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6:00 am, November 13th, 2025 - 28 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 …
The RNZ news at 6am made it seem as if the most exciting reason for Watts to go to COP30 was a bid to secure the next COP – you know, all those delegates, good for the economy and all that!
The climate crisis – well, sure, we can talk about that too, if anyone can be bothered!
“While at COP, Simon Watts said he would also support Australia and Pacific Island nations' joint bid to host COP31 next year.”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/578698/climate-change-minister-defends-weakened-methane-emissions-target-ahead-of-cop30
They should be doing the whole thing on Teams.
Mungo no understand.
No need for an in-person conference and all those flights; no benefit to holding the conference in economic terms. No need for conferences of this kind in analogue space at all.
I stand with Chris Hipkins!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/578609/30-with-guyon-espiner-labour-leader-chris-hipkins-comfortable-being-labelled-a-socialist?
At the last election, I attended a meeting where I met the young (by my reckoning) NZ First candidate and asked him whether he was going to talk about me.
Since he knows me he humoured this old man and asked how was that? I replied when he talked about 'woke, virtue-signalling socialists' that was me.
We have to take back these words that describe us and give them honour in the face of belittling attempts to control the narrative of politics with insult, falsehood and smears.
Yes, if you are not a socialist, what are you?
Chris' record and policy positions place him firmly in the centrist, social-democratic tradition rather than socialism in any meaningful sense.
Hipkins supports a mixed-market economy, and embraces private enterprise as the primary engine of growth. His government maintained orthodox fiscal settings, and avoided structural reforms that would shift economic power from markets towards socialism. Far from advocating the abolition of capitalism, Hipkins’ approach is incremental and rooted in moderate reform, making the “socialist” label a complete "falsehood".
If I get a moment this weekend I will do something on the rapid decline of trust in New Zealand institutions. It is no coincidence that our Prime Minister showed near-zero empathy for the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who suffered in institutional care, at the same time as our Police are shown to be both internally repressive, venal, and about as misogynist as we all saw in the late 1980s.
This is a government bent on repression of our citizens
We see it in the Fast Track legislation and amendements wiping out all citizen resistance, the legislation against compensation for those who clearly suffered in the hands of state care, the brutality of the Police against their own as well as the rise of sex crime at the highest levels of the police and growing gang infiltration of its sworn staff, the eradication of the right to vote of prisoners, and of course the retrospective eradication of claims for gender equality in employment.
Agreed AD, and do not underestimate the chilling effect of the removal of Treaty obligations, the gender sneers and the acceptance of Proud Boys, Destiny Church and other “charities and foundations” Money rules and human lives are devalued as a replaceable commodity. Communities and societies are not favoured, individuality is key to the Government fragmenting dividing and deflecting from the aim of selling off our assets for someone else to privately gain. As individuals we lose strength to challenge their agenda. That is why they do not want Unions, Co-operatives, Community Bodies, and they even argue “They know best”, when in many cases community consensus is seen as a road block. They prefer groups to target each other over diminishing resources. The wealthy have set the scene to disempower all but their wealthy friends… openly!!
Representation has become manipulation, even to who and how we vote. Dangerous days.
Very well put Patricia – thanks for that.
Cops had a method for disposing of unpleasant allegations of criminality by cops:
Just falsify the evidence, and it no longer exists in the system. Relabelling is all they need to do to eliminate the problem. Closet stalinism. The victim also tried to blow the whistle on LinkedIn:
Deleting evidence of a complaint is an excellent way of defeating a complainant. It alerts us to the strategy being used by the patriarchy nowadays: tame women. Kura was sufficiently compliant to be seen as a tool by those above her. Useful idiot theory.
All the window-dressing the cops did 20 years ago in the wake of the LN saga turns out to have been a sham:
So all you need to do officially to make allegations of criminal behaviour by cops go away is to ensure that they don't go onto an official record. You officially eliminate them. This is public service Aotearoa 2025, produced by National and Labour in collusion consistently to preserve neocolonial traditions.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/11/13/top-lawyer-to-lead-employment-probe-into-three-serving-police-leaders/
Sorry, but the complainant could be an aggressive stalker with significant boundary issues. Perhaps the Police were right in their conclusion of false complaints:
https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/11/13/jevon-mcskimming-accuser-faces-charges-of-harassing-another-officer/
We don’t have any idea what the complaints against
Don't get me wrong, McSkimming seems like a really objectionable character. Extremely egotistical and depraved and I'm not defending either his internet search habits or his integrity, but Ms Z has accused him and potentially another police officer of rape and both times she’s the one who has been charged.
I agree re boundary issues but her pattern seems more like victim to me. I gather it was a consensual affair initially, before it became predation. True that we must reserve judgment to await the current official process though.
Does the public really know how to use the system? I doubt it. She was young, naive, seemingly, and he got her the police job according to media reports. She reacted to being made a victim by trying to alert others, whereas whatever official whistleblower avenues were available to her may not have been apparent to her…
Investigating Ms Z’s behaviour (cf. the veracity of her complaints), and charging her, was perhaps not the only course of action available to the police.
The way to find out if the complaint is legitimate is to investigate the complaint. An option which seems not to have occurred to the senior officers involved.
Their approach seems to have been to pre-judge the outcome, and move straight to prosecution of the victim.
The IPCA report
https://www.ipca.govt.nz/download/169325/11%20November%202025%20-%20IPCA%20Public%20Report%20-%20Review%20of%20Police%20handling%20of%20complaints%20against%20Jevon%20McSkimming.pdf
Just look at the timeline:
So the first step was to charge the complainant. Investigating whether there might be some truth to the complaints only began later.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360880939/prime-minister-im-beginning-wonder-whos-actually-running-country
Turns out it isn't the tail wagging the dog when it comes to what's happening in education with regards to te tiriti, it's the fleas that feed off it.
Pablo spelling things out.
https://www.kiwipolitico.com/2025/11/no-surprises-versus-plausible-deniability/
"The sordid saga of Jevon McSkimming reminds us of the inherent tension between two largely unspoken axioms of democratic politics. These are the “no surprises” and “plausible deniability” rules. Infrequently formalised in written instructions and more commonly shared as unwritten understandings between government officials, these axioms require delicate juxtaposition in order to strike the right balance between institutional accountability, individual responsibility and partisan fortunes."
Really, this is the dumbest thing Richard Chambers has done? I find that hard to believe.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/578778/police-commissioner-richard-chambers-pulled-over-for-speeding-at-112km-h
If it is, or not, the dumbest thing he has ever done, then he joins some 600,000 Kiwis issued speeding tickets annually. Nearly one in five drivers. We are among the worst in the world! Five times far worse than the Brits, and ahead of Americans and even the Aussies. We are also worse than the Aussies for drink driving offences.
Let he who is without sin…….
Could be alot more if we deployed more cameras.
Most times I got out it's dumb luck that sees overtaking drivers not have a major crash as they don't wait for the low risk opportunity……no oncoming cars so off they go.
There are more cameras promised and the stats show that numbers being caught are dropping. Maybe the increased chances of being caught is fuelling the drop.
https://www.autoflip.co.nz/blog/highest-grossing-speed-cameras
Maybe ? Hmmm. As Simple Simeon (speaks from your link)….
Although improving safety doesnt quite sit right, old mate….when Simeon went against so many Labour introduced speed safety reductions…around schools, and other high risk areas.
Speed cameras increase safety? IMO..No
Have you ever seen Truck cams of the morons overtaking..and barely making it back in (and sometimes, sadly not)?
I dont think speed cameras would solve that. I've been both a truck driver…and still am a Cyclist.
I've seen them all.
Always considered that camera's should be on blind corners.
So many trying to pass on them. Have been close to being collected several times.
Apart from one vehicle accidents where speeders remove them selves from the gene pool, it seems most fatal accidents are head ons. Someone on the wrong side of the road!
A particular area of danger is people cutting corners, somehow thinking they are on a closed circuit race track. Completely ignoring the following (which keeping Left, I have followed in my Life. If more people kept Left, we would be much better off : )
A particular danger area is narrow gorge areas…..one local being the Kawarau Gorge. Some photos in the local paper even had a car towing a caravan completely in the wrong lane. You would have stood fuck all chance if coming the other way…
Anyway many different things tried, until a cop actually there, sitting in a car, nabbed quite a few. Seemed to stop a bit…
On that…and Police Chief Chambers speeding, there was this, in the same dangerous Kawarau Gorge…. and there have been plenty more Police "errors of speeding judgement"
I still dont think speed cameras are a safety mechanism.
Coming towards the straight Labour and National surge to 38% (up 3) and 33% (up 4)
Greens (down 1) ahead of NZF (down 4) and ACT (down 1).
Clear support for the CGT 57-33%.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360885129/labour-surges-38-new-poll-still-needs-te-pati-maori
From The Post article:
"Assuming Te Pāti Māori won at least one electorate, these numbers would very narrowly see a Labour-led Government, with Labour at 47 seats, the Greens at 11, and Te Pāti Māori at three, for a total of 61 seats."
That is pretty conservative. Despite their recent travails I would have thought TPM still had fairly solid support in the Maori electorates. So TPM overhang seats are likely to give the Left a solid majority of around 64 or 65 seats on this poll.