Open mike 22/03/2015

Written By: notices and features - Date published: - 64 comments
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64 comments on “Open mike 22/03/2015”

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  1. 1

    The Nz Herald online this morning.

    Headline stories on XFactor, the Bachelor and Top Gear. Yes
    Headline stories on Iraq, Child Poverty and the Northland. No

    Dreadful sleazy rag serving the corporate elite.

    1. 1.1

      Not to mention Rodney Hide who thinks the cop’s biggest failings at the moment are their dirty vehicles.

      1. 1.1.1

        Is XFactor, the Bachelor and Top Gear run by the same media group as the Herald as all these stories seem like a promotion for them?

        No wonder the level of public conversation in NZ is so low.

        1. 1.1.1.1

          @ Paul & ScottGN – and doesn’t that tell you something about the intelligence of the nation? Or the lack of it?

          I think the powers-that-be are hell bent on dumbing down the masses. Easier to control a conformed citizenry!

          Thankfully though, a good majority of Kiwis are awake to the agenda of the despotic ruling mob!

          1. 1.1.1.1.1

            The polls last year don’t agree with that assessment mary_a as the sheeple took enough of the blue pill for another 3 years of asset and service stripping.

    2. 1.2

      Rerun story about ‘system of a down’ frontman living here, which I thought he has been for years.

      Didn’t bother seeing if it included councils refusal to allow him to build a recording studio years ago but it wasn’t under lens watch so probably no.

  2. 2

    Haha there is a debate between Osborne and Peters on Q&A. Osborne is on a camera in Mangawhai and refused to come down to the studio. He just admitted that Joyce is in the room with him but out of camera shot …

        2. 2.1.1.2

          @ mickysavage – thanks for the link. I watched it with my husband and we were shaking our heads in disbelief at Osborne’s weak pathetic performance! The man is an absolute insult to Northlanders. To think that’s what Key and the Natsies are expecting the good folk of Northland to accept!

          Don’t believe for one minute Steven Joyce was standing behind the camera. That’s a lie. Lord Haw Haw Joyce obviously had his hand firmly up Osborne’s backside, trying to do some sharp manipulating! Anyone else notice Osborne wince with pain a few times, when he was unable to get a strike against Winston?

          Ha ha. Joyce’s “handiwork” didn’t work though did it? Because Osborne the amateur is up against the master Peters. After watching that debate, it’s conclusive Winston will walk away with the seat, without even trying 🙂

          1. 2.1.1.2.1

            “we were shaking our heads in disbelief at Osborne’s weak pathetic performance!”

            Not Osborne’s weak pathetic performance, but Steven Joyce’s weak pathetic performance actually, because Osborne was just the dozens-of-shoe-spoiling-sock- puppet of the cunningly hidden puppet-master Joyce, as was very clear in the interview! The panicking porkers, nova Ozy and the Novo Joycy! Sad stuff!

        3. 2.1.1.3

          Osborne must have been trained by Joyce to shout over the top of the opposition. Doesn’t work for him at all. He just comes across as a squeaky fuckwit.

        4. 2.1.1.4

          Jeebers.

          After watching that video I’m convinced that Mark Osborne has been abducted and is being held by Joyce, Key and Farrar against his will.

          He almost certainly has a shotgun pointed at his face through that whole debate.

          They won’t let him go to the tv studio in Auckland because they can’t control the hostage there.

    2. 2.2

      Bet he has an earpiece with Joyce providing the responses, such a shallow talent pool of wide boys the NACT have.

      Peters v Osborne is such a mismatch I’m surprised Bovver boy steve agreed to it at all.

      1. 2.2.1

        More like the nats had a camera giving TVNZ the feed and Joyce was behind the camera holding up signs! Osborne is the ultimate sock puppet.

        1. 2.2.1.1

          And to think many say Osbourne has the measure of Prime during these debates.
          So what is her future should her votes cost Peters a win.

          1. 2.2.1.1.1

            It is up to the voters to make the smart move in this by-election. WJP will have a very bright prospect in Northland in 2017 and beyond. She is formidable candidate, but this time is not the right time for her. WP will almost certainly take it this time.

        2. 2.2.1.2

          Did you notice the sideways flashing of Osborne’s eyes as he responded to questions? One of the panel guests commented on it – suggested Joyce was holding up cue cards.

          1. 2.2.1.2.1

            Joyce in the background would have unsettled Osbourne, Peters got quite a free reign to attack him. Boag was out of control and good bloody job got put in her place for a nice change. Peters laughing & smiling at National’s panicking
            was priceless.

            The good thing of Peters losing will be the burnt bridges that the Nat’s will never be able to cross.

        3. 2.2.1.3

          “More like…..Joyce was behind the camera holding up signs !”

          My understanding is that Joyce was using semaphore.

          Which, of course, is why Osborne kept squinting. He was looking at Joyce behind the camera and trying hard to decipher the position of the flags.

          1. 2.2.1.3.1

            I was thinking they were using sign language, some kind of
            three way secret handshakes and private textual connection.

    3. 2.3

      The Nats must be rueing selecting a big village idiot like Osbourne. This is one time their contempt for ordinary people – ie the voters of Northland – looks seriously like backfiring.

      I said as soon as Peters announced he was running that he would win, and I think it still.

      I wouldn’t vote for any of them, but there is some satisfaction in seeing our grinning, self-regarding, imagining they’re our social betters, in a state of some disarray.

      2. 2.3.2

        My guess is that National knew from the start that Osborne was going to be an electoral liability – but the man knew too much to be ignored.

        1. 2.3.2.1

          He has been put in there by rebel Carter who is really calling the shots not Joyce as the Nat’s would like people to believe.

          The dilemma for Labour will be the backlash from wasted votes for Prime that more than likely is going to cost Peters an upset win. Prime should have been directed to come out and say vote Peters I can not win, her loyal voters need to hear this from her, the hints are not enough and give them a way out not too, the LP and her should know this. Bad tactics.

        2. 2.3.2.2

          @ Colonial Rawshark – so what you are alluding to is that you think Osborne might have one over Key? Now that’s a new interesting take on this issue and one to consider. Makes sense then why he’s the Natsy candidate, after being Mike Sabin’s electorate treasurer!

  4. 4

    Q + A…….what a hoot ! Not only do we have Steven Joyce, the elephant in the room in Mangawhai, but we also have Aunty Mich’ Boag in the room in Auckland, flailingly seeking to build the narrative that Osborne did ‘appreciably well, appreciably well, appreciably well, appreciably well…….’ – viz. ‘If I say say say say it, ergo it’s the fact……don’t you worry about that !’

    Ups to Mich’ though……if Osborne didn’t turn up to debate Peters and Joyce didn’t turn up to debate Peters and TheGodKey didn’t turn up to debate Peters (a deficit of guts there as we know)…….then Mich’ certainly did……stepping out of her commentating role to address and challenge Peters directly across the studio.

    Astonishing arrogance ! Soooo National Party. Soooo You-Gotta-Let-Me-Win-Key !

    1. 4.1

      Stephen Joyce DOES have a head shaped like an elephant’s noggin – add the ears and trunk and VOILA – I wonder if he would work for peanuts??

      1. 4.1.1

        My family call him Humpty Dumpty because he looks just like Humpty in the nursery rhyme with his egg shaped head.

    2. 4.2

      The whole debate and panel discussion was the best bit of real life political comedy I think I’ve seen. And it wasn’t a parody!

  6. 6

    Did anybody else notice Gerry Brownlee overlooking the loss of dividends as he touts further asset sales in Christchurch?

    The return from council owned assets helps to keep rates down.

    The sale of assets will negatively impact on council return, requiring further rate increases to meet the future shortfall.

    2. 6.2

      The whole point of asset sales is to shift the profits from the government to the private sector. The rich really don’t like seeing money that they could have going to propping up society and making things better.

      1. 6.2.1

        And as we to often see, they generally end up in the hands of offshore investors, resulting in exacerbating our current account.

        1. 6.2.1.1

          The richest 100,000 people in the world (the 1% of the 1%) see the economy of the entire globe as their play ground, at their service. That is what the deliberate neoliberal changes of the last 40 years has facilitated.

  7. 7

    Looks like Labour may be learning to Listen:

    But what should our next campaign victory be? Take our short survey and have your say on what issues we campaign on next.

    The quote is actually from the email I received.

    Of course, they’re still only going to do what their executive decides about the issues raised rather than asking people what they want to see done.

  9. 9

    For those who want to STOP the ‘stealing of our harbour’:

    PROTEST!

    WHEN: Today, Sunday 22 March 2015

    TIME: 3.30pm

    WHERE: Queens Wharf
    Auckland

    Penny Bright

    1. 10.1

      That is a very curious column for Stuff to publish given the venom such column’s have poured out at Winston in the past. Curiouser and curiouser.

  11. 11

    David Graeber: ‘So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary’

    But Graeber’s book doesn’t just present human idiocy in its bureaucratic form. Its main purpose is to free us from a rightwing misconception about bureaucracy. Ever since Ronald Reagan said: “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help”, it has been commonplace to assume that bureaucracy means government. Wrong, Graeber argues. “If you go to the Mac store and somebody says: ‘I’m sorry, it’s obvious that what needs to happen here is you need a new screen, but you’re still going to have to wait a week to speak to the expert’, you don’t say ‘Oh damn bureaucrats’, even though that’s what it is – classic bureaucratic procedure. We’ve been propagandised into believing that bureaucracy means civil servants. Capitalism isn’t supposed to create meaningless positions. The last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don’t really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.”

    I’ve made that point before, that a corporation is just as much a bureaucracy as government. In fact, I’d say it’s more so.

    Graeber’s argument is similar to one he made in a 2013 article called “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”, in which he argued that, in 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the end of the century technology would have advanced sufficiently that in countries such as the UK and the US we’d be on 15-hour weeks. “In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. Huge swaths of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they believe to be unnecessary. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.”

    And that is the big one. We’re quite capable of dropping the amount each of us needs to work to truly low levels and yet our governments keep looking for ways to make us work harder and longer.

    If we dropped the amount we all had to work then everyone would be able to be more engaged in their community. Perhaps that’s what they’re afraid of.

    1. 11.1

      Very good. I was also surprised to learn that more people are engaged in paid employment than at any other time of the worlds history.

    2. 11.2

      “I’ve made that point before, that a corporation is just as much a bureaucracy as government. In fact, I’d say it’s more so.”

      It’s the classic Marxist view Draco.

      “The Corporation is civil society’s attempt to become state; but the bureaucracy is the state which has really made itself into civil society.”

    1. 12.1

      I’d guess they won’t. Labour is as wedded to globalisation as NAct is. I might be wrong, but I’d be surprised.

      1. 12.1.1

        I see the Maori Party will support the Bill, at least at its first reading.

        Anybody know where the Greens stand?

  13. 13

    Pictures tell a thousand words : On i-predict

    Winston;
    https://www.ipredict.co.nz/app.php?do=graph&sym=BE15.NTD.OTHER&size=xlg&col=%230392D7&cbgcolor=%230089EF&bgcolor=%23FFFFFF

    Osborne:
    https://www.ipredict.co.nz/app.php?do=graph&sym=BE15.NTD.NAT&size=xlg&col=%230392D7&cbgcolor=%230089EF&bgcolor=%23FFFFFF

    Willow-Jean Prime:
    https://www.ipredict.co.nz/app.php?do=graph&sym=BE15.NTD.LAB&size=xlg&col=%230392D7&cbgcolor=%230089EF&bgcolor=%23FFFFFF

    Will all this eventuate next Saturday is the millions of dollars pork barrel question!

    For more details go here:
    https://www.ipredict.co.nz/app.php?do=browse&cat=740

  14. 14

    New Study: Corporations That Put Money Into Politics Get Trillions From the Government

    For every dollar spent influencing politics, the 200 corporations were rewarded with an average of $760 dollars from the government in the form of contracts, tax breaks, or other financial perks. 102 of the corporations in the study received financial benefits from the federal government worth 10 times or more than what they invested in lobbyists and political donations and 29 received 1,000 times or more. If that’s not enough to demonstrate at least “an appearance of corruption” I don’t know what is.

    It’s a study based upon the US but it’s inevitable that similar returns to business happen here as well. Given this and the fact that the majority can’t afford lobbyists it is obvious that lobbying needs to be banned and corporations and other business entities removed from politics.

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