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Jenny Ruth has the best comment I've seen on Philip Field's sentence in today's Sunday Star-Times - not available on the paper's website or on Stuff.co.nz. Taito Philip Field was a pompous twit over the Thai tilers' affair, particularly in his inept attempts at a…
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The Greens are continuing their idiotic policy of "neither left nor right" today with a calculated smear of Sue Bradford in the Sunday Star Times. As far as I can see the story has been fed out by someone high in the party as a…
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We're trying a daily "Open mike". This is a place for anyone to post comments on topics that might be of interest, and for any discussion following up on the comments. Over to you...
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In case you needed reminding how completely deviod of morals and ethics unbridled capitalism is, meet dead peasant insurance. Here's Mark Ames of Exiled Online's beautiful rant against employers making money off their workers' deaths, and the whole screwed up, unethical, inhuman system: It's part…
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Readers of a certain age will remember an Antonioni film called Blowup. The title conceit involves a photographer who finds what appears to be a dead body in one of his photographs but when he blows the photo up to find out more all that…
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So President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace prize: OSLO - President Barack Obama on Friday won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said. "Only very rarely has a…
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We're trying a daily "Open mike". This is a place for anyone to post comments on topics that might be of interest, and for any discussion following up on the comments. Over to you...
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Mike Britton, the general manager of the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society, writes today in the Dom about the gap that appears to be developing between National's pre-election rhetoric and the post-election reality. Worth a look. In the lead-up to the election, John Key…
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I see Winston Peters is trying to resurrect his political career with another racist rant about immigration. I don't think there's much point in giving the man any more attention. My views are pretty much the same as No Right Turn. All I'd add is…
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I know I'm banging on about it this week, but it's rather an important topic! This clip from Wake Up Freak Out is an accessible introduction to the science of the tipping points that are going to accelerate climate change. As the title of my…
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Some of you will get the Trans-Tasman emailed to your work each Thursday. For those of you who don't know it, it's a little rag written by anonymous Tory hacks. Purports to have the inside word on goings on in politics and business on both sides of…
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I've just seen in the Herald that TVNZ has been using one of their TV 'psychics' in the Aisling Symes case. It's bad enough that they had this charlatan, Deb Webbers, on Breakfast talking about the case. It's reprehensible that they put this confidence trickster…
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Stabbing a kid to death is OK because it's: "expressing frustration over [tagging]" Taking away people's access to the most effective 'flu and cold treatment because it's a minor source for an ingredient(less than a third of pseudoephedrine comes from pharmacies according to Key), for a…
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Sweden has had a smacking ban for 30 years. How is that working out? Stockholm When celebrating the 30th anniversary of the world's first national ban on corporal punishment of children last month, Sweden's social affairs minister, Göran Hägglund, claimed a dramatic success over something…
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We're trying a daily "Open mike". This is a place for anyone to post comments on topics that might be of interest, and for any discussion following up on the comments. Over to you...
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The Bridgeman Concrete workers locked out for nine days hardened their picket last week. Two concrete trucks couldn't leave the depo, costing the company $3,000 in ruined concrete. The company responded by caving in, and lifted the lock out. As well as lifting their lockout Bridgeman also…
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Some photos from the Auckland bus driver lockout. The drivers showed up to the depots today to demonstrate they were willing to work, while the NZ Bus/Infratil managers stared at them from behind locked gates. These are from the picket line at the Mt Roskill…
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Under new laws proposed by John Key we're going to need a prescription to get any cold medicine with pseudoephedrine in it. Anyone who has found themselves coming down with a flu or cold as they run up to an important deadline will tell you…
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You know, if you look back to all the elections since 1957, there's only three you would say the Left lost outright - 1975, 1990, and 2008. In the Holyoake years, too much of the vote was being wasted on Left-leaning Social Credit, Muldoon lost…
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The Standard would like to wish Mrs Mavis Lawson many happy returns on her 100th birthday yesterday. We also had a chuckle when we read this from today's Herald: When Papatoetoe resident Mavis Lawson turned 100 on Tuesday she got the standard birthday card from…
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Well the intransigent owners and managers of Infratil / NZ Bus finally went on strike this morning in their quest for higher profits. They locked out the bus drivers for threatening to abide by their contract. This is causing widespread chaos amongst other businesses as their…
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Back in the 1980s, some people who had read too much Milton Friedman and had drunk too much whiskey at Backbone Club meetings, thought adopting the neoliberal economic model, that had never been proven to work outside textbooks, was the way forward for New Zealand.…
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From Inter Press: Climate Change: Food Supply Hangs in the Balance Uxbridge, Canada - Rocketing food prices and hundreds of millions more starving people will be part of humanity's grim future without concerted action on climate change and new investments in agriculture, experts reported this…
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A lot of stuff happens in the world, and Standard writers don't cover all of it. Let's try a daily "Open mike" post and see what happens. Hopefully the concept is self-explanatory, a place to post a comment on any topic*. Clearly this is modelled…
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Jonathan Coleman insists that there is nothing wrong with the Immigrant Advisers Act that restricts anyone giving any advice on immigration matters to registered advisers, against reasoned protest from Helen Winterbottom and others. David Farrar at Kiwiblog thinks this is a wrong call and I…
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hat-tip Sam Vilain in comments
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Rob Fyfe isn't the only business leader calling for socks to be pulled up over climate change. High powered companies appear to dropping like flies from the US chamber of commerce, on account of its anti-climate action stance. The lobbying powerhouse has been fighting an…
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There's a solidarity picket tomorrow outside Infratil's HQ in Wellington to support the locked out Auckland bus drivers. If you've got a moment in your lunch break head on over and support these workers against this latest example of New Zealand's growing employer militancy. What:…
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From The Guardian: Arctic seas turn to acid, putting vital food chain at risk With the world's oceans absorbing six million tonnes of carbon a day, a leading oceanographer warns of eco disaster Carbon-dioxide emissions are turning the waters of the Arctic Ocean into acid…