The Daily Blog Open Mic – 6th January 2025

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Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.

The Editor doesn’t moderate this blog,  3 volunteers do, they are very lenient to provide you a free speech space but if it’s just deranged abuse or putting words in bloggers mouths to have a pointless argument, we don’t bother publishing.

All in all, TDB gives punters a very, very, very wide space to comment in but we won’t bother with out right lies or gleeful malice. We leave that to the Herald comment section.

EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist abuse, homophobic abuse, racist abuse, anti-muslim abuse, transphobic abuse, Chemtrails, 9/11 truthers, Qanon lunacy, climate deniers, anti-fluoride fanatics, anti-vaxxer lunatics, 5G conspiracy theories, the virus is a bioweapon, some weird bullshit about the UN taking over the world  and ANYONE that links to fucking infowar.

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10 COMMENTS

  1. Some ideas from the cognoscenti on how to sharpen one’s knowledge and ideas about our politics.
    This from 2017 https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/02-08-2017/an-illustrated-guide-to-new-zealand-politics-meme-pages

    2016 – A helpful glossary of how Parliament manages to gloss over its shortcomings –
    https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/how-parliament-works/glossary/

    2006 An always pertinent guide to political speak ‘The Incoming Member of Parliament’s Guide to Ducking Questions.’ https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/293123/
    (Note – try to explore nga taonga – think childhood story Aladdin’s Cave – this present similar.)

    April 2024 – https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/08-04-2024/the-christopher-luxon-dictionary-of-corporate-speak

    October 2023 – https://newsroom.co.nz/2023/10/06/co-governance-explained-and-defined-by-politicians/ The He Puapua report, commissioned by the government in 2019, set out a vision to give Māori self-determination. It sparked a political debate about co-governance

    Aug – 2023 for the young and naive of Canterbury (also useful to the older and still bewildered.) https://www.canta.co.nz/politics/politicfordummies

  2. Have you heard that businesses in NZAO can’t get staff when wanted? Perhaps because people don’t lie in boxes on a shelf waiting like wind-up toys to be wanted. They are educated to not like manual work, to learn abstruse facts that have little relation to everyday living, and to pick up from media and their peers that some things are sexy and others not. That is why solicitors can have interns who work for quite a time on no or low pay – it’s well regarded work and therefore sexy. The kids at school are discouraged from doing anything simply, it has to go through a computer and be accessed by an app or on the net. That’s modern and supposedly sexy.

    A friend interested in this reports that in response to her questioning the young – don’t write. They don’t now use computers but their cellphone devices which are faster. They don’t want to read it is too slow, they prefer things explained with images. I don’t doubt her. Do the middle-aged realise how dumbed down today’s young ones are? Social media memes rattling round half-truths and emotionally charged themes for the day fill the timespace available for impressions replacing learning of knowledge.

    This 2022/23 item about a clothes manufacturer whose business is teetering tells us of having staff difficulties. This story relates to much of Kiwiland’s present and near future, and beyond that ‘There be dragons’.
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018870048/cutting-the-cloth-what-it-takes-to-make-clothes-in-new-zealand

    Perhaps we’ll be like the Chagos Islanders and be moved on as in-the-way-human resources not wanted on voyage! – read TDB – https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2025/01/06/guest-blog-ian-powell-imperialism-the-chagos-islands-and-the-fight-to-return/

  3. It took a lot of effort to get shipping companies to paint a Plimsoll line on the side of ships to indicate when adding too much heavy freight for stability, and call taihoa. Perhaps we need some warning system etched on desks in front of shipping companies strategists, or on the maritime men themselves to remind them of their special responsibilities and that their duties are in nautical matters not naughtical as perhaps they imagined!

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/538266/mother-children-stranded-as-cook-strait-ferry-cancelled-says-no-heads-up
    …Luckily we had accommodation, but there were all those people who wouldn’t have had anywhere to stay last night.
    “We have three kids three and under and they’d fallen asleep in the car.

    “It would have been nice to have a bit more notice before we all lined up and checked in, and all that rigmarole.”
    Eising [passenger] said trying to immediately rebook another service had not been easy.
    “The phone lines shut at 8pm, so we couldn’t ring through and the website crashed.”

    She said an attempt to rebook in person was abandoned with lines almost out the door at the Wellington terminal.
    She said they learned on Monday morning that they would not be able to get their car on a service until 12 January, so had requested a refund and were now booked on an Interislander on Tuesday.
    Bluebridge spokesperson Will Dady said thousands of passengers have been affected by the ongoing cancellations, and said the company was as frustrated as them by the relentless southerlies.
    He said the company was doing everything in its power to reschedule those affected but the volume of calls was “putting huge pressure on our call centre”…

    Emergency part-time people trained and ready to step in for for call centres? And some indication of length of time. Care companies have a voice that says ‘You are…eighth… in the queue’ etc which indicates a long wait but you will get nearer – four, two – and can make a cup of tea, or dash to the toilet. Just to be acknowledged is a comfort in these efficient and effective times! wince (sic) we changed over from slow and dull and not at all innovative government! And business is supposed to be so sensitive to the desires of the populace, ahem I mean consumers. Maybe, later, if viable at a price with profit matey,,,,,,,,,,,,

  4. Details on what to think about when you are travelling by air and particularly if there is a warning that problems are occurring.
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/538208/the-survivors-of-recent-crashes-were-sitting-at-the-back-of-the-plane-what-does-that-tell-us-about-airplane-safety ??
    …(Ed Galea, professor of fire safety engineering at London’s University of Greenwich, who has conducted landmark studies on plane crash evacuations, warns, “There is no magic safest seat.”)
    …So you’ve booked your flight and selected a seat within five rows of the exit. Now is the time to sit back, relax and rely on the pilots and crew, right?

    Not according to Galea, who says there are things we can do onboard that give us the best chance of surviving an incident.
    “Chance favours the prepared mind,” is his mantra. “If you’re aware of what you need to do to improve your chances, you’re going to increase your chances of surviving even more. Think about how you’d get out.”

    He says it’s essential, even if you’re a frequent flyer, to listen to the preflight briefing from cabin crew, and understand – really understand – how your seatbelt works.
    “Believe it or not, one thing people struggle with [in a crash] is releasing their seatbelt. You’re in a potentially life and death situation and your brain goes into autopilot,” he says. “Most people’s experiences of seatbelts are in cars, where you press a button instead of pulling a latch. A lot of the people we interviewed [who survived plane crashes] had difficulty initially releasing their seatbelts. That’s why it’s important to pay attention to the preflight briefing. All that advice is really valuable.”

    He also recommends fully studying the evacuation cards in your seat pocket and, if you’re seated at an emergency exit, carefully look at how you’d open it.
    “That [overwing] exit is quite heavy and will likely fall on top of you,” he says. “I interviewed one of the people onboard the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ [2009 emergency water landing of US Airways flight 1549]. He was seated by an overwing exit and hadn’t paid attention. As the plane was going down, he got the placard out and studied it. He was an engineer so figured it out – but I think the average person if they hadn’t bothered to read it beforehand, wouldn’t.”

    Keep your shoes on until you’ve reached cruising altitude – and put them back on as the plane starts final descent, he says. If you’re a family or travelling with other people, sit together, even if you have to pay – in an emergency, being apart will slow you down as people inevitably try to find each other.

    And wherever you’re sitting, count the number of rows between you and the emergency exit – both in front and behind. That way if the cabin is full of smoke – “one of the main killers” in modern crashes, he says – you can still feel your way to the nearest exit, and have a backup if the closest one to you is blocked.

    “People think you’re a nut,” he says of passengers who carefully watch the preflight briefing, and study the evacuation cards and exit doors before takeoff. “But chance favors the prepared mind. If you’re not prepared, it’s quite likely that things won’t go well.”
    …as Galea says, most modern crashes are survivable.
    “Most accidents or emergencies today are not about a total loss of the airplane – it’s something else, an engine fire, an undercarriage failure or a benign overrun,” says Thomas.
    (Geoffrey Thomas knows a thing or two about aircraft safety, …he previously spent 12 years as the founder of AirlineRatings, the first website to rank airlines by safety.)
    The main danger after the initial impact is of a fire breaking out and smoke entering the cabin. And while modern composite materials that today’s fuselages are made of can slow the spread of a fire better than aluminium, they can’t slow it forever – meaning evacuation is key to survival.
    Leave everything – and that means everything – behind
    “More and more we are seeing that passengers will not leave their bags behind, slowing the egress of the aircraft, and quite often we’ve seen where passengers have not got out because the egress of the plane is slowed up,” says Thomas….
    …”The other issue you have is that you get lots of videos on social media of the inside of cabins with flames outside and people yelling. People are taking videos instead of getting off the plane.”
    He believes that filming an evacuation, or evacuating with carry-on bags, should be made a criminal offence. “You are endangering people’s lives,” he says in no uncertain terms.

    • If you read the above useful information – there’s more, and good!
      He [Thomas] cites last year’s [2023/4?] Japan Airlines crash as a “perfect example” of what is possible. The crew kept calm and evacuated passengers efficiently – and the passengers obeyed the crew. Not one person was seen taking their carry-on luggage with them – and everyone survived.
      But he says it was an outlier in terms of incidents.
      That’s a cultural thing – if you’ve got a flight attendant screaming at you to leave your bags, that’s what [Japanese passengers] will do. In most other countries people think, ‘Who gives a stuff, I want my bags,'” he says. (A lesson for us in these modern self.ie-oriented times!)

      Now, whenever Thomas flies, he’s in an exit row, and wearing a sportscoat for takeoff and landing, in which he has his passport and credit cards. “So if I have to get out, I can, and I will have everything I need with me,” he says…

      [Another advisor]…says he never flies without travel insurance – so that if something happens, and he loses his belongings in an evacuation, he won’t be out of pocket.
      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/538208/the-survivors-of-recent-crashes-were-sitting-at-the-back-of-the-plane-what-does-that-tell-us-about-airplane-safety

  7. I forced myself to keep listening: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/538283/on-the-road-with-amanda-luxon
    Play it, and replay it. There’s an admission or two in there of this gorgeous family being out of touch, and sounding like a cat being strangled. Let alone being what we would once have called being ‘social climbing wankers’.
    I seem to remember one of His gorgeous wifey’s admissions was being Tone deaf.

    Well done Anna Thomas. A valiant effort at being ‘fair and balanced’ But fuck me, that was dreadful

    • I probably should have added a /sarc.
      However, you can rely on RNZ for an education. Now I know where the term ‘squeeze’ comes from. As in
      Amanda is Christopher Luxon’s ‘squeeze’. She played the part well.
      Jesu Christos they’re out of touch. And it was supposed to be a politics-free hour.

  8. I probably should have added a /sarc.
    However, you can rely on RNZ for an education. Now I know where the term ‘squeeze’ comes from. As in
    Amanda is Christopher Luxon’s ‘squeeze’. She played the part well.
    Jesu Christos they’re out of touch. And it was supposed to be a politics-free hour.

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