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- Flashback Saturday: Subsidies for Electric Vehicles – How do you like them lemons?
Every weekend we dig into the archives. This post by Stu was originally published in May 2016. Imagine, for a moment, that I was trying to sell you a bag of organic lemons. Now imagine that my bag of organic lemons costs ...4 hours ago - New research, August 5-12, 2018
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below. Climate change impacts Climate change and future wildfire in the western USA: an ecological approach to non‐stationarity (open access) Influence of uncertainties in burned area estimates on modeled wildland fire ...17 hours ago - Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears the Global Crown
In the middle of the nineteenth century, England was the world’s greatest economic power and led the greatest empire the world had to then experienced. What was not understood was that its supremacy was already being challenged. At the core ...19 hours ago - Labour supports Muldoonism
Last month, National's Nick Smith pushed a Muldoonist bill aiming to force the Department of Conservation to surrender part of a protected forest park so farmers in his electorate can build a dam for irrigation. Sadly, it seems that Labour ...21 hours ago - Stuart, Ecoute nous – listen to us
Stuart McCutcheon’s team has spent today telling people working in the University of Auckland’s School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics that they may no longer have a job. McCutcheon’s decision to axe 5.5 full-time equivalent jobs, equal to 30 per cent ...22 hours ago - Hard News: Friday Music: Aretha and the power of song
The times in which the great Aretha Franklin has passed, like the times in which she emerged, require us to consider not only her remarkable contribution to popular music, but what she meant even beyond that.I'm indebted, then, to Chris ...1 day ago - UnsurprisingThe 2017 election delivered a tight result, with National feeling cheated because they no longer held a majority. So naturally, they've been trying to persuade NZ First MPs to switch sides: National leader Simon Bridges has tried to talk New ...1 day ago
- CRL Station Fly-Through videos
City Rail Link Ltd released videos yesterday showing fly-throughs of all of the stations being built or upgraded as part of the project. They really give the best view yet of how the stations will look and feel when the ...1 day ago - Matthew Hooton’s latest fevered conspiracy theory: lügenpresseNational Party loyalist and paid political propagandist Matthew Hooton stooped to another low strategy recently, responding to a news report embarrassing to the National Party’s Simon Bridges with allegations of ‘corrupt’ journalism. I’ve noticed that when he’s under pressure, Hooton seems to ...2 days ago
- The powers who seem to yearn for NZ to become “Somebody Else’s Country”… once again
The barrage of fulminations, recriminations, and invective aplenty have been spewing forth lately across the spectrum, from the papers, the airwaves and the Idiot Box (cue the wild eyed looks, so useful in the medium of TV where what you ...2 days ago - MyThinks on the government’s response to the strike
Greetings. After what could only be described as a celebration of the profession yesterday, today was definitely a plummet earthwards in comparison. What annoyed me the most this morning was listening to the last couple of minutes of the Morning ...2 days ago - Climate change and wildfires – how do we know if there is a link?
Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. A firefighter runs after trying to save a home in Lakeport, California, suffering its biggest fires ever. ...2 days ago - A contempt of Parliament?Today in the sparring over the waka-jumping bill, Nick Smith reminded everyone of something we'd forgotten about: NZ First's dubious attempts to coerce their Members of Parliament: NZ First leader Winston Peters has defended a clause in the party's constitution ...2 days ago
- Teachers’ Strike
Workers who go on strike, and thereby cause some inconvenience to the public, cannot usually expect much by way of public sympathy. But last week’s striking teachers, like the nurses before them, seem to have been met with a great ...2 days ago - More pillageBack in 2014, the then-National government rammed through the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Act 2014. The Act was an act of pure pillage, using the excuse of a strong storm to undermine the Forests (West Coast Accord) Act ...2 days ago
- A bit richSo, the Education Minister thinks teachers are demanding too much money:The Education Minister says teachers' demand for a 16 percent pay rise over two years outstrips what others in the workforce are receiving. [...] Chris Hipkins told Morning Report he ...2 days ago
- Wireless Docs: Losing My Language
Isaiah used to speak Chinese, or that’s what his immigrant parents have told him. Born and raised in New Zealand, Isaiah cannot recall ever speaking Chinese. In the third documentary of the new Wireless Docs series, Isaiah, now 26, revisits how being English-speaking ...2 days ago - Government forgets the Unitary Plan happened
The new Government has made some giant leaps forward in transport policy since they were elected last year, most notably through the 2018 Government Policy Statement and the progress that’s now being made on light-rail. A lot of their housing ...2 days ago - Humans are pushing the Earth closer to a climate cliffA new paper, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has received a lot of media attention. The attention is justified because the paper paints a very grim picture of the climate and what humans may be ...3 days ago
- Corbyn, Black September et cetera – I was, of course, completely wrong
Just a heads up that yesterday's post, suggesting that the images of Corbyn waltzing about a Tunisian cemetery with wreaths were taken at different times and locations is completely wrong.While the people in the images do change, and the chain ...3 days ago - Strike!Last evening I made the fatal mistake of telling my son that, “tomorrow we’re sleeping in.” This turned out to be taken as a reverse challenge, so I have been awake since five. Eventually my puku instructed me to get ...3 days ago
- Press statement: Economic rights are human rights: It’s time to legislate
Media Statement For Immediate Release Wednesday 8th August 2018 ECONOMIC RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS: IT’S TIME TO LEGISLATE If New Zealand wants to close the inequality gap, it needs to follow the advice of the United Nations and enshrine economic ...3 days ago - More Australian racismHow vile is Australian politics? A federal Senator has called for a "final solution" to immigration, and called for a return to the white Australia policy:An Australian crossbench senator has invoked the term “the final solution” in an inflammatory speech ...3 days ago
- Is Don Brash really different from those Canadians?While most normal people remained blissfully unaware, the free-speech wars have raged across the New Zealand internet like wildfire. read more ...3 days ago
- Teachers deserve a raisePrimary and intermediate school teachers are on strike today in effort to get higher pay and better conditions. Good on them. Teachers are massively underpaid for the work they do, and there's been an exodus from the profession as a ...3 days ago
- How getting a job turned into a series of tests
Pre-employment drug tests, psychometric tests, aptitude tests, credit checks, police checks and health tests add up to a lot of work before you even get the job - or don’t get it - Naomi Arnold discovers. Photo: rawpixel / ...3 days ago - Minister, Stuart McCutcheon isn’t making the teacher strike easy for youOn today of all days, it should not escape everyone’s notice that at the same time teachers are standing together for an education system that values and attracts new and incredible people to teach our kids, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Auckland, ...3 days ago
- CapturedA farmer illegally digs up a reserve, destroying native vegetation, in order to plant pasture to make the land they lease seem more attractive to foreign buyers. You'd hope that in New Zealand, such actions would lead to charges under ...3 days ago
- Sea Path engagement
The NZTA are starting public engagement today on Seapath, the walking and cycling path alongside the Northern Motorway from Esmonde Rd to the Harbour Bridge, where it will link in with Skypath – which the NZTA have also been tasked ...3 days ago - More on Corbyn, Tunis, Black September et cetera
4 days ago - #goodnewsstoriesby Melanie Vautier You might have seen a new hashtag emerging on the CANA Facebook page: #goodnewsstories. You might, equally, wonder what these stories about bananas and tramping tracks have to do with our coal focus. Well, I’ll tell you! ...4 days ago
- Who Are You Calling “Evil”?
4 days ago - And more cronyismLabour's cronyism continues. Last week, it was appointing MP's partners to a charity trust. This week, they've appointed former Labour MP Margaret Wilson as deputy chair of the Waikato DHB. As with many crony appointments, its not so much an ...4 days ago
- Some defence!Yesterday Forest & Bird released a report into dirty dairying, showing that some regional councils have been turning a blind eye to pollution. Several regional councils have since tried to quibble over the results - results base don information they ...4 days ago
- What the Haumaha inquiry is aboutFrom the moment it was revealed that new Deputy Police Commissioner Wally Haumaha was a rape-apologist, it was clear that he had to be fired - and that outcome only looks more likely with the new revelations about his bullying ...4 days ago
- Climate change: Fixing the ETSThe big problem in New Zealand climate change policy is that our key emissions control mechanism - the emissions trading scheme - is unfit for purpose. Stacked with subsidies to reward polluters, and flooded with fraudulent foreign "credits" in its ...4 days ago
- Policing social media – who is coming next and who is behind it?
Free speech and the problems of deplatforming and censorship are in the public mind at the moment. The banning of the conspiracy theorist outlet Infowars by a number of social media networks is just the latest example concerning many ...4 days ago - School Bus brouhaha
4 days ago - Racist of the yearApparently the "New Zealander of the year" award has been turned into "racist of the year" with the nomination of Don Brash:Former National Party leader and Reserve Bank governor Don Brash has been nominated for New Zealander of the Year. ...5 days ago
- Time to end the pastoral lease rortStuff had a story yesterday of another South Island farmer whining about the government imposing access over "his" leased high country land. In this case, the Commissioner of Crown Lands had imposed an easement to allow a nearby camping ground ...5 days ago
- Turning a blind eye to pollutionThe Resource Management Act is our key defence against environmental pollution. But in order to be effective, we need regional councils to enforce it - not just by denying resource consents for polluting activities, but also by ensuring that polluters ...5 days ago
- Light Rail & Pt Chevalier
The planning for light rail to the North West is only in its early stages and many details and decisions have yet to be decided. One of the most important decisions will be the location of stations and how they ...5 days ago - Legal Beagle: Last call on the Electoral (Integrity) Bill: A plea for Labour, New Zealand First and ...The Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill is going through it's final stages, and will likely pass this week.It is going to pass, and amendments - such as a sunset clause - or the exclusion of electorate MPs from its scope - ...6 days ago
- Corbyn, Black September Graves et cetera
During the election campaign last year a story surfaced briefly about Jermey Corbyn visiting a cemetery in Tunisia and taking part in a ceremony to honour 'Palestinian martyrs'. The controversial aspect was that - buried in the same cemetery were ...6 days ago - Checkmate In Two Years?
6 days ago - The Government v. The Business Community: Playing Chicken Over Employment Law Reform
6 days ago - While the Left fiddles, the Right beats their war-drum
. . While the Left has been fiddling about with much gnashing of teeth and tears of concern over the right of two Canadian neo-fascists to speak at an Auckland City council venue – National’s focus has been laser-like ...6 days ago - Why am I striking?Imagine, if you will, a small class of, shall we say fifteen to eighteen pupils. Perhaps this class is in a small and well-resourced school. Maybe the class has one-to-one devices. In all likelihood this school is a charter school. ...6 days ago
- 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #32
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week. Editor's Pick Scientists mock Trump’s tweet on wildfires as ‘comedically ill-informed’ and ‘unmitigated crap’ Trump's climate denial is "a crime against the planet" ...6 days ago - Welcome to the Pliocene
The whole story in a table.... The graphic below (click on it for a large version) is adapted from a table in the supporting information from a newly published paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Trajectories ...7 days ago - Debunking business “confidence.”
One of the more suspect metrics used to evaluate a government’s economic program is so-called “business confidence.” The premise behind surveys of “business confidence” is that business is the motor force of capitalist economies and business leaders are the most ...1 week ago - Better Health & Safety Laws Could Have Stopped The 1981 Tour!
1 week ago - Flashback Saturday: Estimating the economic benefits of speeding up Auckland’s trains
Every weekend we dig into the archives. This post by Stu was first published in January 2017. Introduction If you’ve been reading TransportBlog for a while, then you may have noticed that the term “dwell-times” crops up relatively frequently. The ...1 week ago - New research, July 30 – August 4, 2018A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below. Climate change Temperature, precipitation, wind Optimal Ranking Regime Analysis of U.S. Summer Temperature and Degree-Days: 1895-2015 Detectable Impacts of the Past Half‐Degree Global Warming on Summertime Hot Extremes in ...1 week ago
- Winning WinstonOne has been amused by the discovery by so many right-wing commentators that Winston Peters is not the devil incarnate that they have portrayed for twenty-five years and their surprise that he proved to be such a successful acting prime ...1 week ago
- What happened when Israeli state thugs attacked freedom ship: an eyewitness account
Below is a statement by Dr Swee Ang, who was the medical doctor on the al-Awda, the freedom flotilla ship delivering medical supplies to the besieged people of Gaza; among those assaulted and tasered was Mike Treen, the national director ...1 week ago - Hard News: Friday Music: Summer’s comingSigns that summer is on the way are not limited to the recent unnervingly early Spring weather: we're into festival reveal season and there are some things to discuss.Auckland's New Year's Eve party Wondergarden takes a big step up with ...1 week ago
- Climate change: Fonterra ditches coalBig news in the fight to lower New Zealand's emissions today, with Fonterra announcing that it is moving away from coal:Fonterra today announced it is transitioning from coal to renewable energy at its Stirling site in Otago. The move will ...1 week ago
- The bag-banThe government has announced that it plans to phase out single-use plastic shopping bags using regulations under the Waste Minimisation Act. Good. They're a significant source of marine pollution, and while not the biggest, they're an easy place to start. ...1 week ago
- Cities in the Year 2000 (chapter 2)
This is part 2 of a series covering “Cities in the Year 2000”, a kids’ book on cities published in 1985. Click here for part 1. I suggest reading on a desktop, as the screenshots of the pages should be ...1 week ago - Learning the lessons of past ITP mergersOver the weekend, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said he expected there to be fewer polytechnics left once the recommendations of the Tertiary Education Commission’s ITP Roadmap project and the Ministry’s review of vocational education and training were implemented. Two years ago, when Aoraki ...1 week ago
- There will be fewer polytechnics, Minister saysTertiary Update – Vol 21 No 15 In an interview on The Nation on Saturday morning, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said he expected there to be fewer polytechnics once the Tertiary Education Commission’s ITP Roadmap project and the Ministry of Education’s vocational ...1 week ago
- Hey Stuart, we all have a right to debate our futureStudents and staff at the University of Auckland came together last week to stand up against the intensifying efforts of Vice-Chancellor Stuart McCutcheon to silence critique of his leadership. Gathered together for a ‘teach-in’ led by the national president of the Tertiary Education ...1 week ago
- Our links to the community must not be lostHelen Stewart MacKenzie, a teacher educator at the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT), shares her thoughts on what’s currently working well at the institution as part of the Tertiary Education Commission’s (TEC) ITP Roadmap Project. One of the most important successes we can ...1 week ago
- Students and staff need a stronger voiceLast week, Annemarie Jutel, Professor of Health at Victoria University, was part of a TEU panel presenting to MPs on the Education Select Committee about the Government’s proposals to return students and staff to tertiary education institution councils. Here she shares her ...1 week ago
- Funding is the elephant in the roomCraig West, a senior lecturer at Otago Polytechnic, shares his thoughts on the future of the polytechnic sector as part of the Tertiary Education Commission’s ITP Roadmap project. It is great that the Tertiary Education Commission is taking the time to listen to ...1 week ago
- The “Over-65 Vote” May Be “Funkier” That National Expects.
1 week ago - How The New Zealand Left Transformed Southern And Molyneux From Unknown Rightists Into Free Speech H...
1 week ago - Safety finally on the agenda
Safety has been a hot topic this year, and for good reason, with the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads soaring. Turning the trend around has been a stated goal for both the government and Auckland. The ...1 week ago - This man should be firedSo, it turns out that in addition to being a rape-apologist, deputy police commissioner Wally Haumaha is also a workplace bully: Three women working on a joint justice project walked out of Police National Headquarters and refused to return because ...1 week ago
- Development update: August 2018
What a month it’s been for hotels. In the last month, the Herald has covered a number of new hotel announcements – an Indigo Hotel on Albert St, a Sudima Group hotel by the International Convention Centre, a TFE Hotels ...1 week ago - Tax cheats should be prosecutedNewsroom reports that homeowners are cheating on their taxes by refusing to comply with the bright line test:The bright-line test, a key part of both National and Labour’s strategy for addressing the housing crisis, is being flouted by as many ...1 week ago
- DrawnA ballot for two Members' Bills was held this morning, and the following bills were drawn: Holidays (Bereavement Leave for Miscarriage) Amendment Bill (Ginny Andersen) Broadcasting (New Zealand on Air and Te Māngai Pāho Reporting Requirements) Amendment Bill (Melissa Lee) ...1 week ago
- What next for improving Auckland’s buses?
Next month the final stage of implementing Auckland’s new public transport network will be completed, as the North Shore network goes live. This has been a long time coming, as the new network has been in the works since ...1 week ago - Inferno XIX: Whack-a-pope
The full text of the canto in Italian/English Il mio bel San Giovanni . My dear, beautiful San Giovanni. Of all the buildings that survive from the time of Dante’s Florence, this is both the most famous and the one ...1 week ago
Inferno XIX: Whack-a-pope
The full text of the canto in Italian/English Il mio bel San Giovanni . My dear, beautiful San Giovanni. Of all the buildings that survive from the time of Dante’s Florence, this is both the most famous and the one ...
1 week ago
Inferno XIX: Whack-a-pope
The full text of the canto in Italian/English Il mio bel San Giovanni . My dear, beautiful San Giovanni. Of all the buildings that survive from the time of Dante’s Florence, this is both the most famous and the one ...
1 week ago
Inferno XIX: Whack-a-pope
The full text of the canto in Italian/English Il mio bel San Giovanni . My dear, beautiful San Giovanni. Of all the buildings that survive from the time of Dante’s Florence, this is both the most famous and the one ...
1 week ago
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