Written By:
- Date published:
6:00 am, July 9th, 2026 - 38 comments
Categories: open mike -
Tags:
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 …
Cause : Coalition NACT1
Effect :
Reality :
Unreality :
As he, Potaka, of the pushups..and pushouts, dissembles while the lowest of the bottom feeders… freeze : (
Nor likely to….
I also note (for balance) Kieran McAnulty' response. Honest I suppose. Needs a bit more though aye?
Needs a bit more though aye?
He could have pointed out that homelessness is historical due to neoliberalism: the homeless are free to choose that lifestyle in accord with the gospel according to Milton Friedman. Since he won the Nobel, he has impressed both trad sides of politics.
He could have opined that doctrinal adherence is critical for neolibs – one must keep the faith despite not having a clue why. He could comment on Labour's sheeple stance; sensible since that's where the votes are, citing William James' pragmatism.
He could've blended such intellectualism with a pitch for the cow-cocky vote by saying "Hey, I'm just another hick from the sticks, what would I know?" Humility usually works well in most kiwi circles…
Homelessness I would say was due to a lack of compassion- 'a strong feeling of sympathy and sadness for the suffering or bad luck of others and a wish to help them'. Compassion means suffering together with, shared feelings.
On this subject of whether people matter, Virginia Fallon has a great opinion piece in today’s The Press, page 21, titled "Dear ute drivers we need to talk" and weighing in on ute drivers who park backwards in supermarket car parks with their steel tow bar pins projecting halfway into the walkway spaces, at shin level.
She writes cuttingly, "Parking, perhaps, isn't really about cars at all. Maybe it's a tiny daily referendum on whether we think other people matter.
And if your ute is blocking the footpath because, well, that's everybody's problem now, I think we know how you voted"!
Useful backgrounder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_intelligence. Key section is a dyad:
Ute-driving thickos are people too. Play country music at them, they're liable to mellow out more. Just takes compassion. Ask them if they've figured out how best to do shit-kicking yet, or have they grown out of Garth Brooks.
mac1, If you recall we did have a bit of a similar convo recently…I called it lack of Empathy on the perpetrators (ie NACT1) part.
This maybe how i think of the difference between Sympathy and Empathy
Anyway its a word. For a practical application: If Tama Potaka, Christopher Luxon, et al, spent a few nights on those cold streets…would it give them a new perspective?….Sympathy, Compassion, even…. Empathy ? IMO : We will never know.
"If Tama Potaka, Christopher Luxon, et al, spent a few nights on those cold streets…would it give them a new perspective?….Sympathy, Compassion, even…. Empathy ? IMO : We will never know."
Blenheim’s first-ever Big Sleepout is taking place on August 13, 2026 at Seymour Square. Organized by the Christchurch Methodist Mission (CMM), local leaders sleep outside on cardboard to raise awareness and funds for homelessness services, with all money staying in Marlborough.
Maybe a polly or two might be invited to sleep over- then we'd know!
My concern is that our politics are being increasingly run by people with various degrees of anti-social disorders resulting in actions that lack empathy, compassion, social vision.
How long since we heard statements like that of Michael Joseph Savage, refuting his conservative critics who called 1938's social welfare reforms 'applied lunacy', by describing what Labour was doing as "Applied Christianity".
Of course, now we have in power proponents of prosperity theology, grifters for oil companies and tobacco merchants, gun toters, apologists for landlords, willing sellers of minerals, natural resources and public lands, and advocates for privatising education, health and police services.
Recent examples? Chris Bishop complains that his officials are not able to sell a state owned 30 place housing unit for a decent price while 200 people are homeless in the very same town.
Private security guards to be given police powers. Funding encouragement for charter schools.
“Sorted”?
This?
Ah, sounds like Real compassionate and empathetic People putting thoughts into Action ! Unlike the "sorted" (who really need sorting November '26 !)
On similar, I kinda wonder if at, and in lead up, there will be : Please Vote for a Government who will actually change this and actually help you?
Oh and absolutely with you on your other comments too !
Yes, that big sleep-out.
Climate Change Costs. And will increase as our Planet heats (despite the Cnut NACT1 Coalition Climate Change deniers)
Urgent. Decisive. Ah, yeah. Not seeing it from incumbents. ( A big read, but worth it to be Informed)
Again from RNZ. The information is all out there and can be searched. However I find RNZ very good for collating in form…
Good to see City Rail Link preparing to open.
But Auckland is about to find out how very limited infrastructure even on this scale is at economic uplift when central and local government are consistently managing the Auckland economy down.
Bipartisan marketing blitz:
I hope they do! Persistent thought is a thing, and the influence is pervasive. Resilience and sustainability can be achieved by efficiency. Competent folks can arm-wrestle the devil in the detail of how to finesse the market and social interfaces. Collaboration works via goodwill; competing need not cause harm if you do it right (team sports).
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361003978/analysis-economy-has-become-nicola-willis-political-problem
How many people like myself will be refixxing a mortgage before the election??
Willis the incompetent is toast.
When it comes to solar , private batteries are stupid, build a big one in every town , fill it during the day empty it st night, lines charges need to be kept on getting paid ,
Use buy back to offset usage.
We've already got some stonkingly huge batteries with lakes Hawea, Oahu, Pukaki and Tekapo. Every kw produced by solar or wind is a kw that isn't drawn from those batteries. More solar = more hydro storage, directly and in real time.
Yes, such strategic thinking is essential. Then one encounters the engineering and design dimensions where schema, systems, get anchored in geographic contexts, so regional climate becomes a key design component.
Ideally any regional economy ought to be anchored in localities, so you get variance from town to country in the balance tween domestic power systems and grid communality. Some design principles emerge as general use, others particularise toward smaller groups of users. Whereas systems analysis has been a professional discipline in computing since I was young, dunno about import contagion into environmental science. Some potential common ground via networking…
Meridian, Mercury and Genesis already have big wind farms as well as big dams and operate to balance their output.
I’d use it as a backup to my own batteries. My biggest issue with power after the costs is having reliable power (and heat) inside the house that doesn’t rely on any lines or connections. A few all day disconnections does that to recipients, and there have been a lot of them recently.
Post up on Labour's solar saver policy
https://thestandard.nz/labour-solar-without-the-upfront-cost/
A sharp take by Tim Murphy on the highly staged election campaign tactics of mainly NZ First (i.e., Winston Peters).
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/07/09/election-2026-the-illusion-of-the-crowd/
Social media is used to create an almost alternative reality + narrative to ‘sell’ to voters and the [social and mainstream] media.
Over the last 4 elections New Zealand First have overperformed from their pre-election polling.
Tim Murphy is just wrong: the NZFirst ground game works and it's a latency in their support that doesn't sufficiently register in the polls.
He’d be wrong if he’d claimed what you claim he’d claimed. Straw man.
The battle ground is not just on the ground but also in the media, which was Tim Murphy’s final conclusion.
Any systematic & consistent off-set between polls and election result for NZF might be due to polls not sufficiently weighing the actual voter turnout for NZF voters (a lot of older more conservative folk).
Their support obviously doesn't register sufficiently in the mainstream media either. Winston knows they are not to be trusted, and he is right.
I don’t know what you mean. NZ First draws a disproportionate amount of attention in MSM, which is kinda the point that Tim Murphy is making. Surely, somehow some of that must feed into their support [in the polls].
Again, you lost me there and it sounds like you’re parroting Peters’ narrative. For example, how and why can they not be trusted? It’s a broadbrush accusation without evidence backing it up.
In any case, Michael Laws will deal with it and he can be trusted.
Minister takes low road, to kick various roads down the road: https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361004178/rons-nowhere-government-slows-work-promised-major-highways
Can all be rationalised as realistic due to budgetary constraints, I suppose: "Look hey, we've been there & done that on the aspirational front. Time for common sense."
When leaders are difficult characters, life is tough at the top & takes 1 to know 1:
Could be lining up a summit with all 3 difficult characters: anyone got a triangular table for that?? Better to use the UN guy to do the chair role, as if squaring the circle. Anyway, T's authorising Ukraine to make patriot missiles now, to increase pressure on P.
[Link required – Incognito]
Mod note
Sorry again. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/trump-says-both-sides-ukraine-war-want-settlement-2026-07-08/
If ya need a laugh. More reform BS.
How does Nigel Farage reach far into the minds of the people who continually support his trifling mixture of ideas? I suggest he should be renamed Farrago meaning 'A collection containing a confused variety of miscellaneous things.' Or he could be connected to the cartoon series called The Far Side, as he goes on for ages; a rare example of tomfoolery.
https://thestandard.nz/open-mike-02-07-2026/#comment-2066219
The 'hard sell' salesman: Wanna buy some shares in private health companies?
When we have relatives in chronic trouble that they can't afford, we just suck it up and pay for doing all their consults and biopsies private.
We simply won't put their lives at risk going public.
NZ's Health – public health services, and for-profit private health providers – is (back) on a privatisation track which will entrench a two-tier system where prompt care is restricted to the wealthy.
We've been a public-private system since the early 1990s, so after over 30 years it's not like this is new.
Between the cost of NZSuper and the cost of NZ healthcare on our existing public budget, no citizen can be blamed for going in this direction.
How ‘well’ is that evolving system working? Still pretty ‘well’, I reckon, for some.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/health
OK so in the grand sad story of Democrat own goals, who is going to replace Platner as their candidate in Maine?
Pretty unlikely now that they can get a winning candidate up in 4 months.
And now very unlikely that they can take the Senate with 1 seat – even with the miracle of winning Texas Senate seat.
Yip Drowsy the scum private hospitals take the easy money and shift there failures back to the public one , to fix , often by the same surgeon, rotten to the core, ban private health care.
Today's Taxpayer Union poll:
Lab 31.5 Gre 10.4 TPM 3.4=45.3
Nat 30.5 NZF 10.8 ACT 6.9=48.2
62-58 in seats, assuming no TPM overhang, which would close the gap.
While this represents a small shift to CoC since the last TU poll, it is too close to call for November. ACT continues to languish while TPM is edging back.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics/692027/coalition-holds-majority-in-latest-taxpayers-union-poll
Looking up Deep Nostril I present some stuff about 'the shadow' that seems to have unrolled ever since end of WW2 I think.
'Gospel according to Milton Friedman' 1.1 on Open Mike.
But blame Ayn Rand authoress of 'Fountainhead' also. That title reflects a mixed metaphor or something. She was an escapee from Russia (Jewish) in 1926 after the communist theft of her family's possessions and wrote Fountainhead her first novel, in 1943, which runs to over 1000 pages as a close text paperback. And in 1957 a fourth novel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged.
She I think helped along this neolib system with her anti- Russianism and anti-communism flow of words that captivated the times; but I should think few in power bothered to read in full. She was a willing worker touting capitalism.
Waving a paper claiming information about communist infiltration into the USA State Department on it, later shown to be false), he set off deception, harassment and discrimination reminiscent of Germany's program (becoming pogrom) against the Jewish community though these culminated in savage attacks on people, property, and synagogues in 1938. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht
Milton Friedman – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman#Public_service [Parents Jewish working class immigrants from place formerly in Hungary, now Berehove in Ukraine.]
and in 1964 Ayn Rand published The Virtue of Selfishness still available today, [warning cancerous to community living]. Penguin Books New Zealand https://www.penguin.co.nz › books › the-virtue-of-selfishness-9781101137222
How can this be called a morality though? Surely a paradox! And why either/or; our whole foundation of society that is our backstop, though we drop the ball often, called a fashion? It seems that religion affected the actions and drives of these three people.
I think it is time we adopted a model of society, with more rationality but respect for individual soul, as more fit for purpose don't you? Perhaps using visualisation of what we would like to achieve, and look to see how we can achieve this with as much personal freedom as is reasonable and practicable. At present we are bound by strictures from above and even ones adopted from the past; and then fined and punished for not keeping to them. It doesn't appear to have steered us to a vital, happy society. Some psychological considerations from the 20th century appear to have been by-passed with minor uptake or consideration, eg Montessori education some consider very good, but is still rare.