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6:00 am, December 15th, 2024 - 18 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
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Step up to the mike …
https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=166480
Hopefully the people of otaki fight bag like the people of manawatu did , and force minister brown out of town with his double dipping tolls.
I know that the new Manawatu-Woodville road was never originally intended to be a toll road, ostensibly because it was a replacement rather than a by-pass, but I'm not sure if the new northern Horowhenua expressway is in the same category.
By the way, I heard a story once that the objections to the by-pass were mostly by property owners headed by one Nathan Guy – the National Party ex-MP for Otaki who apparently likes by-passes except when they go near HIS property.
Not sure if it is accurate, but here it is anyway.
In the fine print of an article I read the other day brown is slipping through the ability to toll existing roads, I pay road users , tolls is double dipping, in the past I was open to tolls but my views have changed
Brown is certainly creating a heap of resistance.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/12/13/such-a-load-of-s-speed-limits-test-tasman-mayors-patience/?
It's all noise and 'look at me', while the Minister of Transport's need for speed exhausts our patience.
Yeah I heard several people a couple of months ago on RNZ whinging about the speed limit being raised from 80 to 100 somewhere, because they felt much safer at 80.
The problem for Brown is the lower limits have been in long enough for people to realise that they are actually a good idea.
Good on the Labour Party.
This bodes well for the future of our environmental protections under a Labour led administration.
The business pundits are always saying, 'We need certainty'.
Let's give them certainty. Let's ask our opposition leaders to announce now, that a Labour led administration will scrap the fast track legislation.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/131678615/give-us-certainty-sustainable-business-leaders-plead-after-climate-assessment.
[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.]
Imo, the focus should be on eliminating plastics and moving to hemp as a sustainable and renewable resource.
Everything plastic can be made from hemp. The upshot is that one crop of hemp in an acreage takes out as much CO2 in one year as a radiata plantation in an acreage does in 10 years.
It would be the best of both worlds.
The “downside” to having hemp containers is they tend to last around 3-6 months depending on usage, but when they’re done, they can be composted. There would be enough of them being produced that replacement hemp containers wouldn’t cost that much as the supply would more than meet demand.
I would rather the environmental focus shift to a move away from plastics than be so heavily focused on CO2 which is ultimately a beneficial gas for plants, and especially hemp.
Plastic pollution is a vile and disgusting practice.
Banning All plastic packaging in this country, would create a demand for paper bags and wrapping. And set an example for the world. If the fibre for producing paper bags and wrapping paper came from hemp, and it is more sustainable than pine trees, I'm not opposed.
Make Paper Great Again
Think of all the jobs that could be saved and created at Kinleith our biggest paper manufacturer
https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/12/10/hundreds-attend-meeting-over-proposed-partial-closure-of-kinleith-mill/
CO2 may be beneficial for plants Jim, but too much is no good for the climate. But you may be on to something about the other dangers of plastics.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2449545-how-much-should-we-worry-about-the-health-effects-of-microplastics/
[Added corrected link and missing second link that appears to require [a] subscription (i.e. it’s just spam and pretty useless for discussion here on TS – Incognito]
Mod note
CEO's are the….
Building sub-divisions within a year.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/12/14/game-changer-solution-to-speed-up-home-building-process/
Councils seek protection (litigation action) from insurers (and homeowners) over flood protection failure.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/12/13/councils-calling-for-law-change-to-protect-them-from-insurers/
Words fail me
Tl,dr: racism, perceived grievances, too many browns/poors doing better than they should do and a desire to have somebody to look down on.
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A Disease of Affluence
Trump's supporters are not motivated by economic anxiety, but by its opposite.
[…]
A mean and slavish people
The narrative that hardship makes people tribal, and nativist, and mean, and vindictive—that toleration is only possible in a society of pure affluence—reflects a dark view of human nature. If that is true, then socialism, or even a progressive liberalism, isn’t. Those things aren’t compatible. It’s also a much more condescending view than whatever is ascribed to sneering affluent liberals by those who hold it.
But it isn’t true. The core of the MAGA base isn’t people who can’t afford enough $2 packs of pasta and $3 jars of tomato sauce to feed their children. I’m not saying that person doesn’t exist, but statistically they’re not representative. MAGA is someone who earns $70,000 a year and is angry that their overpriced Whole Foods costs a bit more. MAGA is someone who is angry that they might have to shift from buying their goods at a middle-class-coded supermarket to the cheaper, working-class-coded supermarket.
The American Republic has been pulled down, possibly past the point of no return, by affluent people. People who have lives their ancestors would have literally killed for. Who on average spend 10% of their pay on groceries, the lowest in the country’s history, not to mention human history. Who are lashing out at others at the slightest inconvenience, because they want to lash out at others.
Americans are prosperous, but without any deep sense of obligations to others. We are a highly commercial, individualist people, and when we let go of even a thin liberal conception of the public good, we become nasty, petty, small, vindictive and irrational. J.S. Mill, a philosopher who truly prized individual development, also warned of its dangers in isolation:
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/a-disease-of-affluence/
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:pjiafkey2cokiupsxpswqlk7/post/3ldac4oclk22s
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:pjiafkey2cokiupsxpswqlk7/post/3ldc4um7ros2u?
I think it was Mussolini who explained that communism was state control of corporations while fascism was corporate control of the state.
There doesn't seem to be any room left for capitalism, unless capitalism is a divide between/separation of corporates and the state, which appears not to be the case (anymore?).
I'm still thinking about what to make of it.
The millions of Americans who work in the factories in packing houses, in the service industries, those who do the cleaning and caring in retirement villages and in the hospitals and schools; who live pay check to pay check, vastly outnumber the more affluent middle classes,
The middle classes though less numerous than the blue collar working classes, vastly out number the millionaire class.
The middle classes are more affluent, more educated, with more access to resources and leisure, are able to lift their heads up above the struggle to make ends meet, that consumes the working poor and blue collar class.
The middle classes have at different times and different circumstances been the decisive class in society.
Where they go, society follows.