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6:00 am, April 15th, 2026 - 30 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 wealthy eyeing us up since the Iran war. Uuuurgh !Thanks NACT1….incl Ol' Wily Winnie, buying their way into safe bolt holes.
Sotheby's International Realty managing director Mark Harris obviously has a very different idea of Sustainable to me !
There are those with..foresight ie forward Future Thinking..
And those with hindsight…(IMO looking out of their arse !). Ah speaking of which, hello Chris..Bish who fucking cut the Bus, and Public Transport?
Funny how Albanese can lock in new oil supplies from Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei in under four weeks, but our government can't figure our driving a bus.
Four weeks from now Bishop will be changing his tune on everything..
Never forget that Bishop is massively right-wing like his dad. Examples:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2019031011/political-panel-chris-bishop-and-vanushi-walters
Bishop raises the examples of the attacks on Serbia by NATO and Cambodia by Vietnam. He argues that these were morally justified but technically illegal under international law. There are two implications here that he does not spell out.
First, that international law is not an infallible guide to the necessity of intervention. This is something we can accept may be true, but only in a few marginal cases, because international law already tries to codify the grounds for necessity.
And second, that he thinks the US-Israeli attack on Iran may be in this category. And further, that NZ cannot know either way, and so has to remain silent on matters of legality, confining itself to calls for de-escalation. This is where Bishop starts to sound quite silly.
BG I haven't, nor likely too, I hope that many others see through the
shihadshithead too ( FYI… I am a Shihad fan : )Enter stage left Vanushi Walters on RNZ this morning, making Bishop look like a tired value-free Gollum out of the deep right.
Bishop loves the tired-but-tolerant worldly-wise sigh emitted as he begins to divert and obfuscate. He hopes it makes his critics seem naive.
Its an age old, right wing trait…patronise/condescend.
Got time to read? This "Epstein-focussed" piece is essential reading, in my opinion. It balances well the "Chicken Little" with the "Nothing to see here" view intelligently.
https://www.facebook.com/CollectiveEvolutionPage/posts/pfbid02zc3r2uUo1x2T8ips7uuU1jFT2gJf82Ty1iow4rf5M2Lu5o5M1HhtJucrkR2g6rxal
"How can we expect the world to get better if we don’t change a system where Epstein’s network was a symptom?
What type of world is truly possible for us as humans? If we really went to the drawing board and pulled oursleves out of the disbelief, what do we truly want to create and what is truly possible given where we are as a species?
A world where forms of coordination that require no blackmail, no leverage, no mutually assured destruction, are possible among people who can feel each other, connect, and sense the interconnection that exists between us. Yet our current world is so blind to that belief that it has made many people so nihilistic that they do not believe a world like this is possible, all while suggesting they are being realistic about their belief of that.
This is the opportunity. To break the illusion and get to the core of the challenges we face. This is not just our thinking and consciousness, but the system and its design.
What we build as this illusion breaks is a very important conversation we’re still not quite having."
https://www.jmadresearch.com/_files/ugd/a95e86_b1937c0c5f82498088e43cbb5552215d.pdf [last page]
This was taken from the 7th report [since 2020] about trust in news in Aotearoa New Zealand produced by the AUT Journalism, Media and Democracy research centre (JMAD). [HT to Newsroom]
The last few pages [pg. 33 -37] look at correlations between political leaning and news trust. Figure 18 gives an interesting insight in where people place themselves on the political spectrum vs how they find particular news brands (e.g., RNZ, NZH, The Spinoff, The Post, etc.) completely untrustworthy. No surprises there either, i.e., it confirms my bias.
The trust in the media is still very low all across the political spectrum. The margin of error is +/-3%. So the percentage difference between left and right may not be very large.
I'm surprised more on the left trust the NZ Herald than on the right, but maybe that was before the new management approach really took hold.
Also, in the survey, NZers tend to have a low trust of AI generated news even when humans have input into the final articles.
The reasons for avoiding the news are pretty depressing. makes people feels bad, too much war, too much politics, nothing they can do with the info, not relevant to their life, leads to arguments they'd rather avoid, too hard to understand. The last one could be related to lack of trust.
The age groups that trust the media the least : 18-24yrs; 55-74yrs. Curious. 25-44yrs & 75+yrs trust the media the most.
Wow – look at Figure 18. I feel like a clairvoyant, something's wrong surely?
At this stage, it’s not worth my time to do another Post on the increasingly clear election campaign strategy by National. Here’s some pre-amble from Joel MacManus:
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/15-04-2026/new-zealand-is-about-to-have-its-third-covid-election
National will aim for Labour’s perceived weakest spot and carpet-bomb it. Of course, this is Chris Hipkins. They’ll make it into a wedge issue for Labour voters, which is aided by Winston Peters’ rejection of Hipkins. Peters is, of course, another dirty dog who loves to bark and dump on opponents (and the media), as does his deputy shitty shallow Shane Jones. This will put an enormous pressure on Hipkins unless Labour’s campaign can find a way to mitigate or neutralise this attack strategy. However, MacManus writes, and I fully agree with him:
I think this gives the Opposition and Labour in particular a few options – the trick is not to focus too much on one, as they’re not mutually exclusive, but have a few tools sharpened & ready for different circumstances.
I’d love to see Simeon Brown dig his own pothole and for it to become a sinkhole for his whole Party.
The cost of living as per the CPI will in my mind be a problem for them if as is starting to be predicted that before the election it reaches 7.5% or higher, thus being Labour's peak during Covid of 7.2%.
Regardless of how high the CPI will go, National will craft a cunning narrative that they cannot control oil prices – they’re already distancing themselves and adopting the sit-on-hands head-in-sand approach, which is so typical of National. And MacManus wrote:
You can see the green shoots of the blame-game growing in front of your eyes, just about the only thing that National can grow.
"as is starting to be predicted"?
Who, other than yourself, is making this prediction?
You remind me of The Donald who is fond of saying "A lot of people are saying" when he is saying
https://time.com/7312196/trump-americans-maybe-we-like-a-dictator/
It does works though.
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+Bandwagon+technique+infer+consensus
https://www.propwatch.org/category_results.php?cat_id=1&id=27&k=bandwagon&p=propaganda.php
The effects of the fuel crisis haven't fully hit yet.
We are still getting fuel refined from oil that predated the blockade.
That seems to signal one of two likely outcomes by November –
1. People will be angry about the price of not only fuel but goods and services, the result of which will drive the cpi higher, spinning off into interest rates. People won't want to hear about National's "we did nothing and that's why we are so great" campaign calls.
2. Worse than 1, we will have to suddenly ramp up to level 3 intervention which kills the theory that no intervention is best and will prompt people to wonder why the government didn't intervene sooner, when other countries did.
The odds of getting through to November without some form of crisis are slim. Take Luxon today. They're not escalating the level because they are privy to information the rest of us can't share. What possible information could anyone have that could guarantee the global situation come November?
I think there are two main crises, one is present and the other is possible; they’re separate but connected. The acute one is the cost-of-living crisis that’s been aggravated by the fuel price shock. The possible one is an actual supply crisis of multiple supply chains failing, one after the other causing a major ripple effect, starting with fuel/energy. The Coalition is liable and thus vulnerable for the present crisis – nothing new there. It’s also trying to avoid liability for the possible crisis and is downplaying it for as long as is feasible, hoping that it’ll go away, and then claim some kind of force majeure that’s outside their control if it eventuates. This scenario will be a self-inflicted farce majeure aka an absolute shambles, which is where the spin doctors come in with a cunning narrative.
With regard to your post above, So true AB.
Bishops waffle sounded like a long prepared answer that acted as a deviation from the main point, purposely clouding the issue.
The Labour person on the other hand simply said Trump had to be called out.
For socialist who may come on here.
"Can the Left Still WIN"
Couple of notes
Lets remember that this current coalition has failed to act on the war crimes in Gaza. Indeed our current government has effectively, acted in support of it.
The anti-democratic nature of the coalition also need to highlighted.
I know it’s a good day when I confirm another one of my biases.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/04/15/business-confidence-reflects-reckons-and-vibes-not-facts/
I had a feeling about this and now it’s fact.
No prizes for guessing which way business sentiments & feelings go under National-led governments, irrespective of the actual economic conditions.
The important take-home message for this research is this:
Those caveats may have more or less effect depending on readers’ news trust and the news brand (cf. my comment @ 5) but I’m a trusting reader who only reads trustworthy news brands 😉
"I had a feeling about this and now it’s fact."
There might be an emerging hypothesis here. Specifically, it's not true to say that "the facts don't care about your feelings" which was for a while a common put down used by the right. Instead, it's much truer to say that "your feelings do care about the facts", even if you aren't aware of it.
And maybe, to finish off with a contentious statement, that is also why it's much more common for a non-female person to feel they might truly be a woman, than to feel that they might truly be a hippopotamus?
My feelings about vibes are nobody’s business.
And to answer your question, because it may come up during the election campaign, I’d offer up as explanation the proximity bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_bias) and the closely related proximity principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_principle). This hypothesis can be tested using cross-over design with housing or camping people near a hippo enclosure – ideal for budding citizen scientists during school holidays.
They're building themselves an autocracy.
.
Mike Young
@micyoung75
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson didn't invoke Weimar Germany as a rhetorical flourish. She cited a specific scholar by name in a footnote: Ernst Fraenkel, a Jewish labor lawyer who observed the Nazi legal system from the inside, smuggled his manuscript out of Berlin in 1938, and published "The Dual State" at the University of Chicago in 1941.
Fraenkel's framework is precise. The Nazis didn't immediately collapse Germany's legal system. They left courts functioning – particularly in contracts and economic matters – while placing Jews and political enemies in a separate lawless zone where no legal protection applied. Most Germans lived in the law-bound "normative state." The targeted lived in the "prerogative state." The facade of normalcy was the mechanism of control.
https://xcancel.com/micyoung75/status/2044143907190055270
Fraenkel’s work has seen a resurgence of interest in the United States in recent months because it provides a framework for a phenomenon we are increasingly experiencing under the second Trump administration: How a dictator can exercise unfettered power while life appears ordinary for most people. Or, as Jackson observed, how a “zone of lawlessness” can swallow some, while the rest go about their lives under the protection of the law.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/dual-state-supreme-court/
Something centre-left.
I'd increase the IETC. A top rate of tax at the Oz rate. (not sure we can afford to cut GST)
I would phase in the broadening of a CGT to direct investment to productive areas.
A 1% surcharge on landlord mortgages on existing property (exempt new builds)
https://www.thepost.co.nz/business/360985113/fuel-crunch-and-rising-debt-more-reason-reform-tax-system-says-lobby-group
"I would phase in the broadening of a CGT to direct investment to productive areas."
If you want a CGT to do that the first thing you should tax is the family home. A large family home isn't really a Productive area of investment is it?
In Australia it is quite common for people to move to a bigger, and more expensive, home as they get close to 65. That way they reduce their assets that are counted when deciding what National Super you might be entitled to as your family home is not included in your assets for Super purposes. The same would apply if you exclude the family home for CGT purposes.
Do you know why over 30 OECD nations have a full kit CGT but exclude the family home?
The only people who raise this issue are people who oppose a CGT and want family owners to vote against any party introducing one.
What has Oz means testing of super got to to with our tax system?
Why did we get the shitty version of these two?
https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipNdNYp63O7bSJKe7I9d2IyLVeCBQZTR73i2hmhU