The Daily Blog Open Mic – 7th December 2023

Pita Tipene, February 6th, 2022, summing up his recollections about changes of perspective on the ToW since 1974:

“When Hobson said “He iwi tahi tātou” at Waitangi when the Treaty was signed, he wasn’t saying we are one people. He was saying we are two people, one nation.”

Isn’t this at least getting as close as superficially possible to the central issue facing NZ now, and the framework for a solution? Right under his nose though, for some considerable time, Labour, The Greens, The Maori Party, and you better believe National, ACT and NZF, none of them agreed with him. Did he not understand English very well? Was he doing a Luxon and swapping out the meaning of words to always define the same old self-interest, or is he the last leader left in NZ who has his eyes and ears wired to his brain?

Speaking to Tova O’Brien today, he recommends government spend several days in the north in the lead up to the main event:

“It would be a good sign for the government to show that they’re spending quality time on the ground, meeting people, understanding how people are feeling and working with people. So while there’s a risk of things being really inflamed, I think we also have a great opportunity to bring people together and defuse what could be a very trying period of time.”

It’s a quality invitation, at least.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018918502/snoopy-s-christmas-proves-to-be-an-enduring-hit-in-nz
…The song ended up being one of EMI’s biggest selling singles of all time.
Here in New Zealand, the love for the song only grew.
Paul Kennedy from Recorded Music New Zealand which manages Aotearoa’s official music charts, says it has great staying power.
“It has been a regular re-appearer every year,” he says.
“It came back into the Top 40 in 1987, 1988, 1989, and then since streaming came along it helped push it up every year.”
Overseas, it never returned to the charts.
“I think New Zealand is a bit of a unique case. We’re a bit of a bastion for Snoopy and the Royal Guardsmen,” Kennedy says… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psf9PSf0xhQ

I listened to this merry tune yesterday from an old tape. Are we sentimentalists? Lately I have been reading about the World Wars, Dunkirk, my birth father’s death info, the Jewish-Palestine-British connection and wars, and can’t take it so lightly. The song would go over strongly if there had been an end to the blood, lust for power and resources since 1950.

I think there is still a memory of WW1 and the soccer match at Christmas between the German and Brit combatants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce

Now I meet pleasant Germans every day, and have met Jewish people, leaders in local Christian and Muslim following, and found that Martin Luther spoke strongly against the Jewish way back – and I thought he was so good in starting the protest movement against selling indulgences giving forgiveness for past sins. So are any of us good, humane and compassionate all through – do we have to work hard at it? Do we sentimentalise with sprinklings of rosewater all the things we don’t want to look at.

NZ Post Office – how does it in these difficult times while trying not to be totally mercantile?
Dec 2023 https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/what-you-need-to-know/504115/from-drop-off-to-delivery-what-you-need-to-know-about-nz-post-s-christmas-deadlines
June 2023 https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/491290/nz-post-dropped-service-to-quarter-of-world-and-no-one-knew
NZ Post dropped service to quarter of world – and no one knew
Since 2020, more than 50 countries either can’t receive mail from NZ, or aren’t sending it to us.
NZ Post has, with little or no warning, stopped sending mail to 34 countries; there are another 21 that aren’t sending mail to us. That’s a quarter of all nations. Covid is one cause, war another. But three years after services were first suspended there’s no indication if Kiwis are going to get their international post back.
Abann Yor, refugee advocate and Auckland community leader, needs to send visa application documents to his mother in war-torn South Sudan. He can’t email them – immigration needs original signatures from both him and his mum. Private document courier services are expensive. And the post

Is this what Sir Michael Cullen has left us with after six formative years?
He resigned from Parliament in April 2009, to become the deputy chairman of New Zealand Post from 1 November 2009 and chairman from 1 November 2010 until leaving the role in 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Cullen_(politician)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/galleries/nga-taonga-the-post-office

https://www.nzpost.co.nz/about-us/who-we-are/history-of-new-zealand-post (to 2017)
and keeping up with trends – looking at e-commerce on from 2017.
https://www.nzpostbusinessiq.co.nz/annual-ecommerce-review

Media Releases New Zealand Post
https://www.nzpost.co.nz › about-us › media-centre
NZ Post announces Full Year Financial Result of $102 million in profit after tax for the year ended 30 June 2022. Revenue from our parcel segment continues
and
From 1 June 2022 changes and increases – https://www.nzpost.co.nz/about-us/june2022-personal (customers and users DPM Digital Postage Meter)
and
FAQ https://www.nzpost.co.nz/about-us/july2022/q-and-a

Pulling out from serving the public or accepting the present reliance on internet as immutable?
1 June 2023 https://www.nzpost.co.nz/about-us/media-centre/media-release/nz-post-to-reduce-roles-over-five-years-in-response-to-mail-decline
NZ Post continues to evolve in response to mail decline and will soon begin consultation on reducing the number of mail roles by about 750 FTE over the next five years. NZ Post has a workforce of 4,500.
NZ Post Chief Executive David Walsh says New Zealanders have drastically changed the way they choose to communicate.
“Our business is evolving as New Zealanders are increasingly communicating online, and NZ Post has responded to this by making a number of changes over the last decade. We are working to find the most efficient and cost effective way to deliver the lower volume of mail for our customers,” said Walsh.
Twenty years ago New Zealanders sent over 1 billion mail items in the year, which has decreased dramatically to around 220 million mail items in the current year, and we predict that this will decrease to about 120 million items by 2028. NZ Post now needs to move toward a commercially sustainable model for mail delivery.
“Mail will continue to be in our future, but there will be less mail. We’re now looking to the next five years and how we continue to deliver mail to New Zealanders.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018918400/the-alcohol-conundrum
This could be the start of an important discussion.
Wellington mayor Tory Whanau’s admission that she has a drinking problem is another new headline for a not-so-new issue.
The New Zealand Health Survey says that 4 in 5 Kiwi adults have had a drink in the past year, and 1 in 5 have a hazardous drinking pattern. So why is there so much stigma attached to something that’s so widespread?
In today’s episode of The Detail we discuss alcohol, alcoholism, and our reluctance to accept someone who finally accepts they have a problem.

The desire by PTB to start every measurement of supposed useful research from zero renders so much of our info to be confusing. So what ‘4 in 5 Kiwi adults have had a drink in the past year,’ looking for heavy drinkers, we have to start further along than that. How many Kiwis have alcohol, RTDs, Spirits once a week or more?

I was talking to a friend who noticed that a mates home brew was far over the average limit for strength and probably led to his alcoholism, or increased the tendency. Ask why it is sold from supermarkets, meant to be food retailers. The numbers of men loading up with cartons of beer, bought from Australian owned supermarkets is painful to see, and know Aussies are reaping money from our addictions. And OTT drivers caught multiple times in a morning as has happened in Nelson recently! Just who is most addicted, us or the government for tax and a help towards the case for a police state?

A heavy heaping of iron-y..

https://poets.org/poem/unknown-citizen
The Unknown Citizen
W. H. Auden
1907 – 1973

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

Let’s be flexible enough to be a little out-of-line, everyone is even if they cover or pretend not.
Can we find a good self, a unique self, a happy, fair, outgoing self, not one finding strength in judging against others the majority of the time? (Plaintively.)

Crap, your computer wouldn’t allow me to comment for a while. Rogernome Lyn Prentice should be here doing your computer things. Allowing a technician to growl at everyone and their dog on the official Labour site for 30 years killed any idea of ‘a movement’ dead, along with … Labour.

Now about Trotter — you are a little selective in your fury. Just the truth. The wide truth. Which must include TS and Bowalley Road. Narrow truth kills wide truth.

Note the barnacle – isation of your comment section.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/504166/household-costs-forecast-to-rise-70-a-week-on-average-next-year-asb-report
oh bother.