You can stick people into two groups. Those who comply and those don't. Those who comply do so for their own safety and the safety of others. They do so for the greater collective good. Those who don't don't comply feel they themselves are the most important unit and will break any rule which suggests otherwise. These people are from the political right.
Because SARS – CoV 2 favours the non-complying group I comply. I wear a mask, wash my hands, physically distance and avoid crowds, try to stay as healthy as I can – easier for some than others.
"This metasynthesis provides among the most compelling evidence to date that personality predicts overall health and well-being."
In the past weeks own south people seem pretty relaxed about L2, basically not really doing much. More Q codes visible, some manual lists to sign, signs telling people to keep their distance, but while people are aware I guess, seems like it's a bit lax. Presumably because most people think there's no covid here. I assume people are allowed to leave Auckland now so hopefully that perception will change.
Anyone know why 900 state houses in Porirua were handed over to iwi, even though the government promised to put an end to privatisation of state housing?
Probably part of a Treaty of Waitangi settlement and I would not call handing these houses over to Iwi to administer privatisation. Meeting of a treaty settlement is paramount I would have thought. What owners do then is the same as any other owner whose land has been taken. Some handing back is subject to restrictions but I am not sure if this part of the Treaty claim was.
I am looking forward to the time when Paraparaumu airport, taken for Defence purposes around the time of WW2 and the Iwi never compensated, is handed back.
Any shareholder owned organisation that's accumulating and reinvesting virtually all returns from invested settlement assets is by definition a private business.
Iwi have businesses (like the government), but they're not businesses. The Pākehā system forced Māori to adopt Iwi legal structures that suited Pākehā, but Iwi themselves predate any modern concept of business by a long time.
And does or should this overly technical approach by Joe90 override the fact that these settlements endeavour to bring the Iwi into a situation that they should have been had the Treaty of Waitangi breach not occurred.
I think not.
As Weka has said these are our Treaty partners, they have been badly treated in cases where Maori land has been taken for Public Works such as housing, roads, schools etc etc. and most have chosen a range or mix of former crown assets and $$$ to settle their grievances. It is mean-spirited not to allow Iwi to conduct their own commercial operations. Some of these ops have meant that Iwi does the managing eg Ngai Tahu and others the managing has been done by the former Govt dept.
If land owned by the Crown is not going to be in the mix, and Iwi want productive land as part of their settlement then the Treaty Settlements will stall big time.
I think to define the use of assets returned under Treaty settlements as private business is simplistic. To trammel the return of assets to Iwi with strictures on future use risks setting up yet another ToW claim. There are crown assets such as particular reserves that are not available for sale that are passed over to Iwi control.
Possibly it is a lack of knowledge about what the meaning of being a treaty partner is that has led to these mystifying picky comments
I would suggest that readers look at some of these settlements
Some of us who were around in Govt Depts when the full force of the Rogernomics was upon us will recall that it was only the intervention of our Treaty partner, by and through the NZ Maori Council taking Court cases, that some of the worst land related affects such as the proposal to sell the land under the trees as well as the forest crops were tossed out. Ordinary NZers had no ability to seek any stop to the tidal wave of Rogernomics that was going on. There were several cases other than the Forestry one where they over turned what had been proposed. Our Treaty partners have stepped up many times over the years since 1840, and it behoves us to treat their claims in a generous and fair-spirited way.
"The Speaker has referred independent MP Jami-Lee Ross to the Privileges Committee for misusing edited parliamentary TV video for political ads.
"Trevor Mallard ordered the anti-vaccination video – posted by Ross's party and that of Billy Te Kahika's NZ Public Party – to be removed from social media, but that's been met with a blunt refusal.
Parliamentary footage of an exchange between government minister Megan Woods and National's Erica Stanford was edited for use in the political ad, posted on several sites."
Yeah I wonder why we can't force the main internet players twitter facebook etc to have a "local office" so that when something like this comes along they can easily be contacted so that at the very least it can be labeled "false" or "edited"or taken down fast rather than going through some offshore process.
Yes, it is certainly time for government to declare that being connected is a right and then ensure that the means exist for people to fulfil that right without being ripped off by private enterprise.
In other words, time to re-nationalise telecommunications and to produce capable phones and PCs here in NZ also by a government owned production process.
This is a very real problem with both government and private sector. There are whole communities that are effectively excluded.
I've stayed offline because I can't be bothered with the being hacked bit plus I have the ability to complain loudly – which not everyone has.
The government needs to sort its act out for starters. Any government fee or charge should be capable of being paid on the ground with no extra charge or fee payable – that is far from the current situation. Nor should costs and access be pushed sideways onto community organisations libraries funded by ratepayers etc.
There is also the major secondary discrimination- there are government jobs that cannot be applied for unless a real me id is used. Citizen tracking by default.
edit
There is a major and obvious question here, so obvious that nobody has thought to ask it. Did the citizens get asked if they agreed to have government retreat from face to face dealings, to only communicating with citizens through machines? Was it right that such swingeing changes were enabled by a handful of anarchists? Were taxpayers advised that lower taxes meant limited human input into dealing with citizens?
Were people enabled to discuss the result of withdrawal of government from the ordering of people's lives and that elections and ministers in government were becoming less and less true agents of the people? Perhaps if there wasn't so much hype about how marvellous it is, and truthfulness instead of truthiness about this bloody technological takeover and its constant expansion with obsolescence designed in, people might see things as they are, not rosy at all.
Addlepated* is a great word for the quandary we are in. Google quickly finds all I need to know to describe the poor state we and our state are in. I don't think that is quixotic (extremely idealistic; unrealistic and impractical.)
* In Middle English an adel eye was a putrid egg. The stench of such an egg apparently affected the minds of some witty thinkers, who hatched a comparison between the diminished, unsound quality of an adel eye (or addle egg as it came to be called in modern English) and an empty, confused head—or pate. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/addlepated
I want government back – with real people, and all channels open to all citizens., on-line plus traditional. I think that we need to reorganise Parliament though, and all people who work for government have to have a skill or profession that they have worked at adequately for five years before applying for government jobs.
Corin Dan this morning commenting (to Phil Goff I think) that the poor messaging that asked South and West Aucklanders to get tested "muddied the waters" on the country's response and then goes on to ask questions that invite others to muddy the messaging even further.
The PM on TVNZ this morning sensibly sidestepped a question about opening the borders because of "business". If she had addressed it, anything she said would be used to muddy the country's response at the moment. The best response for the economy is a health response. What is the sharemarket doing at the moment? Is the MSM banging on about it?
The thing about Distributed Denial of Service Attacks is they are often (always?) done by people activating Bot Nets.
"
A botnet is a logical collection of Internet-connected devices such as computers, smartphones or IoT devices whose security have been breached and control ceded to a third party. Each compromised device, known as a "bot", is created when a device is penetrated by software from a malware (malicious software) distribution. The controller of a botnet is able to direct the activities of these compromised computers through communication channels formed by standards-based network protocols, such as IRC and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).[3][4]
Those who are not complying with wearing a mask the reasons why not would need to be known. Wise to wear a mask and not a team player if not wearing a mask.
I have a goal of making 500 cloth masks and donating them where needed. I will even cut extra elastic for ear loops and safety pin it on the mask as the elastic may wear due to a hot soapy hand wash.
I feel that a new cluster could only be a day away anywhere.
Another Auckland CCO failure. Not Watercare, this time it's POAL. Not content with shitting on Aucklanders by building a bloody great carpark in the middle of the harbour, Ports of Auckland is an exploitative employer as well.
The next government needs to take a serious look at the corporate model of governance for public utilities. The profit motive does not deliver for the people, only a bunch of MBA executives whose only skills are "cost" cutting and bullshit.
12 hours a day, 60 hours a week, doing demanding physical work outdoors in all weather. Of course we await the findings of the investigation but it's hard not to conclude that this man was killed by understaffing and corporate cost-cutting. Rest in power. https://t.co/rOIztXHXvY
No. Just that massive port and truckie testing drive a few weeks ago. And the fact the Auckland outbreak is still sourced to Americold.
They still came up with nothing but a possible theory: Foreign crew member > stevedore > truck-driver > Americold worker. These people generally work (and have smoke breaks) in close contact so I wonder if there was a bit of mixing going on which shouldn't have happened.
I've had thoughts often re Americool as their Melbourne branch apparently had 2 cases a fortnight earlier – I know they dismiss it but seeing how some things are packed and that it can withstand cold surely is not just coincidence.
Around August 15th through 18th there was a big fluffy of articles about Americold Melbourne covid cases getting genome sequenced.
I have yet to find anything explicitly saying the genomes were different to the B.1.1.1 strain in the outbreak here, but I think it's safe to assume that if the Melbourne cases were also B.1.1.1 we would have heard all about it.
Over the last thirty odd years we've seen that the profit motive always brings about the worst possible response and does not meet the needs of the community.
Tony Gibson again, "Their health is our number one concern." Sure it is, mate. Sure it is. This guy was an arsehole all through the strikes, and he's still an arsehole.
The Pentagon is forming a new task force to investigate UFOs that have been observed by US military aircraft, according to two defense officials. Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist will help oversee the task force
Members of Congress and Pentagon officials have long expressed concerns about the appearance of the unidentified aircraft that have flown over US military bases, posing a risk to military jets. There is no consensus on their origin… The Senate Intelligence Committee voted in June to have the Pentagon and intelligence community provide a public analysis of the encounters, following the official Pentagon release of three short videos showing US aircraft encountering these phenomena.
You can understand how distressing it must be when your top guns get left flat-footed all the time. Hard to be macho. The hormones just stop flowing.
If US intelligence would only learn from random website entrepreneurs posing as tech expert theoreticians, instead of believing what defense personnel & hotshot pilots saw, everyone would live happily ever after… 👽
Hotshot pilots with a penchant for trolling those who want to believe.
Said Fravor, “We used to fly night vision goggles… [and] you can see a campfire from like fifty miles away. So we would go out at night flying around on goggles. You’d see a campfire and go, ‘Oh. UFO time’”. “[Y]ou get the airplane going around 600 knots and then you pull the power back to idle so you can’t hear it. Then you get zinging toward the fire and you turn the lights all down because we’re in a restricted area so you can do that. There’s lights on it you can only see if you’re on vision goggles. So the other airplanes can see us, but no one else can see us. Then you go zinging at it and right when you get to the campfire you pull the airplane into vertical and stroke the afterburners, let ’em light off, you count to three and then you just go away. Instant UFO reporting.”
Obviously pranksters get in on such acts. I recall some faking crop circles in the early '90s & impressing the media – but not the experts, who would point out the physical differences between the fakes and the real thing. So that's a red herring. Military authorities aren't ever likely to be fooled by time-wasters.
"…the real thing." Oh Dennis, isn't your inner skeptic twitching, just a little?
"Although obscure natural causes or alien origins of crop circles are suggested by fringe theorists, there is no scientific evidence for such explanations, and all crop circles are consistent with human causation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle
I admire the creativity/artistry of some hoaxers, provided it’s all in good fun.
all crop circles are consistent with human causation
Seems like total crap to me. Written by the type of sceptic who is possessed by an inner ideological agenda. You know, the kind of person who is too lazy to check out evidence.
Not that I have. I just looked at the photos & read parts of the books at the time. So I arrived at an opinion based on pattern recognition. Neither true believer nor retard sceptic. Binary folk are ever so reluctant to categorise stuff into the maybe category, eh? That's due to being unable to conceive a third alternative.
Like me, a physics graduate, so he ought to have known better! We may be alone, we may not, so that third option exists until you collapse the wave function (via experimental detection).
Journalists who enquired of Clarke whether he was gay were told, "No, merely mildly cheerful."
However, Michael Moorcock wrote: "Everyone knew he was gay. In the 1950s, I'd go out drinking with his boyfriend."
"There are many theories about what creates crop circles, including aliens, mysterious vortices, time travelers and wind patterns, but they all lack one important element: good evidence. The only known cause of crop circles is humans. Perhaps one day a mysterious, unknown source will be discovered for crop circles, but until then perhaps they are best thought of as collective public art."
Radford, B. "Crop Circles Explained". LiveScience. [2017]
"Seems like total crap to me."
Like Radford, I’m all for keeping an open mind, but with past and present crop circle evidence pointing in one direction, we’ll have to agree to disagree re “total crap“.
Anticipating publication of another theory sometime soon: those crop circles in English fields that have been reported on & off since the Middle Ages (according to one researcher years ago) must have been done by wallabies travelling from Oz on ufos.
What bothered me was the perfect symmetry exhibited by the wheat stalks. Perhaps wallabies are capable of levitation? That would explain the lack of footprints within the circles. 🤩
Wallabies are not capable of levitation AFAIK but some birds are and then there is the flying squirrel, of course, which happened to be native to Europe and is nocturnal.
I'd bet there's some really interesting aerodynamics going on. Maybe something like each loop of the undulations generating lift off a specific part of a vortex shed from the loop ahead.
I hope you didn't think I included your good self in that categorisation! There's an immense difference between a sceptic with an open mind and one without, and, operating within the former category, I tend to see you as more likely to be in that camp.
Those wielding scepticism as an ideology are sufficiently robotic that you can read them from phraseology used, denial of existence of evidence, aversion to even looking for it, etc.
“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
– Richard Feynman
Terence McKenna says it's the Japanese crop-circle tourists who make them; they're always there as soon as the circles appear (and before, nearby, waiting…) and act completely innocent when challenged. Cameras are the perfect excuse for being there and a lack of English language the perfect foil to interrogation. The precision of some of those crop-circles certainly points toward a culture of accuracy, elegance and attention to detail in the creators: the Japanese fit the bill!
I wasn't aware that I was claiming anything, John, but I think upon re-reading what I wrote that I can see why you thought so.
So to clarify: my perception of the difference between the fakes and the real thing is derived from the researchers plus the photos in their books, but I probably was too loose in the phrasing.
This is merely my personal impression we're talking about. Nothing to do with objective fact. And I don't rely on any single source – I scan the field & get an overview, a technique I acquired long ago. So my opinion re authenticity is not an assertion in the way you read it. I'm sorry to have used real thing in a way that may have implied whatever, when I just meant `no evidence of fakery apparent'. To differentiate those from the obvious fakes!
You are assuming that pentagon (especially air arm) officials see no advantage in a perceived techological "gap" between the USA and an unidentified neer-peer adversary.
After all, 60-70 years ago the "missile gap" resulted in budget cuts, right? But that had claims that were demonstrably false. These videos, released without comment, make no claims other than the subjects weren't conclusively and individually identified. Like, whose balloon was it? Obviously it's unidentified.
No, I agree that budget capture is a thing, and the US military hierarchy are masters of the art. It would be fair enough to then classify the senators as suckers – unless you'd rather deem them scamsters (ie operating as agents for the military), but that is probably more feasible for those with military corporations in their home state.
The only thing I deem is that there is nothing particularly novel or interesting about those films – the release of the footage and lack of classification of the objects is not proof of aliens, nor is it proof of a funding conspiracy, nor is it proof of haoxers, nor does it indicate that the pentagon merely declassifies shit without comment because it wants to keep the tinfoil hats at arm's length.
The general indications of the videos and the debunkers and the alternative theories is that the explanations for the content of those videos are incredibly banal. Why would I care to know or speculate beyond that, other than to respond to some obscurantist stupidity posted here?
If I were in their shoes (US military decision-makers & their pr hire) I'd reassure the public by making obscure videos available too! Heaven forbid they'd ever release the good ones!!
Anyway the point of the posting is the oscillating tendency of the US military & govt to create official UFO investigation orgs, wind them up some years or decades later, then do it all again in a different form…
Anyway the point of the posting is the oscillating tendency of the US military & govt to create official UFO investigation orgs, wind them up some years or decades later, then do it all again in a different form…
Really?
The new one seemed to be the subject of comment 10, but the point still seems to be elusive. Could you please express your point more clearly?
The news reported by CNN alerts us to a pattern of behaviour by the US military & govt: create official UFO investigations, terminate them a considerable time later, then recreate them in a somewhat different form some years after that.
Bureaucracy is like gardening – the well-tended plots have things come and go and regrow and pruning is done, preferably for the health of the plant rather than convoluted topiary.
Bureaucracy is like a tropical jungle, full of poisonous animals and plants (e.g. Triffid deskus), and easy to get lost in and die, never to be seen again.
Back when children did domestic chores every day, I received training from the patriarch & become proficient at pushing a mechanical mower around the lawn. Come the 1960s, we moved up-market & became fossil-fuel dependent local neighbourhood noise polluters.
Last year I told my neighbour I intend to eliminate my front lawn & gazed curiously at him to see how much he would freak out, but he rolled with it. Sam is cool. Electrical inspector & staunch Labour voter, but we shoot the breeze with political conversations often with no arguments. Maori but looks Greek patrician, talks more like a pakeha, and his property is immaculate!
So I get your point. Encultured control of nature is embedded as much as bureaucracy. I'm rewilding – but slowly enough to not spook the locals. My frogs have been in winter hibernation but have seen a couple medium-sized, almost black, moving now & then but not much. Wonder why they never croak (even in spring & summer)…
A scout troup were on a camp over the hills to the East of Paraparaumu at Camp Waghorn I think. One of the tasks was to build some hot air balloons out of tissue paper and fuelled with methylated spirits on cotton wool. Launched at night they drifted westwards over Paraparaumu. They were sighted by excited townsfolk. Police notified. Reports of figures looking out of portholes and craft as big as two football fields. Certain eyewitnesses. Until the lads went home on Sunday PM. Cover blown.
You have reminded me of the international ballyhoo over the UFO's seen in the night sky seaward of Kaikoura in 1978. Every now and them TV3 comes up with a re-run of the story, totally ignoring the explanation for the phenomena issued at the time by the Meteorological Service.
There was an intense anticyclone over the South Island and an inversion layer at about 2000 feet. On the surface and just beyond the 12 mile limit there was a Japanese fishing fleet. The lights from the fishing fleet was being reflected back at the point of the inversion layer as bright lights seemingly bobbing around the night sky. Sea must have been quite choppy.
What I can't figure out is why we sceptics never see the paranormal. The Kaikoura episode with Blenheim pilot Bill Startup brings back Bruce Cathie's leylines and Harmonic 33, and a local woman Moreland who saw a UFO there in 1959.
Seriously, I can identify with the startling sight of something inexplicable but evident to the eyes. Earlier this year looking at the night sky and then seeing travelling lights in a straight line was freaky, until I looked up online what was happening with a series of satellites……….
The individual experiences are often explained via optical illusions. The mass simultaneous sightings are usually ignored by sceptics due to being too hard to dismiss via this method.
I recall reading once about one such in Taupo, that happened in the 1950s. Think it made the newspaper, but what impressed me was the sheer number of eyewitness accounts that all told the same story.
Re Cathie's theory, I couldn't get my head into it, so I share the sceptic's view. Ley lines in Britain I'm agnostic about. Since they have a fair bit of physical correlates from the megalithic era, not just a personal fantasy of some nutcase.
except 10.2.1 was literally a mass sighting addressed by sceptics. They tend to be hyper-examined these days – e.g. the "missile" off California was examined exhaustively.
What "mass sightings" of ufos have been ignored? A taupo one in the 1950s deserves to be added to wikipedia.
On a related note, a while back I saw a joke chart that purported to show the incidence of miracles – consistantly high until photography was invented, then low and flat until photoshop was invented when it spiked up again. Same sort of thing applies to UFOs, I reckon.
Funnily, this sceptic has never been even part of a mass sighting. I did, though, find out as a young student on a ouija board that I could very subtly spell out all sorts of messages. Nearly cost me a relationship when my girlfriend finally sussed what I was doing………
Something similar happened to me in my first year at university: a group of us tried the ouija method & got mixed results. Some gibberish yet some words spelt out. After we gave up my old school friend & current flatmate admitted to the group that he had been steering the pointer. Taught me that the spirit of (scientific) enquiry is always vulnerable to being trumped by jokers…
Extremely upsetting to hear parent being part of the problem and spouting some very unpleasant Pasifika remarks with regards to the outbreak, and by extension, immigration in general. No amount of calling out and calmly challenging her thought process made any difference.
I'm more confused given she's a refugee herself, and is also disgusted by her father's anti-semetic views during the war when his Jewish neighbours were literally being carted off for extermination. It seems her own life experiences haven't produced tolerance. The only thing we seem to agree on is maybe it stems from her growing up in Australia at a time when racism/white superiority was actively encouraged and perhaps a bit of indoctrination that stuck.
Is there any point in continuing to reason with her?
build bridges and keep lines of communication open over time (if you can). Change doesn't have to happen in one conversation or debate, it can happen gradually, building on each previous discussion.
My experience in conservative communities was that keeping the relationship sound was just as important as any reasoning.
When worldometers is updated Australia's total deaths from Covid will be 652. The 'first wave' stopped at 102 so the July outbreak there has cost 550 lives so far.
…… the Victorian health department said Monday's deaths included 22 people who died in the weeks leading up to August 27 and were only reported to DHHS by aged-care facilities on Sunday.
Save those cute little bats, and their home territory for hundreds, thousands? of years, that nasty great humans are just preparing to rip away and colonise with their own kind.
That is such a familiar theme in our country – here in NZ where we like to say we are a developed, highly civilised country. But a query – what did we develop from and what, to? Have we been fooling ourselves – is there someone who can give a studied, balanced opinion out there (not Mike Hosking or others with their feet in the troughs out there overflowing with goodies that I've heard of)?
Why bother to save anything (sarc). Think how rich we could be by allowing what is unique to NZ die out and we are left with sparrows, Tahr, Wallibies, rabbits, rats etc
I'm not into saving anything. Habitat restoration and pest free islands then leave the mainland (plus Rakiura and Te Waipounamu) to mother nature. Love chilling on a river bank smothered with blossoming broom, watching the hares skittering, quail coveying, trout dimpling.
No maybe, ifs or buts. SkyCity is a private business with restrictions and not a public place as such. There are also CCTVs operating in prisons, which is an equally flawed comparison for this discussion. You are diverting, and this may be accidental, but now I have pointed it out to you, you have a conscious choice.
Ignore my point about SkyCity using facial recognition.
I just don't have an issue with the police using facial recognition if it catches bad people.
Yes, there may one or two cases of people using it for bad things, but the same could be argued for police having access to vehicle owners personal details from number plates at the push of a few buttons.
Matching vehicle ownership for licensing purposes, for example, is not quite the same as biometrics identification (and authorisation?), is it? A better comparison would be the use of fingerprints or the publication of photos taken in public.
It really helps to very clearly articulate the issue before launching (into) debate.
Well I have a lot of issues with nasty little authoritarian tribes like the cops running around and spying on people going about their normal daily business. What about the taking of photos at demo's – then later using these to discriminate against certain classes of people. Where are these cameras going to be and will there be a bias towards younger and lower skilled people being photographed.
As to catching bad people – they would need to CCTV far more executive workplaces , clubs , the roads to coromandel baches and exclusive restaurants to catch the real crooks who prey on society.
Then the traffic enforcement side – the costs of licences, rego's etc has soared compared to minimal wages and benefits. Little wonder that otherwise law abiding citizens slither around in not so legal cars – the costs are beyond them. If the legalise dope goes through then there is whole areas of enforcement that will no longer be needed. Looks like cops are going for some job protection there.
From my limited understanding of dealing with them. And it is pretty limited apart from someone trying to sell it,
It is anywhere where the cameras are up to spec' to be good enough to pick up the details needed visually by the software, used on the servers which controls the network of cameras.
Ie your average old camera from the 90s is probably a bit screwed, but new ones on the main black spots like Courtney Place where there are drunken fights or same sort of places in Auckland would probably be ok.
And obviously the thing looking at the cameras needs access two the visual in real time or it is a bit pointless, so public ones in this case.
Thank you for confirming my point. and no we do not need the attempted distraction of the type of camera.
Clearly your idea of a camera set up to catch a "bad guy" boils down to a public camera for low level street drug deals, some public drunkenness and a forgot to rego the car moment.
How about a few cameras that catch high income males in cafes assaulting female wait staff, issuing warrants to search journalists homes and insinuating to third parties that said journalists are being looked at for criminal reasons all of which turned out to be blatantly untrue. Street camera's won't catch the real crooks of society they will just be used to intimidate lawful people going about their lawful business.
What if the cops become bad people and set out to catch good people. It is important to try and care about surveillance, loss of personal freedom if you are commenting on a leftish blog Chris T.
If we are going to do hypotheticals I can come up with doozys
What if [name deleted; against TS policy] got away that day and the to catch him was through facial CCTV facial recognition?
Look I agree there will be bad cops like in every other profession, and a couple may even take advantage of it, that is a security issue for the police, but they already have way more access to private info' through other methods like vehicle registration etc, tracing phone movements with a warrant, to the point that I really can't see facial recognition making a difference to privacy.
If they start talking about bugging peoples phones and planting tracking devices on peoples cars I would be concerned. But this. Not really.
It is happening all over the world as part of policing, in airports, casinos as mentioned earlier etc (Yes I know these aren't public places)
[Some hypotheticals are just a bad idea – Incognito]
Again you confirm that there is far too much access by cops to private data in an unregulated way already. And the few bad cops – get real we have a continuing trickle of stories roast busters, Hager and other journalists, computer hacking investigations, illegal traffic stops to get information, tooling up and running around doing traffic stops like they are in a war zone and that's just what we know about .. that's just more than the odd bad egg it's a systemic problem that needs dealing with.
Nor is it correct to conflate such things as phone hacking which should need a warrant to the unrestricted unsupervised collection of public data using facial recognition of citizens doing absolutely nothing wrong as they go about their lawful daily lives.
and yes a lot of stuff is collected in non public spaces and again should we be ruling more fully against some of this.
Just remember the police work for us as a society not for some right wing authoritarian clique.
I like No Right Turn – it often has interesting information that is picked up much later by other media, but at other times it is frustrating in its blatant partisanship:
National often claims that the government has failed because an element of party policy put forward before the election has not been achieved and that this represents a failure of government – and the policy is of course always represented as a promise, so according to National it is a "broken promise." We know that a three party government does require compromises, but these do not always represent failure by the party or party that wants something to happen; it may represent a ''victory" for the third party. Also of course there are some policies which are overtaken by events (covid for example?) or where other priorities mean something gets lower than desired priority.
In this case NRT is talking about a "failure'' by the Green Party and Labour – not a failure of government. We need to remember this going into an election campaign; we collectively get what we collectively vote for…
Sadly NRT does not accept comments – fair enough as far as the time it clearly takes on The Standard to keep discussion civil and weed out the nutters; but for a blog that clearly supports some Green policies to blame the government for the need for consensus that is a fundamental part of that government is somewhat short sighted – despite problems I believe that a smaller party like the Green Party does have legitimate views; I do not want voters to think that it is only worth voting for Labour or National.
IS at NRT used to accept comments a long time ago. He shut it down because he prefers to write rather than deal with the ignorant dipshits who used to write most of the comments. I think that he stopped about 2006 or 7
It was pity because the comments were often as good as the posts.
A terrible look for Judith Collins here. Corrupt husband and chief Kauri stump digger David Wong tung has taken to posting misogynist memes about the Prime Minister.
You are well known for not recognising misogyny. One clue is in the use of the name "Cindy" which minimises and trivialises the PM, and all women, really.
Also worrying for Collins is the second one retweeted there by her apparently unruly husband is watermarked “the BFD” which is Slater’s vehicle. He set it up after claiming he had a stroke in order to avoid paying his debtors from the failed WOBF.
Collins has had a cosy relationship with Slater through the years, using him to conduct Dirty Politics. That relationship also contributed to her fall from grace and generally highlighted her and her husband’s corrupt nature.
It's actually less IMO about Jacinda Ardern who just gets one vote & given a raft of slights that most of the public have not had to witness, and would be rightly appalled by, this is how the public will view the LOTO. Regardless of her trying to dismiss it & perhaps suggesting NZers can't "take a joke" or a bit of levity it goes to the core of showing two faces to the public, one that's relatively benign and the other that is a relationship with a nasty and dismissive view of wider NZ
But What About Judith's personal responsibility for the poor personal choice of 41 years ago? Isn't that what the RW says to single mothers struggling to bring up the kids? They made a poor personal choice to have kids with someone so need to be pounded by the right?
Could you imagine the uproar if first bloke was doing anything like this? but he's far too sensible.
Collins shrugs and claims she can't do anything about it. This is an admission she endorses it. If she felt it was damaging she could say to her husband, "you are hurting my career, please stop". But she won't because she doesn't believe he is hurting her career.
Or, she told him to stfu and he didn't and it's better for her to make light of it in public. Her husband sounds like a total dick, and her point about not being able to control him seems potentially true.
Bring it on. The more he tweets the more the election will be a referendum on Judith Collins' relationship with her husband. If she can't control him, how can she control a cabinet?
" If you’ve got the secret to how you control a man who is 64 years old, used to play a lot of rugby and was a policeman, good luck and let me know,” Judith said.
"“He is one of the least sexist men I know, he is married to me, how could he be sexist?” Collins said."
“He is an adult, he will make his own decisions and let’s put it this way, I don't have to answer for him because I have not been able to control him in 41 years."
"Spring is sprung, the grass is riz." and in the river and on its banks at the foot of my garden there are nests which produce cygnets and ducklings, little kawau and pukeko, tiny scaup and paradise shelducks, so I know 'where the birdies is." Life is indeed good.
Full moon as far as I can see tonight. 21 degrees today in Gisborne on the last day of winter. First day of chafing for me.
Why don't I think of myself as a manual worker? Yet by all measures I am for 34 years. I feel I'm posturing since I'm middle class and my real life is in my head.
There are times when tikanga needs to be broken for tikanga to survive.I recently gave a presentation on Māori economic history based on my Not in Narrow Seas. Its most important message was that Māori proved to be a very adaptable people continually evolving as new opportunities arose. The European ...
Some of you may remember our blog post "A conundrum: our continued presence on Facebook" in which we detailed our misgivings about and decision to stick with Facebook for the time being. So these latest developments - reposted from the Cranky Uncle homepage - might come as a bit of surprise! ...
Image credit:Quick Data Lessons: Data Dredging Oh dear – another scientific paper claiming evidence of toxic effects from fluoridation. But a critical look at the paper shows evidence of p-hacking, data dredging and motivated reasoning to derive their conclusions. And it was published in a journal shown to be ...
We've had a housing crisis for the past decade, and successive governments have done nothing to solve it. Why not? Bernard Hickey gets it right when he says its all about protecting the rich: The Government is reluctant to push down house prices fearing they'll loses the support of ...
There’s more of the Obama legacy here and Deporter in Chief: Obama chucks out 2,000,000 and Can Trump really deport more people than Obama? and Obama, gay rights and the killing drones ...
My Department Right Or Wrong: Far from “politicians involving themselves in some Corrections matters” being a bad thing, their involvement – along with that of the Ombudsman – constitutes a necessary check upon the unreasonable and unlawful exercise of authority over prison inmates by prison staff. A Corrections Minister who ...
New Zealand is supposed to have a progressive tax system, which taxes people according to their ability to pay. But it turns out that the rich are cheating: The wealthiest New Zealanders pay just 12 per cent of their total income in tax on average, according to research from ...
Ground truths on warming When we think about rapid climate change of the kind we've accidentally unleashed and the warming of Earth systems inherent in the process, we tend to focus on phenomena in order of their immediate tangibility, their drama. Sea ice loss in the Arctic, atmospheric and ocean ...
by Daphna Whitmore The Department of Corrections has called in the police over a pamphlet that supports protests at Waikeria Prison, saying the material might incite another riot. The group People Against Prisons Aotearoa denies it advocates for riots and has said it “encourages persistent, peaceful protest action such as striking from ...
One theme in the literature dedicated to democratic theory is the notion of a “tyranny of the minority.” This is where the desire to protect the interests of and give voice to electoral minorities leads to a tail wagging the dog syndrome whereby minorities wind up having disproportionate influence in ...
I've just lodged my fourth complaint to the Ombudsman for deemed refusal of an OIA request by police this year. That brings their total to four for four - every request I have sent them has not been answered within the legal timeframe, even when they extend it to give ...
Will the health reforms proposed for the Labour Government make the system better or worse? Health commentator Ian Powell (formerly the Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists) gives his analysis of what change is most necessary, and what should be avoided. The review of the Health ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections An off-course polar vortex meandered toward the Mexican border, bringing with it frigid Arctic air rarely seen as far south as Texas. Frozen equipment rendered power generation systems in the state inoperable, forcing grid operators to begin rolling blackouts to customers then left to fend ...
Just as National once produced a “rock star economy” that Grant Robertson rejected as being only for the rich, the Labour Government has produced an economic “bounce back” that leaves out the poor. Branko Marcetic argues for a rise in benefit levels to give the poor a real bounce back. ...
Virginia has voted to abolish the death penalty: State lawmakers gave final approval on Monday to a bill that will end capital punishment in Virginia, a dramatic turnaround for a state that has executed more people than any other. The legislation repealing the death penalty now heads to the ...
Yesterday a New Zealand Judge issued a formal finding that the Department of Corrections had treated prisoners in a cruel, degrading and inhumane manner, illegally detaining them, using excessive force, denying them basic necessities unless they performed degrading rituals of submission first. Some of the conduct appears to be criminal: ...
The Herald reports that there is a "storm brewing for the Climate Change Commission". The "problem"? Polluters are unhappy with its economic projections saying that action will not be as costly as they have previously claimed: Last week a coalition of over a dozen New Zealand business and industry ...
You're Move: What would a genuinely powerful Maori Caucus do? What policies would it insist upon? More to the point, since the single most important question in politics is always “Or you’ll what?”, does the Maori Caucus possess the wherewithal to enforce its demands?THAT LABOUR’S MAORI CAUCUS is potentially powerful ...
This post is a mix of a few recent reports on trends, recent discoveries or developments. Topics covered are the future of work, the geopolitical shift from oil to semiconductors, transition to low carbon futures, disappearing Artic sea ice, and AI in health care. Yesterday’s Gone A Canadian report ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson One of the hottest years in U.S. history, 2020 was besieged by a record number of billion-dollar disasters, led by two of the most dangerous phenomena with links to climate change: wildfires and hurricanes. In its initial U.S. climate summary for 2020, ...
Just because something is bad, doesn’t mean it’s easy to criminalise. Graham Adams argues that the proposed ban on gay conversion therapy is messier than many realise, and he delves into some of the difficulties facing the Government in their promise to legislate. A highly successful petition has inadvertently ...
Story of the Week... Editorial of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... ‘Absolutely ridiculous’: top scientist slams UK government over coalmineExclusive:Prof Sir Robert Watson says backing of ...
Over the weekend we learned that Turkey plans to deport a New Zealand woman and her children who had fled Syria after previously joing the Islamic State. Which means that Andrew Little's tyrannical Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act 2019 - rammed through under all-stages urgency on the basis of an ...
While it has made a lot of noise about inequality, Labour has resolutely avoided reversing the 1990 benefit cuts and improving living standards for the poorest in our society. Meanwhile, 70% of kiwis think they should: A survey has found seven out of 10 New Zealanders believe the government ...
Anti-Philosopher President? Emmanuel Macron and his party’s reaction to the terrorist atrocities committed on French soil targets the very same philosophical movements excited and emboldened by New Zealand’s own terrifying tragedy.IT IS NOT the sort of thought experiment New Zealanders are encouraged to conduct in these culturally sensitive times. Even ...
If Jacinda Ardern or ay of her Auckland-based cabinet ministers stepped outside this weekend, they would have realised that this afternoon’s cabinet decision on whether to move Auckland back to Level 1 has already been made. The residents of our biggest city have voted with their feet.While some places where ...
According to epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker, the decision to end the second Auckland lockdown after just three days was a ‘calculated risk’. The possibility of undetected community transmission cannot be ruled out. In the United States, modelling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that the ...
As I rose for the first time to speak from the Despatch Box in the House of Commons, I had the comfort of seeing that the Despatch Box had on it the inscription “A Gift from the People of New Zealand”. But I was also a little daunted, like so ...
This article is by Laura Biggs, from the Marxist-Feminist blog On the Woman Question. The term ‘sex work’ has come to replace the word ‘prostitution’ in contemporary discussions on the subject. This is not accidental. The phrase ‘sex work’ has been adopted by liberal feminists and powerful lobbyists in a ...
Sometimes it’s smaller, intensive studies that shed light on issues. Just reported results of daily sampling of COVID-19 patients indicate patients with the B.1.1.7 variant first observed in Kent, UK may have a longer infection compared to patients infected with non-B.1.1.7 variants. This is the variant seen in NZ’s most ...
Redline has just passed one million views – as I start writing this we have reached 1,000,015 views. It took us nearly seven years to reach our first 500,000 and just three months short of three years to reach our second 500,000, with 2019 being our best year, with over ...
. . As the rest of the world was perceived to be “going to hell in a handbasket with an out-of-control pandemic; ructions in Europe as Britain copes with “Brexit” chaos; Trumpism in the United States climaxing with the 6 January mob-led coup attempt in Washington’s Capitol; a deadly ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Feb 14, 2021 through Sat, Feb 20, 2021Editor's ChoiceQ&A: Is Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Book a Hopeful Look at the Promise of Technology, or a Cautionary Tale?The Pulitzer Prize-winning ...
Session Thirty-Five. We have had some in-game and out-of-game indication that we are drawing to the end of the Dreamland adventure… which has lasted since the fourth session. Getting back to the Waking World will require some mental adjustment, especially considering that Annalax has spent thirty-odd sessions not ...
A Friend In Need: I have grown up, and grown old, within earshot of New Zealand’s public broadcaster. Through times of peace and plenty, through days of tumult and recrimination, it has been a constant and reliable presence. The calm and authoritative voices of Radio New Zealand kept their fellow ...
This article, authored by Dr Lisa Schipper, Dr Morgan Scoville-Simonds, Dr Katharine Vincent and Prof Siri Eriksen, was originally published on the Carbon Brief website on Feb 10, 2021. It is reposted below in its entirety. Click here to access the original article and comments posted on Carbon Brief. Photo by ...
. . As the rest of the world was perceived to be “going to hell in a handbasket with an out-of-control pandemic; ructions in Europe as Britain copes with “Brexit” chaos; Trumpism in the United States climaxing with the 6 January mob-led coup attempt in Washington’s Capitol; a deadly resurgent ...
by Georgina Blackmore Instead ask the government to separate the two issues caught under the heading of “Conversion Therapy”. 1) Gay Conversion Therapy which is what 99.9% of people believe this petition is about. It is a ban I personally support. 2) Gender Identity Conversion Therapy which doesn’t have any ...
The burning of books has a long history. That it no reason why we should add to it.If you want to get Burning of the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack from the National Library you may have to hurry. It is in the overseas nonfiction section; many books ...
by Daphna Whitmore After promising to tackle poverty, housing, transport, and climate issues in 2017, and failing on all these measures, Labour has moved to a Helen Clark “promise little and disappoint less” style of government. Poverty – perversely called “child poverty” by Ardern – has worsened under Labour. Much ...
This is one of those subject matters better suited to a thesis than a blog post, and far smarter people than I have tackled the question in a more detailed and accurate manner. But it’s a question that’s been running around in my brain for a fortnight or so. ...
Chris Fogwill, Keele University; Alan Hogg, University of Waikato; Chris Turney, UNSW, and Zoë Thomas, UNSWThe world experienced a few centuries of apocalyptic conditions 42,000 years ago, triggered by a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles combined with changes in the Sun’s behaviour. That’s the key finding of our ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jan Ellen Spiegel Colorado is no stranger to drought. The current one is closing in on 20 years, and a rainy or snowy season here and there won’t change the trajectory. This is what climate change has brought. “Aridification” is what ...
Sweet Surrender: By 1933, Adolf Hitler was the last political leader left standing, and his Nazis the only party Germany had yet to try. It was ever thus. Dictators and dictatorships succeed by being the only medicine a desperately sick nation hasn’t swallowed; the only strength that hasn’t failed.NOT ALL ...
"I know what you're not thinking!" Thanks to their polling agency and the participants in its focus-groups, the Labour leadership possesses a great deal more information about the Kiwis clamouring for action on the housing and inequality fronts than most journalists and lobbyists.ACCORDING TO PEOPLE “in the know”, Labour is ...
James Higham, University of OtagoThe Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s second tourism report urges the government to take advantage of the disruption caused by COVID-19 to transform the tourism industry. Titled “Not 100% – but four steps closer to sustainable tourism”, it builds on commissoner Simon Upton’s 2019 “Pristine, ...
My column over at Newsroom this week points out the fairly obvious. The government can add daily saliva testing for everyone at the border to the existing testing regimen. If daily testing winds up proving the swab tests to be redundant, ditch the swab tests when we find that out. ...
Geoengineering heats up Sorry, that was irresistible. By chance in this edition of New Research are two intriguing papers including different perspectives on the subject of geoengineering, a topic increasingly arousing emotions. Happily both of these papers are open access and free to read. A third article underlines that enthusiasm ...
Tamra Burns Loeb, University of California, Los Angeles; AJ Adkins-Jackson, Harvard University, and Arleen F. Brown, University of California, Los AngelesRacial and ethnic minority communities that lack internet access have been left behind in the race to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The average monthly cost of internet access, about ...
Zach St. GeorgeThe first and only time Steve Jackson spoke to Bill Critchfield was in the late 1980s. Critchfield, an authority on the conifers of North America, was at home recovering from a heart attack. Jackson, then a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University, had called looking for advice on how ...
Richelle Butcher, Massey University; Britta Denise Hardesty, CSIRO, and Lauren Roman, CSIROPlastic in the ocean can be deadly for marine wildlife and seabirds around the globe, but our latest study shows single-use plastics are a bigger threat to endangered albatrosses in the southern hemisphere than we previously thought. You ...
On Monday, the US Congress failed to hold former President Donald Trump accountable for inciting an attempted coup against the US constitution. So now someone is doing it privately, in the traditional American way: suing him: Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani, the former president’s personal lawyer, have been accused ...
The media this morning was full of hopeful stories about how the current lockdown may have been a "false alarm" and an over-reaction and how it would all be over soon (I bet those journalists and editors all feel pretty stupid now). But along the way, National's Michael Woodhouse let ...
Jen Purdie, University of OtagoAs fossil fuels are phased out over the coming decades, the Climate Change Commission (CCC) suggests electricity will take up much of the slack, powering our vehicle fleet and replacing coal and gas in industrial processes. But can the electricity system really provide for this ...
Nearly twenty years after they first arrived, the last New Zealand troops will finally be leaving Afghanistan in May: New Zealand troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by May 2021. The current deployment consists of six Defence Force personnel - three deployed to the Afghanistan National Army Officer Academy, ...
I’m a bit of an ETS-absolutist. Or at least a carbon-pricing absolutist, in a place the size of NZ. I think the Weitzman reasons for preferring a carbon tax to an ETS are second-order relative to political economy considerations, and any weight at all put on switching costs makes it ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson Despite the speed bump posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is rolling toward completion of its Sixth Assessment Report, the latest in a series that began in 1990. IPCC’s assessments, produced by many hundreds of scientists volunteering countless hours, ...
On Friday (5 February) we went for a walk in the Karangahake Gorge, and were very happy to discover (during the Windows Walk) that there are glow-worms in the darker parts of the mine workings. (Strictly speaking they’re glow-maggots as they’re the larvae of small flies/midges, but that is perhaps ...
Alysha JohnsonThey say a good day is a busy day, and aboard the R/V Falkor (Seafloor to Seabirds in the Coral Sea – Schmidt Ocean Institute), almost every day is busy! On this particular day, we deployed a CTD, which stands for Conductivity, Temperature and Density. It is ...
This is a transcript of a speech by developmental biologist Dr Emma Hilton delivered at on 29 November 2020 for the ‘Feminist Academics Talk Back!’ meeting. This talk was originally published by womentalkback.org Sex denialists have captured existing journals We are dealing with a new religion Thank you for the ...
We know that when our rural communities do well, all of New Zealand benefits. Labour is committed to supporting our regions so that, together, we can achieve even more. Here are just some of the ways we’re backing rural communities. ...
Government data today shows that the wealthiest New Zealanders aren’t paying their fair share of tax, whilst everyone else chips in, Green Party spokesperson on Finance Julie Anne Genter said today. ...
The Green Party welcomes the change in the Reserve Bank’s remit to consider the impacts on housing when making financial decisions, but housing affordability shouldn’t be left to the Reserve Bank, Green Party Co-leader and Housing spokesperson Marama Davidson said today. ...
The Green Party welcomes the passing of the Local Electorate Act Māori Wards Amendment Bill which ensures Māori have a say on local issues across Aotearoa New Zealand. ...
New UMR research reveals that 69 percent of New Zealanders agree that the government should increase the amount if income support paid to those on low incomes or not in paid work. ...
The Green Party are celebrating the Labour Government bringing forward the timeline to ban conversion therapy, and will push to ensure any draft bill properly protects all of our Rainbow communities. ...
The Green Party is joining the call for ‘brave policy action’ to address rapidly increasing inequality in New Zealand, which is likely to be exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
Green MPs currently in Auckland, Marama Davidson, Chlöe Swarbrick and Golriz Ghahraman, will remain in Auckland for the next 72 hours. Those in Auckland today for Big Gay Out who have flown home will self-isolate for 72 hours. These decisions will be subject to any new information that may arise ...
It’s Pride month, and as we celebrate our LGBTIA+ community, we’re taking the next steps towards a more inclusive Aotearoa. From investing in mental health services to banning harmful conversion therapy, we’re building a New Zealand where everyone can be safe, healthy and happy. ...
The Green Party strongly condemns the revelation that Air New Zealand may have provided assistance and maintenance to Saudi Arabian vessels involved in committing atrocities in Yemen. ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has expressed her condolences at the passing of long-serving former Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare. “Our thoughts are with Lady Veronica Somare and family, Prime Minister James Marape and the people of Papua New Guinea during this time of great ...
The Government is backing a new project to use drone technology to transform our understanding and protection of the Māui dolphin, Aotearoa’s most endangered dolphin. “The project is just one part of the Government’s plan to save the Māui dolphin. We are committed to protecting this treasure,” Oceans and Fisheries ...
Major water reform has taken a step closer with the appointment of the inaugural board of the Taumata Arowai water services regulator, Hon Nanaia Mahuta says. Former Director General of Health and respected public health specialist Dame Karen Poutasi will chair the inaugural board of Crown agency Taumata Arowai. “Dame ...
New funding announced by Conservation Minister Kiri Allan today will provide work and help protect the unique values of Northland’s Te Ārai Nature Reserve for future generations. Te Ārai is culturally important to Te Aupōuri as the last resting place of the spirits before they depart to Te Rerenga Wairua. ...
Today the Government has taken a key step to support Pacific people to becoming Community Housing providers, says the Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito William Sio. “This will be great news for Pacific communities with the decision to provide Pacific Financial Capability Grant funding and a tender process to ...
Conservation Minister Kiri Allan is encouraging New Zealanders to have their say on a proposed marine mammal sanctuary to address the rapid decline of bottlenose dolphins in Te Pēwhairangi, the Bay of Islands. The proposal, developed jointly with Ngā Hapū o te Pēwhairangi, would protect all marine mammals of the ...
Attorney-General David Parker today announced the appointment of three new District Court Judges. Two of the appointees will take up their roles on 1 April, replacing sitting Judges who have reached retirement age. Kirsten Lummis, lawyer of Auckland has been appointed as a District Court Judge with jury jurisdiction to ...
Government announces list of life-shortening conditions guaranteeing early KiwiSaver access The Government changed the KiwiSaver rules in 2019 so people with life-shortening congenital conditions can withdraw their savings early The four conditions guaranteed early access are – down syndrome, cerebral palsy, Huntington’s disease and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder An alternative ...
The Reserve Bank is now required to consider the impact on housing when making monetary and financial policy decisions, Grant Robertson announced today. Changes have been made to the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee’s remit requiring it to take into account government policy relating to more sustainable house prices, while working ...
The Labour Government will invest $6 million for 70 additional adult cochlear implants this year to significantly reduce the historical waitlist, Health Minister Andrew Little says. “Cochlear implants are life changing for kiwis who suffer from severe hearing loss. As well as improving an individual’s hearing, they open doors to ...
The Local Electoral (Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill passed its third reading today and will become law, Minister of Local Government Hon Nanaia Mahuta says. “This is a significant step forward for Māori representation in local government. We know how important it is to have diversity around ...
The Government has added 1,000 more transitional housing places as promised under the Aotearoa New Zealand Homelessness Action Plan (HAP), launched one year ago. Minister of Housing Megan Woods says the milestone supports the Government’s priority to ensure every New Zealander has warm, dry, secure housing. “Transitional housing provides people ...
A second batch of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines arrived safely yesterday at Auckland International Airport, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says. “This shipment contained about 76,000 doses, and follows our first shipment of 60,000 doses that arrived last week. We expect further shipments of vaccine over the coming weeks,” Chris Hipkins said. ...
The Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Carmel Sepuloni has today announced $18 million to support creative spaces. Creative spaces are places in the community where people with mental health needs, disabled people, and those looking for social connection, are welcomed and supported to practice and participate in the arts ...
Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Minister Andrew Little today welcomed Moriori to Parliament to witness the first reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. “This bill is the culmination of years of dedication and hard work from all the parties involved. “I am delighted to reach this significant milestone today,” Andrew ...
22,400 fewer children experiencing material hardship 45,400 fewer children in low income households on after-housing costs measure After-housing costs target achieved a year ahead of schedule Government action has seen child poverty reduce against all nine official measures compared to the baseline year, Prime Minister and Minister for Child Poverty ...
It’s time to recognise the outstanding work early learning services, kōhanga reo, schools and kura do to support children and young people to succeed, Minister of Education Chris Hipkins says. The 2021 Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards are now open through until April 16. “The past year has reminded us ...
Three new Jobs for Nature projects will help nature thrive in the Bay of Plenty and keep local people in work says Conservation Minister Kiri Allan. “Up to 30 people will be employed in the projects, which are aimed at boosting local conservation efforts, enhancing some of the region’s most ...
The Government has accepted all of the Holidays Act Taskforce’s recommended changes, which will provide certainty to employers and help employees receive their leave entitlements, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Wood announced today. Michael Wood said the Government established the Holidays Act Taskforce to help address challenges with the ...
The Government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and faster than expected economic recovery has been acknowledged in today’s credit rating upgrade. Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) today raised New Zealand’s local currency credit rating to AAA with a stable outlook. This follows Fitch reaffirming its AA+ rating last ...
Tena koutou e nga Maata Waka Ngai Tuahuriri, Ngai Tahu whanui, Tena koutou. Nau mai whakatau mai ki tenei ra maumahara i te Ru Whenua Apiti hono tatai hono, Te hunga mate ki te hunga mate Apiti hono tatai hono, Te hunga ora ki te hunga ora Tena koutou, Tena ...
The Minister of Justice has reaffirmed the Government’s urgent commitment, as stated in its 2020 Election Manifesto, to ban conversion practices in New Zealand by this time next year. “The Government has work underway to develop policy which will bring legislation to Parliament by the middle of this year and ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage and Social Development Hon Carmel Sepuloni today launched a new Creative Careers Service, which is expected to support up to 1,000 creatives, across three regions over the next two years. The new service builds on the most successful aspects of the former Pathways to ...
Overseas consumers eager for natural products in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic have helped boost honey export revenue by 20 percent to $425 million in the year to June 30, 2020, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor says. “The results from the latest Ministry for Primary Industries’ 2020 Apiculture Monitoring ...
Thanks to more than $10-million in new services from the Government, more rangatahi will be able to access mental health and addiction support in their community. Minister of Health Andrew Little made the announcement today while visiting Odyssey House Christchurch and acknowledged that significant events like the devastating earthquakes ten ...
Two month automatic visitor visa extension for most visitor visa holders Temporary waiver of time spent in New Zealand rule for visitor stays Visitor visa holders will be able to stay in New Zealand a little longer as the Government eases restrictions for those still here, the Minister of Immigration ...
The Tourism and Conservation Ministers say today’s report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) adds to calls to overhaul the tourism model that existed prior to COVID19. “The PCE tourism report joins a chorus of analysis which has established that previous settings, which prioritised volume over value, are ...
The Government is providing certainty for the dietary supplements industry as we work to overhaul the rules governing the products, Minister for Food Safety Dr Ayesha Verrall said. Dietary supplements are health and wellness products taken orally to supplement a traditional diet. Some examples include vitamin and mineral supplements, echinacea, ...
The Government is joining the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime (the Budapest Convention), Justice Minister Kris Faafoi and Minister for the Digital Economy and Communications Dr David Clark announced today. The decision progresses a recommendation by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terror attack to accede to ...
Attorney-General David Parker announced today that an appointment round for Queen’s Counsel will take place in 2021. Appointments of Queen’s Counsel are made by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the Attorney-General and with the concurrence of the Chief Justice. The Governor-General retains the discretion to appoint Queen’s Counsel in ...
The new Resurgence Support Payment passed by Parliament this week will be available to eligible businesses now that Auckland will be in Alert Level 2 until Monday. “Our careful management of the Government accounts means we have money aside for situations like this. We stand ready to share the burden ...
A dry run of the end-to-end process shows New Zealand’s COVID-19 vaccination programme is ready to roll from Saturday, when the first border workers will receive the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says. “The trial run took place in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch yesterday afternoon, ahead of the ...
From June this year, all primary, intermediate, secondary school and kura students will have access to free period products, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti announced today. The announcement follows a successful Access to Period Products pilot programme, which has been running since Term 3 last ...
The latest update shows the Government’s books are again in better shape than forecast, meaning New Zealand is still in a strong position to respond to any COVID-19 resurgence. The Crown Accounts for the six months to the end of December were better than forecast in the Half-year Economic and ...
The Department of Conservation’s (DOC) new Heritage and Visitor Strategy is fully focused on protecting and enhancing the value of New Zealand’s natural, cultural and historic heritage, while also promoting a sustainable environmental experience, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “It has been a quarter of a century since DOC first developed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Defence Minister Peeni Henare have announced that New Zealand will conclude its deployment of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) to Afghanistan by May 2021. “After 20 years of a NZDF presence in Afghanistan, it is now time to conclude ...
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. This is a special time in our country. A little over a week ago, it was the anniversary of the signature by Māori and the British Crown of Te Tiriti O Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi), a founding document in ...
The Government is in contact with relevant authorities in Turkey following the arrest of a former Australian and New Zealand dual citizen there, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “Contingency planning for the potential return of any New Zealander who may have been in the conflict zone has been underway for ...
Figures released today by Stats NZ show there was strong growth in median household incomes in 2020, before surveying was halted due to COVID-19. Stats NZ found the median annual household income rose 6.9 percent to $75,024 in the year to June 2020 compared with a year earlier. The survey ...
Legislation will be introduced under urgency today to set up a new Resurgence Support Payment for businesses affected by any resurgence of COVID-19. “Since the scheme was announced in December we have decided to make a change to the payment – reducing the time over which a revenue drop is ...
What’s the best way to get adults reading? Get them reading when they’re children – and there’s no better place to start than the Unity Children’s Bestseller Chart.AUCKLAND1 Sapiens: A Graphic History, Volume 1, The Birth of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari and David Vandermeulen, and illustrator Daniel Casanave (Jonathon ...
"The lab assistants developed various amphetamine habits, Linda in HR started sleeping with her co-workers’ wives, a few of the guys from down in IT went undercover as recruits in local criminal organisations and were instantly murdered": a vision from Wellington writer Jordan Hamel There are nine different incident reports, ...
Rebecca Wadey used to love the wellness industry. Now she doesn’t know who to trust.This story was first published on Ensemble. I love a bit of woo woo.As a former wellbeing editor, I’ve interviewed countless experts on how to achieve a work-life balance and live a life of optimal energy. I’ve ...
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By Scott Waide in Lae, Papua New Guinea Sir Michael was a man of many titles. He was father, grandfather and chief. As a tribal leader, he was Sana, the peacemaker. His influence and his reputation extended beyond Papua New Guinea’s border to the Pacific and other parts of the ...
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Analysis: The government wants the Reserve Bank to curb house prices, Parliament passes the Māori wards bill, and an MP gets away with a rude word in the House. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Paddy Nixon discuss the week in politics. This week Michelle and Paddy discuss the continued probe into the culture of ...
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Immigration New Zealand is standing by its decision to grant a visa to the partner of Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March and says the application was treated "like any other". ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathalie Collins, Academic Director (National Programs), Edith Cowan University Business etiquette has one golden rule: treat others with respect and care. The same is true for encouraging cyber safety at work, on everything from password security to keeping valuable information like tax ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Bryant, Professor & Director of Traumatic Stress Clinic, UNSW Although Australia is now largely COVID-free, the repercussions of the pandemic are ongoing. As the pandemic enters its second year, many people will be continuing to suffer with poor mental health, or ...
Auckland Council has signed off on a new strategy to make it easier to recycle or get rid of inorganic waste, but according to South Auckland community leaders, it doesn’t go far enough.Tucked a few streets back from former prime minister William Massey’s beautiful old homestead in Māngere East is ...
With crowd-friendly dance tunes and affordable drinks, a new dancehall and bar opening tonight is hoping to make going out more accessible for Aucklanders.“In many ways, it’s fucking stupid opening a nightclub in the middle of a global pandemic,” says Sam Walsh, one of the three owners of a new ...
Water New Zealand says the establishment of the new Taumata Arowai board is an important milestone in the journey towards safer drinking water for all New Zealanders. The Minister of Local Government, Nanaia Mahuta has announced that former ...
The PM says there are "many, many people" being treated as contacts of the latest Covid-19 community case, but the government is willing to go further than usual to keep the country at level 1. ...
Listen: This week's Extra Time podcast from RNZ dissects the women's White Ferns' cricket challenge against England, the men's Black Caps vs Australia and the start of Super Rugby The White Ferns have a battle on their hands to fight their way back into their one-day series against England - ...
Our Beehive Bulletin … While Housing Minister Megan Woods was being grilled at Question Time in Parliament about the government’s performance in her portfolio domain, the Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito Williams Sio, was announcing new initiatives to provide housing. Attorney-General David Parker, meanwhile, was announcing the appointments of three ...
Asia Pacific Report Papua New Guineans awoke this morning to great sadness, reports the PNG Post-Courier. As the bells tolled with the sad news of the passing of the much beloved statesman and the founding father of the nation, newsfeeds and social media were abuzz with shock, grief, sadness and ...
In remarks for a Monetary Policy Statement presentation to the Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce today, Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr has elaborated on the direction received from the Minister of Finance, to have regard to house price sustainability ...
Critic's Chair: Guy Somerset watches the first of four documentaries on the allegations against Woody Allen in his years in the Farrow household, and hears the air of truth in the early testimonies against him. Of all the witness statements with the air of truth about them in the first ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Gangland: New Zealand’s Underworld of Organised Crime by Jared Savage (HarperCollins, $37)“It’s hard for me to imagine ...
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Last year 320 people were killed on New Zealand’s roads. Alex Braae spoke to the people on the front line of road safety about the plan to turn that around. When the goal is to bring the road toll down to zero deaths a year, there’s no one simple solution. ...
Its 2012 investment prospectus was all suits, cigars, guns, sports cars and models in short skirts, and its consumer advertising was possibly even worse. Did the Moa brand’s misogyny contribute to its huge losses?The middle of the road can wind up being a risky place for a business. Typically a ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Georgina Heydon, Associate professor, RMIT University The alleged rape of former Liberal Party staffer Brittany Higgins has raised many questions about how sexual assault gets reported. Members of the Morrison government have repeatedly stressed the appropriate response to allegations of sexual assault ...
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Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for February 26. All the latest news from New Zealand, updated throughout the day. Reach me at stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur Members make The Spinoff happen. Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us from ...
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You can stick people into two groups. Those who comply and those don't. Those who comply do so for their own safety and the safety of others. They do so for the greater collective good. Those who don't don't comply feel they themselves are the most important unit and will break any rule which suggests otherwise. These people are from the political right.
Because SARS – CoV 2 favours the non-complying group I comply. I wear a mask, wash my hands, physically distance and avoid crowds, try to stay as healthy as I can – easier for some than others.
"This metasynthesis provides among the most compelling evidence to date that personality predicts overall health and well-being."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28277701/
Plenty of people that would otherwise be progressive who aren't following the rules. We ignore this and make it a partisan issue at out peril.
Be interesting to hear the range of reasons why. Presumably our media will vox pop that for us.
In the past weeks own south people seem pretty relaxed about L2, basically not really doing much. More Q codes visible, some manual lists to sign, signs telling people to keep their distance, but while people are aware I guess, seems like it's a bit lax. Presumably because most people think there's no covid here. I assume people are allowed to leave Auckland now so hopefully that perception will change.
There's also the anti-authoritarian crowd.
She’ll be right, mate.
lol, not sure it's *quite that bad.
Anyone know why 900 state houses in Porirua were handed over to iwi, even though the government promised to put an end to privatisation of state housing?
Ref: https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/122560292/ngti-toa-will-take-its-land-back-and-bring-its-people-home-iwi-ceo-says
Probably part of a Treaty of Waitangi settlement and I would not call handing these houses over to Iwi to administer privatisation. Meeting of a treaty settlement is paramount I would have thought. What owners do then is the same as any other owner whose land has been taken. Some handing back is subject to restrictions but I am not sure if this part of the Treaty claim was.
I am looking forward to the time when Paraparaumu airport, taken for Defence purposes around the time of WW2 and the Iwi never compensated, is handed back.
Iwi aren't private businesses, they're Treaty partners with the Crown.
Any shareholder owned organisation that's accumulating and reinvesting virtually all returns from invested settlement assets is by definition a private business.
Iwi have businesses (like the government), but they're not businesses. The Pākehā system forced Māori to adopt Iwi legal structures that suited Pākehā, but Iwi themselves predate any modern concept of business by a long time.
And does or should this overly technical approach by Joe90 override the fact that these settlements endeavour to bring the Iwi into a situation that they should have been had the Treaty of Waitangi breach not occurred.
I think not.
As Weka has said these are our Treaty partners, they have been badly treated in cases where Maori land has been taken for Public Works such as housing, roads, schools etc etc. and most have chosen a range or mix of former crown assets and $$$ to settle their grievances. It is mean-spirited not to allow Iwi to conduct their own commercial operations. Some of these ops have meant that Iwi does the managing eg Ngai Tahu and others the managing has been done by the former Govt dept.
If land owned by the Crown is not going to be in the mix, and Iwi want productive land as part of their settlement then the Treaty Settlements will stall big time.
I think to define the use of assets returned under Treaty settlements as private business is simplistic. To trammel the return of assets to Iwi with strictures on future use risks setting up yet another ToW claim. There are crown assets such as particular reserves that are not available for sale that are passed over to Iwi control.
Possibly it is a lack of knowledge about what the meaning of being a treaty partner is that has led to these mystifying picky comments
I would suggest that readers look at some of these settlements
Ngati Toa's is here
https://www.govt.nz/treaty-settlement-documents/ngati-toa-rangatira/
It is instructive to read some of the happenings and the beautiful language that has been used in these settlement documents
https://www.govt.nz/assets/Documents/OTS/Ngati-Toa-Rangatira/Ngati-Toa-Rangatira-Deed-of-Settlement-7-Dec-2012.pdf
Some of us who were around in Govt Depts when the full force of the Rogernomics was upon us will recall that it was only the intervention of our Treaty partner, by and through the NZ Maori Council taking Court cases, that some of the worst land related affects such as the proposal to sell the land under the trees as well as the forest crops were tossed out. Ordinary NZers had no ability to seek any stop to the tidal wave of Rogernomics that was going on. There were several cases other than the Forestry one where they over turned what had been proposed. Our Treaty partners have stepped up many times over the years since 1840, and it behoves us to treat their claims in a generous and fair-spirited way.
MP Jami-Lee Ross referred to committee over anti-vaccination video.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300094071/mp-jamilee-ross-referred-to-committee-over-antivaccination-video?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
"The Speaker has referred independent MP Jami-Lee Ross to the Privileges Committee for misusing edited parliamentary TV video for political ads.
"Trevor Mallard ordered the anti-vaccination video – posted by Ross's party and that of Billy Te Kahika's NZ Public Party – to be removed from social media, but that's been met with a blunt refusal.
Parliamentary footage of an exchange between government minister Megan Woods and National's Erica Stanford was edited for use in the political ad, posted on several sites."
Yeah I wonder why we can't force the main internet players twitter facebook etc to have a "local office" so that when something like this comes along they can easily be contacted so that at the very least it can be labeled "false" or "edited"or taken down fast rather than going through some offshore process.
Just heard this ad on RNZ,
!!!!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018761552/how-a-digital-inclusion-policy-is-widening-the-inequality-gap
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300094308/the-detail-kiwis-are-suffering-from-digital-exclusion
Yes, it is certainly time for government to declare that being connected is a right and then ensure that the means exist for people to fulfil that right without being ripped off by private enterprise.
In other words, time to re-nationalise telecommunications and to produce capable phones and PCs here in NZ also by a government owned production process.
This is a very real problem with both government and private sector. There are whole communities that are effectively excluded.
I've stayed offline because I can't be bothered with the being hacked bit plus I have the ability to complain loudly – which not everyone has.
The government needs to sort its act out for starters. Any government fee or charge should be capable of being paid on the ground with no extra charge or fee payable – that is far from the current situation. Nor should costs and access be pushed sideways onto community organisations libraries funded by ratepayers etc.
There is also the major secondary discrimination- there are government jobs that cannot be applied for unless a real me id is used. Citizen tracking by default.
edit
There is a major and obvious question here, so obvious that nobody has thought to ask it. Did the citizens get asked if they agreed to have government retreat from face to face dealings, to only communicating with citizens through machines? Was it right that such swingeing changes were enabled by a handful of anarchists? Were taxpayers advised that lower taxes meant limited human input into dealing with citizens?
Were people enabled to discuss the result of withdrawal of government from the ordering of people's lives and that elections and ministers in government were becoming less and less true agents of the people? Perhaps if there wasn't so much hype about how marvellous it is, and truthfulness instead of truthiness about this bloody technological takeover and its constant expansion with obsolescence designed in, people might see things as they are, not rosy at all.
Addlepated* is a great word for the quandary we are in. Google quickly finds all I need to know to describe the poor state we and our state are in. I don't think that is quixotic (extremely idealistic; unrealistic and impractical.)
* In Middle English an adel eye was a putrid egg. The stench of such an egg apparently affected the minds of some witty thinkers, who hatched a comparison between the diminished, unsound quality of an adel eye (or addle egg as it came to be called in modern English) and an empty, confused head—or pate. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/addlepated
I want government back – with real people, and all channels open to all citizens., on-line plus traditional. I think that we need to reorganise Parliament though, and all people who work for government have to have a skill or profession that they have worked at adequately for five years before applying for government jobs.
Thankee for addlepated. 'Fun with words' is our non-lasting legacy. 10,000 of agriculture and 270 of industry.
JLR openly goes the false news route, gets caught and claims he's being 'censored' in an election campaign.
The apple doesn't fall far from the dirty politics tree does it.
JLR published an EDITED video.
Isn't “careful” selection of another's words a form of censorship?
lol.
Actually, its outright lying. Same as what National did the other day.
So, yeah, more proof that we need to make the publication and broadcasting of lies and misinformation illegal. Especially in politics.
@millsy 2 (reply not working etc, etc)
Did you read the article? The land the houses are on are part of a treaty settlement that was concluded in 2014.
Corin Dan this morning commenting (to Phil Goff I think) that the poor messaging that asked South and West Aucklanders to get tested "muddied the waters" on the country's response and then goes on to ask questions that invite others to muddy the messaging even further.
The PM on TVNZ this morning sensibly sidestepped a question about opening the borders because of "business". If she had addressed it, anything she said would be used to muddy the country's response at the moment. The best response for the economy is a health response. What is the sharemarket doing at the moment? Is the MSM banging on about it?
It has been down.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/122599368/hell-to-pay-from-kiwisaver-managers-if-nzx-doesnt-get-on-top-of-cyberattacks
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. It is actually not funny.
Edit: it is still happening FFS!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/122611626/stock-market-website-crashes-but-trading-continues-without-a-blip-nzx-says
The thing about Distributed Denial of Service Attacks is they are often (always?) done by people activating Bot Nets.
"
A botnet is a logical collection of Internet-connected devices such as computers, smartphones or IoT devices whose security have been breached and control ceded to a third party. Each compromised device, known as a "bot", is created when a device is penetrated by software from a malware (malicious software) distribution. The controller of a botnet is able to direct the activities of these compromised computers through communication channels formed by standards-based network protocols, such as IRC and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).[3][4]
Botnets are increasingly rented out by cyber criminals as commodities for a variety of purposes.[5]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet
Why isn't more done to help people improve security of their systems to avoid them becoming part of a BotNet?
[This comment was held up in Pre-Moderation because it contains too many hyperlinks]
See my Moderation note @ 12:15 PM.
@ Muttonbird 1
Those who are not complying with wearing a mask the reasons why not would need to be known. Wise to wear a mask and not a team player if not wearing a mask.
I have a goal of making 500 cloth masks and donating them where needed. I will even cut extra elastic for ear loops and safety pin it on the mask as the elastic may wear due to a hot soapy hand wash.
I feel that a new cluster could only be a day away anywhere.
Why is a Samsung phone not working to reply?
Reply function doesn't work on iPad either.. my guess is some mobile browsers have trouble rendering the fancy comment box
Lprent is aware of the issue and working on it. You can try switching between mobile and desktop versions, sometimes that helps.
Another Auckland CCO failure. Not Watercare, this time it's POAL. Not content with shitting on Aucklanders by building a bloody great carpark in the middle of the harbour, Ports of Auckland is an exploitative employer as well.
The next government needs to take a serious look at the corporate model of governance for public utilities. The profit motive does not deliver for the people, only a bunch of MBA executives whose only skills are "cost" cutting and bullshit.
There also more than a whiff that POA (or Tauranga) was the source of the Auckland outbreak.
Are you sure it's not this incident which did circulate on SM before it came to light officially?
https://www.sunlive.co.nz/news/250672-tauranga-port-worker-covid19-claim-hoax.html
No. Just that massive port and truckie testing drive a few weeks ago. And the fact the Auckland outbreak is still sourced to Americold.
They still came up with nothing but a possible theory: Foreign crew member > stevedore > truck-driver > Americold worker. These people generally work (and have smoke breaks) in close contact so I wonder if there was a bit of mixing going on which shouldn't have happened.
I've had thoughts often re Americool as their Melbourne branch apparently had 2 cases a fortnight earlier – I know they dismiss it but seeing how some things are packed and that it can withstand cold surely is not just coincidence.
Around August 15th through 18th there was a big fluffy of articles about Americold Melbourne covid cases getting genome sequenced.
I have yet to find anything explicitly saying the genomes were different to the B.1.1.1 strain in the outbreak here, but I think it's safe to assume that if the Melbourne cases were also B.1.1.1 we would have heard all about it.
Over the last thirty odd years we've seen that the profit motive always brings about the worst possible response and does not meet the needs of the community.
Tony Gibson again, "Their health is our number one concern." Sure it is, mate. Sure it is. This guy was an arsehole all through the strikes, and he's still an arsehole.
It's deja vu all over again, again: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/13/politics/pentagon-ufo-task-force/index.html
You can understand how distressing it must be when your top guns get left flat-footed all the time. Hard to be macho. The hormones just stop flowing.
Yeah, those camera flares are a serious national security threat.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/explained-new-navy-ufo-videos.11234/
If US intelligence would only learn from random website entrepreneurs posing as tech expert theoreticians, instead of believing what defense personnel & hotshot pilots saw, everyone would live happily ever after… 👽
Hotshot pilots with a penchant for trolling those who want to believe.
Obviously pranksters get in on such acts. I recall some faking crop circles in the early '90s & impressing the media – but not the experts, who would point out the physical differences between the fakes and the real thing. So that's a red herring. Military authorities aren't ever likely to be fooled by time-wasters.
Military authorities aren't ever likely to be fooled by time-wasters.
I'm rendered utterly speechless by that statement, so I'll just spend a while basking in the gloriousness of the worldview that produced it.
Be my guest, but I'd go with gloriosity… 😎
"…the real thing." Oh Dennis, isn't your inner skeptic twitching, just a little?
I admire the creativity/artistry of some hoaxers, provided it’s all in good fun.
all crop circles are consistent with human causation
Seems like total crap to me. Written by the type of sceptic who is possessed by an inner ideological agenda. You know, the kind of person who is too lazy to check out evidence.
Not that I have. I just looked at the photos & read parts of the books at the time. So I arrived at an opinion based on pattern recognition. Neither true believer nor retard sceptic. Binary folk are ever so reluctant to categorise stuff into the maybe category, eh? That's due to being unable to conceive a third alternative.
Like me, a physics graduate, so he ought to have known better! We may be alone, we may not, so that third option exists until you collapse the wave function (via experimental detection).
"There are many theories about what creates crop circles, including aliens, mysterious vortices, time travelers and wind patterns, but they all lack one important element: good evidence. The only known cause of crop circles is humans. Perhaps one day a mysterious, unknown source will be discovered for crop circles, but until then perhaps they are best thought of as collective public art."
Radford, B. "Crop Circles Explained". LiveScience. [2017]
Like Radford, I’m all for keeping an open mind, but with past and present crop circle evidence pointing in one direction, we’ll have to agree to disagree re “total crap“.
" but not the experts, who would point out the physical differences between the fakes and the real thing "
There are no real crop circles. They are all man made
Incorrect.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/crop-circles-stoned-wallabies_n_916196
Never heard of Black Swans either?
Anticipating publication of another theory sometime soon: those crop circles in English fields that have been reported on & off since the Middle Ages (according to one researcher years ago) must have been done by wallabies travelling from Oz on ufos.
What bothered me was the perfect symmetry exhibited by the wheat stalks. Perhaps wallabies are capable of levitation? That would explain the lack of footprints within the circles. 🤩
Wallabies are not capable of levitation AFAIK but some birds are and then there is the flying squirrel, of course, which happened to be native to Europe and is nocturnal.
I've got a soft spot for flying snakes.
Cool!
I'd bet there's some really interesting aerodynamics going on. Maybe something like each loop of the undulations generating lift off a specific part of a vortex shed from the loop ahead.
First 'reported' by the BBC in June 2009; for ‘true believers‘ only – it's enough to make a "retard sceptic" weep (with laughter.)
We need more laughter in this world.
I hope you didn't think I included your good self in that categorisation! There's an immense difference between a sceptic with an open mind and one without, and, operating within the former category, I tend to see you as more likely to be in that camp.
Those wielding scepticism as an ideology are sufficiently robotic that you can read them from phraseology used, denial of existence of evidence, aversion to even looking for it, etc.
Phew, that's a relief
Curiosity & skepticism: a knockout combination for researchers IMO.
https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~rikblok/wiki/doku.php?id=science:the_curious_skeptic#curiosity_and_skepticism
“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
– Richard Feynman
Curiosity & scepticism are the foundation of and for all learning. Otherwise, we would still be living in grottos.
Mere conjecture. No proof offered.
Terence McKenna says it's the Japanese crop-circle tourists who make them; they're always there as soon as the circles appear (and before, nearby, waiting…) and act completely innocent when challenged. Cameras are the perfect excuse for being there and a lack of English language the perfect foil to interrogation. The precision of some of those crop-circles certainly points toward a culture of accuracy, elegance and attention to detail in the creators: the Japanese fit the bill!
Good theory. Levitating Japanese wallabies is even better tho. 🤩
" Mere conjecture. No proof offered."
It's you lacking the proof, sir. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and it isn't up to me – you made the claim, you back it up
I wasn't aware that I was claiming anything, John, but I think upon re-reading what I wrote that I can see why you thought so.
So to clarify: my perception of the difference between the fakes and the real thing is derived from the researchers plus the photos in their books, but I probably was too loose in the phrasing.
This is merely my personal impression we're talking about. Nothing to do with objective fact. And I don't rely on any single source – I scan the field & get an overview, a technique I acquired long ago. So my opinion re authenticity is not an assertion in the way you read it. I'm sorry to have used real thing in a way that may have implied whatever, when I just meant `no evidence of fakery apparent'. To differentiate those from the obvious fakes!
You are assuming that pentagon (especially air arm) officials see no advantage in a perceived techological "gap" between the USA and an unidentified neer-peer adversary.
After all, 60-70 years ago the "missile gap" resulted in budget cuts, right? But that had claims that were demonstrably false. These videos, released without comment, make no claims other than the subjects weren't conclusively and individually identified. Like, whose balloon was it? Obviously it's unidentified.
No, I agree that budget capture is a thing, and the US military hierarchy are masters of the art. It would be fair enough to then classify the senators as suckers – unless you'd rather deem them scamsters (ie operating as agents for the military), but that is probably more feasible for those with military corporations in their home state.
Dude, I don't deem them to be anything.
The only thing I deem is that there is nothing particularly novel or interesting about those films – the release of the footage and lack of classification of the objects is not proof of aliens, nor is it proof of a funding conspiracy, nor is it proof of haoxers, nor does it indicate that the pentagon merely declassifies shit without comment because it wants to keep the tinfoil hats at arm's length.
The general indications of the videos and the debunkers and the alternative theories is that the explanations for the content of those videos are incredibly banal. Why would I care to know or speculate beyond that, other than to respond to some obscurantist stupidity posted here?
If I were in their shoes (US military decision-makers & their pr hire) I'd reassure the public by making obscure videos available too! Heaven forbid they'd ever release the good ones!!
Anyway the point of the posting is the oscillating tendency of the US military & govt to create official UFO investigation orgs, wind them up some years or decades later, then do it all again in a different form…
Really?
The new one seemed to be the subject of comment 10, but the point still seems to be elusive. Could you please express your point more clearly?
The news reported by CNN alerts us to a pattern of behaviour by the US military & govt: create official UFO investigations, terminate them a considerable time later, then recreate them in a somewhat different form some years after that.
Bureaucracy is like gardening – the well-tended plots have things come and go and regrow and pruning is done, preferably for the health of the plant rather than convoluted topiary.
Bureaucracy is like a tropical jungle, full of poisonous animals and plants (e.g. Triffid deskus), and easy to get lost in and die, never to be seen again.
There are those who prefer open lawns over native jungle or forest. But remember -heavily rolled and mown non-pastoral, decorative lawns were adopted by the powerful to demonstrate their power. 🙂
It's like a magic money tree.
Back when children did domestic chores every day, I received training from the patriarch & become proficient at pushing a mechanical mower around the lawn. Come the 1960s, we moved up-market & became fossil-fuel dependent local neighbourhood noise polluters.
Last year I told my neighbour I intend to eliminate my front lawn & gazed curiously at him to see how much he would freak out, but he rolled with it. Sam is cool. Electrical inspector & staunch Labour voter, but we shoot the breeze with political conversations often with no arguments. Maori but looks Greek patrician, talks more like a pakeha, and his property is immaculate!
So I get your point. Encultured control of nature is embedded as much as bureaucracy. I'm rewilding – but slowly enough to not spook the locals. My frogs have been in winter hibernation but have seen a couple medium-sized, almost black, moving now & then but not much. Wonder why they never croak (even in spring & summer)…
Rewilding, Dennis!?!
He nui te tautoko!
His voice betrayed no guile to my ears.
I used to see UFOs all the time in my garden until somebody pointed out to me that they were Tui.
A scout troup were on a camp over the hills to the East of Paraparaumu at Camp Waghorn I think. One of the tasks was to build some hot air balloons out of tissue paper and fuelled with methylated spirits on cotton wool. Launched at night they drifted westwards over Paraparaumu. They were sighted by excited townsfolk. Police notified. Reports of figures looking out of portholes and craft as big as two football fields. Certain eyewitnesses. Until the lads went home on Sunday PM. Cover blown.
Those balloons were box shaped about 600mm high.
The Yes vote will be high in Paraparaumu in the upcoming referendum, undoubtedly.
You have reminded me of the international ballyhoo over the UFO's seen in the night sky seaward of Kaikoura in 1978. Every now and them TV3 comes up with a re-run of the story, totally ignoring the explanation for the phenomena issued at the time by the Meteorological Service.
There was an intense anticyclone over the South Island and an inversion layer at about 2000 feet. On the surface and just beyond the 12 mile limit there was a Japanese fishing fleet. The lights from the fishing fleet was being reflected back at the point of the inversion layer as bright lights seemingly bobbing around the night sky. Sea must have been quite choppy.
Jeez what a fun grinch, Anne.
Do you go to play-centres and tell the kids Santa isn't real as well?
What I can't figure out is why we sceptics never see the paranormal. The Kaikoura episode with Blenheim pilot Bill Startup brings back Bruce Cathie's leylines and Harmonic 33, and a local woman Moreland who saw a UFO there in 1959.
Seriously, I can identify with the startling sight of something inexplicable but evident to the eyes. Earlier this year looking at the night sky and then seeing travelling lights in a straight line was freaky, until I looked up online what was happening with a series of satellites……….
The individual experiences are often explained via optical illusions. The mass simultaneous sightings are usually ignored by sceptics due to being too hard to dismiss via this method.
I recall reading once about one such in Taupo, that happened in the 1950s. Think it made the newspaper, but what impressed me was the sheer number of eyewitness accounts that all told the same story.
Re Cathie's theory, I couldn't get my head into it, so I share the sceptic's view. Ley lines in Britain I'm agnostic about. Since they have a fair bit of physical correlates from the megalithic era, not just a personal fantasy of some nutcase.
except 10.2.1 was literally a mass sighting addressed by sceptics. They tend to be hyper-examined these days – e.g. the "missile" off California was examined exhaustively.
What "mass sightings" of ufos have been ignored? A taupo one in the 1950s deserves to be added to wikipedia.
On a related note, a while back I saw a joke chart that purported to show the incidence of miracles – consistantly high until photography was invented, then low and flat until photoshop was invented when it spiked up again. Same sort of thing applies to UFOs, I reckon.
Funnily, this sceptic has never been even part of a mass sighting. I did, though, find out as a young student on a ouija board that I could very subtly spell out all sorts of messages. Nearly cost me a relationship when my girlfriend finally sussed what I was doing………
Something similar happened to me in my first year at university: a group of us tried the ouija method & got mixed results. Some gibberish yet some words spelt out. After we gave up my old school friend & current flatmate admitted to the group that he had been steering the pointer. Taught me that the spirit of (scientific) enquiry is always vulnerable to being trumped by jokers…
Worked night shifts off and on for thick end of 40 years including outside work, never seen anything not explained by science.
gsay Hah Lol
The plane that reported the Kaikoura UFO is now a cafe parked opposite the Blenheim Airport.
Several police officers were handing out free disposable masks at the Wellington station.
This is the way.
The red balloon over the harbour was a spectacle, they said.
Extremely upsetting to hear parent being part of the problem and spouting some very unpleasant Pasifika remarks with regards to the outbreak, and by extension, immigration in general. No amount of calling out and calmly challenging her thought process made any difference.
I'm more confused given she's a refugee herself, and is also disgusted by her father's anti-semetic views during the war when his Jewish neighbours were literally being carted off for extermination. It seems her own life experiences haven't produced tolerance. The only thing we seem to agree on is maybe it stems from her growing up in Australia at a time when racism/white superiority was actively encouraged and perhaps a bit of indoctrination that stuck.
Is there any point in continuing to reason with her?
build bridges and keep lines of communication open over time (if you can). Change doesn't have to happen in one conversation or debate, it can happen gradually, building on each previous discussion.
My experience in conservative communities was that keeping the relationship sound was just as important as any reasoning.
What does this comment relate to?
I took it to be about an offline conversation.
"Is there any point in continuing to reason with her?"
Only for as long as you have the energy to.
Can you please put up a link, we don't know what you are referring to.
Apologies, it was a phone conversation this morning so no link.
Just a shock my otherwise very liberal mother has an extremely racist streak
Offense is only ever offered, it is over to you if you want to take it.
Try looking at where you have commonalities.
Plus, it is yr Mum…different generations, different experiences, different expectations.
Tell her to criticise government policy, not people just trying to make a life for their families
41 Covid deaths in Melbourne today.
When worldometers is updated Australia's total deaths from Covid will be 652. The 'first wave' stopped at 102 so the July outbreak there has cost 550 lives so far.
Hawaii should be a major heads-up for us, too.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/30/hawaii-coronavirus-cautionary-tale-404564
Lazy sensationalist headline from the Herald.
…… the Victorian health department said Monday's deaths included 22 people who died in the weeks leading up to August 27 and were only reported to DHHS by aged-care facilities on Sunday.
Which is why it can be helpful to look at rolling (moving) averages such as 3- or 7-day average.
What was the headline? You haven't linked to it.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/424837/fight-to-protect-hamilton-s-rare-bats-heads-to-environment-court
Save those cute little bats, and their home territory for hundreds, thousands? of years, that nasty great humans are just preparing to rip away and colonise with their own kind.
That is such a familiar theme in our country – here in NZ where we like to say we are a developed, highly civilised country. But a query – what did we develop from and what, to? Have we been fooling ourselves – is there someone who can give a studied, balanced opinion out there (not Mike Hosking or others with their feet in the troughs out there overflowing with goodies that I've heard of)?
Why bother to save anything (sarc). Think how rich we could be by allowing what is unique to NZ die out and we are left with sparrows, Tahr, Wallibies, rabbits, rats etc
https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/118303821/housing-development-protects-long-tailed-bats-as-well-as-housing-people
I'm not into saving anything. Habitat restoration and pest free islands then leave the mainland (plus Rakiura and Te Waipounamu) to mother nature. Love chilling on a river bank smothered with blossoming broom, watching the hares skittering, quail coveying, trout dimpling.
Set the wilding-pines free!
Police evasiveness, facial-recognition cameras, No Right Turn.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/424845/police-setting-up-9m-facial-recognition-system-which-can-identify-people-from-cctv-feed
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2020/08/if-police-think-this-is-lawful-and.html
Bit of a non thing IMHO.
Places like SkyCity use it already, so if it helps the cops catch bad people who cares?
Maybe the people who get affected when the system is misused?
SkyCity is at Victoria Street, it is not Victoria Street. In other words, your comment contains a false equivalence.
Maybe.
And maybe I am just a drone, willing to be lead.
But I don't really see it as different from finger prints, and DNA records from crim's
They actually have to know who you are for the thing to work.
No maybe, ifs or buts. SkyCity is a private business with restrictions and not a public place as such. There are also CCTVs operating in prisons, which is an equally flawed comparison for this discussion. You are diverting, and this may be accidental, but now I have pointed it out to you, you have a conscious choice.
Apologies.
I was meaning the facial recognition.
The CCTV bit is irrelevant as they are every where
Yes, what about it?
Let me put it another way.
Ignore my point about SkyCity using facial recognition.
I just don't have an issue with the police using facial recognition if it catches bad people.
Yes, there may one or two cases of people using it for bad things, but the same could be argued for police having access to vehicle owners personal details from number plates at the push of a few buttons.
Ok, thanks.
Matching vehicle ownership for licensing purposes, for example, is not quite the same as biometrics identification (and authorisation?), is it? A better comparison would be the use of fingerprints or the publication of photos taken in public.
It really helps to very clearly articulate the issue before launching (into) debate.
Well I have a lot of issues with nasty little authoritarian tribes like the cops running around and spying on people going about their normal daily business. What about the taking of photos at demo's – then later using these to discriminate against certain classes of people. Where are these cameras going to be and will there be a bias towards younger and lower skilled people being photographed.
As to catching bad people – they would need to CCTV far more executive workplaces , clubs , the roads to coromandel baches and exclusive restaurants to catch the real crooks who prey on society.
Then the traffic enforcement side – the costs of licences, rego's etc has soared compared to minimal wages and benefits. Little wonder that otherwise law abiding citizens slither around in not so legal cars – the costs are beyond them. If the legalise dope goes through then there is whole areas of enforcement that will no longer be needed. Looks like cops are going for some job protection there.
RedBaronCV
From my limited understanding of dealing with them. And it is pretty limited apart from someone trying to sell it,
It is anywhere where the cameras are up to spec' to be good enough to pick up the details needed visually by the software, used on the servers which controls the network of cameras.
Ie your average old camera from the 90s is probably a bit screwed, but new ones on the main black spots like Courtney Place where there are drunken fights or same sort of places in Auckland would probably be ok.
And obviously the thing looking at the cameras needs access two the visual in real time or it is a bit pointless, so public ones in this case.
Thank you for confirming my point. and no we do not need the attempted distraction of the type of camera.
Clearly your idea of a camera set up to catch a "bad guy" boils down to a public camera for low level street drug deals, some public drunkenness and a forgot to rego the car moment.
How about a few cameras that catch high income males in cafes assaulting female wait staff, issuing warrants to search journalists homes and insinuating to third parties that said journalists are being looked at for criminal reasons all of which turned out to be blatantly untrue. Street camera's won't catch the real crooks of society they will just be used to intimidate lawful people going about their lawful business.
Sorry RBC, but think we might have to agree to disagree on this one.
An example. Some piece of scum king hits some innocent down Courtney Place, and does a runner.
The dude/dudette king hit smashes their head into the ground while falling and dies.
If all the police have is footage of the scums face, I would prefer them to be able to identify them as easily as possible.
Apologies, my comment on real time, was probably a bit too short sighted after thinking about it more.
What if the cops become bad people and set out to catch good people. It is important to try and care about surveillance, loss of personal freedom if you are commenting on a leftish blog Chris T.
If we are going to do hypotheticals I can come up with doozys
What if [name deleted; against TS policy] got away that day and the to catch him was through facial CCTV facial recognition?
Look I agree there will be bad cops like in every other profession, and a couple may even take advantage of it, that is a security issue for the police, but they already have way more access to private info' through other methods like vehicle registration etc, tracing phone movements with a warrant, to the point that I really can't see facial recognition making a difference to privacy.
If they start talking about bugging peoples phones and planting tracking devices on peoples cars I would be concerned. But this. Not really.
It is happening all over the world as part of policing, in airports, casinos as mentioned earlier etc (Yes I know these aren't public places)
[Some hypotheticals are just a bad idea – Incognito]
See my Moderation note @ 9:01 PM.
Fair call
I apologise
Again you confirm that there is far too much access by cops to private data in an unregulated way already. And the few bad cops – get real we have a continuing trickle of stories roast busters, Hager and other journalists, computer hacking investigations, illegal traffic stops to get information, tooling up and running around doing traffic stops like they are in a war zone and that's just what we know about .. that's just more than the odd bad egg it's a systemic problem that needs dealing with.
Nor is it correct to conflate such things as phone hacking which should need a warrant to the unrestricted unsupervised collection of public data using facial recognition of citizens doing absolutely nothing wrong as they go about their lawful daily lives.
and yes a lot of stuff is collected in non public spaces and again should we be ruling more fully against some of this.
Just remember the police work for us as a society not for some right wing authoritarian clique.
I like No Right Turn – it often has interesting information that is picked up much later by other media, but at other times it is frustrating in its blatant partisanship:
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2020/08/climate-change-this-government-is.html
National often claims that the government has failed because an element of party policy put forward before the election has not been achieved and that this represents a failure of government – and the policy is of course always represented as a promise, so according to National it is a "broken promise." We know that a three party government does require compromises, but these do not always represent failure by the party or party that wants something to happen; it may represent a ''victory" for the third party. Also of course there are some policies which are overtaken by events (covid for example?) or where other priorities mean something gets lower than desired priority.
In this case NRT is talking about a "failure'' by the Green Party and Labour – not a failure of government. We need to remember this going into an election campaign; we collectively get what we collectively vote for…
Sadly NRT does not accept comments – fair enough as far as the time it clearly takes on The Standard to keep discussion civil and weed out the nutters; but for a blog that clearly supports some Green policies to blame the government for the need for consensus that is a fundamental part of that government is somewhat short sighted – despite problems I believe that a smaller party like the Green Party does have legitimate views; I do not want voters to think that it is only worth voting for Labour or National.
IS at NRT used to accept comments a long time ago. He shut it down because he prefers to write rather than deal with the ignorant dipshits who used to write most of the comments. I think that he stopped about 2006 or 7
It was pity because the comments were often as good as the posts.
A terrible look for Judith Collins here. Corrupt husband and chief Kauri stump digger David Wong tung has taken to posting misogynist memes about the Prime Minister.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/08/judith-collins-responds-to-criticism-of-husband-david-wong-tung-s-anti-jacinda-ardern-social-media-posts.html
She says she can’t do anything about it but in reality she endorses this behaviour.
Should be worth at least 50K votes for JA. Keep it up David.
While I don't really think it is that clever, I am missing where the misogynist bit is.
Have you seen some of the Collin's and Bridge's ones?
You are well known for not recognising misogyny. One clue is in the use of the name "Cindy" which minimises and trivialises the PM, and all women, really.
Also worrying for Collins is the second one retweeted there by her apparently unruly husband is watermarked “the BFD” which is Slater’s vehicle. He set it up after claiming he had a stroke in order to avoid paying his debtors from the failed WOBF.
Collins has had a cosy relationship with Slater through the years, using him to conduct Dirty Politics. That relationship also contributed to her fall from grace and generally highlighted her and her husband’s corrupt nature.
Seems Mr Wong tung is still an avid reader…
Something tells me Ardern is tough enough to not get offended by a stupid nickname, or needs people getting offended on her behalf.
Same as Crusher, or does that not count as misogynistic for some reason?
Or Soymun Brudges. Which I assume is misandrist.
It's actually less IMO about Jacinda Ardern who just gets one vote & given a raft of slights that most of the public have not had to witness, and would be rightly appalled by, this is how the public will view the LOTO. Regardless of her trying to dismiss it & perhaps suggesting NZers can't "take a joke" or a bit of levity it goes to the core of showing two faces to the public, one that's relatively benign and the other that is a relationship with a nasty and dismissive view of wider NZ
You have to wonder about the intellect…feeding the base has its limitations…they can only vote once
But What About Judith's personal responsibility for the poor personal choice of 41 years ago? Isn't that what the RW says to single mothers struggling to bring up the kids? They made a poor personal choice to have kids with someone so need to be pounded by the right?
Could you imagine the uproar if first bloke was doing anything like this? but he's far too sensible.
Yea seen that. This from ODT. Photo …a right pair. The dodgy duo.
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/decision-2020/collins-husband-criticised-sharing-anti-ardern-memes
Yuk, the face matches his personality.
The husband of Judith Collins is actually posting childish rubbish which one would think came from an immature 14 year old boy.
Collins shrugs and claims she can't do anything about it. This is an admission she endorses it. If she felt it was damaging she could say to her husband, "you are hurting my career, please stop". But she won't because she doesn't believe he is hurting her career.
Or, she told him to stfu and he didn't and it's better for her to make light of it in public. Her husband sounds like a total dick, and her point about not being able to control him seems potentially true.
Do you really think Collins would be genuinely concerned about what her husband's doing and would ask him to stop?
place yourself in his position and ask yourself the same question…do you wish your partner to succeed in his/her ambition?
if it was harming her election campaign, yes.
from the reporting it would appear he disagrees
yep.
But it's not so she won't.
Bring it on. The more he tweets the more the election will be a referendum on Judith Collins' relationship with her husband. If she can't control him, how can she control a cabinet?
It's probably mission accomplished now, getting the internet traffic through that toxic slater-esque website. Dirty politics john key style.
I guess he's fair game then.
If she can't even manage her husband she won't be much use as PM. Don't their billboards state "strong leadership" ?
"strong" ties to their puppet masters,
"leadership" in the game of dirty politics
" If you’ve got the secret to how you control a man who is 64 years old, used to play a lot of rugby and was a policeman, good luck and let me know,” Judith said.
Shudder…..
Yep. Screams male dominance and domestic abuse. And it screams even louder she is accepting of it.
That needs to go to the media.
Are you accusing Collin's husband of domestic abuse against her Muttonbird?
No. I am accusing her of trivialising domestic abuse in order to deflect and for political purposes.
That she would suggest the prospect is pretty gross.
OK
Point out where she is suggesting it.
Hint…… it's not about control, but Judith doesn't get that.
"“He is one of the least sexist men I know, he is married to me, how could he be sexist?” Collins said."
“He is an adult, he will make his own decisions and let’s put it this way, I don't have to answer for him because I have not been able to control him in 41 years."
These 2 claims are contradictory, Judith.
It's juvenile behaviour from the husband of the Leader of the Opposition.
Rebutting Chris Trotter's analysis of Winston Peters:
Misreading the Sorcerer's Apprentice
as usual neither party is correct…..id suggest both are writing to a desired outcome….and as time passes both will become increasingly unlikely
The green school saga get worst, funding conspiracy theorist and new age crystal moonbeams
Spring tomorrow, full moon the day after. Life is good.
"Spring is sprung, the grass is riz." and in the river and on its banks at the foot of my garden there are nests which produce cygnets and ducklings, little kawau and pukeko, tiny scaup and paradise shelducks, so I know 'where the birdies is." Life is indeed good.
Full moon as far as I can see tonight. 21 degrees today in Gisborne on the last day of winter. First day of chafing for me.
Why don't I think of myself as a manual worker? Yet by all measures I am for 34 years. I feel I'm posturing since I'm middle class and my real life is in my head.