Simon Bridges’ molasses soaked steps are the least of his worries
Simon isn’t happy…
Simon Bridges urges ‘glorified social worker’ police to crack down on Extinction Rebellion
Simon Bridges has described police as “glorified social workers” and is urging them to be tougher on Extinction Rebellion protesters who vandalised his electorate office.
Bridges, National Party leader, told Magic Talk while he thinks it’s important people have the right to protest, the vandalism against his office in Tauranga was “unlawful”.
“I’ve got workers who will be turning up there and will spend – I presume – a couple of hours or more cleaning this icky stuff off and that’s not right.”
…now does Simon Bridges deserve this kind of specific targeting by Extinction Rebellion? Oh of course he does because of his highly secretive role in the manner in which activists were spied on during his time at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment…
Bridges on Thompson and Clark spying: ‘I never had anything to do with this’
Former National Party ministers are being forced to defend the activities of private investigators under their watch, saying they didn’t know about any unethical activity.
The State Services Commission delivered a damning report into the use of companies like Thompson and Clark to carry out surveillance on protestors, activists and other members of the public, as well as inappropriately close relationship between investigators and some public servants.
The Commissioner described the way some agencies allowed some New Zealanders to be targeted by investigators as an affront to democracy.
Two agencies for which National Party leader Simon Bridges had ministerial responsibility in the last government featured in the report – the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Transport Agency.
It found Thompson and Clark was portraying so-called “issue motivated groups” including Greenpeace, the Green Party and iwi groups, as security threats.
…Chris Trotter put it most eloquently last year…
One of his more notable public gifts, however, was the legal expertise he deployed in the framing of the legislation prohibiting seaborne protests aimed at impeding oil exploration in New Zealand’s territorial waters.
That expertise was a long time in the making. Bridges learned the lawyer’s trade here in New Zealand, at Auckland’s Law School, and then among the dreaming spires of Oxford University. In the course of his training, Bridges studied not only how the legal system works, but also what the Rule of Law is intended to protect. As a keen student of history, he must have known, even as he proscribed them, how important the rights of the citizen have always been to the proper functioning of a democratic state.
That Bridges was willing, coolly and efficiently, to curtail New Zealanders’ protest rights, would not have gone unnoticed by his political patrons (among whom were John Key and Steven Joyce). They had set him a test – and he had passed it with flying colours. In order for Bridges to become a successful statesman, his political peers needed to be convinced he had it in him to put his most cherished ideals to the sword without flinching.
That, too, would have been a factor in Simon Bridges’ successful campaign to become the National Party’s twelfth leader.
It is one thing to have the accent of a “petrol head” from West Auckland: more important by far, however, is how well a leader of the National Party is able to speak the language of power. That New Zealanders know much more about the former than the latter is proof of just how little political reality they are expected to bear.
…let’s also not forget the manner in which Bridges met with oil interests to increase penalties against deep sea oil protestors and remember it was done secretly and quietly behind the scenes…
Last week, documents released to the Labour Party revealed that Government Ministers Steven Joyce and Simon Bridges had met with oil giant Shell to thrash out a back-room deal to criminalise protesting at sea.
There’s nothing new here – it’s called crony capitalism and it’s something that the John Key Government does well. It’s his bread and butter. You take a company – in this case New Zealand Inc – and you use it to line the pockets of your mates.
Yet, it seems that in a desperate attempt to show that the Government is wagging its own tail, Simon Bridges has been caught out misleading Parliament. Originally telling Parliament that he had had no contact with oil companies about the controversial law changes, it has emerged that he had met with Shell just weeks before making his draconian decision.
No details of that secret meeting have so far been released, but at a previous meeting with Government, Shell expressed their concern about offshore protests. Simon Bridges then presented to Cabinet that: ‘the upstream oil and gas industry has sought a more robust government response to threats of, and actual, direct protest action’. A month later it was passed in to law.
…so you can see why Simon Bridges has become Public Enemy Number 1 when it comes to Extinction Rebellion and the hilarious thing is that Extinction Rebellion are attacking him because…
…thanks to our none existent short term political memory, the poor cherubs aren’t even aware of the accusations against Bridges in terms of activists being spied on or even any awareness of what he did to help oil companies increase penalties against protestors.
Extinction Rebellions should be pissed because Simon Bridges secretly met with oil interests to ram through a new law prosecuting deep sea oil activists and mislead Parliament about that meeting, all the while his very agency was pushing through that law change committing unethical spying actions against Greenpeace, the Green Party, the MANA Movement and local Iwi protesting possible oil pollution.
The problem for Simon however is that this kind of protest is only going to get more and more radical because the real time climate crisis is erupting as we speak…
Our Planet May Be Barreling Toward a Tipping Point
When we’re talking about social justice, a tipping point is a beautiful thing—a court case that shifts public opinion, for example. For a species, a tipping point can spell doom, as an environmental catastrophe pushes a population to the brink. When it comes to climate change, there isn’t just one tipping point but many that scientists are increasingly pulling into view.
Today in the journal Nature, a group of researchers argues that we’re closer to tipping nine climate demons than previously believed, and that we’re already starting to see some associated effects. “We argue that the intervention time left to prevent tipping could already have shrunk towards zero, whereas the reaction time to achieve net zero emissions is 30 years at best,” they write. “Hence we might already have lost control of whether tipping happens.”
…we are facing an existential crisis and it’s breaking into our consciousness…
Dictionary.com names ‘existential’ as word of the year
How did 2019 make you feel? Surely there were highs and lows, but if you spent a good portion of the year that was feeling concerned with the nature of your existence, then Dictionary. com understands. On Monday the website announced that it has selected “existential” as its word of the year for the 2019, and explained why through the lens of Toy Story 4 breakout character Forky.
“We know what you must be thinking: Forky? The dictionary? 2019?” Dictionary.com’s write-up begins. “Well, the thing about Forky is, his dilemma actually speaks to a broader theme of threat and crisis reflected not only in culture and news, but also in our dictionary work throughout this year. High-stakes events around the world involving climate change, gun violence, and democratic institutions were some of the top news stories. And words about these events, from polar vortex to stochastic terrorism to exonerate, were top searches and trends on Dictionary.com. Notable among searches was existential, which we’ve chosen as our Word of the Year for 2019. It captures a sense of grappling with the survival — literally and figuratively — of our planet, our loved ones, our ways of life.”
…the climate crisis is now an event beyond politics and the reality is that radicalism is the next step to force a political spectrum dominated by the vested interests of polluters into radical adaptation because the entropy of a rapidly warming planet from human pollution is here now…
‘A lot of suffering’: Grim 3000yo warning about to come true
It’s happened before, now some claim it’s happening again.
In 1200BC, the world’s most advanced civilisations — Egypt, Assyria, Cannan — were burnt to the ground all at once.
It was the era of the Biblical Exodus and the poet Homer’s Trojan War.
A convergence of catastrophes made these nations weak. And it’s happening again.
…when the enormity of what we are facing dawns on more and more NZers, spilled symbolic molasses will be the least of Simon’s concerns.
For every half of oil reserves left in the ground that we burn is 2° of warming. So we can expect 4° of warming. At 4° higher global average temperatures only the top 1% of humans could possibly survive. I don’t mean the wealthiest 1%, they’re not even close to being 1 percenters. People who are in the top 1% for running the furthest while shooting the straightest.
There is no combination of systems that can leave the last bits of oil in the ground. The whole system is rationalised to burn it all. The system won’t survive, capitalism won’t survive, and I doubt Christianity will survive burning the last of the fossil fuels. Only individuals can survive anthropogenic global warming.
So because The National Party is inviting disaster with there environment discussion paper what we need from extinction rebellion is to identify the people who we can no longer listen to and when the shit finally flips the script we need to know who needs citizens arrest and jail time so they can remember there part in the crimes against humanity.
Martyn;
we wrote this today about Bridges still being a “closet climate denier” and using his call for more roads as Steven Joyce did in our narrative.
“CEAC – PM must attend COPS 25 Climate Change Conference.
Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre Incorporated (CEAC)
Press release 3rd December 2019.
PM Ardern must attend COPS 25 Climate Change Conference beginning today in Madrid with 125 other countries.
https://www.matconlist.com/2019/12/25th-un-climate-change-conference-cop-25-madrid.html
CEAC is encouraged to see our Government who is caring about climate change and
are, actively being considerate, inclusive and responsive to citizens’ concerns about our future with the potential effects of Climate change now impacting to our citizens.
The silence from our NZ media today about the COPS 25 Climate change conference beginning today shocked our organisation with no coverage for this important event at all from breakfast time today.
As the latest CB political poll yesterday has promoted more reactions from negative comments of government, while others call for climate change CO2 emissions to be lowered even more.
All this; – while we saw a weird reaction from the National opposition party and others claiming that we need to build more roads.
Why more roads?
Our response to the call for more roads; – is this;
We need instead;
• To use less road transport, – and less air transport.
• We now need to switch to using shipping and rail to move us and our freight around our country.
This must be stated over and over again to change the mindset of the oil companies and their pundits, who only promote use of more road transport and air passenger service only for increasing profits for oil companies from increased oil use, which will make our future weather worse.
We will benefit from increased collusion with the 125 countries who are attending the COPS 125 Conference now beginning today in Madrid Spain.
End.
Simon Bridges and the natz are horrific, ecological destroyers.
But can somebody tell the Green Party that a bottle of water takes the equivalent of filling 1/4 of the bottle with oil. Then there is the transport and waste costs on top.
It would be nice to have a political party who make good choices about the environment! Green lighting water bottling expansion in NZ, is not something the Greens should be doing!
We also now know that the Natz would sell out their country for a donation and their is a preferred ethnicity for list MP seats based on their donations.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/17-10-2018/the-jami-lee-tapes-a-transcript-of-the-ross-and-bridges-donation-chat/
“Just weeks after Simon Bridges faced backlash over a trip to China and a meeting with the country’s spy boss, National MP Jian Yang has returned to Beijing for a major military parade. Laura Walters reports.”
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/10/02/838837/jian-yang-in-china-for-chinese-communist-party-celebrations#
#NZ for sale, democracy and human rights no longer necessary!
“I’ve got workers who will be turning up there and will spend – I presume – a couple of hours or more cleaning this icky stuff off and that’s not right.”
The current government might think this is a bit rich considering they’ll be spending years cleaning up the mess Soymun made at the Ministry of Transport.
Bridges is the last one who has tried to destroy the MOT as the first one was Johkey then it was Steven Joyce then Gerry Brownlee and lastly Simon Bridges.
They are wreckers of many good agencies like Ministry of Transport, all that will need to be restored by the Labour co-coalition again so Simonm you are so right.
Bridges is the last one who has tried to destroy the MOT as the first one was Johkey then it was Steven Joyce then Gerry Brownlee and lastly Simon Bridges.
They are wreckers of many good agencies like Ministry of Transport, all that will need to be restored by the Labour co-coalition again so Simonm you are so right.
Sound familiar, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/03/malta-corruption-daphne-caruana-galizia-murder
so called economic prosperity while there is increased corruption, criminal activity and local and central politicians and influencers of them on the take, and selling off assets based on selling of visas https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/malta/10445966/Maltese-passport-and-life-as-an-EU-citizen-for-anyone-with-546000.html!
I guess NZ hasn’t got to the point of blowing up Nicky Hager yet… but you can see if our laissez faire approach to selling visas here to criminals to expand globally, combined with wink, wink, 0% money laundering and wink, wink, don’t worry NZ banks about money laundering, regulators are ok to turn a blind eye here… https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/114664719/bnz-struggled-to-abide-by-antimoney-laundering-laws
Maybe a decade or less away from Malta situation in NZ.
And very close to debt trap diplomacy – underwater stadium for Auckland, anyone?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/21/chinese-loans-expose-pacific-islands-to-risk-of-unsustainable-debt-report-finds
saveNZ You don’t know often I have reflected that at least we live in a country where a good man like Nicky Hager doesn’t get bumped off; I think that this is recorded as canvassed by protagonists in “Dirty Politics” – and I hope he has a large dog.
Yes but he has been harassed by police no doubt on behalf of the National government at the time, illegally searched, had warrants that did not declare relevant information to the judge aka that he was a journalist, his bank records taken illegally by authorities despite him not being suspected of anything.
Without the amount of time and legal help and public support, the outcome might be different next time, as the government gets more corrupt and has more to lose, if we look at Trump who appears to be making it up as he goes, which was a bit like the Natz in power and Labour are only a bit better and doing little about justice and privacy breaches! In fact government agencies seem to be big offenders! The ministry of education recently gave access to a Chinese big data seller, information on NZ kids and schools.
Police apologise to Nicky Hager over Dirty Politics raid as part of settlement
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/104638742/police-apologise-to-nicky-hager-over-dirty-politics-raid-as-part-of-settlement
saveNZ – Yes, of course Nicky Hager’s experiences at the hands of the police, were on behalf of the Nat Govt, or perhaps one particular Nat who gave me the impression that NZ was his fiefdom, and if he complained to the police then they had to act on it.
Le Noeud de Viperes’ various doings documented by Hager are likely the tip of the iceberg – but worse than anyone would have dreamed of, and many got away with appalling behaviour which majorly damaged innocent persons, and that’s not okay. Someone pushed the police in Bradbury’s direction – unless govt spies were snooping and decided that 2+2 = 6, and that this justified underhand action – when upfront approaches should be the first step.
D’Esterre mention the late Jack Marshall acting for NZ interests with the EEC, and it reminded me how he was referred to as ‘Gentleman Jack’ and ‘Gentleman John’, and how low we have sunk since then; snakes in office who would not know what a real gent is, collect absurd knighthoods, do not know or care what damage they’ve caused. I can’t see Labour as being as bad, if only because they’ve generally been the party with the brains, and a concern for social justice – more or less.
Why didn’t he clean the fucking steps himself and save us tax payers some money. Talk about the lack of fiscal responsibility.
Bert – Gosh you’re great for a laugh. Simon’s a man… or an approximation of one… and cleaning the front steps has always been women’s work… remember Bridges turning to the ghastly Bennett and saying something like, “Getis a drink of water LUV,” ? And it looked like Luv acquiesced.
That treacle would most likely have vanished overnight anyway… or he could have left it for hungry children to lick… and show that he’s got… what is that word I’m grappling to get? What has Simon got ? “
Crabs!
Bert – the Chinese stir fry them with ginger, spring onions, and soy sauce, and may be counting on Simon for a continuous supply…