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Coders Your Planet Needs You TheGlobalSquare: Call for coders. Your mission If you choose to accept it: Prevent the proposed creation of a Global Square from becoming the world's biggest talk shop. Empower this new Global Commons to act in the real world to intervene…
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Two weeks into the political year, who deserves the sack? Bill 'it's a guess' English, Lockwood 'small hands' Smith, Paul 'cheeky darkies' Holmes, John 'DJ' Key, Maurice 'Dumb' Williamson, Jonathan 'Dumber' Coleman, Craig 'Goebbels' Foss, Stephen 'Riefenstahl' McElrea, Trevor 'Scalper' Mallard, Tariana 'Slush Fund' Turia,…
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The famous hockey stick is the graph that tells us we're all screwed. Climate change is causing extreme weather turmoil, and the underlying average warming is going to cook the planet. There have been several interesting pieces on the politics of climate change recently. Let's…
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Whitney's funeral was today's news - across the BBC, Fox and CNN for over three hours. It was riveting; a great tribute to a warm and loving woman, and a reminder of how hard it can sometimes be for those whose gift it is to…
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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...
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Fran 'Sell it all' O'Sullivan is fuming over the Court decision putting aside the approval of Pengxin's application to buy Crafar Farms. She knows that Pengxin can't satisfy the actual legal test because its bid has never been about bringing benefit to New Zealand. Its…
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Private sector competition brings market disciplines and efficiencies to bloated publicly-owned monopolies. That's the mantra, eh? That's the indisputable truth... right? So, how come the Nats are planning to make ACC raise its levies and pay a dividend - for the first time ever -…
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No Right Turn on the plight of democracy in Greece. And so its come to this... Having screwed years of austerity out of the Greek government, the Germans are now openly discussing removing its democracy: There were signs a group of triple A-rated governments, including…
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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...
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Paula Bennett, in her rush to action, has a Green Paper that intends to create a White Paper that may result in some legislation that she hopes will help "vulnerable children". But, much as National have spurned attempts from other parties for a non-partisan action…
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Peter Radich, Chair of the Broadcasting Standards Authority, seems to have had a Hamlet moment at the Commerce Select Committee meeting yesterday, absolutely rejecting "any kind of improper influence" over his controversial decision on the PM's Hour. He apparently saw that accusation made on a…
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Weekend social is for non political chat. What's on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever. No politics, no aggro, why can't we all just get along?
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Bill English admitted yesterday that his new estimate that asset sales will net $6b in revenue, $800m above book value, is just a guess - the midpoint of the previous guess of $5-7b. And that's not all that's made up. The forecast foregone profits are…
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Computers have replaced many jobs. While it's hard to argue with the gains in efficiency and productivity in some cases, the downside is of course that it is real people who lose those jobs, and there are often no new opportunities for them to move…
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National's in retreat on every front. Its had to break its economic promises, again. Asset sales are a disaster. Ministers are exposed over the Crafar Farms, NZ on Air, and DJ Key affairs. The media's gone off Key ever since he declared war on them.…
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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...
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I attended the VUW post-election conference in Legislative Chamber today, held under Chatham House rules. Usual mix of insight tinged with the odd bit of bullshit - the best contribution by far IMHO came from Colin James. Election conference 12Feb16 James argues that 2011 was…
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Interesting opinion piece in the Guardian today. Suzanne Moore looks at how the neo-liberal mindset has pervaded through society so that we are no longer disgusted by poverty, but by the poor themselves: The idea that ultimately the poor must help themselves as social mobility…
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Sad as I am to acknowledge it, there is a nasty streak in New Zealand culture. Angry, authoritarian, often racist, thoroughly unpleasant. One of its symptoms (and of course one of its causes) is the way we tolerate, indeed sometimes glorify, thoroughly toxic commentators and…
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On November 30th, after the election, National received a $55,000 donation from Oravida. It's a Chinese-owned company whose former owner, Terry Lee, is director of Pengxin's Crafar Farms vehicle, Milk New Zealand, and co-owns a company, Natural Pure, with Pengxin owner Jiang Zhaobai that is…
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If you or I or, say, an Mfat official were storing confidential work files or, worse, officially classified information in our personal email and those files were hacked, you or I or the Mfat official would get the sack for gross misconduct. So when's McCully…
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If the evidence against the Urewera 4 is so strong and what they were planning to do so serious, how come they've only been charged with a handful of minor offences? And how come the others had the charges dropped? Where are the treason and…
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In yet another internet related act of stupidity Trevor Mallard has been busted scalping tickets to a bunch of kids. From Stuff: He came out and gave us the package really quickly and he kept saying: 'It's not what it looks like; it's not what…
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The Crafar Farms decision is sensible and a correct interpretation of the law. Foreign buyers must add something that a local buyer can't, other than a higher purchase price. Otherwise, our farmers will continue to be out-bid for our land by foreign government-backed companies that…
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Denise Roche's maiden speech deserves a special mention (hat-tip Felix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=TyKPW1hCwwU
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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...
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Haven't had time to watch many maiden speeches but of the few I saw Andrew Little's was a stand out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sksdWg0YNJc I'm sure we'll be putting a few more up over the next few days.
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"Not to the best of my knowledge - that is absolutely correct - I wasn't even aware these emails existed until I heard about them yesterday" a flustered Key said in Parliament today in response to another question from Grant Robertson about the Radio Live…
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Now there is a surprise (not). The Crafar farms sale doesn't conform to the economic benefits required under the OIO's act. I guess that Fran O'Sullivan is going to be distressed. "Anonymous" authors here actually knew what they were talking about, and the decision by…
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Gerry Brownlee has weakly attempted to fob off the decline in benefit:cost ratio of highway projects under National. 'Sure' he says 'we've been funding projects that barely break even while high BCR spending like early childhood education gets cut, but things will turn around'. Um,…