The Daily Blog Open Mic – 13th October 2023

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/500057/council-response-to-bromley-fire-poor-and-slow-independent-report-says
Some people are doing it hard in NZ/AO – thank goodness it isn’t you and me eh! Can we get some nous cheap on the world market and import it here, and special steel stanchions to attach to our spines so we can stand tall and not be talked down to and demeaned as being stupid and naive?

Hey this is a good story. Reminds me of schoolyard chant ‘ Stacks on the mill, more on still’ presumably till the pile of whatever collapses.

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2310/S00020/the-mps-using-the-taxpayer-to-own-wellington-property.htm

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2310/S00019/will-tennessee-threaten-the-medical-workforce-in-new-zealand-with-a-little-bit-of-help-from-dolly-parton.htm

Watch out for Tennessee! They might be worse than us.
https://www.insider.com/georgia-tann-tennessee-children-home-society-survivors-speak-out-2019-12
For 20 years, a Tennessee baby thief kidnapped more than 5,000 children from the streets, hospitals, and shanty towns of Memphis. Now, 70 years later, survivors of her ‘house of horrors’ are confronting the past.
…Tann ran the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, where she and an elaborate network of coconspirators kidnapped and abused children to sell them off to wealthy adoptive parents at a steep profit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-State_Crematory_scandal
It provided cremation services for a number of funeral homes in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee,..Nearly three hundred and forty bodies that had been consigned to the crematory for proper disposition were discovered to have never been cremated, but instead dumped at several locations in and around the crematorium’s site.

Social Contract Theory – we may have to seek where it is embedded here; a source here and relearn about it.
https://iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/
Social contract theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons’ moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live. …However, social contract theory is rightly associated with modern moral and political theory and is given its first full exposition and defense by Thomas Hobbes. After Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are the best known proponents of this enormously influential theory, which has been one of the most dominant theories within moral and political theory throughout the history of the modern West. In the twentieth century, moral and political theory regained philosophical momentum as a result of John Rawls’ Kantian version of social contract theory, and was followed by new analyses of the subject by David Gauthier and others. More recently, philosophers from different perspectives have offered new criticisms of social contract theory. …

Note that it is being reassessed as being based on unsatisfactory concepts, and I think, possibly being reformed into another unsatisfactory concept!

I’m reading good novels that probably everyone else read decades ago. C.P. Snow physicist, civil servant and author is interesting. This is what he said about a gulf between scientists and other intellectuals.
C. P. Snow brought to our attention what he named “the two culture’s problem.” The problem is that artists, or more generally, humanists, and scientists form two distinctive cultures and so cannot understand nor talk with each other.
20th WCP: The Two Cultures Problem
bu.edu https://www.bu.edu › wcp › Papers › Scie › ScieRich

That generalises of course, but is there something in that? Also I am reading Snow’s ‘The Conscience of the Rich’, in the Strangers and Brothers series. The story summarised is; ‘In this novel of conflict, P.C. Snow explores the world of the great Anglo-Jewish banking families between the two World Wars.’ I wonder if it will help in explaining the active opposition to Jeremy Corbyn by the UK Labour Party administration which seemed to have a Jewish backing?

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018911050/not-in-our-backyard-old-trains-dumped-in-north-island-town
This could not have been cost effective for the salary and future rise up the ladder. Leave it as SEP.

This is a para from Chris Trotter’s pondering about the election. Are we allowed to ponder today?
https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2023/10/reckless-speculation.html
Nothing signals the political class’s contempt for the will of the people as strongly as its refusal to accept the will of the people. The message being sent is unmistakable: We – not you – know what’s best for the nation. So, don’t go getting ideas above your station. Which was the pretty much the gist of Chris Bishop’s reckless speculation. Get it right – or we’ll make you do it again!…

To discover that New Zealanders could so easily be cowed into submission would be rather disconcerting. It would signal an almost masochistic desire to be punished for allowing themselves to be seduced by Jacinda Ardern’s “kindness” back in 2020. Lacking Peters’ restraining influence, the resulting National-Act government would have free-rein to impose the swingeing austerity programme required to pay for Luxon’s inflationary tax-cuts. That so many of us are willing to see so much pain inflicted upon our fellow citizens, strongly suggests that there is a fair amount of sadism mixed in with all that masochism.* Hardly a pretty picture of our national character, and even less so of those NZ First voters so easily bounced into abandoning their nobler impulses by the prospect of a second election.

*That reminds me of a tale supposedly Slovenian from Slavoj Zizek, about a citizen in God’s favour, who is given a wish also to go to his neighbour, two-fold. He decides to ask for one of his eyes to become blind. Reddit musers say that is a version of a common meme. Is that us – how mean we are in Kiwiland?

Greetings Comrades. I use that term particularly for Martyn and assorted lefties who also support individualism. Now we thank you for keeping up the argument, the reasoning that has led us to put in deep thought, or some of us. I appreciate the blog and hope it doesn’t get shut down by NZs creeping, creepy fascists and latent brown shirts. I am not exaggerating either, a long journey starts with steps that seem small. In 1984 and after we recognised that steps taken would lose our sovereignty; we’ve been concerned about the drop in standards for our pasture stocks and failure to treat fowls and pigs and beneficiaries and sick people in State houses properly and fairly. And so it goes…

Thank you Martyn for what you have achieved, kept filing the oil in the lamps so we have kept bright. Please keep on and perhaps have a sticky post for reports from all areas of positive things that are happening around us individuals in our bit of the country/nation, , being planned, to assist each other, and cope with problems.

We need each other as government decides it doesn’t need us. It has immigration and AI and robotisation and space toys to play with. It’s default thought is – go away snotty-nosed peeps, back to your slums.

One thing to try – read Catherine Cookson, it’s about people trying to cope and managing. Written by a woman for women who knew about hard lives for both genders, and the working class particularly. As the story unfolds and the characters try to better their lives it takes you out of present problems – a change is as good as a rest. They succeed and you will notice what you can do in the present and feel ready to try again. We have been educated so let’s read rather than supinely watch tv, the news, play games with false reality; ‘go forward’ with new ideas and practical approaches with similar, reliable others.

Also read Anne Perry; who was part of a killing of a parent who was going to destroy a close friendly, sisterly relationship that was the first for both of the girls. She for the rest of her life wrote about people’s efforts to cope with life’s adversities and tribulations to find lasting companionship and commitment that rose above all badness. Actually that is what we too have to do.

Our good NZ has been poisoned, and we must seek our way out before we lose everything. No kidding, take your preferred stimulant, and apply your minds to help each other and oneself in the process.

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC2310/S00022/research-wages-war-against-a-silent-threat-in-our-planted-forests.htm
I’ve referred to the problems that can rise with monocultural cropping. Here is a new one to me, for our pine forests that we have heavily invested in as NZs or made land available to foreigners who have I think, mainly planted pine as part of offsetting business they run or participate in.

Red needle cast (RNC), an unyielding fungal-like disease, has silently been wreaking havoc on pine trees in New Zealand since at least 2008. Infections cause pine needles to lose their colour and fall to the ground, with research showing how defoliation can impact growth for three years after the trees show symptoms.

In addition in Nelson the creamy coloured pollen falls like thick dust and causes breathing problems to the susceptible.

Thinking citizens have to now awake if we have been Rip van Winkles for long. This short story reminds me of how Kiwis are when the work is ‘thinking hard and wisely’ about procedures, decisions and plans.

Rip Van Winkle, a Dutch-American man with a habit of avoiding useful work, lives in a village at the foot of New York’s Catskill Mountains in the years before the American Revolution. One day, he goes squirrel hunting in the mountains with his dog Wolf to escape his wife’s nagging. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_Van_Winkle

I like the idea of learning to apply this item heading from Scoop:
https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=155774
How to be strategic and clever
by Lindsay Shelton
The Wellington City Council is starting workshops on its next long-term plan, where councillors will be reviewing priorities in the works programme at a time of “tighter external economic conditions.”
(They have been told there are “external pressures like increased inflation, insurance premiums and interest costs.”)

But the workshop chair Cr Rebecca Matthews seems to have made up her mind before the workshops have started.
“We are not going to propose removing or deeply cutting services,” she announced in the council news release about the workshops.

https://elections.nz/media-and-news/2023/election-night-results-for-the-2023-general-election/

Official Results Process
The Official Results process starts on Sunday 15 October and is expected to be completed in 20 days. All ordinary advance and election day votes will be recounted. Special declaration votes will be processed and counted. The target to release the Official Results of the 2023 General Election is 2pm on Friday 3 November 2023. …
Special declaration votes still to be counted are estimated at 567,000 (20.2% of total votes). This includes an estimated 80,000 overseas and dictation votes. In 2020 there were 504,621 special votes including 62,787 overseas and dictation votes.

The total estimated votes (those counted on election night plus estimated special votes still to be counted) is 2,811,380.

Voter turnout for the 2023 General Election is estimated to be 78.4% of those enrolled as at 5pm Saturday 14 October. This compares with a final 82.2% turnout of those enrolled in 2020.
Enrolment applications are still being processed. By 5pm on Saturday 3,585,232 people were enrolled, or 92.6% of estimated eligible voters. The final enrolment rate in 2020 was 94.1%.

The number of ordinary votes cast in advance is 1,368,830, which is estimated to be 61.0% of total ordinary votes cast. In 2020, 68% of votes were cast in advance.
A summary of party votes, electorate votes and advance votes is available at http://www.electionresults.govt.nz

. The website also shows the distribution of seats by party as calculated by the Sainte-Laguë formula based on the preliminary results. Preliminary results by voting place for each electorate will also be available on the site.
Port Waikato by-election

A by-election will be held in the Port Waikato electorate on 25 November following the death of a candidate. When an electorate MP is elected in Port Waikato, it will increase the size of Parliament by one seat.

Will NZ First go with Labour again?

With the special votes yet to be counted NZ First may decide the next government. They could go with National with all their sky wizardry, anti abortions and wealth transfer to the few, which means also forming a coalition with the crazies in ACT, or they could go with a party they know in Labour but also the Greens and Te Pati Maori. This would absolutely rule the left out then to some but if the numbers do come up the left could be the winner Winston. You could cap your career and seal your legacy by becoming Prime Minister and have your choice of all other cabinet positions when you redesign the left block. The odds are long but the return favourable. Instead of being just a stablehand with National you could own the whole stable of fine thoroughbreds.

We who go walkabout in these impossible times are the rational ones. 7 weeks late for one customer!

Watched a utube on Jordan Peterson today. He took the precise wrong interpretation from Orwell’s ‘Road to Wigan Pier’. Every socialist is a queer cunt but the cause is celestial, said Orwell. Peterson took from it socialism is ‘orrible by its personnel.

Cobbett did it all, but we’re not him.