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6:00 am, June 6th, 2026 - 22 comments
Categories: open mike -
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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 …
So the war criminals are complaining about people fighting back.
Re: Imported Culture War ? FFS. Meanwhile Gnats and fellow creeps/cronies are rollin' along…take this asshole…somewhere else.
Which surely.. exactly describes his Gnat crap?
A brief search on Ol' Mike 50 shades of green Butterick. What a tool….
Rob Campbell has written a subtle yet blunt call for societal change that, to me, looks like a contemporary form of bespoke NZ democratic socialism. Even if we don’t heed this call, change will happen, one way or another.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/06/02/we-dont-know-how-precarious-we-are-mate/
He mentions a few key requirements for a change to be broadly satisfactory and thus sustainable that are solid, in my opinion.
Here, I don’t quite share his optimistic point of view; there are no blueprints yet for a ship, orders are placed & cancelled repeatedly, and ultimately, it will be built by an overseas shipyard, as is always the case for and with NZ.
Rather than waiting for pieces to come from elsewhere, or a global-central answer, be it from [old historical] textbook examples or some other utopian source, NZ should be brave & imaginative & independent enough to chip its own path without the burden & shackles from the past or present that make us move in lock-step with established powers & power structures.
The very pertinent comment from that piece……
"Perhaps we need not to be looking to a new alternative to the reigning neoliberal ideolog but simply return to the old logic of the state providing core infrastructure……….."
Hear hear………
I've found an upside of the cocs being in power, I can afford a motel holiday in wellington in the school holidays, due to prices being slashed!! The last time I could afford holiday stay somewhere nice was in covid , so national have destroyed nz to the same level an international pandemic did , take a bow national
Wishing you and yours an enjoyable Wellington getaway in a few weeks.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/business/361017148/while-nz-tinkers-energy-global-peers-surge-ahead
An observation that this government responds to problems, but does not move ahead of them.
1.Other nations are reducing their fossil fuel exposure
2.More solar and wind would preserve water in hydro lakes for dry years and during peak demand.
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2026/05/18/solar-cheapest-form-energy.html
The Official Information Act (OIA) is vital for NZ democracy. It’s been mired in bureaucracy that’s taking Kafkaesque features. Unfortunately, the narrow & selective interpretation of the OAI by The Taxpayers’ Union (TPU) has slipped into the article at late notice and unchallenged. In fact, uncritical commenters are agreeing with the TPU!? Of course, and unsurprisingly, it’s the same framing of the same narrative from the same song sheet as the Coalition’s.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/06/05/govt-agencies-spend-over-180m-on-official-information-requests-report-claims/
Invest in document shredders, ethics training, and OIA redaction sevices.
document shredders – that’s so last-century.
ethics training – that’s so woke.
OIA redaction services – that’s a great application of degen-AI.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/597416/wairarapa-mp-mike-butterick-s-national-party-swag-bags-upset-parents
The sample party that hates feeding kids is algood trying to buy m young
From The Conversation.
https://theconversation.com/politicians-have-long-misunderstood-the-working-class-the-rise-of-the-far-right-shows-how-mistaken-they-have-been-284431?
[When you copy & paste, you should make that clear by using block quotes, and distinguish quoted text from your own words & commentary, which is also missing, in this case – Incognito]
Mod note
Supermarkets – 2 items of interest.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/community/597433/social-supermarket-for-hamilton-follows-surge-in-food-insecurity
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/597428/foodstuffs-brings-facial-recognition-to-fourth-christchurch-store
Where are the definite statistics backing the need for this decline in citizenship freedom and respect? Staff reported … Hearsay evidence and the onus on staff? This should be checked by a Privacy and Citizen Respect Commissioner. Do we have one, and for how long? Why should supermarkets have to set standards for our politicians who don't seem to give a moment of thought for us ordinaries.
GWS. I have been following Surveillance creep…and over reach for many years. Before sir Key’s "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" (oh the absolute Irony there !)… and right on through. And have made comment here on The Standard, and elsewhere, many times.
Some links if of use/Interest….sadly many people (again for reasons) cant be arsed. "A great starting point". The slope, ever slippery : (
Pushing for it….Auror
Earlier…surely a warning !? (Im sure there have been others….?)
On a positive..I sure like that Social Supermarket. Much more needed. : )
IMO by far the majority of NZers are nice, honest people.
And IMO, quite often the crims are the 1%ers.. at the top… of the pyramid.
Thanks Psycling it is strange how people can't be bedazzled by what is happening. Good on you. I bring it up in the nature of a mosquito bite, if it gets itchy enough it will reach the centre of brain.
How yo present matter that affect people and their future? We may not have been as effective as we could in the past and perhaps some information on commercial advertising and memory will need to be studied and applied.
https://ebrary.net/293332/philosophy/advertising_consumer_memory
https://charltonmarketing.com/expected-response-from-newspaper-ads/
https://calculatorshub.net/marketing-calculators/reach-and-frequency-calculator/
"To attack Robertson for saying something shows a complete disregard of its core values. It should be fighting for his right to say what he did, and not attacking him "
So should your neoliberal frauds in the LINO party.
Where is the fight from his majesties opposition…?
None.
Hipkins , Sepuloni and their colleagues are so frightened at making a stand on anything so that they don't harm their possible reelection to ensure the status quo continues with donated corporate money and influence.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[Don’t be a diversion troll and hijack a Post to attack your usual target.
FYI, Grant Robertson is VC of the University of Otago.
This is your warning – Incognito]
Mod note
Sign of a strong economy when you start talking about pressing 12 year olds.
/
Russia is considering lowering the country’s working age to 12 and reopening Soviet child labour camps to solve a jobs crisis driven by the war in Ukraine.
Moscow’s children’s rights commissioner proposed the change to get young people into employment during the holidays, claiming “almost all of them want to work in the summer”.
Olga Yaroslavskaya argued the camps would provide employment and structure for teenagers, particularly those whose parents cannot afford to give them a “three-month fiesta”.
https://archive.li/EcMbQ
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/06/04/russia-considers-working-age-12-to-solve-wartime-job-crisis/
It might be a good idea to watch Russia trying to cope with the 'modern' degenerate life system that we are all facing. We may yet be thinking about giving 12 year olds some light work, as an improvement on current and past education which has been inadequate for today's requirements and complex systems, often idealistic and illusory, and tends to raise hopes for a better, more advanced future.
We need our young people to know how to run their own lives and homes so we should return to abandoned life skill training at say intermediate age. They should have had practice at carrying out small projects at school or their neighbourhood, with a budget and a scoping document about its worth and value to people, they can get married at 16 after having attended life classes.
Young people should have learned, and had many discussion sessions, so they are all introduced to the amount of work and thoughtful love that was required to set them off well to be well-informed teenagers and full adults at 18 and which they need to in turn, pass to their children. Everything is different from what we are used to. We have to see the picture clearly at last, not in foggy darkness as we have fooled ourselves with for so long.
Are we tall ants? What animals/insects are we similar to? No-one with real objectivity could realise humans as good animals with intellect. I think a mixture of bower-bird, locusts and warring ant colonies. Presently behaving in a disgusting way according to our preached values. Be honest.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/596618/budget-2026-nicola-willis-takes-swing-at-nz-first-over-superannuation
and:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/596636/budget-2026-willis-superannuation-comments-an-unfortunate-mistake-says-winston-peters
Now we can blame the bulge of baby-boomers going through retirement for an increase in costs – those born in 1946 are now 80, but the peak effect of that generation is yet to come. For most of the time that bulge went through working years, many employers had superannuation schemes were both employer and employee paid 5% of earnings (years some such as Government employees contributed more, with Govt Departments paying even higher rates to provide pensions that were based on earnings near retirement, and increased with near-inflation, but most were not that generous.
Then after a couple of tinkerings, including from Muldoon, we got Kiwisaver, but with helpful changes to pay rates to help struggling employers give priority to higher profits, some employees found it hard to keep paying 5% to Kiwisaver and still have enough to meet living costs, so a helpful government reduced the minimum contribution – and at the same time allowed employers to reduce their contributions as well. As if that was not enough, they are now allowing anyone struggling with low pay and high price increases for basic goods, to apply to take out capital built up for income so they can live in old age. We now have a lot of people with very little in Kiwisaver, still struggling to make even minimal contributions, and many know that they may have to try and live on New Zealand Superannuation alone.
Then a Labour Government looked at costs going out into the future, saw things were going to be tough with a bulge of over-65s, and started putting money aside in a special fund so that the country had a hope of being able to cover at least some of those future costs. Naturally, governments of the Right didn't keep on putting money aside for that fund, so that it getting even harder to avoid increasing numbers of pensioners of the future being in real poverty.
So the government that has happily accepted that they have at best stopped most initiatives to provide for the future, now want to make it worse by increasing the age of eligibility for NZ Superannuation – but note that they still won't set any money aside to try to avoid the impact of that lower provision. They have shown their personal priorities as well – many of the current Ministers have very large amounts going to Kiwisaver – I so wonder if that gives them some advantage relating to income tax, and effectively increasing their package by a very large amount by not looking at total cost of the package . . .
So now we have the three Government Parties all getting advice from Atlas Network "advisers" to create the impression that they are considering different options for fixing the problem. If anyone is relying on their children being in the say 40% of the next generation that will not be in poverty through their working life and worse in retirement, we had better get rid of all three parties at the next election. We need to move to tax rates that are closer to those in Australia . . . after all a very large number of New Zealanders decided that Australia was worth moving to despite higher income tax rates . . .
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/586737/retirement-age-will-rise-to-cover-superannuation-cost-investment-company-predicts
Really well thought out Ed1. But pollies would say tl:dr. They leave the reading and understanding to their lackeys who are paid to find out the things that their bosses want to know only. If by chance someone with a practical, educated, value-laden nature gets into an off-side-to-politician role, there is probably a 'calculus' of how long they will be in the job.
And so it goes…'nobody told me'. You might not have heard or enjoy again this piece of advice (priceless) from Nga Taonga vaults.
Visual with audio – https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/293123/
Thinking further if senior citizens could do something useful for the country instead of spending their spare cash on overseas trips etc they could get an increment of NZ only ‘Kiwis dollars which would only be recognised in this country and would not by all retailers no doubt. But some areas feeling chronically hard up might which would get that currency started. For instance, Gisborne Mayor has said how drained! they are from one crisis foloowing close to the last. Older people coulcd go on a working holiday there and do some good and get paid din Kiwis as well, as spending them there. Get that currency moving and retired people could do it – a boon for them and their/ our country.