consider how easy it is….you have (alleged) experts waiting and willing to give (informed?) comment…..or you can do the analysis yourself…sometime in the never never when its too late.
its not as if there is much on offer of formal alternative analysis….so msm conspiracy? unlikely…..reason the right fund it? of course
Give Radionz their due, when they aren’t telling us the latest horror from the USA, full coverage, of fire, flood and pestilence, they are digging out some interesting stuff using OIA. They are trying.
@ TC, While I agree Hooton etc get air time to push an acceptable agenda, I think the manufacturing consent component is more subtle.
Most people understand Hooton and friends are from, and are promoting a specific political view, so in my mind not all that threatening politically.
What I would say is more in line with the ‘manufacturing consent’ theory in regards to RNZ, would be some of the following, you can add your own….
1.Having the markets referred to and analyzed constantly all day.
But at the same time no constant updates on labour/workers news, in fact no daily news or views on workers issues at all.
2. Having bank economists as the main commentators on the economy.
3. Having that useless centrist Mike Williams on the Monday politics with Kathryn Ryan. RNZ are prepared to have a right wing ideologue like Hooton, which I think is fine, but not prepared to have the Left wing equivalent.
So the Left, with Williams speaking for it, generally come out looking weak and ineffectual, ( which sadly, probably pretty accurately describes the political playing field now actually).so no indepth ideological debates to be had on that show.
4. You only have to look at the presenters, Guyon Espiner, Susie Ferguson, Jesse Mulligan, Kathryn Ryan, when was the last time any of these four really held power to account? a pretty rare occurrence to my knowledge.
The only saving grace is John Campbell with his quite effective dripping tap technique.
Far right neo liberal think tank huh?
And how come Labour are ‘certainly open to the idea’ and ‘one they would definitely look at’?
Are you implying that Labour are open to far right neo liberal ideas there Paul?
A brief history of the vampire squid Goldman Sachs’ entanglements with the US government and how its spawn have been welcomed into Trump’s swamp to continue sucking the country dry.
Went to the cricket yesterday, a fine day spent becoming sun kissed little solar babies! But anyway, there were 12 of us, and as they were mostly average Joe kiwi blokes at the pub before hand I did a quick survey as to what people thought of Trump’s immigration ban. Only two people (and me) thought it was a bad thing. All the rest supported it. I suspect, depressingly, Trump’s ban will turn out to be rather popular.
Perhaps people just didn’t want to talk politics on such a beautiful day. You and I disagree on almost everything but even I think his plan is “too far” or at least could have been implemented a hell of a lot better.
But it was a beautiful family day and a lot of people wouldn’t want to ruin it having an argument or discussion on trump that could cause arguments.
That’s right Sanctuary, and the sad fact is that’s what all this promotion of sport, sport and more sport is all about ….. bread and circuses to numb the masses.
OK Paul, I will put it in a question.
What’s more important in this Country – Rugby or Politics ?
As to your second sentence…..yes that covers many basically unacceptable excuses for not getting involved in democracy.
A narrow view maybe, and a minority view in godzone when compared to avid sports fans. However I am not going to resile from my belief that sport is over emphasised deliberately ( by the likes of Sky, ‘professionalism’ and politicians) in the knowledge that it is escapism/entertainment to keep the masses happy whilst it encourages the winner/loser mentality. I am all for individual excellence but the tribal team/nation aspect is nigh on war.
The winner/loser mentality plays right into the Capitalistic free market/neoliberalism agenda – leading to more CC and economic unsustainability and boom/bust cycles, and to our impending total demise.
We need a cooperative society, not a combatative, resource depleting, winner takes all doomed situation like we currently have.
The general population seem to be ‘wilfully or naively ignorant’ of the connection I am pointing out.
Will the outgoing PM speak out about Agent Orange.. NOOOO of course not, he would rather reassure people that it won’t happen here, that’s it. Gutless, the leader of NZ is an embarrassment, we need a strong leader, one that condemns the bad decisions of other leaders, English is not that person.
People with no responsibility for the good of the country shoot their mouths off, but English tolerates idiots and thinks about the effect on the country of a fruitcake PM or President yakking on. Espiner was just his usual bloody minded self asking unreasonable questions.
I do not have a transcript but the saying comes to mind “Fools rush in, or expect others to, while wise men consider matters” I know who I consider to be wise in this situation.
Good on Smalley for (eventually) speaking up, I suppose…
….actually, nah.
She should have spoken up in a loud clear voice to the staff at reception and in triage that there was a bloodied child who needed attention right NOW.
Mum may or may not be known to those at A&E…and this happens….but bringing in a child in that condition…
1) she either knew it would attract attention and she would finally get the help she needs, or
2) she doesn’t give a shit about her child’s condition.
I wonder what would happen if A&E went on strike like junior doctors recently did … would they get more money to adequately staff the A&E at known busy times?
Heaven forbid that strike happens when my family need help BUT all this cost cutting by having more bean counters and not enough medical staff is crazy.
The BCs cannot say X number can be seen in Y time because good doctors give each patient the time they need for their problem and the rest have to wait … the only answer is to have ‘spare capacity’ rather than saving money.
“On Inauguration Day, Trump apparently filed his candidacy for 2020. Beyond being unusual, this opens up the ability for him to start accepting “campaign contributions” right away. Given that a sizable fraction of the campaign funds from the previous cycle were paid directly to the Trump organization in exchange for building leases, etc., at inflated rates, you can assume that those campaign coffers are a mechanism by which US nationals can easily give cash bribes directly to Trump. Non-US nationals can, of course, continue to use Trump’s hotels and other businesses as a way to funnel money to him.
(6) Finally, I want to highlight a story that many people haven’t noticed. On Wednesday, Reuters reported (in great detail) how 19.5% of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, has been sold to parties unknown. This was done through a dizzying array of shell companies, so that the most that can be said with certainty now is that the money “paying” for it was originally loaned out to the shell layers by VTB (the government’s official bank), even though it’s highly unclear who, if anyone, would be paying that loan back; and the recipients have been traced as far as some Cayman Islands shell companies.
Why is this interesting? Because the much-maligned Steele Dossier (the one with the golden showers in it) included the statement that Putin had offered Trump 19% of Rosneft if he became president and removed sanctions. The reason this is so interesting is that the dossier said this in July, and the sale didn’t happen until early December. And 19.5% sounds an awful lot like “19% plus a brokerage commission.”
Conclusive? No. But it raises some very interesting questions for journalists to investigate.”
A lot of energy and thinking here goes into present news. politics and future elections, and discussing present and future policies needed. Some space also provides stories about smart and/or clever ideas that advance our living standards, education and thinking.
(I put these separately because our education system has not been spent on thinking and discussing so that we end up understanding our society, economy, and our place in that of the world and how we all fit into the environment on the planet, or not.)
TS could be a place where there was some space for discussion in a post about ideas for better living, indeed eventually, for better surviving. Some people need to be thinking beyond our next wrestling match with lordly politicians and the wealth accumulators, and the dogma of those who want us to stop thinking and be obedient to the latest fashionable cult or religious edict made well before the industrial revolution and the useful art of making toilet paper, flush toilets and hand washing. These have been vital in preventing plagues, but as shown in Havelock North, are like many of our systems are under stress or deteriorating.
I would like to be part of an on-line discussion group who all read a certain book about human directions and our fading future, and then put up a post and discuss the points we have taken. If mickey savage, ie Greg, does pursue his politics in real time it would bring other important topics to the blog. There would be another avenue for consideration and discussion of thought. It would bring ‘disruption’ ie a different approach.
I was thinking that EF Schumaker “Small is Beautful: a study of economics as if people mattered’ book which was praised some years ago, and which I never read, would be a good one to start on. (On Trade me under title.)
It would be good if even two or three commenters would group and take a month to read it and make notes as they go along with ideas that they would be positive about, and some that they might enlarge on. One of us would have to set up a post and if no-one else wanted to do that I would stop thinking about it and actually learn to do it and moderate it.
There are some deep thinkers and some very concerned people who write here. It would be good if we could concentrate our brains to light some ideas for the future. Anyone who will do this please indicate by reply on Open Mike and we can co-ordinate. If I have annoyed someone in the past, remember that the idea is sovereign and sharing thoughts with people disagreed with is essential for getting broad understanding. If we only take notice of people we agree with we never get wider perspective.
Rob
Yes I think that I may have to do that, but I like the idea of having concentrated thinking being done ahead of the actual post, rather than the post being set up as the subject du jour and getting 5 comments of varying perspicacity, or words of that nature !
When it comes to examining the weighty problems of humankind, and how to manage ourselves, the one sentence comment from some idiot savant doesn’t get us far. I have ideas, posters have ideas, authors in the mainstream have ideas. Commenters have ideas, and some get raised in Open Mike, and never taken further, so hope having pre-reading would result in some better response and could lead to further research from links that people would find.
With the decline of government for the people, we citizens need to find our own experts and make our own draft policies for the country’s betterment then lobby for ones that are therapeutic of our ills, not just reactionary to events. The corporates already draft legislation to suit themselves as a small but influential group. We ordinary citizens are a large but not influential group and have to get smart, or get trodden on. Sort of like the giant foot that I think Terry Gilliam drew for Monty Python, with us being like sticky mud between the toes.
Please can anyone, either commenter, or reader, or briefly passing through who would like to apply their mind to reading an agreed book, and then putting forward intelligence on a dedicated post, please indicate now or in the next few days. If there is silence I will have to draw the conclusion that we are mainly a nation of fence sitters, and cargo cult recipients, with no backbone to make change and demonstrate our own analytical skills in humanities and development. We can contact through the blog, don’t have to have personal involvement but personally contact each other’s names or pseudos on this blog.
I want to know now if we have enough people who are not already fully stretched on one area of interest. There are some like that, but many who are marking time while others do the thinking for them. And likely it won’t be appropriate, or too late.
How many would like to be in on building knowledge so as to develop new ways of managing ourselves in the future that is getting ever difficult and coming closer all the time.
I haven’t had a proper read through this thread yet, but I’ve been thinking about a book or film club idea for TS so would love to follow your lead on this. I’m interested in the Schumacher book too. Thanks for bringing this up. I’m away out for a while, hope to catch up later.
Weka
Glad you like the sound of it. It would be good if it came within your ideas for advancing the value of The Standard. So look forward to your thoughts. I’m going out for a while. But I’ll be back.
weka
Including us two that makes seven who have shown interest. So if most were willing and we got a modus operandi going, we could get started.
I like EF Schumaker as an idea but people might need time to get a copy. There is one in the stack at the local Nelson library, there are new ones under $20 from a bulk book merchant in Hamilton, I have one in my books somewhere but…. Second hand bookshops are thinner on the ground than they used to be. We might need two weeks between books for all to get copies. For some of these older authors Gutenberg might have them.
Practicality might result in getting an easily available one to start off with.
Rob was talking about guest posts, I like the idea of that when we have got some good quotes to a=start discussing and arguing about.
I just got an ebook copy from Amazon for around $10. It looks like about a 4 hour read. Cheap paper copies there too. It looks like it’s available in many libraries, so I would expect it to be available on interloan (that’s something like $6 or $7 I think).
A couple of initial thoughts. We can put up a post introducing the idea and the first book. I’m thinking Sunday is good. It’s often a quiet day but it continues with the sunday magazine idea we used for putting Robert Guyton’s posts there. People can get to know that we have those kinds of posts on that day. (someone used to do a Sunday Reading posts, a kind of round up of the week). I can put it up on a busier day, but on those days people tend to go for the topical posts.
In the post we put links to how to access the book and how long it takes to read (that’s available online), and a timeframe for reading, and maybe ask for who is interested. We need to make that encouraging 🙂
Then x weeks later, I put up another post which is the discussion one. This discussion can primarily be for the people that read the book, but I think it would make sense for the conversation to be broad enough that anyone can join in if their interest gets piqued.
Is that the kind of thing you were thinking of, or something else?
The more work that other people can do the better. I’ve got a pretty full load of things to be doing here already, so if all I have to do is put the post up that’s easy, but if I have to write a lot of copy etc that’s more work and less likely to happen.
What I would need for the first post is:
Content of the post (intro and explanation, how to find the book etc)
Any relevant links
A photo for the front page
A blurb for the front page
weka
That sounds practical and likely to be supported. The Sunday reads in my opinion didn’t get as many comments as deserved and I myself didn’t get to read them often. This would be similar I think, in intention, but more structured, and likely to get more attention over
a longer period.
So Always on a Sunday would be just the job. Following on Robert Guyton’s input which was so good with continuing episodes , ‘The Knowledge’ club would be sporadically continuing each month but we could weekly put some favourite quote of what we had read already just for general interest at that stage.
It’s Wednesday. and what you suggest about having an initial post about it on Sunday would be good. With explanations of how to access book etc. But I would like to know first that there was a core group who are intending to read the entire book and discuss its points at the end. Anyone could join in at any time reading some or all of the book, but we do need a core group going right through.
I would like to call for hands-up of the initial core participants (it would be best to have minimum of four), to make a reasonable discussion at end. I’ve seen Paul, Pat, Asleep While Walking saying good idea. Macro likes the idea but has to source the book again but might do a reprise (I thought Schumaker because he was famous and first in his time Macro), KJT has commented referring to UBI, which looks like it will get highlighted again. And Weka and greywarshark.
So can we have confirmation of who, whom will start us off and get welcomed onboard? Hi there.
Once we have the core number of readers and commenters, then this list from you Weka which I can probably do by 12 February – may need to ask advice for some things. And we would be set and off – and if anyone wants to work on it to get it up faster then good.
Weka’s list
What I would need for the first post is:
Content of the post (intro and explanation, how to find the book etc)
Any relevant links
A photo for the front page
A blurb for the front page
Everyone needs access to a copy, (eg weka’s advice on how and which outlet to access E-books or other internet offerings.) (And if hard copy from library – I’ll enquire how long it takes to get inter-loan and will initiating library send direct to your address as provided by your home library? This could be helpful for the disabled, or people distant from their own library.) Buy hard copy – local bookshop? Amazon weka says E-book $10 and hard copies, and on Trme about $17 from Hamilton address quickly if paid quickly – look under Small is Beautiful.
In our discussions of whatever book when we quote pieces we must give chapter sources and page or topic references with our response which builds our ideas on or against. This would follow the usual practice of confirming and enabling reference to our source. Which you would want weka and would help to keep ourselves and readers
on track.
I think this would be valuable to us individually and to add to the political nous in the country. I have been concerned that serious and important background info often gets 12 comments, while the latest political gaffe or flagrant or fragrant behaviour gets 112.
We are watching the lampooning of our political system and the clowns are entertaining us, keeping us occupied and away from our important business of looking after all our own interests as citizens in our country. It’s fascinating, sometimes grotesque to watch but some of us have to turn away from the view, and work out what we can do together to repair this crumbling long-running show of democracy-as-we-know-it.
ok, let’s go for Sunday the 12th as the first intro post. That will avoid Waitangi weekend and associated posts too.
So for the first post we need:
Content
intro to the whole idea, keep it succinct, maybe 3 paragraphs?
naming and a brief intro to the first book
Links to who Schumacher is (note spelling)
wikipedia
Guardian review
Info and links on how to get book:
Your ideas
Te Puna search for interloans/which libraries have the book
Amazon link for ebook and cheap 2nd hand
Other option links?
Other links?
Front page photo
Front page blurb
I will need all that in a single document, ordinary text. If any of the content is a direct quote, please put it in ” ” and put a link at the end of the sentence/paragraph for where it was taken from.
I’m happy to help out while you organise that too, just ask or comment here.
As for getting people to commit, I think we can ask again. Try today’s OM, and I’d suggest keeping to the point and making the comment easy to read and engage with. However I also think there will come a point where we just need to do that work and see what happens.
weka
Okay first step I have put comment on Open Mike 1/2 No. 17 asking for keen Standardistas. So that’s all for now as I have to do something else. This could be good once its going. I remember some really good and long discussions around CV’s ideas and also Bill’s.
I thought a harmonica action – expand, contract to NZ (Rosemary suggested Marilyn Waring could be next) then out to someone like Joseph Stiglitz? world economics, then perhaps Max Rushbrooke here in NZ etc.
That would open our minds away from strictly NZ. Say we kept to the local, global then repeat but we took a vote or a priority list of authors each time, say once a month then two week break then again.
r0b
Are you interested in being in the first reading group? If you have time, as well as writing posts, as well as whatever else you find to pass the time away!
Please don’t tell me what as I think I would be exhausted hearing. But over a month you could find the time perhaps, weka says it doesn’t take long to read, but of course the reading would have to have some note taking of points as well, even keywords, and that would slow it up. And also lead to links being included to give direction to the points.
I thought I’d ask though you are no doubt busy, and if not this time, then at a later time perhaps. Could you advise thanks.
What a good idea greywarshark. I read posts and comments here on TS and sometimes get the impression that folk seem to think that they are saying something new. That their ideas are novel and groundbreaking….when in reality most of these thoughts have been said and/or writ before….often by people who have spent a lifetime in active research and discussion in their particular field.
“Safe drinking water counts for nothing. A pollution-free environment counts for nothing. Even some people – namely women – count for nothing. This is the case, at least, according to the United Nations System of National Accounts. Author Marilyn Waring, former New Zealand M.P., now professor, development consultant, writer, and goat farmer, isolates the gender bias that exists in the current system of calculating national wealth.
As Waring observes, in this accounting system women are considered ‘non-producers’ and as such they cannot expect to gain from the distribution of benefits that flow from production. Issues like nuclear warfare, environmental conservation, and poverty are likewise excluded from the calculation of value in traditional economic theory. As a result, public policy, determined by these same accounting processes, inevitably overlooks the importance of the environment and half the world’s population.
Counting for Nothing, originally published in 1988, is a classic feminist analysis of women’s place in the world economy brought up to date in this reprinted edition, including a sizeable new introduction by the author. In her new introduction, the author updates information and examples and revisits the original chapters with appropriate commentary. In an accessible and often humorous manner, Waring offers an explanation of the current economic systems of accounting and thoroughly outlines ways to ensure that the significance of the environment and the labour contributions of women receive the recognition they deserve.”
When Trump et al have all moved on to wherever defunct politicians slope off to we, the people will still be here trying not only to survive another day, week, month…but also doing what we can to make the lives of our kids (and their kids) better and more secure.
And we must learn to do this irrespective of which coloured flag flies atop our parliamentary seat. We do get so bound to the ‘we MUST change the government’ narrative instead of concentrating on what you, greywarshark, suggest giving space for “stories about smart and/or clever ideas that advance our living standards, education and thinking.”
I fear though, the usual ‘I know best voices’ will prevail here and elsewhere on the net…as history appears to have been deliberately ignored as the world seems hell bent on repeating it. 🙁
Rosemary McDonald
I am interested in people who will opt in, not just people who think it is a good idea. So will you opt in Rosemary? Marilyn Waring would be good too. Would you join the reading, discussing circle?? If the post was moderated effectively, only useful discussion that added to the discourse would go in so the usual riff raff would have to shape up or ship out.
Anyone can comment, critique, it’s essential that some actually do the hard yards of getting informed on the same text and subject and then raise points of disagreement, doubt, positive visions if…so and so was done, and how lack of finances could be circumvented etc.
Looking at achievable objects, how to avoid having Johnny come latelies take over and drive the project too fast, or too far into middle class materialisms, or too idealistically and rigidly, purely etc. Tailoring projects to allow for human nature, and climate change, and continuity, and rewarding and respecting all participants in suitable ways. Those are things that wise thinkers would be incorporating in ideas for projects.
How to provide jobs for ourselves in the future would be one of the things to consider. There is the constant theme that this or that is going to happen and that’s the word so get used to it. We have knowledge from education and wisdom but the poem of Ozymandias sorrowfully reminds us of our overweening desires and fantastic visions. That poem came from the discovery of a creation of Rameses BC 13th century. So can we so many centuries later actually see above those grand confabulations, and think as pragmatic idealists. As Rutherford said “We haven’t much money, so we need to think”.
In antiquity, Ozymandias (Ὀσυμανδύας) was a Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. Shelley began writing his poem in 1817, soon after the announcement of the British Museum’s acquisition of a large fragment of a statue of Ramesses II from the thirteenth century BC, leading some scholars to believe that Shelley was inspired by this.
The 7.25-ton fragment of the statue’s head and torso had been removed in 1816 from the mortuary temple of Ramesses at Thebes
KJT
And here is something I found that is a long standing and presumably experienced project team. was called the Intermediate Project or something to help adapt to intermediate technology – I saw it on EF Schumaker site – Practical Action – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practical_Action.
When I was at Waikato Uni, the engineering department were looking at technologies transferable to third world countries, with inadequate infrastructure and capabilities. Small scale water treatment, for example.
KJT
I don’t know whether you would consider it a genuine engineering project but this morning I came upon a Greenpeace? info leaflet about the work that had been done on constructing low cost toilets using local materials after studying 500 people going to the toilet to advise on the best design!
I am not sure how they did this, probably studying the aftermath.
They worked out a plan, it has plaited palm leaf sides on wooden frame, a 100mm vent pipe going high covered with flyproof gauze, and can be shifted to another spot when hole is filled. I see that as a beautiful and elegant design myself. What do you think?
And while we are communicating – can you come into the first reading group looking at E F Schumacher over a month with a big discussion on his ideas at end? We could do with a practical innovative open mind on this. Could you let me know?
It would be great to revisit the UBI this year. I’ve got some half finished posts from around the time of Labour’s discussion paper. Maybe we could republish some of the previous ones and invite people to take the idea forward. We could do a week on the UBI at The Standard.
“I am interested in people who will opt in, not just people who think it is a good idea. ”
Tomorrow my partner and I head off into the wild blue yonder after 3 months of enforced houseboundness. Too busy for the likes of us over the silly season, having to compete with the thousands of others for dwindling free/cheap camping spots.
Our Bus is basic. Very basic. Living in a space measuring 7mx2m certainly forces one to think very carefully about what is needed to ensure a tolerable standard of living and what is mere want. And while other Brethren of the Eternal Highway have embraced mobile internet, we have not…considering it a luxury and an unnecessary extravagance. Our 300w of solar on the roof removes the need (over the sunny months) for us to scuttle into a commercial camp every 7-10 days to plug into the 240V to charge our house batteries and do some internetting…so any engagement in forums such as this will be limited to the occasional hook up via the Aotearoa People’s Network at the local library if we should wander into a town. We do not have an ipad, android, smartphone etc…just a couple of unsmart 3G flip phones…one for each of the major networks.
It is not unusual for us to have no cellphone coverage either. And we don’t have telly. We read, a lot. And listen to Natrad…and Sport Radio (for the cricket, because relationships only survive close proximity if the other person’s peccadilloes are tolerated and accommodated).
But don’t be concerned that I will be bereft of intelligent and informed discourse on politics, history and social issues in general as the regions are teeming with interesting folk who make very pertinent observations and have formed credible opinions about life the universe and everything.
Usually while waiting for the fish to bite. 😉
And the conversations we have with young and not so young overseas travelers…coming to the realisation what a small world we live in and how remarkably similar we all are.
So no, I can’t commit to opting in on a regular basis, and it would be rude to pop in now and again like a johnny come lately riff raff type who comments and runs without engaging with the whole discussion. But I will be checking in now and again to see how such a project is shaping up because, I do think it is a goer. 🙂
Rosemay
I am talking about a study circle. And if you can spend some of your time while you are travelling reading and then contribute when we have our post at the finish that will be fine.
And if a number of people can start doing this, each time we had another study subject you or anyone else could come in for that. That is all I am talking about. Spending time concentrating on one thing, as a special project apart from other activities and input.
Cool, you got me wondering about your solar power system, I wouldn’t mind playing around with something similar. Did you setup the solar power yourselves? Was it easy? Do you store the power in deep cycle batteries? What appliances can you run from the 300W panel?
You’re probably busy trying to get ready for your holiday, but thought I’d ask anyway 😉
Hiya maui…not holiday as much as normal life for us!
We had the Bus fitted out by the experts…but many clever folk do their own work. Lots of help/advice on line…ask mr. google “motorhomes/rv solar power”….some of those guys are real technophiles. I’ll happily do plumbing…but I’ll leave the sparky stuff to the experts!
We started off with 80W of solar and doubled that as $$$ came available…one of the reasons for Bus dwelling was because house living too expensive….we can save, living in the Bus. Anyway, 2x80w panels not quite enough to keep pump, toilet, 12v fridge and lights going and charge the batteries on the power assist wheelchair wheels on a dull day…so after the solar controller folded (you need a controller able to take the maximum input from your panels) we upgraded to a 30A…then added another 140w panel. Total keeps our 4 aging deep cycle batteries topped up…might get another year out of them. We live lean…seriously…our fridge is less than 25litres, no telly etc. So 300w is plenty. Some of the Brethren have 2000w solar and Lithium batteries and run coffee machines and hairdryers!
Or…if you’re out and about and you spot a house with solar proud on the roof…try knocking on their door…most folk living off the grid are more than happy to turn others to the light side. 🙂
That is very cool, life on the road huh. Sounds brilliant. Yeah, I could have used google, but nothing beats talking to someone direct and getting an interesting nugget of information or two. Thanks, its good to get to know a bit more about how these things work. Enjoy your travels!
I read Schumaker’s book some years ago – then stupidly lent it and never got it back. It made good sense then and I suspect even more sense now. There are a number of books out along similar lines, many of them following the sustainable economy framework of zero growth and prosperity without growth. I have some on my book shelves now but regrettably no longer “Small is Beautiful’.
Give the guy a break – he has been thrown without warning into the aftermath of Key’s amoral opportunism and wrecking-ball approach to constitutional propriety .. and the economy. Does this remind anyone of Trump ?
he is a bigot. and a spineless one. someone without courage and conviction. someone who likes his bread buttered both sides and who is a ‘benefit fraud’.
Wow a big chip there on both shoulders, I am sure his wife 8 kids, siblings, friends, parents think differently and know him a hell a lot better than your hate rant
Who knows the score and has been in politics a long time and is a key player behind all the corrupt, wrong abuses this government, (and the previous National government), has done and continues to do.
No, Caretaker Bill doesn’t deserve to be given a break, not at all.
An executive order from President Donald Trump opening up discrimination against the LGBTQ community on the basis of religious belief is expected sometime this week, possibly as soon as today.
[…]
From what we’ve heard, the executive order could be far-reaching, and could include: making taxpayer funds available for discrimination against LGBTQ people in social services; allow federally funded adoption agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ parents; eliminate non-discrimination protections in order to make it possible to fire federal employers and contractors based on their sexual orientation or gender identity; and allow federal employees to refuse to serve people based on the belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and that gender is an immutable characteristic set at birth, which would impact a broad range of federal benefits.
The order is expected to come in the packaging of so-called “religious freedom,” which argues that someone’s religious beliefs should be enough to prevent them from having to provide goods and services to members of the LGBTQ community if doing so would conflict with said beliefs.
…and that gender is an immutable characteristic set at birth…
That one’s not just obnoxious, but also stupid. Gender refers to differences between the sexes that are social rather than physical in nature – by definition it isn’t “immutable” or “set at birth.” Presumably they mean sex is an immutable characteristic set at birth, but even that’s only true most of the time. Biology isn’t the manufacturing of identical units, it’s vague and messy at the edges.
At the risk of spreading fake news, the link below is an interesting read. A lot of the claims made are by nature unverifiable, and the author doesn’t appear to be a particular expert on the topic, but it does pull the threads together into a thought provoking picture.
“A growing bandwagon of academics and policy makers in other countries, including the United States, UK, Australia, etc. has been calling for prohibitions against cash.
It’s always the same song: cash is a tool for criminals and terrorists.
Harvard economist Ken Rogoff is a leading voice in the War on Cash; his new book The Curse of Cash claims that physical currency makes the world less safe.
Rogoff further states “all that cash” is being used for “tax evasion, corruption, terrorism, the drug trade, human trafficking. . .”
Wow. Sounds pretty grim.
Apparently pulling out a $5 bill to tip your valet makes you a member of ISIS now.
Of course, this is total nonsense.
A recent Gallup poll from last year shows that a healthy 24% of Americans still use cash to make all or most of their purchases, compared to the other options like debit cards, credit cards, checks, bank transfers, PayPal, etc.
And the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco released a ton of data late last year showing that:
– 52% of grocery purchases, along with personal care products, are made in cash
– 62% of purchases up to $10 are made in cash
– But even at much higher amounts over $100, nearly 1 in 5 purchases are still made using physical cash
This doesn’t sound life nefarious criminal activity to me.
It seems that perfectly normal, law-abiding citizens still use cash on a regular basis.
But that doesn’t seem to matter.
A bunch of university professors who have probably never been within 1,000 miles of ISIS think that a ban on cash would make us all safer from terrorists.
You probably recall the horrible Christmas attack in Berlin last month in which a Tunisian man drove a truck through a crowded pedestrian mall, killing 12 people.
Well, the attacker was found with 1,000 euros in cash.
The logic, therefore, is to ban cash.
I’m sure he was also found wearing pants. Perhaps we should ban those too.”
AWW
I am very concerned that there is such a big push for banning cash. I use EFTPOS a lot but I don’t want to have my every transaction be scrutinised and digitalised. The only way many can manage in this unfair system of people having to pay the rich for the right to exist and have some government support is to utilise the black economy. Now that we have this impost of 15% GST on practically all our spending, and very low wage rises to match the inflation that is so low that it mainly benefits large investors, the poor are being screwed by our economic system and RW government.
I am very concerned that there is such a big push for banning cash. I use EFTPOS a lot but I don’t want to have my every transaction be scrutinised and digitalised.
It may be digitised but there’s almost no chance that it will ever be scrutinised. Really, nobody cares – unless you’re committing a crime.
The only way many can manage in this unfair system of people having to pay the rich for the right to exist and have some government support is to utilise the black economy.
The answer to that is to limit the rich. Make it so that they can’t oppress others. In fact, get rid of them altogether.
Now that we have this impost of 15% GST on practically all our spending, and very low wage rises to match the inflation that is so low that it mainly benefits large investors, the poor are being screwed by our economic system and RW government.
Which tells us that the system needs changing and not that we should keep it the way that it is.
DTB It may be digitised but there’s almost no chance that it will ever be scrutinised. Really, nobody cares – unless you’re committing a crime.
You are always so certain. I am certain that I don’t always believe you.
You just cannot make sweeping statements like the above in a time when some can track one’s keying on the computer, and follow where you go on the internet and then try and sell you something or remind you what you did yesterday. The insatiable desire to know everything you do, surveil it control it, profit from it, sanction it. That’s what is abroad these days from government and corporates.
No to a cashless society and don’t believe there would be no charges – only a matter of time before there were.
hear hear…and not only charges…ask the Greeks or the Cretans how they felt about the frozen accounts and the usefulness of cash….with the ability to identify, pigeon hole and control ALL purchasing opportunity the assumption that the system will not be misused punitively is naive….indeed i would suggest it is a certainty, the only question is how long it would take?
Having said that, it will likely happen and there will sweet FA we can do about it.
Having said that, it will likely happen and there will sweet FA we can do about it.
There is always something we can do about it. It’s this belief that we can’t that prevents us from making our political system better and more responsive to the people rather than the corporations.
post election this year the government announces that in 12 months time cash will will no longer be legal tender and all transactions will be electronic…..what effective response do you foresee?
Although I’d prefer a plan to remove the present banking system and replace it with a new one based around the government being the sole creator of money in the system. This money would be digital and introduced into the economy through a UBI and other government spending. Private banks would not be able to create money at all.
cashless society and private banking are two separate issues…a general strike assuming it was widely supported, may reverse the decision…perhaps but then that could be said of any policy….has it happened in neolib times?…and what makes you think “this time it will be different”?
just because you desire to link the two doesn’t mean it will occur as such and general strike?good luck with that….last one was in 79, not even the advent of the ECA triggered one…..power of positive thought only takes you so far, then reality hits.
“The only way many can manage in this unfair system of people having to pay the rich for the right to exist and have some government support is to utilise the black economy”
You mean tax avoidance. Deliberately running small businesses and not paying tax or being customers knowing that the business is avoiding tax in order to get cheaper goods yourself.
Isnt this something you were against? I thought people were supposed to pay their fair share – this means everybody.
but you can’t put charges on cash as you can with ‘bank accounts’.
And you can deprive anyone of access to their money via a an IT issue, or an outage, or or or or.
i once had a nice paid job and because i had money go into my account every month and because it was over a certain amount, my account was ‘free’ of charges.
then i lost my nice paid job due to restructuring and the first month not receiving my pay me previously ‘free’ account suddenly was not so ‘free’ anymore but cost me ‘account service fees’.
now if i were paid in cash every month in by either my boss or receiving unemployment benefits it would not matter, but you just lost your job, you are on a benefit and your account of several years suddenly costs you 10 bucks.
Yeah, mate, no matter how much you like the idea of digital, virtual reality money, i like cash.
and i also dislike the idea that those of us that like cash, because we can control our spending better, because we don’t like to be paying transaction fees and the likes to be ‘considered’ criminals, cause if you don’t have anything to hide you would not care.
I also like to point to the demonetization debacle in India just recently were the only ones that were not hurt were the ones that already had money. The poor and the very poor as always can get fucked.
btw, if I wanted to pay for drugs via a bank transfer, or pay pal who the fuck would stop us from doing so, unless you really like the surveillance tool that comes with virtual reality money.
i once had a nice paid job and because i had money go into my account every month and because it was over a certain amount, my account was ‘free’ of charges.
then i lost my nice paid job due to restructuring and the first month not receiving my pay me previously ‘free’ account suddenly was not so ‘free’ anymore but cost me ‘account service fees’.
Yep, happened to me as well.
Still, it was the privatisation and high profit model that did that. Which is why I say that that infrastructure should be state owned and run with no fees.
btw, if I wanted to pay for drugs via a bank transfer, or pay pal who the fuck would stop us from doing so,
Funding a crime is, as a matter of fact, a crime in itself.
Now, I’m all for legalising drugs so buying drugs doesn’t bother me. It’s the avoidance of paying taxes that the drug sellers do and can get away with doing by only taking cash and thus ripping off the rest of us that does.
Yes, there’s a surveillance issue but it more comes down to if the figures match then we don’t look but if they don’t then we do type thing. Nobody’s going to be looking into the figures unless something is wrong.
So, basically, it’s a cool idea as long as we trust all future governments to not privatise it or abuse its surveillance opportunities, we can ensure criminals don’t go back to barter or use a proxy commodity as a means of exchange, we can ensure employers don’t pressure employees to under-report hours worked, everyone’s online in every location, and you don’t lose your card.
Cash is still a damned good option for any number of reasons. Hell, there’s a twenty in my pocket right now – it was the most convenient way to transfer the money at the time and location.
it’s a cool idea as long as we trust all future governments to not privatise it or abuse its surveillance opportunities
Not trust. Put in place processes that allow us to keep an eye on them.
Trust but verify
we can ensure criminals don’t go back to barter or use a proxy commodity as a means of exchange
Going back to barter would decrease the number of possible clients that the criminals have decreasing their income and it would show up elsewhere.
we can ensure employers don’t pressure employees to under-report hours worked
Employers do that already. Having cash doesn’t change that and many employers now refuse to pay in cash any way.
everyone’s online in every location
Secure coverage should cover our entire EEZ.
and you don’t lose your card.
I’ve lost my card once in the last five years and it took me two days to notice. Once I did it took another day to get it replaced. It was never a concern.
I pretty much stopped using cash ten years ago. The few times that I’ve needed it was because the buses in Auckland either didn’t have HOP card or used a different one that was incompatible. Now that they all use HOP so even that’s no longer an issue.
Basically, you’re at the point of having to invent disaster scenarios to produce fear of the new to prevent it coming in.
I’m not the one inventing secure data coverage throughout the EEZ.
How does it decrease clients? People already use drugs, stolen groceries, and various commodities as pretty difficult-to-trace means of exchange. Hell, even ramen noodles have become a standard currency in US prisons, after cigarettes got banned.
And that’s not even getting into standardised slugs of gold used as a means of exchange.
We don’t have the technology to implement it anytime soon.
It doesn’t decrease the availability of trading to criminals. It inconveniences them slightly, and every innocent person who prefers to use cash.
Druggies might not be thieves, but drugs are already a means of exchange/barter.
You’ve obviously never bought precious or semi-precious metals.
It’s pretty easy, and all they have is my word for who I am. As long as they get the cash, it’s all good. And I read an article recently about how topline watch/jewellery manufacturers pay couriers to fly to the client state with the new watch as “personal jewellery”, thus avoiding all import/export duties. So to make your cashless society effective, now you’re going to have to control how much bling people can wear before it’s “for supply”.
And you only need to exchange barter goods for money for the side of your finances that’s legitimate. Even then, you’re not doing much more than what a fence does every day.
There is currently no public engagement about many issues of governmental privatization. It’s not going to suddenly change tact to accommodate an open and honest discussion around digital only currency
An open and honest discussion about digital only currency, fails and falls apart immediately as there is no single coherent point which will pass a logical sniff test. Evidenced by the illogical incoherent utterings of the ‘experts’ fronting the propaganda campaign
The procession of privately sponsored and paid for ‘experts’ will remain, along with the privately and industry authored legislation which will be rolled out and dutifully passed into law by the paid for governments who represent the same private agendas!
Those who comment here on the topic can see and understand the blatant negative consequences, should physical cash no longer be legal tender
You don’t. I’ve provided the reason why I believe you don’t!
The example of this discussion while singular in its nature is part of a plethora of threads which make up, what is becoming a transparent nefarious agenda. An old agenda which is becoming increasingly difficult to wave away using such terms as ‘conspiracy theory’
That the system as a whole needs to be changed (disposed of and built from the ground up) is a given should the majority of life on this planet wish to regard itself as ‘ free’ or ‘living’ in a near term timeline
The ‘digital agenda’ is at the very core of the roadmap that I see, and is totally incompatible with freedom and living organisms, and their continuance to exist. The planet and all inhabitants are functional in analogue. Resonant frequencies which support and enable life are analogue, and as such are incompatible with the ‘digital agenda’. Should I say the ‘digital agenda’ is incompatible with the natural world of analogue
The major issue as I see it, is that there is no visible path to how the required change will happen (current frameworks) and I don’t forsee a critical point reached before the lock down under digital technological dictatorship (that’s what it is) has taken a hold which can’t be rolled back without severe consequences and violence
Private entities will fight with all they have to continue the ‘deployments’
The articles written here about stepping out of the existing systems are good examples of what I agree needs to happen, but I don’t believe the numbers are high enough and it essentially becomes those who ‘exit’ and those who ‘remain’ (essentially giving mandate to the privately owned and controlled ‘democracys’ masquerading as the governments of entire nations of peoples
The tipping point required to halt the agendas in flight is reliant on those who ‘remain’ ….
This doesn’t sound life nefarious criminal activity to me.
Which, of course, isn’t the point.
The point is the ‘cash jobs’. You know the ones where the trady says that he’ll do the job for a few percent less if you pay cash – because it doesn’t go through his books and so doesn’t pay tax.
And I’m pretty sure that the drug dealer isn’t going to accept credit card or even bank payments either.
1 in 5 purchases are don in cash – all criminal purchases, that aren’t covered by those stats, are done in cash because it can’t be traced.
Now consider this. ~98% of all money is bank money. Bank money is 100% electronic money tracked by the banks. Considering that cash makes up such a small amount of money in the economy why are so many purchases still done in cash?
Of course, the private banks do hide the movement of money from the government.
See, it’s not just about going cashless but there also only being one issuer of money per country and that money only then exists on that issuers systems and cannot leave the country.
The current system has been destroyed by those who own and direct said system, and now they’re looking for a way to continue the plunder…
Cashless is the next step as directed by the same owners of the monetary and financial systems
The companies and agencies leading the propaganda campaign against ‘cash’ are the companies , institutions and agencies who will most benefit from the implementation of ‘digital only’,as well as the operational theft which will follow….should there be no hedge agaist the intended theft through digital
Cashless is the next step as directed by the same owners of the monetary and financial systems
You don’t leave it to the private sector. That’s simply a bad move.
In fact, the major problems we have with our financial system is that we leave it to the private sector. And they use it as a Ponzi Scheme.
Cash money is the hedge…
Cash is the only money that’s of government issuance. You make it so that digital money is also the only money of government issuance and that there is no bank money at all.
More info about the suspect in the Canadian mosque shooting. It seems he’s a pro-Trump white nationalist. But somehow Trumpets are using him as further lying justification for their travel ban on a few Muslim majority countries.
look white male shooters and mass murderers are ‘lone wolfs’ who have ‘legitimate grievances’ and ‘who are misunderstood’ and who ‘just lost the plot’ and and and.
its the others that you are to be afraid of. be the effn afraid.
Human ingenuity knows no bounds. Over at Whaleoil, the attacker was a Muslim, not a White nationalist, because he shouted Allahu Akbar. At Kiwiblog, the first comment on the thread says the propensity for bigots to kill Muslims is just another reason our country would be safer if we didn’t let Muslims immigrate.
Hawkes then takes this even further, suggesting that when certain apes started pursuing more complex resources — for example, by developing tools for hunting — grandmothers came about in order to ensure that small children weren’t left behind. With the kids provided for, natural selection was free to favor those with larger brains, thus paving the way for those apes to evolve into humans. And grandmothers’ style of upbringing, with its emphasis on social dependence, gave rise to “a whole array of social capacities that are then the foundation for the evolution of other distinctly human traits, including pair bonding, bigger brains, learning new skills and our tendency for cooperation.” Grandmothers, Hawkes says, are what make us human.
It’s so obvious that we’ve evolved to be a socialist species. Capitalism is against that nature.
Yup. Interesting and disturbing piece on a subject I’m not entirely unfamiliar with. But I’m struggling way too much to see how it’s connected to the topic of the post.
I wonder if the Green Party will be apologising to Hawkes Bay dairy farmers?
They were the ones blamed for the water pollution shambles in Havelock North, after all.
Indeed it seemed to received wisdom that it was all caused by the conversion of farms from sheep to dairy.
Looks as if Ms Delahunty’s crusade against dairying was misplaced.
“He knows, as we al do, that the real and lasting damage to our rivers is from stock in waterways, farm run-off, sewage and intensified dairy farms among others – he just won’t admit it,” Green Party water spokeswoman Catherine Delahunty said.” http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/health/2016/09/smith-havelock-north-speculation-unhelpful.html
They don’t lie so much as see what they want to see……..
I know a lot of people who will read a thing and inside their head it gets converted into something else…..and they don’t even realise they are doing it.
That’s the Hastings District Council water manager’s opinion of what caused the outbreak. From the same organisation that poisoned thousands of people. Not exactly independant is it..
Lots of interesting, insightful, engaged commentary across a range of topics and posts/OM on TS today. Am also noticing an absence of the RW trolls as well as noting who is currently banned. Making connections 😉
There are a few of us still floating around in the shadows, I just don’t disagree with a lot of what is being said (with the exception of Paul who thinks quotes from the New Zealand Initiative shows that right wing bias and propaganda in NZ media. I notice he doesn’t think quotes from Trade Unionists show a left wing bias…but talking to Paul is like talking to a brick wall, so I just let it slide)
Overall, making reasoned comments stops me commenting, so I concur, well done you!
I asked Danyl about it – he’s taking another break. I presume switching it to private is to prevent comments in the meantime. Hopefully it’s not permanent.
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Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Genterwocky After a hard days marching, Sir Doocey calls in at the Village Tavern For a pint of ale and a pork pie. The grim villagers stare at him. “Do not be travelling on the forest road,” warns a crusty old beak. “And why is that, antique peasant?” Grins Sir ...
Political conferences after a party returns to power are usually a chance for some healthy, even unhealthy backslapping. Yet National Party president Sylvia Wood’s address to its mainland representatives on Saturday hardly contained the unalloyed delight that one might have expected following National’s escape from the wilderness of opposition. Yes, ...
Comment: Almost half the world is voting in national elections this year and artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. There are genuine fears AI-generated or AI-edited deepfakes will potentially manipulate election outcomes not just in the US and UK, but critically in countries such as India. For that ...
Ahead of the reality franchise’s return to New Zealand, allow us to introduce the eight brides and grooms. Chuck on a veil and tie back your man bun, because it’s time to say “I do” to a new season of Married at First Sight NZ. The reality TV “social experiment” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
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 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
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The New Zealand Institute is a far right neoliberal think tank.
How come its pronouncements get so much airtime on RNZ?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201831413/immigration-expert-calls-for-a-levy-on-migrants
Same reasons hooten, farrar, boag, franks etc all get airtime, to push the themes and messages to manufacture consent.
Which shows that right wing bias and propaganda exists in all Management of NZ msm media, including RNZ.
consider how easy it is….you have (alleged) experts waiting and willing to give (informed?) comment…..or you can do the analysis yourself…sometime in the never never when its too late.
its not as if there is much on offer of formal alternative analysis….so msm conspiracy? unlikely…..reason the right fund it? of course
Don’t overlook supporting Scoop.
Give Radionz their due, when they aren’t telling us the latest horror from the USA, full coverage, of fire, flood and pestilence, they are digging out some interesting stuff using OIA. They are trying.
@ TC, While I agree Hooton etc get air time to push an acceptable agenda, I think the manufacturing consent component is more subtle.
Most people understand Hooton and friends are from, and are promoting a specific political view, so in my mind not all that threatening politically.
What I would say is more in line with the ‘manufacturing consent’ theory in regards to RNZ, would be some of the following, you can add your own….
1.Having the markets referred to and analyzed constantly all day.
But at the same time no constant updates on labour/workers news, in fact no daily news or views on workers issues at all.
2. Having bank economists as the main commentators on the economy.
3. Having that useless centrist Mike Williams on the Monday politics with Kathryn Ryan. RNZ are prepared to have a right wing ideologue like Hooton, which I think is fine, but not prepared to have the Left wing equivalent.
So the Left, with Williams speaking for it, generally come out looking weak and ineffectual, ( which sadly, probably pretty accurately describes the political playing field now actually).so no indepth ideological debates to be had on that show.
4. You only have to look at the presenters, Guyon Espiner, Susie Ferguson, Jesse Mulligan, Kathryn Ryan, when was the last time any of these four really held power to account? a pretty rare occurrence to my knowledge.
The only saving grace is John Campbell with his quite effective dripping tap technique.
Far right neo liberal think tank huh?
And how come Labour are ‘certainly open to the idea’ and ‘one they would definitely look at’?
Are you implying that Labour are open to far right neo liberal ideas there Paul?
Yes, sadly they are.
They are open to then and have been for 30+ years. That’s why their policies always look so much like National’s.
Labour spouts neoliberal dogma, yes.
And TVNZ, another win for the right wing backed by their presstitute media.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/migration-big-bright-spot-in-new-zealand-according-report
NZ business doesn’t want immigration questioned, its worth too much for them.
The New Zealand Institute is the Business Roundtable, rebranded.
Far Right Think Tank says immigration in NZ is ok
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/01/30/far-right-think-tank-says-immigration-in-nz-is-ok/
A brief history of the vampire squid Goldman Sachs’ entanglements with the US government and how its spawn have been welcomed into Trump’s swamp to continue sucking the country dry.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-goldman-sachs-effect_us_588eabf7e4b0b065cbbcd9d9?section=us_politics
Went to the cricket yesterday, a fine day spent becoming sun kissed little solar babies! But anyway, there were 12 of us, and as they were mostly average Joe kiwi blokes at the pub before hand I did a quick survey as to what people thought of Trump’s immigration ban. Only two people (and me) thought it was a bad thing. All the rest supported it. I suspect, depressingly, Trump’s ban will turn out to be rather popular.
Perhaps people just didn’t want to talk politics on such a beautiful day. You and I disagree on almost everything but even I think his plan is “too far” or at least could have been implemented a hell of a lot better.
But it was a beautiful family day and a lot of people wouldn’t want to ruin it having an argument or discussion on trump that could cause arguments.
That’s right Sanctuary, and the sad fact is that’s what all this promotion of sport, sport and more sport is all about ….. bread and circuses to numb the masses.
Actually no – it’s just that some people enjoy sport.
Its entertaining, it’s a fun day out with the family. Quality time with kids.
Not some vast conspiracy to numb masses and stop them thinking.
Ffs – do you even believe what you type.
Some reading for you, James.
It’s usually best not to take a strong viewpoint until some research on the subject has been done.
https://www.amazon.com/Deliberate-Dumbing-America-Revised-Abridged/dp/0966707117
Ffs, to put it more plainly , your average avid sports fan is a boofhead.
I think that’s a bit harsh.
Wilfully or naively ignorant, I’d say.
OK Paul, I will put it in a question.
What’s more important in this Country – Rugby or Politics ?
As to your second sentence…..yes that covers many basically unacceptable excuses for not getting involved in democracy.
You know people can like and be involved in both right ?
bit of a narrow view there Garibaldi
A narrow view maybe, and a minority view in godzone when compared to avid sports fans. However I am not going to resile from my belief that sport is over emphasised deliberately ( by the likes of Sky, ‘professionalism’ and politicians) in the knowledge that it is escapism/entertainment to keep the masses happy whilst it encourages the winner/loser mentality. I am all for individual excellence but the tribal team/nation aspect is nigh on war.
The winner/loser mentality plays right into the Capitalistic free market/neoliberalism agenda – leading to more CC and economic unsustainability and boom/bust cycles, and to our impending total demise.
We need a cooperative society, not a combatative, resource depleting, winner takes all doomed situation like we currently have.
The general population seem to be ‘wilfully or naively ignorant’ of the connection I am pointing out.
The decline of Empire looks the same, whether it be in Roman times or today.
Their gladaiators, our sports ‘stars.’
Will the outgoing PM speak out about Agent Orange.. NOOOO of course not, he would rather reassure people that it won’t happen here, that’s it. Gutless, the leader of NZ is an embarrassment, we need a strong leader, one that condemns the bad decisions of other leaders, English is not that person.
Jack Tame interviewed English this morning..
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/why-youre-not-prepared-take-stronger-stance-jack-tame-puts-bill-english-spot-over-trumps-travel-ban?auto=5303064130001
He just had a train wreck of an interview with Espiner on Morning Report too.
If he was asked “are you indecisive “he would reply “Look I’m not sure whether I am or not”.– That’s our pm.
People with no responsibility for the good of the country shoot their mouths off, but English tolerates idiots and thinks about the effect on the country of a fruitcake PM or President yakking on. Espiner was just his usual bloody minded self asking unreasonable questions.
What were the unreasonable questions that the interviewer asked him?
One does not have to shoot ones mouth off to make a stand against religious persecution.
I do not have a transcript but the saying comes to mind “Fools rush in, or expect others to, while wise men consider matters” I know who I consider to be wise in this situation.
True, but fools multiply when wise men remain silent.
Link for RNZ interview with English from this morning.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/323446/'i'm-not-here-to-defend-the-policy'-pm
Blood stained toddler…where is he/she now?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11791637
Good on Smalley for (eventually) speaking up, I suppose…
….actually, nah.
She should have spoken up in a loud clear voice to the staff at reception and in triage that there was a bloodied child who needed attention right NOW.
Mum may or may not be known to those at A&E…and this happens….but bringing in a child in that condition…
1) she either knew it would attract attention and she would finally get the help she needs, or
2) she doesn’t give a shit about her child’s condition.
Either way…help should have been on hand.
If/when this wee one becomes a statistic….
I wonder what would happen if A&E went on strike like junior doctors recently did … would they get more money to adequately staff the A&E at known busy times?
Heaven forbid that strike happens when my family need help BUT all this cost cutting by having more bean counters and not enough medical staff is crazy.
The BCs cannot say X number can be seen in Y time because good doctors give each patient the time they need for their problem and the rest have to wait … the only answer is to have ‘spare capacity’ rather than saving money.
Scary stuff coming out of the White house.
“On Inauguration Day, Trump apparently filed his candidacy for 2020. Beyond being unusual, this opens up the ability for him to start accepting “campaign contributions” right away. Given that a sizable fraction of the campaign funds from the previous cycle were paid directly to the Trump organization in exchange for building leases, etc., at inflated rates, you can assume that those campaign coffers are a mechanism by which US nationals can easily give cash bribes directly to Trump. Non-US nationals can, of course, continue to use Trump’s hotels and other businesses as a way to funnel money to him.
(6) Finally, I want to highlight a story that many people haven’t noticed. On Wednesday, Reuters reported (in great detail) how 19.5% of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, has been sold to parties unknown. This was done through a dizzying array of shell companies, so that the most that can be said with certainty now is that the money “paying” for it was originally loaned out to the shell layers by VTB (the government’s official bank), even though it’s highly unclear who, if anyone, would be paying that loan back; and the recipients have been traced as far as some Cayman Islands shell companies.
Why is this interesting? Because the much-maligned Steele Dossier (the one with the golden showers in it) included the statement that Putin had offered Trump 19% of Rosneft if he became president and removed sanctions. The reason this is so interesting is that the dossier said this in July, and the sale didn’t happen until early December. And 19.5% sounds an awful lot like “19% plus a brokerage commission.”
Conclusive? No. But it raises some very interesting questions for journalists to investigate.”
https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5#.6gedv9r1w
There’s a post up too,
https://thestandard.org.nz/shock-after-shock/
A lot of energy and thinking here goes into present news. politics and future elections, and discussing present and future policies needed. Some space also provides stories about smart and/or clever ideas that advance our living standards, education and thinking.
(I put these separately because our education system has not been spent on thinking and discussing so that we end up understanding our society, economy, and our place in that of the world and how we all fit into the environment on the planet, or not.)
TS could be a place where there was some space for discussion in a post about ideas for better living, indeed eventually, for better surviving. Some people need to be thinking beyond our next wrestling match with lordly politicians and the wealth accumulators, and the dogma of those who want us to stop thinking and be obedient to the latest fashionable cult or religious edict made well before the industrial revolution and the useful art of making toilet paper, flush toilets and hand washing. These have been vital in preventing plagues, but as shown in Havelock North, are like many of our systems are under stress or deteriorating.
I would like to be part of an on-line discussion group who all read a certain book about human directions and our fading future, and then put up a post and discuss the points we have taken. If mickey savage, ie Greg, does pursue his politics in real time it would bring other important topics to the blog. There would be another avenue for consideration and discussion of thought. It would bring ‘disruption’ ie a different approach.
I was thinking that EF Schumaker “Small is Beautful: a study of economics as if people mattered’ book which was praised some years ago, and which I never read, would be a good one to start on. (On Trade me under title.)
It would be good if even two or three commenters would group and take a month to read it and make notes as they go along with ideas that they would be positive about, and some that they might enlarge on. One of us would have to set up a post and if no-one else wanted to do that I would stop thinking about it and actually learn to do it and moderate it.
There are some deep thinkers and some very concerned people who write here. It would be good if we could concentrate our brains to light some ideas for the future. Anyone who will do this please indicate by reply on Open Mike and we can co-ordinate. If I have annoyed someone in the past, remember that the idea is sovereign and sharing thoughts with people disagreed with is essential for getting broad understanding. If we only take notice of people we agree with we never get wider perspective.
Do you want to do some guest posts along these lines?
Rob
Yes I think that I may have to do that, but I like the idea of having concentrated thinking being done ahead of the actual post, rather than the post being set up as the subject du jour and getting 5 comments of varying perspicacity, or words of that nature !
When it comes to examining the weighty problems of humankind, and how to manage ourselves, the one sentence comment from some idiot savant doesn’t get us far. I have ideas, posters have ideas, authors in the mainstream have ideas. Commenters have ideas, and some get raised in Open Mike, and never taken further, so hope having pre-reading would result in some better response and could lead to further research from links that people would find.
With the decline of government for the people, we citizens need to find our own experts and make our own draft policies for the country’s betterment then lobby for ones that are therapeutic of our ills, not just reactionary to events. The corporates already draft legislation to suit themselves as a small but influential group. We ordinary citizens are a large but not influential group and have to get smart, or get trodden on. Sort of like the giant foot that I think Terry Gilliam drew for Monty Python, with us being like sticky mud between the toes.
Please can anyone, either commenter, or reader, or briefly passing through who would like to apply their mind to reading an agreed book, and then putting forward intelligence on a dedicated post, please indicate now or in the next few days. If there is silence I will have to draw the conclusion that we are mainly a nation of fence sitters, and cargo cult recipients, with no backbone to make change and demonstrate our own analytical skills in humanities and development. We can contact through the blog, don’t have to have personal involvement but personally contact each other’s names or pseudos on this blog.
I want to know now if we have enough people who are not already fully stretched on one area of interest. There are some like that, but many who are marking time while others do the thinking for them. And likely it won’t be appropriate, or too late.
How many would like to be in on building knowledge so as to develop new ways of managing ourselves in the future that is getting ever difficult and coming closer all the time.
I haven’t had a proper read through this thread yet, but I’ve been thinking about a book or film club idea for TS so would love to follow your lead on this. I’m interested in the Schumacher book too. Thanks for bringing this up. I’m away out for a while, hope to catch up later.
Weka
Glad you like the sound of it. It would be good if it came within your ideas for advancing the value of The Standard. So look forward to your thoughts. I’m going out for a while. But I’ll be back.
weka
Including us two that makes seven who have shown interest. So if most were willing and we got a modus operandi going, we could get started.
I like EF Schumaker as an idea but people might need time to get a copy. There is one in the stack at the local Nelson library, there are new ones under $20 from a bulk book merchant in Hamilton, I have one in my books somewhere but…. Second hand bookshops are thinner on the ground than they used to be. We might need two weeks between books for all to get copies. For some of these older authors Gutenberg might have them.
Practicality might result in getting an easily available one to start off with.
Rob was talking about guest posts, I like the idea of that when we have got some good quotes to a=start discussing and arguing about.
I just got an ebook copy from Amazon for around $10. It looks like about a 4 hour read. Cheap paper copies there too. It looks like it’s available in many libraries, so I would expect it to be available on interloan (that’s something like $6 or $7 I think).
A couple of initial thoughts. We can put up a post introducing the idea and the first book. I’m thinking Sunday is good. It’s often a quiet day but it continues with the sunday magazine idea we used for putting Robert Guyton’s posts there. People can get to know that we have those kinds of posts on that day. (someone used to do a Sunday Reading posts, a kind of round up of the week). I can put it up on a busier day, but on those days people tend to go for the topical posts.
In the post we put links to how to access the book and how long it takes to read (that’s available online), and a timeframe for reading, and maybe ask for who is interested. We need to make that encouraging 🙂
Then x weeks later, I put up another post which is the discussion one. This discussion can primarily be for the people that read the book, but I think it would make sense for the conversation to be broad enough that anyone can join in if their interest gets piqued.
Is that the kind of thing you were thinking of, or something else?
The more work that other people can do the better. I’ve got a pretty full load of things to be doing here already, so if all I have to do is put the post up that’s easy, but if I have to write a lot of copy etc that’s more work and less likely to happen.
What I would need for the first post is:
Content of the post (intro and explanation, how to find the book etc)
Any relevant links
A photo for the front page
A blurb for the front page
weka
That sounds practical and likely to be supported. The Sunday reads in my opinion didn’t get as many comments as deserved and I myself didn’t get to read them often. This would be similar I think, in intention, but more structured, and likely to get more attention over
a longer period.
So Always on a Sunday would be just the job. Following on Robert Guyton’s input which was so good with continuing episodes , ‘The Knowledge’ club would be sporadically continuing each month but we could weekly put some favourite quote of what we had read already just for general interest at that stage.
It’s Wednesday. and what you suggest about having an initial post about it on Sunday would be good. With explanations of how to access book etc. But I would like to know first that there was a core group who are intending to read the entire book and discuss its points at the end. Anyone could join in at any time reading some or all of the book, but we do need a core group going right through.
I would like to call for hands-up of the initial core participants (it would be best to have minimum of four), to make a reasonable discussion at end. I’ve seen Paul, Pat, Asleep While Walking saying good idea. Macro likes the idea but has to source the book again but might do a reprise (I thought Schumaker because he was famous and first in his time Macro), KJT has commented referring to UBI, which looks like it will get highlighted again. And Weka and greywarshark.
So can we have confirmation of who, whom will start us off and get welcomed onboard? Hi there.
Once we have the core number of readers and commenters, then this list from you Weka which I can probably do by 12 February – may need to ask advice for some things. And we would be set and off – and if anyone wants to work on it to get it up faster then good.
Weka’s list
What I would need for the first post is:
Content of the post (intro and explanation, how to find the book etc)
Any relevant links
A photo for the front page
A blurb for the front page
Everyone needs access to a copy, (eg weka’s advice on how and which outlet to access E-books or other internet offerings.) (And if hard copy from library – I’ll enquire how long it takes to get inter-loan and will initiating library send direct to your address as provided by your home library? This could be helpful for the disabled, or people distant from their own library.) Buy hard copy – local bookshop? Amazon weka says E-book $10 and hard copies, and on Trme about $17 from Hamilton address quickly if paid quickly – look under Small is Beautiful.
In our discussions of whatever book when we quote pieces we must give chapter sources and page or topic references with our response which builds our ideas on or against. This would follow the usual practice of confirming and enabling reference to our source. Which you would want weka and would help to keep ourselves and readers
on track.
I think this would be valuable to us individually and to add to the political nous in the country. I have been concerned that serious and important background info often gets 12 comments, while the latest political gaffe or flagrant or fragrant behaviour gets 112.
We are watching the lampooning of our political system and the clowns are entertaining us, keeping us occupied and away from our important business of looking after all our own interests as citizens in our country. It’s fascinating, sometimes grotesque to watch but some of us have to turn away from the view, and work out what we can do together to repair this crumbling long-running show of democracy-as-we-know-it.
ok, let’s go for Sunday the 12th as the first intro post. That will avoid Waitangi weekend and associated posts too.
So for the first post we need:
Content
intro to the whole idea, keep it succinct, maybe 3 paragraphs?
naming and a brief intro to the first book
Links to who Schumacher is (note spelling)
wikipedia
Guardian review
Info and links on how to get book:
Your ideas
Te Puna search for interloans/which libraries have the book
Amazon link for ebook and cheap 2nd hand
Other option links?
Other links?
Front page photo
Front page blurb
I will need all that in a single document, ordinary text. If any of the content is a direct quote, please put it in ” ” and put a link at the end of the sentence/paragraph for where it was taken from.
I’m happy to help out while you organise that too, just ask or comment here.
As for getting people to commit, I think we can ask again. Try today’s OM, and I’d suggest keeping to the point and making the comment easy to read and engage with. However I also think there will come a point where we just need to do that work and see what happens.
weka
Okay first step I have put comment on Open Mike 1/2 No. 17 asking for keen Standardistas. So that’s all for now as I have to do something else. This could be good once its going. I remember some really good and long discussions around CV’s ideas and also Bill’s.
nice one grey, I’ll follow on there too.
Assume (one shouldn’t) the book is “Small is beautiful” E F Schumacher…?
Pat
Yes. I thought that one to give an overview from the past – he died in 1977 I think. He sounds like a nice guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._F._Schumacher
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/e_f_schumacher.html
I thought a harmonica action – expand, contract to NZ (Rosemary suggested Marilyn Waring could be next) then out to someone like Joseph Stiglitz? world economics, then perhaps Max Rushbrooke here in NZ etc.
That would open our minds away from strictly NZ. Say we kept to the local, global then repeat but we took a vote or a priority list of authors each time, say once a month then two week break then again.
Great idea.
greywarshark – OK, sounds interesting! I don’t always catch what’s going on in comments, so I’ll email you…
r0b
Are you interested in being in the first reading group? If you have time, as well as writing posts, as well as whatever else you find to pass the time away!
Please don’t tell me what as I think I would be exhausted hearing. But over a month you could find the time perhaps, weka says it doesn’t take long to read, but of course the reading would have to have some note taking of points as well, even keywords, and that would slow it up. And also lead to links being included to give direction to the points.
I thought I’d ask though you are no doubt busy, and if not this time, then at a later time perhaps. Could you advise thanks.
Hi – just leaving now in a rush – complicated – email me?
What a good idea greywarshark. I read posts and comments here on TS and sometimes get the impression that folk seem to think that they are saying something new. That their ideas are novel and groundbreaking….when in reality most of these thoughts have been said and/or writ before….often by people who have spent a lifetime in active research and discussion in their particular field.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Alongside Schumaker (and perhaps ahead IMHO 🙂 ) would be anything written by our own Marylin Waring. http://www.marilynwaring.com/html/books.html
“Safe drinking water counts for nothing. A pollution-free environment counts for nothing. Even some people – namely women – count for nothing. This is the case, at least, according to the United Nations System of National Accounts. Author Marilyn Waring, former New Zealand M.P., now professor, development consultant, writer, and goat farmer, isolates the gender bias that exists in the current system of calculating national wealth.
As Waring observes, in this accounting system women are considered ‘non-producers’ and as such they cannot expect to gain from the distribution of benefits that flow from production. Issues like nuclear warfare, environmental conservation, and poverty are likewise excluded from the calculation of value in traditional economic theory. As a result, public policy, determined by these same accounting processes, inevitably overlooks the importance of the environment and half the world’s population.
Counting for Nothing, originally published in 1988, is a classic feminist analysis of women’s place in the world economy brought up to date in this reprinted edition, including a sizeable new introduction by the author. In her new introduction, the author updates information and examples and revisits the original chapters with appropriate commentary. In an accessible and often humorous manner, Waring offers an explanation of the current economic systems of accounting and thoroughly outlines ways to ensure that the significance of the environment and the labour contributions of women receive the recognition they deserve.”
…and if like me you haven’t got the book (on my list when scouring the second had bookshops) you can watch….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS2nkr9q0VU
When Trump et al have all moved on to wherever defunct politicians slope off to we, the people will still be here trying not only to survive another day, week, month…but also doing what we can to make the lives of our kids (and their kids) better and more secure.
And we must learn to do this irrespective of which coloured flag flies atop our parliamentary seat. We do get so bound to the ‘we MUST change the government’ narrative instead of concentrating on what you, greywarshark, suggest giving space for “stories about smart and/or clever ideas that advance our living standards, education and thinking.”
I fear though, the usual ‘I know best voices’ will prevail here and elsewhere on the net…as history appears to have been deliberately ignored as the world seems hell bent on repeating it. 🙁
Rosemary McDonald
I am interested in people who will opt in, not just people who think it is a good idea. So will you opt in Rosemary? Marilyn Waring would be good too. Would you join the reading, discussing circle?? If the post was moderated effectively, only useful discussion that added to the discourse would go in so the usual riff raff would have to shape up or ship out.
Anyone can comment, critique, it’s essential that some actually do the hard yards of getting informed on the same text and subject and then raise points of disagreement, doubt, positive visions if…so and so was done, and how lack of finances could be circumvented etc.
Looking at achievable objects, how to avoid having Johnny come latelies take over and drive the project too fast, or too far into middle class materialisms, or too idealistically and rigidly, purely etc. Tailoring projects to allow for human nature, and climate change, and continuity, and rewarding and respecting all participants in suitable ways. Those are things that wise thinkers would be incorporating in ideas for projects.
How to provide jobs for ourselves in the future would be one of the things to consider. There is the constant theme that this or that is going to happen and that’s the word so get used to it. We have knowledge from education and wisdom but the poem of Ozymandias sorrowfully reminds us of our overweening desires and fantastic visions. That poem came from the discovery of a creation of Rameses BC 13th century. So can we so many centuries later actually see above those grand confabulations, and think as pragmatic idealists. As Rutherford said “We haven’t much money, so we need to think”.
In antiquity, Ozymandias (Ὀσυμανδύας) was a Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. Shelley began writing his poem in 1817, soon after the announcement of the British Museum’s acquisition of a large fragment of a statue of Ramesses II from the thirteenth century BC, leading some scholars to believe that Shelley was inspired by this.
The 7.25-ton fragment of the statue’s head and torso had been removed in 1816 from the mortuary temple of Ramesses at Thebes
Have a look back on the UBI conversations on the Standard.
A group of us, Authors and commentators, not always people who agreed with each other, agreed this was one thing we could be united on.
I think we should again get behind the UBi, and other solutions, of course?
KJT
Yes I will thanks.
KJT
And here is something I found that is a long standing and presumably experienced project team. was called the Intermediate Project or something to help adapt to intermediate technology – I saw it on EF Schumaker site – Practical Action –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practical_Action.
When I was at Waikato Uni, the engineering department were looking at technologies transferable to third world countries, with inadequate infrastructure and capabilities. Small scale water treatment, for example.
KJT
I don’t know whether you would consider it a genuine engineering project but this morning I came upon a Greenpeace? info leaflet about the work that had been done on constructing low cost toilets using local materials after studying 500 people going to the toilet to advise on the best design!
I am not sure how they did this, probably studying the aftermath.
They worked out a plan, it has plaited palm leaf sides on wooden frame, a 100mm vent pipe going high covered with flyproof gauze, and can be shifted to another spot when hole is filled. I see that as a beautiful and elegant design myself. What do you think?
And while we are communicating – can you come into the first reading group looking at E F Schumacher over a month with a big discussion on his ideas at end? We could do with a practical innovative open mind on this. Could you let me know?
Yes.
KJT
Great. I’m trying to crank myself up to present it with some formality.,
with Weka’s help. Watch this space!
It would be great to revisit the UBI this year. I’ve got some half finished posts from around the time of Labour’s discussion paper. Maybe we could republish some of the previous ones and invite people to take the idea forward. We could do a week on the UBI at The Standard.
“I am interested in people who will opt in, not just people who think it is a good idea. ”
Tomorrow my partner and I head off into the wild blue yonder after 3 months of enforced houseboundness. Too busy for the likes of us over the silly season, having to compete with the thousands of others for dwindling free/cheap camping spots.
Our Bus is basic. Very basic. Living in a space measuring 7mx2m certainly forces one to think very carefully about what is needed to ensure a tolerable standard of living and what is mere want. And while other Brethren of the Eternal Highway have embraced mobile internet, we have not…considering it a luxury and an unnecessary extravagance. Our 300w of solar on the roof removes the need (over the sunny months) for us to scuttle into a commercial camp every 7-10 days to plug into the 240V to charge our house batteries and do some internetting…so any engagement in forums such as this will be limited to the occasional hook up via the Aotearoa People’s Network at the local library if we should wander into a town. We do not have an ipad, android, smartphone etc…just a couple of unsmart 3G flip phones…one for each of the major networks.
It is not unusual for us to have no cellphone coverage either. And we don’t have telly. We read, a lot. And listen to Natrad…and Sport Radio (for the cricket, because relationships only survive close proximity if the other person’s peccadilloes are tolerated and accommodated).
But don’t be concerned that I will be bereft of intelligent and informed discourse on politics, history and social issues in general as the regions are teeming with interesting folk who make very pertinent observations and have formed credible opinions about life the universe and everything.
Usually while waiting for the fish to bite. 😉
And the conversations we have with young and not so young overseas travelers…coming to the realisation what a small world we live in and how remarkably similar we all are.
So no, I can’t commit to opting in on a regular basis, and it would be rude to pop in now and again like a johnny come lately riff raff type who comments and runs without engaging with the whole discussion. But I will be checking in now and again to see how such a project is shaping up because, I do think it is a goer. 🙂
Rosemay
I am talking about a study circle. And if you can spend some of your time while you are travelling reading and then contribute when we have our post at the finish that will be fine.
And if a number of people can start doing this, each time we had another study subject you or anyone else could come in for that. That is all I am talking about. Spending time concentrating on one thing, as a special project apart from other activities and input.
Cool, you got me wondering about your solar power system, I wouldn’t mind playing around with something similar. Did you setup the solar power yourselves? Was it easy? Do you store the power in deep cycle batteries? What appliances can you run from the 300W panel?
You’re probably busy trying to get ready for your holiday, but thought I’d ask anyway 😉
Hiya maui…not holiday as much as normal life for us!
We had the Bus fitted out by the experts…but many clever folk do their own work. Lots of help/advice on line…ask mr. google “motorhomes/rv solar power”….some of those guys are real technophiles. I’ll happily do plumbing…but I’ll leave the sparky stuff to the experts!
We started off with 80W of solar and doubled that as $$$ came available…one of the reasons for Bus dwelling was because house living too expensive….we can save, living in the Bus. Anyway, 2x80w panels not quite enough to keep pump, toilet, 12v fridge and lights going and charge the batteries on the power assist wheelchair wheels on a dull day…so after the solar controller folded (you need a controller able to take the maximum input from your panels) we upgraded to a 30A…then added another 140w panel. Total keeps our 4 aging deep cycle batteries topped up…might get another year out of them. We live lean…seriously…our fridge is less than 25litres, no telly etc. So 300w is plenty. Some of the Brethren have 2000w solar and Lithium batteries and run coffee machines and hairdryers!
for mobile solar talk…here’s the best place to look http://www.nzmotorhome.co.nz/NZMotorhomeForum/viewforum.php?f=55 there’s a really good search facility.
For a house…these guys…good reputation and happy to share the knowledge…http://www.indepower.co.nz/index.html
Or…if you’re out and about and you spot a house with solar proud on the roof…try knocking on their door…most folk living off the grid are more than happy to turn others to the light side. 🙂
That is very cool, life on the road huh. Sounds brilliant. Yeah, I could have used google, but nothing beats talking to someone direct and getting an interesting nugget of information or two. Thanks, its good to get to know a bit more about how these things work. Enjoy your travels!
Good idea.
I read Schumaker’s book some years ago – then stupidly lent it and never got it back. It made good sense then and I suspect even more sense now. There are a number of books out along similar lines, many of them following the sustainable economy framework of zero growth and prosperity without growth. I have some on my book shelves now but regrettably no longer “Small is Beautiful’.
Give the guy a break – he has been thrown without warning into the aftermath of Key’s amoral opportunism and wrecking-ball approach to constitutional propriety .. and the economy. Does this remind anyone of Trump ?
so you are saying Bill English was not Vice PM all those years? That was an alternative version of Bill English?
True, but he is not Trump or Key. He’s an old style Southland boy.
he is a bigot. and a spineless one. someone without courage and conviction. someone who likes his bread buttered both sides and who is a ‘benefit fraud’.
he is very much like the others.
+1 Sabine.
Wow a big chip there on both shoulders, I am sure his wife 8 kids, siblings, friends, parents think differently and know him a hell a lot better than your hate rant
Who knows the score and has been in politics a long time and is a key player behind all the corrupt, wrong abuses this government, (and the previous National government), has done and continues to do.
No, Caretaker Bill doesn’t deserve to be given a break, not at all.
Theocrats have been busy.
An executive order from President Donald Trump opening up discrimination against the LGBTQ community on the basis of religious belief is expected sometime this week, possibly as soon as today.
[…]
From what we’ve heard, the executive order could be far-reaching, and could include: making taxpayer funds available for discrimination against LGBTQ people in social services; allow federally funded adoption agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ parents; eliminate non-discrimination protections in order to make it possible to fire federal employers and contractors based on their sexual orientation or gender identity; and allow federal employees to refuse to serve people based on the belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and that gender is an immutable characteristic set at birth, which would impact a broad range of federal benefits.
The order is expected to come in the packaging of so-called “religious freedom,” which argues that someone’s religious beliefs should be enough to prevent them from having to provide goods and services to members of the LGBTQ community if doing so would conflict with said beliefs.
http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2017/01/sources-report-trump-executive-order-lgbtq-community-coming-soon/
…and that gender is an immutable characteristic set at birth…
That one’s not just obnoxious, but also stupid. Gender refers to differences between the sexes that are social rather than physical in nature – by definition it isn’t “immutable” or “set at birth.” Presumably they mean sex is an immutable characteristic set at birth, but even that’s only true most of the time. Biology isn’t the manufacturing of identical units, it’s vague and messy at the edges.
At the risk of spreading fake news, the link below is an interesting read. A lot of the claims made are by nature unverifiable, and the author doesn’t appear to be a particular expert on the topic, but it does pull the threads together into a thought provoking picture.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ex-kgb-spy-cited-in-the-trump-blackmail-dossier-just_us_588e3f0de4b0cd25e4904a24
The other ban
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/the-other-ban-that-was-quietly-announced-last-week-20742/
“A growing bandwagon of academics and policy makers in other countries, including the United States, UK, Australia, etc. has been calling for prohibitions against cash.
It’s always the same song: cash is a tool for criminals and terrorists.
Harvard economist Ken Rogoff is a leading voice in the War on Cash; his new book The Curse of Cash claims that physical currency makes the world less safe.
Rogoff further states “all that cash” is being used for “tax evasion, corruption, terrorism, the drug trade, human trafficking. . .”
Wow. Sounds pretty grim.
Apparently pulling out a $5 bill to tip your valet makes you a member of ISIS now.
Of course, this is total nonsense.
A recent Gallup poll from last year shows that a healthy 24% of Americans still use cash to make all or most of their purchases, compared to the other options like debit cards, credit cards, checks, bank transfers, PayPal, etc.
And the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco released a ton of data late last year showing that:
– 52% of grocery purchases, along with personal care products, are made in cash
– 62% of purchases up to $10 are made in cash
– But even at much higher amounts over $100, nearly 1 in 5 purchases are still made using physical cash
This doesn’t sound life nefarious criminal activity to me.
It seems that perfectly normal, law-abiding citizens still use cash on a regular basis.
But that doesn’t seem to matter.
A bunch of university professors who have probably never been within 1,000 miles of ISIS think that a ban on cash would make us all safer from terrorists.
You probably recall the horrible Christmas attack in Berlin last month in which a Tunisian man drove a truck through a crowded pedestrian mall, killing 12 people.
Well, the attacker was found with 1,000 euros in cash.
The logic, therefore, is to ban cash.
I’m sure he was also found wearing pants. Perhaps we should ban those too.”
AWW
I am very concerned that there is such a big push for banning cash. I use EFTPOS a lot but I don’t want to have my every transaction be scrutinised and digitalised. The only way many can manage in this unfair system of people having to pay the rich for the right to exist and have some government support is to utilise the black economy. Now that we have this impost of 15% GST on practically all our spending, and very low wage rises to match the inflation that is so low that it mainly benefits large investors, the poor are being screwed by our economic system and RW government.
It may be digitised but there’s almost no chance that it will ever be scrutinised. Really, nobody cares – unless you’re committing a crime.
The answer to that is to limit the rich. Make it so that they can’t oppress others. In fact, get rid of them altogether.
Which tells us that the system needs changing and not that we should keep it the way that it is.
DTB
It may be digitised but there’s almost no chance that it will ever be scrutinised. Really, nobody cares – unless you’re committing a crime.
You are always so certain. I am certain that I don’t always believe you.
You just cannot make sweeping statements like the above in a time when some can track one’s keying on the computer, and follow where you go on the internet and then try and sell you something or remind you what you did yesterday. The insatiable desire to know everything you do, surveil it control it, profit from it, sanction it. That’s what is abroad these days from government and corporates.
No to a cashless society and don’t believe there would be no charges – only a matter of time before there were.
hear hear…and not only charges…ask the Greeks or the Cretans how they felt about the frozen accounts and the usefulness of cash….with the ability to identify, pigeon hole and control ALL purchasing opportunity the assumption that the system will not be misused punitively is naive….indeed i would suggest it is a certainty, the only question is how long it would take?
Having said that, it will likely happen and there will sweet FA we can do about it.
There is always something we can do about it. It’s this belief that we can’t that prevents us from making our political system better and more responsive to the people rather than the corporations.
post election this year the government announces that in 12 months time cash will will no longer be legal tender and all transactions will be electronic…..what effective response do you foresee?
A general strike.
Although I’d prefer a plan to remove the present banking system and replace it with a new one based around the government being the sole creator of money in the system. This money would be digital and introduced into the economy through a UBI and other government spending. Private banks would not be able to create money at all.
cashless society and private banking are two separate issues…a general strike assuming it was widely supported, may reverse the decision…perhaps but then that could be said of any policy….has it happened in neolib times?…and what makes you think “this time it will be different”?
No they’re not and they shouldn’t be treated as such.
We work to make it different rather than just whinging that it’s too hard.
just because you desire to link the two doesn’t mean it will occur as such and general strike?good luck with that….last one was in 79, not even the advent of the ECA triggered one…..power of positive thought only takes you so far, then reality hits.
More bloody whinging.
more bloody invective but no answers.
“The only way many can manage in this unfair system of people having to pay the rich for the right to exist and have some government support is to utilise the black economy”
You mean tax avoidance. Deliberately running small businesses and not paying tax or being customers knowing that the business is avoiding tax in order to get cheaper goods yourself.
Isnt this something you were against? I thought people were supposed to pay their fair share – this means everybody.
but you can’t put charges on cash as you can with ‘bank accounts’.
And you can deprive anyone of access to their money via a an IT issue, or an outage, or or or or.
And with the government as issuer and maintainer of the money supply then there won’t be any charges.
little story from my life.
i once had a nice paid job and because i had money go into my account every month and because it was over a certain amount, my account was ‘free’ of charges.
then i lost my nice paid job due to restructuring and the first month not receiving my pay me previously ‘free’ account suddenly was not so ‘free’ anymore but cost me ‘account service fees’.
now if i were paid in cash every month in by either my boss or receiving unemployment benefits it would not matter, but you just lost your job, you are on a benefit and your account of several years suddenly costs you 10 bucks.
Yeah, mate, no matter how much you like the idea of digital, virtual reality money, i like cash.
and i also dislike the idea that those of us that like cash, because we can control our spending better, because we don’t like to be paying transaction fees and the likes to be ‘considered’ criminals, cause if you don’t have anything to hide you would not care.
I also like to point to the demonetization debacle in India just recently were the only ones that were not hurt were the ones that already had money. The poor and the very poor as always can get fucked.
btw, if I wanted to pay for drugs via a bank transfer, or pay pal who the fuck would stop us from doing so, unless you really like the surveillance tool that comes with virtual reality money.
Yep, happened to me as well.
Still, it was the privatisation and high profit model that did that. Which is why I say that that infrastructure should be state owned and run with no fees.
Funding a crime is, as a matter of fact, a crime in itself.
Now, I’m all for legalising drugs so buying drugs doesn’t bother me. It’s the avoidance of paying taxes that the drug sellers do and can get away with doing by only taking cash and thus ripping off the rest of us that does.
Yes, there’s a surveillance issue but it more comes down to if the figures match then we don’t look but if they don’t then we do type thing. Nobody’s going to be looking into the figures unless something is wrong.
So, basically, it’s a cool idea as long as we trust all future governments to not privatise it or abuse its surveillance opportunities, we can ensure criminals don’t go back to barter or use a proxy commodity as a means of exchange, we can ensure employers don’t pressure employees to under-report hours worked, everyone’s online in every location, and you don’t lose your card.
Cash is still a damned good option for any number of reasons. Hell, there’s a twenty in my pocket right now – it was the most convenient way to transfer the money at the time and location.
Not trust. Put in place processes that allow us to keep an eye on them.
Trust but verify
Going back to barter would decrease the number of possible clients that the criminals have decreasing their income and it would show up elsewhere.
Employers do that already. Having cash doesn’t change that and many employers now refuse to pay in cash any way.
Secure coverage should cover our entire EEZ.
I’ve lost my card once in the last five years and it took me two days to notice. Once I did it took another day to get it replaced. It was never a concern.
I pretty much stopped using cash ten years ago. The few times that I’ve needed it was because the buses in Auckland either didn’t have HOP card or used a different one that was incompatible. Now that they all use HOP so even that’s no longer an issue.
Basically, you’re at the point of having to invent disaster scenarios to produce fear of the new to prevent it coming in.
I’m not the one inventing secure data coverage throughout the EEZ.
How does it decrease clients? People already use drugs, stolen groceries, and various commodities as pretty difficult-to-trace means of exchange. Hell, even ramen noodles have become a standard currency in US prisons, after cigarettes got banned.
And that’s not even getting into standardised slugs of gold used as a means of exchange.
Well, if we don’t invent it then we certainly won’t have it.
By decreasing the availability of trading.
Most of the people who use drugs aren’t going to go out and become a criminal to support their habit.
Do you have any idea as to how difficult that is? Gold is well controlled and so is pretty much every other mineral/element.
And, at the end, you need to be able to exchange the barter goods for money and that’s in the system. And the figures won’t match.
We don’t have the technology to implement it anytime soon.
It doesn’t decrease the availability of trading to criminals. It inconveniences them slightly, and every innocent person who prefers to use cash.
Druggies might not be thieves, but drugs are already a means of exchange/barter.
You’ve obviously never bought precious or semi-precious metals.
It’s pretty easy, and all they have is my word for who I am. As long as they get the cash, it’s all good. And I read an article recently about how topline watch/jewellery manufacturers pay couriers to fly to the client state with the new watch as “personal jewellery”, thus avoiding all import/export duties. So to make your cashless society effective, now you’re going to have to control how much bling people can wear before it’s “for supply”.
And you only need to exchange barter goods for money for the side of your finances that’s legitimate. Even then, you’re not doing much more than what a fence does every day.
Well. If we had Democratic control of the Government, instead of the managerial model of Government?
I’d work on that before trying for a cashless society, frankly.
The government WON’T be the “issuer and maintainer”..
The core premise of your argument is counter to comments you make about government on a number of other topics …
Which tells me you have a technological hard on which confuses and misdirects you!
That’s actually the only valid option. Leaving it to private enterprise will make the whole financial system even more of a scam than it is now.
WTF are you talking about?
Money is privately owned, issued and controlled either directly or indirectly through government structures such as exist in NZ
Who owns the NZ public/govt/private debt Draco?
Your belief that digital only currency will be managed and controlled by benevolent governments is that of a fantasist
Same response to your comment 12.4.1
Yes, so we change the system. If we don’t then it all keeps going the same as it is now.
There is currently no public engagement about many issues of governmental privatization. It’s not going to suddenly change tact to accommodate an open and honest discussion around digital only currency
An open and honest discussion about digital only currency, fails and falls apart immediately as there is no single coherent point which will pass a logical sniff test. Evidenced by the illogical incoherent utterings of the ‘experts’ fronting the propaganda campaign
The procession of privately sponsored and paid for ‘experts’ will remain, along with the privately and industry authored legislation which will be rolled out and dutifully passed into law by the paid for governments who represent the same private agendas!
Those who comment here on the topic can see and understand the blatant negative consequences, should physical cash no longer be legal tender
You don’t. I’ve provided the reason why I believe you don’t!
Dude, the problem you have is that you’re solely concentrating on the digital money. You’re forgetting that we need to change the whole system.
If we only do one part then it won’t work as the present system itself doesn’t work.
No, that’s not it, in broader context anyways…
The example of this discussion while singular in its nature is part of a plethora of threads which make up, what is becoming a transparent nefarious agenda. An old agenda which is becoming increasingly difficult to wave away using such terms as ‘conspiracy theory’
That the system as a whole needs to be changed (disposed of and built from the ground up) is a given should the majority of life on this planet wish to regard itself as ‘ free’ or ‘living’ in a near term timeline
The ‘digital agenda’ is at the very core of the roadmap that I see, and is totally incompatible with freedom and living organisms, and their continuance to exist. The planet and all inhabitants are functional in analogue. Resonant frequencies which support and enable life are analogue, and as such are incompatible with the ‘digital agenda’. Should I say the ‘digital agenda’ is incompatible with the natural world of analogue
The major issue as I see it, is that there is no visible path to how the required change will happen (current frameworks) and I don’t forsee a critical point reached before the lock down under digital technological dictatorship (that’s what it is) has taken a hold which can’t be rolled back without severe consequences and violence
Private entities will fight with all they have to continue the ‘deployments’
The articles written here about stepping out of the existing systems are good examples of what I agree needs to happen, but I don’t believe the numbers are high enough and it essentially becomes those who ‘exit’ and those who ‘remain’ (essentially giving mandate to the privately owned and controlled ‘democracys’ masquerading as the governments of entire nations of peoples
The tipping point required to halt the agendas in flight is reliant on those who ‘remain’ ….
‘And the meek shall inherit the earth’
Which, of course, isn’t the point.
The point is the ‘cash jobs’. You know the ones where the trady says that he’ll do the job for a few percent less if you pay cash – because it doesn’t go through his books and so doesn’t pay tax.
And I’m pretty sure that the drug dealer isn’t going to accept credit card or even bank payments either.
1 in 5 purchases are don in cash – all criminal purchases, that aren’t covered by those stats, are done in cash because it can’t be traced.
Now consider this. ~98% of all money is bank money. Bank money is 100% electronic money tracked by the banks. Considering that cash makes up such a small amount of money in the economy why are so many purchases still done in cash?
Of course, the private banks do hide the movement of money from the government.
See, it’s not just about going cashless but there also only being one issuer of money per country and that money only then exists on that issuers systems and cannot leave the country.
The current system has been destroyed by those who own and direct said system, and now they’re looking for a way to continue the plunder…
Cashless is the next step as directed by the same owners of the monetary and financial systems
The companies and agencies leading the propaganda campaign against ‘cash’ are the companies , institutions and agencies who will most benefit from the implementation of ‘digital only’,as well as the operational theft which will follow….should there be no hedge agaist the intended theft through digital
Cash money is the hedge…
You don’t leave it to the private sector. That’s simply a bad move.
In fact, the major problems we have with our financial system is that we leave it to the private sector. And they use it as a Ponzi Scheme.
Cash is the only money that’s of government issuance. You make it so that digital money is also the only money of government issuance and that there is no bank money at all.
More info about the suspect in the Canadian mosque shooting. It seems he’s a pro-Trump white nationalist. But somehow Trumpets are using him as further lying justification for their travel ban on a few Muslim majority countries.
https://thinkprogress.org/the-trump-camp-is-using-the-attack-on-a-quebec-mosque-to-prop-up-its-muslim-ban-a9ed63996b5a#.w1nafzdup
look white male shooters and mass murderers are ‘lone wolfs’ who have ‘legitimate grievances’ and ‘who are misunderstood’ and who ‘just lost the plot’ and and and.
its the others that you are to be afraid of. be the effn afraid.
Human ingenuity knows no bounds. Over at Whaleoil, the attacker was a Muslim, not a White nationalist, because he shouted Allahu Akbar. At Kiwiblog, the first comment on the thread says the propensity for bigots to kill Muslims is just another reason our country would be safer if we didn’t let Muslims immigrate.
The Evolutionary Importance of Grandmothers
It’s so obvious that we’ve evolved to be a socialist species. Capitalism is against that nature.
the “grandmother hypothesis”, is species limited.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/why-do-killer-whales-go-through-menopause/512783/
Fascinating and very interesting. Thanks Poission.
the red river runs.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-dc75304f-e77c-4125-aacf-83e7714a5840
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Yup. Interesting and disturbing piece on a subject I’m not entirely unfamiliar with. But I’m struggling way too much to see how it’s connected to the topic of the post.
Heh. What it might be like if women got the power to decide what men could do with their bodies. Ejaculation ban!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fake-photo-hilary-clinton-signs-male-ejaculation-ban-parody-joke-french-feminists-52_us_588f6321e4b0176377958797?ox39pb9&
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/826175120238604288
Donald J. Trump :
The American dream is back. We’re going to create an environment for small business like we haven’t had in many, many decades!
After securing the borders the Don is set to bring wealth and employment back to America!
You Lefties should be celebrating!
The American Dream has always been a nightmare for the majority, and Trump will certainly make it grow.
+1
Yep, the home of Robber Barons. Trump looks set to bring that back in.
I wonder if the Green Party will be apologising to Hawkes Bay dairy farmers?
They were the ones blamed for the water pollution shambles in Havelock North, after all.
Indeed it seemed to received wisdom that it was all caused by the conversion of farms from sheep to dairy.
Now it appears that it was all due to sheep farming in the area. It wasn’t dairy at all.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11791401
Looks as if Ms Delahunty’s crusade against dairying was misplaced.
“He knows, as we al do, that the real and lasting damage to our rivers is from stock in waterways, farm run-off, sewage and intensified dairy farms among others – he just won’t admit it,” Green Party water spokeswoman Catherine Delahunty said.”
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/health/2016/09/smith-havelock-north-speculation-unhelpful.html
Where did Ms Delahunty say it was “only” Dairy farms.
Intensive Dairy, of course, makes it worse.
“farm run-off” says Catherine Delahunty.
And she was correct.
Looks like you’re lying again.
They don’t lie so much as see what they want to see……..
I know a lot of people who will read a thing and inside their head it gets converted into something else…..and they don’t even realise they are doing it.
That’s the Hastings District Council water manager’s opinion of what caused the outbreak. From the same organisation that poisoned thousands of people. Not exactly independant is it..
..Follow distractions…
…waste your own life…
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
The pumpkin pinochet’s first international achievement.
well lookit it, it may have to do with this.
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/british-navy-lead-war-games-gulf-tensions-simmer-iran-205169915
What could possibly go wrong
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/06/10/warships-hit-high-temperatures-gulf.html
Not to mention the British will have a period without a functioning carrier in the next few years.
And the F35 was supposed to replace the marine corps harriers that are being phased out.
And apparently the LCS is a bit of a bust.
The special relationship is beginning to get quite the strategic problem in its make-up.
Lots of interesting, insightful, engaged commentary across a range of topics and posts/OM on TS today. Am also noticing an absence of the RW trolls as well as noting who is currently banned. Making connections 😉
Well done us.
There are a few of us still floating around in the shadows, I just don’t disagree with a lot of what is being said (with the exception of Paul who thinks quotes from the New Zealand Initiative shows that right wing bias and propaganda in NZ media. I notice he doesn’t think quotes from Trade Unionists show a left wing bias…but talking to Paul is like talking to a brick wall, so I just let it slide)
Overall, making reasoned comments stops me commenting, so I concur, well done you!
Yes when I listen to the radio it is awash with the views of trades unionists , while bankers are hardly ever heard at all…….
Dimpost is still on the Private viewing link. Any news on this?
I asked Danyl about it – he’s taking another break. I presume switching it to private is to prevent comments in the meantime. Hopefully it’s not permanent.
Thanks Psycho. Hope he returns. His is one of my daily visits.
Though in doing so he has effectively removed his entire back catalogue of posts from the Net……which is unfortunate.
Something for Labour to seriously ponder?
There’s not one comment on the thread: Little’s State of the Nation speech.
An uninspiring Labour is the biggest obstacle to changing the Government.