The Daily Blog Open Mic – Monday – 11th October 2021

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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, Qanon lunacy, climate deniers, anti-fluoride fanatics, anti-vaxxer lunatics, 5G conspiracy theories, the virus is a bioweapon, some weird bullshit about the UN taking over the world  and ANYONE that links to fucking infowar.

7 COMMENTS

  1. RNZ seem to sightly stemmed their woke tirade and actually have an interesting article on justice! If you abandoned reading them, then they are worth investigating again for their ‘Is this justice”.

    Information you won’t find anywhere else on MSM.

    Who knew justice was a monopoly? NZ justice is capped at $40 million? NZ is one of the only private led state justice centres in the world?

    $40m of public money for private law firms
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/is-this-justice/452851/40m-of-public-money-for-private-law-firms

  2. For those tired of 50% of all news and discussion about Covid. The planet is still dying under NZ’s MBIE for business led reasoning, which will eventually bankrupt NZ before Covid does, as MBIE has set the carbon threshold in NZ is ridiculously low. So essentially the NZ tax payer is underwriting polluting business in NZ.

    From no right turn.
    http://norightturn.blogspot.com

    “Last month, in the wake of the September carbon auction, I talked about how the government’s policy of flooding the market with a “cost containment reserve” of an extra 7 million tons of pollution in an effort to keep carbon costs low was a huge waste of money. Ministry for the Environment has now released their auction monitoring report, so we can see exactly how big a waste of money it was. The “interim clearing price” – pre-CCR – was $57 / ton. The final clearing price – post-CCR – was $53.85. So the government’s flooding of the market saved polluters all of $3.15 a ton, or (when multiplied by the original auction volume of 4.75 million tons) just under $15 million.

    The government values carbon internally at $150 / ton. So the social cost of that extra 7 million tons of pollution they have allowed is $1.05 billion. Or about 70 times more than the amount of money they saved, a benefit-cost ratio of 0.014. Which is even worse than the proverbial Auckland motorway, previously the rule-of-thumb for “waste of money”.

    While carbon prices have now settled at $64.50, that’s just short of the 2022 CCR trigger price of $70/ton. So there’s every chance that this tremendous polluting waste will be repeated next year. And possibly the year after that. The policy conclusion is simple: the CCR must be repealed.”

    In addition more from no right turn.

    “Last month the Emissions Trading Scheme turned into a farce, when the government flooded the market with credits in a failed and wasteful attempt to Keep Carbon Prices Low. When I asked about the background of this policy Climate Change Minister James Shaw sent me one of the most egregious “fuck you” responses to an OIA request I have ever seen:”

  3. From no right turn perspective on Pandora papers and NZ’s role in them
    http://norightturn.blogspot.com.

    “The International Coalition of Investigative Journalists released its latest look at the theft of the rich and famous overnight, it he form of the andora Papers. There’s the usual assortment of billionaires, thieves, and oligarchs – increasingly overlapping categories – and the usual famous names (oh look! Tony Blair’s a tax cheat!) And of course New Zealand has its usual role: a Moldovan oligarch who stole 12% of his country’s GDP before fleeing used New Zealand to launder his ill-gotten gains, thanks to a low-oversight, tax-free part of our financial system. There’s a name for this: effectively we were acting as a fence for stolen money. If someone had done that over, say, a television set or laptop, they’d be charged with receiving and face up to 7 years in jail. But when rich people and lawyers and accountants are involved, everyone just looks the other way. Only poor people commit crimes. Rich people pursue business opportunities.

    Supposedly reforms after the last big leak in 2016 closed some of the loopholes which made this possible, requiring trustees to identify beneficial owners to IRD. But its still all very lax – people can just lie – and the big loophole, the trust’s tax-free status, is still unplugged. Which means New Zealand is actively soliciting tax cheats to funnel their money through here, so local lawyers and accountants can clip the ticket on the way.

    Does the “centre-left” Labour government have any plans to close this loophole, and prevent new Zealand being used to effectively steal from other countries? Of course not:”

  4. Some thoughts that come to mind from reading yours savenz. That a current idea from the PTB that cheap is good enough for NZ is a driving factor and also the desire for ‘efficiency’ and getting rid of ‘fat’ so as to be ‘lean’ and make bigger profits. Limiting any sort of over-engineering, including regulation, and of course appropriate and fair taxation seems to be the driving factor.

    Aldous Huxley stated to George Orwell that the modern drive for efficiency would be bad for humanity.
    Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World#Comparisons_with_George_Orwell's_Nineteen_Eighty-Four…Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance…

    The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency. Aldous Huxley https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/aldous_huxley_391055

    What according to Huxley makes a really efficient totalitarian state?
    “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” Huxley once again harkens back to the idea of slaves loving their servitude.
    https://www.pastemagazine.com/books/brave-new-world/the-15-best-quotes-from-brave-new-world/

  5. A sign of environmental change and/or deterioration.
    https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK2110/S00185/action-needed-now-to-save-nzs-butterflies.htm
    My feeling is for our endemic preying mantis. It is green and on the inside of its front legs it has a blue patch. It is being threatened by the immigrant mantises which are a lively lot and seem to breed more, and also it is being affected by tiny wasps, I have read, brought in to control something else. So we compound our problems from introduced species from other countries. I like the way that preying mantises turn their heads and look at you with their big googly eyes. And they don’t bite when they want to run up your arm for a perch as if you are a shrub. though they have claws on their legs.
    Ruud Kleinpaste ‘Bugman’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh6KVhdPHeE

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