Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.
The Editor doesn’t moderate this blog, 3 volunteers do, they are very lenient to provide you a free speech space but if it’s just deranged abuse or putting words in bloggers mouths to have a pointless argument, we don’t bother publishing.
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.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/479623/auckland-s-st-james-theatre-restoration-now-do-or-die-swarbrick-says
The future of Auckland’s St James Theatre is set to be decided in Parliament, as pleas for its restoration ramp up.
The 1920s theatre has hosted some of the world’s biggest acts including James Brown, Miles Davis and Joni Mitchell, but the venue just off Queen Street has sat dormant for the past six years.
Renovation plans have fallen by the wayside, with plans to build an apartment building next door to provide funding also languishing.
Amidst a music venue shortage across New Zealand, a group called Save the St James – alongside Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick – are fighting to restore the venue to its former glory.
This is where the Greens can really help NZ/Ao.
Aucklanders of course deserve everything of the best so they can draw in overseas artists and wealthy incomers and tourists. Thet have already done up the old Civic with its overhead panorama of stars on a blue background which I remember from childhood.
Look at it now.
https://www.aucklandconventions.co.nz/venues/the-civic
Location: Corner Queen Street & Wellesley Street, Auckland
One of only seven atmospheric theatres in the world
Opulent and dramatic setting
Domed ceiling with spectacular starscape
Four unique spaces to choose from
Central Auckland City location
Moorish design with turrets, minarets and spires
Auckland is another country I think which is what ACT and Rodney Hide had in mind when applying their sharp little ferret minds to advancing the cause of the upwardly ambitious, and soulless.
I’m not sure the Green Party or Labour is interested in saving history or the arts they seem to hate it, just like the Natz and ACT and NZ First. Nothing from Greens to help the Auckland University specialist libraries that were shut and the books destroyed, but kept the Law specialist library (arguably law is the easiest to move to online rather than architecture and art!) all while the new overseas bought in chancellor lived in a 5 million Parnell mansion. Lost 13+ jobs for people in the arts that used to run the libraries.
Gosh, gobsmacked savenz. I have read about precious libraries and collections being shifted, perhaps lost to us, through changes for the national collections. But read more about the $5 million house which seemed a reasonable investment in the circumstances, but not at the cost of the loss of written records. Madness by university supposed to be repository of historic happenings and findings. That’s bad faith behaviour.
Good terminology in this heading –
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/479234/review-finds-number-of-workers-exposed-to-asbestos-grossly-underestimated
That’s ‘gross’ all right.
Further grossness.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/479694/rnz-tvnz-public-media-merger-private-contractors-paid-6000-per-week-on-average
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/479687/retirement-commission-review-suggests-more-people-set-to-retire-without-a-nest-egg
I know someone who has been paid a few thousand as part of a sensitive issues claim, had it in the bank so to assist in future problems, has turned 65, was going to retire from a physical job, has bmuscular pain, had accommodation supplement withdrawn immediately after phone interview about something else, and can’t afford to retire though needing injections for pain. The supposed social system to aid us has become a matter of limiting, lessening numbers and spending less on the poor and needy. Putting money into physical things like buildings and monuments is more showy.
How can people become more compelling as objects of receipt of government largesse? Perhaps set up a large screen visible from Parliament and flash onto it images of beneficiaries thanking government for the help they get and telling the positive things they can now do as a result of that funding, in continual transmission 24/7? Make the invisible and anonymous, visible!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/479702/education-report-recommends-more-cybersecurity-investment-as-risk-grows
Be like the maths teacher, work it out with a pencil (or biro) – remember 8 out of 10 people use a biro for writing! (Possible confabulation.) However if true, join the majority in this new craze that is so efficient and inexpensive.
Hard to disagree and disgusting that the media keeps reporting billionaires in good light that pledge to give away their fortune but just seem to be doubling it, while the taxpayers pay out instead for their tax breaks.
Opinion: We should be sceptical of billionaires who pledge to share their wealth
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2022/11/opinion-we-should-be-sceptical-of-billionaires-who-pledge-to-share-their-wealth.html
Promises are cheap!
When Maori get their lands and tikanga as their way of life everything wiould be much smoother and more peaceful. No, they are not carbon copies and have strong ideas which sometimes conflict.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/479737/te-urewera-hut-found-burnt-after-court-injunction-against-removal
and
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018868103/the-stoush-in-te-urewera-that-s-about-more-than-just-huts
…He [John Boynton, reporter for The Hui, Newshub’s Māori affairs show.] has also reported on ongoing tensions within the iwi over Tūhoe’s leadership and the actions of its operating arm Te Uru Taumatua – its perceived lack of transparency and decision-making without consultation. Boynton says the huts row is an extension of that.
“The huts have been a way for whānau to connect with Te Urewera. They might be DOC buildings, but I think the community and Tūhoe have given them life. It’s been their way to hunt and have that relationship with the ngahere (forest).
“But you also have to look at what Te Uru Taumatua is trying to do, in creating a new whakapapa and a new relationship for whānau and for the wider community in Aotearoa to have in Te Urewera,” says Boynton.
Te Uru Taumatua plans to replace the huts with new purpose-built structures for the use of locals and manuhiri (visitors). It is part of its vision for Tūhoe to reconnect with the land.
Te Uru Taumatua chair Tamati Kruger told RNZ recently that it was not tenable to continue to run shelters and huts that become memorials to what happened in the 1950s and 1960s…
…It was a Tūhoe member, Wharenui Clyde, who went to the High Court to stop the programme, saying he was concerned about the loss of access to Te Urewera for his whānau “to use the huts as a base for food gathering, recreational and cultural purposes”.
He said authorities had not taken into account the culture and heritage of the huts, and failed to consult on their plan. On November 9, Justice Woolford granted the interim injunction saying there needed to be a hearing on the issues and ordered demolition to stop.
“It’s been a flashpoint for something that has been simmering and something that is deeper,” says Jamie Tahana, RNZ’s Māori news director, pointing to the fact that among the protests against the demolition were some hapū members as well as trampers, hunters and conservationists.
Tahana explains to The Detail some of the history of Te Urewera, how the land was taken from Tūhoe over many decades then turned into a national park in 1954, then disestablished in 2014 and given status as a legal entity under the Treaty of Waitangi settlement with Tūhoe….
Poor Uyghurs in China. a minority group – 12 million!https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/443418/ai-emotion-detection-software-tested-on-uyghurs
He said officers used “restraint chairs” which are widely installed in police stations across China.
“Your wrists are locked in place by metal restraints, and [the] same applies to your ankles.”
He provided evidence of how the AI system is trained to detect and analyse even minute changes in facial expressions and skin pores.
According to his claims, the software creates a pie chart, with the red segment representing a negative or anxious state of mind.
He claimed the software was intended for “pre-judgement without any credible evidence”….
However the word is … ‘”People live in harmony regardless of their ethnic backgrounds and enjoy a stable and peaceful life with no restriction to personal freedom.”‘,,,
“Everyone knows that the smartphone is something you have to carry with you, and if you don’t carry it you can be detained, they know that you’re being tracked by it. And they feel like there’s no escape,” he said.
Most of the data is fed into a computer system called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, which Human Rights Watch claims flags up supposedly suspicious behaviour.
“The system is gathering information about dozens of different kinds of perfectly legal behaviours including things like whether people were going out the back door instead of the front door, whether they were putting gas in a car that didn’t belong to them,” said Richardson…
Other AI use:
Chongqing-based investigative journalist Hu Liu told Panorama of his own experience: “Once you leave home and step into the lift, you are captured by a camera. There are cameras everywhere.”
“When I leave home to go somewhere, I call a taxi, the taxi company uploads the data to the government. I may then go to a cafe to meet a few friends and the authorities know my location through the camera in the cafe,” he said.
“There have been occasions when I have met some friends and soon after someone from the government contacts me. They warned me, ‘Don’t see that person, don’t do this and that.’
“With artificial intelligence we have nowhere to hide.”
-BBC
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/130547443/he-worked-70-hours-a-week-for-11-an-hour-for-five-years-his-boss-wouldnt-even-give-him-the-day-off-for-his-wedding
… “I was always working, working. I couldn’t ever enjoy anything. Even on my day off sometimes, I would be asked to work, to do deliveries,” Sanjay says. “I ran around here and there like a rabbit. They treated me like a slave.”
Even when a close relative died, the rules were not relaxed. Sanjay says he was denied bereavement leave. He took a week’s annual leave instead. While he was away, he says his bosses docked his pay illegally…
Sanjay had thought, because the restaurant owners were from India, like him, they would understand his culture, to care for him while he made a new life in New Zealand.
“But the only culture they followed was exploiting us,” he says. “Their god was money, only money.”
By late last year, Sanjay was exhausted, desperate to escape. He tried to push back against his boss, to say he needed to be paid properly. In practice, he was working up to 70 hours a week. But on paper he was only doing 35 or 40 hours – and he had no way to prove to the authorities that his employer was breaking the law.
“Everything was just fake,” he says. “Rosters, payslips. It would have put me down as taking sick leave, but I was working. It would say I was doing 32 hours, but I was working much more.”..
She [barrister Dhilum Nightingale] says the common factors are migrants taking a job with a business they trust, and gaining a visa that is tied to their employment at that business. They are then pressured into working long hours, below the minimum wage, but with no record of most of their work. People are unsure of their rights, how to get help and are too afraid of repercussion to speak up. This same pattern was found by research from the University of Auckland, and by a Stuff investigation into the routine exploitation of Indian students.
In both Nightingale’s experience and in the research, most of the exploitation was perpetrated by those in the victim’s same ethnic group…
Two things – the government won’t free up the contracted single employer basis. It’s almost indentured servitude. And second, if there was racial law brought in, could one then criticise an Indian or other ethnicity for wrong practices to their own people, or would that be a cultural practice and all right under the law?
And Burr did not even shoot his firearm during the “extraordinary” home invasion when he was faced with a teenager who had stolen from him three times before and who was younger and bigger, he said.
The teen had just smashed an empty wine bottle on Burr’s head, and was in the house with an acquaintance, had a knife, and later admitted trying to get up to stab Burr…
The end sentence of 400 hours’ community service and six months’ community detention was to be served concurrently.
In a May trial relating to the beating and finger-cutting during the 2020 home invasion, a jury found Burr and his son Shaun Burr not guilty of all charges after the pair argued it was self-defence.
They had both been charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and wounding with intent to injure, maiming with intent to injure, and maiming with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/479732/farmer-who-chopped-off-teen-home-intruder-s-finger-sentenced-for-firearms-charges
This is a queer sort of justice – who is most in the wrong? Don’t know what happened to the teenager.
https://community.scoop.co.nz/2022/11/new-maori-business-development-director-to-bridge-gaps-and-grow-maori-capability/
What are UniServices?
Here is a good opportunity for pakeha and Maori apart from the affected iwi to meet with the kaitiaki of that place and listen to each other and find a joint design that suits all.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018869076/erebus-memorial-protesters-mean-spirited-ngati-whatua-rakei
Mean spirited” is how one iwi is describing opposition to an Erebus memorial planned for Auckland’s Parnell Rose Garden.
Yesterday marked 43 years since the Air New Zealand scenic flight over Antarctica crashed into the side of Mount Erebus killing all 257 people onboard; New Zealand’s largest peace time loss of life.
A planned national memorial at the gardens in Dove Meyer Robinson park has stalled following protests, concerns over a large neighbouring pōhutukawa and claims the tone of the gardens will change.
That is despite Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern renewing her commitment to delivering a national memorial for the Erebus families.
Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Trust deputy chair Ngarimu Blair told Checkpoint the hapū has been engaged in lengthy discussions with the Ministry of Culture and Heritage over the years because the memorial would be within their rohe….
Co-governance working practice!