK of politicians claiming we should treat everyone the same “under the law” and that is why Maori shouldn’t get Maori seats of whatever. The TREATY of Waitangi is (arguably I know) a legal document. It is “under the law”
A partnership agreement made when Maori were 99% of the population and the british 1%. NOW that our dominance is assured, it’s a piece of law, an agreement that group, and others don’t want any more.
Have some honour
Many of us white folk seem to choose to forget the incredible generosity of the Maori folk back in 1840. Im not to sure that it was 99/1 but there were certainly way more Maori being generous than there were English receiving it at the time.
No doubt, there was an area of misunderstanding between the parties, as to what the other interpreted it to mean (each side interpreting it by their own culture) but that did not excuse the wrongs that were subsequently done to the Maori people.
When you do a wrong, you need to put it right. Hence the Waitangi Tribunal.
contra proferentum my friend. its all allowed for under the law.
Contra proferentem (Latin: “against [the] offeror”),[1] also known as “interpretation against the draftsman”, is a doctrine of contractual interpretation providing that, where a promise, agreement or term is ambiguous, the preferred meaning should be the one that works against the interests of the party who provided the wording.[2] The doctrine is often applied to situations involving standardized contracts or where the parties are of unequal bargaining power, but is applicable to other cases.[3] However, the doctrine is not directly applicable to situations where the language at issue is mandated by law, as is often the case with insurance contracts and bills of lading.[4] wiki
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/graph/36364/maori-and-european-population-numbers-1840-1881
+11111 Tracey – I was not happy when Dame Susan Devoy was appointed Race Relations Commissioner. She did say though that she had a bit of catching up/reading to do about what had gone before, but she certainly has ripped into the ACT leader’s comments and rightly so.http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11301500
Goodness me, first Nigel Latta and now Dame Susan – whoever next.
I imagineshe has learned stuff, like facts, since taking up the position. Previously she, like others only tuned into shallow rhetoric and thought it was “true”
You’ll have to point out to me in the Treaty where is says anything about Maori seats. The Maori Representation Act 1867 was a bribe to Crown loyalists during the land wars and now seem only to exist to prop up National and maybe get Kim Dotcom influence in Parliament.
go read it..
and then we have that racist piece of shit on tvone breakfast..rawdon christie..
..with his blond sidekick..
..defending/(translating?) whyes’ racist diatribe..
..’he’s got a point there’..
(the only point whyte has..is his fucken conehead..)
..and then reading out emails from aggrieved-whites who have suffered from these excessive privileges maori enjoy..(!)..(who fucken knew..?..eh.?..)
..and after reading out an email noting the 150 yrs of maori having their land stolen etc..
..’rawdy’ airily waves his hand..and sneers:..’that’s looking back’…
..just who is the bigger odious-oink..?..whyte or christie..?
whyte accused Guyon of being “all over the place.”
Whyte was the one very much all over the place. Incoherent!
Seems to have done the trick about getting publicity though. Winston even joined in the fun.
yeah..if yr happy about that ‘publicity’ being widespread laughing-at/piss-taking…
..confirmation of what an inarticulate-idiot whyte is..
..i mean..cd the man give instructions on how to get to a bus-stop..?
..without thoroughly confusing the listener..?
not quite – even though i disagree with winston he was far more articulate and he fired some shots at act and nat at the same time
all jamie whyte power did was further confirm hes not very smart – just like most racists
Jamie Whyte wasn’t much better on RNZ this morning. Again, Espiner was asking some good questions. A nice surprise.
Oh I do like listening to jamie Whyte. He is so articulate and you always know what he stands for. The people of Epsom must be jumping up and down with joy at having him represent them in parliament. /sarc.
The people of Epsom must be saying oh fuuuucccckkkkkkk. Oh why, do we have these fools foisted on us by TricKey.
whyte is not the act candidate..he is the party ‘president’..
..(what do you call ‘the president’ of such a small motley-crew as act..?..delusional..?..)
..the actual candidate is a super-dweeb called seymour..
..and yet they keep him well under wraps..(since those unfortunate junping out from behind hedges and scaring people..and video-taping it..episodes..)
..and they wheel whyte out for act public-appearances….because he handles the media better..?..(!)..
(a talent-pool as deep as a petrie-dish..)
..seymour is walking proof of the dictum..’keep them wondering..!..don’t open yr mouth..and prove what an idiot you are!’..
..those lucky lucky epsom-voters…!..eh..?
..aren’t they spoilt..?
Whtye is on the ACT list, and he will get into parliament if any red buttons are found and pushed.
Unfortunately even the richest people are seeing that National no longer is representing their interests. Wealth can be undermined, by boardrooms, by market failures but also by governments undermine the society that underwrites the whole economy.
Why would a wealthy person want to support others to get wealthy, cheat on their taxes, get incentives than undermine their consumers buying power, etc, etc. Its just dumb to want tax cuts, its socialism for the rich, an easy rich for those who are supposed to make their wealth by hard work, or harder risk taking.
National is corrupted by its neo-liberal ideological heart. I still can’t find an example of this high minimum wages causes job loses ideal, the closest I can find is a slave economy, where slave owners raise the amount of money they give the slaves. The slaved then buy themselves out of slavery and push up the unemployment numbers.
Jamie Whyte is not standing as a candidate in Epsom so the people there won’t have him represent them.
But if Act get enough party votes he will get in won’t he?
Yes but you can hardly claim he is representing Epsom in that situation.
well apart from the fact that its only because of epsom he would be there
Then the same would apply to Laila Harre and Te Tai Tokerau if she gets in as a result of Hone winning that seat.
indeed.
Are any parties intentionally throwing the TTT electorate campaign in order to get an overhang on their side? No?
Epsom must be proud.
i have to wonder then Gosman why the pathetic racially divisive idiot is then given airtime anywhere on the TeeVee or my wireless,
The 7 Maori electorates, in my opinion, being a physical manifestation of Tinorangatiratanga, would suggest that until such time as Maori enrolled to vote in such electorates agree to not have them they will be a major feature of our political landscape…
Because it is newsworthy apparently. Winston and Tariana Turia also thought so as they both commented on the subject.
Nah Gos, the people of Epsom understand personal responsibility, surely?
just like they understand the rule of law, contract law and property rights 🙂
for a party that is chock full of crims, doesnt want to honour legal contracts and wants to remove property rights from a group of people, they have some funny policies
ACT’s Whyte is in some ways correct, Maori do have a legal privilege here in Aotearoa/New Zealand,
Its called the Treaty of Waitangi and the only racial problem ever created from the existence of this legal privilege was in fact the ignoring of its provisions once the colonials got the upper hand militarily over the tribal Maori nations…
Interesting that the Treaty is considered a “race” based document. It is between the chiefs and tribes of NZ and the Crown. The former are the owners of property and property rights allowing usage over the same. It just so happens that these “owners” and “sellers” happened to be Maori, the “buyers” non Maori. Under British law we are talking property rights that are inherited by through genealogical linkage. Is that “race” based?
Watch out. Auckland home owners, surely, could argue that they have special treasure in the liveability of Auckland and so stop the councils from raising the building heights.
There was a lilt in his voice, an inflection that screamed out loud and clear his class position: there was an assumed authority that underlined the former. In short a privileged prat. He sounded like Don Brash Mark 2.
His logic on race was quite precise: which all goes to prove that a logical argument can be made for anything in isolation. That in a nutshell is where ACT are, ideologically logical in isolation of any facts or realities that challenge their dogma.
I hope someone takes the time soon, live, to destroy Unclecousin’s facile conceit that his sophistry qualifies as philosophy, while he splutters and rages like the lying entitled wretch he is.
@ oan..
..tidily put…
Precisely:
That being despite all the evidence proving that it’s farming that is ruining our waterways.
How fascinating. You appear to regard people with Don Brash’s “class position” as being privileged prats.
Presumably you regard David Cunliffe as being a “privileged prat” also. After all Don’s father was a Presbyterian Minister and David’s an Anglican one. Both apparently favoured the Labour Party. Hard to see any difference really.
One would have to say they come from the same class, wouldn’t one?
@ alwyn 3.10
How fascinating. That you have not noticed that people from the same class can behave in a variety of ways. There is a general behaviour that people adopt within a class system, with extremes at the fringes. So David Cunliffe can be different from Don Brash on that basis.
Then within each church referred to there are differing attitudes to achieving righteousness. If Don’s parents were Calvinists and David’s were from the liberal side of the Anglican church they would be quite different in their outlooks, though they would be aware of the attitudes likely coming from those positions. The Anglicans have a broad church – the Presbyterians inclined to be more demanding to be worthy of heaven.
The whole core of the rich prick class brought in by Thatcher, was of a socialist party for the rich, and privatizism for the everyone else. They’re the rich so they can cheat on their taxes, and force our taxes up while screaming how we aren’t paying enough.
ACT is not a libertarian party. Its a socialist elite party. Nearest thing a western country comes to a communist politburo. Always dictating how others aren’t shaping up.
gw
Yes alwyn is really fascinating. My god I think DC and DB have the same size shoes too.
“One would have to say they come from the same class, wouldn’t one?’ (No one wouldn’t).
Isn’t torylogic great.
Can you perhaps tell me how the class they come from is different?
Just what class do you think each one was born into if it isn’t the same one?
Claiming say that the Presbyterian church is a higher class than the Anglican which in turn is higher than The Salvation Army which is higher than the Baptist doesn’t really cut it.
Brash became a commercial – a blind servant of mammon – 2nd class. Cunliffe seems to subscribe to a notion of public service that resembles to some degree the synthetic ideals of Hutcheson. As an accountant Brash may have had some virtue, as a statesman he had none. You might also consider Brash’s degree (Canterbury?) vs Cunliffe’s (Harvard?).
I suppose I could consider Don Brash’s degrees, since you have no idea.
Canterbury BA and MA in Economics. That’s economics, not accounting.
ANU PhD. That is a more highly rated University than any of the NZ ones.
Cunliffe has one economics qualification I suppose. A diploma from Massey.
Doesn’t really seem much does it?
Did Brash learn his racism at ANU? The university at which someone gets their qualifications has very little to do with how well they do in their chosen career. I’ve seen many examples of this.
But I have, greywarbler, I have. It was ennui who appears to regard peoples behaviour as being due to the class into which they were born. If you are born in one class he seems to think your behaviour is pre-ordained.
I think that Don and Dave were born into a very similar class background. It didn’t really matter though. Whatever class Don came from I think he would always have been successful and would have contributed greatly to New Zealand, particularly as he did from his time as Reserve Bank Governor. David Cunliffe on the other hand was always going to be a prat.
I will take your word for the religious attitudes of the various churches. I regard all those who profess to believe in a god as being idiots. You are allowed to take the easy way out and say, as Helen Clark did, that you are an agnostic, or come out and say you are an atheist. Anything else is for people who believe in fairies.
Greywarbler – in defence of some Presbyterian friends I have, it is also a fairly broad church. Standard Calvinism is pretty rigid stuff, but my friends (one a reverend) have been in favour of “worldly” things like gay marriage and marijuana legalisation for years. My impression was that it was broader than the Anglicans, with some of the more traditional Anglicans being able to swap easily to Catholicism.
@ Murray Olsen 1.43
Trying to classify religions as I did was a mistake. I remember now one interesting book by I think, a chap Greenwood, which referred to the high Anglican church and its rites being so near Catholicism, setting its style apart from the practice of the major part of the church. Actually there are some quite good crime stories that weave religious practices and styles in and it is a fascinating theme within the genre.
And alwyn I think you are looking down on the goings on of pollies, while I am the reverse, looking up. And I see Don Brash as a prat who probably got too much praise at school for being precise and clever while never learnign much about actual human behaviour, and David Cunliffe as being successful, highly trained, experienced and yet human-oriented, less statistical and theory biased and more ground-based than Brash.
I don’t like fervent idealists and theory based, utopian followers whether its in economic theory squeezing life to comply, or socially based humanitarian ones who announce the world belongs to the people in fervent tones, or knock-it-all-down and rebuild fresh and new stirrers, or religious ones whose hymn is I Did it my Way, and there is no other, and anyway it is the next life that counts. A pox on all their houses.
John Key says that water quality is not that bad, all it means is that we can’t swim in some rivers on some days.
Show us the money John. It’s your policy, so you should understand the costs by now. Tell us which rivers and which days. Or is it more like which catchments and which months or seasons?
Fish and Game sound really unimpressed by the government on this issue.
As am I.
Paul Fish & Game are so unimpressed that they have (collectively as a Council that is) called for Nick Smith’s resignation – the resignation of their very own Minister.
And these are sensible calm rational people (the f&g folk that is, not smith of course)
National, firstly they bought us carless days now its rivers we cant swim in. Time for real change.
Fantastic cartoon by Murdoch in the Press this morning showing Nick Smith at a restaurant refusing a glass of water “strained lovingly through cows” while he eats fish.
Someone described this as not the “rock star economy” but the “pollution economy”, which is most apt. John Key’s pollution economy.
And Tom Scott in the Dom, Nick screaming that no one will get away with accusing him of bullying!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/cartoons/
Given the newspaper rage aimed at Mr Cunliffe about the Liu affair, does it seem strange that newspapers seem to have almost avoided the clean water/Smith issue?
OOps. Found some items in the Newspapers today though muted criticism of Old Nick.
I think the swimming in Hawaii is great. Key probably wonders why people dont just there on holidays to swim.
I want to see on what days Key and his family are prepared to swim in which rivers?
From my wireless, RadioNZ National, 550+ pack out the hall at the Rotorua InternetMana roadshow, the sniff of 5% of the vote for InternetMana i had last week just got as pungent as that from one of the many mud-pools up there in Waiariki,
Those numbers say to me Annette Sykes will be the new Member of Parliament for that electorate, the tangi for the Maori Party begins….
Clarification from yesterdays open mike
I posted this
“Actor Cliff Curtis has become the latest celebrity to publicly declare support for the Mana Movement.” http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10320814/Cliff-Curtis-supports-Mana
today this
“But Curtis today clarified his position, saying that “while I respect my cousin Annette Sykes’ commitment in engaging in the political process, I do not endorse or support any political party”.” http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/10324758/Cliff-Curtis-denies-Mana-support
Hope that’s all sorted now 🙂
Not to split hairs but the second piece was published yesterday and last updated at 18:58 and not today. It was also on TV3’s site at 5:44p.m.
lol thanks allen
No worries Mars, I know you’re a stickler for accuracy and stuff.
“someone” should not have put Curtis in the media mix till he had at least fronted the event. Always easier to let a cat out of the bag than add one.
I don’t know the inside story here yet, but do know that there are a number of whanau still split along Mana/Māori Party lines that take it seriously which is why Hone was still reaching out for some kind of rapprochement last year.
Curtis is just doing a nice turn of supporting his bollocks with a fence rail.
And now for the next act… surprise surprise folks … (drum roll) … bring you hands together for Simon Bridges…… (applause) … our latest LIAR from John Key’s government.
Yesterday Bridges admitted spending $240,000 on oil execs in NZ for the rugby world cup
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10326838/Oil-exec-junket-needed-Govt
The result?… is this … “Only one of those companies had so far been granted a petroleum exploration permit but had committed to spending almost $20 million here,”
BUT folks here is the clanger, the lie, the deceit and the dishonesty that you have all been waiting for …… I give you again …. Siiiimmon Bridgeessssss…. (applause) …
“But Energy Minister Simon Bridges defended the spending: “the sums expended were very modest …. and has resulted in billions of dollars of international investment in New Zealand.”
…. ta daa
$20million the reality
$billions the liar claims.
Simon Bridges please take your place alongside all the other liars in your government….
(the audience is nearly all gone at this point …)
Yep, six oil companies, that’s a 40 grand piss up, accommodation, and, you can just about bet with certainty free tickets to the rugby for each of those oil companies, only one of which has taken up the right to explore here, all paid for by us the taxpayers,
i wonder if that was one executive per company that such largesse was bestowed upon by Slippery’s National Government, if so, the expense would suggest that they got flown around the country on one very long drunken tour of our rugby stadia,
Meanwhile, those of us living life within the small means brushed our way as crumbs off of the table got to watch ‘live’ from the big screens at the pub…
Chevron, Statoil, Apache and? ??
I’m pretty sure these three companies will make investment decisions on factors other than sychophantic governments. A nice presentation to the Boards would have done the trick if NZ had solid investment potential. I’ keen toknow whhether thre other three companies are established players or cowboy companies. Also if any of them operate here already, or have up sticks and left.
This is a nice touch at the end:
Yes, let’s point out what taxes are for, while somehow implying that if not for oil exploration we’d not have roads, schools and hospitals.
Yes clever clogs, well aware of the place of the mining and oil sector in NZ …. but you missed the deception. The point of the comment was not the place of oil and mining, it was the dishonesty of Simon Bridges…. can you see it here?
“the sums expended were very modest …. and has resulted in billions of dollars of international investment “
Yes, I can, I was being sarcastic about the need to include that tidbit at the end.
oh woops so you were – burning the candles at all ends makes for weary brain. Time for time out.
And if we didnt spend 250k wining and dining they would walk away from their drills…
And remember this Government buying votes for the Security Council bid with junkets to NZ/Queenstown.
question for the day:
..can john banks drive..talk on cellphone..and pick ‘n eat earwax…at the same time..?
i was just about to indulge in my favorite breakfast when i read that, 2 toasts, i each with a swipe of marmite and peanut butter, both then lashed with guacamole,
Think i might wait for your image of Banks indulging in His dogs dinner to fade…
sounds like a yummy breakfast…i also have avocado on my toast when i can ….what about the black coffee?
just read pu’s comment …disguisting….glad i have finished my vege/peanut butter toast
That’s my standard munch at breakfast Chooky, laugh, six months ago i had never even made guacamole now its become a staple replacing butter or margarine which are both off the menu here,(and strangely enough not missed at all),
i have just moved to supplying myself with milk for $1.20 a liter via buying in the skim milk powder and purchasing a couple of liter bottles with screw top lids which resemble the milk bottles of my hugely misspent youth,(takes all of five minutes to mix, and is best accomplished by mixing half the liter and then leaving overnight for the froth from the shaking to dissipate),
Soy milk which tastes yummy has been put through my testing regime and found wanting in a number of areas including cost,(anyone thinking of shifting to obtaining their milk via powder should buy the kilo pack as there is no savings involved from buying the smaller packages)…
Well you could put your sign out as a local breakfast cafe as far as i am concerned! …breakfast is the meal of the day i enjoy most i think ( probably because i havent eaten for a while….food tastes so much better on an empty stomach)
Lolz, i have a breakfast menu, including a couple of slices of one of the poor little piggies rear end that is the ultimate in Delish, works as dinner as well…
…you won’t be arguing with Phillip over breakfast then!
..once when I was in an isolated fish and chip shop with my 8 year old son a Mongrel Mob looking guy walked in and my 8 year old red head said “Mum, what do people taste like?”….the Mongrel Mob guy looked interested ….I said “I dont know but your sister would!”…there was the teenage daughter cool as a cucumber …she would have scared any Mongrel Mob!…the guy smiled ever so slightly…I said “I have heard people taste a bit like bacon that is why they were called ‘long pig’ ”
Maybe some NACTS will come knocking at your door and you could have them in for breakfast
Just watched BamBam on the Whitehouse Lawn “givin them damned godless Ruskies” a tongue lashing. Absolute pity about the whole thing was that nothing he said could be backed up by solid evidence, it was all be implication. What the limp rag Uncle Tom was announcing was more sanctions against Russia on behalf of US corporate energy and agricultural corporates. The Russians of course are better placed because they don’t have to rely upon “faith” in the Greenback..they have the real oil and gas that Europe so desperately needs. Merkel wont risk German wealth just to help out a US oil company that cant supply her industry.
Somehow I think the whole issue is going to blow up in our faces with much higher oil prices: the timing is such a pit because along with the drop in dairy receipts, pressure on petrol prices might just have given Key and his cronies a massive electoral headache.
Uncle Tom….
really ?
The election of a “black” President does not seem to have done any good for “his” people. One can only surmise that Obama is powerless to change the way things are for African Americans OR he does not care. Both would be Uncle Tom traits.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/03/obama-african-americans-paradox
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/28/these-seven-charts-show-the-black-white-economic-gap-hasnt-budged-in-50-years/
http://blackagendareport.com/content/expansion-black-american-misery-under-barack-obama%E2%80%99s-watch
To say that Obama doesnt care is pretty harsh. To say that on the important stuff, he doesnt actually have much of a say, would be far more accurate.
The things he did push, like ObamaCare (he promised “You can keep your existing plan”) may or may not have been a good policy move, but its upsetting a bunch of his middle income voters who already had an existing plan and couldnt keep it, despite the promise.
Those who got cover for the first time, were overwhelmingly likely to support the Democratic nominee in any case.
Laila Harre is standing in Helensville for the Internet/Mana Party.
Hopefully, this will encourage Prime Minister John Key to participate in Helensville electorate candidate debates.
I look forward to voters who support candidates who are members of political parties, giving them their PARTY vote, and giving me their ELECTORATE vote as the (fiercely) Independent MP for Helensville.
All good!
Penny Bright
http://www.dodgyjohnhasgone.com
It will confirm Key as a no show in Hellensville. WHY would he debate he has won that seat.
“nternet Mana leader Laila Harre will take on Prime Minister John Key in the Helensville electorate.
Harre says she wants to debate Key at candidate meetings and says he has “some explaining to do.”
Key had a 21,000 majority at the last election and has held the seat since 2002.
“I want to wake New Zealanders up from the anaesthetic trance that John Key has induced with his soothing words,” Harre said.
A spokesman for Key said, “the Prime Minister has said Ms Harre is free to stand wherever she likes.” “
Why would he waste his time.
You capture Key’s arrogance quite well..
with his electorate? – beats me too – its not like he lives there or ever visits is it
Yet people know this and are still happy to vote for him in overwhelming numbers.
Accountability?
+100 Penny …Go Girl!
Penny! Don’t stand in Helensville . You and Laila will split the left vote and allow John Key to come through the middle. Yeah Nah.
That would be about 20 votes each would it?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10324092/Peters-No-deal-with-Maori-Mana
Do keep up will ya.
So, Slippery the Prime Minister has spun the roulette wheel and bet the ‘House’ on Winston Peters, that’s some gamble from the money trader who in His former life always got to play the game with the deck having been previously stacked by the bigger money boys on the floors of the ‘trading house’ above,
There’s a huge prospect in play here where NZFirst and Colon’s Conservatives become entwined in a lose/lose battle for party vote %’s each chiseling not only votes from each other but crucially nibbling at the soft rump of the National Governments own party vote,
A minus for NZFirst in September will be the loss of support from those who in election 2011 voted for that party solely on the basis that Slippery the PM ruled Peters out of inclusion in a National coalition, and, in the chess game of MMP politics voted as a ‘check’, which incidently nearly became ‘check-mate’, to ensure National as all the media polls were suggesting at the time, could not ‘Govern alone’,
Unfortunately this ‘tactical vote’ which helped NZFirst re-enter the Parliament in 2011 cannot be measured, but, my opinion says, a 3% Conservative vote along with the loss of that 2011 ‘tactical vote’ will see NZFirst fall again, as the party did in 2008, agonizing short of the 5%,
If Anette Sykes wins Waiariki, and, last nights standing room only InternetMana meeting in that electorate has me giving Her a 70/30 advantage over the dying Maori Party’s Flavell there, then Nationals chances of forming a third term Government look even more remote,
Kick ACT from Epsom and/or Dunne from Ohariu and it becomes virtually impossible for the Tory’s to gain that third term,
The left? despite the media polls, looking good, by that i mean looking GOOD, Labour 33%, Greens 12%, InternetMana 5%, not too big an ask at all i would suggest….
I’m conflicted, on the one hand National in power = good but Winston with some form of power = bad
i always seen you as confused Puckish, add to that conflicted and we await the addition of a few more words beginning with the consonant C, above four letters please, and we may have you described to a T as opposed to simply describing you in simpler form via C with few other letters added….
(Condensed springs to mind as an addition to confused/conflicted)…
[lprent: Approaching pointless again. ]
Well thats just plain rude 🙂
i have some manual labour to attend to, be assured Puckish, later there is more such ‘rudeness’ to be supplied and applied…
I used to do manual labour but I prefer to work inside now, much better on the body
the nz herald features in the huffington post..
..but not to be praised/for good reasons…
“..Newspaper Runs Image Of ‘Jackass’ Star Instead Of Killed Israeli Soldier..”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/29/newspaper-gaza-ryan-dunn-jackass-new-zealand_n_5629828.html?ref=topbar
Starve them and mow the lawn.
In 2006 Weissglass was just as frank about Israel’s policy towards Gaza’s 1.8 million inhabitants: ‘The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.’ He was not speaking metaphorically: it later emerged that the Israeli defence ministry had conducted detailed research on how to translate his vision into reality, and arrived at a figure of 2279 calories per person per day – some 8 per cent less than a previous calculation because the research team had originally neglected to account for ‘culture and experience’ in determining nutritional ‘red lines’
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n15/mouin-rabbani/israel-mows-the-lawn
The regularity of Israel’s perceived need to use force is illustrated by the notorious expression, “mowing the lawn,” that one of its military officers used to describe strategy toward Gaza. It is reminiscent of the advice that Thrasybulus gave Periander of Corinth, recounted in Herodotus. Walking through a field, Thrasybulus broke off the tallest ears of grain by way of showing Periander’s envoy the best way to rule violently. The envoy couldn’t figure out his meaning, but Periander, the prototype of the ancient tyrant, understood immediately on hearing the envoy’s report. The analogy showed that violence could not be a one-time affair. New stalks would grow up. It would remain necessary to keep lopping off the top ones—i.e. mowing the lawn.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-thrasybulus-syndrome-israel%E2%80%99s-war-gaza-10968
Following the destruction of the sole power station 90% of Gazans are without electricity.
American Intelligence Officers Who Battled the Soviet Union for Decades Slam the Flimsy “Intelligence” Against Russia
What the professional’s think of the ‘evidence’ against Russia can only be termed scathing. They’re particularly nasty in their condemnation of Senator Kerry.
I just read on another blog a post by someone complaining about Key’s WWI speech yesterday, and was pleased to see someone felt the same as I did. Other pollies spoke with emotion and as this person said, from the heart. But John Key read his speech without any emotion or emphasis. He looked bored and he sounded it and as if it was all just too tiring and bothersome. I felt it was insulting that he didn’t take the time to familiarize himself with the material someone else had written for him. I can only think the subject was just not important enough to him personally. Our veterans weren’t worth the bother of him learning his speech and speaking with the level of commitment the commemoration deserved. Why are so many blinded by this fake?
Don’t take it personally. He’s always like that. There is nothing warm or genuine about him, he’s just going through the motions. Enter room, shake hands with Important Person One, smile, shake hands with Important Person two, smile. Give canned speech written by someone else. Wait until applause dies down. Move away for media standup. Exit. Move on to next event.
As to why so many are blinded, there is a lot that power, money and superficial charm can convince people to overlook.
Gaza: hell on earth. http://i.imgur.com/H0NSLBk.jpg
..the Israeli government has gone mad …it is hell of a PR for Israelis around the world …they are beginning to look more and more like the Nazi government…they will be called to account by history and future generations for crimes against humanity ….and the rest of the world had better not look on and do nothing about it!…because we also will be called to account!
Daniel Barenboim is one Israeli who has spoken out
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/07/29/bare-j29.html
I met Mirak Smisek several times ….a New Zealand potter of repute, an a opponent of the Nazis and a refugee from Nazi torn Europe …and he told me that it is art that will save us…it was art that gave him hope and art that helped him transcend the evil he had witnessed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirek_Sm%C3%AD%C5%A1ek
Daniel Barenboim is transcendent in a similar way
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/apr/04/beethoven-and-quality-courage/
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11301000
Looks like Phil Quin, like Jones, Pagani and Steve Kilgallon’s mysterious “insider”, is a paid-up member of the ABC club.
Yep it really grates when the right of the party side with the Herald to tell us there is no bias to see and to move along when we spend so much time detailing the concerns. Their choice is a dead giveaway. If the Herald wanted a debate it would select a leftie not an apologist for the right.
I also wish Quin would get his stuff right. The comment about how Labour is only going for the missing million has been replied to on numerous occasions but he still trots out the wrong line …
Just remember that after the next election and you’re scrambling around for excuses as to why Labour did so badly you were told time and time again whats wrong with Labour
that there was a bunch of turncoats who are in the wrong party and who couldnt swallow thier egos and get in behind the boss?
yeah we know that one already
+100 Framu
That they arent National enough?
I’ll tell you what I have had a gut full of – people who are so lacking in respect that they think they can turn the Labour Party into a vehicle for whatever suits them. For God’s sake, this guy cites the opinion of Shane Jones, who has decamped to work for National. Having taken a glance at other headlines of Quin’s, I assume he is one of the eighties’ influx of aspiring “young men of the city” who sought a vehicle for themselves under Douglas’s wing. And Josie and her ilk appear to think the party exists to allow nice, talented people like themselves to retain a foothold among the political/media elite. To these people I say, read the party’s bloody principles, and try to refrain from dissembling to yourself as you do so! You would not become a priest because the Catholic church could do with more atheists. You would not join the Greens to contribute a much-needed voice in favour of fracking. Why do you think it is OK to do this kind of thing to Labour?
Labours a broad church so i’m guessing their views are valid otherwise why would you have the likes of Mallard, Cosgrove, Goff , King etc etc still hanging around
As opposed to National which is a Cult.
For the money, I suppose !
Mickey
What does it take to get chucked out of Labour? Surely scuttling the ship is not a good thing?
We had a conversation about Phil Quin on another Open Mike.
It resulted in Karen sharing this article.
Phil Quin was someone who tried to get rid of Helen Clark prior to her gaining the government for 9 years.
Perhaps that is why he is an ex Labour adviser?
Not someone’s advice who I would listen to.
It is about time those further right (centrists) created a new party. As it stands it appears that the ‘right-wing’ faction of Labour are pissing on our chances of a decent left-wing government gaining power. Those who are ‘centrists’ in the party need to realise that Labour have very much been presenting themselves to appeal to the centre whilst still attempting to appeal to those further left too. It is ultraistic to push Labour’s current stance any other way. I wish those right-wing /’centrist’ types connected to Labour would stop their squawking and get real.
[Additionally in his article Quin cited, amongst other things, the Dong Liu saga as ‘mismanaged’ by Labour – omitting to mention the story was fictitious and yet propagated by our media. There has been no apology for that nonsense. The problem there was Labour took the story seriously – how were they to know that the media would grab something so unsubstantiated and report it as fact? I think most people who followed that story were truly shocked by how lacking in facts that story was.]
Here is a working link to that other Open Mike:
Interesting BL. So according to Quin Helen’s reign and the fifth Labour Government was an abject disaster for the party and we should be led by Shane Jones, no doubt with Josie Pagani as deputy.
Words fail me …
I am thinking, broadly, the difference between nats and labs is
Nats are driven by self interest and that drive will lead them to a collective lie cos they think it will benefit them in the long run
Labs are driven by self interest and if they think they wont get what they want, they will burn the house down
It is certainly looking like that although I think it is important to acknowledge the many Labourites who are loyal and are working diligently. Those loyal people need to speak firmly to the ones that are wrecking things for Labour and tell them in no uncertain terms how unacceptable their behaviour is.
Agreed.
Anything theydois undermined by the type i describe.
Former labour seems to mean when roger dpuglas was in power, so having them as commentator for the left is a joke cos they probably vote ACT now
😆 …. yes it beggars belief…
… and yet Quin gets his platform as a left-supportive commentator….?
I’m sure that a few of them would be quite comfortable in ACT.
Or united future… The right wing party pretending to care but bobbing its head in agreement to policies that are unfair
Yes it’s true that this is someone’s OPINION, well spotted 🙄
Even this crap: “Supporters and activists find it much easier to blame straw-men, presumably along with a mandatory 50 per cent of straw-women……”
This could be the most relevant part: “Phil Quin is a FORMER Labour Party adviser and a strategic communications consultant”
Yep, unemployed ‘strategic communications consultant’ touting for work.
yet another rightwing labour-trout..eh..?
..hardly an endangered-species…
He’s certainly no Mighty Quin, but he’s possesses a lame schoolboy humour Key
would beis proud of.I think Labour is failing, sadly, on several issues…
one of which is tax policy…
as an example:
Your image proves you an idiot.
Stylee 😆
i think Richard is flailing, sadly, in the wrong place at the wrong time, it really is too late in the piece for us to be attempting to exploit that which we see as not quite right in the policy arena,
The 3 years just passed were the times to be talking thus, with the campaign proper having overtaken such concerns the vote itself now becomes the imperative,
i like these numbers, for me they have a certain resonance, an inevitability if you will, Labour 33%, Greens 12%, InternetMana 5%, my little gaze into the crystal ball of the 2014 election…
A dreadful comment on Radionz this morning about the ballooning tragedy and the defects of the CAA. They knew lots about the guy, binge drinker, marijuana smoker, incidents. But they all know each other, and cosset each other apparently. The CAA put hot air balloons low on the dangerous list! They are not only not doing their job properly, they are under their own control and espouse apparently, that stupid, irresponsible free market crap about businesses should control and regulate themselves.
And they are one of these pseudo-government entities that are free to operate as they wish without control, oversight or discipline from government.
It is time that we demanded a complete overhaul and sacking of these pompous, diseased shits. The disease of arrogant position, so that they feel no shame when accidents occur, just throwing excuses, statistics and technical jargon in everyone’s eyes when actually the source of the fault is quite obvious to the naive, unpropagandised enquirer. And a Royal Commission to establish the fault properly. These so and so’s in CAA should be jailed and fined as well. The interview with David Still sets out the situation well.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon
Balloon death families call for government to act ( 12′ 43″ )
09:08 David Still’s daughter Alexis was one of 10 passengers who died in a hot air balloon crash in Carterton in 2012, along with pilot Lance Hopping. He says the Civil Aviation Authority failed to act despite repeated complaints about Hopping prior to the accident, and he’s calling for the government to force change upon the aviation safety regulator.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport
CAA failed to take action over balloon pilot complaints ( 3′ 11″ )
08:23 An inquest has been told several complaints had been made to the Civil Aviation Authority about the pilot of a hot-air balloon which crashed in Wairarapa in 2012 killing all 11 people on board.
Preventable accidents in NZ –
Crash survivors sue Ansett for $3 million – Tony Stickley – NZ …
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/tony-stickley/news/article.cfm?a_id=143...
Dec 23, 1999 – … Dash-8 flight which smashed into a hill while trying to land at Palmerston North in June 1995. Two passengers and one crew member died in the tragedy. … The airline had also made a deliberate decision not to replace faulty landing gear, … on flying the plane, said Mr Miles, the captain was helping the co-pilot lower the …
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=192796
As evidence would show, this was not as alarming as it may sound. Landing gear problems on the Dash-8s had become so frequent that pilots had stopped reporting them to Ansett.
But what Captain Sotheran and First Officer Brown had failed to notice was that their aircraft was perilously close to the foothills of the Tararua Ranges, to the east of Palmerston North.
Interesting from CAA 1990s
NZ Fixed Wing Aviation Accidents 1995-2004
Seven Crop and Food deaths.:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=3506293
Interestingly, i gather the market response is that now that business will fail, and others will see their failure, due to deaths, and do stuff to avoid people dying… But look how many have to die
Job interview at 2pm.
Only a fixed term contract through January 31st 2015, but a bit of breathing space from Mr Wolf when he comes a knocking.
Don’t know what to say about my last employment when asked, but I’ll burn that bridge when I’ve crossed it.
Good luck
Cheers mate
I bought fake job references on the Internet—and it worked
http://www.dailydot.com/business/career-excuse-fake-job-references/
http://www.careerexcuse.com/
By almost any measure, I have an impeccable résumé.
I went with honesty being the best policy. Whether it works or not is out of my hands now.
I was happy enough with my performance. I’ll just have to keep my trotters crossed.
Labour had some concerns about the proposals, but agreed to back the bill into law because it felt urgent measures were needed to relieve house prices.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/election-2014/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503581&objectid=11301094
And many wonder what the difference between Nat and Lab are ? Well for developers IMO they allow for profits to increase as they transfer costs to the rate payer, and I defie anyone to prove anything different.
If anyone has any ideas that transferring council contributions to rate payers will reduce the price of property, they are misguided. The price we pay for a house is “market driven” not as cost plus basis.
If you look to the last major building industry crisis, leaky homes, developers took profits, shut down the company, avoided any liability and have had NO legislation aimed at them… Builders, yes. Designers? Yes. Developers no, and this govt wants to give them more money, less regulation and still no tightening of liability.
And they get full support from Labour. Next year when rates have increased it is not all the fault of our local govt, they have been given a hospital pass from Wellington.
Many of the services that are to now be funded by “other ” sources like libraries, sports grounds, community facilities, there are vast amounts that have been already collected by council & to be spent in the future, but under the LTCCP are deferred., part of the reason is the squeeze on councils increasing debt. Also talking of the LTCCP , councils spent huge resources, $ and time in preparing these and in one wee stroke all the work and planning of funding and timing has been undone. What a waste
Now that Stephen Joyce has confirmed that he will be nationalising Novopay from Talent2, can some one tell me whether Michelle Boag is a shareholder in Talent2?
dunno about boag…but banks was…
Beyond Reasonable Doubt?–police culture is still reactionary no doubt about that.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11301287
This expensive re–look at the 4 decades old Crewe murders is only significant for more arse covering and fingers in ears from the blue bellies. They do manage to find space to retry the case and smear pardoned and compensated Arthur Thomas again and let one early suspect off the hook.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10328036/Labour-pledges-2-rise-in-minimum-wage-to-16-25
no..this was heralded before..
..and gee..!..shock horror..!..labour party promises to raise minimum wage..
..the story wd be if they weren’t promising to do that..
..um..!..do you ever say anything that could be of the slightest interest to anyone..?
..do you ever take the sneer off yr face..
..are you really as thick/simplistic as you appear in yr postings here..?..
..or is it a routine/act that you do..?
I apoligise if I sound rude but I’m having trouble following you
first step..join the mana party..
..second step:..stop eating animals..and their bye-products..
..third step..stop drinking booze..smoke pot instead..
..(then get back to me..and i’ll give you some more ‘following’-tips..)
..oh..!..and go to the pound..and get a dog or two…eh..?
first step..join the mana party..
..second step:..stop eating animals..and their bye-products..
..third step..stop drinking booze..smoke pot instead..
..oh..!..and go to the pound..and get a dog or two…eh..?
“The problem is it doesn’t matter if you vote left or vote right bacon is delicious”
Aint that the truth of it.
“I don’t think smoking pot is all that good for you either”
If you’re a balloon pilot it really isn’t.
RIP to those who perished in the Wairarapa ballooning tragedy, it could be said that to be the passenger of a balloon pilot so affected is even worse,
Obviously, at some point in the future when the Parliament comes to look at the decriminalization/legalization of that particular substance such concerns as how to address the use of such vis a vis employment/public safety issues will have to be an inherent part of such Legislation,
The recent ‘running aground’ of a Tranzrail passenger train at the Melling station here in Wellington has been attributed to either a too high speed limit rounding the bend into that particular end of the line station and/or the Marijuana use of the driver…
“in the future when the Parliament comes to look at the decriminalization/legalization of that particular substance such concerns as how to address the use of such vis a vis employment/public safety issues”
Not to make light of that shocking preventable tragedy, but a literacy test might be a start.
You will have to be far more lucid than this comment Alien if such ”literacy test’ were directed my way,
Of course as a general comment thought of as directed ‘elsewhere’ it becomes far clearer to understand,
Phillip below seems to have, perhaps mastered the art of the oblique when referencing a particular commenter,
Of course as ‘it’ is never ever engaging with me again here at the Standard that comment surely cannot be aimed my way,
i would have really liked to spark a discussion about puckering up to relieve some commenters of their condyloma but don’t dare…
“You will have to be far more lucid than this comment Alien if such ”literacy test’ were directed my way,”
Nah, I mostly get what you’re going on about.
“Of course as a general comment thought of as directed ‘elsewhere’ it becomes far clearer to understand,”
Bullseye. …Ah!!!..the rambling prose…
“condyloma”
I had to google.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condyloma
i laughs,(but only quietly up my sleeve), gee Alien for once i am a little disappointed in the Wiki,
my Collins English ‘book of words’ is far more descriptive and explanatory when the words puckering up are considered previous to a reference to condyloma,
i am of course far to polite to go into the minute detail here, and besides, its dinner time…
@ pouting ‘bad-boy’..
well at least you have got yr ‘following’ sorted out..eh..?
..that was a particularly silly conceit on yr part to claim that..eh..?
Those on The Standard who read women’s magazines will enjoy this one:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/07/lessons-in-capitalism-from-kim-kardashian/375252/
David Cunliffe’s facebook page just sent a message:
https://www.facebook.com/david.cunliffe.labour
excellent idea…
Yes, I thought so too 🙂
Yes, just like a political commissionar in the old soviet union. All decisions will be then be able to be vetoed if they don’t meet certain “National interest” criteria.
Do you think multinationals shouldn’t pay their fair share of tax or not, Gosman?
no gossie..just ensuring they pay their tax…
..r u ‘relaxed’ about these thieving-bastards ripping us blind…?
…Gosman has suddenly come over all coy about responding. Funny thing that.
[lprent: Could be working? After all that is why my moderation sweeps have gotten more intermittent. ]
He probably is one of those thieving bastards.
😆 😯
“Yes, just like a political commissionar in the old soviet union.”
Or like a political commissar in Radio New Zealand: the purpose Richard Griffin has been fulfilling for the past few years.
Will that include unions that don’t pay their fair share as well?
Are unions ‘multinationals’?
So unions get a free pass on tax, good to know
Don’t know how you arrive at that conclusion
Oh, for goodness’ sake.
Unions will get no more of a ‘free pass’ on tax than any New Zealand-based business or other organisation currently does.
This policy is an additional tax enforcement strengthening measure and not the removal of all tax enforcement for everyone other than some errant multinationals.
Yes I can just see Cunliffe going after the unions for tax money…
Do you think multinationals shouldn’t have to pay their fair share of tax?
pouting ‘bad-boy’ is like gossie..
..he won’t answer that question..
..they both ‘duck and cover’..
..that is their answer..
Tell us about a vegan’s stance on possum/rat/weasel/stoat control any time.
Puckish, David Cunliffe as far as i know does not collect taxes, the IRD involve themselves in that activity,
i see no suggestion from you or the Labour Party that Trade Unions will be absolved from taxes by altering of the current Legislation which makes your comment somewhat deserving of a multiple lettered epithet starting with the consonant, (you choose)…
Those right-wing hacks/commenters are so irrational…and yet they are the type to trust that ‘markets players are rational’ – you couldn’t make this stuff up.
You need to pop away and research multinational. Clue its not a terms for national mps who change their positions on things many times
Further to the decreasing voter turnout debate…
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/assignments/will-you-be-voting-in-this-election/10327597/I-value-my-privacy-more-than-my-vote
People such as the writer of this article apparently fall outside the expected group of low income folk, people in debt or worried about immigration status, etc.
I think this group who just don’t want their details bought and sold for business gain is growing.
Anyone got a good reason for the roll to be published at all? I can’t see why and I bet the turnout would go through the roof if voters were allowed to remain anonymous, just as the vote they cast is.
Not that I know of.
That said, it was possibly an idea that someone had that people would be able to look at the role and see if there were people on it that shouldn’t be. It may have worked if communities stayed below about 1000 people and everyone knew everyone else. Won’t work in any community above that size though.
And these days we have better options to ensure that people are registered where they should be without having to make the role publicly available.
It’s up to the EC to decide who should and should not be on the roll, not the public. So at the moment you have to register by paper, or online using RealMe. Even using RealMe you have to open an account then go to a postshop and have your photo taken.
Even after all of this I cannot see a reason for publishing unless the EC have been given a directive to fund themselves by selling voters’ information to third parties.
Ie, user pays, even when voting, a basic right in any democracy.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10326510/Ron-Mark-eyes-return-to-parliament
News from my wireless, RadioNZ National, the Government has announced it will establish a private company to take over the Education Payroll from Novopay,
Novopay is said to be paying the Government an undisclosed amount as penalty payment for a system that still fails to fulfill its expectations,
Gee only how many years too late and the ‘problems’ in the system will still have to be addressed by this ‘private company’…
From, I think, the same item on Checkpoint Stephen Joyce admitted that the taxpayer was picking up the larger share of the tab because there was “blame on both sides”. The Ministry had, apparently, bungled some things too. He didn’t mention who the negligent Minister was who has just cost us this coin.
Then, when asked if this was a case of the public sector being better than the private sector Joyce said words to the effect of ‘not at all, it simply happens that the government holds one side of the contract in this case and is taking over’.
But I thought that governments and their bureaucracies just can’t do this sort of stuff. Wouldn’t they be the last type of organisation you’d therefore turn to for a safe pair of hands in this kind of situation?
Aren’t things like payrolls just too tricky by half for them to get their heads around. The private sector, on the other hand …
Do we need another Henare voted into Parliament? The last one was bad enough. Is it not time for labour supporters to start voting for greens and other candidates in electorates? Labour activist here and elsewhere, keep begging the left not to split the vote. The gall to ask people to hold there noses and vote for some Tory scum in red clothing.
How about all those so called supporters of working people advise/aid/direct, or just be honest about some of the candidates that the labour party have put up. Phil Goff, Stuart (I think your grandfather is rolling in his grave) Nash, I’m sure others can be added to this list.
These are the evil shits we need to remove, the elephant in the room – how much longer labour people, how much longer you going to push the dead donkey?
Why do labour supporters keep putting up with these scum?
In the interests of working people any chance we can have an honest debate about the dead chaff in Labour who are hell bent on losing this election? Or am I going to get called a right wing troll – stupid or some other slagging off? Are the labour faithful going to go into fits of there own self-righteousness, and cling to any old Tory wannabe?
You say you like David Cunliff, yet he keeps being treated like shit. Labour have finally put up a leader who will make a bloody decent PM. And it is these MP wannabes who seem to me the happiest to poop in their own nest. Quite frankly, it reeks of the politics of self interest.
Everyone is accusing Jamie Whyte from the Act Party of being a racist.
Hypothetically speaking, if his partner was black, like I mean black black, would that change anything?
[lprent: Everybody? Don’t be a fool. There are usually thousands of people reading this site every day and a few hundred commenting. I guess you can’t count or have the common neolib inflationary view that expands the few fools in Act into a “movement”. I’d suggest that if you’re going to indulge in hyperbole, that you don’t do it about this site. That draws my attention to the dickheads doing it because I will answer for the site.
I really hate wasting time on peewees who measure their dicks using a magnifying glass for that extra size inflation. Read the policy. ]
No. Notwithstanding his personal family situation, to claim Maori are unjustly privileged is unhelpful to New Zealand, and racist. We intend to be different to African and American history here.
In addition, to describe someone as black is one thing, silverbullet, but to then describe someone as “black black” is…
racist.
Go put your pointy white hat on.
Go put your Stalinist comrade uniform on – oh hang on, you are already wearing it.
[lprent: I suggest that you read the policy. You appear to be wearing a troll uniform. Lets be nice and imagine that it is like this…
This is your one warning about being a dickhead jerking off on our site. Engage with the conversation or leave before I have to toss you off the site. Leading up to an election, I really can’t be bothered being tolerant of mindless fools who try to imagine that they are sophisticated smartarses. ]
If any current NZ leader could be compared to Stalin it is John Key. Figuratively, the similarities between Key’s rejuvenation drive to the great purge in the 1920’s are alarming.
Your Far Left ideology is grounded in the philosophy of Marxism, with its “class consciousness”, “class conflict” and some future “workers paradise” type utopia.
Nothing other than the slight possibility of making fellow racists less likely to vote for him.
Seeing as you asked silverbullet, NO, racism is not confined within one racial grouping, a white male for instance with an African American partner could for instance express hatred for Maori and rightly be labeled a racist,
The term racist does not presuppose that there is hatred of all the races other than that of the racist, the racist might only be so concerning one race other than his own to be a racist…
Seriously? Its always been about white vs the rest. So it does bring into question hypothetically that Whyte really is racist if he is married to someone of African descent and has kids too…
You were the one who brought up white vs “the rest” (ie brown, black, yellow).
You might want to stop digging.
Who are you kidding? The meme has always been white oppressors vs the oppressed ethnics, Comrade Weepy.
I’m really sorry this exchange didn’t go the way you planned, and that’s left you arguing against a case that no-one seems to be making, but what’s happening here is obvious. Jamie Unclecousin is attacking maori so racists will vote for ACT.
Now that might be a racist thing to do, or it might just be a selfish stupid short-sighted evil nasty cynical divisive corrosive thing to do. But either way, it has nothing to do with his wife, just as it had nothing to do with Don Brash’s wife when he pulled the exact same stunt 10 years ago.
What we do know is that no good can come of it. It will make some people in our society angry about other people in our society. It will hurt people. It will hurt race relations. And it will not achieve a single positive thing.
plus bloody 1
“tough on crime” is their main clarion call in Epsom, despite the Govt, of which they were a part, until their only member committed… a crime… tells us crime is falling and we are safer than ever.
So
2.Maori are too privileged
AND they will get a seat in parliament… Over 17% of their sitting MPs have committed crimes…People of Epsom worship at the later of money
🙄 Continuing the conversation with you would be an exercise in legitimizing abject stupidity, yours that is, 🙄 …
Wow, just wow, you really have been triggered.
Just heard on the TV that we’ve paid x millions to Talent2 for the Novapay fuckup and that we’re then going to paying another nine million over the next six years as well. Wish I could get a job like that – paid for fucking it up, paid to be fired from it and then 6 year multi-million dollar redundancy package.
In short, does that mean they’re being paid to keep their mouth’s shut?
Key spun it as the sensible thing to do. Might have been sensible 2 years ago, but not now. Now it looks like the Minister of fix-its didn’t fix it.
Where is the minister of Education in all of this?
@ Weepus beard 6.55
“Where is the minister of Education in all of this?She has learned when to keep her mouth shut.”
These words by Graham Nash have substance and they say what we are all thinking here! And we need to rouse them and ourselves and follow our dreams during the day and night – dreams for a happy, functioning society. I think there might be an odd word in it.
From musixmatch
“Teach Your Children”
You, who are on the road must have a code that you can live by.
And so become yourself because the past is just a good bye.
Teach your children well, their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams, the one they fix, the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.
And you, of the tender years can’t know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth, they seek the truth before they can die.
Teach your parents well, their children’s hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams, the one they fix,the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.
This extract from Chris Trotter’s reply to Phil Quin referred to in Puddleglum 6.45 carries forward my comment about the necessity for igniting the dream. I fear that the generations since 1984 have been unable to imbibe enough of that message from their parents, and certainly not from school or any other formal or informal education. One reason they may not feel like voting.
The people whose precarious position of privilege vis-a-vis the working poor and beneficiaries renders them unashamedly reluctant to redistribute even a little of the wealth they have “worked for”.
Beneath a superficial “concern” for the disadvantaged, these voters conceal a visceral contempt for the poor. They are terrified of being forced to share their resources with the “underserving” and will have absolutely no truck with any political party which suggests that, as citizens, they have a moral obligation to put an end to inequality and poverty. –
See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/07/30/the-40-percent-solution-chris-trotter-responds-to-phil-quin/#sthash.0TbWppqF.dpuf
Chris Trotter’s response to Phil Quin.
I have to admit that I am stunned that there is still such a thing as a ‘Labour Right’ that extends so far to the right that its apparent members (Pagani, Quin, Jones) are essentially pushing an economic approach that actively undermines the welfare of just those people that Labour Parties around the world were set up to represent and advance.
How on earth is such an economic policy orientation part of any ‘Labour’ approach?
Do words mean nothing anymore?
You can thank the Post Modernists for the meaningless of language these days, they are after all the bastard children of ‘Progressive’ Left Neo Marxist ideology.
Nope, the language has been screwed over by the RWNJs to further their own goals against the majority of people.
I’m not sure it’s that straightforward.
I think you need to distinguish between postmodernism as an intellectual current and postmodernity as a hypothesised economic, social and cultural transformation of modernity.
The latter is exemplified by ‘late consumer capitalism’ and all of its attendant industries (marketing, advertising, media, design, etc.) and the emergence of a supposedly new social class (highly educated, high income, usually employed in the industries just mentioned) for whom ‘cultural capital’ is an additional boasting right (on top of other forms of capital).
To be honest, I think it is postmodernity (or the cultural and economic conditions that that term usually refers to) that is responsible for any loss of meaning in our use of language. That loss of meaning is present in managerialism-speak, marketing-speak, neoliberalism-speak (which is increasingly commerce-speak) and, sadly, political-speak.
This morphing flexibility in linguistic meaning comes very close, of course, to old-fashioned lying – semantic relativism taken to its logical conclusion.
For me that logical conclusion is forever epitomised by John Key’s one-time reference to ‘the dynamic environment’ to explain why the meaning of his words change over time (or something like that).
By comparison, I think the influence of postmodernist theorists over the actual loss of meaning in everyday practice is infinitesimal.
I’m afraid your ‘silverbullet’ just missed what should have been its real target.
@Puddleglum 7.42
Your comment on ‘the dynamic environment’ and changes in meaning reminds me of something that Thomas Belmonte wrote and I think called it protean, about the changing, sometimes conflicting and changing beliefs of people rather lost in a changing society. He was impressed how people could be Catholic and Communist at the same time etc.
I looked up protean and came on this psycholgist who has done work on Nasties and their psychology and the Holocaust. Then he has posited two streams of people management – one called totalism and has presented proteanism as being the opposite.
I don’t know whether this is useful towards understanding what is exercising people’s minds at present but it is interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jay_Lifton
Indeed. I made a similar remark at 21.1.1.2. The broad church concept is meaningful where someone like, say, Damien O’Connor, is concerned, beavering away on behalf of the West Coast. He is often considered to be of the right of the party, but he still able to say he sees social justice and regional development as his missions. However, the people you list seem to want to remain in the Labour Party while casting aside everything it stands for.
The real schism in the Labour Part is between the traditional working class and the academic Identity Politics crowd – the latter having a strangle hold on the Labour Party which is a shadow of its former self.
No, the most significant parting of the ways will always be when one faction believes that it should be serving the interests of the powerful and entrenched rather than the powerless, dispossessed and marginalised.
Clever justifications for serving powerful interests (trickle-down, etc.) will never resolve that betrayal, I’m afraid.
Who in the current Labour caucus would you say is part of the “academic Identity Politics crowd”?
I’m struggling to make seense of that.
I suspect you are muddling a range of concepts.
I’m with pg. It’s more about those who’ve bought into the third way pandering to the comfortable middle classes as a route to electoral victory.
Agreed.
I have no problems with someone like O’Connor being ‘Labour’. And I’m even enough of a pragmatist to accept that some in the Labour caucus would want to make some sort of ‘truce’ or compromise with the ‘neo-liberal consensus’.
What I really can’t fathom is people who are not satisfied with ‘accommodating’ neoliberalism but seem bent on actively extending its reach and pushing it further into our social and economic arrangements – just because that’s what National is doing and ‘Ooo, look how popular National are!’.
It’s just mind-boggling that someone wishing to do that would even want to be in the Labour Party.
Aye.
I just wish that when the media went for people who can talk intelligently on the Labour Party they would choose people that I knew! Mike Williams can do it. He has a grassroots understanding of the party.
Pagani and Quin cannot. Honest I have been heavily involved in the party for the past 15 years and I have not met either of them. I met John Pagani but this does not qualify him as someone who can talk intelligibly on the party.
There are people who come and go at the “upper” level but they have no comprehension about what is happening at the activist level.
Pagani and Quin cannot. Honest I have been heavily involved in the party for the past 15 years and I have not met either of them. I met John Pagani but this does not qualify him as someone who can talk intelligibly on the party
I know exactly what you mean. I’ve met John Pagani once and wasn’t that impressed. His campaigning felt like it was out of the ark (mind you most of the MPs are worse). Never met the other two that I am aware of. And I’ve been to the majority of the conferences and congresses in one capacity or another over the last 25 years which is where you’d expect to meet Labour party people. I still do even though I’m in the media room rather than the remit floor.
@ MS & lprent,
That is truly horrible that the people commenting in the media as though they are informed about Labour – or as though they are insiders – may not be even actively involved in the Party – that really is terrible to hear.
Why can’t the media find more informed voices to comment on these political current affairs? (Not really a question – more of a plea).
Basically because damn near everyone who is suitable is also actively working during the day for a variety of private and public organisations and volunteering at night. Generally companies like my current employers have contract clauses that limit how much time I can take during paid hours and conflict of interest clauses that limit me in the rest. I also have many claims on my “free” time.
It takes time to write articles, prep for interviews and panels, or anything else.
Hell the one interview I have ever done involved me in a 3 hour hole in the middle of my working day driving from Albany to Newmarket, doing a segment, and then going back to work. I then worked 3 hours extra that day, which interfered with the volunteer work for the rest of the week as I caught up.
The people who are left over to become talking heads are those who aren’t particularly actively involved, those developing careers as talking heads, or who are semi-retired.
For everyone else who works a lot, the whole thing is a confounded nuisance.
Well written from Chris Trotter, thanks for the link as i forget sometimes to cast an eye over the daily offering from that direction,
40% as far as the vote goes is totally unnecessary in the enviroment of MMP, these numbers, Labour 33%, Greens 12%, InternetMana 5%, are hardly wildly optimistic, they do tho shout out 50% at the September vote…
I have a little anecdote. Talking to an older woman with health problems. Mentioned that it was very hard for unemployed and mentioned the recent comment that people are required to apply for 5 jobs a day and may still have their benefit withdrawn.
She said that was awful but she couldn’t cope with it, she needed to just manage and carry on quietly. I said well don’t vote for National will you. But I like John Key she said, he seems nice, (or something of that nature). She said with a smile, is that the end of the lecture. We smiled and went on with our day.
greywarbler …that is very depressing when you meet idiots like that…however after her encounter with you this timid soul may change her vote once she gets in the voting booth
Interesting you should say that, because i had a similar, but more disturbing experience. The person I was talking to was a 50 plus year old primary school teacher who said that she would be voting National because she said, she likes key! I was very surprised that she was so naive. I try to change her reasoning, but she actually was peeved with me and did not want to discus the issue.
Shows that lots of people have been fooled and conned so very easily by the smiling assassin!
Nats know this. No wonder they have chosen #Team Key as their slogan.
People are in pretty bad, sad political/enlightened state in modern NZ!
@ Chooky 10.54 and Clemgeopin
“that is very depressing when you meet idiots like that”
Trouble is she is not an idiot. But I think one of many NZs who want to leave the pollies to govern, as that being their job, and have never been taught how fragile democracy is, and our firm opinions are (not firm at all – able to be changed fast with a propaganda campaign.) To many NZs, having an interest in politics is a hobby, it is akin to stamp collecting, or it is for go-getters who are pushing their wheelbarrow not for ordinary people.
Then there are those who can hardly bring themelves to complain about anything apart from blocks to whatever is dear to their heart. What right do we have to disagree with the confident con men and fabulists who tell us all they want us to know, and are never guilty of wrongdoing, at worst whatever – was a little mistake – just a tiny, teeny one. We all have a little cringe built-in. We have got confused, don’t have a dream for NZ, don’t have even a workable vision – given up on pollies substance and just see the candy floss. Poem for today’s pollies, there for us at election time with hearts on sleeves, and then after the election – a different story.
W. H. Mearns – Antigonish
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away
When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
By Robert Fisk
“It’s not just radicalised Islamists – what about foreign fighters who flock to the IDF?
Is the Government interested in UK citizens who have been fighting in Israeli uniform in Gaza in the past couple of weeks?…
Let me be frank. Dozens of British supporters of Israel do serve in the Israeli army. The same applies for Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. And they don’t necessarily gravitate to being war criminals. This may not be what an Arab would say – and it is certainly not what Israelis would suggest. But there is plenty of evidence – from 1982 in Lebanon, from 1996 in Qana, from 2008-9 in Gaza and again in Gaza these past two weeks – that individual Israeli soldiers and pilots have committed acts which, under international law, are war crimes…
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/its-not-just-radicalised-islamists–what-about-foreign-fighters-who-flock-to-the-idf-9634260.html
Maybe NZ needs some of this:
It will hit you sooner or later, what goes on in Ukraine, in Middle and Near East, and many other parts of the world, New Zealand is not insulated and will be affected.
MORE to come!
After Ukips success in the UK and EU elections NZ polictions are trying to jump on the bandwagon but NZ has only a limited number of racist so it will be slim pickings for Winnie the poo ,in reading whyte supremacist and Crazy Colon Craig.