The Daily Blog Open Mic – Friday 5th July 2019

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Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.

Moderation rules are more lenient for this section, but try and play nicely.

EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist language, homophobic language, racist language, anti-muslim hate, transphobic language, Chemtrails, 9/11 truthers, climate deniers, anti-fluoride fanatics, anti-vaxxer lunatics and ANYONE that links to fucking infowar.

6 COMMENTS

  1. Time for the Government to do some fine tuning of law quickly where it is needed by an entity doing God’s work, so to speak. By this I mean where people are helping people in need.

    There is a new levy, not expensive in itself, on coastguard search and rescue boats which have to fundraise to keep operating and which provides the major part of their operating costs.
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/393680/left-to-perish-lack-of-support-for-coastguard-a-national-disgrace

    The coastal search and rescue charity needs $20 million a year to keep its patrol vessels afloat. It receives 12.5 percent of that from the government and fundraises the rest. But as of 1 July it has a new bill in its in-tray.Coastguard NZ has been asked to pay the maritime levy, which it calculates will costs it another $20,000 a year. Maritime New Zealand said the charity was being asked to pay the annual fee as it is classified under the law as a ‘commercial’ operation not ‘recreational’ – the only two categories available.

    Coastguard NZ said as a not-for-profit whose primary tasks were search and rescue and educating boaties on water safety, that description didn’t fit. The search and rescue operation has 60 paid staff, 2200 volunteers and more than 15,000 kilometres of coastline to patrol.
    Last year its volunteers brought nearly 7000 people home safely after an emergency on the water.

    Just think of Norm Hewitt floating in the sea for three days, it was only the belief that people would search for him that kept him going. And actually the official search was called off, and only the private search that continued, found him when he was near giving up.

    The government has usually had to be dragged to providing or part funding practical essential caring services, eg ambulances, services for the blind, hospice care, (and dying people outside hospice care may receive little or no support). The neolib economic system which wants to leave everything to the market, and limit government provisions and services has enfeebled government till it can be likened to a leaky building with a favourable outside appearance, but behind the walls – ugh – really sick-making.

    So government, can you use deemed regulations somehow and enable special not-for-profit classifications for public helping entities like rescue vessels also lifesavers, and firefighters too. These are entities carrying out activities involving caring for the community in need. I think that churches get tax exemptions, and I don’t think they always meet this level of caring and respect for the person. So please do something now for genuine helpers like Search and Rescue, and support them whole-heartedly, to show that government does have a heart!

  2. Just to show how we NZ battlers can keep popping up and striving for better outcomes with a wry laugh (absolutely essential to have at least one therapeutic hee-haw very day. Why should donkeys get all the hee-haws?)

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/113814441/stylish-living-on-the-smell-of-an-oil-rag
    Bob Irvine local wit and raconteur can be thanked for this tale about folk living in a healthy open-air mode.

    “We’ve got two good incomes but still couldn’t afford a house,” she says. “Then Ben came up with the idea of converting the space beneath a bridge. It’s roomy, watertight and handy to services like water and roads.”
    Charlotte says the Brutalist concrete roof is on-trend, which sealed the deal.

  3. Just noticed this before I go and do some work! This is how our ‘rockstar economy’ works in reality, (John Key’s term). What sort of rock is it though – after all a meteorite is a sort of rock star and the economy after that hit would be – terrible?

    This scene is terrible. If I had a heart it would bleed, but you have to conserve hearts in this NZ, there is a constant need for bits of heart, and who has enough to give away?
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/114011065/parents-queuing-in-dark-cold-rain-for-hours-to-get-emergency-grants

    The first person was outside the Manurewa office just after 2am today – he said he was there to get a grant to pay for warm clothes for his three children.

    “I need to buy long pants, jumpers, jerseys and that, and then I need to get food, because I stay in a three bedroom house – I pay $610 a week.”

    If there were people who went along to the office with clothes early in the morning, I wonder if that would help with part of their problems, certainly the man quoted would need more than clothes, but at least he would have some met. I am sure that if someone was willing to go to the Manurewa office earlyish say 8 am, and replied here with an address, they could be posted some useful warm things with no holes, not stained, washed and dried. I wonder how that would go – peer to peer interaction that was real and physical not just air-waves.

  4. Indian loan shark victim allowed to stay in New Zealand for a year
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/393803/indian-loan-shark-victim-allowed-to-stay-in-new-zealand-for-a-year

    Surely the idea should be to stop people coming to NZ that can’t afford to be here, most of the students coming here take out loans and are lured into doing so by NZ slack requirements that just require a loan of money in a bank account to prove they can support themselves, they can’t and we are propping up Indian and foreign loan sharks profits, encouraging more victims, as well as everything else!

    So many middle men profiting from NZ pathetic visa rules, hundreds of thousands are coming from poor countries with fake and misleading paperwork and NZ then decides if anyone coming here from all over the world have been ripped off faking their residency requirements for study by borrowing the money, they get more visas…

    What message it that sending when Kiwi’s are living in cars and we have a housing, health care crisis and a pollution crisis… the people who rip them off get an unlimited supply of new punters and the loser is NZ taxpayers and NZ poor?

    Auckland council is now thinking of selling our water assets because we have too many people (in fact apparently we have had a dry winter and running out of water too) but still we can allow the world’s poor with fake paperwork to come here and work.

    You can also claim NZ residency if you are a victim of family violence, pretty much any negative thing in someone’s life you can get residency for, aka you get into a relationship with a NZ passport holder, then claim it did not work out and your life is at risk… and then get residency in NZ too!

    Great to see we are exporting the smart people out of NZ and importing those who are easily duped or bad judges of character, to replace them…

    Last five years we have had our skills applications actually dropping for people coming here, as apparently our government’s vision of NZ as a nation of unskilled low wage workers comes to fruition.

  5. Is NZ the go to place for fraudsters to launder their money? Easy to get in here, no questions asked!

    Malaysian businessman facing $26.5m fraud allegations lived luxury NZ life as motor racing team owner

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12246336

    We all know if you come from a certain country, nothing can touch you, and our $10k money laundering and declarations don’t apply to everyone these days and you will not be mentioned or the country you are from either! (what was the price to circumvent our own laws, threatening to stop another flight or import… we have a two tier justice system operating in NZ)

    Customs returns nearly $302,000 to foreign diplomat who failed to declare the cash in breach of money laundering laws

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12247240

    • Keep up the checking Savenz it is hard to be up to date with our latest stupidity. Why we ever believed that NZ was a well-developed smart country was because we allowed things to sink below the everyday sight level. That mistake led to the pathos and bathos of today.

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