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6:00 am, March 31st, 2017 - 70 comments
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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“Mr Mark John Taylor”, of Hamilton.
A New Zealand citizen who is now classified by the US as a terrorist.
For fighting in Syria and making videos for several years.
Quite a first for us.
Greens’ rivers PR a car crash
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2017/03/opinion-greens-rivers-pr-a-car-crash.html
That’s a shocking, yet utterly amateurish hatchet job by Isobel Ewing. Just plain stupid.
It does sound like it could have been better planned and organised – seems like a PR screwup for a number of reasons.
John Pilger’s doco is screening soon in NZ (The Coming War with China) .
Pilger says the NZ government is playing a dangerous game – doing war exercises with the US, while also courting China.
I used to laugh at my Dad back in the Vietnam war days, when he had this bee in his bonnet about China ultimately planning to invade NZ. That was part of his and many others’ domino theory back then – first they’ll take Nam, then, before you know it, NZ.
My Dad used to quote Nostradamus about the next big world war including us against China. Pilger now seems to be sounding a bit like my Dad.
Pilger can go stuff himself. He’s concerned about NZ undermining its relationship with China, yet doesn’t seem to have any concern about NZ undermining its relationship with the US.
That shows a fundamental ignorance about the options little powers have with big powers – unless he straight comes out and says “NZ should align with China against the US”.
There’s a Chinese saying “when elephants fight, the grass gets trampled”. NZ is a blade of grass. What we need to do is be small and out of the way enough that nobody wants to stamp on us, and then pivot to the side of the winners at the last minute.
When did RNZ start doing political polling? – Oh – it doesn’t. It does a poll of polls average.
This article on the RNZ website, posted today, has Nats down 3, Labour up 4, Greens down 2 and NZ First the Kingmaker – in their poll of polls.
@Carolyn Thanks for that. From the article:
“National went on….to cruise back into government [in the 2014 election]”
This is bollocks. Despite massive and disingenuous media coverage in their favour and a disastrous “Moment of Truth” the Nats scraped back in.
As the article says, their current polling leaves them in trouble and the English honeymoon is coming to an end. The Nats can’t get more than 40% under English which leaves them in trouble.
“the Nats scraped back in”. Now that really is hilarious.
What parallel universe do you inhabit?
They scraped back in by an act with ACT and United Future. Not a resounding win. Unless as friends of ours who like to just compare National with Labour 2014 as though no other parties matter.
But don’t forget the 4% of wasted votes that went Conservative. It’s fairly safe to say that few of those would otherwise have gone to Labour, most would have otherwise gone Nat or maybe Winnie.
Yes, it’s been consistent over the last three elections that the country is around 7% to the right
It’s you in the parallel universe. Really, check the ejection results. National needed three support parties rather than just one.
Can Labour afford to win the next election?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/91039043/labour-amps-up-pressure-on-donors-warning-campaign-may-be-scaled-back
So what? We all know that Labour is short of funds and we all know that National have many dubious big donors.
“We all know that Labour is short of funds…”
“So what? “
Do you think it will be another nail in their coffin when it comes to the election? Funding is not all they’re short on.
You seem desperate for Labour to fail.
Not at all. But I would prefer to see them move more to the left.
I’d prefer them to nail their colours to the mast.
As the government sets out to renegotiate the China free trade agreement, a survey of businesses found most businesses see no benefit from FTAs.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/91042376/most-businesses-see-no-benefit-from-ftas-many-prefer-protection
+1 – The Chairman – like the ‘trickle down’ theory – years of the ideology of fake trade, massive reliance on external factors and countries has made little difference to most business but a hell of a mess to local living standards and affordability, and one of our biggest exports… is now profits not goods or services.
“One of our biggest exports… is now profits not goods or services”
Indeed, saveNZ. And it seems more company profits are about to head offshore.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/91046612/dunedin-city-council-dumps-councilowned-company-from-20-million-rubbish-contract
Part of the issues is that the people doing the calculations are not looking past the sticker prices and are foolishly and slavishly taught to exclude other factors, jobs, wages, welfare payments, homelessness and crimes (when people have no jobs), etc
Thatcher famously said there is not such thing as society. Labour and Greens need to bring back ‘society, aka community, in their calculations.
Because money is just a commodity, and being loved, accepted, healthy, safe and free to make your own decisions as an individual, community and country and influence those decisions and be listened too, is more important than money for most people.
Caring about local people is now labeled as ‘harmful protectionism’ to be avoided.
I just don’t think Labour has really been able to message that in a modern way.
Their previous messages of tax rises and declining levels of social security with free trade and foreign investment not having to pay their taxes, is not the same message. It’s an unpopular message.
I seem to recall that Paul Holmes thought it would be good for his olive oil business…and everyone was very excited to get those cheap deals on garden furniture at the Warehouse…we’re an easily distracted bunch really….
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10502493
Seventy-one percent of respondents say the new Kapiti Expressway has either made no difference, or made things worse.
Funny, that’s exactly what local and overseas experience said would happen. Still, I suppose, at least some National Party donors made lots and lots of money.
One Anonymous Bloke – not surprising at all.
I drove on it last weekend and it was fantastic.
NZTA have always said there would be bottle neck issues until Transmission Gully is completed. It is a great start though.
Have nzta ever solved any long term traffic issues? You think building two highways means bottlenecks just disappear, no they just get shifted somewhere else. I hope that was worth the almost $2 billion dollar spend.
Exactly maui, all it does is shift the traffic jam down the road a bit further.
It is like this farce we have going on with the Waikato Expressway, Hamilton section 17 bridges in a 22 k length of road
nzta are crowing that it will knock 33 minutes off the journey. No it won’t all it will do is to get to the traffic parking area known as the Southern Motorway 33 minutes earlier.
Bottlenecks tend to shift elsewhere when one is playing catch up and construction of the overall roading network has failed to keep up with growth, thus is vastly insufficient. Not to mention, dangerous.
“I hope that was worth the almost $2 billion dollar spend.”
That depends on how much one values life, thus the added safety value the new and improved highway provides.
lol
You please easily – a highway is “fantastic”? There are many adjectives to use, some of them even approving, but if a highlight of your day is the motorway to work then you’re doing life wrong.
http://bv.ms/1JudYgT
Greece’s Highways Are Smoother Than Its Finances
By Marc Champion
Oh look, Herald journos (with probable exception of David fisher) are on an SAS charm offensive.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11829109
We know there are some decent ones because they approached Nicky Hager with their stories and I’m sure the soldier in the item was a decent one too. But there are the other sort too. Around 15 years ago an ex SAS soldier did some computer repair work for me. He took advantage of my next to nothing knowledge of computers to charge me more than an arm and a leg. I’m talking around $200 dollars for a job I later learned was worth less than $50.
Charming.
Dairy is Scary
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/30/dairy-scary-public-farming-calves-pens-alternatives
There was talk of a Chinese company wanting to do this down South a few years back. Does anyone know if they succeeded? God I hope not.
“The ethnic makeup of New Zealand’s new intakes of prisoners has set new records.
Maori now make up a higher proportion of all new prisoners than at any time in recorded history.
Ministry of Justice figures released last week showed 56.3 per cent of people imprisoned last year were Maori – the highest proportion since records were available from 1980.”
Unbelievably bad and in so many interconnected and intergenerational ways.
“…Auckland University of Technology law lecturer Khylee Quince said New Zealand courts were “incredibly punitive”. “About half of people in prison in New Zealand are there for property and drug offending. Very few Western nations send people to prison for those types of offences.
“It’s outrageous.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11828500
the sick thing is Māori will be blamed for it and for not fixing it!!! When clearly the bias is shown and known throughout all stages of the process – from racial profiling, to not enough diversity on the bench, to ingrained systemic bias against Māori, to politicians saying little and doing even less even while they build MORE prisons and let serco-like scum run them.
You have to ask though, why do the Maori party continue to support the Natz in their right wing policies…
Clearly whatever Maori party bribes they are getting are not working out for most Maori…
Oh look marty mars the very next comment by saveNZ fits you prediction “sick thing is Māori will be blamed for it and for not fixing it!!! ”
Gotta love NZ racism, so predictable it hurts
sadly it is very predictable adam
Oh well keep supporting the Maori party if you think they are working for Maori! Statistic’s show they are not, but hey, if you want to call everyone racist to stop questions being asked about their conduct…..
What have you done to help reduce the number of Māori in prison?
He has criticised the elite-favouring Maori party, the reps of the ultra-rich Maori minority who are happy with neo-liberalism.
How has that helped reduce the number of Māori in prison?
A small start…
I don’t see how.
“Oh well keep supporting the Maori party if you think they are working for Maori! Statistic’s show they are not, but hey, if you want to call everyone racist to stop questions being asked about their conduct…..”
Citation needed for the stats that show the Mp aren’t working for Māori.
So how to get the 2017 edition English and Collins to pay attention to the 2011 versions?
“And he has a surprising ally in Corrections Minister Judith Collins who, on TV3’s The Nation last month, joined Finance Minister Bill English in describing prisons as a “moral and fiscal failure”.
English had said: “Prisons are a fiscal and moral failure. And building more of them on a large scale is something I don’t think any New Zealander wants to see. They want a safer community and they want protection from the worst elements of criminal behaviour, but they don’t want to be a prison colony … It’s the fastest rising cost in government in the last decade and my view is we shouldn’t build any more of them.” ”
http://www.noted.co.nz/archive/listener-nz-2011/the-problem-with-prisons/
Yep, but what is English’s solution?
To just make criminals ‘disappear’ like pollution, homelessness and unemployment when their policies are creating them in increasing numbers.
What an illusionist the Natz are…
Billions have been targeted at Maori to improve these sort of terrible statistics yet it’s not improving it’s getting worse, why?
What’s going on? why are Maori fighting society?
Because society is fighting them?
Do you think society is anti-Maori?
Well, I’m a quant guy, so the stats like life expectancy, educational attainment, avoidable hospital admissions, unemployment rates (most socio-economic indicators, really) tell me “yes”, but qualitatively I also have a certain “yes” impression. Even in the deep south.
Do you think it isn’t anti-Māori ?
Big questions with a variety of answers. What do you think the issue is?
I’m only guessing here, but II think’s it’s more a cultural/mental issue, 150-200 years ago Maori had to be hard warriors to survive in Aotearoa, only the toughest and hardest Maori survived and prospered.
I do believe that this sort of mindset is still mentally ingrained within Maori today that comes out at times of intense emotional situations(“the red mist”) which leads to all these bad scenarios that end up putting so many Maori behind bars.
I wonder if the answer is eventually over time like the Scots the Maori will just eventually mellow lose that initial fight response and develop other avenues to deal with issues.
Can’t believe that comment has stood for over an hour and no-one has called you on it by way of simply telling you to fuck off.
“Red mist”? Mellowed Scots? “Initial fight response.”
Where in the name of fuck are you dredging this shit up from?
I started to write something and then decided there was no point. There’s a whole post worth of things to pull apart there.
Yep I wrote a couple of replys but decided it wasn’t worth it.
I know, right? It was like he distilled fuckedinthehead into such a concentrated form that any possible response was woefully inadequate to the level of pointlessness.
Useful tool for debates, especially with those trying to deflect or muddy the waters – http://www.krisconstable.com/logical-fallacies/
Kiwi rail, kiwi rail, kiwi rail………… sigh!
Can’t remember the initial cost kiwi rail put on the repairs to the Gisborne/Wairoa rail line but my maybe was around $4 mil ?
Far too much for this govt! so it set about widening roads/adding passing lanes so those required extra freight trucks could beat the road into gravel, and now this announcement that the rail-bike business deal is all go ahead.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/91041334/new-railbike-tourism-venture-for-mothballed-gisbornewairoa-train-line
But, but, but………. what about the proposal from the Gisborne business community and the logging company that had freight stacked up just waiting for the line to come back into service?
And the roads, what has been the increase in costs of road repairs since all freight has been on trucks? (never mind the costs of passing lanes etc).
Were Iwi whose land sections of the line are built on consulted? What about the HBRC and the local businesses that had their proposal shat down the crapper?
My only consolation is the barstads haven’t started ripping out the lines already, but the whole sorry saga gets me very, very angry at this govts poor vision and constant fall back position of taking the option that enriches their mates, fuck everyone else.
I guess you’d be thinking of a Friedlander in all of that.
They really do seem to have a ‘grab it while you can’ attitude. Which is why, when we do eventually get a change in government, it’ll be important to just take it all back with no, or little compensation for those involve in what is effectively theft.
(After all ……… “the market the market” etc.)
hey, cheers john, for highlighting this.
well said, too, once…
bloody rogues the lot of ’em.
kick the lobbyists out
Flynn’s own words then: “I mean, five people around her have had, have been given immunity, including her former chief of staff,” Flynn told Chuck Todd. “When you are given immunity, that means that you have probably committed a crime.”
It seems he now wants immunity…
http://www.vox.com/2017/3/30/15132280/michael-flynn-immunity-testify
Flynn protegees named as the source of Nunes’ revelation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/us/politics/devin-nunes-intelligence-reports.html
edit:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8M_IkzXkAEw5c6.jpg
heh
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8NNBfVUIAAEmtR.jpg
“Lookups for immunity spiked over 2500% over the hourly average after The Wall Street Journal reported that a recent national security adviser was interested in the subject.”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/news-trend-watch/flynn-offers-to-testify-in-exchange-for-immunity-20170330
looks like all of the dumps staff are looking it up
“Operation Burnham: the cover-up continues
by Nicky Hager”
Has this been aired?
“Jon Stephenson and I, the authors of Hit and Run, have now had time to study the defence chief’s statements. Our conclusion is that the NZDF criticisms are wrong – with one exception – and that they have failed to address almost everything of substance in the book. This is what a cover up looks like.
1. The raid described in the book “is not an operation the NZSAS conducted”: INCORRECT
“The information presented in Keating’s press conference leaves no doubt that the book and the defence chief are talking about the same raid. Keating gave the name of the raid (Operation Burnham), the times and date (12.30-3.45am on 22 August 2010), the location in the Tirgiran Valley, and said the SAS arrived in two Chinook helicopters, used SAS snipers, found a quantity of ammunition in one building and had one SAS trooper injured by falling debris. All of these are details of the SAS raid publicised first in chapter 3 of the book. There were not two different raids with the same operation name at the same time in the same valley. It is obviously the same raid…….”
http://www.pundit.co.nz/content/operation-burnham-the-cover-up-continues
And Paul Buchanan in SpinOff has added this :
http://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/31-03-2017/an-inquiry-into-the-hit-and-run-claims-is-now-essential-and-there-is-an-obvious-person-to-lead-it/
Where did all the honest people go?
I think I’m getting jaded.
Mr Buchanan has it correct, but if this inquiry is to succeed it has to make sure that the people right at the top who made the decisions are brought to account and not the service personnel who were doing their job at the front line who are punished and made accountable for what happened.
Always the same all through history – no wonder Key did a bunk – slimy toad – of course it was always going to be a bad decision made right at the top of the tree, they are never made accountable. Look at Bush – he has never been made accountable for the terrible decision he made to be the big boy and invade Iraq, how he sleeps at night beggars belief.
Hager and Stephenson need to stay strong and keep on the course and make sure this sees the light of day. Our servicemen men need more support and they never get it – that report on the tours of Afghanistan show how much was lacking in their support, lack of equipment and lack lustre treatment of our service personnel who died out there.