The Daily Blog Open Mic – Friday – 3rd January 2020

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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.

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22 COMMENTS

  6. More words. And these words should be thought of every morning as we wake up. Be pasted onto a plate that sits proud of the wall, so they stand out in every way.
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=12295052
    Gwynne Dyer: Deadlock in Madrid as Australia burns

    Dyer seems to have the world as is, clear in his mind. He says about the climate conference:
    “The point of no return is no longer over the horizon,” warned UN secretary general Antonio Guterres as the 25th climate summit (COP25) opened in Madrid two weeks ago, and the multitude of delegates from more than a hundred countries presumably understood what he meant. But they ignored it anyway…

    In diplomatic-speak, what happens then is “dangerous climate change”, but that is actually happening already, with carbon dioxide at 405ppm and average global temperature “only” 1.1C higher. We are seeing firestorms in Australia, rising sea levels, catastrophic storms and melting glaciers.

    What happens at 450ppm is that the two degrees of warming caused by human beings trigger natural processes (“feedbacks” or “tipping points”) that also cause warming – and once they start, human beings cannot stop them. The Big Three feedbacks are the loss of the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cover, the melting of the permafrost zone, and the release of vast amounts of CO2 by the warming world oceans.

    Those interested in joining with others to make a crucial difference could perhaps join:
    ECO – Environment and Conservation Organisation in Wellington of … http://www.eco.org.nz
    at Phone/Fax: 04 385-7545 Email: ECO office
    … umbrella group for environment and conservation organisations in New Zealand. … of the environment and major conservation issues in Aotearoa New Zealand.

    Or they might like to go to Robert Guyton’s thinking place for all on Sunday, How to Get There on The Standard. There is good green talk and philosophy there too. Being constructive rather than destructive is the idea; not wittering on how bad things are and what is not being done, there is plenty of that negativity around. Some have said, I think rightly, that it leads to fatalism and being frozen in the headlights of the approaching crises.

  7. I wonder if it is possible to make any comment about JK Rowling and transgender statements made? The new generation seem to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater in every matter that they are exercised about. It’s for or against, it’s black or white, it’s PC or verboten. Trying to hold onto societal norms that enable us to all have an enjoyable life if we choose, expanding these where they are unreasonably tight and narrow, seems open to attack with emotive language and moral outrage of the past turned on its head so that only amoral outrage is the only driver.

    It is happening over a number of avenues too, marijuana for one, assisted dying for the terminally ill another. Abortion. Anything sexual becomes the business of the leaders, and then gradually more comes under surveillance; being drunk and a woman caught short for a toilet is caught on CCTV, now littering, next handwashing….?….?
    https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/20/uk/jk-rowling-transgender-explainer-intl-gbr/index.html

  8. If you received a shock diagnosis – it’s cancer, diabetes, gastroparesis, alzheimer’s or anyone of the over 200 rare diseases – would you to have to do these things to fund un funded medications ?

    1) Setup a GiveALittle page to beg for money from strangers to help to pay for medicines to save your life?
    2) Sell your house or spend your life savings to fund the medicine yourself or take out regular ( On an almost weekly basis) payday loans ?
    3) Spend many hours of your time petitioning (aka begging) the government to fund the medicine you need?
    Please http://www.sign4life.nz now if you would not want to be put in the above situation, or would not want someone you love to either.

    The NZ government should fund Pharmac adequately to be able to provide the access to modern medicines that other OECD countries (such as Australia) have funded for many years. Currently NZ only has 12% access to modern medicines, which is the worst access out of 22 OECD countries. This dire situation means lives are being lost that could otherwise have been saved.

    Pharmac’s budget needs to be doubled immediately to address the chronic lack of access to medicines in NZ which has been hidden from the NZ public for too long. Please support Patient Voice Aotearoa’s petition to double the Pharmac budget and reform Pharmac so that more New Zealanders can have the longevity and quality of life that they deserve. http://www.sign4life.nz

    If at this point you are thinking the old neoliberal belief that NZ ‘can’t afford it’, then consider that:

    1) Every $1 spent on modern medicines saves $3-$10 elsewhere in the health system.
    2) Providing life-changing medicine gets people working again, and also frees up their caregivers’ time.
    3) There are already huge wastages of spend by the NZ government, e.g. the $50M/year for free-fees for tertiary students who either failed or withdrew.
    4) There are, medicines funded in poorer countries than NZ, such as Romania, that are not funded in New Zealand.
    5) Money is always ‘magically’ found by the government in times of crisis (e.g. the Christchurch earthquakes, White Island tragedy, etc).

    We have a medicine funding crisis on our hands – which is that people are dying due to lack of access to medicines ( Which is a UN HUMAN RIGHT UNDER SECTION 25 under the UN HUMAN RIGHTS CHARTER- the government should respond, and quickly, just the same as if it was a natural disaster. It’s the decent and humane thing to do.

    Everyone thinks ‘it won’t happen to me’ until it does happen to them, or someone close to them.
    There are currently over 5000 GiveALittle pages for cancer alone.
    1 in 2 people will die of cancer according to recent studies from the US and UK.
    Give ‘future you’ a chance at life by supporting the petition to double Pharmac’s budget. It’s time to fix this.

    Please sign the petition at http://www.sign4life.nz and then share this post with 3 friends who you know want to make New Zealand a better country for now, and for the future. Thank you.

    #repost via Breast Cancer Foundation NZ

  9. If you received a shock diagnosis – it’s cancer, diabetes, gastroparesis, alzheimer’s or anyone of the over 200 rare diseases – would you to have to do these things to fund un funded medications ?

    1) Setup a GiveALittle page to beg for money from strangers to help to pay for medicines to save your life?
    2) Sell your house or spend your life savings to fund the medicine yourself or take out regular ( On an almost weekly basis) payday loans ?
    3) Spend many hours of your time petitioning (aka begging) the government to fund the medicine you need?
    Please http://www.sign4life.nz now if you would not want to be put in the above situation, or would not want someone you love to either.

    The NZ government should fund Pharmac adequately to be able to provide the access to modern medicines that other OECD countries (such as Australia) have funded for many years. Currently NZ only has 12% access to modern medicines, which is the worst access out of 22 OECD countries. This dire situation means lives are being lost that could otherwise have been saved.

    Pharmac’s budget needs to be doubled immediately to address the chronic lack of access to medicines in NZ which has been hidden from the NZ public for too long. Please support Patient Voice Aotearoa’s petition to double the Pharmac budget and reform Pharmac so that more New Zealanders can have the longevity and quality of life that they deserve. http://www.sign4life.nz

    If at this point you are thinking the old neoliberal belief that NZ ‘can’t afford it’, then consider that:

    1) Every $1 spent on modern medicines saves $3-$10 elsewhere in the health system.
    2) Providing life-changing medicine gets people working again, and also frees up their caregivers’ time.
    3) There are already huge wastages of spend by the NZ government, e.g. the $50M/year for free-fees for tertiary students who either failed or withdrew.
    4) There are, medicines funded in poorer countries than NZ, such as Romania, that are not funded in New Zealand.
    5) Money is always ‘magically’ found by the government in times of crisis (e.g. the Christchurch earthquakes, White Island tragedy, etc).

    We have a medicine funding crisis on our hands – which is that people are dying due to lack of access to medicines ( Which is a UN HUMAN RIGHT UNDER SECTION 25 under the UN HUMAN RIGHTS CHARTER- the government should respond, and quickly, just the same as if it was a natural disaster. It’s the decent and humane thing to do.

    Everyone thinks ‘it won’t happen to me’ until it does happen to them, or someone close to them.
    There are currently over 5000 GiveALittle pages for cancer alone.
    1 in 2 people will die of cancer according to recent studies from the US and UK.
    Give ‘future you’ a chance at life by supporting the petition to double Pharmac’s budget. It’s time to fix this.

    Please sign the petition at http://www.sign4life.nz and then share this post with 3 friends who you know want to make New Zealand a better country for now, and for the future. Thank you.

    #repost via Breast Cancer Foundation NZ

    • A double dose of rationalisation as to why the whole country should choose to assist some people to the hilt who have some disease and are in the ‘right’ class of people, and not help with basic stuff for families of another class of people. Those who look at the world through a telescope that magnifies a small portion and doesn’t register the surrounds at all can make this argument.

      As one guy who has been hit by a nasty cancer said, it shouldn’t happen to him. Another said that because his death was very important to him, it should be top of everybody’s priorities. And all the time many elderly are living to past 90 with the help of medicines that enable them to live on though having no interest or giving to the society that supports them. How can this uneven system of medical care carry on without some rationing? It was too radical in the case of the drug changed by Pharmac, these sufferers must have what is appropriate for them, and if not are at risk of death.
      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12294418 Pharmac knew of epilepsy deaths for weeks but stayed silent
      This is a press release from the National Party which also would be inclined to support the drug companies for the same reason. https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2001/S00003/minister-must-launch-inquiry-into-pharmac-decision.htm
      RadioNZ – https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/405925/fifth-death-linked-to-epilepsy-brand-switch

      But too it suits the media to make stories about drugs. The drug companies are big, wide, have deep pockets. Comparative costings would be interesting. I don’t know what costs we are paying out, but here is the published pharmaceutical list.
      https://www.pharmac.govt.nz/about/your-guide-to-pharmac/factsheet-14-pharmaceutical-schedule/

      As our conditions worsen in this country we will have to accept that all of us can’t live up to the expectations of post WW2; we have mucked the world up. Big business now makes big profits from helping us with drugs to enable us to survive the degrading of our environment that they themselves have brought about with their products; a great money-making vicious circle. That is reality, so let’s think about it, stop demanding everything for some individuals and denying anything for others, and devise a reasonable plan to assist the afflicted and dying, and not just react to the demands for more and more drugs and expense.
      https://www.axios.com/usmca-big-pharma-biologics-protections-drug-prices-e998959a-245b-4518-9a50-f0db455751b6.html

  10. It is tough being in politics, and can be particularly so for women. So It is good Marilyn Waring still has an open door for advice for the women.
    …Former MP Marilyn Waring – who Ardern rang as a 14-year-old social studies student, asking for political advice – has been made a dame companion [Dame Companion, titles of any sort dese4rve a capital letter!] for her services to women and economics…

    Waring is now an academic at the Auckland University of Technology, but says she retains an “open-door policy for suffering women MPs”. Waring served as a National party MP for nine years in the 1970s and 1980s.

    “I think it’s been really important that I’ve been able to be there for anyone who needed that … I’ve felt very useful doing that,” Waring told the New Zealand Herald. “Just to say: ‘You’re not going crazy. This is truly what they do. And this is truly how the system operates and, yes, it hurts’.”…
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/31/new-year-honours-marilyn-waring-who-inspired-a-teenage-ardern-made-a-dame

  11. What exactly was this zoo’s fire defence plan? Maybe there is something to be learned from it by everybody.
    World environment
    3:29 pm today
    Australia bushfires: Mogo Zoo animals saved by staff efforts
    Hundreds of animals have been saved at Mogo Zoo in New South Wales, with staff battling surrounding bushfires and one even sheltering small monkeys and red pandas at his home.

    The zoo’s director, Chad Staples, described the conditions as “apocalyptic” but felt he and staff were able to defend the zoo because they enacted their fire defence plan.

  12. Urban design and planning can promote mental health by refocusing on spaces we use in our everyday lives and we advocate that Government give solid recommendations to all NZ Council planners these future plannning instruments to use to assist in restoring better urban community mental health.

    https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2001/S00001/biodiversity-and-our-brains-ecology-and-mental-health.htm

    Biodiversity and our brains: ecology and mental health
    Thursday, 2 January 2020, 12:08 pm
    Article: The Conversation
    Biodiversity and our brains: how ecology and mental health go together in our cities
    Zoe Myers, University of Western Australia
    Mental health in our cities is an increasingly urgent issue. Rates of disorders such as anxiety and depression are high. Urban design and planning can promote mental health by refocusing on spaces we use in our everyday lives in light of what research tells us about the benefits of exposure to nature and biodiversity.

  13. When you find out that supermarkets are making record profits here and cutting down on more and more products they sell towards their own ‘home brand’ and 70% of food sold in supermarkets is not nutritious and highly processed about time we look at levelling the monopolies in NZ!

    We already have highly dysfunctional near monopoly industries in NZ, Banks, supermarkets, petrol, construction etc

    India has just put in rules to prevent online retailers from selling products through vendors in which they hold an equity stake.

    NZ should do the same and make it across industry aka Banks can’t sell their own ‘brand’ insurance products etc.

    Food should be the starting point! NZ is very small and it is too easy for companies to start to control and wipe out competition here by increasing the presence of more and more of their own products.

    • This is a problem rightly aired savenz. House brands like Pam’s are taking over more and more shelves where other brands used to display. Supermarkets are so handy, and can make food shopping so pleasant, rain or shine, that they suck many in. But I am disturbed at their hard trading policies and the way that well-known and loved brands can be replaced by some new foreign brand, or undersold by cheap offers of the house brand.
      I think in business it is called vertical integration, where one entity pushes more of their own product, in their own store, decreasing everybody else. What the house brands in supermarkets do is to offer their own brand selling some product that another company has developed and been successful with. Horizontal selling is where a company spreads out with many outlets, and sometimes they will have different names, so appearing to be operating in a competitive market when they actually all arise from the same mega-company and use their size and volume of business to out-compete smaller individuals.
      https://www.coursehero.com/file/p5rtjhg/Ch-7-What-is-the-difference-between-horizontal-growth-and-vertical-growth-Name/

  14. Police not taking small offenders to Court or pursuing the matter. Said to be because of cuts in police budgets with lack of personnel. NZ has seen the Serious Fraud Office not pursuing a case they weren’t sure they would win, but I think was public knowledge and should have been pursued as a warning measure to others.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/02/private-security-firm-mounts-uks-first-private-prosecutions/?li_source=LI&li_medium=li-recommendation-widget

    The neolib agenda in NZ is to have the best system you can have for the reasonably off for the lowest taxation; that’s efficiency folks. The people at the bottom will not see the holes in the safety net mended, with more falling through. I don’t know how long it will take to reach tipping point just short of complete collapse, but there is still room for a lot of accommodation for increasing poorer conditions for ordinary citizens than at present.

  15. This wee piece in the paper re recycling and decreasing thrown-out objects was fascinating.
    28/9/2019 Nelson Mail said the French Senate ‘approved legislation banning the destruction of unsold non-food items, including cosmetics…in a “world first”.’ Reckoned $NZ1.7billion pa thrown out in France. The item mentioned clothes and shoes, textiles, electronics or plastics particularly. There is already a law banning supermarkets from destroying unsold food which has to go to charity.

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