Written By: - Date published: 2:24 pm, September 6th, 2009 - 8 comments
In Ponsonby there is a bloody great big hole which is all that remains of the unlamented DYC Vinegar factory. It has been affording the locals some amusement between bouts in hearings. The site was to be a $250 million mall. The hole was dug last year. However it stopped abruptly when the development group […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, September 5th, 2009 - 17 comments
An old favourite came around on the playlist. It sounded like the ostriches that occupy the sewer and appear here for our entertainment… So I tracked down a live performance by Leonard Cohen. The Man from Uncle version with the studio soundtrack is pretty funny as well. Lyrics over the page… Everybody knows that the […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, September 3rd, 2009 - 71 comments
There are an interesting couple of posts over at Red Alert about an editorial in the Dominion Post yesterday. Grant Robertson describes it as a bitter diatribe. Trevor Mallard thinks it is a bit over the top. I think that the editor who wrote it is an authoritarian git who really needs to consider why […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, September 2nd, 2009 - 12 comments
The Economist has an article on the recent election in New Zealand’s current region of conflict – Afghanistan. The title of the article says it all really, so that is the title of the post. But here are a selection of depressing quotes from the article to make people realize why this is currently a […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, September 1st, 2009 - 62 comments
ACT as part of its coalition agreement, and probably as a result of their funders conditions, forced a review of the Emissions Trading Scheme last year. The review has concluded that the science is valid and chosen to go with the IPCC 4th report as a basis. This is of course extremely conservative and doesn’t […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, August 19th, 2009 - 34 comments
Open Parachute has a post Evidence, not lawyers about that well-known writer of political fiction, Ian Wishart, issuing a press release saying that he is preparing to sue the Chris Barton at the NZ Herald and Gareth Renowden at Hot-Topic. As Open Parachute says The offensive sentence? ‘Only this week breakfast TV host Paul Henry flirted […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:46 pm, August 16th, 2009 - 28 comments
This video from Phil Twyford, Labour’s spokesperson on the campaign to make sure that Rodney Hide is prevented from buggering Auckland by selling critical assets to his mates in the business community so they can raise prices, diminish maintenance, stop capacity building, and make more profits for themselves. Given the history of natural monopoly privatizations […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, August 8th, 2009 - 3 comments
If you’re interested in the software that runs this site and many others, there is a wordcamp in Wellington this weekend about the open-source wonder WordPress. WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:47 pm, August 7th, 2009 - 20 comments
John explains how what he said was taken out of context, and he outlines his views on climate change.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, August 6th, 2009 - 11 comments
John Key has recently acted like a jerk to a young mother worried about what climate change is going to mean for her future and that of her child. Essentially he said that she should stick to what she knew. Bearing in mind the complete lack of understanding that both John Key and his NACT […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:41 pm, July 29th, 2009 - 26 comments
This has been added to the policy because as Lew points out there appear to be morons in government, blogs, and in journalism who appear to think that by speaking out on a blog about politics implies that you lose all expectation of protections on privacy. I’d suggest that all blogs insert this or something […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, July 29th, 2009 - 12 comments
Nick Smith is the front-man for this government on climate change, and it appears that he knows absolutely nothing about the numbers. The ones he has been using are not related to his claims. It is puzzling because he was an engineer who are usually accurate users of numbers. It is more likely he is […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:43 pm, July 7th, 2009 - 20 comments
After a remark by all-your-base the other day, I’m testing how good Akismet (the WordPress anti-spambot) is. I’ve removed the need for entering a captcha for registered and logged-in users. That is a reasonable compromise for a test as the registration is protected with a captcha. If anything manages to get through it is (based […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, July 6th, 2009 - 22 comments
The US has finally managed to pass a bill through the house of representatives dealing with climate change (sort of). It is laden with pork-barrel initiatives because the congress members realised that they could treat carbon credits as a type of free-money boondoggle. It still has to pass the senate and get approval from Obama, […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, July 5th, 2009 - 12 comments
There are a few odd times that I wish I was living in Wellington instead of Auckland (not often).This is one of them. There is a lecture by one of the leading researchers looking at the geology of the West Antarctica ice sheet (WAIS) and the critical medium-term effects of climate change. Tim Naish says […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:16 pm, July 1st, 2009 - 54 comments
This post by Scott Yorke over at Imperator Fish amused me. It is such an apt description of the differences between the two major political partisan blogs in New Zealand. I like to visit The Standard now and then. There’s an occasional gem to be found there, although an angry hectoring tone largely dominates. The main […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:59 am, June 30th, 2009 - 34 comments
Ok. The new server is up and running after a few painful days with the system being suspended, and then after moving it to a backup and having a partition run out of space (yesterdays problem). The ostensible reason that Bluehost were suspending my account was because the processing usage on their CPU’s was exceeding […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, June 24th, 2009 - 19 comments
The hosting company has moved the site to a new server last night at about 10pm. That is nice, however they didn’t bother to inform us that it was happening. Of course it was 0400 their time. I noticed it because I was working on a few bugs like the archive page at the time. […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:40 pm, June 19th, 2009 - 22 comments
I’m unsure exactly what the server glitch was earlier today. The hosting company had a problem with our database going ballistic, so they shut it down and suspended the account until fixed. By the look of it, I was told about 5 minutes later and a few minutes after that received an e-mail from the […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:52 am, June 15th, 2009 - Comments Off on Glitch
There has been a domain registrant glitch that has had the server unavailable. Fixed now.
Written By: - Date published: 7:52 pm, June 13th, 2009 - 7 comments
The by-election is over apart from finding out the result. So I’m dragging my tired and abused body to the party to find out the result. It was a long day and night. This is the second time I’ve been struck down with a cold, or in this case, some obnoxious common (not swine) flu […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:02 pm, June 12th, 2009 - 26 comments
Today all of the hoardings in Mount Albert go down. Tommorrow the many volunteers from all major and few minor parties will assemble to help get voters to go to the polling booths. For people in Mount Albert who are unsure if they can vote in that electorate because you just moved there. You can. […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:24 pm, June 12th, 2009 - 74 comments
Breaking news from Stuff / DomPost LATEST Richard Worth has resigned as an MP with immediate effect. Dr Worth, who entered Parliament in 1999, said he had gone for the good of the National Party. “Since I resigned as a Cabinet Minister earlier this month, I have been considering my personal options, and also the […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, June 12th, 2009 - 7 comments
No Right Turn has been investigating John Key’s baby: Back in February, Prime Minister John Key came up with a bold and radical plan to end the recession and create jobs: a cycleway the length of New Zealand. As it became apparent that the plan was not a joke, and was in fact being taken […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, June 12th, 2009 - 9 comments
Rodney Hide, in his role of Minister for Local Government, has made himself the petty dictator of Auckland’s future. Therefore he is ultimately responsible in that role for a curious request through his minions. Phil Twyford reports at Red Alert.. Council water staff in Auckland have been given a case of the jitters after Councils […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 11 comments
Lynton Crosby of the political spinners Crosby/Textor, who ‘advised’ both John Key and Don Brash, has finally given up on trying to pursue a unwinnable defamation case against Nicky Hager and Radio NZ.The case appears to me to have been started largely as intimidation by the Crosby (and maybe the National party) to find out […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:41 pm, June 8th, 2009 - 17 comments
Well it is that time again. We just rolled over the 3000th post on the site. Number 2000 was in November last year, so it took 7 months – not bad considering that it took 6 months coming up to an election last time. The comments are sitting at 95,000. So we have done about […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, June 6th, 2009 - 128 comments
The Queen of Thorns at Ideologically Impure has a post with this wonder title about the type of victim bashing that the some of the right have indulged in this week. Notably tsmithfield from our comments page. Here are her answers – pretty good considering she had a cold. First bold: ‘If the victim didn’t […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:00 am, June 4th, 2009 - 20 comments
Happy 50th lprent! Now here’s someone Russel Norman could legitimately call grey 😉 But seriously, Lynn is a baby-boomer, one of those generation born with a golden spoon who enjoyed a free education while lumbering my generation with debt. A generation who are now further stealing from mine by refusing to pay for their own […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:42 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 31 comments
It turns out that Phil Goff was aware of an allegation about Richard Worth weeks ago that may relate to the current investigation. Labour leader Phil Goff took an allegation of Richard Worth’s inappropriate behaviour towards a woman to Prime Minister John Key about a month ago, it emerged tonight. This was apparently not the […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:17 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 1 comment
Over at No Right Turn, Idiot/Savant writes:- The Auckland Governance Committee has called for submissions on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. Two copies, by Friday, 26 June 2009, to: Auckland Governance Committee Secretariat Parliament Buildings Wellington The bill contains the details of the government’s Auckland Supercity, including its plans for at-large election, no Maori […]
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