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- Leaks, dirt, and ethics
So, National leader Simon Bridges thinks he has found his leaker: the same MP he granted leave to a few weeks ago for "embarassing" personal health reasons. Given that the leaker supposedly sent text messages to Bridges and the Speaker ...11 hours ago - Our racist health systemWhen Don Brash and his ilk talk about "Māori advantage", they're ignoring a hell of a lot of empirical data showing that Māori are in fact disadvantaged. And now there's another data point for the pile: our health system is ...11 hours ago
- The “solution” that wasn’tIn 2013, National introduced its "solution" to housing unaffordability. Its "Special Housing Areas" were basicly a developer's charter, with fast-tracked resource consents and lax oversight. The aim, as stated in the bill's purpose clause, was to "enhance housing affordability by ...13 hours ago
- Hard News: Shots Fired
Last night's 11-minute debate on cannabis law reform on Q+A was hardly the first time the issue has been discussed on national television. But it can fairly be considered the opening round of the long argument that will precede the ...13 hours ago - NZDF decorated a war criminalNicky Hager has a new piece in North & South today, with new dirt on the defence force, including drunkenness in the field in Afghanistan, and a systematic failure to investigate a sexual assault. But the worst of it is ...13 hours ago
- 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #41
Story of the Week... Opinion of the Week... Legal Matters... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Reviews... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... 2022124 ...13 hours ago - Fuel Prices an opportunity for change
Increasing petrol prices have unsurprisingly remained a hot topic of conversation. Brian Fallow wrote an excellent piece on the subject last week. So why not give drivers a break? Because fuel prices are too low, not too high. This week ...17 hours ago - September ’18 – NZ blogs sitemeter ranking
A view of the Montserrat Monastery, Catalonia, from above. Views from the mountaintop were amazing Apologies for the delay this month. But my excuse is excellent – a Wine, Tapas and Walking Tour in Spain. I have come back ...1 day ago - 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #41
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week including numerous articles about the IPPC's Special Report, Editor's Pick Mary Robinson on climate change: ‘Feeling “This is too big for me” is ...2 days ago - Book review: Protecting Paradise: 1080 and the fight to save New Zealand’s wildlife by Dave Hansf...
by Don Franks Along New Zealand roadsides, especially on the South Island’s west coast, are hammered hand painted signs. “1080 poisons our water”, “Kea killed in 1080 drop”, “1080 kills everything”. The accused 1080 is an organic salt, sodium ...2 days ago - Donald Trump And The Art Of Populist Grotesque.
3 days ago - New research, October 1-7, 2018
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below. Climate change Understanding the abrupt climate change in the mid-1970s from a phase-space transform perspective Temperature, precipitation, wind Distinguishing trends and shifts from memory in climate data Persistence of ...3 days ago - Flashback Saturday: If you want more consumption choices, live near lots of other people
Every weekend we dig into the archives. This post by Peter was originally published in March 2015. One of the many reasons that people choose to live in cities is that cities offer variety. As Stu Donovan has argued before, ...3 days ago - Yale versus NZ Super Asset Allocation
Disclaimer: Punakaiki Fund Limited has lodged a Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) for a Public Offer. Please read the PDS if you are considering an investment. Yale Investment Office have just announced their latest results (good, especially with the lower risk they carry) and their ...3 days ago - Invercargill Spring Eco Fest
Guest blogger, Southland Forest and Bird Chair Lori Johnston, reflects on the Invercargill Spring Eco Festival theme ‘Climate Change: You Make the Difference’ The future hasn’t been written yet, but I saw previews of it at the Spring Eco Fest in ...3 days ago - Let’s make student and staff voice the law
The Education Amendment Bill returns to Parliament shortly. Currently, the Bill will give students and staff one seat each on all tertiary education institution councils – reversing National’s decision to remove these seats, therefore excluding us from decision-making at our institution. Green Party ...3 days ago - Cuts killAnother example of how austerity kills. A couple of years ago, when National was looking for things to penny-pinch on so it could pay for its tax cuts for the rich, NZTA cut the number of checks it made on ...3 days ago
- The IPCC Report: All Of A Sudden – Nothing Happened.
4 days ago - Just how much of the $2 billion Kiwibuild fund has Phil Twyford spent on Fortnite?
On the left is one thing we’re talking about. On the right is another thing we’re talking about. You see them here juxtaposed. You are now informed. One Auckland mother is reportedly furious and distraught after finding her finances several ...4 days ago - One state at a timeWhile America is looking like a pretty horrible place at the moment, there's some progess: the Washington state supreme court just abolished the state's death penalty:The Washington state Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down the death penalty there as ...4 days ago
- Over-estimating the importance of City-Airport trips
At its core, the argument over between the proposed City Centre to Mangere light-rail line and a Puhinui-Airport heavy rail spur boils down to the importance we place on serving direct trips between the City Centre and the Airport, compared ...4 days ago - Invisible Children
I do not know whether we were once the best country in the world for children. Certainly when I grew up in the 1950s we thought we were – even if there were no systematic comparisons. We returned from our ...4 days ago - Water Whirler doubles in value after beaning titanic douchemonger
Praise has been ubiquitous for the inanimate carbon rod. The Wellington man who broke the Len Lye Water Whirler sculpture may be relieved today after a report revealed that his antics on the waterfront art piece have actually doubled its ...4 days ago - Victims of Hurricane Michael voted for climate deniersFloridians are staring down a very powerful Category 4 typhoon that is causing extensive damage. The high winds, heavy rains, and storm surge will cost billions of dollars. We know that climate change is making these storms stronger. The storms feed off of ...4 days ago
- Canterbury Socialist Society Founding Statement
The Christchurch-based Canterbury Socialist Society has been organising educational talks, film showings and social events since last year. The public talks have ranged from Marx’s analysis of the working day to war resisters in New Zealand to the Frankfurt School. ...4 days ago - Government will provide therapy for business owners to help them feel more confident
Numbers notably don’t indicate whether it’s the business owners or if the businesses themselves are sad. In an attempt to ease plummeting business confidence, the not-Labour-led Government says it plans to spend some of its unexpectedly large surplus on therapy ...4 days ago - Hard News: Friday Music: Indeed a good one"That was my first Silver Scrolls – was it a good one?" asked Aldous Harding, who I'd just met, at the after-party."It was a good one," I said, before blathering on about the cultural import of Silver Scrolls ceremonies over ...4 days ago
- Submission on the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment BillI support the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill and ask that it be passed with the amendments suggested below. As this week's IPCC report shows, humanity needs to move rapidly away from fossil fuels if we are to have ...4 days ago
- VC’s first duty is to serve the public goodSharn Riggs, national secretary of the Tertiary Education Union, responds to an article by the chair of Universities New Zealand, Stuart McCutcheon, and reminds all vice-chancellors of their responsibility to improve tertiary education and enrich the contribution our public institutions make to society. ...4 days ago
- Māori women are now effectively working for freeOn 6 October Māori women effectively started working for free until 2019, because of the gender pay imbalance compared with the pay of men. Per hour of work, Māori women on average receive $24.26, compared with the $31.82 received by Kiwi men. ...4 days ago
- Focus on student and staff wellbeing more important than everTo mark Mental Health Awareness Week, the Tertiary Education Union is calling on all tertiary institutions to make student and staff wellbeing a priority. Last year the TEU published its second state of the sector report, revealing a serious drop in staff ...4 days ago
- “Unionism has been a significant part of my life” Te Tumu Araki candidate Hūhana WāteneHūhana Wātene is standing for Te Tumu Araki, Māori vice-president. She says “unionism has been a significant part of my life”. Her father was a watersider and her grandfather a “die-hard unionist”. She’s been active in the union for over 20 years. ...4 days ago
- Let’s carry on the work of Te Tiriti group, Te Tumu Arataki candidate Bill RogersBill Rogers is standing again for Te Tumu Arataki, Māori vice-president. Bill has been an architectural tutor at Northtec for nearly 20 years. Bill is Ngāpuhi and grew up in the Matawaia marae area. He is the current Tumu Arataki Māori ...4 days ago
- Equality must be embedded in all we do, women’s VP elect Sarah Proctor ThomsonWomen’s vice-president elect of the Tertiary Education Union, Sarah Proctor Thomson, is an academic at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, coordinating a degree. She’s been in this role since February and was in a general staff role at NMIT prior to that. ...4 days ago
- All institutions should adopt the Living Wage, ITP vice-president elect, George TongariroGeorge Tongariro is standing unopposed for the role of Tertiary Education Union industrial and professional vice-president. A senior IT lecturer at Whitireia in Porirua, George has recently stood down as branch co-chair, a position he’s held since 2010. George was ...4 days ago
- Voting opens for next TEU leadersUnion members across New Zealand have the chance to decide who will lead the Tertiary Education Union for the next two years as voting opened earlier this week to elect a range of leadership positions, including the national president. Two vice-president roles have, ...4 days ago
- Latest commissioner appointment heaps pressure on Education Minister for urgent changeEducation Minister Chris Hipkins’ decision to formally dissolve the combined council of WelTec and Whitireia and appoint a commissioner in its place is a clear sign that New Zealanders cannot afford for the current model of tertiary education provision to continue any ...4 days ago
- A Change Of Plan.
5 days ago - Dumping Simon Bridges May Be Just the Easy Option
Simon Bridges may seem to have been around for a long time but, in truth, he has been leader of the National party for a matter of only months rather than years. The qualities that persuaded his colleagues to vote ...5 days ago - The All Blacks Aren’t Done YetThe All Blacks may have retained the Bledisloe Cup, won the Rugby Championship with a game to spare, and beaten both the Wallabies and the Pumas twice in a row, but their single loss to the Springboks and their dramatic ...5 days ago
- Benefit sanctions don’t workThe Greens are currently campaigning to end benefit sanctions, under which people have their benefits cut and are left to starve if they refuse an arbitrary and demeaning drug test, or fail to take the first shit job they are ...5 days ago
- Private Funding for Penlink?
There was some interesting news late last week with the Auckland Chamber of Commerce announcing it had achieved a “breakthrough” on a funding deal for Penlink An unsolicited bid by an international group to establish a joint venture with a ...5 days ago - SkS Analogy 14 – Inertia and Inevitability
Tag Line Inertia is your friend … until it isn’t. Elevator Statement Inertia delays the response … But for each CO2 level there is a guaranteed response … Be patient, the response is coming … And when it finally comes ...5 days ago - “Surplus”So, the government thinks its in surplus, to the tune of $5.5 billion. Of course, its nothing of the sort. As I noted last time, when there are queues for basic healthcare, people without homes, underpaid public servants, and kids ...5 days ago
- Confronting Despotic Interference.
It is hard to fix a precise date when despotic politics entered the liberal democratic world, and then again when it began to corrode the rules-based international order. Some say that it started with the emergence of right-wing nationalism in ...5 days ago - Bigotry loses in RomaniaRomanians went to the polls over the weekend to vote in a constitutional referendum to ban same-sex marriage. Or rather, they didn't - because the referendum failed due to miserably low turnout:A referendum to establish a constitutional ban on same-sex ...5 days ago
- Petrol Pump Politics.
5 days ago - Airport connections, consider the whole network
The idea of a heavy rail spur to the airport has been getting an airing again and there’s a lot of deliberately false and misleading information being presented as fact as part of this. We’ve discussed the issue of a ...6 days ago - Australia wants to destroy the worldAustralia's response to the IPCC's dire climate warning yesterday? Full denial:The Australian government has rejected the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report’s call to phase out coal power by 2050, claiming renewable energy cannot replace baseload coal power. The deputy ...6 days ago
- Don’t let OMV destroy the planetLast month, we learned that Labour's "commitment" to end offshore oil drilling wasn't. In an act of bad faith with their coalition parner, and total, two-faced dishonesty, they were quietly planning to extend existing offshore drilling permits, giving polluters more ...6 days ago
- Unnecessary intrusionOne of the aims of the Privacy Act was to regulate government use of information matching. The Act prevents unauthorised disclosure, so any government use for (for example) seeing if people on the electoral roll are citizens or residents and ...6 days ago
- Cruel and barbaricOver the weekend, Nauru threw out NGO Médecins Sans Frontières, which had been providing mental health services to the suicidal inmates of australia's concentration camp there. So what is the Nauruan regime going to do about suicidal refugees now that ...7 days ago
- That was Then, This is Now #29 – Joyce’s $11.7 billion hole – goneburger!
. . “Billions of dollars extra cash that are there that they could dip into“, eh? It would appear that Ms Kaye has inadvertently ‘sunk’ Steven Joyce’s claims of Labour’s $11.7 billion “hole” made during last year’s election campaign. . ...7 days ago - Fuel Prices talk of the town
Petrol prices have dominated news and opinion columns for the last week or so as they reach record levels. In most cases the blame for them has been directed at the government following the most recent increase in petrol tax that ...7 days ago - The Trump administration has entered Stage 5 climate denialA cartoon illustration of the Trump administration’s climate policy logic Illustration: John Cook Several years ago, I wrote about the five stages of climate denial. To date, the Trump administration has pinballed between Stages 1, 2, and 3, calling ...1 week ago
- We should be trying to raise petrol prices, not lower themToday the IPCC released a devastating report showing that we have only a decade or less to deal with climate change, and that we need to cut emissions to zero by 2050 if we want to avoid catastrophe. Meanwhile, at ...1 week ago
- Remembering CheBelow is a list of pieces here on Redline by and about Che, executed without trial by the imperialists, October 9, 1967. Fidel Castro on the death of Che Ireland’s Che Guevara stamps The Legacy of Che Guevara Che’s African ...1 week ago
- Cleaning up our rivers
Our streams, rivers, and lakes are precious to all of us. Freshwater is the lifeblood of our communities. That’s why we’re pleased that the Government is continuing work to deliver on the Green Party’s commitment to clean up our rivers ...1 week ago - Climate change: A line in the sand for our speciesThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released its special report on limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, and argued strongly that the current two degree target is too dangerous:At 1.5C the proportion of the global population exposed to water stress ...1 week ago
- New climate report a wakeup call for all governments, including NZ
PRESS RELEASE The IPCC report on 1.5˚C should be a wake-up call for the government as it negotiates the Zero Carbon Act with the opposition, says Coal Action Network Aotearoa. The report, just released today, says C02 emissions need to ...1 week ago - The exception that proves the ruleOn Friday, the police announced they were charging the secretary of the People's Party with failing to declare donations on time. Great! Parliament has made it clear that they regard this as a crime, and its good to see the ...1 week ago
- Australia wants refugees to dieAustralia is currently detaining hundreds of refugees in a concentration camp on Nauru. Being detained indefinitely without hope pretty obviously causes mental health issues, and self-harm and attempts at suicide are regular occurances. To some extent, this problem is mitigated ...1 week ago
- They Do Things Differently There“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” So said the English writer, L. P. Hartley, in the first sentence of his famous novel, The Go-Between. In the light of recent events in the United States, we ...1 week ago
- A funny thing happened at the Mall…. . The other day I was at Johnsonville Mall, one of Wellington’s northern suburbs. Michael Wolff’s exposé, Fire and Fury was available at the mall’s Whitcoull’s at a discount, and I was keen to read for myself what was ...1 week ago
- 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #40Calls to Action... Story of the Week... Editorial of the Week... SkS Highlights... El Niño/La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... SkS in the News... Photo of the Week... SkS Spotlights... ...1 week ago
- Riding the Northern New Network
1 week ago - 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #40
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week. Editor's Pick The Nihilism of Trump’s Climate Policy The administration cites the likelihood of catastrophic global temperature rise to justify gutting fuel-efficiency ...1 week ago - The Political Amnesia Of Winston Peters’ Critics
1 week ago - New research, September 24-30, 2018A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below. Climate change mitigation Climate change communication Enduring Extremes? Polar Vortex, Drought, and Climate Change Beliefs Not in my back yard: Egocentrism and climate change skepticism across the globe Climate ...1 week ago
- War – the line between rememberance and glorification. . Without doubt or argument, the World War 1 exhibitions at the former Dominion Museum and Te Papa museum were feats of outstanding technical achievement. The abilities of creators Peter Jackson and Weta Workshop’s Richard Taylor are a stunning ...1 week ago
- Flashback Saturday: Demographia fails Urban Economics 101
Every weekend we dig into the archives. This post by Peter was originally published in March 2015. Every year since 2005, pro-sprawl think-tank Demographia has published a new edition of its “International Housing Affordability Survey“. They report a “median multiple” ...1 week ago - Looking into itSo, Callaghan Innovation's treatment of OIA requests from the Taxpayer's Onion and its wrongful release of personal information about them seems to have backfired badly, with the Ombudsman announcing that they may launch an investigation. And they should. Because apart ...1 week ago
- MI5 supports criminalsOne of the functions of Britain's MI5 is to support law enforcement agencies in the prevention and detection of serious crime. But it turns out they're doing the opposite, with an official policy of ignoring serious crimes by their agents ...1 week ago
- An unrepentant bullyThe Department of Internal Affairs has released the redacted investigation report into the allegations of bullying against former Minister Meka Whaitiri, showing that the investigator David Patten found it probable that Whaitiri grabbed (that is, assaulted) her staffer and yelled ...1 week ago
- New Fisk2 weeks ago
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