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6:00 am, June 1st, 2026 - 47 comments
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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 Policy).
Step up to the mike …
Do their lives matter?
Mini-Minister Simeon IMO, unsurprisingly fobs it off…."where it makes sense"
Do our lives matter? Having had two prostate cancer diagnoses, treated by surgical removal and then by radiation, I have some skin in this debate.
More than 4000 men are diagnosed each year. There are 1,030,000 men aged over 40. Every year, therefore, some 0.4% of men over 40 are diagnosed with prostate cancer. Over 40 years that's 16% of men. 700 die each year of this cancer. That's 2.7%.
The effects of prostate cancer for 16% of men, for 8% of our population, is surely worthy of pilot programmes?
Because prostate cancer can grow very slowly and often lacks early symptoms, a large portion of these 700+ deaths occur in men who are diagnosed too late for curative treatment.
Young men, like our Minister of Health Simeon Brown at age 35, may not feel the urging of age. Intimations of mortality peak in our 40-50s, and then decline as older people become more accustomed to the prospect of death.
As Wordsworth wrote in his Ode;
"The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;"
Be like the setting sun, Simeon, and enable a good watch over our mortality!
mac1, firstly, hope you are allgood now?
And..I have given all of this some thought…over quite a while.
It is possibly Ironic that a small part of The Human Body (also a good Bill Bryson book)…that it can be both a Life giver…and a Life taker…..and yes, I do know other parts also etc; etc;
However…for a small part, with such possible detrimental consequences to our Mens Health, to be denied such a small amount..($6.4 million over four years !) by IMO such a small minded Mini-Minister…seems absolutely unacceptable.
Take care, all the best.
Thanks for the best wishes. I should have said that I am all well and good now, thanks to early diagnosis and the best treatment by public health. The costs of my treatments would have been unaffordable otherwise- full body scans, operations, radiation, follow-up scans and inspections etc.
You are right. Totally unacceptable. Against the $6.4 million should go the costs of more expensive treatment if diagnosed later and the costs involved in a man being longer away from productive work and attendant taxation, as well as social costs to friends, family, the loss of ability to put back into society what greywarshark refers to below- labour, volunteering work, academic and artistic endeavours.
What is the value of a life? New Zealand estimates via the NZTA the value of life to be $12.5 m for a median age person in good health, double the cost of this pilot trial.
Hidden ailments that are treatable; there is also the bowel problems – colonoscopies and breast cancer. All treatable. So the health system needs to do better more quickly.
Those receiving treatment I think, need to consider what they can put back into society. In turn society needs to stop giving so much importance to long life as a measure of how well a country stands on old criteria for progress. Let us die when we wish after getting our affairs in order, which would be good practice, then the hospitals wouldn't be full of people over 75 years. They could then help younger people faster who with their active lives of work and their families, friends and living their lives well.
Well of course they did. One positive ….IMO its a sign they, and donors are not so sure of a big ACT Parliamentary presence? Rally round the Family…..of creeps.
I think these donations show how worried the Right is that it will not win the election.
For Labour and the Greens, I suggest that somebody start an Obama-style mass small donations campaign. I could see 20,000 people sticking $20 into an account for these parties, maybe more.
Not only does this raise funds, but it also creates a movement.
BG
My take on it… for sure.
Re small donation campaign….slightly humorous : )
A Give a Little page…..
But yeah something like could easily work.
Cop…..scumbags. Australian in this instance….(and they were on body cam ?! : (
Sadly, they are in every country. ….
IMO body cams needed in NZ Police…..
In Australia, they were jailed.
In Israel, they get medals!
Maybe moreso in Australia, there are whistleblowers, with Moral centres, but IMO there are some in Israel too.
And an onya to those brave Kiwi Police men and women who stand up about and for same..often at cost.
House of El describes the recent deals that Xi didn't make with Trump and those he did make with Putin, when they visited him recently. As well, China has just placed a national ban on private investors buying new US stocks, government securities and bonds. They can now only sell.
The US is looking to borrow almost a trillion dollars in the next 5 months. With this ban China joins other countries in dumping US government investment, but at larger scale. This will surely crash and burn the US economy.
https://youtu.be/nTeQBOES2dM?si=P0JadmSg0-3RJB11
Trumpistan is drowning in govt debt, unlike NZ Aotearoa, which is why our fair Lotto lady, Nicky-No-Boats, is laser-focussed on shrinking debt, and indeed the govt itself.
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GGXWDG_NGDP@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD
Otoh, Kiwis are much closer to leading the world when it comes to household debt.
Forgot to add monetary theorist Stephen Hail's final conclusions.
The myth of the household analogy (that debt is always bad), is being used by CoC to scare NZers into accepting the shrinkage of the role of the State in economic and social development.
However, this does not mean that the State is actually spending less – instead it is handing out gifts and incentives to businesses and landords and through tax cuts skewed to the top end. The justification is the fallacious insistence that only the private sector can be the engine of social and economic development.
It's a wealth transfer from the bottom and the middle to the top.
What I would say to you is everything 'we' do, we do to give the very $orted $$$.
A household could focus on paying down debt to be mortgage free asap or
*savings into other assets (growth stocks etc)
*energy efficient house (solar panels) and car (EV/hybrid)
*health and or income insurance
*private schooling
*small business finance
The Coalition insists on shrinking the Public Sector to a Fiat 500 ‘Bambino’ and on bulking up the private sector to kit it out with a V8 petrol engine, mag wheels, and a spoiler to make it more efficient and go faster. The towbar is for the trailer for transporting fire wood to the marina for export, so that we can pay off the Bambino.
That might be their 'justification' to the general public, but it's a bald lie used to hoodwink the public into believing they know best. The reality: they are consumed with an insatiable greed solely for themselves and those they regard as their own kind. Everybody else can go s**t themselves.
I've been watching the demeanour of Nicola Willis and Erica Stanford closely in recent times, and their false (outlandish at times) enthusiasm when justifying their respective decision making, tells me neither can be trusted in any way. They almost appear to be trying to copy the genuine article we saw with Jacinda Ardern and it ain't working.
IMO NACT1 are all empathy free people. So have literally no fkn idea, or even care for that matter, of the harm/consequences of their pronouncements and actions.
The only way its going to change for us all at the lower end of the table…is end their rule. November.
Maybe I'm making too much of this – perhaps all those blue-tinted 'Lotto wins' have simply coloured lucky Lotto lady Willi$' sorted perception of material hardship.
Might explain why NAct MPs have no compunction punching down on Kiwis doing it tough in this cost-of-living crisis – more investment opportunities please. Move-On!
Very good cartoon Drowsy.!!!
November – just as well the election isn't on the 5th. I hope. What other people have done around that historical date – sung, and …
And we would never be able to do this here without it spreading out of control. Lewes Bonfire Night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcecvnlgu8E
The Rt 'Hon' Luxon – tripped up by his own greed – Move On!
I'm just watching a Rentokil presentation and they didn't show that sized cockroach, only the ones from the NI east port that came from Australia. We are burdened by vermin – I'm afraid.
"To journalism"? Heather Duplicity-Allan, yours is in the NZ Post.
If you watch the Ardern doco Barely Sober stands out with his constant attempt at 'gotchyas' whilst others have more constructive questions.
The wife isn't political and at one point asked who the a-hole was with the stupid questions again and again. Not surprised the coalition has rewarded the ZB hack for his services to their cause.
Next it'll be arise Sir Mike Hoskins and how about a gong for Plunket whilst at it.
I remember when Barry Soper's life was saved by the NZ Health system, read NZ taxpayers, and the only thing he could say about his experience was that it was like being in prison. I don't know how he knew what it was like to be in prison.
His very junior South African wife also claimed that Pacific Island people were leeches that time around the same time.
Sir Soper, for you.
It's not a knighthood, even if you want it to be for the purposes of having a go at me, seemingly the biggest nemesis of this forum.
Paranoid much or just wrong?
Why would I not be paranoid on this platform? I get banned at the drop of a hat and I feel moderators do try bait me to that end. So that's what I thought you were doing.
After another 2 week ban by weka upon return I’ve had both off you directly reply to me within minutes of regular return. It’s quite intimidating.
You could of course give me some space…
" I don't know how he knew what it was like to be in prison."
He lives in the same house as Du Plessis-Allan.
That's one thing we have in common. I'm usually three months on, then three months off due to being banned.
In the last 18 months you've been banned once, for 3 months.
It's always illuminating the gap between how bannees perceive things, or retell them, and evidence based reality.
We all forget things. The problem is when people misrepresent moderation and use that to hassle the mods about decisions.
Drowsy would you split up large paras – I can't sort out my ideas else. This I thought from 8 above, was great on Barry Soper about our ex-PM Ardern – I find it amazing how terse critics can be from their superior position of being, not the donkey, but the tail.
What tainted honeyed phrases. I expect proper gestures and action from a good PM as would raise us internationally and bring us plaudits. The self-serving ones we have now who daren't or can't be bothered to condemn Palestine's decimation, harsh treatment for 4 days of a good man trying to offer food aid show incompetence. And no doubt many people could add to our PMs list of non-compliance with the ethical, and practical, government leadership rules, if he knows of any.
I will try to remember to do that greywarshark, although the passage quoted @8 appears as a single paragraph in the source Newsroom article, and altering quoted material is (rightly) frowned upon. Not sure if that includes formatting, and I’m guilty of (sometimes) reformatting, e.g. italicising speech between quotation marks. I try to do this consistently, but miss bits or run out of time.
I was going to say Trevor Noah is nice, but that's not true. He's moral and very smart and occasionally sweet, though.
I enjoyed his recent chat with Hasan Piker.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lSZocmOQoME
Otara issues.
*Some Otara folk are pre loading by buying at the only local bottle store in the town centre (near food outlets) then sitting in some open space nearby a bar.
*Others are unemployed, thus around in the daytime (these people are said to also inhabit a horse racing betting outlet).
The police seem to think the need for their presence will end if there is no bottle shop.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/361010871/bottle-shop-blamed-otaras-public-drinking-anti-social-behaviour
That's a great read Drowsy thanks.
It seems that Kiwis are virtual sleep walkers in the main. People can get excited about getting a thing near to them done, but keep on supporting a vile government producing unease and sorrow and a poor outlook in every way, along with lost values, trust, and obvious inadequacy.
I thought of sleep walkers – somnambulists. Then ringing bells to wake up people – tintinnabulation, there is a cartoon series about a bear with that name I think. The words connected with bells offer a number of terms to describe our situation – 'bats in the belfry' for instance. There are a good number in this link. https://reversedictionary.org/wordsfor/bell-ringing
I think we should regularly awake people prior to the election of the need for Kiwis to get some clear tones, new thoughts. Lepers used to ring bells to warn people to get clear of their toxic presence – there is a word tocsin. But let's hear more chimes and peals and grow more bellflowers, begone the clang of a knell!
How to get into people's heads? Tell me where is fancy bred, or in the heart or in the head?
And famously, Luxon, bell-end.
An option for the South Pacific Island players (Tonga and Samoa and Cook Island) would be selection to be available for pick-up by NPC teams.
The base salary is c$20,000 for a 4 month period (pre-season July, games August, September October).
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/360986696/winston-peters-initiates-talks-save-moana-pasifika-super-rugby-side
More personal description of the Israeli treatment of flotilla activists by Australian film maker Julie Lamont, from 1:30 min.
https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2026/may/30/i-was-raped-by-israeli-soldier-gaza-flotilla-survivor-breaks-silence
I have just been looking at TOP's "tax reset" and from it I quote:
The Citizen’s Income replaces most benefits, with top-up support available for superannuitants, parents and others.
If their UBI merely replaces benefits, and top ups take them only back to square one, then they will, effectively, not be receiving the payment that the rest of the people will be receiving; although it's beneficiaries who probably need it more. I think benefits should continue as is, and the $400 per week paid on top. The same thing applies to superannuitants.
This I think is Guy Standing's position also. Standing is probably the UK's foremost authority, and advocate, where UBIs are concerned.