Interesting, anti-immigrant groups in the past have used a “competitor standing” doctrine to try to limit immigration on the grounds that immigrants compete with local workers and harm their prospects. Now that doctrine may get used to go after Trump.
“At first she didn’t think of the state welfare homes as incarceration. But when she started to interview people she changed her mind. The regimes they were subject to were very similar to prison regimes.
“They were horrific. Really austere. Children were left in the secure cell during the day with nothing. Nothing. A concrete plinth. They even removed the mattress so they wouldn’t be comfortable during the day. They’d be boiling in the summer, they’d be freezing in the winter. In some institutions they even had a nodding system where the guards or workers wouldn’t even speak to them. You can’t imagine what that would do to you if you’re an adult let alone if you’re 11, 12, 15, that dehumanisation.”
That dehumanisation included regular use of physical violence as punishment, including electric-shock therapy. Some victims say the shocks were applied to their genitals and other parts of their bodies. Some children were controlled with drugs that sedated or knocked them out.
Not only are victims deeply distrustful – the state is still acting in ways that call into question its trustworthiness. Currently the process for making a complaint about abuse in state institutions means going through a system set up and administered by the government department that ran the institutions where the abuse happened.”
Great work by Aaron Smale supporting this morning’s RNZ’s piece about the reports about abuse in State care.
Interview with Judge Henwood, and currently Kim Hill has Anne Tolley on the griddle. I hope the audio will be available later.
Anne Tolley’s current defense is along the lines that only 3.odd percent of the 100,000 who went through State care during this period have made complaints.
I do not disagree, but unfortunately I heard Kim Hill calling for an independent inquiry quite a few times, rather than an independent agency to consider complaints – all some will hear is Tolley being hectored, and not understand the point that was being made. Any excuse for wilful misunderstanding will be taken in defense of the indefensible . . .
Agree with that, I heard that interview.
They will now be definitely earmarked for further funding cuts or sold off.
You must also remember Tolley was the minister who destroyed an NZ institution called Evening Classes.
As Paul said an appalling person.
Agree 1000% …. Tolley was toast, Kim for once you were wonderful, I am not one of your fans but this was great stuff putting an incompetent minister through the hoops.
@tc
Leave Ryan alone – she gets a lot of good stuff out into public asks good question people like yourself have too sharp teeth. Having a skeleton staff devoted to getting the news out there is better than having the bones bitten and cracked and some plastic thing built with a computer.
Meantime back on planet NZ where life still goes on our despicable Government is caught out by whistle-blowing from Housing NZ and no-one appears to have even noticed, likely because they’re too obsessed with Donald Trump.
The opposition parties have been handed the opportunity of a lifetime and I’ll bet few if any even know it.
But they have to make an allowance in their asset valuations for an impairment for a small proportion of their stock that they are selling to account for being a social housing agency.
WTF
So they are valuing their assets, and the return on those assets as if they were a normal commercial landlord. They say themselves that their assets are overvalued by 50 – 60%
Jeez, if a private sector business tried that on it’d get messy fast.
Yup. And a whole lot can be read and concluded from that.
One logical conclusion is they’ve established a formula for pricing the state houses they intend to sell to social housing providers. They’ve just announced the intended sale of 2400 state houses in ChCh and using their own formula they’d be intending to sell $1 billion worth of property for $380 million.
Selling significant publicly owned assets for only 38% of their value is not condusive to staying a government. Even National voters wouldn’t wear that, we all know what property is worth.
Really? That sounds exactly like the proposed Labour Party policy of building houses and selling them to people with low incomes at a discount.
The fact that the Party website says
“KiwiBuild homes will only be sold to first home buyers. To avoid buyers reaping windfall gains a condition of sale will require them to hand back any capital gain if sold on within 5 years”
clearly implies they expect to sell them at below market value.
I wonder how you qualify to buy one? Will production of a Union Card or proof of Labour Party membership be required?
Ah, no alwyn. Meaning your hearing is impaired. The information you posted doesn’t sound anything like what you thought you heard. No mention is made there of discounting the houses, indeed they’re doing the opposite in taking any capital gain that might accrue.
Now either your reading comprehension is so poor there’s no point in me conversing with you for fear of having my words misread, or you’re merely trying to derail & divert in which case there’s no point in me conversing with you there either.
Good that HNZC recognise that covenants are required to protect the social housing use once sold to the private provider. But that should have been explicit in the valuation, and expected return on that valuation, from the very beginning.
When the beginning was will have considerable political import, and along the way someone may have miss-understood, or been devious / deceived around the basis of valuation.
Time to sit well back and see where this cow pat lands.
It’s not that they were “Selling significant publicly owned assets for only 38% of their value”, the assets were overvalued by 163%
They’re not overvalued Graeme, HNZ are required to declare their housing stock at “Fair Value” according to IFRS rules and have done so for quite some time.
The social housing providers are non-profit organisations so there is no commercial valuation here. This is really about funding IMO. This tells me the charities that the Govt wants to sell to have no spare money. They look to be needing to borrow the dosh to buy the houses and HNZs income statement reveals the nett rental return from the properties won’t even come close to paying the interest on substantial levels of borrowed funds.
They can’t fund the deal on borrowed money at market rates, the rental income won’t pay the interest, so I’d expect the only way the deal can proceed is if English gives them a humungous discount or fronts them a low/no interest loan.
And they would have been valued under the same rules once the covenant / encumbrance had been applied to the property title. But nothing has changed about the property or it’s use, just the expected owner.
I see it more as explaining how inappropriate the “dividends” HNZC paid to the shareholding minister were. Both from the moral repugnance of it all and the usurious way that these dividends appear to have been calculated. No wonder the govt got out of there as quickly as they did.
Oh come now Graeme, do you seriously believe that a 25 year encumbrance really lowers the value of a house?
Commercial properties are often leased out on encumbrances like 7×7 terms, do you see any of those having their price lowered because they have to be leased for the next 14 years?
Get real mate, the encumbrance values are bullshit. All housing NZ properties are rented out at market rates and you’re trying to justify them being sold at a 60% discount to market price?
Well one of them is bullshit, as I said at the start nothing has actually changed, just a different way of looking at it.
The original valuations would have reflected the commercial value of the properties that could be rented and sold on the open market. The second reflected properties that could be rented as social housing, but not on-sold for capital gain.
The govt has got themselves in a bit of a hole there, as it would be politically difficult if the properties were on-sold for a profit, hence the encumbrance.
Whether HNZ’s properties were, or could be rented or sold on a commercial basis on the open market is a very debatable concept due to it’s social housing responsibilities and function. It does increase the possible / requires dividend if the assets are viewed as fully commercial however. I tend to the view that it’s actually the first valuations that are questionable.
“Well one of them is bullshit, as I said at the start nothing has actually changed, just a different way of looking at it.”
Huh? A very fundamental change has occurred, $240 million worth of a publicly owned asset has been written off for no good reason or reward.
“The original valuations would have reflected the commercial value of the properties that could be rented and sold on the open market. The second reflected properties that could be rented as social housing, but not on-sold for capital gain. ”
One would need to have come down in the last rain shower to fall for that line Graeme. These new valuations occurred in the context of the Govt being in lengthy negotiations with a potential buyer. It would be a complete fool who gives away their bottom line price to the other party wouldn’t it, clearly the ‘valuations’ were retrospective.
Of course they can be on-sold for capital gain. They can be held for 25yrs, amassing very considerable gains, and on-sold to anyone or on-sold earlier to another social housing provider. It’s little different to the situation of operators like Rymans and they don’t get to buy their retirement complexes at 38cents in the dollar do they.
“I tend to the view that it’s actually the first valuations that are questionable.”
You’d be questioning IFRS there and it’s not really relevant to the topic.
Tolley the terrible.
She is under orders to minimise the financial damage.
Having an independent agency and enquiry will show its more like 70% of children who were state wards were violently sexually psychologically abused.
Tolley’s dispicable obfuscation including she was just a child(still).
I know many many state wards most seriously damaged unable to function as adults.
Nasty Nasty piece of Work .
Shame on you Tolley.
The interview with Minister Anne Tolley on RNZ is going to go down in infamy as one of the worst and most heartless pieces of work in modern New Zealand politics.
Has anyone heard anything like it in the last three decades?
Also a particularly stupid juxtaposition:
On the one hand, Minister of Education Hekia Parata shuts down a Special Needs school in Dunedin for allegations about two teachers where the Police don’t see a case to answer, and so far there’s no evidence to be seen anywhere. So far.
Quite a strong reaction from the state to protect people under its direct control and care.
And on the same day, the Minister of Social Welfare cannot open her mouth and utter the word “I am sorry” for decades of solidly proven abuse on behalf of the state while protecting people under its direct control and care.
And also reported one parent who saw nothing untoward at that Dn school.
Me thinks some stirrers with bees in their bonnet at work. Perhaps that parent has brought up their child correctly?
“Perhaps that parent has brought up their child correctly?”
You might want to back up the judgmental truck there a tad jcuknz.
The whole issue of managing meltdowns and difficult behaviours is nuanced…requires a little more knowledge and experience that perhaps some commenters lack.
Upon establishing his provisional government in 1959, Castro organised trials of members of the previous government that resulted in hundreds of summary executions. In response to an international outcry and amid accusations that many of the trials were unfair, Castro responded:
“Revolutionary justice is not based on legal precepts, but on moral conviction… we are not executing innocent people or political opponents. We are executing murderers and they deserve it.”
Was that when the mafia ran Cuba into communism.
After years of exploitation by the Mafia anything was better as far as the peasants were concerns.
American foreign policy could have solved the problem but alas just like in Syria the Russians gave Fidel Castro a better deal.
The Americans have propped up nasty dictators all through Central America for over a century.
Oh, he was a particularly unpleasant person but unless of course Quin counted the estimated Balseros death toll, 79,000 extrajudicial killings, really.
February 19, 2008 Update on Findings
This work documents loss of life and disappearances of a political or military nature attributed to the Cuban Revolution. Each documented case is available for review at http://www.CubaArchive.org and substantiated by bibliographic/historic data and reports from direct sources. Due to the ongoing nature of the work and the difficulty of obtaining and verifying data from Cuba, the following totals change as research progresses and are considered far from exhaustive. Cuba Archive is currently examining additional cases –most are expected to be added to this table. Experience has shown that as additional outreach efforts are undertaken, many more cases are likely to be uncovered’.
It does bring to mind the question of the accuracy of “everything else” if estimates vary that wildly.
Frankly, seven thousand just after the revolution seems a bit low to me – they captured 1200 in the Bay of Pigs, I would have thought many of those would have been put on trial and received severe sentences.
Even so, Cuba’s better off than if Batista had remained.
Ummm… you seem to be making a massive leap there. Not surprising for supporters of brutal leftists dictators like Castro. The idea that if you are not with them you must support who they disposed is one of the reasons human rights went out the window when Castro took power.
Local councils with democratic control who send remits and consensus upwards to their Government.
Cubans have more democratic control over things that affect them than we do.
Meanwhile, in the USA, everyone is terrified of what Trump may do with his dictatorial powers.
Castro saved Cuba from being one of the many examplars of US controlled South American capitalism.
Haiti, Nicaragua, Chile, Mexico. All poverty and crime ridden failed States.
Funny we never hear about all the people trying to leave them. Except for Trump and Obama trying to send them back.
If you are going on about human rights. There are some really serious and continued abuses in Cuba. In the US controlled Guantanamo Bay.
Not to mention, on our own doorstep. In Indonesia and Australia/Nauru
You really think the average Cuban has more control over their life than we do? Pray tell how the average Cuban can afford to go to a holiday resort in their own country without access to hard currency and why should they be denied that right?
Was that when the mafia ran Cuba into communism.
After years of exploitation by the Mafia anything was better as far as the peasants were concerns.
American foreign policy could have solved the problem but alas just like in Syria the Russians gave Fidel Castro a better deal.
The Americans have propped up nasty dictators all through Central America for over a century!
Castro was always a communist dictator (either in waiting OR in power). There was no way he was going to be some sort of Carribean Social Democrat. The Soviet Union didn’t force him to outlaw private enterprise or send Cubans offshore to ferment Communist revolution in other nations.
So that makes it okay in your book does it? Somehow all Castro’s human rights abuses are fine because the person he replaced was worse. I suppose that would explain why many leftists in the West supported East Germany. At least they weren’t the Nazi’s
No it doesn’t make it right but it does show that he actually made life better in Cuba from what was before.
Unlike our present NZ government which is actively making life worse for the poor so a few rich people can get richer. And, yes, there’s probably deaths involved as well from those policies.
The average poor person in NZ has a life that the average Cuban could only dream of. That is the tragedy of Cuba. With better economic management the country could have been a success story. Instead it is an economic basket case.
Trade is bad, ask Draco and the Nz loony left, any decent planned economy does not need it, so sorry no out there Also hard to trade with some one that wants to nuke you
Stop with the nonsense of the embargo. There is not one documented case of Cuba not being able to trade with a nation outside the US as a result of the embargo. Heck the country traded with the Soviet Bloc for 30 years. It can trade with the EU or China or even NZ. Name me one item that it couldn’t get from outside the US.
Actually havn’t seen so many clean, happy leisured people anywhere else, apart from New Zealands dairy farmer retirement towns, Mt Muanganui and Cambridge.
Especially glaring compared to parts of New Jersey, and Haiti and Jamaica.
You’ve been reading far too much propaganda from the same people who say that Chavez was a dictator?
Your utter refusal to look at how international politics, and how it works Gossy is outstanding. The Embargo had the effect of stopping trade with anyone who did not want to piss off the USA. Which was a big group, that even NZ was part of till after the fourth labour government.
But lets leave aside your lack of understanding of international politics. The other effect was to limit hard currency Cuba could lay it’s hands on. You understand what that does to an economy right?
Car parts and Kiwifruit? ?? The Cubans can get those from any number of nations. As for the US applying pressure on countries not to trade, there is no evidence for that. Indeed I believe Mexico is one of Cuba’s largest trading partners. That is not indicative of the US causing problems.
Facts to Gosman are such horrid things.
Cuba is the living example of what life will be like post oil.
Gossy take a hard long look and if you happen to be young enough to survive to until the time oil becomes so expensive it is no longer extracted, just think of what it must have been like for Cubans for the past 50 + years.
By the way – if you ever need a doctor in that part of the world – make sure you are in Cuba – not the US. In Cuba its free – you will come out minus an arm and a leg in the US.
Yes I give you Castro did well in convincing left ideologues and his people of that, as does North Korea howeve pre and post Cuba economic stats don’t support your rediculous statement, even before contrasting living standards in Cuba vs Latin America, Europe pre revolutions to now
Geez Gossy your lot have many on the right supporting old PInochet. It’s a dilemma for your lot.
The Cuban revolution was better than what became before, I know you find that hard because a leftist made it better. But they were far from perfect. Guess what – it’s a imperfect world.
As for many of your dumb assertions over the last few days have been sickening. The Cuban revolution was born out of nasty set of events. It was led by a Castro and like all authoritarian regimes it was crap. But, and it’s a big but, it was better than the authoritarian right wing gangsta nation it was before he came to power.
But lets not forget that for 2 million dollars a day the USA put Cuba under an embargo for almost half a century. So, so much for your free trade ah Gosman, so much for freedom there.
I don’t think many people on the right have claimed Pinochet was anything but a brutal military dictator with blood on his hands. He certainly hasn’t been set up to be some sort of Right wing icon who people should aspire to and that despite Pinochet leaving the country a whole lot better off economically than the mess Allende was making of the place. Noone can claim the same of Castro and Cuba.
I’m not putting him on a pedestal. As I stated he was a brutal military dictator with blood of his opponents on his hands. Are you willing to state the same for Castro?
But you did, when you said he was economically better. That is supporting his world view, and economic choices.
I have never said otherwise about Castro. But what I have with you is simple, your blanket statements, and ignoring that the Cuban economy was bulldozed by the US.
Plus, I think you are conveniently ignoring how bad it was before the revolution. The gangster state before the revolution, was one of the worst in the whole of America’s.
Puckish Rogue, you are a fool to quote Phil Quin for ANYTHING, let alone something where he is clearly so far out of his depth.
Perhaps the most risible part of the rant you linked to was the sentence beginning: “Anne Applebaum, a brilliant Washington Post reporter, hardly of the right….”
Anyone who has any familiarity with the views of Anne Applebaum—and Quin obviously does not—would immediately recognize that statement as an absurdity. Applebaum is an “adjunct fellow” at the American Enterprise Institute, a notorious extreme right think tank. Her writing is shrill, biased and the antithesis of scholarly: on one infamous occasion she claimed, outlandishly, that the late Ho Chi Minh, Salvador Allende and Fidel Castro were similar to Stalin, Mao and Kim Il-Sung.
Applebaum is one of the loudest and most incessant agitators on behalf of the Ukrainian junta, and she has been trenchantly condemned by leading thinkers like Glenn Greenwald.
On top of all that, she is actively involved in attempts to minimize and trivialize the under-age rape allegations against her friend Roman Polanski.
Yet Phil Quin, that vacuous chuntering radio ninny, claims she is “brilliant” and “hardly of the right.”
I don’t expect anything intelligent from Phil Quin, but I must say, Puckish Rogue, that I do expect better from you.
I think Castro was a brave and inspirational leader, and a symbol of freedom and resistance against oppression. However, that doesn’t mean that I think he was not deeply flawed. His intolerance of gays was notorious, which of course makes him pretty similar to a significant portion of the United States House of Representatives. And I never fail to be deeply angry and depressed when I think about Castro’s bumptious and destructive attitude toward the beautiful avante-garde architectural work of the National Art Schools.
So my take on him is complicated. But let’s not forget the reality of the situation he faced: He was demonized and targeted for assassination by the United States, which never forgave him for the radical act of leading a popular revolt against Fulgencio Batista, the dictator it backed. Cuba was in a permanent state of siege, as a vengeful superpower pursued a vicious, illegal and internationally condemned jihad against the island state for more than half a century.
Castro’s legacy should be rigorously criticized—-but by serious scholars, not by shallow know-nothings like Phil Quin.
Cuba income before revolution where 60 pc of European levels, amoung the highest in Latin America they are now the poorest in line with Central America. GDP 1950 per capita was approx 3k still as such in 1999, all hail the planned economy and the great Castro before we even consider the human rights record
Ah yes but GDP doesn’t count for many leftists. So long as education and health care are ‘free’ that is the real definition of a successful state. No matter that medical professionals don’t earn enough and many have to moonlight in jobs that pay hard currency, or that there is usually not enough drugs or other medical supplies and patients have to provide their own, or that the education they receive hasn’t led to any innovative new businesses or helped develop the Cuban economy at all.
No it’s not. What you are stating is the health care in Cuba is better than the health care available in the US for the uninsured. This may well be the case but I suspect in the US poor people are able to access health care of some level that does not need them to provide their own drugs and health supplies.
For the socialist elite and offshore paying customers yes, for the average Cuban, get real, smell the roses Many Cuban doctors are simply sent offshore to generate hard currency for the state
“Havana gets subsidized oil from Venezuela and money from several other countries in exchange for medical services. This year, according to the state-run newspaper Granma, the government expects to make $8.2 billion from its medical workers overseas. The vast majority, just under 46,000, are posted in Latin America and the Caribbean. A few thousand are in 32 African countries.”
But this brings up an interesting question: What is it about this trade that upsets the right-wing?
I’m pretty sure that they’ve been telling us how great trade is for centuries. Is it just that there isn’t a private individual making a profit from the work of others as corporations would?
“I was a couple of months old in October 1965, when the Indonesian government gave free rein to a mix of Indonesian soldiers and paramilitaries to kill anyone they considered to be a “communist.” Over the next few months into 1966, at least 500,000 people were killed (the total may be as high as one million). The victims included members of the Communist Party of Indonesia (P.K.I.), ethnic Chinese, as well as trade unionists, teachers, civil society activists and leftist artists.”
The Act of Killing
The film focuses on the perpetrators of the Indonesian killings of 1965–66 in the present day; ostensibly towards the communist community where almost a million people were killed. When Suharto overthrew Sukarno, the President of Indonesia, following the failed coup of the 30 September Movement in 1965, the gangsters Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry in Medan (North Sumatra) were promoted from selling black market movie theatre tickets to leading the most powerful death squad in North Sumatra. They also extorted money from ethnic Chinese as the price for keeping their lives. Anwar is said to have personally killed 1,000 people.
Today, Anwar is revered as the right wing of a paramilitary organization Pemuda Pancasila that grew out of the death squads. The organization is so powerful that its leaders include government ministers who are openly involved in corruption, election rigging and clearing people from their land for developers.”
A right wing Gangster nation where mass murders are celebrated and walk free …………. I think we either just did a trade deal with them ,,,,,,,,,, or maybe it was a tax haven/offshore network meeting
Its hard to know with john keys nats ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
okey dokey.
That says 50-odd thousand doctors overseas.
CIA reckons 6.7 docs per thousand Cubans (looks like 2010 WHO stats).
Cuban population is 11.1 mil (same source).
That’s roughly 75 thousand doctors.
50,000 overseas, that’s 25,000 remaining.
Or, reversing the process, that’s 2.25 doctors per thousand.
NZ is 2.74, US is 2.45 per thousand.
I really couldn’t care less.
DTB asked for a citation that Cuba sent medical people overseas as a way of raising money.
I had been talking to a Cuban born friend who was telling me what incredibly low incomes the people in Cuba have. I found this reference when I was googling for info on that subject and remembered it when DTB asked for a reference. I posted it to satisfy his curiosity.
For the record I think that Castro was a miserable SOB. Not in the class of Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao or Hitler but a despicable specimen none the less.
I am old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. The one who came out of than looking sane was Khrushchev. Castro wanted to start WW3 and Kennedy wasn’t much different.
Castro was willing to destroy the world.
Hi Robert Guyton
Are you involved with this new Southland initiative? Sounds promising in the line of other Invercargill moves like adopting toothy Tim as Mayor. You people might be a role model for the Far North, isolated and languishing a bit though trying but with too many conservatives sitting on their prejudices I think – up for violent disagreement with that. (Note a recent radio piece on the police difficulties and understaffing there).
Southland can only go up along with feisty Stewart Island – after that there is only the Southern Ocean rocky outposts and sealife.
‘a bit languishing’
Violent offense duly taken.
Southland / Northland
GDP per capita – 57,135 / 34,825
Mean household income – 87,100 / 70,000
Unemployment rate – 3.6% / 8.8%
‘Isolated’
I’ll give you that one, and you forgot to point out that the weather in Southland is shit.
And Gore, though I think greywarshark was making his languishing comment with regards the Far North, rather than Southland but it certainly brought out the Parochial Defender in you. Good thing too.
I’ve spent a bit of time in both places (Dang, sold the holiday home at Shipwreck Bay way too early!).
IMO the primary reason for the economic disparity between the two regions is that while the kind of grass cows eat grows brilliantly in both, Southland has the good fortune to be crap for growing the kind you smoke.
That’s not a woolly idea. But I figure that with intelligent forward and smart thinking pollies instead of the prim and punitive little greasers we now have…if gummint could get its head around the growing and sale of marijuana under standards they would have a fast-moving expansionist economy. T
he Northland area would have a ready-made expertise in growing the weed and just need strong guidance to be marketed properly and to standard and be controlled by and keep the returns in, local trusts shared by the community, but employing Maori and pakeha half and half. There would be problems for sure, but just on a better level than at present.
Hi greywarshark
Do you mean the SoRDS (Southland Regional Development Strategy) that’s being launched this morning in the presence of Steven Joyce and Nathan Guy and seeks to establish fin-fish farms in Fiordland National Park, amongst other things?
Sounds like it, doesn’t it. “Swords” though, eh! Economic development, bring in the tourists, double our production, full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes! Pretty keen on drilling and fracking to, that Tom Campbell, Head Sword-wielder. Seen Tom’s name before?
2013, I wrote a story about Christchurch talent quest stars the Manetti Brothers, Gerry Brownlee and former schoolmate Richard Holden.
The pair performed a unique mix of country and western and jazz cover songs around Christchurch bars from 1980 to 1986.
Towards the end of their career, the Manetti Brothers auditioned in front of Ray Columbus for a TV show.
“He subtly told us we were crap,” Brownlee told me in 2013.
He went on to describe the audition as a “cock-up” on Columbus’s part.
“It was the most appalling thing. We went to the second floor of the now demolished TVNZ building to audition,” said Brownlee.
“Ray Columbus was there, very small he was. I had to look down to see him, and he said ‘show us what you’ve got’. We only got a little way through our act and he said ‘that’s enough, you guys’. I’m not bitter about it but it was a cock-up in my opinion.”
Oh how Ray laughed when I read Brownlee’s quote to him.
I really think you should have included the last bit of the article
“”All right,” Ray eventually agreed when I suggested he should have right of reply. “But you can only print this response when I’m gone.”
As I said, Ray did always like to have the last word.
“I may be short, Mr Brownlee, but at least I could sing.””
She listened to Guy ‘humans only have ten years left’ McPherson and experienced a personal epiphany….
“Many try to believe that politicians will soon see the error of their delays, act quickly on our behalf for the good of the planet, and all will be well. Business helps the environment, neoliberalism will save the kea, and continued fossil fuel extraction is a necessary evil. Technology will ultimately save the day. Hurrah!
I’ve thought hard on what was emotionally so different about McPherson’s short timeframe versus my unquestioning belief in a much longer one. Obviously, the longer timeframe means I’d get to live out my natural life.
I had never, for one second, consciously entertained the idea that human extinction was conceivable in the near term.
In other words, I’m basically okay with the sadness and anxiety about some far-off future generation seeing the collapse of humanity. Just not this one. My one.
Which tells me everything I didn’t want to know about myself. I possess precisely the same procrastination, selfishness and denial that got us into this mess.
@Rosemary
Makes you gulp more than a little. Most people I know are ignoring warnings, but trying to make rational decisions based on the expectation that an ordered society will be possible in the long term. Short term, well more earthquakes, tsunami, a change of government, but near extinction no!
And how many people are putting the Syrian and African refugees to the forefront. I gave some money some months ago but have been sidetracked by other costs of money and time. Though they are just ordinary people like us who deserve their chance to live and have settled communities without being bombed and murdered because they are inconveniently in the way of strategic assets wanted by giant powers.
I am part of a group trying to do something for now for the community with an eye for the near to mid- future and having hard enough job to keep people on reality track when their heads are full of untested ideas, beliefs, personality clashes, examples from different times, areas etc which may not be replicated, differing understandings of what we are doing and about, what is of first priority etc. And trying to keep control from being wrested by charismatic loud voices that disdain questioning, quiet and meaningful analysis.
“Short term, well more earthquakes, tsunami, a change of government, but near extinction no!”
A Young Twentysomething of my acquaintance has (and sometimes is blighted by) what she terms ‘Apocalypse’ nightmares. End of the world stuff in full living colour and 3D. Every disaster, natural or manmade that dominates the headlines results in a sub conscious -produced movie that robs her of the settled sleep she needs to function well. Often this will be a mish-mash of various cataclysms…a bit of earthquake, tsunami with a sub plot of volcanic eruption and civil disorder.
I can’t say…”Chill, child, it’ll never happen”, that would be lying, but I do try to say that combining all these different types of incidents into one big nightmare is a bit OTT. Then…she points out, that in the middle of the earthquake, and the resulting tsunami warning, miserable scrotes broke into the houses of evacuees and robbed them. Such are humans…and do we really deserve to inhabit, never mind dominate, the planet? I try the “Not all folk are like that”, line, pointing out some of the good stuff that people do…but looking at the Big Picture, the Overall View of The World….???
Lyrics…. No lullaby
Keep your eyes open
And prick up your ears
Rehearse your loudest cry.
There’s folk out there
Who would do you harm
So I’ll sing you no lullaby.
There’s a lock on the window;
There’s a chain on the door:
A big dog in the hall.
But there’s dragons and beasties
Out there in the night
To snatch you if you fall.
So come out fighting
With your rattle in hand.
Thrust and parry. Light
A match to catch the devil’s eye.
Bring a cross of fire to the fight.
And let no sleep bring false relief
From the tension of the fray.
Come wake the dead with the scream of life.
Do battle with ghosts at play.
Gather your toys at the call-to-arms
And swing your big bear down.
Upon our necks when we come to set
You sleeping safe and sound.
It’s as well we tell no lie
To chase the face that cries.
And little birds can’t fly
So keep an open eye.
It’s as well we tell no lie
So I’ll sing you no lullaby.
McPherson is a moonbat who follows a long line of millerites and millenialists.
Stewart has been gullible to be sucked in by him as there is little in the way of a life lesson to be drawn from McPherson’s ‘science’ (except perhaps ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’).
Stewart is particularly obtuse if she’s never encountered the possibility of humanity ending – as an opinion writer she’s remarkably uninformed if she has never read theories or novels on comet impacts, germ warfare, plagues, nuclear war, vogons, zombie apocalypse etc etc.
The IPCC always gives conservative estimates of AGW impact, as I see it McPherson is looking at worst case scenarios. Unlikely perhaps but not outside the realm of possibility.
inspider
Don’t be such a jerk and know all. Plenty of totally unreal things have happened in the last 150 years, they have been real – not unreal, rarely have many imagined their unpleasant possibilities.
And for those others who already know everything and just look sarcastically at others flailing around trying to open and expand their minds – note the numerous thinking pattern systems:
Black swan theory
Dunning–Kruger effect
Epistemic modal logic
Four stages of competence
I know that I know nothing
Ignoramus et ignorabimus
Ignotum per ignotius
Johari window
Known and Unknown: A Memoir
List of political catch phrases
Outside Context Problem
Russell’s teapot
The Unknown Known
Wild card (foresight)
These are not even unknown or unpredictable events, any science that contradicts the relentless pursuit of profit is treated as a pariah.
History shows that all civilizations have a limited life span, and there are so many things going wrong with the climate and ecosystems sustaining human civilisation, I think we will see in our lifetimes massive collapses of cities and nations, but hopefully not complete extinction of humanity.
Our species faces some existential threats but down here in Planet Key we are pretending it’s business as usual for as long as possible. Until it’s too late.
– record levels of extinctions
– collapsing bee populations
– widespread soil degradation
– increasing pressure on water supplies (fracking, cowshit, mining)
– human population still growing out of control
– destruction of remaining rainforests
– overfishing and fish dumping
– ocean acidification, warming, and gyres of floating garbage
– methane emissions from thawing tundra
– sea level rise and extreme weather events
– donald trump
“Coroner Bain concluded: “Having reviewed all the evidence, the Court does not support the view that Mr McMurtrie is in effect, the author of his own misfortune. Considerable issues are raised by the family and the Counsel for Trade Unions in respect of fatigue and in the Court’s view this may well have played a significant part in what occurred,” he said.
“The Court, on the balance of probabilities, finds no fault with Mr McMurtrie.”
Coroner Bain went on to repeat general findings from three inquest findings released on Friday, in which he said the forestry industry was a far safer place to work now than it was when the eight men died.
“The primary driver in highlighting the lack of safety in the forestry industry and the need for accountability and urgent safety reforms has been the CTU and, in particular, Helen Kelly,” he said.””
Many people appear to be concerned about the spread and influence of “fake news” in this so-called post-truth era and agonise about how to deal with it. I don’t think there’s an easy answer – it would be worth a lengthy post here on TS if I knew it would ever get published – but this piece may be a step in the right direction although I don’t think it is nearly enough or sufficient:
Nope, even philosophy 101 would be far too abstract for most kids.
Would be good to get the opinion of a teacher, but I remember learning about Nazi propaganda in social studies, and reading ‘1984’ and ‘Brave New World’ (and probably Fahrenheit 451) at various points.
So I think the basics are covered, if the high school curriculum is anything like it was in the 80s.
I don’t think philosophy needs to be abstract, rather the opposite, it can be highly practical and relevant. I think it would be great if more emphasis would be given in schools to ethics, logic, analytical thinking, etc. The (human) brain has awe-inspiring capabilities but if we don’t get taught how to engage our brains awful things can and do happen plus it is just a waste of our tremendous potential both individually and collectively IMHO.
Obviously, you tailor your teaching to the children but IMO philosophy starts at a very young age.
“There are reports a deal with the Greens to stand aside in Nelson has fractured the local electorate, with as many as eight people said to have quit the party in protest.
Labour sources suggested to Fairfax there were more.”
Someone is telling porkies – But it sounds like its possible some of the members are not happy with the MOU implementation.
I believe I have pointed out previously that this is what I’d expect. I’d also expect that the number of people actually voting for the local candidates would drop. I think that the party votes for the area will also drop.
It may make “political” sense for people in Wellington. However I suspect that overall it is a vote loser.
Personally as a matter of principal I’d simply vote against whatever party did it. Doesn’t matter if it is National in Epsom or Labour in Nelson. The idea that a political party ‘owns’ votes is just outright dumb. If you have a decent candidate (and Labour and National usually do), then put them up and let the voters make up their mind. Don’t do deals that cut into the voting base.
We have enough issues with the slow but steady reduction of the turnout already.
Very interesting move from the NZ Reserve Bank to seek powers to limit lending to home buyers if they do not earn enough.
English wants a bit more time to see if the current measures will continue to cool the Auckland market enough. But that’s quite a call if all this debt starts to get riskier.
I seem to recall Minister Smith this morning saying how important it was that young people didn’t rack up more mortgage debt than they could bear, after figures came in showing the percentage of debt increase for fist home buyers over the last two years. (better jaw jaw than act act, or something).
For example, events may change fast in the global economy that really push up interest rates up fast, so anyone with a mortgage that isn’t fixed gets in real trouble because it’s just too hard to pay back. Trouble Capital T.
We will see Ministers meet with the Reserve Bank in the next few weeks to nut this one out. It’s a biggie.
Under Labour the average person could afford to buy a house. Under National housing is the most unaffordable in the world.— Dovil (@Dovil) November 28, 2016
The NZ Roy Morgan Government Confidence Rating has increased strongly to 141pts (up 14.5pts) in November with a high 65% (up 9.5%) of NZ electors saying NZ is ‘heading in the right direction’ compared to only 24% (down 5%) that say NZ is ‘heading in the wrong direction’. This is the rating’s highest score for nearly two years since January 2015.
The lolly scramble and two-tier economy is working well for Gnat supporters.
So is the media adulation and careful PR image of AB captain/beer swilling kiwi PM.
We are ranked near the top of the OECD on all sorts of measures except for absolute basic stuff like education, health, and housing. But that’s all swept under the carpet.
Our Cranky Uncle Game can already be played in eight languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. About 15 more languages are in the works at various stages of completion or have been offered to be done. To kick off the new year, we checked with how ...
The (new) Prime Minister said nobody understands what co-governance means, later modified to that there were so many varying interpretations that there was no common understanding.Co-governance cannot be derived from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It does not use the word. It refers to ‘government’ on ...
It’s that time of the week again when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kaka. Jump on this link for our chat about the week’s news with special guests Auckland Central MP Chloe Swarbrick and Auckland City Councillor Julie Fairey, including:Auckland’s catastrophic floods, which ...
In March last year, in a panic over rising petrol prices caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the government made a poor decision, "temporarily" cutting fuel excise tax by 25 cents a litre. Of course, it turned out not to be temporary at all, having been extended in May, July, ...
This month’s open thread for climate related topics. Please be constructive, polite, and succinct. The post Unforced variations: Feb 2023 first appeared on RealClimate. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two fresh press releases had been posted when we checked the Beehive website at noon, both of them posted yesterday. In one statement, in the runup to Waitangi Day, Maori Crown Relations Minister Kelvin Davis drew attention to happenings on a Northland battle site in 1845. ...
It’s that time of the week again when I’m on the site for an hour for a chat in an Ask Me Anything with paying subscribers to The Kaka. Jump in for a chat on anything, including:Auckland’s catastrophic floods, which are set to cost insurers and the Government well over ...
Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers (left) has published a 6,000 word manifesto called ‘Capitalism after the Crises’ arguing for ‘values-based capitalism’. Yet here in NZ we hear the same stale old rhetoric unchanged from the 1990s and early 2000s. Photo: Getty ImagesTLDR: The rest of the world is talking about inflation ...
A couple of weeks ago, after NCEA results came out, my son’s enrolment at Auckland Uni for this year was confirmed - he is doing a BSc majoring in Statistics. Well that is the plan now, who knows what will take his interest once he starts.I spent a bit of ...
Kia ora. What a week! We hope you’ve all come through last weekend’s extreme weather event relatively dry and safe. Header image: stormwater ponds at Hobsonville Point. Image via Twitter. The week in Greater Auckland There’s been a storm of information and debate since the worst of the flooding ...
Hi,At 4.43pm yesterday it arrived — a cease and desist letter from the guy I mentioned in my last newsletter. I’d written an article about “WEWE”, a global multi-level marketing scam making in-roads into New Zealand. MLMs are terrible for many of the same reasons megachurches are terrible, and I ...
Time To Call A Halt: Chris Hipkins knows that iwi leaders possess the means to make life very difficult for his government. Notwithstanding their objections, however, the Prime Minister’s direction of travel – already clearly signalled by his very public demotion of Nanaia Mahuta – must be confirmed by an emphatic ...
Open access notables Via PNAS, Ceylan, Anderson & Wood present a paper squarely in the center of the Skeptical Science wheelhouse: Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased. The signficance statement is obvious catnip: Misinformation is a worldwide concern carrying socioeconomic and political consequences. What drives ...
Mark White from the Left free speech organisation Plebity looks at the disturbing trend of ‘book burning’ on US campuses In the abstract, people mostly agree that book banning is a bad thing. The Nazis did us the favor of being very clear about it and literally burning books, but ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has undergone a stern baptisim of fire in his first week in his new job, but it doesn’t get any easier. Next week, he has a vital meeting in Canberra with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese, where he has to establish ...
As PM Chris Hipkins says, it’s a “no brainer” to extend the fuel tax cut, half price public subsidy and the cut to the road user levy until mid-year. A no braoner if the prime purpose is to ease the burden on people struggling to cope with the cost of ...
Buzz from the Beehive Cost-of-living pressures loomed large in Beehive announcements over the past 24 hours. The PM was obviously keen to announce further measures to keep those costs in check and demonstrate he means business when he talks of focusing his government on bread-and-butter issues. His statement was headed ...
Poor Mike Hosking. He has revealed himself in his most recent diatribe to be one of those public figures who is defined, not by who he is, but by who he isn’t, or at least not by what he is for, but by what he is against. Jacinda’s departure has ...
New Zealand is the second least corrupt country on earth according to the latest Corruption Perception Index published yesterday by Transparency International. But how much does this reflect reality? The problem with being continually feted for world-leading political integrity – which the Beehive and government departments love to boast about ...
TLDR: Including my pick of the news and other links in my checks around the news sites since 4am. Paying subscribers can see them all below the fold.In Aotearoa’s political economyBrown vs Fish Read more ...
TLDR: Including my pick of the news and other links in my checks around the news sites since 4am. Paying subscribers can see them all below the fold.In Aotearoa’s political economyBrown vs Fish Read more ...
In other countries, the target-rich cohorts of swinging voters are given labels such as ‘Mondeo Man’, ‘White Van Man,’ ‘Soccer Moms’ and ‘Little Aussie Battlers.’ Here, the easiest shorthand is ‘Ford Ranger Man’ – as seen here parked outside a Herne Bay restaurant, inbetween two SUVs. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / ...
In other countries, the target-rich cohorts of swinging voters are given labels such as ‘Mondeo Man’, ‘White Van Man,’ ‘Soccer Moms’ and ‘Little Aussie Battlers.’ Here, the easiest shorthand is ‘Ford Ranger Man’ – as seen here parked outside a Herne Bay restaurant, inbetween two SUVs. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / ...
Transport Minister and now also Minister for Auckland, Michael Wood has confirmed that the light rail project is part of the government’s policy refocus. Wood said the light rail project was under review as part of a ministerial refocus on key Government projects. “We are undertaking a stocktake about how ...
Sometime before the new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced that this year would be about “bread and butter issues”, National’s finance spokesperson Nicola Willis decided to move from Wellington Central and stand for Ohariu, which spreads across north Wellington from the central city to Johnsonville and Tawa. It’s an ...
They say a week is a long time in politics. For Mayor Wayne Brown, turns out 24 hours was long enough for many of us to see, quite obviously, “something isn’t right here…”. That in fact, a lot was going wrong. Very wrong indeed.Mainly because it turns ...
One of the most effective, and successful, graphics developed by Skeptical Science is the escalator. The escalator shows how global surface temperature anomalies vary with time, and illustrates how "contrarians" tend to cherry-pick short time intervals so as to argue that there has been no recent warming, while "realists" recognise ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Here’s a quick roundup of the news today for paying subscribers on a slightly frantic, very wet, and then very warm day. In Aotearoa’s political economy today Read more ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Here’s a quick roundup of the news today for paying subscribers on a slightly frantic, very wet, and then very warm day. In Aotearoa’s political economy today Read more ...
Tomorrow we have a funeral, and thank you all of you for your very kind words and thoughts — flowers, even.Our friend Michèle messaged: we never get to feel one thing at a time, us grownups, and oh boy is that ever the truth. Tomorrow we have the funeral, and ...
Lynn and I have just returned from a news conference where Hipkins, fresh from visiting a relief centre in Mangere, was repeatedly challenged to justify the extension of subsidies to create more climate emissions when the effects of climate change had just proved so disastrous. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The ...
Lynn and I have just returned from a news conference where Hipkins, fresh from visiting a relief centre in Mangere, was repeatedly challenged to justify the extension of subsidies to create more climate emissions when the effects of climate change had just proved so disastrous. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The ...
A new Prime Minister, a revitalised Cabinet, and possibly revised priorities – but is the political and, importantly, economic landscape much different? Certainly some within the news media were excited by the changes which Chris Hipkins announced yesterday or – before the announcement – by the prospect of changes in ...
Currently the government's strategy for reducing transport emissions hinges on boosting vehicle fuel-efficiency, via the clean car standard and clean car discount, and some improvements to public transport. The former has been hugely successful, and has clearly set us on the right path, but its also not enough, and will ...
Buzz from the Beehive Before he announced his Cabinet yesterday, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced he would be flying to Australia next week to meet that country’s Prime Minister. And before Kieran McAnulty had time to say “Three Waters” after his promotion to the Local Government portfolio, he was dishing ...
The quarterly labour market statistics were released this morning, showing that unemployment has risen slightly to 3.4%. There are now 99,000 people unemployed - 24,000 fewer than when Labour took office. So, I guess the Reserve Bank's plan to throw people out of work to stop wage rises "inflation", and ...
Another night of heavy rain, flooding, damage to homes, and people worried about where the hell all this water is going to go as we enter day twenty two of rain this year.Honestly if the government can’t sell Three Waters on the back of what has happened with storm water ...
* Dr Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Chris Hipkins continues to be the new broom in Government, re-setting his Government away from its problem areas in his Cabinet reshuffle yesterday, and trying to convince voters that Labour is focused on “bread and butter” issues. The ministers responsible for unpopular ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins continues to be the new broom in Government, re-setting his Government away from its problem areas in his Cabinet reshuffle yesterday, and trying to convince voters that Labour is focused on “bread and butter” issues. The ministers responsible for unpopular reforms in water and DHB centralisation ...
Hi,It’s weird to me that in 2023 we still have people falling for multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs for short). There are Netflix documentaries about them, countless articles, and last year we did an Armchaired and Dangerous episode on them.Then you check a ticketing website like EventBrite and see this shit ...
Nanaia Mahuta fell the furthest in the Cabinet reshuffle. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: PM Chris Hipkins unveiled a Cabinet this afternoon he hopes will show wavering voters that a refreshed Labour Government is focused on ‘bread and butter cost of living’ issues, rather than the unpopular, unwieldy and massively centralising ...
Nanaia Mahuta fell the furthest in the Cabinet reshuffle. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: PM Chris Hipkins unveiled a Cabinet this afternoon he hopes will show wavering voters that a refreshed Labour Government is focused on ‘bread and butter cost of living’ issues, rather than the unpopular, unwieldy and massively centralising ...
Shortly, the absolute state of Wayne Brown. But before that, something I wrote four years ago for the council’s own media machine. It was a day-in-the-life profile of their many and varied and quite possibly unnoticed vital services. We went all over Auckland in 48 hours for the story, the ...
Completed reads for January Lilith, by George MacDonald The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (poem), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel (poem), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, by Anonymous The Lay of Kraka (poem), by Anonymous 1066 and All That, by W.C. Sellar and R.J. ...
Pity the poor Brits. They just can’t catch a break. After years of reporting of lying Boris Johnson, a change to a less colourful PM in Rishi Sunak has resulted in a smooth media pivot to an end-of-empire narrative. The New York Times, no less, amplifies suggestions that Blighty ...
On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth.Genesis 6:11-12THE TORRENTIAL DOWNPOURS that dumped a record-breaking amount of rain on Auckland this anniversary weekend will reoccur with ever-increasing frequency. The planet’s atmosphere is ...
Buzz from the Beehive There has been plenty to keep the relevant Ministers busy in flood-stricken Auckland over the past day or two. But New Zealand, last time we looked, extends north of Auckland into Northland and south of the Bombay Hills all the way to the bottom of the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters When early settlers came to the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers before the California Gold Rush, Indigenous people warned them that the Sacramento Valley could become an inland sea when great winter rains came. The storytellers described water filling the ...
Wayne Brown managed a smile when meeting with Remuera residents, but he was grumpy about having to deal with “media drongos”. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: In my pick of the news links found in my rounds since 4am for paying subscribers below the paywall:Wayne Brown moans about the media and ...
Wayne Brown managed a smile when meeting with Remuera residents, but he was grumpy about having to deal with “media drongos”. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: In my pick of the news links found in my rounds since 4am for paying subscribers below the paywall:Wayne Brown moans about the media and ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes – Last night’s opinion polls answered the big question of whether a switch of prime minister would really be a gamechanger for election year. The 1News and Newshub polls released at 6pm gave the same response: the shift from Jacinda Ardern to Chris Hipkins ...
Hipkins’ aim this year will be to present a ‘low target’ for those seeking to attack Labour’s policies and spending. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Anyone dealing with Government departments and councils who wants some sort of big or long-term decision out of officials or politicians this year should brace for ...
Hipkins’ aim this year will be to present a ‘low target’ for those seeking to attack Labour’s policies and spending. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Anyone dealing with Government departments and councils who wants some sort of big or long-term decision out of officials or politicians this year should brace for ...
Last night’s opinion polls answered the big question of whether a switch of prime minister would really be a gamechanger for election year. The 1News and Newshub polls released at 6pm gave the same response: the shift from Jacinda Ardern to Chris Hipkins has changed everything, and Labour is back ...
Over the last few years, it’s seemed like city after city around the world has become subject to extreme flooding events that have been made worse by impacts from climate change. We’ve highlighted many of them in our Weekly Roundup series. Sadly, over the last few days it’s been Auckland’s ...
And so the first month of the year draws to a close. It rained in Auckland on 21 out of the 31 days in January. Feels like summer never really happened this year. It’s actually hard to believe there were 10 days that it didn’t rain. Was it any better where ...
A ‘small target’ strategy is not going to cut it anymore if National want to win the upcoming election. The game has changed and the game plan needs to change as well. Jacinda Ardern’s abrupt departure from the 9th floor has the potential to derail what looked to be an ...
When Grant Robertson talks about how the economy might change post-covid, one of the things he talks about is what he calls an unsung but interesting white paper on science. “It’s really important,” he says. The Minister in charge of the White Paper — Te Ara Paerangi, Future Pathways ...
The clean up has begun but more rain is on the way. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Auckland’s floods over the last three days are turning into a macroeconomic event, with losses from Aotearoa’s biggest-ever climate event estimated at around $500 million and Auckland’s schools all closed for a week until ...
The clean up has begun but more rain is on the way. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Auckland’s floods over the last three days are turning into a macroeconomic event, with losses from Aotearoa’s biggest-ever climate event estimated at around $500 million and Auckland’s schools all closed for a week until ...
The news media were at one ceremony by the looks of things. The Governor-General, the Prime Minister and his deputy were at another. The news media were at a swearing-in ceremony. The country’s leaders were at an appointment ceremony. The New Zealand Gazette record of what transpired says: Appointment of ...
I n some alternative universe, Auckland mayor Efeso Collins readily grasped the scale of Friday’s deluge, and quickly made the emergency declaration that enabled central government to immediately throw its resources behind the rescue and remediation effort. As Friday evening became night, Mayor Collins seemed to be everywhere: talking with ...
They called it an “atmospheric river”, the weather bombardment which hit NZ’s northern region at the weekend. It exacted a terrible toll on metropolitan Auckland and the rest of the region. Few living there may have noted a statement from electricity generator Mercury Energy labelled “WET, WET, WET!” This was ...
I know, that is a pretty corny title but given the circumstances here in the Auckland region, I just had to say it. The more oblique reference embedded in the title is to the leadership failures exhibited by Mayor Wayne Brown and his so-called leadership team when confronted by the ...
How much confidence should the public have in authorities managing natural disasters? Not much, judging by the farcical way in which the civil defence emergence in Auckland has played out. The way authorities dealt with Auckland’s extreme weather on Friday illustrated how hit-and-miss our civil defence emergency system is. In ...
TLDR: Here’s the key news links and useful longer reads I’ve spotted since 4 am this morning, including:calls for a more ‘spongey’ urban infrastructure after Auckland’s floods;demands for an inquiry into Auckland Council’s communications failure;the latest on Chris Hipkins’ plans for Three Waters; inside the PR trainwreck that is Wayne ...
TLDR: Here’s the key news links and useful longer reads I’ve spotted since 4 am this morning, including:calls for a more ‘spongey’ urban infrastructure after Auckland’s floods;demands for an inquiry into Auckland Council’s communications failure;the latest on Chris Hipkins’ plans for Three Waters; inside the PR trainwreck that is Wayne ...
Mayor Wayne Brown, under fire for his communication failures, quietly visited the scene of the fatal Remuera slip on Sunday, with his staff taking photos for social media updates. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: The cleanup and the post-mortem have begun, even though the rain just keeps falling in Auckland after ...
Mayor Wayne Brown, under fire for his communication failures, quietly visited the scene of the fatal Remuera slip on Sunday, with his staff taking photos for social media updates. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: The cleanup and the post-mortem have begun, even though the rain just keeps falling in Auckland after ...
Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The recent leadership change in the governing Labour party resulted in a very strange response from National’s (current) leader, Christopher Luxon. Mr Luxon berated Labour for it’s change of leader, citing no actual change.As ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 22, 2023 thru Sat, Jan 28, 2023. Story of the Week New Study Reveals Arctic Ice, Tracked Both Above and Below, Is Freezing LaterClimate change is affecting the timing of both ...
We’ve just announced a massive infrastructure investment to kick-start new housing developments across New Zealand. Through our Infrastructure Acceleration Fund, we’re making sure that critical infrastructure - like pipes, roads and wastewater connections - is in place, so thousands more homes can be built. ...
The Green Party is joining more than 20 community organisations to call for an immediate rent freeze in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, after reports of landlords intending to hike rents after flooding. ...
When Chris Hipkins took on the job of Prime Minister, he said bread and butter issues like the cost of living would be the Government’s top priority – and this week, we’ve set out extra support for families and businesses. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to provide direct support to low-income households and to stop subsidising fossil fuels during a climate crisis. ...
The tools exist to help families with surging costs – and as costs continue to rise it is more urgent than ever that we use them, the Green Party says. ...
Over $10 million infrastructure funding to unlock housing in Whangārei The purchase of a 3.279 hectare site in Kerikeri to enable 56 new homes Northland becomes eligible for $100 million scheme for affordable rentals Multiple Northland communities will benefit from multiple Government housing investments, delivering thousands of new homes for ...
A memorial event at a key battle site in the New Zealand land wars is an important event to mark the progress in relations between Māori and the Crown as we head towards Waitangi Day, Minister for Te Arawhiti Kelvin Davis said. The Battle of Ohaeawai in June 1845 saw ...
More Police officers are being deployed to the frontline with the graduation of 54 new constables from the Royal New Zealand Police College today. The graduation ceremony for Recruit Wing 362 at Te Rauparaha Arena in Porirua was the first official event for Stuart Nash since his reappointment as Police ...
The Government is unlocking an additional $700,000 in support for regions that have been badly hit by the recent flooding and storm damage in the upper North Island. “We’re supporting the response and recovery of Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel, Northland, and Bay of Plenty regions, through activating Enhanced Taskforce Green to ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has welcomed the announcement that Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, will visit New Zealand this month. “Princess Anne is travelling to Aotearoa at the request of the NZ Army’s Royal New Zealand Corps of Signals, of which she is Colonel in Chief, to ...
A new Government and industry strategy launched today has its sights on growing the value of New Zealand’s horticultural production to $12 billion by 2035, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor said. “Our food and fibre exports are vital to New Zealand’s economic security. We’re focussed on long-term strategies that build on ...
25 cents per litre petrol excise duty cut extended to 30 June 2023 – reducing an average 60 litre tank of petrol by $17.25 Road User Charge discount will be re-introduced and continue through until 30 June Half price public transport fares extended to the end of June 2023 saving ...
The strong economy has attracted more people into the workforce, with a record number of New Zealanders in paid work and wages rising to help with cost of living pressures. “The Government’s economic plan is delivering on more better-paid jobs, growing wages and creating more opportunities for more New Zealanders,” ...
The Government is providing a further $1 million to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Auckland following flooding, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced today. “Cabinet today agreed that, given the severity of the event, a further $1 million contribution be made. Cabinet wishes to be proactive ...
The new Cabinet will be focused on core bread and butter issues like the cost of living, education, health, housing and keeping communities and businesses safe, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has announced. “We need a greater focus on what’s in front of New Zealanders right now. The new Cabinet line ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins will travel to Canberra next week for an in person meeting with Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. “The trans-Tasman relationship is New Zealand’s closest and most important, and it was crucial to me that my first overseas trip as Prime Minister was to Australia,” Chris Hipkins ...
The Government is providing establishment funding of $100,000 to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Auckland following flooding, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced. “We moved quickly to make available this funding to support Aucklanders while the full extent of the damage is being assessed,” Kieran McAnulty ...
As the Mayor of Auckland has announced a state of emergency, the Government, through NEMA, is able to step up support for those affected by flooding in Auckland. “I’d urge people to follow the advice of authorities and check Auckland Emergency Management for the latest information. As always, the Government ...
Ka papā te whatitiri, Hikohiko ana te uira, wāhi rua mai ana rā runga mai o Huruiki maunga Kua hinga te māreikura o te Nota, a Titewhai Harawira Nā reira, e te kahurangi, takoto, e moe Ka mōwai koa a Whakapara, kua uhia te Tai Tokerau e te kapua pōuri ...
Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Social Development and Employment, has activated Enhanced Taskforce Green (ETFG) in response to flooding and damaged caused by Cyclone Hale in the Tairāwhiti region. Up to $500,000 will be made available to employ job seekers to support the clean-up. We are still investigating whether other parts ...
The 2023 General Election will be held on Saturday 14 October 2023, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. “Announcing the election date early in the year provides New Zealanders with certainty and has become the practice of this Government and the previous one, and I believe is best practice,” Jacinda ...
Jacinda Ardern has announced she will step down as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. Her resignation will take effect on the appointment of a new Prime Minister. A caucus vote to elect a new Party Leader will occur in 3 days’ time on Sunday the 22nd of ...
The Government is maintaining its strong trade focus in 2023 with Trade and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor visiting Europe this week to discuss the role of agricultural trade in climate change and food security, WTO reform and New Zealand agricultural innovation. Damien O’Connor will travel tomorrow to Switzerland to attend the ...
The Government has extended its medium-scale classification of Cyclone Hale to the Wairarapa after assessing storm damage to the eastern coastline of the region. “We’re making up to $80,000 available to the East Coast Rural Support Trust to help farmers and growers recover from the significant damage in the region,” ...
COMMENTARY:By Kayt Davies in Perth I wasn’t good at French in my final year of high school. My classmates had five years of language studies behind them. I had three. As a result of my woeful grip on the language, I wrote a terribly bad essay in my final ...
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Iwi leaders have accused National and ACT of "fanning the flames of racism", urging the prime minister to be brave and not walk away from partnership on three waters. ...
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For Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown, sorry seems to be the hardest word to say The mayoral chains must have been heavy this week for Auckland’s Wayne Brown, as his response to last week’s flood garnered its own veritable torrent of scandals and media scrutiny. Almost exactly one week on from ...
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Auckland mayor Wayne Brown has conceded he “dropped the ball” during last Friday’s major flooding event. The state of emergency in the super city has today been extended for a further seven days, though Brown said he expects it will be lifted early. After a week of defensiveness over his ...
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Auckland’s state of emergency is expected to be extended for another seven days, according to the Herald. It was due to expire overnight after being declared a week ago, the day of the worst flooding in the super city. While weather conditions have improved, the city is continuing to experience ...
Proposed pay equity claim settlements for school librarians and science technicians have been reached between the Ministry of Education and NZEI Te Riu Roa, Secretary for Education, Iona Holsted and NZEI Te Riu Roa president, Mark Potter, announced ...
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New Zealand’s egg shortage is hitting cruise ships too – forcing the crew of one vessel to hatch a poaching plan. This story was first published on Stuff. On the hunt for eggs, a crew from a luxury cruise ship got cracking and hatched a cunning plan. Earlier this week, Stuff ...
Now demolished, the First Church of Christ Scientist was a masterclass of architectural imagination. Kate Linzey visits the site on which it once stood, to learn more. The object is delicate and small. Small enough to sit in the palm of my hand and weighing less than 300 grams. It ...
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Drongo-gate continues for another day with the Herald reporting that Auckland’s mayor has been caught out using the slang term for a second time. It comes this time from a former minor mayoral candidate, Mike Kampkes, who said he received a message from Brown in response to a media release ...
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“The decision by the Reserve Bank of Australia to not replace the late Queen with Charles on the Aussie $5 note should indicate to our Reserve Bank that it’s time to change the NZ $20 note” said Lewis Holden, campaign chair of New ...
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Interesting, anti-immigrant groups in the past have used a “competitor standing” doctrine to try to limit immigration on the grounds that immigrants compete with local workers and harm their prospects. Now that doctrine may get used to go after Trump.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-immigration-legal-theory-231899
Sit still for a wee while and read this….http://www.radionz.co.nz/stories/201825742/justice-delayed-justice-denied
“At first she didn’t think of the state welfare homes as incarceration. But when she started to interview people she changed her mind. The regimes they were subject to were very similar to prison regimes.
“They were horrific. Really austere. Children were left in the secure cell during the day with nothing. Nothing. A concrete plinth. They even removed the mattress so they wouldn’t be comfortable during the day. They’d be boiling in the summer, they’d be freezing in the winter. In some institutions they even had a nodding system where the guards or workers wouldn’t even speak to them. You can’t imagine what that would do to you if you’re an adult let alone if you’re 11, 12, 15, that dehumanisation.”
That dehumanisation included regular use of physical violence as punishment, including electric-shock therapy. Some victims say the shocks were applied to their genitals and other parts of their bodies. Some children were controlled with drugs that sedated or knocked them out.
Not only are victims deeply distrustful – the state is still acting in ways that call into question its trustworthiness. Currently the process for making a complaint about abuse in state institutions means going through a system set up and administered by the government department that ran the institutions where the abuse happened.”
Great work by Aaron Smale supporting this morning’s RNZ’s piece about the reports about abuse in State care.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport
Interview with Judge Henwood, and currently Kim Hill has Anne Tolley on the griddle. I hope the audio will be available later.
Anne Tolley’s current defense is along the lines that only 3.odd percent of the 100,000 who went through State care during this period have made complaints.
Heartless bastards.
Kim Hill roasts Anne Tolley.
What an appalling person Toley is.
I do not disagree, but unfortunately I heard Kim Hill calling for an independent inquiry quite a few times, rather than an independent agency to consider complaints – all some will hear is Tolley being hectored, and not understand the point that was being made. Any excuse for wilful misunderstanding will be taken in defense of the indefensible . . .
Audio here….http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201825818/judge-blasts-government-over-handling-of-abuse-claims
and the frying of Tolley here….http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201825819/anne-tolley-defends-government's-handling-of-abuse-claims
Good work Natrad…good work.
“Good work Natrad…good work”
Agree with that, I heard that interview.
They will now be definitely earmarked for further funding cuts or sold off.
You must also remember Tolley was the minister who destroyed an NZ institution called Evening Classes.
As Paul said an appalling person.
Agree 1000% …. Tolley was toast, Kim for once you were wonderful, I am not one of your fans but this was great stuff putting an incompetent minister through the hoops.
“They will now be definitely earmarked for further funding cuts or sold off.”
Hah! Just like the HRC and OHRP…god forbid that those paid from the Public Purse actually do their jobs.
I have flicked an email to Natrad asking if the feedback from survivors of abuse in state care that were read out by the hosts could be put on audio.
These spontaneous testimonies are gold.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201825831/abuse-victim-says-independent-inquiry-needed
and…. http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201825841/-i-want-an-inquiry-abuse-survivor
The Natrad links aren’t working but all morning report podcasts can be found here
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport
“The Natrad links aren’t working…”
I’ve gone back and checked each one, and their all fine from where I am…I do always check links are working…:-)
Good work kim hill you mean who stands apart from natoid shills like mora and pissweak interviewers like gluon and sidekick suzie.
Ryans been MIA awhile now.
@tc
Leave Ryan alone – she gets a lot of good stuff out into public asks good question people like yourself have too sharp teeth. Having a skeleton staff devoted to getting the news out there is better than having the bones bitten and cracked and some plastic thing built with a computer.
Excellent analysis and background from Aaron Smale, RNZ Te Manu Korihi Reporter …
http://www.radionz.co.nz/stories/201825742/justice-delayed-justice-denied
Great work Natty radio!
Yep – its getting some traction – here it is on stuff now: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/87027752/rnz-host-clashes-with-anne-tolley-for-her-response-to-state-abuse-inquiry
Meantime back on planet NZ where life still goes on our despicable Government is caught out by whistle-blowing from Housing NZ and no-one appears to have even noticed, likely because they’re too obsessed with Donald Trump.
The opposition parties have been handed the opportunity of a lifetime and I’ll bet few if any even know it.
OK I’ll bite – I haven’t noticed – do you have a cite?
Page 72 of their annual report….. hidden away in the notes.
http://www.hnzc.co.nz/assets/Uploads/Annual-Report-2016.pdf
?
If you’re talking about the Tamaki Redevelopment Co notes, that’s already been covered off on an earlier Open Mike.
The Tauranga and Invercargill property sales are dead in the water.
If it’s not either of those things, a more specific example that’s not a vague reference to “hidden away in the notes” would be more helpful.
Just how hard is it to download the file and read a page James?
Point.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>You.
I read it, but it wasn’t immediately obvious to what you were referring to.
More clarity next time please.
Thank you.
HNZC is a social housing agency.
But they have to make an allowance in their asset valuations for an impairment for a small proportion of their stock that they are selling to account for being a social housing agency.
WTF
So they are valuing their assets, and the return on those assets as if they were a normal commercial landlord. They say themselves that their assets are overvalued by 50 – 60%
Jeez, if a private sector business tried that on it’d get messy fast.
Yup. And a whole lot can be read and concluded from that.
One logical conclusion is they’ve established a formula for pricing the state houses they intend to sell to social housing providers. They’ve just announced the intended sale of 2400 state houses in ChCh and using their own formula they’d be intending to sell $1 billion worth of property for $380 million.
Selling significant publicly owned assets for only 38% of their value is not condusive to staying a government. Even National voters wouldn’t wear that, we all know what property is worth.
Really? That sounds exactly like the proposed Labour Party policy of building houses and selling them to people with low incomes at a discount.
The fact that the Party website says
“KiwiBuild homes will only be sold to first home buyers. To avoid buyers reaping windfall gains a condition of sale will require them to hand back any capital gain if sold on within 5 years”
clearly implies they expect to sell them at below market value.
I wonder how you qualify to buy one? Will production of a Union Card or proof of Labour Party membership be required?
You need to go back for further programming alwyn, that was a pretty weak attempt at diversion even by your standards.
You mean it is true and you don’t know how to justify it.
Ah, no alwyn. Meaning your hearing is impaired. The information you posted doesn’t sound anything like what you thought you heard. No mention is made there of discounting the houses, indeed they’re doing the opposite in taking any capital gain that might accrue.
Now either your reading comprehension is so poor there’s no point in me conversing with you for fear of having my words misread, or you’re merely trying to derail & divert in which case there’s no point in me conversing with you there either.
Back to the reprogramming booth for you.
Good that HNZC recognise that covenants are required to protect the social housing use once sold to the private provider. But that should have been explicit in the valuation, and expected return on that valuation, from the very beginning.
When the beginning was will have considerable political import, and along the way someone may have miss-understood, or been devious / deceived around the basis of valuation.
Time to sit well back and see where this cow pat lands.
It’s not that they were “Selling significant publicly owned assets for only 38% of their value”, the assets were overvalued by 163%
They’re not overvalued Graeme, HNZ are required to declare their housing stock at “Fair Value” according to IFRS rules and have done so for quite some time.
The social housing providers are non-profit organisations so there is no commercial valuation here. This is really about funding IMO. This tells me the charities that the Govt wants to sell to have no spare money. They look to be needing to borrow the dosh to buy the houses and HNZs income statement reveals the nett rental return from the properties won’t even come close to paying the interest on substantial levels of borrowed funds.
They can’t fund the deal on borrowed money at market rates, the rental income won’t pay the interest, so I’d expect the only way the deal can proceed is if English gives them a humungous discount or fronts them a low/no interest loan.
And they would have been valued under the same rules once the covenant / encumbrance had been applied to the property title. But nothing has changed about the property or it’s use, just the expected owner.
I see it more as explaining how inappropriate the “dividends” HNZC paid to the shareholding minister were. Both from the moral repugnance of it all and the usurious way that these dividends appear to have been calculated. No wonder the govt got out of there as quickly as they did.
Oh come now Graeme, do you seriously believe that a 25 year encumbrance really lowers the value of a house?
Commercial properties are often leased out on encumbrances like 7×7 terms, do you see any of those having their price lowered because they have to be leased for the next 14 years?
Get real mate, the encumbrance values are bullshit. All housing NZ properties are rented out at market rates and you’re trying to justify them being sold at a 60% discount to market price?
Well one of them is bullshit, as I said at the start nothing has actually changed, just a different way of looking at it.
The original valuations would have reflected the commercial value of the properties that could be rented and sold on the open market. The second reflected properties that could be rented as social housing, but not on-sold for capital gain.
The govt has got themselves in a bit of a hole there, as it would be politically difficult if the properties were on-sold for a profit, hence the encumbrance.
Whether HNZ’s properties were, or could be rented or sold on a commercial basis on the open market is a very debatable concept due to it’s social housing responsibilities and function. It does increase the possible / requires dividend if the assets are viewed as fully commercial however. I tend to the view that it’s actually the first valuations that are questionable.
“Well one of them is bullshit, as I said at the start nothing has actually changed, just a different way of looking at it.”
Huh? A very fundamental change has occurred, $240 million worth of a publicly owned asset has been written off for no good reason or reward.
“The original valuations would have reflected the commercial value of the properties that could be rented and sold on the open market. The second reflected properties that could be rented as social housing, but not on-sold for capital gain. ”
One would need to have come down in the last rain shower to fall for that line Graeme. These new valuations occurred in the context of the Govt being in lengthy negotiations with a potential buyer. It would be a complete fool who gives away their bottom line price to the other party wouldn’t it, clearly the ‘valuations’ were retrospective.
Of course they can be on-sold for capital gain. They can be held for 25yrs, amassing very considerable gains, and on-sold to anyone or on-sold earlier to another social housing provider. It’s little different to the situation of operators like Rymans and they don’t get to buy their retirement complexes at 38cents in the dollar do they.
“I tend to the view that it’s actually the first valuations that are questionable.”
You’d be questioning IFRS there and it’s not really relevant to the topic.
Tolley the terrible.
She is under orders to minimise the financial damage.
Having an independent agency and enquiry will show its more like 70% of children who were state wards were violently sexually psychologically abused.
Tolley’s dispicable obfuscation including she was just a child(still).
I know many many state wards most seriously damaged unable to function as adults.
Nasty Nasty piece of Work .
Shame on you Tolley.
Thats why she is there along with collins, parata and bennett.
Nasty people in a nasty party doing nasty things in govt.
Recall kate wilkinson, far to nice and nowhere near nasty enough so got moved on.
The interview with Minister Anne Tolley on RNZ is going to go down in infamy as one of the worst and most heartless pieces of work in modern New Zealand politics.
Has anyone heard anything like it in the last three decades?
Also a particularly stupid juxtaposition:
On the one hand, Minister of Education Hekia Parata shuts down a Special Needs school in Dunedin for allegations about two teachers where the Police don’t see a case to answer, and so far there’s no evidence to be seen anywhere. So far.
Quite a strong reaction from the state to protect people under its direct control and care.
And on the same day, the Minister of Social Welfare cannot open her mouth and utter the word “I am sorry” for decades of solidly proven abuse on behalf of the state while protecting people under its direct control and care.
This story is now set to roll.
And also reported one parent who saw nothing untoward at that Dn school.
Me thinks some stirrers with bees in their bonnet at work. Perhaps that parent has brought up their child correctly?
“Perhaps that parent has brought up their child correctly?”
You might want to back up the judgmental truck there a tad jcuknz.
The whole issue of managing meltdowns and difficult behaviours is nuanced…requires a little more knowledge and experience that perhaps some commenters lack.
Natrad is on fire this morning!
Although, having to listen to the smarmy, patronising and eventually whiny tones of both Tolley and Parata in the same morning is almost too much.
I don’t always agree with him but he’s pretty much spot on here:
http://www.philquin.com/blog/2016/11/29/castro-mourning-by-hipster-lefties-makes-me-sick
Quin’s source for this figure, his arse or the lunatic claims of the exile community?.
Phew that’s lucky, here I was thinking Castro was an unpleasant person, glad that’s cleared up:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/fidel-castro-s-human-rights-legacy-a-tale-of-two-worlds/
Upon establishing his provisional government in 1959, Castro organised trials of members of the previous government that resulted in hundreds of summary executions. In response to an international outcry and amid accusations that many of the trials were unfair, Castro responded:
“Revolutionary justice is not based on legal precepts, but on moral conviction… we are not executing innocent people or political opponents. We are executing murderers and they deserve it.”
From a supporter of our Government of serial child abusers.
FIFY.
As opposed to the government of oppressive homophobic drug peddlers in Cuba do you mean?
Homosexuality was legalised in Cuba about the same time it was in Britain.
Don’t let facts get in the way of anti communist propoganda, however.
But the drug peddling is okay then?
How can you be sure hard drugs are produced in Cuba?
When it is financing the Contras? Or Cuba?
Was that when the mafia ran Cuba into communism.
After years of exploitation by the Mafia anything was better as far as the peasants were concerns.
American foreign policy could have solved the problem but alas just like in Syria the Russians gave Fidel Castro a better deal.
The Americans have propped up nasty dictators all through Central America for over a century.
How is the life of the average Cuban detailed in this article not corrupt?
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/cuba/corruption.htm
Any one who thinks Cubans making a burger joint is a corrupt practices isn’t worst listening too
Gosman ignores things like right wing death squads killing over 1 million in indonesia …………… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwJMJqjqEdw
Oh, he was a particularly unpleasant person but unless of course Quin counted the estimated Balseros death toll, 79,000 extrajudicial killings, really.
February 19, 2008 Update on Findings
This work documents loss of life and disappearances of a political or military nature attributed to the Cuban Revolution. Each documented case is available for review at http://www.CubaArchive.org and substantiated by bibliographic/historic data and reports from direct sources. Due to the ongoing nature of the work and the difficulty of obtaining and verifying data from Cuba, the following totals change as research progresses and are considered far from exhaustive. Cuba Archive is currently examining additional cases –most are expected to be added to this table. Experience has shown that as additional outreach efforts are undertaken, many more cases are likely to be uncovered’.
[…]
Documented Cases
Firing squad executions 4,074
Extrajudicial killings not in prison 1,334
Missing and disappeared 219
Other, including deaths in prison(1) 2,215
http://www.cubaverdad.net/genocide.htm#Other
It’s good that since Quinn got those numbers, allegedly, wrong everything else can be safely ignored 🙂
It does bring to mind the question of the accuracy of “everything else” if estimates vary that wildly.
Frankly, seven thousand just after the revolution seems a bit low to me – they captured 1200 in the Bay of Pigs, I would have thought many of those would have been put on trial and received severe sentences.
Even so, Cuba’s better off than if Batista had remained.
The moral bankruptcy of people on the left is truly wonderful to behold. I suspect you think the ends justifies the means.
You crying for Batista’s bunch of criminals.
LOL.
Ummm… you seem to be making a massive leap there. Not surprising for supporters of brutal leftists dictators like Castro. The idea that if you are not with them you must support who they disposed is one of the reasons human rights went out the window when Castro took power.
Local councils with democratic control who send remits and consensus upwards to their Government.
Cubans have more democratic control over things that affect them than we do.
Meanwhile, in the USA, everyone is terrified of what Trump may do with his dictatorial powers.
Castro saved Cuba from being one of the many examplars of US controlled South American capitalism.
Haiti, Nicaragua, Chile, Mexico. All poverty and crime ridden failed States.
Funny we never hear about all the people trying to leave them. Except for Trump and Obama trying to send them back.
If you are going on about human rights. There are some really serious and continued abuses in Cuba. In the US controlled Guantanamo Bay.
Not to mention, on our own doorstep. In Indonesia and Australia/Nauru
You really think the average Cuban has more control over their life than we do? Pray tell how the average Cuban can afford to go to a holiday resort in their own country without access to hard currency and why should they be denied that right?
I don’t know much about Cuba. But Britians have less control than Cubans
Elegant, Clump.
This may come as a surprise but going to a holiday resort isn’t a human right.
Except in moderately developed economies the vast majority can afford to spend some time at a holiday resort at some stage.
Have you got proof that Cubans can’t?
If you think the vast majority of Cubans are able to access a resort (even a relatively down market one) more power to you.
Tell that to the jobless brown kids in Whangarei.
Ah, so you don’t have anything to back up your assertion. That would make what you said a lie.
But that’s all we can expect from RWNJs – they have to lie because reality doesn’t conform to their delusional beliefs.
RWNJ’s think that an independent nation should just bend over and take it when US corporations want to rape and pillage.
The Cubans should not have stood up for freedom and justice, they should have let themselves be impoverished and exploited by criminal US enterprises.
Remind us, which nation throws people into Guantanamo Bay without trial?
Was that when the mafia ran Cuba into communism.
After years of exploitation by the Mafia anything was better as far as the peasants were concerns.
American foreign policy could have solved the problem but alas just like in Syria the Russians gave Fidel Castro a better deal.
The Americans have propped up nasty dictators all through Central America for over a century!
Castro was always a communist dictator (either in waiting OR in power). There was no way he was going to be some sort of Carribean Social Democrat. The Soviet Union didn’t force him to outlaw private enterprise or send Cubans offshore to ferment Communist revolution in other nations.
.
Yeah, if you ignore the 20,000 Cubans murdered by the Batista regime, human rights in Cuba prior to Castro were just fucking peachy.
So that makes it okay in your book does it? Somehow all Castro’s human rights abuses are fine because the person he replaced was worse. I suppose that would explain why many leftists in the West supported East Germany. At least they weren’t the Nazi’s
No it doesn’t make it right but it does show that he actually made life better in Cuba from what was before.
Unlike our present NZ government which is actively making life worse for the poor so a few rich people can get richer. And, yes, there’s probably deaths involved as well from those policies.
The average poor person in NZ has a life that the average Cuban could only dream of. That is the tragedy of Cuba. With better economic management the country could have been a success story. Instead it is an economic basket case.
Basket case, yeap you put an embargo on NZ for half a century and see where we end up. I like how you cherry pick and ignore facts Gosman.
Trade is bad, ask Draco and the Nz loony left, any decent planned economy does not need it, so sorry no out there Also hard to trade with some one that wants to nuke you
Stop with the nonsense of the embargo. There is not one documented case of Cuba not being able to trade with a nation outside the US as a result of the embargo. Heck the country traded with the Soviet Bloc for 30 years. It can trade with the EU or China or even NZ. Name me one item that it couldn’t get from outside the US.
Looked far from a “basket case” to me.
Actually havn’t seen so many clean, happy leisured people anywhere else, apart from New Zealands dairy farmer retirement towns, Mt Muanganui and Cambridge.
Especially glaring compared to parts of New Jersey, and Haiti and Jamaica.
You’ve been reading far too much propaganda from the same people who say that Chavez was a dictator?
Life expectancy in Cuba is better than the USA, and not far behind us.
Car parts. Kiwifruit. There two.
Your utter refusal to look at how international politics, and how it works Gossy is outstanding. The Embargo had the effect of stopping trade with anyone who did not want to piss off the USA. Which was a big group, that even NZ was part of till after the fourth labour government.
But lets leave aside your lack of understanding of international politics. The other effect was to limit hard currency Cuba could lay it’s hands on. You understand what that does to an economy right?
Car parts and Kiwifruit? ?? The Cubans can get those from any number of nations. As for the US applying pressure on countries not to trade, there is no evidence for that. Indeed I believe Mexico is one of Cuba’s largest trading partners. That is not indicative of the US causing problems.
Facts to Gosman are such horrid things.
Cuba is the living example of what life will be like post oil.
Gossy take a hard long look and if you happen to be young enough to survive to until the time oil becomes so expensive it is no longer extracted, just think of what it must have been like for Cubans for the past 50 + years.
By the way – if you ever need a doctor in that part of the world – make sure you are in Cuba – not the US. In Cuba its free – you will come out minus an arm and a leg in the US.
Are being obtuse Gossy, or are you really that ignorant of international politics and it’s machinations?
Yes I give you Castro did well in convincing left ideologues and his people of that, as does North Korea howeve pre and post Cuba economic stats don’t support your rediculous statement, even before contrasting living standards in Cuba vs Latin America, Europe pre revolutions to now
And so does John Key, on that we can agree Red.
Geez Gossy your lot have many on the right supporting old PInochet. It’s a dilemma for your lot.
The Cuban revolution was better than what became before, I know you find that hard because a leftist made it better. But they were far from perfect. Guess what – it’s a imperfect world.
As for many of your dumb assertions over the last few days have been sickening. The Cuban revolution was born out of nasty set of events. It was led by a Castro and like all authoritarian regimes it was crap. But, and it’s a big but, it was better than the authoritarian right wing gangsta nation it was before he came to power.
But lets not forget that for 2 million dollars a day the USA put Cuba under an embargo for almost half a century. So, so much for your free trade ah Gosman, so much for freedom there.
I don’t think many people on the right have claimed Pinochet was anything but a brutal military dictator with blood on his hands. He certainly hasn’t been set up to be some sort of Right wing icon who people should aspire to and that despite Pinochet leaving the country a whole lot better off economically than the mess Allende was making of the place. Noone can claim the same of Castro and Cuba.
Actually you just did, by saying he was economically better.
You just put him on a pedestal.
I’m not putting him on a pedestal. As I stated he was a brutal military dictator with blood of his opponents on his hands. Are you willing to state the same for Castro?
But you did, when you said he was economically better. That is supporting his world view, and economic choices.
I have never said otherwise about Castro. But what I have with you is simple, your blanket statements, and ignoring that the Cuban economy was bulldozed by the US.
Plus, I think you are conveniently ignoring how bad it was before the revolution. The gangster state before the revolution, was one of the worst in the whole of America’s.
The economy in Chile took 20years to recover from Pinochet.
In what right wing phantasy world did he improve it?
Rich people got richer and that’s all that the RWNJs care about.
You agree it was an improvement then.
“the ends justify the means” ..like in say Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay?
Are you stating that these places are not abhorent?
Puckish Rogue, you are a fool to quote Phil Quin for ANYTHING, let alone something where he is clearly so far out of his depth.
Perhaps the most risible part of the rant you linked to was the sentence beginning: “Anne Applebaum, a brilliant Washington Post reporter, hardly of the right….”
Anyone who has any familiarity with the views of Anne Applebaum—and Quin obviously does not—would immediately recognize that statement as an absurdity. Applebaum is an “adjunct fellow” at the American Enterprise Institute, a notorious extreme right think tank. Her writing is shrill, biased and the antithesis of scholarly: on one infamous occasion she claimed, outlandishly, that the late Ho Chi Minh, Salvador Allende and Fidel Castro were similar to Stalin, Mao and Kim Il-Sung.
Applebaum is one of the loudest and most incessant agitators on behalf of the Ukrainian junta, and she has been trenchantly condemned by leading thinkers like Glenn Greenwald.
On top of all that, she is actively involved in attempts to minimize and trivialize the under-age rape allegations against her friend Roman Polanski.
Yet Phil Quin, that vacuous chuntering radio ninny, claims she is “brilliant” and “hardly of the right.”
I don’t expect anything intelligent from Phil Quin, but I must say, Puckish Rogue, that I do expect better from you.
Fair enough, so whats your take on Castro?
he appears on way too many t-shirts
I think Castro was a brave and inspirational leader, and a symbol of freedom and resistance against oppression. However, that doesn’t mean that I think he was not deeply flawed. His intolerance of gays was notorious, which of course makes him pretty similar to a significant portion of the United States House of Representatives. And I never fail to be deeply angry and depressed when I think about Castro’s bumptious and destructive attitude toward the beautiful avante-garde architectural work of the National Art Schools.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2015/05/cuba-unfinished-spaces-150519094656409.html
So my take on him is complicated. But let’s not forget the reality of the situation he faced: He was demonized and targeted for assassination by the United States, which never forgave him for the radical act of leading a popular revolt against Fulgencio Batista, the dictator it backed. Cuba was in a permanent state of siege, as a vengeful superpower pursued a vicious, illegal and internationally condemned jihad against the island state for more than half a century.
Castro’s legacy should be rigorously criticized—-but by serious scholars, not by shallow know-nothings like Phil Quin.
4th rate stenographer is outraged….outraged I tells ya !
No hipsters are not left Puckish, Liberal (but, so is John Key) but not left. Most hipsters are all about money.
This is what I imagine most hipsters aspire to be:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemcneal/hipster-barbie?utm_term=.glarPxRA9#.mvK9lqVP1
Buying there way to happiness…
Yeah seems more right wing than left, that world view.
Definitely not anything I’d be into I can tell you that although I do sport a beard…a trimmed, neat beard though
Right wing death squads kill millions and you do not give a stuff ….. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwJMJqjqEdw
Sick ol Puck …….
http://www.amara.org/en/videos/lCHCQE8uqUJb/info/jagal-the-act-of-killing-full-movie/
Cuba income before revolution where 60 pc of European levels, amoung the highest in Latin America they are now the poorest in line with Central America. GDP 1950 per capita was approx 3k still as such in 1999, all hail the planned economy and the great Castro before we even consider the human rights record
Ah yes but GDP doesn’t count for many leftists. So long as education and health care are ‘free’ that is the real definition of a successful state. No matter that medical professionals don’t earn enough and many have to moonlight in jobs that pay hard currency, or that there is usually not enough drugs or other medical supplies and patients have to provide their own, or that the education they receive hasn’t led to any innovative new businesses or helped develop the Cuban economy at all.
strange also not many people drowned sailing from Miami to Cuba,
You do realise that the healthcare available in Cuba is better than that available in the US don’t you?
In fact, everything you said there sounds like a lie started and propagated through right-wing fake news outlets.
No it’s not. What you are stating is the health care in Cuba is better than the health care available in the US for the uninsured. This may well be the case but I suspect in the US poor people are able to access health care of some level that does not need them to provide their own drugs and health supplies.
No, I’m not.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/salim-lamrani/cubas-health-care-system-_b_5649968.html
And there’s a WHO report around somewhere that places Cuba’s healthcare system above the US healthcare system as well.
You should probably watch this as well.
Considering how much the US spends per capita on health their system is truly pathetic.
That’s a left wing opinion piece.
The WHO report I mentioned isn’t. Irritated that I can’t find ATM but I’m sure I’ve linked to it before on this board.
And it’s a piece developed upon facts rather than the RWNJs usual use of delusion.
For the socialist elite and offshore paying customers yes, for the average Cuban, get real, smell the roses Many Cuban doctors are simply sent offshore to generate hard currency for the state
[citation needed]
Although it sounds like more RWNJ false news.
From the New York Times
“Havana gets subsidized oil from Venezuela and money from several other countries in exchange for medical services. This year, according to the state-run newspaper Granma, the government expects to make $8.2 billion from its medical workers overseas. The vast majority, just under 46,000, are posted in Latin America and the Caribbean. A few thousand are in 32 African countries.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/opinion/a-cuban-brain-drain-courtesy-of-us.html?_r=0
The article is quite strongly opposed to the US Government’s action but it does confirm the claim about being a source of income to Cuba.
Ok.
But this brings up an interesting question:
What is it about this trade that upsets the right-wing?
I’m pretty sure that they’ve been telling us how great trade is for centuries. Is it just that there isn’t a private individual making a profit from the work of others as corporations would?
https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/02/28/indonesia-and-act-forgetting
“I was a couple of months old in October 1965, when the Indonesian government gave free rein to a mix of Indonesian soldiers and paramilitaries to kill anyone they considered to be a “communist.” Over the next few months into 1966, at least 500,000 people were killed (the total may be as high as one million). The victims included members of the Communist Party of Indonesia (P.K.I.), ethnic Chinese, as well as trade unionists, teachers, civil society activists and leftist artists.”
The Act of Killing
The film focuses on the perpetrators of the Indonesian killings of 1965–66 in the present day; ostensibly towards the communist community where almost a million people were killed. When Suharto overthrew Sukarno, the President of Indonesia, following the failed coup of the 30 September Movement in 1965, the gangsters Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry in Medan (North Sumatra) were promoted from selling black market movie theatre tickets to leading the most powerful death squad in North Sumatra. They also extorted money from ethnic Chinese as the price for keeping their lives. Anwar is said to have personally killed 1,000 people.
Today, Anwar is revered as the right wing of a paramilitary organization Pemuda Pancasila that grew out of the death squads. The organization is so powerful that its leaders include government ministers who are openly involved in corruption, election rigging and clearing people from their land for developers.”
A right wing Gangster nation where mass murders are celebrated and walk free …………. I think we either just did a trade deal with them ,,,,,,,,,, or maybe it was a tax haven/offshore network meeting
Its hard to know with john keys nats ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
okey dokey.
That says 50-odd thousand doctors overseas.
CIA reckons 6.7 docs per thousand Cubans (looks like 2010 WHO stats).
Cuban population is 11.1 mil (same source).
That’s roughly 75 thousand doctors.
50,000 overseas, that’s 25,000 remaining.
Or, reversing the process, that’s 2.25 doctors per thousand.
NZ is 2.74, US is 2.45 per thousand.
Jamaica is 0.41 per thousand. Just as comparison.
I really couldn’t care less.
DTB asked for a citation that Cuba sent medical people overseas as a way of raising money.
I had been talking to a Cuban born friend who was telling me what incredibly low incomes the people in Cuba have. I found this reference when I was googling for info on that subject and remembered it when DTB asked for a reference. I posted it to satisfy his curiosity.
For the record I think that Castro was a miserable SOB. Not in the class of Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao or Hitler but a despicable specimen none the less.
I am old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. The one who came out of than looking sane was Khrushchev. Castro wanted to start WW3 and Kennedy wasn’t much different.
Castro was willing to destroy the world.
Hi Robert Guyton
Are you involved with this new Southland initiative? Sounds promising in the line of other Invercargill moves like adopting toothy Tim as Mayor. You people might be a role model for the Far North, isolated and languishing a bit though trying but with too many conservatives sitting on their prejudices I think – up for violent disagreement with that. (Note a recent radio piece on the police difficulties and understaffing there).
Southland can only go up along with feisty Stewart Island – after that there is only the Southern Ocean rocky outposts and sealife.
‘a bit languishing’
Violent offense duly taken.
Southland / Northland
GDP per capita – 57,135 / 34,825
Mean household income – 87,100 / 70,000
Unemployment rate – 3.6% / 8.8%
‘Isolated’
I’ll give you that one, and you forgot to point out that the weather in Southland is shit.
And Gore, though I think greywarshark was making his languishing comment with regards the Far North, rather than Southland but it certainly brought out the Parochial Defender in you. Good thing too.
I’ve spent a bit of time in both places (Dang, sold the holiday home at Shipwreck Bay way too early!).
IMO the primary reason for the economic disparity between the two regions is that while the kind of grass cows eat grows brilliantly in both, Southland has the good fortune to be crap for growing the kind you smoke.
It’s cooler here, so more incentive to dig and delve, rather than head to the beach and the bong.
That’s not a woolly idea. But I figure that with intelligent forward and smart thinking pollies instead of the prim and punitive little greasers we now have…if gummint could get its head around the growing and sale of marijuana under standards they would have a fast-moving expansionist economy. T
he Northland area would have a ready-made expertise in growing the weed and just need strong guidance to be marketed properly and to standard and be controlled by and keep the returns in, local trusts shared by the community, but employing Maori and pakeha half and half. There would be problems for sure, but just on a better level than at present.
Hi greywarshark
Do you mean the SoRDS (Southland Regional Development Strategy) that’s being launched this morning in the presence of Steven Joyce and Nathan Guy and seeks to establish fin-fish farms in Fiordland National Park, amongst other things?
@Robert G
Ho ho ho – I little innocent thought that Santa Claus had come with pressies that would be good to play with!
Sounds like it, doesn’t it. “Swords” though, eh! Economic development, bring in the tourists, double our production, full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes! Pretty keen on drilling and fracking to, that Tom Campbell, Head Sword-wielder. Seen Tom’s name before?
No but sounds like a nematode to watch.
Ray Columbus has died. Stuff entertainment had this item.
I thought this was a funny anecdote which relates to Gerry Brownlee – Vicki Anderson at http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/music/87016165/Ray-Columbus-always-had-the-last-word-even-for-Gerry-Brownlee
2013, I wrote a story about Christchurch talent quest stars the Manetti Brothers, Gerry Brownlee and former schoolmate Richard Holden.
The pair performed a unique mix of country and western and jazz cover songs around Christchurch bars from 1980 to 1986.
Towards the end of their career, the Manetti Brothers auditioned in front of Ray Columbus for a TV show.
“He subtly told us we were crap,” Brownlee told me in 2013.
He went on to describe the audition as a “cock-up” on Columbus’s part.
“It was the most appalling thing. We went to the second floor of the now demolished TVNZ building to audition,” said Brownlee.
“Ray Columbus was there, very small he was. I had to look down to see him, and he said ‘show us what you’ve got’. We only got a little way through our act and he said ‘that’s enough, you guys’. I’m not bitter about it but it was a cock-up in my opinion.”
Oh how Ray laughed when I read Brownlee’s quote to him.
I really think you should have included the last bit of the article
“”All right,” Ray eventually agreed when I suggested he should have right of reply. “But you can only print this response when I’m gone.”
As I said, Ray did always like to have the last word.
“I may be short, Mr Brownlee, but at least I could sing.””
How true those last 3 words were.
Yes Alwyn true, the last three lines are good. But Brownlee has now found how to squeeze the rest of us till we sing.
Deeply insightful piece by renegade farmer journalist Rachel Stewart.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environment/news/article.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=11756771
She listened to Guy ‘humans only have ten years left’ McPherson and experienced a personal epiphany….
“Many try to believe that politicians will soon see the error of their delays, act quickly on our behalf for the good of the planet, and all will be well. Business helps the environment, neoliberalism will save the kea, and continued fossil fuel extraction is a necessary evil. Technology will ultimately save the day. Hurrah!
I’ve thought hard on what was emotionally so different about McPherson’s short timeframe versus my unquestioning belief in a much longer one. Obviously, the longer timeframe means I’d get to live out my natural life.
I had never, for one second, consciously entertained the idea that human extinction was conceivable in the near term.
In other words, I’m basically okay with the sadness and anxiety about some far-off future generation seeing the collapse of humanity. Just not this one. My one.
Which tells me everything I didn’t want to know about myself. I possess precisely the same procrastination, selfishness and denial that got us into this mess.
Turns out, I’m only human.”
@Rosemary
Makes you gulp more than a little. Most people I know are ignoring warnings, but trying to make rational decisions based on the expectation that an ordered society will be possible in the long term. Short term, well more earthquakes, tsunami, a change of government, but near extinction no!
And how many people are putting the Syrian and African refugees to the forefront. I gave some money some months ago but have been sidetracked by other costs of money and time. Though they are just ordinary people like us who deserve their chance to live and have settled communities without being bombed and murdered because they are inconveniently in the way of strategic assets wanted by giant powers.
I am part of a group trying to do something for now for the community with an eye for the near to mid- future and having hard enough job to keep people on reality track when their heads are full of untested ideas, beliefs, personality clashes, examples from different times, areas etc which may not be replicated, differing understandings of what we are doing and about, what is of first priority etc. And trying to keep control from being wrested by charismatic loud voices that disdain questioning, quiet and meaningful analysis.
“Short term, well more earthquakes, tsunami, a change of government, but near extinction no!”
A Young Twentysomething of my acquaintance has (and sometimes is blighted by) what she terms ‘Apocalypse’ nightmares. End of the world stuff in full living colour and 3D. Every disaster, natural or manmade that dominates the headlines results in a sub conscious -produced movie that robs her of the settled sleep she needs to function well. Often this will be a mish-mash of various cataclysms…a bit of earthquake, tsunami with a sub plot of volcanic eruption and civil disorder.
I can’t say…”Chill, child, it’ll never happen”, that would be lying, but I do try to say that combining all these different types of incidents into one big nightmare is a bit OTT. Then…she points out, that in the middle of the earthquake, and the resulting tsunami warning, miserable scrotes broke into the houses of evacuees and robbed them. Such are humans…and do we really deserve to inhabit, never mind dominate, the planet? I try the “Not all folk are like that”, line, pointing out some of the good stuff that people do…but looking at the Big Picture, the Overall View of The World….???
Lyrics…. No lullaby
Keep your eyes open
And prick up your ears
Rehearse your loudest cry.
There’s folk out there
Who would do you harm
So I’ll sing you no lullaby.
There’s a lock on the window;
There’s a chain on the door:
A big dog in the hall.
But there’s dragons and beasties
Out there in the night
To snatch you if you fall.
So come out fighting
With your rattle in hand.
Thrust and parry. Light
A match to catch the devil’s eye.
Bring a cross of fire to the fight.
And let no sleep bring false relief
From the tension of the fray.
Come wake the dead with the scream of life.
Do battle with ghosts at play.
Gather your toys at the call-to-arms
And swing your big bear down.
Upon our necks when we come to set
You sleeping safe and sound.
It’s as well we tell no lie
To chase the face that cries.
And little birds can’t fly
So keep an open eye.
It’s as well we tell no lie
So I’ll sing you no lullaby.
McPherson is a moonbat who follows a long line of millerites and millenialists.
Stewart has been gullible to be sucked in by him as there is little in the way of a life lesson to be drawn from McPherson’s ‘science’ (except perhaps ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’).
Stewart is particularly obtuse if she’s never encountered the possibility of humanity ending – as an opinion writer she’s remarkably uninformed if she has never read theories or novels on comet impacts, germ warfare, plagues, nuclear war, vogons, zombie apocalypse etc etc.
The IPCC always gives conservative estimates of AGW impact, as I see it McPherson is looking at worst case scenarios. Unlikely perhaps but not outside the realm of possibility.
inspider
Don’t be such a jerk and know all. Plenty of totally unreal things have happened in the last 150 years, they have been real – not unreal, rarely have many imagined their unpleasant possibilities.
I think you should read this wikipedia page that goes into the realms of thinking and knowing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns
And for those others who already know everything and just look sarcastically at others flailing around trying to open and expand their minds – note the numerous thinking pattern systems:
Black swan theory
Dunning–Kruger effect
Epistemic modal logic
Four stages of competence
I know that I know nothing
Ignoramus et ignorabimus
Ignotum per ignotius
Johari window
Known and Unknown: A Memoir
List of political catch phrases
Outside Context Problem
Russell’s teapot
The Unknown Known
Wild card (foresight)
These are not even unknown or unpredictable events, any science that contradicts the relentless pursuit of profit is treated as a pariah.
History shows that all civilizations have a limited life span, and there are so many things going wrong with the climate and ecosystems sustaining human civilisation, I think we will see in our lifetimes massive collapses of cities and nations, but hopefully not complete extinction of humanity.
Our species faces some existential threats but down here in Planet Key we are pretending it’s business as usual for as long as possible. Until it’s too late.
– record levels of extinctions
– collapsing bee populations
– widespread soil degradation
– increasing pressure on water supplies (fracking, cowshit, mining)
– human population still growing out of control
– destruction of remaining rainforests
– overfishing and fish dumping
– ocean acidification, warming, and gyres of floating garbage
– methane emissions from thawing tundra
– sea level rise and extreme weather events
– donald trump
Can anyone else hear “Woman of the Year” Helen Kelly cry….YES! ?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11757719
“Coroner Bain concluded: “Having reviewed all the evidence, the Court does not support the view that Mr McMurtrie is in effect, the author of his own misfortune. Considerable issues are raised by the family and the Counsel for Trade Unions in respect of fatigue and in the Court’s view this may well have played a significant part in what occurred,” he said.
“The Court, on the balance of probabilities, finds no fault with Mr McMurtrie.”
Coroner Bain went on to repeat general findings from three inquest findings released on Friday, in which he said the forestry industry was a far safer place to work now than it was when the eight men died.
“The primary driver in highlighting the lack of safety in the forestry industry and the need for accountability and urgent safety reforms has been the CTU and, in particular, Helen Kelly,” he said.””
+100……. thanks for the post Rosemary
It made me happy … and sad.
For both Helen Kelly and David McMurtrie …
Many people appear to be concerned about the spread and influence of “fake news” in this so-called post-truth era and agonise about how to deal with it. I don’t think there’s an easy answer – it would be worth a lengthy post here on TS if I knew it would ever get published – but this piece may be a step in the right direction although I don’t think it is nearly enough or sufficient:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/86918289/why-we-should-be-teaching-philosophy-in-schools
Nope, even philosophy 101 would be far too abstract for most kids.
Would be good to get the opinion of a teacher, but I remember learning about Nazi propaganda in social studies, and reading ‘1984’ and ‘Brave New World’ (and probably Fahrenheit 451) at various points.
So I think the basics are covered, if the high school curriculum is anything like it was in the 80s.
I don’t think philosophy needs to be abstract, rather the opposite, it can be highly practical and relevant. I think it would be great if more emphasis would be given in schools to ethics, logic, analytical thinking, etc. The (human) brain has awe-inspiring capabilities but if we don’t get taught how to engage our brains awful things can and do happen plus it is just a waste of our tremendous potential both individually and collectively IMHO.
Obviously, you tailor your teaching to the children but IMO philosophy starts at a very young age.
Its official…
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/87049997/high-profile-defection-of-nick-leggett-to-national-will-rock-labour
Nick Leggett – National candidate for Mana.
Good luck Nick !!!
Leggett didn’t leave Labour, Labour left Leggett 🙂
Leggett has been right wing all the way through.
He supports Rogernomics, Goff, hated Cunliffe, and thinks that Labour should focus more on the businessman.
In short. Typical RWNJ and only out for himself.
This was interesting in the same link:
“There are reports a deal with the Greens to stand aside in Nelson has fractured the local electorate, with as many as eight people said to have quit the party in protest.
Labour sources suggested to Fairfax there were more.”
Someone is telling porkies – But it sounds like its possible some of the members are not happy with the MOU implementation.
I believe I have pointed out previously that this is what I’d expect. I’d also expect that the number of people actually voting for the local candidates would drop. I think that the party votes for the area will also drop.
It may make “political” sense for people in Wellington. However I suspect that overall it is a vote loser.
Personally as a matter of principal I’d simply vote against whatever party did it. Doesn’t matter if it is National in Epsom or Labour in Nelson. The idea that a political party ‘owns’ votes is just outright dumb. If you have a decent candidate (and Labour and National usually do), then put them up and let the voters make up their mind. Don’t do deals that cut into the voting base.
We have enough issues with the slow but steady reduction of the turnout already.
Seems to me that that’s the good direction for Labour to lose members.
There needs to be a fundamental difference between the two main parties, imo. And a step to the left is illustrated by those who jump to the right 🙂
Very interesting move from the NZ Reserve Bank to seek powers to limit lending to home buyers if they do not earn enough.
English wants a bit more time to see if the current measures will continue to cool the Auckland market enough. But that’s quite a call if all this debt starts to get riskier.
I seem to recall Minister Smith this morning saying how important it was that young people didn’t rack up more mortgage debt than they could bear, after figures came in showing the percentage of debt increase for fist home buyers over the last two years. (better jaw jaw than act act, or something).
For example, events may change fast in the global economy that really push up interest rates up fast, so anyone with a mortgage that isn’t fixed gets in real trouble because it’s just too hard to pay back. Trouble Capital T.
We will see Ministers meet with the Reserve Bank in the next few weeks to nut this one out. It’s a biggie.
Sounds like a half arsed solution that picks on the bottom end of the market who are mostly priced out anyway.
National needs to implement policies that curb rentier behaviour and speculation, not punish working people.
See also this cartoon:
Latest Roy Morgan is out.
Ouch for labour. A dismal 23%. Jesus wept.
National on 49.5%.
Confidence in the government right up:
The NZ Roy Morgan Government Confidence Rating has increased strongly to 141pts (up 14.5pts) in November with a high 65% (up 9.5%) of NZ electors saying NZ is ‘heading in the right direction’ compared to only 24% (down 5%) that say NZ is ‘heading in the wrong direction’. This is the rating’s highest score for nearly two years since January 2015.
The lolly scramble and two-tier economy is working well for Gnat supporters.
So is the media adulation and careful PR image of AB captain/beer swilling kiwi PM.
We are ranked near the top of the OECD on all sorts of measures except for absolute basic stuff like education, health, and housing. But that’s all swept under the carpet.