Written By: - Date published: 5:51 pm, October 18th, 2013 - 21 comments
Last week there was a Fabian debate between Wayne Mapp and Jane Kelsey about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement that New Zealand started originally as a free trade agreement. Bearing in mind the short notice there were a quite credible audience. However to enhance the audience, Lyn Collie was inveigled into filming and editing the debate. Here is the film of the debate..
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, October 16th, 2013 - 31 comments
As the resulting court battles die away and the suppression orders lift, the level of sheer dumb stupidity and outright silly paranoia of the police and other agencies involved in Operation 8 becomes clearer. It is time to start examining the officers in the police who brought so much dishonour and disrespect to their force. And where better than Te Putatara who has a post up which details a raid who had a court examination of the validity of the bloated and illegal search warrant to court – while a raid was in progress.
Written By: - Date published: 9:01 pm, October 13th, 2013 - 30 comments
It isn’t that hard to get around the prurient arsehole peekers that populate the NSA and the kiwi puppets – John Key being a prime example. Encrypt, falsify your “metadata”, and send lots of crap purely so they have no idea what to look at. Hell – even the NZ Herald gets it these days as in an anonymously published article in the weekend rag…
Written By: - Date published: 4:05 pm, October 11th, 2013 - 12 comments
Maurice Williamson has apparently been proclaiming that the lower than expected population growth in the census (mostly from people fleeing his government and emigrating) means that a revision of Auckland’s infrastructure plans was needed, such as an increase in high-rise apartments and the construction of an inner-city rail loop. Bullshit. Perhaps the idiot minister should look at *where* the growth has been going…
Written By: - Date published: 12:52 pm, October 9th, 2013 - 20 comments
Hadyn Green was at the Brunei TPPA talks in August for Consumer NZ and a couple of other groups. His post on Public Address today is an excellent run through many of the points that bother me. For instance a section on intellectual property where the TPPA will restrict the current freedom of trade! Arrgghh!.
Written By: - Date published: 7:55 am, October 9th, 2013 - 44 comments
One thing John Key always seems to like to do is to appear to be stupid about his own job. Last week the fool said that parliament had to ratify a TPPA treaty. Either through incompetence at his job or by deliberately lying to the public, he is completely wrong. This is something that a few minutes reading of the MFAT website could have told him.
Written By: - Date published: 11:48 am, October 7th, 2013 - 55 comments
My current view is that the TPPA will provide intergovernmental welfare for Fonterra and farmers while destroying our rapidly expanding technical export industry. It just leaves us as a farm for the world just as we we used to be the farm for the UK. We remain susceptible to policy changes from outside destroying our economy. But maybe this public debate on Wednesday evening in Auckland will provide more information.
Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, October 6th, 2013 - 28 comments
The Sunday programme this evening has Rob Gilchrist, police spy and provocateur, breaking his silence about the decade he spent amongst mostly peaceful activists. He was one amongst the very many sworn officers and informants that the police, spy agencies, and their civilian detective agencies use to monitor and often to disrupt democratic change. At […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:22 pm, October 1st, 2013 - 14 comments
I’ve managed to miss a milestone on this site (again). As you can see, we’ve passed 13,000 published posts over the weekend. That really isn’t bad for a voluntary coop over a 6 year period with no particular publishing schedule beyond “put something up if and when you feel like it”. Looking back, I see […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, September 28th, 2013 - 101 comments
The levels of agreement in IPCC AR5 preliminary report on oceans are no longer ambiguous. Enough data has (finally) been collected.
Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence). It is virtually certain that the upper ocean (0−700 m) warmed from 1971 to 2010, and it likely warmed between the 1870s and 1971.
Written By: - Date published: 2:37 pm, September 24th, 2013 - 53 comments
National is a very traditional party. They think that NZ is good at clearing land and raising animals, with a bit of mining on the side. The population is there to service farmers and miners on low wages. That may have been the case in the 1950’s. But as usual they’re hopelessly dated. Sometimes in recent years it has appeared to me that Labour thinks that way as well. But it looks like David Cunliffe is intent on refocusing us back on the burgeoning hi-wage and hi-growth hi-tech sector.
Written By: - Date published: 2:10 pm, September 20th, 2013 - 18 comments
The spinners in parliament and government are rather predictable. They dump their embarrassments late on a friday, preferably on a long holiday weekend or with a sporting event. I’m picking that today we will see some material dropping off the rear of DOC related to what Nick Smith saw and can no longer remember….
Written By: - Date published: 6:45 am, September 19th, 2013 - 65 comments
Ok, I’m very pleasantly surprised. David Cunliffe has made a very interesting choice for chief of staff. Based on what I know about the task, she looks like a damn good fit for the role. In fact I’m just surprised that he managed to attract her at all for the thankless task.
I’ve always thought that the Chief of Staff role should be exercised by someone who was more managerial and staff orientated rather than being deeply embedded in the political game.
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, September 17th, 2013 - 134 comments
This may be shades of getting over-Apple’d as they mercilessly flay people on iTunes with their gargantuan pile of boilerplate each time they change a line.
However there are a couple of policy changes on this site that people should be aware of.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, September 16th, 2013 - 51 comments
For many years there used to be a blog site called The Thordon Bubble that was dedicated to the minutiae of the political scene as seen from a small area in Wellington. I always thought it was a perfect name for the thermocline difference of views between the hunting grounds of the politicians and parliamentary political media, and what happens inside the Labour party. The leadership vote numbers highlight the scale of the event horizon between them.
Written By: - Date published: 8:50 am, September 13th, 2013 - 125 comments
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike… First make sure that the mike doesn’t bite.
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, September 12th, 2013 - 100 comments
I voted for Cunliffe, Robertson, and Jones in that order. My reasons are in this post. It is unnecessary for people to speculate on additional motivations.
But if any MP or jonolist wants to try to run a politically based smear on me like they did on Jenny Michie, Mike Williams, and others then I’m perfectly happy to tear them a new rectum through their political credibility over the next decade.
Written By: - Date published: 10:02 am, September 5th, 2013 - 23 comments
If Key and Joyce aren’t simply corrupt, then they are some of the most stupid business people I’ve ever seen. But most likely they’re just politicians trying to cover their arses for making a stupid mistake. It looks to me like they have gutted TVNZ to give a bare land deal to SkyCity, ignoring the value of the building on top or the profitable business that they will destroy in the process.
Written By: - Date published: 9:55 am, August 27th, 2013 - 36 comments
In the odd moments that I have to view and write about politics outside NZ at present, I happened upon a Wall Street Journal article this morning about the election contest in aussie that got me thinking. Australia is leaning toward electing its first conservative government in six years, to be led by a man considered […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:39 am, August 26th, 2013 - 32 comments
There is a reason for candidates in single transferable vote elections to sing in harmony. It has to do with the effect of second preference votes.
This probably explains the remarkable singing in harmony of Grant Robertson and Shane Jones this morning.
Besides it provides a nice simple story for the rising jonolists in the media.
Written By: - Date published: 8:45 pm, August 22nd, 2013 - 42 comments
The word is that the NZ Council decided tonight when they will cut off the memberships which are current for voting in the membership vote on the leadership primaries.
The deadline is at midnight tonight.
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, August 14th, 2013 - 5 comments
The SkyCity deal still needs some urgent attention from members of the public interested in getting a submission to the select committee. They close on Thursday 22 August next week. The politically corrupting influence of the gaming industry means that members of the public will have to push the politicians to stop them giving SkyCity these extraordinarily lucrative and destructive concessions for a economic pittance.
Written By: - Date published: 7:28 am, August 7th, 2013 - 77 comments
600,000 comments is getting pretty large. Even more disturbingly we are almost exactly on Eddie’s predictions of getting to a million comments by the August 2015 – in a exponential growth curve. While the numbers of posts per month aren’t changing that much, the numbers of comments per post have risen to average 75 per post. I have some charts and a bit of personal philosophy on what it all means…
Written By: - Date published: 1:52 pm, August 4th, 2013 - 49 comments
Were David Henry and his staff the right people to pursue an inquiry? They were incapable of opening a Outlook .pst file. And this appears to have held them up for days. They had the files before they even requested permission from Peter Dunne and (apparently) only their incompetence prevented them from their intent of reading the emails. If they’d been capable of using google, then our political landscape might look quite different..
Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, July 27th, 2013 - 132 comments
This cartoon by Mark O’Brien at monsta.co.nz probably accurately reflects the distasteful uncertainty that many of us feel about the purpose and intent of John Key’s bill to control the past and future excesses of the GCSB. Put away a bit of your weekend at 2pm and come and show your MP’s why they should […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, July 27th, 2013 - 124 comments
Jono Hutchison invented a story that aired on 3 News last night. He took a single inaccurate comment expressing an opinion and wrapped a story around it as the angle. The comment he used was in my observation quite inaccurate and has escalated my opinion of Jono to that of being a lazy dickhead unworthy of being called a reporter.
Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, July 24th, 2013 - 145 comments
To say that the GCSB law changes are misguided is the kindest possible interpretation, but many people including myself tend to view them as being quite malevolent. They aren’t going to provide any more security for citizens and residents here. But they are going to provide more security for incompetents in the security and police forces from both public and legal scrutiny. There are series of protests planned, and one in Auckland tomorrow. Updated – packed.
Written By: - Date published: 2:19 pm, June 2nd, 2013 - 67 comments
Been having a look around the question of party memberships. Turns out there was a good investigative package in The Nation last year. We really need to tighten this stuff up. From alleged National’s “raffle ticket” membership to the incompetence of our revenue minister’s party being unable to locate their members, it seems like an awful lot of money flowing around with little accountability.
Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, May 11th, 2013 - 127 comments
The story this morning of a hotelier in Whangarei causing a lesbian couple to seek another place to sleep. That she was worried about them doing “sodomy” under her roof might be amusing. However the coprolalia syndrome that it displays has been tiresomely endemic amongst the self-ordained fuckwits in recent months. When will they take time to educate themselves so they don’t look like they just have brain defects?
Written By: - Date published: 5:26 am, May 10th, 2013 - 35 comments
Yesterday’s NZ Herald editorial gave a hard-line conservative view of what a charity should be. Charities should and must deal with ills of society on a person by person basis without attempting to fix the causation. That sounds more like a parasitical “charity” like the workhouses of the 19th century or the adoption factories of the 20th than anything that a person of goodwill would choose to support.
Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, April 30th, 2013 - 23 comments
When you look at the dependence of farmers in extreme climates around the world who are reliant on regular weather like the monsoons in Bangladesh or the mild winters in the gulf stream washed areas like Europe, it is clear how reliant we are for food on our relatively unchanging climate of the past 11,000 years.
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