The Daily Blog Open Mic – 21st February 2024

Fucken rachet. We gotta better. We gotta bulk up. Get lean. Focused.

A very good reminisence of a huge flood 20 years ago in the Manawatu by Radionz.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018927036/woman-remembers-cow-that-swam-her-to-safety-during-floods
At the end a person who was prominent in it remarks that there was a lot of publicity about it continuing pm for a some some time but now, “It’s 20 years ago after all. There’s a bit of water under the bridge.”

Yesterday on the radio news i heard Chris Hipkins saying he wasn’t sure if he wanted to do anything different to what is already happening. Maybe a CGT, maybe a wealth tax, we were doing it but then we didn’t and now we might later and maybe this and maybe that. Will someone push that twats head into a wall to see if he is still functioning? If he’s the best they have I can save them all a lot of wondering about what to do later and say it straight up, you are terminal fools RESIGN AND BE GONE. It was like the worst version of no news news ever. Ask him about anything hapening far far away and he can tell you what to do about it in great exacting detail. What an ass.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/country/509851/cyclone-gabrielle-aftermath-hits-kiwifruit-growers-the-orchard-s-just-collapsed
Now we need cool informed heads working for our country’s production of goods, coping with the real problems such as increased pest plant problems and so our ability to support ourselves! Caused by stupid actions and agreements; listening to blandishments and ambitiously greedy politicians and business people. Applicable fairystory: Jack and the Beans-talk – he sells a material advantage for an airy fairy possibility, theoretically to yield greater profit in money; which is an ephemeral thing made up of reckons and promises.

What we have are big thinkers who tower like Colussus* over our miniscule projects and budgets appropriate for a country smaller than a world city. Money is no object, world credit is available for government-connected projects. Danyl McLauchlan points out some results which can not raise our spirits and pride in our country and a realistic positive forecast for the future, and ours!
the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)
…the principal-agent problem.” The lawyers are agents who are supposed to act in the interests of their clients – the principals – but of course, they act against them to maximise their own gains.
Modern politics is riddled with principal-agent problems. When I talk to people about Let’s Get Wellington Moving – the doomed, now cancelled $7.4 billion mega infrastructure project that only delivered a pedestrian crossing while it spent $100,000 a week on consultants – they describe a very Jarndyce-like [Dickens’ Bleak House] process. Endless rounds of consultation and engagement between the regional, city and central government and other stakeholders, all facilitated by private sector providers gorging themselves on those consulting fees. The principals were the ratepayers and taxpayers, who wanted their rates and taxes to go towards building stuff – but this wasn’t in the interests of the agents managing the rounds of consultation and planning. They benefited by keeping the Jarndyce loop rolling.

When will we realise that once we invented money, money invented the modern us – not actually homo sapiens (wise human) but with a persona that leads us to homo desideroso (could be ‘wanting humans’ – as we seem to be constantly in this mode).
(Etymology – https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/the-history-of-desire-and-consider)

Note the Roman Colossus’ sad end. *The so-called Colossus of Constantine, which dates to the early 4th century, was a monumental statue erected to celebrate Constantine’s reign. Originally some 11 metres tall, it was later broken up and pillaged for bronze. euronews.

In The Standard recently there have been some anecdotes about Labour and Social Welfare Dept and bennies and their treatment. It is necessary to keep these in mind as there is quiet misery and troubles that are on-going all around but they aren’t heard much.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-20-02-2024/#comment-1989985 – Some informed comments from this lead one on.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/509870/plastics-recycling-was-a-green-washing-lie-all-along-report-author
If there are going to be many plastic bottles that are long-lasting. Could they have their tops screwed after emptying and than be tied together in a web shape say, and be moored somehow so they cast shadow over reefs etc. That would be some good from them, and a use, and any leakage of chemicals no worse than what is already happening.

And some could form rafts that would help to take the place of ice floes? if they can handle icy waters, and they would be resting places for some animals needing to come out of the water – polar bears” They would be awfully heavy but would find the floating reefs a boon if they could be made to suit.multi-layer

Julian Assange hearing, or what passes for listening and thinking.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2402/S00036/imperial-venality-defends-itself-day-two-of-julian-assanges-high-court-appeal.htm

It’s good as our civilisation crumbles, middle-class women have the opportunity to get advanced educational levels, ranking positions and pay, with equal rites to punish societal norms and users, abuse it, dismember it and so on. I hope the holier-than-thou are fully enjoying their ‘freedom from patrimony’ if that is how it is viewed. They seem to be chosen as being best to cavil at miscreants of the new and experimental society open to fissures and bulges occurring as the molten magma of accumulated, hoarded, wrongdoings burst through society’s thin skin of ingenuousness. ignorance or tradition.

Justice Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp got the bien pensant [conventional or orthodox in attitude] treatment of the national security state, dressed in robes, and tediously inclined. Prosaic arguments were recycled like stale, oppressive air. According to Clair Dobbin KC, there was “no immunity for journalists to break the law” and that the US constitutional First Amendment protecting the press would never confer it.

This had an undergraduate obviousness to it; no one in this case has ever asserted such cavalierly brutal freedom in releasing classified material, a point that Mark Summers KC, representing Assange, was happy to point out.

This is long but there are no short easy answers and I tried to think through and around the obstacles that seem unhappily constant.

Government hand in hand with private greed and nonsensical neoliberal fascinations – what Mata Hari or male equivalent sold these ideas to the noble officers of civil service in gummint hey?? Why would we shoot a brave little company that is needed for NZ/AO – it’s not right to force them to recite their last prayer etc. before the virtual firing squad.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/510009/air-chathams-hit-hard-by-auckland-airport-fee-hikes
The small regional airline claims “skyrocketing” prices being charged by Aotearoa’s largest airport will dampen demand on regional routes and threaten its viability.
Auckland Airport plans to spend up to $8 billion over 10 years upgrading facilities and that means airlines are facing increased user charges to cover costs.

Why spend up extravagantly on the airport? Why this unaffordable economy? Who gave our sensible political managers the drug that has addled their brain? A Central government is weird. It seems in control of regional government and is loading them up with responsibility that is increasingly being funded by ratepayers. Yet it can’t stop regionals dreaming up projects apparently for tourist benefit and for encouraging the rich to buy us out for their personal use, before the planet is over-run with these aggressive human ants.

Are these people blind – do they not realise that the planet is stressed from tourism, from planes and giant cruise ships filled with the gawping. from this wild extravagant life the wealthy and materialists want to follow? THIS IS GROSS, WE PAY PEOPLE HIGH SALARIES TO RUIN OUR LAND AND OUR ECONOMY SO THAT THE WEALTHY AND FOREIGN INVESTORS CAN PROFIT. WE DECLINE AND STILL ALLOW THIS STRIPPING OF OUR RESOURCES.

What is the name of the economic sect we are currently bowing under? Is it this one? Someone who can explain it so a five year old can understand please step forward. My brain is collapsing close to that age I think.’
A monetarist is an economist who holds the strong belief that money supply—including physical currency, deposits, and credit—is the primary factor affecting demand in an economy. Consequently, the economy’s performance—its growth or contraction—can be regulated by changes in the money supply.
Monetarist: Meaning, Overview and Examples – Investopedia
https://www.investopedia.com › … › Macroeconomics

Money is just Universal Exchange Tokens remember, whether it is physical or indications on an electrified or energised screen or the like. it’s not useful like food; but could be if it is paper to burn for warmth immediately. But then you have to find another resource to sell or exchange.
Apt words from near the end of American Pie by Don McLean

Oh, and there we were all in one place
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again
So come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
‘Cause fire is the devil’s only friend

And in the streets, the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/donmclean/americanpie.html

We have to help the politicians who are adept at playing the game, the religious who are adept at playing the game, the individuals who are ‘passionate’ about their personal interests, and not waste too much time in blame but support people who are doing worthwhile things physically that support maintenance of a good, co-operative society, We will need reasonable controls and encourage the young to be there beside us working and learning – an apprenticeship in life skills- and forget the education system as it has been. It has led us to our present debacle.

We don’t need a Royal Commission or extended consultations. Let us set up models in different parts of the country within agreed parameters, decide on what is to be aimed as achievement, monitor and report to the other devolved groups and let’s get this country going. It’s constipated; rude, crude, and very apt. No nitwits and ‘antimacassars’ sic need bother.

We will have definite times for expression, and then small projects done according to rules, that all follow and which are explained and demonstrated. Communication, trust, understanding, annoyance all will be there and exposed and become fodder for the next step. And the remuneration will have to be worked out. It ain’t easy. It will need an internal NZ/AO financial package suitable for the task and not beholden to world financial institutions who will be listened too briefly and not allowed to dominate or undermine. Whew!