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The Daily Blog Open Mic – Wednesday 10th August 2016
Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.
Moderation rules are more lenient for this section, but try and play nicely.
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Why would Stuart Nash spoil Labour’s moment in the Sun?
Why, oh why, would Stuart Nash ruin Labour’s moment in the Sun huh?
Here is the first mainstream media poll that follows internal polling that finally shows Labour/Green are contenders and what does Stuart go and do? Why he manages to allow some of Labour’s most poisonous critics to remind voters that Labour bicker internally.
Why Stuart thought sharing a stage with Phil Quin was a smart idea suggests Nash lacks the internal warning signals that normal people have when around venomous snakes.
You don’t get to say the things that Quin has said and then pretend he can be come back into the tent for social occasions. It would be like having Cameron Slater turn up for a Green Party fundraiser.
Seeing as this is not the first time Stuart has been caught straddling the idealogical fence, I’d think he’s about to have all his privileges revoked.
Dumb, dumb, dumb behaviour.
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Ministry of Social Development spy on beneficiaries using Facebook
As was first reported on Waatea 5th Estate 4 months ago, the Ministry of Social Development spies on beneficiaries using Facebook.
Now let’s be clear what is going on here.
Because the Ministry of Social Development has a sexist and anti-women moralistic position that being in a relationship with someone automatically means you should get less, they trawl social media to find evidence that beneficiaries are in a ‘relationship’ and when the Ministry feels it has evidence, they then charge the beneficiary with welfare fraud.
It’s a despicable and shocking extension of the State forcing their sexist ideas and morality onto women.
60% of solo mothers on welfare owe WINZ money for this so called ‘fraud’. That means these people are locked into a debt cycle forever with WINZ for the ‘crime’ of being in a relationship!!!
This is Orwellian, we should not have a Government Department that is actively creeping into our bedrooms to sniff the underwear to determine if we are having a relationship.
Also remember, there is no clear cut formula that determines a relationship, no number of nights that equates to a relationship, it’s just up to the nosey staff members discretion.
This is the very kind of example we need to have a political revolution against, these so called public services have become vicious extensions of the State and do nothing but cause grief to those it is supposed to be concerned with.
WINZ, CYFs, Corrections, Probation, Housing NZ, the Ministry of Social Development – all of them are the problem, not the solution. We need a new means of reigning these departments in and forcing them to act in the interests of those they serve, not the petty bigotry of talkback.
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The two political juxtapositions that will most impact the 2017 NZ Election
I think there are two political juxtapositions that will most impact the 2017 NZ Election.
The first is the that the First Past the Post mainstream media have been forced to report the political polls for an MMP election. Month after month, year after year voters who don’t support National have been told their side is getting flattened.
We report political polls like we report sports win and losses. This has created the perception that National are impossible to beat. By forging a MoU, Labour and the Greens must be reported as a bloc. This dramatically changes the perception from National 47%-Labour 29% to National 45%-Labour/Green 44%.
See the difference? Watch what happens when Labour/Green overtake National by December.
The second political juxtaposition that will most impact the 2017 NZ Election is over the housing crisis. Labour will build houses while National will sell them is as clear cut a political message as the infamous Kiwi-Iwi Billboards Don Brash used. It’s a simple juxtaposition that highlights the political values and uses National’s as a weakness.
After 8 years of growing inequality, NZers don’t want to be told what John Key can’t do for them, they want to hear what anyone else can do for them.
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Is Trump Preparing To Substitute Bullets For Ballots?
AS TRUMP’S NUMBERS slump, and Hillary’s surge, the worst elements of the American Right are mobilising in his defence. The Republican Party’s most notorious political saboteur, Roger Stone, is urging Trump to prepare his followers for a “rigged” election. And Trump is listening. To the alarm of election observers and commentators of every political stripe, Trump has taken to dropping the “R” word into his recent stump speeches.
“November 8th, we’d better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged,” he told American television viewers on Monday, 1 August, “and I hope the Republicans are watching closely, or it’s going to be taken away from us.”
Fears are growing in the Democratic camp that the prospect of losing to Hillary fills Trump with such terror that, rather than concede defeat, he will not shy away from doing irreparable damage to America’s 240-year-old system of representative democracy.
Roger Stone, who has a portrait of Richard Nixon tattooed on his back, is nothing if not explicit. In an interview with Alex Jones (a far-right extremist broadcaster and conspiracy theorist) he issued a chilling warning to Trump’s opponents:
“Well you have to let them know in advance that you’re not going to stand for it. That if there’s any solid evidence of election irregularities you’re prepared to challenge her swearing in and create a constitutional crisis.”
Or something much worse. According to the BBC’s Anthony Zurcher:
“In a podcast last week, long-time Trump advisor Roger Stone said that if the election results in November don’t match opinion polls, the Republican nominee should challenge the validity of the election and warned that the unrest could end in a “bloodbath”. “If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate,” he said. “The election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.”
Threats of a similar nature were made in the lead-up to the Republican Convention. Even if, back then, they were directed at the leadership of the Republican Party itself! Historically-speaking, such overt references to political violence are alien to the presidential election process. At the state and local level of American government, however, “election irregularities” are commonplace.
Stone’s reference to “voter fraud” is telling. For nearly a decade Republican-controlled state legislatures have been passing legislation specifically designed to make it harder for voters more likely than not to support the Democratic Party to both register to – and cast – their vote. The standard political justification for these so-called “voter suppression” laws is the alleged incidence of fraudulent voting. Expert examination of such claims has pronounced them groundless. Proven examples of voter fraud in the United States are extremely rare.
The strongly contested presidential election of 2000 is, however, proof that, even at the presidential level, things can go very badly wrong with the election process. The irregularities surrounding the Florida vote were legion – including strong prima facie evidence of Bush family involvement (in 2000, George W. Bush’s brother, Jeb, was the Florida Governor) in a comprehensive plan to suppress the participation of the state’s African-American voters.
A more reckless and less patriotic Democratic Party presidential candidate than Al Gore might have done considerably more to prevent the 2000 election being stolen from him. His party had, after all, won the popular vote by a comfortable margin, and election day exit polls had shown him ahead (albeit narrowly) in Florida. Rather than call his followers into the streets, however, Gore allowed the US Supreme Court to determine the outcome of the election. By the narrowest of margins, the Court voted to declare Bush the winner.
Can Donald trump be relied upon to go quietly if the election is won narrowly (or even decisively) by Hillary Clinton? Or will he goad the losing side of the most heavily-armed citizenry on earth into substituting their bullets for their ballots?
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Waatea 5th Estate – Gaza blockade
Joining us tonight to discuss the Women’s Boat to Gaza…
In studio – Green Party MP and participant in the Women’s Boat to Gaza – Marama Davidson
Kia Ora Gaza Co-ordinator and human rights activist – Roger Fowler
Former convoy to Gaza participant and Palestinian Rights Activist – Tali Williams
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The Daily Blog Open Mic – Tuesday 9th August 2016
Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.
Moderation rules are more lenient for this section, but try and play nicely.
TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com
National knew trade war with China brewing – did nothing and now trade war is here
It feels odd.
The trade war with China has broken out and we still seem to be asleep at the wheel.
Has no one noticed?
Maybe Paul Henry’s arse tattoo really is actually more important than our largest trading partner declaring a trade war on us?
Every day we get denial by the Government that there is any problem, and then after each assurance, new evidence emerges that there really is a huge problem right now.
McClay’s extraordinary new version of events released yesterday is his fourth attempt now to explain what he knew about Chinese threats of a trade war and when.
Our terribly forgetful Trade Minister has previously managed to create 3 versions of whether or not he had been briefed about China threatening trade sanctions for investigating their wonky steel.
His First version was that the claims were ‘extremely hypothetical’ and that there was no hard evidence.
His second version was to announce that after checking with his office, he had in fact been briefed himself last week of such an approach.
His third version was that, oh yeah, we’ve been working on this threat from China for about 2 or months now.
His latest version has been, oh, yeah, looks like we’ve been told explicitly that China would use a range of non-tariff barriers against our biggest exporters since May.
Which is exactly what has just fucking happened to Zespri!!!
HELLO?
The Trade Minister is informed that China will use a range of non-tariff barriers against our exporters if a complaint about their faulty steel is made. Complaint gets laid, and then suddenly one of NZs largest exporters gets a non-tariff barrier slapped on them.
Are all the media in Rio? Is that why no one at home seems to understand the enormity of what’s happening?
Vernon Small’s excellent work on this issue is fast becoming the political journalism of 2016.
At some point, the claims of ‘nothing to see here’ must get challenged.
Who would have thought buying ridiculously cheap steel from China would ever go wrong huh?
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New Newshub Poll – National 45%-Labour/Green 44%
As the Daily Blog first predicted the internal polls have now filtered out to the mainstream polls and TV3’s latest poll shows National on 45% and Labour/Green at 44.2%
NZ First are down to 8%
The biggest change that has occurred is that the media now are obliged to represent Labour and the Greens as a block, which in tern changes voters attitudes. We report Political Polls like sports results, and month after month, year after year people have been told National are on some huge percentage while Labour struggle. Now the mainstream media are obliged to announce them as a block, it changes the voters perceptions.
TDB first broke these internal polls and our understanding is the next set of them has Labour and the Greens ahead of National.
Now the big external polls are starting to show what has quietly been happening for months now, watch as National prepare for a blood letting over the Summer holidays. As the Polls continue to melt for National, Judith Collins will start making moves.
I wouldn’t be surprised if leak of something offensive John Key said to Cameron Slater wouldn’t suddenly appear in the next few months.
You can read things occurring first on TDB, or you can see it a couple of months later in the mainstream media.
I think the Panama Papers still has a lot more to play.
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Senior doctors press hospital bosses for more leadership in health services – ASMS
The union for senior doctors and dentists working in public hospitals is calling on district health board bosses to let doctors behind the wheel of the health system.
“Hospital managers need to put senior doctors in the driving seat when it comes to changes in service design, configuration and delivery that are going to affect their clinical practice,” says Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).
“Instead, they’re increasingly being left to pump air into the bald tyres, which is a waste of their expertise and is also contrary to the brave new era of clinical leadership that the Government and DHBs have previously promised to usher in.”
Writing in the latest issue of the ASMS magazine, The Specialist, he says several strategic documents published since 2008 had created an expectation that health services would be clinically-led. These documents include the Health Sector Relationship Agreement between DHBs and health unions, the Time for Quality Agreement between DHBs and ASMS, and the Government’s policy statement on clinical leadership, In Good Hands.
Since the increased financial pressures on DHBs, however, Mr Powell says DHBs have lapsed into the frustrating habit of excluding the wider senior medical workforce from strategic planning in hospitals, even when their expertise is directly relevant.
“It’s very disappointing, and results in changes to health services that are not well supported by the wider senior medical workforce. Essentially we’re seeing the derailing of these earlier strategic policy documents, which were themselves the result of much discussion and negotiation.”
He attributes this to an artificial division between the people carrying out the planning functions of DHBs and the health professionals, including senior doctors and dentists, who provide front line patient care.
“This split appears to be a leftover from the failed dogma of the 1990s market-driven era, which, unfortunately, still exists in some DHBs,” he says.
Lack of adequate funding for New Zealand’s public hospitals wasn’t helping the situation, with hospital managers opting for short-term solutions rather than long-term answers.
“Short-term solutions are about reacting to the environment the DHBs find themselves in but what New Zealanders need is a more considered approach that leads to sustainable improvements in health care.
“We think that an important part of that approach is to let senior doctors and dentists do what they’ve been trained to – weigh the evidence, work out what’s needed, and then guide the development of clinical services for the benefit of New Zealanders.”
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A – cough, cough – very unique ‘view’ of the Saudi Sheep bribe
In NZ, we are still trying to understand the $11.5million bribe paid by this Government to a Saudi Businessmen in a desperate attempt to try and get a free trade deal with one of the worlds worst human rights abusers and biggest financial supporters of terrorism.
In Saudi Arabia however, the story is a very, very, very different one…
Saudi farm saves New Zealand’s sheep dairy industry from crisis
JEDDAH: Authorities in New Zealand did not give permission to Hamoud Ali Al-Khalaf, a Saudi businessman, for six years to export live cattle to the Kingdom, yet by sheer dint of his business prowess, Al-Khalaf saved his host country from a crisis that had nearly devastated its sheep dairy industry.
The English-language Stuff publication, in its June 20 edition, said the Awassi sheep farm, owned by Saudi businessman Hamoud Ali Al-Khalaf, at Hawke’s Bay in New Zealand, is being used to revive the sheep dairy industry.
The dairy business, it said, faced a real crisis because of incapability of the east Friesian sheep to produce enough milk.
The publication said the officials at Waituhi Kuratau Trust (WKT), specializing in dairy and meat production, had some 20 years breeding large numbers of Friesian sheep which were designed to help them breed quickly, resulting in producing more than 600 heads, but the experience proved these sheep cannot live in the atmosphere of New Zealand.
The officials at WKT found out this kind of sheep breed is with genetic weakness making it incapable of producing enough milk, so they negotiated with the Saudi businessman to let them use his Awassi sheep to fill the deficit in milk production by breeding the Awaasi sheep with the east Friesian to improve their milk production.
According to reports, to “compensate” over a six-year-old ban of live sheep exports on Al-Khalaf, in which he is said to have lost hundreds of millions of dollars, the government of New Zealand has spent $6 million for air freighting 900 pregnant ewes and farming equipment to Al-Khalaf’s farm.
Stuff said the Saudi businessman agreed to cooperate with the officials in New Zealand to solve the crisis facing the country’s sheep diary industry despite the fact that the New Zealand authorities prevented him to export live cattle to the Kingdom to be slaughtered there.
…that’s right folks, NZ didn’t bribe Saudi Businessman Al-Khalaf for reneging on live sheep exports in order to gain a free trade deal, oh no, apparently Al-Khalaf was actually doing NZ a huge favour by saving our ‘sheep crisis’.
Tumeke!
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No more council sellouts before the election
With just two months before we elect a mayor and councillors it would be a travesty of democracy were the current mayor and council to sign off a new cost-sharing agreement with the government.
And yet this seems to be underway with secret negotiations behind closed doors last week with an end date of mid-August for agreement.
It appears Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee wants to pressure the out-going council to sign-off on a new agreement stacked with government priorities for spending of ratepayer money.
Brownlee did the same thing in the dying days of the previous council under Bob Parker.
That left the city with huge bills for the so-called anchor projects (which are a government priority rather than a Christchurch priority) and a timeline which ensured many on council would adopt a Brownlee-inspired asset sale programme.
Christchurch has suffered enough body blows to its local democracy in recent years without the mayor and council signing off on this latest outrage.
Mayor Dalziel quite rightly heavily criticised the previous council for doing deals with the government behind closed doors to hobble an incoming council. Now it appears she has allowed herself to become trapped in the same position.
These negotiations must be put on hold till a new council has got its feet under the table.
NOTE: It’s worth remembering the government of the day paid the entire bill for the 1931 Napier City rebuild when it wrote off the council’s government loans in 1938. Prime Minister John Key said the government would pay “whatever it takes” to rebuild Christchurch – we should insist he keeps his word.
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GUEST BLOG: Anonymous – the truth about the housing crisis in Auckland
It’s hard to raise a people’s army and take control of the state when all the disposed are living in garages or cars.
If it hadn’t been for all those skyline garages that went up in the 80s and 90s along with the closing in of car ports from the 90s the housing crisis would be a lot worse – thank your lucky stars for those slum landlord that moved in and took over the provision of housing for the working poor whilst both the labour and national govts kissed the arse of investor class wealthy migrants and also bought in heaps of coolies to serve them.
Every week over this wet winter I am being asked to fix substandard structures that are leaking that should not in any way be housing but are being populated by families, couples, the working poor who consist in equal measure of both people born here and recent non-wealthy migrants.
Last week I saw a a two dwelling cross lease where the carport for one house and the skyline garage of the other – which met at the boundary had been converted into living with the gutter of the skyline garage being used as an internal gutter between the two shanty dwellings – of course it rusted out and failed – the owners of these units who each lived in the main houses could not agree who should have the gutter replaced – the owners were new migrants the tenants of the shanty dwellings kept out of site.
Often you find rooms with one power point, a light, no running water, a gas burners and gas bottles on a make shift bench, no sink, a food store and a beds or bunks – all in the same room.
I’m a fine one to talk I’m looking at over the next year converting the garage under mum’s house so that I can live there.
Welcome to Auckland the Worlds Most Liveable City – no matter what the level of housing health and welfare deprivation you can’t afford “we” will cater for it so that you can live and work here and afford nothing but to work and die. The Slogan for both parties should be Phuck off and Die Working Poor People but while you’re at it pay the rent sucker.
Anonymous lives in Auckland and doesn’t want to be targeted for telling the truth
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