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6:00 am, June 5th, 2026 - 40 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 …
This is a good decision to free up a house for a family that actually needs it and will appreciate the help.
Kāinga Ora tenant Jasmine Hanham loses Christchurch rental over antisocial behaviour | RNZ News
Appears poor Jasmine has 'lost the Lotto', possibly more than once – them's the breaks.
Still, as you say, one family's loss is another family’s 'Lotto win.'
It’s not selling NZ off for parts; it’s about creating more sorted investment opportunities!
I wouldn't say "poor Jasmine has 'lost the Lotto' ", I would say Jasmine never deserved to be given a hand up and was obviously not very appreciative of being given the hand up. The other tenants and neighbours will be pleased to see her go.
And right there is the unGodliness I and many others have come to expect from national/act and their ilk.
Not even a modicum of morality or decency. Looking always for a back door to sneer and puff out ones chest. To look down and judge.
I hope no one in your family falls from your perfect world or does it hard. As I expect they would find it hard to be in the same room as you if they did.
Christianity it would seem has become nothing more than a cover for your hate. Than the religion of love, compassion and a devotion to uplift the most unfortunate.
Mind you with a CEO who can't accept the gospels, what can one expect from his sheep.
I would say Jasmine obviously needed, and still needs, a lot of help in her life.
And withdrawing the little she has, is not going to improve her life, or those people around her.
Yes she probably does need help.
"is not going to improve her life, or those people around her." – it will certainly improve those neighbours around her who you seem to have forgotten are actually the 'victims'. Do they not count?
We had a violently abusive neighbour some time ago.
I didn't even consider taking their home off them, as an option.
Nor should we.
Did you end up moving or did they?
If they happened to own the house, then it's a different situation obviously.
Did you get police involved when they violently abused you and what did they do about it?
The story about Jasmine first appeared (unsurprisingly) in the Herald – clearly as a defensive move to generate feelings that will lead its readers to support the CoC's recently announced changes to rents for KO residents. The headline does the job required – contributing to a generic smearing of KO tenants as ratbags unworthy of sympathy. Job done, tick, move on.
But the fly in the propagandist ointment is the story itself. Because anyone with the remotest experience of having high-needs children thinks, "how close have I ever got to losing it like that? – thank God I can keep private my fury at the lack of support and the indifference or cruelty of other people." And the thing that enables that self control most of all is having financial resources to find services and options that give parents a sense of agency, the feeling that they are least doing something. So unlike Jimmy, I feel no delight in this story, it makes me slightly sick, because this woman needs more help, not less.
Yup, like the homeless (aka those who’ll never win lotto and never deserve to win lotto), she and her kids have been told to move on – that’ll teach her.
This woman may indeed need more help. But so do her neighbours.
And, someone who not only harasses you, but threatens you, your carers, family and animals; and then records and posts both of these to TikTok – has crossed a line
There’s no line as such, there’s a complex issue that has many grey areas that change with time & space (i.e., PoV). Spare us the moral superiority of linear- and binary-thinking members of the mob who stir up the fire and fan the flames of [moral] outrage & indignation. You’ll recognise them by their spineless spray & walk-away behaviour.
Do you not have any sympathy for her neighbours who are also needing a hand up, and have been threatened and even their pets threatened?
What a nicely framed leading question, Jimmy. You don’t expect me to answer it, do you?
Yes I did actually.
You do want others and me to take sides?
I don't really think it is about taking sides as I would hope that 99.9% of the rational thinking population (and no I cannot back that up with actual statistics) would agree that the neighbours should not have to put up with their car being vandalised, receiving threatening letters re: themselves / pets, and being abused and filmed while being abused.
And quite frankly, it surprises me that several commentors on here are more concerned for the abuser than the abused.
Jimmy says,
"I don't really think it is about taking sides…"
Jimmy also says,
" several commentors on here are more concerned for the abuser than the abused."
Jimmy sides with "the abused."
Jimmy is confused.
You’re either too stupid to fully understand or too devious to admit what you’re doing, which is creating and propagating a polarising and divisive narrative that invites an equally polarising and divisive counter-narrative. Your consistent comments speak for themselves and your contempt is clear. Own it.
Yes, definitely leading, not to mention the unnatural sentence construction. 'Do you have sympathy' is more natural, imho. Perhaps you're dealing with a robopath. I see robopaths everywhere, and am drafting an MP exposé.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/05/30/the-secret-diary-of-louise-upston-2/
It might be more attractive to stay in a garage than a house next to a mad person who has children with a special condition. She has lost herself to difficulties overwhelming and adopted attitudes on social media and warped tech sites.
Someone you can't come to an understanding with. They can drive you 'mad', and then their madness spreads. The social housing is very patchy as to whether the conditions around you enable you to live in reasonable comfort. I think on TDB one commenter had 90 year old parents living next to a violent man with I think a shared wall. He would rage and threaten his housemates and the parents too I think. They were frightened. and peace of mind is a good that we would all like to have. But not under a neolib free market, uncaring, money-first self-advancing political system as in NZAO.
I've mentioned before my line of work, Support Worker to some very complex & violent & obnoxious & bizarre behaving people, we had one guy who was a menace to neighbours so we found him a place in a rural area so he can scream & shout & bang on walls to his hearts content. One size does not fit all.
Something for the Jimmys & Belladonnas to think about is some of the people I have supported weren't born with a mental illness, some have been trauma based, some from an accident (& remember a head injury can cause an issue years after the event) or it can just come on for seemingly no reason at all, there but for the grace of god etc…
IFL I read a previous comment from you and was really thankful that there are people like you around. It is important that you are kept safe. One fellow that I met years ago died while looking after some chap, some happening connected with having a bath. May have slipped or such but it was sad.
But Lake Alice etc shows that there has to be a constant pressure for authorities who want to run the country, to accept all the people who are here, not cherry pick the nice ones. If only we could make it a huge value to be a patron for a clinic that assisted needy people.
I saw recently a glossy publication with a winning house in a building program for ones over $4m. What if that person had instead taken pleasure from assisting dealing with needy people as a patron, even if he considered it like having a stable of fine horses. It needs a change in social attitudes.
I Feel Love, thinking about how I get irritated to hell at times and kick plastic things around the kitchen. It's very therapeutic. Do you have a place or method for releasing anger and despair, probably mixed?
If you have soft balls half the size of a pillow in different colours and the person chooses whether it is a yellow, orange or red one that fits. Well that cuts across the strength of the impulse. Also do you manage to get a laugh out of it? 'Oh that was an orange one was it, could be worse then eh?'
What methods do you use to talk people down? I read years ago that Japanese men, who were in demanding jobs with bosses to match, could go away from desks and throw things at pictures of their boss.
Of course she can't stay there and harm her neighbours – I would bever claim otherwise. But what happens next?
Today walking down the main street of Dunedin I counted 9 homeless people begging for money. 20 years ago there was none, it really was only ever something I saw up in Auckland or Wellington, the big cities, now tiny little Dunedin has as many as I used to see in Auckland back in 90s. My GF wants to move to Australia & I really do not want to, but it's getting harder justifying staying here, & I'm relatively comfortable but I know things are better over there.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/weather/597283/watch-violent-storm-sweeps-through-the-centre-of-nz
How will we cope with this triple onslaught of destructive weather and swarms of locust-like pests of politicians and administrators plus tech-driven megalomaniac schemes that will chew up our needed resources. We should eschew them hah! – but how?
We have cardboard politicians when we need sturdy minds and bodies who enjoy being NZAOs and like each other, ready with imaginative, far-seeing, practical mindsets sufficient to cope with trends and tribulations of a challenging nature to the body politic. Instead our simulants, trained in the political game of appearance-control, trickery, and how to divert money and power to themselves or to the magnetic attraction of a well-paying monopsony. They have a tertiary degree in living high on others low opportunities and incomes. Down the chain our living conditions and community value systems and interests in life are degraded.
Here is the transcending power of the wealthy to raise themselves over the rest of humanity to god-like, mythic conditions, just as an interesting contrast. In modern times Little Red Riding Hood becomes the wolf.
A stirring, encouraging story about changed attitudes of authority bettering the rigid, unreasonable codes, in this case sexual, so destructive over centuries.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/books/i-was-outed-by-two-people-everything-just-collapses-and-you-think-your-life-s-done
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/597338/couple-of-small-modular-reactors-a-new-pitch-for-nuclear-power-in-new-zealand
Cheap carbon emmisions free with recyclable waste, seems a no brainer who'll we wait for fusion.
I only know what I read and listen to, so yes, but let's not get ahead of ourselves – only Russia and China have operational SMRs.
There doesn’t appear to be an officially proposed SMR site in Japan. I'd like to see how SMRs (are) run in western democracies, and would prefer NZ wasn't a guinea pig.
Australia will likely have little need for SMRs at the rate their renewable energy sector is developing, so maybe see how they go in the UK, Canada and some of the European democracies – no use looking to MAGA (Drill, Baby, Drill), for now. The first western country SMRs may reach criticality within 2 – 4 years – then we can begin to see.
Meanwhile, more solar and wind generation could be rolled out at pace in NZ (where there's a will there's a way), accompanied by various battery storage options. And, if there's no will, there's always LNG.
Cheap?'
1.
2,
3.
There are cheaper alternatives.
Battery storage. Homes, industry and general supply.
That build up might enable hydro surplus (thus a reserve in dry years).
The future might be where data centres use a small nuclear plant – thus they meet the high cost for their own power
ah, SMRs. TL,DR – nobody has built one for reasons.
There won't be any developing-world country add nuclear generation to their repetoire having watched Iran get its head caved in, twice in 2 years, for trying.
Or South Africa giving up on nuclear after external pressure, or Germany after sustained pressure from the Greens, or Taiwan's massive nuclear programme failure, or the permanent politicisation of acquiring nuclear materials from either Russia or China or the USA.
I mean, which country realistically now has the means, muscle, and will to do it even on a small scale?
I don't even know why we are continually having discussions around nuclear.
"..Solar delivered the fastest energy transition in human history. Batteries are scaling faster than solar did at the same point on its curve…"
https://substack.com/@exponentialview/note/c-261030787
New Zealand is so damn parochial sometimes. We need to wake up and take a look at the rate of change in technology around batteries that is happening. Battery technology is leading what is nothing less than a new industrial revolution, be that the annoying neighbour with their flash EV, catching an electric bus, dodging that damned electric scooter rider on the footpath, the commuters on their e-bikes, or FPV drones in Ukraine making for the greatest revolution in warfare since the internal combustion engine, or battery storage for the grid.
On battery at scale, it would be great if we could be as progressive as South Australia, but New Zealand is in 2026 such a weak and disaggregated state that the only hope for attracting battery storage at scale is datacentres.
And demand for those is booming.
Japan is going back big on nuclear power.
South Korea is building 2
In Taiwan a popular majority support the move to nuclear power
https://eastasiaforum.org/2025/09/25/taiwans-nuclear-phase-out-faces-public-opinion-shift/
China is still building more.
Russia is the one building the most
Bangladesh (2), Egypt (4), India (4), Iran (1), Turkey (4), and at home (6), thus a total of 25 units.
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Fewer-Countries-Building-New-Reactors.
I can't find any free to air coverage but Albanese's q&a at a Sky News/The Australian function is a must watch.
Impressive.
https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/prime-minister-anthony-albanese-addresses-sky-news-australias-economic-outlook/news-story/59db30d8403d5289d6e34acd4ca0bb4a
Surly every nuclear powered ship/sub us a small modular reactor, I'm sure the odd ones gone splat , but they operate in rough conditions
But do they go "splat" because of the rough conditions?
Or do they just go, “SPLAT!!”
Apart from dodgy Soviet subs there's none, according to the wizard in my ph. There's even a couple that went splat for other reasons are are sitting relatively harmless with core intact at the bottom of the ocean, the wizard said that it is hard to control emergencies in a sub due to pressure and confinement, something that wouldn't happen sitting on a nice flat site away from major faults.