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6:00 am, July 26th, 2026 - 29 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 …
Something I posted last night which bears repeating:
The polling now is Left 46.3 to Right 48.7 (excluding the Opportunist Party) according to the rolling average on the Wiki NZ General Election page. This is a gap of 2.4%, where at the election the gap was 11.2%.
You would be a brave man to call the election for the Right on these numbers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2026_New_Zealand_general_election
Like every other result this year, it's too close to call (i.e. within the margin of error).
But it's very difficult for journos to report 'there is no change; and no obvious trend', so they obsess on tiny, statistically insignificant differences in order to generate a story.
You would be brave, indeed, to call the election based on any poll this year.
The Greens are far ahead as usual. There are lots of votes in this. The consented data centre in Southland will use two-thirds of the power generated by the Clyde dam.
"The Green Party wants a one-year pause on consents for new AI data centres, until stronger rules and regulations are put in place.
Chloe:"Some may argue these AI data centres could build their own renewable energy, or that they're increasingly using closed-loop water cooling systems. That may well be the case, but our current rules don't require any of those things," she said.
"New Zealanders haven't even had the opportunity to discuss and decide whether they want them.""
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics/796938/urgent-need-for-rules-and-protections-on-data-centres-greens-say
The Southland data factory consent was granted on a non-notified basis, with no right for public input or appeal. Scandalous.
Beat me to it, BG!
The Greens have done the right thing and their timing is spot-on. Southland aligns tightly to National but this declaration will attract a great many votes to the Greens, imo. Dave Kennedy will enjoy huge support over the next few months.
+100 Merc
With regards to data centers a quick chat to the all seeing eye that lives in my ph reckons 40 to 80% of data is stuff that will never be used again, so strong rules about what can and should be stored would greatly decrease the size and amount of these resource sucking behemoths we need.
To think, all these resources for lots of curated personalised pornography.
Or, as George Melly once remarked about an over-ornate vacuum cleaner factory: "all that to suck up shit".
Chlöe .v. Tova – tough confrontation – intense challenges elegantly met and answered; Chlöe for the win and the clear connection to everyone watching.
Kudos to Swarbrick for keeping her cool and staying on track.
Modern technology is wonderful, you can't see the strings operating the interviewer's movements and voicing the inane interjections is uncannily good too.
Agree gsays…she is on top of her game.
You are saucy about this Merc. What about giving us the source, the basis of the comment?
https://nickrockel.substack.com/p/tovas-q-and-a-trainwreck
Ta for that Incog.
Chlöe afire!
Has anyone factored-in her influence on the election?
I don't think so.
Yet.
Presumably, yes. The polls sample the voting preferences across NZ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2026_New_Zealand_general_election
If there is a significant 'Chloe bump' in people choosing to vote for the Greens – it would be included there.
ATM, it seems to parallel the 'Winston bump' for NZF – in the trend graph (individual polls bounce around all over the place)
People just getting on with life without much thought have no idea of how far we can slip to a disgracefully decadent situation when there is little respect for fellow citizens. Reading this about funeral costs reminds me of some stories from the USA and elsewhere.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK2607/S00782/families-need-greater-support-as-the-cost-of-dying-continues-to-rise.htm
Overseas: 2026 https://www.npr.org/2025/06/28/nx-s1-5449615/funeral-home-owner-decaying-bodies-sentenced-colorado
2023 Indiana funeral director found with dozens of rotting bodies … BBC https://www.bbc.com › world-us-canada-65732861 27 May 2023 — Randy Lankford will be sentenced in June for failing to complete funeral services he was paid for.
2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Tri-State_Crematory_scandal | Rotting Human Bodies Are Found at Georgia Crematory https://www.ebsco.com › research-starters › law › rotting… In February 2002, a shocking discovery was made at the Tri-State Crematory in Walker County, Georgia, when officials uncovered over 330 human bodies in ..
(Followed by litigation in 2004 by families in desecration case and decision of $37 million. Not an appropriate ending for respectful treatment of people and death in a community.)
2019 Australia – https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-23/four-corners-investigation-body-identification-in-carparks/11528608
2024 UK – https://theconversation.com/the-humberside-funeral-home-incident-shows-england-and-wales-need-a-better-system-for-dealing-with-death-226040
I went to a day seminar in Ashurst about d-i-y funerals, and easing the passing of someone you love at home, the Death Without Debt movement.
It is legal to carry the body prep at home, and even transport a body in your car, as long as you protect against leakage. Some funeral directors are happy to be involved with such minimal funerals.
The Ashurst community has invested for loan in cooling mats used to lay out bodies during tangi ceremonies on marae.
The people running the course were empathic and genuine, and see it as a form of respectful farewell to prepare the bodies of those you love.
The same group, hosted by RECAP, are running repeat seminars in Sept. (Their newsletter just arrived in my email today, so thought I’d pass it on.)
https://recap.org.nz/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=158
Business: Death can be a stressful time, when the business of life is put on hold in order to hold space for grief and the dying process. Death can also be stressful because it is expensive, with the average Kiwi funeral topping out at $13,000. DIY knowledge can cut costs. However, the more prepared you can be with the business end of death—processes and paperwork—the more focused you can be on what is most important, honouring this final stage of life by being present. In this first half of the workshop, details local options for burial, cremation, and natural burial, as well as the paperwork required. We also cover Advanced Care Plans, Wills, EPOAs, and probate.
https://recap.org.nz/civicrm/mailing/url?u=1020&qid=97934
Body: Communities have largely lost the skills and knowledge needed to care for a loved
one who is dying, or who has died. Along with this, we have lost ways to talk about death, which impacts the way we grieve. When we don’t know what to expect or how to prepare for death, something precious is lost. This intimate support is a gift–not only for the person who is dying, but for the loved one left behind. This second half of the workshop focuses on the dying process, unexpected death, post-death priorities, body care, cooling the body, shrouding and coffins, as well as transport.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/07/26/nz-sleepwalking-into-a-digital-strait-of-hormuz/
The Coalition wants to expose NZ to the whims of Trump, Musk, and other notoriously unpredictable and unreliable characters.
A friend mentioned how interesting Sam Neill's comments on his past were. It seems that came from here March 2023. Thanks to Philip Matthews and The Press for a great backgrounding:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300837756/sir-sam-neill-says-generation-of-inbreeding-at-elite-christchurch-school
,,,,,These facts and others are relayed in Neill’s friendly conversational style in his new memoir ‘Did I Ever Tell You This?’…
…what does he make of his years in Dunedin and Christchurch? While he was born in Northern Ireland, Dunedin was home. But the gloss wore off as he aged, and he found it small and claustrophobic….
“One anecdote about my hometown might tell you why,” he writes. “In 1964, at the very height of Beatlemania, the Dunedin Town Hall was only three-quarters full when they played there. The one place in the world they didn’t sell out. ‘Provincial’ doesn’t cover it.”…
In classic Christchurch fashion, we can ask what schools he went to, and he provides the answer. He was at Cashmere Primary briefly, then Medbury School and Christ’s College, before going on to university…
at Medbury. He recalls that the Old Boys’ Association, headed by “poor Richard Ballantyne”, would ask him for this or that, and he would reply as follows. “Richard, you must know I absolutely hated my time at Medbury, and I have no good memories of it. I know you mean well but, please, do not ask me for anything again.” He admits he might have over-egged the “hate” aspect.
“There was bad food, there was bullying, there were prefects, there was an insufferable seniority system, boys brutalising other boys and, last but not least, there was corporal punishment,” he writes. “Of course. The whole British nine yards.”
Neill was alert to the psychological cost, as he saw it. “I don’t remember anyone actually being happy there, and one of the saddest things I can think of is the junior dorm, where the little boys were. Boys of six or seven would cry themselves to sleep every single night, desperately missing home.”
After that, Christ’s College was more of the same, only bigger. He recalls it as a school full of thick future farmers. A brutal PE teacher named Hec Mackay was just one of the ex-military officers and war veterans who terrorised boys at that and other schools….
Neill recalls Jacobs House* had a “disproportionate number of very thick boys”. “Quite a few of my friends, therefore, were in Jacobs. The truly eccentric boys were in Flower’s House. My old pal Gus Watson was one of these. Inspired by The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen, Gus dug an escape tunnel. Like many things that Gus has done over the years, it wasn’t fully thought out. When he emerged, the tunnel exit was only a few metres away from the headmaster’s office. Gus’s sense of direction had failed him underground.”…
Christchurch is also where Neill first became interested in acting, under the tutelage of the legendary Dame Ngaio Marsh, remembered as “a grand dame of a very old school, and slightly scary”.
He played Theseus in her production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and he knows it got a good review in The Press (the paper praised his “fine voice”). He also recalls Marsh storming backstage and accusing him of “a sissy performance”.
Neill got on better with Mervyn Thompson, a true original of New Zealand theatre, nicknamed “Proc”, whose career was derailed when he was publicly accused of rape by feminists in Auckland in the 1980s.
His last meeting with Thompson offers a nice conclusion to the Christchurch years. “Years later, I found Proc in Christchurch, living in a small, dark flat off Bealey Avenue,” he writes. “Proc was in seclusion. He’d been subject to a scandal not long before: he’d been chained to a tree by some women activists in revenge for an alleged transgression in the past. As to the truth of those claims, I have no idea.
“He was also suffering from a terminal cancer of the face, and he was hideously and cruelly disfigured. I felt desperately sorry for him, isolated and facing imminent death. I was able, though, to thank him for the change he had made to my life, and indeed to theatre in New Zealand.”
That short, melancholy scene says many good things about Neill, who emerges from the book as a decent, funny, empathetic and only slightly fogeyish figure, a man with a gift for friendship and a love of family.,,,
So another lively Kiwi icon bites the dust. Soon a generation will have passed; those who can pick up the threads and carry on must stick together. No more Mervyn Thompson alienation please; no similar incensed cabals imposing persecution on a person in detestation and punishment. That does not prepare us for a humane future for either gender, or whatever the case.
I have wondered where these that step up for leadership roles then proceed sell off NZAO to the world's wealthy like auctioneers, learned their crafts. Ayn Rand's creeds in USA required significant reading skills which these blowhards have not. I have quoted the book 'Posh Boys' about UK boarding colleges before; it would be relevant, on UK class society of the 1900s appearing here now.
Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain | PEPF : Private Education Policy Forum https://www.pepf.co.uk › Book Reviews 14 Apr 2021 — Verkaik does a very good job of illustrating damage done by a historic English public school ethos of muscular Christianity.
It's up to us now then isn't it?
One good conversation at a time.
Perhaps there need to be little no-alcohol meetings regularly in each town to choose a project that would be good for their town and another that would in the short term make things better for the needy.
Ask around to see which of the suggested ideas for the two avenues would be good to start on and have more meetings, look for starting a local trust that can never be sold, and at worst split up and handed to the most in need. Seeing the gummint is determined to rob us of everything, law, or solid or commons, that we had settled on keeping, leave the buggers out altogether. Make it totally non-political not even a PPP.
We need to help with good things to keep them going and in Kiwi hands. I'm looking at plastic recycler Future Posts since it has had a problematic fire. Does anyone know any points against them so we know just what we have and have not.
I'd very nearly forgotten the Mervyn Thompson saga so thanks for the reminder.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/12-09-2016/the-mervyn-thompson-affair-revisiting-the-strange-case-of-a-teacher-chained-by-vigilantes-to-a-tree-in-western-springs
And this turned up in Robert Verkaik rabbit hole.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/history/article/graham-greene-kim-philby-and-the-secrets-of-their-cold-war-friendship-wlb0zdzpd
https://archive.li/BkZEg
Yes, Steve, 'sex without consent' is rape. Whatever happened or didn't happen, minimising rape like this is rape culture, and rape cultures leads to women being raped.
Having dealt with that matter weka I hope you can bring your incisive mind to fixing some of the other cultures that bloom with ever more toxic algae in the natural and unnatural world in Kiwiland.
El Nino or El None-oh? All these scientists with new findings that upset the old ones leave us confused.
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/news-and-media/highlights/climate-models-get-key-feature-el-nino-wrong-undermining-forecast-accuracy
But pay attention – we need some ideas outside selling our agricultural,horticultural businesses to overseas buyers with heavy pockets. See what some are saying in North England.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0qvw91ejp1o
Climate change has produced a huge down and upturn in different species. In only a couple of years. Serious for us all over the world. This is off Goggle News.
Clam production in Scardovari fell from 4,800 tons to 340 tons, while blue crab catches in the Po Delta climbed from about 200 tons in 2022 to 2,000 tons in 2024, a 900% increase.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/invasive-blue-crabs-drive-italy-101100308.html
Further about Future Post. The arson was in November 2025. The government has turned them down for support apparently.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/115333285/inside-future-post-how-a-kiwi-company-is-turning-plastic-bags-into-fences
https://www.futurepost.co.nz/news
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michelle-henry-90002024_this-post-matters-future-post-the-kiwi-activity-7482877844881248256-Hqw4
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/regions_auckland/580032/man-charged-with-arson-over-waiuku-recycling-facility-fire
2026 July 21 https://www.farmersweekly.co.nz/news/future-post-in-dire-straits-after-arson/
2021 Feb. https://environment.govt.nz/assets/Doc-4-Future-Post-CRRF-A15-proposal-for-release.pdf
2019 August https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/115333285/inside-future-post-how-a-kiwi-company-is-turning-plastic-bags-into-fences