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“Angela Merkel’s interview with the newspaper Die Zeit on Wednesday, in which she said the actual purpose of the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements was to stall for time and allow Kiev to build up its military potential for a future confrontation with Russia.”
Looks like the old boss has had enough of the new boss(es) war mongering ways.
This may have triggered the coup’de’tat by the Weimar Republic Third Reich this week?
Reads like the German population have had enough of the war mongers too.
Popo shit on kiwis, again: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2022/12/police-pamphlets-in-taranaki-encourage-people-to-report-cannabis-growers.html
Let’s cancel Netflix and show our support for the UK instead. This smear campaign is obscene: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/entertainment/2022/12/harry-meghan-rated-3-10-on-imdb.html
Putting today into perspective: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/the-sixth-mass-extinction-is-happening-now-and-it-doesnt-look-good-for-us
Community stewardship is the new democracy. It transfers power from the few to the many. This is good! Let’s have more of this! https://www.newsroom.co.nz/ultimate-three-waters-bills-reveal-impact-on-councils
Sounds reasonably possible said Doubting Thomas slowly. But can we trust the Commerce Commission to know when and what to do to keep water in the possession of the Peeps?
There should be a section of the new bit of the law requiring A) no loans with water assets as collateral and B) council or the relevant water org has right of first refusal in any sale.
If not the govt just stuffed up yet again, under urgancy which is why _they shouldn’t be using urgancy_.
Congratulations! To M Hooton! He shoots and he scores!
I wonder how will it take him to figure out the Ngati Paoa rep is a crook! She rigged the iwi election by cancelling it and then elected herself uncontested over a weekend and didnt tell anyone until 4 days later!
And then tries to have a sneaky AGM without a proper (Statutory) notice to gerrymander a mandate! That didnt work neither because the Maori Land Court hasnt accepted any of this BS!!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-mayor-wayne-brown-earmarks-415k-to-matthew-hooton-and-key-advisors-after-pledge-to-slash-council-salaries/B6AO72ETCVCKNKVVHK75GLBKLY/
Hoots has decided he will let eke Panukus chairman off the hook because he’s obviously got a deal on with him!
He’s told WB everything is sweet and don’t worry about Paul Majurey and the other 3 pending investigations, complaints coming about the Independent Māori Statutory Board election!
So all I can say Hooton is as crooked as Majurey is.
How did we get on in Neolithic? days. Now we are so smart we don’t know how to manage ourselves. Perhaps look back to the future eh!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018870689/mike-parker-pearson-stonehenge-s-purpose-and-origins
A leader in this research is archaeology professor Mike Parker Pearson. A specialist in the Neolithic British Isles, he is curator of exhibition Secrets of Stonehenge, opening at Auckland Museum December 15. It features over 300 objects from archaeological digs, including stone tools, antler picks, pottery, gold and bronze burial objects.
Parker Pearson led the discovery nearby in 2005 of the remains of the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain – Durrington Walls. He says its houses provide insights into how the builders of Stonehenge lived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durrington_Walls
Although there is evidence of some early Neolithic activity at the site, most of the structures seem to have been built in the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age. At some point c. 2600 BC, a large timber circle was constructed. It is now known as the Southern Circle. The circle was oriented southeast towards the sunrise on the midwinter solstice. Its four large concentric circles of postholes would have held extremely large standing timbers.
The drive now is to use the earth as a launch pad for space and to abandon the needs and interests of the rest of the tribe, though most of us really don’t share that obsession.
Present Earth example – Auckland NZ:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/480481/removing-funding-for-childcare-centres-could-be-option-for-filling-auckland-council-s-270m-budget-hole
Ten childcare centres are “doomed” if Auckland Council decides to strip funding.
Its one of the suggested options to try and plug a budget hole for the next financial year.
The city was facing a $295 million “budget hole”, according to mayor Wayne Brown, who has proposed selling the council’s share of Auckland International Airport to avoid having to hike rates more than 13 percent.
Brown said council staff have advised discontinuing funding for Kauri Kids centres across the city would save $1m a year.
The NZ governments have long set up systems that force mothers to leave their children and home and nurturing, socialising duties and go out to work either full time, or at hours when they need to be around for their kids and family.
But then who looks after the children and keeps them safe. Who can children be left with while mothers continue in their jobs of skill needed by the country at wages needed for supporting a home and family? Children are our future, and mothers and parents generally are forging that future but seem likely to be considered economic externalities as their purpose is a ‘heart, respect and values’ duty not just an efficiency or monetary one.
However Mayor Wayne Brown has been funded into his position and the old greybeard is past his life forming youth and now into his finance accreting and moving old age, with the help of a billionaire who has followed the path of finance building since youth Graeme Hart.
There is no youthful beneficial drive for a great little country now and children are a burden that must be costed properly.
Just listening to the great musical-opera West Side Story. Always relevant and crisp.
The words of Somewhere sung by the young lovers beset by historic cultural mismatch and racism and faced by problems they want to rise above. Very suitable for any young couples aspiring to have a good, stable life, in a house though, not a stable. That’s just a traditional Christmas birthplace, now we want a hospital or well-built house without leaks, cracks or mould .
Rita Moreno Lyrics
“Somewhere”
(2021 film version)
(from “West Side Story” soundtrack)
There’s a place for us
Somewhere a place for us
Peace and quiet and open air
Wait for us somewhere
There’s a time for us
Some day a time for us
Time together with time to spare
Time to learn, time to care
Some day! Somewhere!
We’ll find a new way of living
We’ll find a way of forgiving
Somewhere
There’s a place for us
A time and place for us
Hold my hand and we’re halfway there
Hold my hand and I’ll take you there
Somehow Some day Somewhere!.
Writer(s): Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/westsidestory/somewhere1242529.html
Thank you Stephen and Leonard for arousing our imagination
and taking us there if only in our minds just now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLGK_SHMTEk
Good questions that Guyon Espiner is asking in docos. Whyyyyyy?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/wasted/479846/how-a-us-president-set-nz-s-drug-laws
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/in-depth-special-projects/story/2018868598/guyon-espiner-wasted
After half a century of waging war on drugs, dozens of countries have called a truce. They now view harmful drug use as a health matter, aiming to help people out of addiction, instead of punishing them.
In New Zealand, though, we are yet to lay down our arms. With a few exceptions, drug use remains a criminal, rather than a health matter.
In Wasted, an RNZ documentary, Guyon Espiner finds there are few signs the punitive approach is really working.
For all the criticism Andrea Vance gets – she sums things up pretty well:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/130716112/how-a-councils-weird-tiktok-account-represents-everything-that-is-wrong-with-local-democracy
Councillors subservient to their council administrators and CEO, and similar shit happening at central government level
So much for all that public service reform!
Hate to say it, but Earth to Jacinda:
You didn’t take on too much, you just took on too many of the wrong things, and those things that were worthwhile, you allowed yourself to be captured by bullshit, PR spin meisters and ‘officials’.
Unfortunately, the same goes for some of your more competent Munsters.
HOUSING — CHRISTCHURCH – MEETING
The meeting is organised by the State Housing Action Network and takes place on Monday 12 December, 7pm at the Transitional Cathedral on the corner of Hereford and Madras Streets.
Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt to speak on human rights breaches in a talk entitled: “Housing as a Human Right”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/480511/gulf-livestock-1-abc-investigation-reveals-history-of-concerns-over-ship-before-fatal-sinking
Gulf Livestock 1: ABC investigation reveals history of concerns over ship before fatal sinking
12:43 pm today
By Alison McClymont and Dan Harrison, ABC Investigations
An ABC investigation can reveal the owner of a ship that sank in a typhoon two years ago, killing 41 people, had repeated safety concerns flagged by maritime authorities and may have been operating while insolvent, according to auditors…
Shipping data, supplied to the ABC by Spire Global, a space-based data and analytics provider, is captured from the vessel’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder.
It tracks vessel identification, speed, location and course and allows boats and coastal authorities to prevent collisions.
Using this data, ABC was able to track the final days of the Gulf Livestock 1 as it made its way from Napier on New Zealand’s north island towards the Chinese port of Jingtang.
On board were 43 men – 39 Filipinos and two New Zealanders as well as the two Australians – and 5867 heifers.
By now, weather data showed the nearby typhoon generating wind speeds in excess of 175km/h….
The Gulf Livestock 1 had barely departed on what would be its final voyage when trouble first appeared.
“We’re not even a day out of port and the engine is f—ed,” William Mainprize messaged a friend on 15 August.
In fact, the ship’s problems dated back much further.
An ABC investigation has discovered that in the 18 months prior to the Gulf Livestock 1 sinking, Indonesian and Australian authorities recorded dozens of safety breaches aboard the ship, including critical failures of its propulsion and navigations systems, as well as concerns about the stability of the vessel….
As the Gulf Livestock 1 entered the East China Sea, it sailed into the storm. Huge waves crashed over the ship.
Lukas Orda sent a message to his brothers, Jens and Tobi: “Don’t tell mum but our engine control room has just filled with water and the motor has now failed.”
William Mainprize messaged a friend: “We are floating sideways in huge sea … Oh man, it’s very hairy.”
Yep it really IS this bad, and has been for quite a few years now:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018870831/rse-report-finds-major-gaps-in-system
Cudda Shudda Wudda been one of the first things a Labour government tackled
Actually, possibly the quickest contribution to fixing the problem while ‘officials’ and politicians get off the chuffs would be to take the Matt McCarten approach, and start naming and shaming.
Not just the employers who’ve outsourced the problem as much as they can in order to distance themselves from accountability, but also the ‘officials’ that’ve been complicit. Waiting for those ‘officials’ to embarrass themselves (such as that wanker Casson) is taking too long.
Some of them have been spectacular in their incompetence, arrogance, commitment to shuffling around between public service gigs, and building up their spectacular C.V’s and LinkedIn profiles.
(Probably the Munsters in this, and the next gummint should be watching ACC.
And could the next incisive, investigative jonolist that isn’t angling for a job in corporate PR and spin ask both the responsible Munster and his ‘officials’ that have both advised Him/Her, and then gone through the whole charade of saying they’re tied to the regulations by way of enforcement they’re responsible for – “What IS the reason for tying visas to a specific employer?”.
We already know it’s supposedly “best practice” – How and Why? Because it’s in the Book?
And there are a number of other questions s well such as is it legal for someone to be holding the passports of other people
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/480529/datacentres-in-nz-pm-s-office-rejects-oia-request-on-briefings-over-plans
Democracy huh! The steel fist behind the velvet glove emerges when you have votes to spare.
Datacentres use a lot of power.
Datagrid previously wanted to use electricity left surplus if the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter – which gets the power at cut-price rates – was to close. This was before the smelter decided not to close.
Documents have also showed that officials expected Datagrid to “propose the data centre as a backup for government data”.
A lot of government data is stored in Australia in the ‘cloud’ – meaning in this case on Microsoft datacentre servers.
” Her office has rejected an Official Information Act request by RNZ for briefings to Ardern ahead of any meetings with the companies Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, DCI, Datagrid, CDC, Lake Parime/ Simply Energy, Google Cloud, Salesforce, Catalyst Cloud, CCL and Datacom.
Previously released documents show many of the companies have been strongly lobbying ministers for support.
Adern in 2017 I will lead an open and transparent government.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/480529/datacentres-in-nz-pm-s-office-rejects-oia-request-on-briefings-over-plans