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6:00 am, July 20th, 2025 - 57 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 …
Today's Posts (updated through the day):
The left should unite on tax, fast
National raided $6,000,000,000 infrastructure & flood fund
New Post up:
National raided $6,000,000,000 infrastructure & flood fund
Shock horror fake news story: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/07/18/trump-sues-rupert-murdoch-wall-street-journal-dow-jones-over-hit-piece/
I presume someone sent them a copy instead. Probably a Deep State agent. Trump doesn't do drawings, he claims:
It will be interesting to see how the court assesses reputational damage. Plenty of folks will already believe that Trump already does enough of that to himself without the help of other top capitalists. I like that his targets are a triad: Murdoch/WSJ/Dow. Don isn't doing Don Quixote tilting at the NYC capitalist establishment, he's trying to run his lance through all 3 of them simultaneously. A valiant endeavour consistent with timeless heroic sagas everywhere. Will leftists take sides on the morality of the thing?
The discovery and depositions process will be interesting. Depositions are done under oath and if it is one thing Donald J Trump avoids like the plague it is giving any evidence under oath.
@ d.frank..
Birthday cards are the least of Trump's worries..
It looks like he's going down…
I wonder if ghilaine Maxwell is being careful not to get herself into suicide situations..?.
And what ‘morality’..?..what the hell are you talking about..?
Trump is pretty much dog tucker on this one…and he is just lashing out ..
If course if widespread civil disobedience breaks out..that could just play into his plan b…
..namely declaring martial law…and suspending elections…before the midterms next year ..
(Does anyone think he isn’t capable of that…?… especially if being president is the only thing keeping him out of jail..)
The maga base is in a total uproar…and of course not all of them are Republicans…they are just there as cultists to trump…and so that will hurt Republicans at the polls .
Trump has come out as 'deep state'..as far as those magas are concerned. ..
And searching for comparisons to the significance of that u-turn…it'd be like me opening a butchers shop ..
And Murdoch is playing the long game here.. on the one hand he has fox news ..blatantly pandering to trump and his cult followers…and on the other one of Trump's biggest critics has been the wall Street journal ..
He's 'sorted'.,.
All of the above is IMHO…
Sould labour continue to cling to/wrap themselves in ..the tattered flag of neoliberal incrementalism…
..might it not be time…given we now have mmp ..to have another crack at another version of new labour ..?
One that is unabashedly advocating democratic socialism…
This would mop up all of those who support such policies ..
..and labour can be left to compete with national …for that centre ground. .
.. IMHO…it seems kinda logical…labour now is too broad a church… satisfying nobody..
I say, no thanks.
Generally, IMO they are not mature enough at that age
Their brains are still undergoing significant development. Particularly, impulse control, emotional control and decision-making. Moreover, they are far more susceptible to fads, misinformation, marketing and being misled
Really? At the moment we have mature people fucking NZ to beat the band.
And your
If not ironic…is risible as an example…
IMO most young people..incl 16 year olds are worried about the Planet that is being left to them ! I have met many..incl on Climate Marches !
Absolutely we should lower the age of voting to 16.
The world we made(def not you or I) is going to hell. Burning all the way..
IMO they can and should be given the power to try and change that trajectory.
The Future..is theirs
If they are deemed mature enough to vote, will they also be deemed to be at the age of eligibility for everything else?
Risible, really? Is the reasoning given above not used to justify the age of eligibility settings?
Like?
Going to a brothel?
Spurious comment, at best.
Young voters would have to enrol just like all other eligible voters. I can’t see them registering to visit a brothel and receiving their registration in the mail, can you?
I was asked for an example that relates to the age of eligibility. I provide one.
Enrolling to vote is not difficult. Are you implying it's some sort of safeguard?
Where do you stand on this matter? And why?
It was a spurious example, IMO; was it the best you could come up with?
You can work out the implications of formally appearing on the electoral roll – procedural difficulty ought not to be an issue for any voter irrespective of age.
I’d be ok with lowering the age to 16 for those few younger people who are interested & engaged enough and who’d like to vote. I don’t think it’ll have a major impact on representation in Parliament – not sure what it’ll achieve and what the intentions are behind the change.
And that sounds like a reasonable way forwards.
I know a five year old that is worried about the planet. Should we allow them to vote too?
Well….I thought you might be…now confirmed. Troll on.
Just because I expressed an opinion that differs from yours, no need to call me a troll. Keep it civil.
As for my last question to you, I was merely applying your logic. Trying to determine where you would draw the line for lowering the voting age and your reasoning for it
I refer to your…..
To be fair, 18-year-olds aren't very mature either. I agree with you though – if someone's old enough to elect the government of their country, that implies they must also be old enough to buy alcohol, to marry and start a family, to be called up for military service, to have their offences dealt with by the adult criminal justice system etc. I don't believe the Greens would support those.
Perhaps we should be looking to increase the voting age – not lowering it?
I'd be reluctant to go there, in case people started thinking about declining mental competence in old age and decided to also impose a maximum voting age.
there are other ways to get younger teens involved in democracy. Lowering the voting age is a very blunt tool.
I'd be interested in hearing more.
Please stop the duplicate comments, thanks.
I've seen one liberal argue for letting all children vote
😆
Link?
like many, he's deleted his twitter
locked in fact (he's gone to Mastodon), but I can't find the tweet and am not ok quoting from a locked account anyway. But I remember being surprised. He had reasonable rationale, I just completely disagreed with it.
Fair enough. Im not on twitter etc. Thanks for looking
That's awesome! If children had been allowed to vote when mine were in primary school, one would have been scanning the ballot for any cats or fairies standing and the other would have been looking for a powerful and invulnerable destroyer of enemies. The potential for unforeseen consequences strikes me as high.
"Generally, IMO they are not mature enough at that age."
My thoughts too.
I concede about a third of them are sufficiently mature but the rest are not and therefore open to manipulation by unscrupulous politicians and their enablers.
Imo, kids these days expect too much too soon. They can damn well wait two more years.
OK Anne. I'm sure back in the day you didnt expect too much too soon. And as for "They can damn well wait two more years" ?
Seems some age well…some not so much.
I think adults put too much on them too.
Only just picked up on your response. I agree with that too. Dragging their off-spring around the countryside to attend everything going, instead of letting them develop their own skills at their own speed. No wonder so many young people end up with serious anxiety issues.
Na let them be kids for a little bit longer, why do we pressure kids to grow up so fast, shit they'll mostly have 60 plus years of adulting, that's enough for anyone!
Pretty much what I was saying. 🙂
Crikey chairman….!
I know so many voting adults with all those above faults you attribute to the young…
And some young people will engage and vote…and some won't…
Much like those afor-mentioned adults..eh..?
Your argument is a false one.. IMHO..
Ditto.
And look at the results of that. We don't need to add more voters like that.
My argument is a genuine one.
Well, not like that – immature – but aren't you tarring an entire demographic?
'More voters' is more democratic, imho.
Out of curiosity is that our former MP Darren Hughes?
It would appear so.
@ chairman..
Therefore your call is age discrimination 101..?
And the taxation without representation argument is a strong one..
We have age settings for drinking smoking etc. Do you class that to be age discrimination?
Taxation without representation argument is an interesting one because as far as I know more young people are working. Albeit, mostly part time.
Indeed, age discrimination is awful. How shameful of us to treat 16-year-olds differently from adults. I look forward to the future Greens' policy to put 16-year-old criminal offenders in adult prisons. Justice delayed is justice denied, after all.
Yes, thank goodness we discriminate on age and imprisonment for the purposes of voting – 16 and 17-year-olds being too immature, and prisoners being wrong 'uns – and not cognitive capacity.
The Greens are calling for a Warrant of Fitness that is certified by independent certifiers
https://www.greens.org.nz/healthy_homes_standards_need_more_teeth
To keep the cost of this inspection from being passed on to tenants, the Greens need to add a clause that ensures the fines for failing to comply are set at a rate that covers the cost of inspection.
Effectively making the inspections free. Thus, avoiding more cost burden being put onto tenants
Can you please explain the logic of the claim that your proposal will "Effectively making the inspections free. Thus, avoiding more cost burden being put onto tenants"
I don't see how, if any fee at all is charged for an inspection, that it can be free.
Good news from the UK – highlights what a sad place NZ is becoming on the CoC track:
after being, at times, a wordl leader in electoral reform.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_reform_in_New_Zealand#Parliamentary_electoral_reform
Potaka says the government has not caused more homelessness, but admits this has occurred after it restricted access to support and placed more scrutiny on those applying.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/07/20/many-link-govts-emergency-housing-policy-to-homelessness-rise-minister/
https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/07/20/haunting-memories-new-doco-explores-horror-of-growing-up-in-care-in-nz/
https://www.abuseinquiryresponse.govt.nz/
You think Epstein was bad, have a read about another tRump bestie.
Denise Wheeler @denisedwheeler.bsky.social
· 6h
🧵The man on the left is Thomas Kramer He's the other Epstein in Trump's life for over 35 yrs He's the guy who developed South Beach, had a dungeon in his 5 Star Island mansion that drugged girls would wake up in, and his infamous sex lair bedroom w whips & teddy bears
Brace yourself for this read
https://bsky.app/profile/denisedwheeler.bsky.social/post/3lue5wabxcx2g
skyview
Tl;dr, Buckley was an arsehole.
Perhaps the highest praise I can offer a book that took 27 years to complete and runs over 1,000 pages is that I can see why, and that it doesn’t feel like it. Sam Tanenhaus’s extremely long and anxiously awaited biography of the man who founded National Review, and is often regarded as the architect of modern American conservatism, arrived with a resounding thud on my doorstep.
[…]
Another of the book’s revelations has to do with dishonesty as well, namely the extent to which the Buckley family was engaged in the segregationist cause. While regarded as a scion of the Northeast, Bill spent much of his time in the family’s second home in Camden, S.C., at a restored plantation manor called “Kamschatka.” While the Buckleys were segregationists of the genteel variety—Tanenhaus notes how well the family’s black servants were treated—the book reveals that Buckley money funded a paper, The Camden News, which espoused the views of the local White Citizen’s Council. National Review’s editorial from 1957, written by Buckley and titled “Why the South Must Prevail,” is notorious and well-known. In it, Buckley wrote that the question:
This family connection sheds new light on the depths of Buckley’s commitment, and further explains why he would dismiss the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution as “inorganic accretions to the original document,” or compare the federalized National Guardsmen deployed to desegregate Little Rock’s schools to the Soviet tank commanders in Hungary and Poland. Tanenhaus reports that William Buckley Sr. assured his friend Strom Thurmond that Bill “is for segregation and backs it in every issue.”
It also helps explain how Buckley would approach his 1965 debate with James Baldwin at Cambridge University, and why he lost it. Buckley thought, and wrote, that Baldwin “celebrates his bitterness against the white community,” and prepared to debate an inferior opponent with a list of bitter complaints. Instead, when Baldwin takes upon his person the weight of centuries of injustice—his now famous assertion that “I picked the cotton, I carried it to the market, and I built the railroads under someone else’s whip for nothing. For nothing”—he becomes towering. Buckley, going as he so often did for personal slights, is the one made to seem small and petty.
https://defector.com/william-f-buckleys-bill-never-came-due