The Daily Blog Open Mic – 15th June 2023

1. Does any thinking. reflecting person feel good about living in NZ? Latest report on men’s reactions to life in NZ are majorly negative especially for young men. Loneliness, disconnectedness.

   >https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK2306/S00226/nib-survey-finds-43-of-kiwi-men-feel-disconnected-from-friends.htm

   nib New Zealand (nib) found in a survey that 43% of Kiwi men sometimes feel isolated, out of the loop or disconnected from friends, and this feeling of loneliness is greatest for younger men (63%) between the ages of 18 – 34.

   This Men’s Health Week (12 – 18 June), a video featuring nib’s Mental Fitness Champion Jimi Hunt, along with Blues’ players Kurt Eklund, Marcel Renata and Tom Robinson will be released across nib’s social channels to address the issue of male loneliness and promote team sports as a great way to make meaningful connections.

   I feel disconnected by the use of non-word letters that are used to name something of which I am ignorant and therefore have no clue what it’s all about. Such as the use of nib in the above article. Guess what it’s an Australian health insurance company specialising I think in worker insurance. What’s in it for them to look over from Oz – where’s the money?

   What does nib stand for health insurance?
   1952. Newcastle Industrial Benefits (nib) Hospital Fund established by workers at BHP Steelworks, Mayfield.
   Company history | nib nib.com.au
   https://www.nib.com.au › shareholders › com

2. Something we need to discuss. Rates rising because of why? Rich people, business minded people buying houses and property, increasing land values, on which rates are calculated. Big problem. Let’s think, we haven’t got much money – most of us.

   https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=153027 Land-value Rating for Wellington?
   Long discussion – someone has put their mind to it so why not read up and have a think.

3. https://www.rnz.co.nz/stories/2018894359/what-to-watch-when-you-ve-cut-your-streaming-services
   Cut all your streaming services to offset other rising household costs, and now worried that you’ve got nothing to watch? Fear not, there are some gems out there in the world of free TV.

   Try reading a book bozo. Otherwise most of your education has been wasted. Grow up and don’t feed yourself slop all your life. Creative and thoughtful people are dying to tell you things and try to catch up before they do pass away. (A bit harsh but do try to read a book of fiction now and then. Stretch your mind in a different direction, let some imagination grow.)

4. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/491387/how-nz-s-own-law-helped-australia-win-the-manuka-honey-trademark-war
   It seems that government is full of people with insufficient useful experience and nous, with most decisions and assessments and criteria being passed to agencies and self-serving public-private entrepreneurs; no-one is looking properly after NZ interests. It is hit and miss. Our song now – Empty chairs and empty tables.
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCfzl5Ae3cU

5. Australian war criminal holidays in Queenstown

   Christchurch call. Hahahahahahaha. Fighting terrorism and hate. Hahahahahaha. Join Aukus. Hahahahahaha. Immigration NZ and Minister. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

   • Who dat? I didn’t pick up on that news. Need full info in your comment. Perhaps I was reading about one of the economic criminals that our flash, floozy (he/she) economy is based on – Ricardo. Following his paradigm has bred so many criminals against society it floors you to trace the toxic progression.

6. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/132319503/staff-gutted-as-details-about-te-pkenga-restructure-emerge
   Staff at Te Pūkenga are feeling “shocked” and “gutted” after hundreds found out their roles have been cut – and they still don’t know how many jobs might be left to reapply for.
   The mega polytech flagged it would be consulting staff this week as part of its “organisational design and change programme”.

   https://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/southland-top-stories/132322484/penny-simmonds-southern-institute-of-technology-staff-treated-disgracefully

   https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2023/01/sir-tim-shadbolt-concerned-about-crippling-impact-axe-to-southern-institute-of-technology-s-zero-fees-scheme-will-have-on-southland-s-economy.html
   About 28 staff at the Southern Institute of Technology [SIT] have this week been told their roles are being disestablished, the National Party tertiary education spokesperson and Invercargill MP Penny Simmonds says.
   Simmonds, who is the former chief executive at the SIT, said she believed the institute’s staff had been treated disgracefully.
   Staff had been given between just two and 24 hours notice to bring a support person to a meeting about the matter, and had yet to learn what other positions they could apply for, she said on Wednesday evening.

   Is NZ stuffed (no pun intended)? Are we a neoliberal management experiment and will have all our advances and NZ initiatives stripped away by appealing to a desire for efficiency, order and dogma while we are are mired in debt to the financial sector using our clever monetary and obligation system that can be manipulated by fiat to enslave and break us down, and if not entirely successful to enforce it by control and violence?

   Seems possible looking at the way things are going. Education only on computers, hospitals and health unsupported and underfunded, cruelty to rule breakers,, fear of the future and uncertainty, lack of trust, lack of practical measures to train the young for future jobs and citizenship which is being undercut by the influx of ambitious and poor from other countries. AI and little concern for the gifts of individuals who may be abandoned. High remuneration for the top with common grift even theft, and lowering conditions for others when there is no political value in considering them.

   Further on Southern Institute of Technology that was:
   https://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/opinion/130329829/te-pkenga–the-gift-that-keeps-on-taking
   https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/southland/sit-zero-fees-under-threat-mp-warns

7. A great obit on Berlusconi. It seems perfectly credible to me and enlightening. And towards the end becomes hard-hitting on one of our sore points – ouch.

   https://www.pressreader.com/new-zealand/manawatu-standard/20230614/281878712781459
   …Beaming from his TV channels on January 26, 1994, the one-time cruise ship crooner presented himself as a self-made businessman lent to politics. His new party, called Forza Italia to harness Italy’s obsession with football, promised lower taxes, the renewal of a corrupt, conservative class that had governed since 1948, and protection from a centreleft-wing coalition which he cast shamelessly as ‘‘child-eating’’ communists.

   In fact, his stunning surprise victory in that year’s election was a revolution designed to stop more significant change. Berlusconi’s move allowed the system’s persistence through the appearance of change, according to the old survival instinct of the elites that author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa had decades earlier summed up in The Leopard (1958): ‘‘If we want everything to stay the same it is necessary for everything to change.’’…

   An international reputation as embarrassing and incompetent did not hinder, but arguably sustained his success, and politicians across Europe and beyond took note. Although Berlusconi’s populism was not as radical as the kind we have seen triumph in Europe and then the US since 2016, much of its ingredients were the same.

   His friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin withstood the strife of time and war and there is little doubt that he has helped pave the way for Donald Trump. With the latter he shared a background in business and entertainment, as well as that particular charisma of the billionaire able to project himself simultaneously as trustworthily ordinary and inspirationally, almost intimidatingly extraordinary.

   And like Trump, Berlusconi was also a serial liar, relentless, aggressive when necessary, and skilled at turning his flaws, sins, and even his crimes, into electoral assets: Berlusconi’s orgies were evidence of his unbridled manliness; his blatant conflict of interest a symptom of his enviable business success; his tax avoidance a form of cunning in the struggle against a grasping, not-so-deep state of which – with miraculous agility – he could present himself as both archenemy and leader. Arguably, the two men share these traits because they both borrowed and adapted them from the strongmen and dictators of their generation, and particularly from Benito Mussolini…

   Yet as others around the world surf with still fewer scruples the same fears, frustrations, miseries and antidemocratic tendencies that Berlusconi exploited in 17 years on the wave’s crest, his passing is also a reminder of the fragility of democracies.

   Every time we look the other way, because of partisanship or self-interest, apathy or conformism, laziness or nihilism, vulnerability or the guilty pleasure of peeking at a disruptor, we chip away at a fragile democratic fabric that can only be as resilient as it is inclusive, fair, open to its futures and mindful of its pasts.

   Compassion for the dead should not rewrite history, so rest in peace, Silvio, and thanks for nothing.

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