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6:00 am, May 12th, 2026 - 34 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 …
Note. Huge fuss when University study subsidies are cut.
Didn't see the same when Governments have gutted apprenticeships.
Community Scoop » Cuts To Apprenticeship Boost Will Fail Future NZ
Not that kids with low income parents can afford either. The only apprentices now, in my trades, are the ones whose parents can support them to have three years without income.
Things that affect the upper middle class are still considered more important.
Mind you, New Zealand has never valued skilled trades.
Don't worry, we can just import "skilled immigrants" to replace all the young people that have given up, or gone to Australia.
Are you meaning MSM ? There was certainly support for Apprentices on The Standard , I know I personally (and others) have started many threads on same incl recently.
I know Labour have done a lot for Apprentices incl…
I do feel ( and I commented many times ) that Labour should have been getting this message out more..ie on building sites,(and of course other Trades), connecting with young (and not so young) guys and gals.
There is time for this…now.
However…I dont feel that criticising some reactions to Tertiary cuts is especially productive? After all they are still our Young People ? United we stand.
Saw this:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/education/594901/students-question-university-affordability-after-government-scraps-fees-free-scheme
Thought this: With the trend towards private education and seeing the right-wing(presumably) take advantage, why not two university-polytechnics (one in each island) setting up for Kiwis, not overseas students except perhaps a few PhDs or whomever. Privately funded by the rich middle-class New Zealanders who can run it as a charity and get tax relief on their input. Hopeful parents could buy in with regular small payments as investments on which they will either get educational return suitable for their children, and perhaps for themselves too as catch-up, or a payback with
The money must be held under deepest Trust controls so no rip-off merchant (government or overseas foundation) could gain control of finances or curricula. And no sly 'entitled' employee could spread poisonous greed and embezzle, so killing off something good and fine.
There would be compulsory humanities, as a base study, plus some living skills so no deaths from regurgitating vomit after parties, fights, deaths from meningitis (compulsory vaccinations to protect). And learn how a country's economy and human community interact. And a broad set of studies to set up the youth of the uncertain future, beset by climate change, and not the slave of programmed humanoids churned out by tech and simplistic media, horror fantasy, abandonment to lusts which can twist themselves into a Good. Ayn Rand's self-will in'The Virtue of Selfishness' needs to be balanced by wider thoughts of Nietzsche.
Nietzsche drifts between viewpoints, not entirely negative as often painted but realistic I think.One thing to learn is not to trust without scrutiny and understanding of human deviousness. We have to protect ourselves against ourselves, as none of us is beyond temptation of some sort, or coercion, some sort of blackmail. We need to be honest about this possibility. We must change radically, nothing from the past has prepared us for ourselves when we got our teeth into tech, or vice versa.
"The mob is ruling at the moment. They have tasted blood. Who will they turn on next?"
Richard Harman.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/594902/opposition-mps-say-former-tvnz-political-editor-maiki-sherman-hounded-into-resigning
The process by which Maiki Sherman was "mobbed", particularly the role played by Ani O'Brien, has become more and more clear as various politicians and political commentators piece together and comment upon the dirty behaviour of the Right wing.
Aye, yes !
TVNZ executives should be under the gun for supressing it for a year and threatening legal action when NZME were going to report on it. LLoyd Burr should also be investigated for his part in it by his employer.
Okay. Let's clear up the Lloyd Burr aspect before we go any further.
Plenty of ordinary people have been severely criticised if not fired for posting the wrong thing, or saying the wrong thing on social media. Why should a highly paid state employee be let off scott free for abusing another person while attending a state funded function held in a cabinet ministers office?
My employer expects me to exhibit a high standard of behaviour while attending any function where my fellow employees or customers are present. Additionally if I’m recognised as an employee at any function, private or otherwise, I must hold my accountable for my behaviour.
Journalists will hound anyone who offends against the current moral sensitivities, why not their own?
A lot of loaded language there ("highly paid state employee" etc). But never mind, let's get to the real point.
Sherman apologised immediately and rightly so. But if your attempt to apply a general principle is valid, then of course it must apply without preference. In all cases, not just one that suits.
As many people with experience of Parliament have said in recent days, there would have to be many departures (jumping or pushed) if that standard were sincerely applied, to all.
In reality, it is not applied to other journalists or staff or MPs. Not even applied to Ministers (Exhibit A: Shane Jones, the very definition of "scot-free" as you put it). Sherman was singled out. That is beyond dispute.
Not even applied to Lloyd Burr, who is accused himself of saying something unsavoury which set the whole thing in motion.
"Why should a highly paid state employee be let off scott free for abusing another person while attending a state funded function held in a cabinet ministers office?"
You are referring to Lloyd Burr?
As far as I know Lloyd Burr is not an employee of the state, he has been on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse from Sherman.
No one has accused Lloyd Burr of using abusive language towards Sherman, although she has implied that Burr has said something offensive to her, interestingly no other person, including members of the media have supported her side of the story.
"torrent"?
Maiki certainly has accused Burr of using abusive, racist language. Many, many people have supported Maiki's side of the story.
What are you trying to spin here?
Witnesses have confirmed that Lloyd Burr was subjected to abuse from Maiki Sherman; there are no witnesses who support Maiki Sherman’s claim that she was subjected to abuse from Lloyd Burr.
Perhaps you’re the one who is trying to spin something here.
You forgot to say "torrent".
Green Power ! Onya Chloe, Marama, et al. Represent !
And pertinent (to my mind anyway)….is NZ yet again going to be the test bed/cheap source for another money siphon scheme ? I am talking about the latest Dream Scheme…AI
My thoughts…Its very much a version of Socialising the cost while reaping the Profit…
And the huge Power requirement….guess who supplies that?
And yes re
TiwaiRio Tinto. IMO its way past time for either a true power payment…or fuck off. Especially under NZ's new circumstances. After of course, fully cleaning your polluted site…..Andrew Geddis argues that a NatLab govt is unlikely, and most punters would agree: https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/11-05-2026/the-grand-coalition-idea-is-gaining-traction-heres-why-it-wouldnt-work
Well okay, that does establish salience for the notion.
Such wild optimism could indeed inspire the sheeple. Andrew makes a good point tho:
True, the effect seems contingent upon circumstance. Sometimes the cream ascends, other times it remains homogenised. He then explains that emotion and self-interest will continue to motivate each bunch of suits to play against each other. That ain't necessarily so. Fate can incentivise a shift into improvisation at any point. Optionality in this regard hinges on the ratio of sheeple milling around Winston come the election. If he pulls upward of 15%, left/right neolibs may have to coalesce to close him out.
"The Māori Green Lantern" says:
"This essay examines Christopher Luxon's provably false public claim that Fees Free "didn't achieve any goals" because it directly affects the educational futures of Māori whānau, Pacific learners, and rangatahi across Aotearoa — and because a Prime Minister who lies about data to justify policy destruction is a threat to democratic accountability itself….
…Let us be precise. As reported by RNZ, Christopher Luxon declared:
"Fees-free university scheme didn't achieve any goals."
That statement is a lie. Not an exaggeration. Not a political framing. A documentable, verifiable, primary-source-contradicted lie.”…
(By Ivor Jones on The Māori Green Lantern)"
Well, Mercurio,cheers for that. I've not previously heard of MGL before…
but he certainly knows his stuff..and how to dig deep to find it!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/594954/luxon-calls-oecd-warning-on-government-s-lng-plans-load-of-rubbish
Obviously our great leader dismisses the OECD report as rubbish, who would have thought
Luxon et al hold steadfast to the belief that our view from the Left is;
""kumbaya and mush""
This has been the way for a very long time but it's astonishing to be reminded that the ""kumbaya and mush"" framing is still core to their belief.
Some things don't change.
All the opposition parties and any interested journalists have to do is Google "Luxon" and "OECD". Then quote his own words at him, on many previous occasions.
The OECD reports are the source of wisdom and truth, when Luxon wants to score a point. Now it's mush?
The OECD declined to comment
Right down there with 'bottom feeders', eh Lux – you’re helping the economy, right?
When it comes to expert advice our current govt generally rejects it.
I wonder if they think the same about their health. “Nah mate that lumps been there for ages”
Or their house. “Nah mate it’s always slumped in that corner.”
Or is that just have to do what their donors ask?
No, they don't. They are authoritarians. They accept uncritically the directions from those they believe to be expert. They know also, that there'll be a treatment they can afford to cure their discomforts.
If someone suggested that their selfish world-view was contributing to their ailments, they'd say, "kumbaya and mush".
Questions re the nz government and types of medical treatment came to mind when reading this: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/594974/government-considered-phasing-out-fees-free-university-scheme-before-axing-it
(What does Erica 'Standfast' do? What sort of education have these persons had themselves? And to what level? Did it leave them staggering? Can Ms Simmonds afford a haircut?)
And axing sounds rather rough and ready when one would expect higher intelligent, and more precise efforts at management of the situation. Instead it sounds more like the treatment of a sad patient by a Filipino psychic surgeon.
Dunno how I feel about this, I just got phoned up by my union, E Tu, & it was an AI (self identified) bot, I just hung up on it. It was a PSA asking if I am enrolled to vote, which is nice to have a reminder (I am) but AI? I guess cheaper etc but also kinda … ironic? I dunno, guess I am getting too old for this shiz.
David Farrar's Taxpayers Union/Curia poll today, which tends to favour the Right, is as follows:
Lab 31.9 Gre 9.7 TPM 4.1=45.7
Nat 30.0 NZF 11.7 ACT 6.5=48.2
Only 2.5% in it where in the last Curia (I think rogue) poll the gap was 8.6.
Interesting to see TPM recovering to 4.1 and ACT way down at 6.5 ….not that far ahead of TPM.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/election-2026-poll-gap-between-government-opposition-parties-narrows-in-taxpayers-union-curia-poll/YT2IIO6XFFBHPIO6GE3KOC7OUA/
ACT are scabies on the invisible hand of the market.
The last Talbot Mills may also have been rogue where it had the Greens on 7 and NZF on 15. I believe neither.
There has been a DDOS attack going on against the server box that houses The Standard. It doesn't appear to be directed towards the site that I can see, and the hosting company has been stifling it – apart from a 20 minute outage at about 1130 today.
I'll put some additional monitoring in place, and check my backup server for how fast I can get it online. I'm a bit under-worked for a change, so this will be fun.
This seems the reverse equivalent of what my Dad used to say about tradies (never tell them it's not urgent), and likely to result in a wish list for TS 😈
I should have specified. Paid under worked, not under-worked. I have been building a library of tools for my own developments since mid-2024. Apart from about 3 months in 2024 when I was also trying to find paid work, it has languished because there is only so much work I can do in a week, and I was mostly doing paid work.
But I'm on week 6 of relative idleness (mostly caused by the diesel rising by about 95%) and starting to make actual headway on quiescent projects. Most are related to the features of The Standard that got dropped when I switched hosts before moving to Invercargill and lost the full server capabilities.
Mostly search, and RSS feeds. I've been concentrating on building it with reasonably good unit-test coverage and designed for under-powered virtual private servers to make them more sustainable in the future. ie designed for a couple of core and limited memory rather than 16 cores and 10s of gigabytes of unused RAM. Also able to run with high degrees of protection with encrypted links and secure connections.
It is getting close. I'm almost up to attaching the front-end project to the backend.
"There has been a DDOS attack going on against the server box that houses The Standard. "
F*ckin sentinels!