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6:00 am, April 26th, 2026 - 20 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 …
https://www.cfr.org/articles/washingtons-growing-portfolio-tracking-u-s-government-investments
US government now has $21 billion invested directly into 16 companies, and preparing to "invest" in Spirit Airways.
Not all good ones, but mostly are.
Maybe it's time our next government did more than leave it to NZSuperFund.
The tough guys….(FYI : I have known shearers, some good ,some fkn cruel arseholes. Hey they're just sheep aye?)
Pysclingleft!
Not condoning ruff handling, people with the wrong temperament shouldn't shear, but are you really OK with people spying in people , if I had a camera on you would all you actions pass muster?
I hear ya but I would just assume we are all being filmed, somewhere, somehow. About 10 years back I worked as a posty & we had a meeting about not peeing while on the job (sometimes we'd just go behind a tree at park or somewhere if desperate) because the company were getting many complaints & all filmed, usually peoples house cameras, even cars filming us.
I think that is a good example of our negative society. It is not a tall poppy society, cutting people off at the knees for rising above the norm, it is everyone obeying the particular rules of the day, ensuring a place in proper society. Quite different to what John Clarke displayed with Fred Dagg. We laugh because we are smarter and more elevated than those simple souls. They are separate and lesser than us, eating their peas off their knife etc.
I think we are frozen mentally, into becoming some elevated type of person in most of our minds. The real great people who feel friendship for their fellows are found under the middle class (who are okay with much if they have achieved money and house and holidays etc). The good and worthy and understanding with a sense of tolerance, humour and irony, are more in the upper lower class. Also many who do skilled work with materials and interacting with others face to face, of some sort.
We need people who keep it real more than ever. I was just looking at Robert Harris The Fear Index written in 2011 about AI taking over the stock exchange. It may have already happened. Now all might be filmed most communicate on the internet, the postie comes less and less. Phones are less and cellphones (through the net) are the common, and a phone number can be rejected as contact number by an organisation.
The general public believe they have 'agency' and look on real life like a theatrical performance and they are the amused or merely carping critics. My feeling for the way forward, find some real people; staunch, who all could live and work together in a sort of supportive family, on land owned by a trust etc, and have some years of human living before the next cataclysm. Don't waste time to laugh or sneer, face reality and be strong, practical and enjoy knowing others like you face to face if you can. It's later than you think; these days you can run but you can't hide from this wave of tech and tactile brainwashed warriors.
Now we're all wishing we'd been rinsing our letters before opening them,IFL 🙂
Lol! I assure you, posties are assiduous in their cleanliness because they all come with a dose of OCD, it's a precise job & that is/was harder than it looked. I loved the work! But it's all over, except a few hold outs like Masterton (still posties biking out there).
In my yoof, I aspired to be one (a postie) – the bicycle, the basket, the cheery, "Good morning!", but the early-morning grind behind the scene, sorting envelopes and parcels and exposure to some manager or other's OCD and 6:30 am grumpiness – no thanks!
Pleased to hear you used gloves, or tissues, or something…
Well bwaghorn ! I could wonder if I had touched a nerve? I certainly wasnt meaning you..personally ?
Anyway the link article (if you read it) describes how…
And re your "are you really OK with people spying in people , if I had a camera on you would all you actions pass muster?"
And yes, I have indeed worked with workplace cameras on me.I and others did fight back when the employer wanted to film in the Staff break room.
Anyway, back to it… these sheds are workplaces. Very much like the commercial fishing boats that also would like to do whatever the fck they like…
If they could be trusted…but obviously..not !
A sheep is defenceless against an enraged shearer, just as a Maui's dolphin can't fight a fisherman's net. The camera's unblinking eye helps change brutish behaviour for the better where personal ethics is insufficient.
Someone keeping an eye out for the vulnerable human or other perceptive being is a worthy activity. In early 1900s Upton Sinclair did undercover work in abbatoirs in USA – got changes from government. (He and Orwell both did full-body research, and a camera would have been useful to assist in understanding.)
The effort to control our trend to bad behaviours to others and even ourselves is unceasingly necessary it appears.
Ian Powell has written a scathing brief history of Lester Levy who’s just like his buddy Luxon a legend in his own mind. Uncharacteristically, for Powell, not a single word on Levy’s heavy hand in the privatisation of public health.
So, what was the reason for Levy’s fall from the 9th floor? He’d turned the dogmatic drive for cost-efficiency (aka cost-cutting, outsourcing, and privatisation) by and for the Government into weakness and liability for the Government.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/04/24/how-the-levy-finally-broke-the-ninth-floor-went-cold-on-lester/
According to the Ipsos NZ Issues Monitor, Labour is perceived as much more capable than National at managing issues related Healthcare/hospitals since May 2024.
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2026-02/Media%20Release%20-%20Ipsos%20New%20Zealand%20Issues%20Monitor%20-%2002%20March%202026_0.pdf
Levy (nor Shane Reti) never managed to stop this bleeding of public perception, so Simeon Brown stepped in to amputate the Levy limb and sedate the patient (aka NZ voters) enough to stop kicking up a stink for the upcoming election.
I’m not going to link to the Herald.
Is the witch hunt they’re doing on Jacinda and Ashley over teenager vaccinations. being driven by Jim Grenon?
Grenon may have a role, given what little we know.
Another Grenon (no relation) offered a pre-vaccine Covid cure – before ivermectin.
Oops – [careful now RNZ, 6 March
20262025]Got to keep that important topic at the forefront of voters’ minds, especially of NZ First devotees who cite the gospel of Peters.
Pyscling left,
Some days I let myself down
But like most issues they are complex..
There's mental health, work load, poor facilities, culture, and big one the real hard stock jobs , quality traing ,support and supervision, if you want cameras in shearing sheds ,cow sheds sheep yards by all mean go advocate and get the law changed, a camera would certainly modify behavior, but don't sneak around like a filthy spy, and name and shame and possibly ruin a person's life and risk suicide because you think wool is cruel and meat is murder.
bwaghorn, I didnt see this till now. First up, I am definitely not (as I said ) putting this as a personal ?
I would never have done that .You are as i have said at other times one of the (maybe rarer) left speaking Farm worker/employee I have seen/heard.
And to clear things, I personally am not advocating cameras….nor do I personally think wool is cruel/meat is murder.
However as I do say…and I will stand by this, some are fkn cruel arseholes. And have been for fkn years.
Not just to the sheep as in the story..but smashing cows tails/calves with metal pipes,etc (and worse, I'm not going to link…)
Would only that Peer Pressure would work…the people doing it called out by their mates?…(FYI I personally have said, and stopped some of this shit happening)
Anyway take care.
Too-many-rists should result in the supposedly responsible authorities to have their wrists held firmly when the business is defiling our good, healthy environment. And too many tourist coys owned by 'overseas', are coyly lifting their profits out of the country and, I fear, employing others from the big world not Kiwis properly trained.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/environment/593449/community-group-alarmed-by-shotover-river-s-spike-in-e-coli-council-opens-investigation
[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.]
Sorry thought I was on Mike. And to add a point to the above that shows the slowness of authorities to respond to fast deterioration and still feel comfortable to contract to 35 years – what will happen in 5 years? Need to stop polluting right now :