The Daily Blog Open Mic – 31st January 2022

1. It was January 13, 1917, and the 30-year-old flyer from Blenheim had become the first person to make a successful parachute descent from a Royal Flying Corps aircraft.

   The demonstration at the Orford Ness Experimental Station, and a second equally successful jump several days later, were important. Across the Channel, in the skies of France, the raging air war was taking its toll on young British pilots who all too often died at the controls of their flimsy and highly flammable aeroplanes. Indeed, just three months later, in “Bloody April”, the Royal Flying Corps would lose 245 aircraft and 211 aircrew, killed or missing during the British offensive at Arras.
   .
   Interesting story from NZ Geographic.
   It seems that NZs men and women, can do much if they can get a chance at life beyond the machinations of business shiny-bottom corporates and government prevaricators.

2. A new NZ anthem to represent our brave new world under neo liberalism?
   It keeps cats awake. Perhaps it would wake up we denizens of Sleepy Hollow.
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kind5OWiKNg

3. Why haven’t psa resistant varieties of kiwifruit been sold at garden centres, so that kiwfruit prone to psa could be pulled out of suburban backyards, and replaced with resistant varieties?

   • Enquire here perhaps.
     The National Pest Plant Accord (NPPA) helps the government and plant producers prevent the sale, distribution, and propagation of highly damaging pest plants (weeds) in New Zealand. Learn more about the NPPA, how species are added or removed, and what this means for you.

     https://www.mpi.govt.nz/biosecurity/how-to-find-report-and-prevent-pests-and-diseases/partnerships-programmes-and-accords/national-pest-plant-accord-for-preventing-the-sale-of-invasive-weeds-in-nz/
     Sign up to get updates about the NPPA

     MPI maintains a consultative list – a group of key stakeholders and parties interested in the NPPA or the Accord list. We update these people when the Accord list changes and send out consultation material. Anyone interested in the NPPA and the Accord list can sign up.
     Email: nppa@mpi.govt.nz
     Adding and removing species to the NPPA

     Anyone can suggest a change to the Accord list. You’ll need to fill out a proposal form, then email it to MPI at nppa@mpi.govt.nz
     Or post it to:
     NPPA Co-ordinator
     Ministry for Primary Industries
     PO Box 2526
     Wellington 6140.

     Labour needs to labour, and National needs to look beyond its navel and …
     Citizens have to expect more from their highly-paid operatives. Pepps can make it happen, whatever is the slogan. PUNZ Parallel Universe NZ

4. Poll shows TVNZ leads in ridiculous stories

   Space cadet Luxon seems to be very chuffed with the latest poll which purports to show New Zealanders want him to lead the country. The make-believe poll asked respondents three questions:
   1. If Luxon’s photographic allure was now stronger than Jacinda’s
   2. If they believed alpha executives and delegating apex predators made better thought leaders
   2. If they wanted some detached wealth speculator to drive the country into the ground on their behalf taking the environment and social cohesion with it

   The respondents, wracked with guilt, apparently said yes to all three. Sadly, it’s as though Luxon is treating politics like his housing portfolio: if he sits on his arse, does absolutely nothing and exploits the public long enough, he will expect to reap big returns from his privileged position.

   The rabid vaxxer electorate will need to sink their fangs into something else when the pandemic hysteria splutters out, and this gargantuan bald head may be just their ticket. In other TVNZ news, the White House got a cat.

5. Looking at Aldous Huxley’s writing I saw this foreword he wrote to a new edition in 1946 of Brave New World written in 1932. (I have split it up to present the ideas separately. I don’t know the things and the people he names and in case others have not come in contact with them I am passing on this. Our past knowledge has been inadequate to prevent the present breakdown of society so perhaps we can do a swot session and catch up on what we missed for all our benefits.)

   If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the Utopian and primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity… In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian, politics Kropotkinesque and co-operative.

   Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them.

   Religion would be the conscious and intelligent pursuit of man’s Final End, the unitive knowledge of immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahman.

   And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle—the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: “How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man’s Final End?”
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_(Huxley_novel)

6. In it would be funny if it wasn’t serious category.
   A Kaipara Councillor has stated this about her possible unvaccinated status. She is representing for the good of the community one expects. How can one be a self-centred individual and show no concern for the community’s interests and needs, and be a good councillor?
   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/460583/covid-19-kaipara-ratepayers-won-t-pay-for-rapid-antigen-tests-used-by-unvaccinated-councillors
   DC West Coast/Central ward councillor Victoria del la Varis-Woodcock did not confirm her vaccination status, including specifically whether she was unvaccinated.
   “It is my personal medical information that I do not share, on principle. I think it is a breach of a person’s privacy. Many breaches of civil liberties are being conducted under the guise of public health and it’s wrong. There are common law principles of individual sovereignty, first do no harm and the right to have individual sovereignty, as well as New Zealand’s Bill of Rights Act 1990,” del la Varis-Woodcock said in response.
   “Elected members need to be a role model, need to stand for values of respect, of civil liberties and human rights.”
   The Ministry of Health website says RATs are not a replacement for vaccination.

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