General Debate 7 December 2014

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holysheet

What is it about these piece of shit Kiwis, who go overseas and become drug couriers and dealers. The misery and pain they cause by their greed is despicable. Who in their right mind would go to a country that has the death penalty for drug dealing and expect to get away with it when caught.
In the news at the moment are 2 of these lowlife scum. One in China and one in Bali. I hope they are both shot and the cost of the bullets sent to their families. I hope our embassy staff in these countries do not offer any form of financial aid.

Any one who deals in drugs is the lowest of the low, down there with pedophiles. They would be in good company with our starving returned convict. More the pity we cannot give him a bullet as well.
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December 7, 2014 8:03am
mikenmild

We should actually legalise the use of all psychoactive substances for use by consenting adults and regulate that use in a similar fashion to our regulation of alcohol. Accompany that with releasing all those in prison solely for drug offences and we would be making a good start.
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December 7, 2014 8:06am
Steve (North Shore)

Mayor Len Browns new office open for public viewing 2 – 4pm today. See where your Rate dollars are going.
Just kidding
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December 7, 2014 8:06am
duggledog

In the Herald:

‘Millie Elder drawing on the spirit of her partner…’ blah blah blah

Well, the out-of-touch media have appointed Paul Holmes’ daughter a new national icon. For no other reason than her dad was famous.

Someone needs to tell this young woman she is simply being groomed so the paper’s sister publications can always have someone to call on when their B story drops out. As far as I’m aware, Ms Holmes has done nothing in her life except be around A list celebs, take Class A drugs, go out with some guy who has gang connections and now thump some other girl for charity.

Someone else needs to tell the Herald they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel and we can all see what’s going on
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December 7, 2014 8:08am
Steve (North Shore)

Too early for stupid jokes mike – go back to bed
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December 7, 2014 8:08am
fernglas

What is it about Auckland that the Police can’t get their shit together to clear up after an accident for more than 3 hours? Once the injured left the scene, the bikes should have been thrown onto a tow truck, the debris swept up, and the traffic got moving again. This nonsense about completely disrupting the heart of our major city so they can find out who might or might not have been responsible is the mentality of a small provincial town. How can Auckland pretend to be a major city when a single motor vehicle accident can effectively shut it down? This will give my friends in London, Paris and New York yet another reason to laugh at us.
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December 7, 2014 8:08am
Viking2

Oh fuck!
Looks like ACC are coming to YOUR BEDROOM.
They are on the PR stunt about mishaps whilst having sex.

Kiwis are injuring themselves in sexual mishaps by the hundreds each year, ACC figures show.

Up and down New Zealand, citizens are wrenching necks, hurting hips and twisting spines in sex sessions which, over the past five years, have cost taxpayers $452,000 in 1200 claims.

The most common injuries were cuts, punctures or stings, and injuries resulting from interactions with a foreign body – and that doesn’t mean a tryst with a tourist.

But the Sunday Star-Times has also received accounts of unfortunate incidents involving chillies, broken jaws and knees injured on volcanic rock. Decency prevents us going into detail.

Proving, perhaps, that youth is not always wasted on the young, people aged 20 to 24, followed closely by 15 to 19-year-olds, were most likely to make claims for sex-related injuries.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/63910051/Sexual-athletes-leave-taxpayer-with-bill
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December 7, 2014 8:11am
Griff

http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/tim-groser-heads-to-peru-climate-change-meeting-2014120707
Mr Groser.will sign us up to a new binding climate change agreement

“The meeting at Lima is critical to success at Paris next December where world leaders will agree a new binding climate change agreement that includes contributions from all major emitting countries for the first time,” says Mr Groser.

The meeting will clarify how countries will put forward their pledges towards reducing carbon emissions next year and how the UN’s green climate fund can support countries facing the impacts of climate change.

New Zealand would announce its pledge next year, he said.

“It’s going to be a challenge for New Zealand. There’s no doubt about that. But we’re doing the analysis now, and we’ll come up with a credible position,” Mr Groser told The Nation yesterday.

What you gonna do about the governments belief in climate change.
Vote out national?
.
.
and get the greens

Wonder if how soon this will get voted out
😆
Wingnuts in denial are so funny
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December 7, 2014 8:16am
wat dabney

“In the news at the moment are 2 of these lowlife scum. One in China and one in Bali. I hope they are both shot and the cost of the bullets sent to their families. I hope our embassy staff in these countries do not offer any form of financial aid.”

What a vile, disgusting person you are.

And, unsurprisingly, you wish to dictate to everyone else – at the point of a gun – what they may and may not ingest. The assumption being that other people are not free but must obey you like slaves.

Why is it that the most revolting, despicable people are always the ones who feel the need to literally force their views onto others?
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December 7, 2014 8:19am
wat dabney

There has been no warming now for 18 years and 2 months.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/03/onward-marches-the-great-pause/
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December 7, 2014 8:19am
Akaroa

Re-Duggledog at 8.08.

The same thought occurred to self and life partner when we read – yet again – the name ‘Millie Elder’ in recent news.

We know who she is, and I’ve no reason to think she’s other than a nice person, but that does not detract from the fact that she’s a nonentity who’s only claim to – er ‘fame??” – rests on the fact that her father was Paul Holmes.

And without wishing to speak ill of the dead, I have to say he wasn’t everyone’s all-time favourite TV person either.

I don’t know if Millie Elder – or those around her – are trying to do a ‘Kardashian’ on a gullible public, but I for one am supremely disinterested in Millie Elder and will be until she discovers a cure for cancer or swims the Tasman to Australia and back.

They are achievements – being Paul Holmes daughter is not.
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December 7, 2014 8:20am
Pete George

Yesterday Kim Hill interviewed Tom Scott (the musician one) about killing the Prime Minister and raping his kids. He didn’t take kindly to people picking bits out of his songs but seemed unrepentant.

He becanme uncomfortable being held to account, trying to claim he was just a musician, but also didn’t hold back from bitterly criticising John Key.

He also seems to think he represents the working class, but was also uncomfortable being asked about receiving New Zealand On Air funding.

He said:

So at the end of the day you don’t have to worry about Tom Scott, ’cause him and the working class got fucked.

Talking of rape and murder is fine but saying fuck isn’t so Kim Hill told him off. So he started sulking, and then walked out.

Transcript: Tom Scott on and off Radio NZ
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December 7, 2014 8:25am
laworder

Viking2 wrote

Looks like ACC are coming to YOUR BEDROOM.
They are on the PR stunt about mishaps whilst having sex.

Kiwis are injuring themselves in sexual mishaps by the hundreds each year, ACC figures show.

What the hell are these people doing that they manage to injure themselves?
When I make love with my partner it is always so gentle that I would be happy to opt out of ACC coverage for it

Regards
Peter J
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December 7, 2014 8:28am
ChrisM

To show how isolated the Greens are, has anyone seen their new revised blog? Talk about empty room stuff, it isn’t even an echo chamber. No one can be even bothered commenting there, even Griff. Why does the left seem to have to spend all their time being evangelists? Or are they just concern trolls?
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December 7, 2014 8:31am
wiseowl

Fernglas re mentality of a provincial town.

Thanks for the condescending comment about us in the provinces.
It happens everywhere and we have had closures for hours for the same reasons.Bloody infuriating.

Thing is I bet the idea comes from them in those big cities who sit behind desks and think of ways to piss people off.
Provincial common sense long gone out the window.
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December 7, 2014 8:35am
mikenmild

wiseowl
No one in the cities is deliberately doing over small towns. There are long term demographic trends towards larger towns and the cities. Some of the larger places are struggling too. The only things smaller towns can do is reinvent reasons for their existence. The Wairarapa towns are an example of this.
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December 7, 2014 8:43am
SGA

laworder at 8:28 am

When I make love with my partner it is always so gentle that I would be happy to opt out of ACC coverage for it
Regards
Peter J

Ummm… No, I shouldn’t say that, so I won’t.
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December 7, 2014 8:43am
Griff

😆
yip way to go wat
rss chaneel tlt
Strangely it is the only record that show no warming
Would lord I lie a lot* be cherry picking?
1 it doesn’t include the poles. it only goes to 72 degrees. The north pole is the fastest warming region
2 it is not the surface were we live it is for 12 kilometers above sea level.
3 it is not accurate
4 it uses some extremely suspect math to get temperature from microwave readings though the rest of the atmosphere by a series of different satellites and instruments#.
5 it doesn’t even agree with the other satellite derived temperature series UAH@

I much prefer actual temperature measurements made with real thermometers.
this gives the warmest year ever as …..2014
As does UAH

* http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2011/july/letter-to-viscount-monckton/
# http://images.remss.com/papers/rsspubs/Mears_JTECH_2009_TLT_construction.pdf
@ http://davidappell.blogspot.co.nz/2014/04/uah-but-not-rss-again-at-record-5yr-high.html
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December 7, 2014 8:48am
Longknives

Get used to ‘Our Millie’ Akaroa! Millie Holmes is now New Zealand’s Kim Kardashian!! The gushing media breathlessly reporting on her ‘brave’ fight for life boxing match in memory of her Gangmember boyfriend confirms she ain’t going away in a hurry…
*Anna Guy must be pissed!
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December 7, 2014 8:50am
Longknives

And re ‘Homebrew’- How does making awful ‘Hip Hop’ records while hoovering up NZ on Air taxpayer handouts make you ‘Working Class’???
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December 7, 2014 8:52am
mikenmild

Do we even have a ‘working class’? How about a ‘non-working class’?
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December 7, 2014 8:56am
Yoza

wat dabney (3,823 comments) says:
December 7th, 2014 at 8:19 am

There has been no warming now for 18 years and 2 months.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/03/onward-marches-the-great-pause/

“Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley”

At least the fraud has stopped calling himself ‘Lord Monkton’. Although, it is funny people still link to
Monkton as if he is some kind of authority on climate change.
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December 7, 2014 8:59am
Viking2

fernglass.
The Pratts that were on the motor bikes were wearing gang patches.
Question is, why did anyone give them a second thought. Should have just continued on over them.
Scum
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December 7, 2014 9:01am
kowtow

fernglas

Re the bridge. The cops are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

That was a seriou accident which could yet result in a fatality. If the police didn’t cross the t’s and dot the i’s on that,then the prosecution would fail,the courts would hammer them,the press have a field day and potentially a dangerous fatality causing offender go free.

If motorists want trouble free driving then they need to improve how they drive.
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December 7, 2014 9:03am
Longknives

And Akaroa- If the rumours are true we are soon going to be seeing a lot more of ‘Our Millie’ on our screens (there is talk of a taxpayer-funded ‘Reality Show’ in the pipeline)
*Anna Guy will be doubly pissed!
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December 7, 2014 9:03am
mikenmild

Yoza
So far as I know, he is Lord Monckton, being a baron. The fraudulent bit was pretending to be a member of the House of Lords. Oh, and his pseuodoscientific chicanery.
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December 7, 2014 9:04am
waikatogirl

Wat Dabney: And, unsurprisingly, you wish to dictate to everyone else – at the point of a gun – what they may and may not ingest. The assumption being that other people are not free but must obey you like slaves.

***
You missed Holysheet’s point.
China and Bali both have the death penalty by firing squad for drug trafficking. One of these idiot drug traffickers took 75kg of meth over the boarder of a country where this is widely known. It is known, or an urban myth that the authorities in China send the bill for the bullet to the family of the criminal shot.

How anyone can justify their greed for the misery these drugs would have caused is deplorable.
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December 7, 2014 9:04am
wiseowl

The climate has changed in the last two days.
Cold Friday, warm Saturday.

Something is going on.
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December 7, 2014 9:05am
kowtow

What makes a railway engineer or even our very own Dr Jan Wright an expert on the weather?

“Jan has a multidisciplinary background with a Physics degree from Canterbury, a Masters degree in Energy and Resources from Berkeley in California, and a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard.”
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December 7, 2014 9:08am
Lance

A serious traffic accident has to treated as a crime scene. I get that.
But in this era of high tech gear I fail to see why a bevy of high resolution photos and recording of debris on a digital theodolite cannot be completed in an hour, 2 at most?
The road then opened and the data then analyzed off site.
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December 7, 2014 9:08am
oldpark

Seems Newstalk ZB were let off the hook and dodged a bullet when a big mouth blouse called Duncan Garner turned down a very lucrative offer to join them. Not only NewsTALK were let off the hook, imagine having to listen to Garners verbal Diarrhoea daily. Garner classes himself as a self styled “Moralist”,hahahahaha..
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December 7, 2014 9:10am
G152

“At least the fraud has stopped calling himself ‘Lord Monkton’.”

Then I feel sure you’ll take that up with Burkes Peerage..
Or would that be to embarrassing for you to admit you’re wrong
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December 7, 2014 9:10am
waikatogirl

PG:
Yesterday Kim Hill interviewed Tom Scott (the musician one) about killing the Prime Minister and raping his kids. He didn’t take kindly to people picking bits out of his songs but seemed unrepentant.
He becanme uncomfortable being held to account, trying to claim he was just a musician, but also didn’t hold back from bitterly criticising John Key.

****

Tom Scott, musician? Hahahahahahaha. Wanker, yes!
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December 7, 2014 9:10am
kowtow

“How about a ‘non-working class’?”

There is such a thing. Most of them are in Wellington and Bill English needs to cut a few more thousands off the taxpayers’ tit.
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December 7, 2014 9:11am
mikenmild

kowtow
What would be th ideal qualifications to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment? Or to be the PM’s science adviser?
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December 7, 2014 9:15am
kowtow

The power these nannies have and the bullying ,harassing tone is appalling.Liquor licensing inspector Dunedin.

http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/326304/how-many-standard-drinks-glass
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December 7, 2014 9:16am
kowtow

The ideal qualification would be “not on my tax dollar”.
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December 7, 2014 9:17am
wat dabney

Griff,

““Strangely it [the satellite record] is the only record that show no warming””

There’s nothing strange about it.

The reason is simply that the satellite data hasn’t had a completely fake warming trend applied to it.

This has been demonstrated to you before, and you don’t dispute it because it is documented fact.

The NASA/NOAA fake warming trend. Note that they not only add a false warming trend to recent raw data, but actually go back and change the historical record to falsely present the recent past as being cooler:

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/how-noaa-data-tampering-destroys-science/
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/08/31/noaa-data-tampering-always-worse-than-it-seems/
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/08/02/noaancdc-about-to-get-ensnared-in-their-tangled-web/

I could of course go on and on with many more links demonstrating the same fraud.

As for the hadcrut record it is amusing to see that, as with NOAA’s efforts, they have to fake the trend not just once but multiple times in order to perpetuate the required result: “the adjustment is nearly ten times the amount by which the old record is claimed to have been beaten by”

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/records-adjustments/

Thank you for giving me another chance to rehearse these facts, Griff. You make a great foil. You set them up and I’ll knock them in. Please keep doing what you’re doing, as it means more and more people are being exposed to facts which they will never get from the legacy media.
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December 7, 2014 9:17am
Griff

What makes a railway engineer or even our very own Dr Jan Wright an expert on the weather?

Nothing at all.
The “engineer” is not the person who writes the report he merely organizes the efforts of the 2,000 odd unpaid scientists involved.

Ignorance again Kow tow
who is talking about weather?
the topic under discussion is climate
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December 7, 2014 9:20am
wat dabney

waikatogirl,

““How anyone can justify their greed for the misery these drugs would have caused is deplorable.””

I don’t justify it. I don’t need to.

And that’s the point. It’s not for you or me to justify what other people do when they engage in peaceful voluntary transactions.

Put another way, how do you justify the violent destruction of society in Mexico and the murders of tens of thousands of people there due not to drugs but to drugs prohibition?
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December 7, 2014 9:22am
wat dabney

Yoza,

It’s noticeable that you don’t even attempt to refute what Monckton has written.

You are reduced instead to pathetic (and ill-informed) attempts at smears.

That speaks volumes.
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December 7, 2014 9:25am
mikenmild

Citing Goddard as an authority generally comes under the category of ‘Not even wrong’.
Monckton is similar – so far from reality that sober refutation is just buying into his scam.
You are right about the war on drugs though, wat.
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December 7, 2014 9:25am
Simon

Pay tax to the State and they promise to control the weather.

No wonder the State considers us as plebs.
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December 7, 2014 9:28am
wat dabney

milky,

“Citing Goddard as an authority generally comes under the category of ‘Not even wrong’.”

I’m not citing anyone, I’m citing official data.

Do you see the difference?

“Monckton is similar – so far from reality that sober refutation is just buying into his scam.”

Sorry milky, even Griff’s use of smiley faces when he surrenders has more credibility than that, and he’s genuinely retarded.
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December 7, 2014 9:31am
Simon

Pay tax to the State and they promise to make us all fit and healthy.

No wonder the State considers us as plebs.
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December 7, 2014 9:31am
flipper

Vote: Thumb up 6 Thumb down 0

Report abusive comment

Pete George (23,703 comments) says:

December 7th, 2014 at 8:25 am

Yesterday Kim Hill interviewed Tom Scott (the musician one) about killing the Prime Minister and raping his kids. He didn’t take kindly to people picking bits out of his songs but seemed unrepentant

*****

Never took much interest in this thing called Scott. But having read the transcript via the Red Radio link kindly provided by PG, I say it is worth taking time to read, learn, and contemplate the “loony left”. There is a totally absent line between this Scott piece of dogshit and the likes of Hager, Bradbury, Norman, and even haters like Kelly and Little. The hate/envy lines used by those sick individuals are to be found embedded in neon lights in the crap Scott presents as music. And awe are asked to fund idiots like him. The Milkeys, the Psychos, the BWVs ,and their ilk, will probably have some esoteric defence of that snotty nosed prick.

To put it mildy, the DPS should go calling.
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December 7, 2014 9:32am
mikenmild

flipper
Don’t take my name in vain. I don’t defend faux ‘working class’ moonbats like Tom Scott.
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December 7, 2014 9:36am
Manolo

Crooked to the core: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/us/politics/hillary-clintons-history-as-first-lady-powerful-but-not-always-deft.html?_r=0
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December 7, 2014 9:38am
waikatogirl

Wat d:

And that’s the point. It’s not for you or me to justify what other people do when they engage in peaceful voluntary transactions.

***

What indeed!

It is the law, take your concerns to parliament if you dont like it.

No use ranting about CRIMINAL activity that the majority of the population disagree with you about. Drugs aren’t a necessity of life unless they are prescribed medication. They are a stupid choice by stupid indolgent people.
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December 7, 2014 9:38am
mikenmild

What would Kiwiblog be, waikatogirl, if we couldn’t advocate here for peaceful change to stupid laws?
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December 7, 2014 9:40am
Simon

Now that the science around global warming is settled we can move onto how much more you have pay into the State to keep you all safe from yourselves.

Currently Monday Tuesday and most of Wednesday is spent working for the State. But thats not enough. All of wednesday is now required.
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December 7, 2014 9:40am
Griff

Surrenders
😆
In your dreams wingnut
why haven’t you explained why you use only the lowest and known to be unreliable method of Temperature measurement.

Criss Monckton has been caught lying many times care to discus ?:
Steve Goddard is a anonymous blogger not even a real person care to discuss ?
You allege a global conspiracy including many government agencys and university’s on the word of an anonymous blogger care to expand on this accusation ?
RSS is known to be running low by their own admission care to discus why you ignore this fact?

“Oh look squirrel” is all you have done so far wat
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December 7, 2014 9:42am
hj

Analysing the White New Zealand policy: developing a theoretical framework. Marxism. Immigratiom.

http://rdln.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/analysing-the-white-new-zealand-policy-developing-a-theoretical-framework/
by Philip Ferguson

The following was first written in the late 1990s as an attempt to provide a theoretical framework for understanding the development and imposition of the ‘White New Zealand’ immigration policies in this country in the period c1880-c1920

1: Reification and ‘race’

Given that the Chinese were seen as an ‘alien race’, it is necessary to look at the question of ‘race’ as a category of thought and what it reflects as such. This includes how racial thinking and non-white immigration have been recorded, conceptualised and analysed in New Zealand by historians and sociologists and the more theoretically-developed work done internationally. Reviewing some of the most important international literature enables us both to measure the progress being made in these studies in New Zealand and to find useful approaches to developing an understanding of the interplay of the social structure, politics, non-white immigration and racial thinking in this country in relation to the Chinese.

In 1976, Kerry Howe noted the “now very extensive published literature on race relations in New Zealand dat(ing) back to the early nineteenth century. . .”[1] However, in terms of theory, writing on race/racial thinking is still in its infancy. Recent literature appears to be closely linked to political pressures associated with the rise of Maori nationalism, the Maori cultural renaissance, the desire of successive governments to redress long-standing grievances and also an officially-perceived need to create a new New Zealand national identity (sometimes conceived as incorporating a subset of ‘cultural’ identities).[2] The literature is thus still very much concerned with developing ‘race relations sociology’ and a liberal ‘race relations’ industry in which inclusionary and exclusionary processes and mechanisms are crucial for resource allocation on ‘racial’ or ‘ethnic’ bases. At the theoretical level, moreover, the idea that Maori and pakeha constitute separate and discrete peoples is largely taken as beyond dispute.[3]

The acceptance that difference is innate and inevitably causes problems between groups such as Maori and pakeha has been simply transferred recently onto other population groups such as the Chinese. For instance, Manying Ip, the leading academic in New Zealand on the Chinese, writes of the development of exclusionary laws in the late 1800s, “The root of the problem lies in the cultural and physical distinctiveness of the Chinese.”[4] This echoes Michael Banton’s view in the 1970s that “There has always been a tendency for people to prefer those of their ‘own kind’ and be wary of strangers” and that contacts between white Europeans and other peoples were “obviously” of “import(ance) to the development by Europeans of racial categories.”[5] It also echoes Australian work on the subject three decades and more ago. For instance, H.I. London, in his study of the White Australia policy, claimed, “Subjugation was the natural concomitant of contact between the races.” For London, “Fears and antagonism engendered by differences, and exacerbated by direct competition” allowed “the bastions of white supremacy to pass legislation against the non-white intruder.” [6]

David Pearson argues that racism “refers to a form of social categorisation based on beliefs about biological or other ‘inherent’ differences of a deterministic kind.”[7] It is “an ideology” which contains “a more or less coherent set of beliefs, which some people draw upon to comprehend and explain the nature of their own social existence and that of others around them.” As a form of social categorisation, racism “is always connected to beliefs about innate properties of persons and groups. . . Distinctions are made on the basis of beliefs about the inbuilt inferiority of a group. . .” For Pearson, racist ideas involve cultural as well as biological distinctions: “(i)nvariably, beliefs about biological distinction go beyond mere appearance to embrace notions of cultural difference.”[8] Moreover, “It is hard to imagine a situation in which beliefs about physical differences are not enmeshed with perceptions of cultural distinction.”[9] Indeed racism “always implies a sense of immutability in physical and/or cultural terms. Races, except one’s own, are deemed inferior because they are biologically or culturally incapable of changing.”[10] “The word ‘deterministic’ is also central” to his definition of racism. Thus

Put most simply, but most tellingly in terms of oppression, racism implies that the subordinate are biologically and/or culturally incapable of achieving equality with the dominant. Why? Because they are different. And why are they different? Well, because they just are. Such logic is not easily rebutted by reasoned argument. . . [11]

Pearson argues that by grounding an approach in terms of “how people make sense of their surroundings and the similarities and differences they see between themselves and others” it is possible to avoid both biological and cultural determinism.[12] As he continues, “Group relations do not arise, as if by magic, from inbuilt qualities or cultural tendencies; they are based on the creative interaction of human actors and the way in which they perceive their world.”[13] Pearson and Thorns argue that while scientific research has rendered ‘race’ boundaries “scientifically dubious”, ‘race’ as a term

“still has important sociological connotations because beliefs about the social implications of physical appearance or innate biological differences shape the perceptions and actions of many men and women in pluralistic societies such as New Zealand. Hence, while we can seriously question the biological basis of ‘race’, the term cannot be arbitrarily discarded. . . .”[14]

These are all very useful insights. The question remains, however, as to why particular physical features should become an issue at all and be perceived to have any particular – and usually they are negative – social implications. In much New Zealand writing on ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’, difference and its apparently innate power to cause discrimination – the very thing that actually has to be interrogated – is taken for granted. In contrast, it is necessary to develop an approach which interrogates, as a section of the more recent and critical international writing does, the specific social relations which result in physical and cultural features being given significance as markers and which determine forms of consciousness. Writers such as Robert Miles and Christine Guillaumin have contested the very concept of ‘race’ and ‘race relations’. Guillaumin argues:

“. . . the very use of such a distinction tends to imply the acceptance of some essential difference between types of social relation, some, somewhere, being specifically racial. Merely to adopt the expression implies the belief that races are ‘real’ or correctly apprehensible. . . moreover it implies that races play a role in the social process not merely as an ideological form, but as an immediate factor acting as both determining cause and concrete means.”[15]

Kenan Malik notes the way in which ‘common-sense’ definitions of ‘race’ permeate academic, legal and political discourse. Furthermore, “the concept of race is borrowed from everyday perceptions of differences and subsequently acts to legitimate as true the very definition on which it was based in the first place.[16] Leading social constructionist David Roediger further argues, “race is given meaning through the agency of human beings in concrete historical and social contexts, and is not a biological or natural category.”[17] Robert Miles has developed an entire critique of ‘race relations sociology’ and the race relations industry. He sees ‘race’ as a reified category, by which he means that it represents nothing that is real.[18] He also points to the tautological nature of existing categorisations of race, noting that these amount to the idea that “a ‘race’ is a group of people defined by their ‘race’: this formulation assumes and legitimates as a reality that each human being ‘belongs’ to a ‘race’.”[19] ‘Race’ is, in effect, thus a piece of ideology: “the use of the word ‘race’ to label the groups so distinguished by such features is an aspect of the social construction of reality: ‘races’ are socially imagined rather than biological realities.”[20]

From this it follows that people who talk in terms of race relations “have employed uncritically the common-sense notion of ‘race’, reified it and then attributed it with the status of a scientific concept.”[21] The notion of reification is also important for Nancy Stepan, who notes in relation to scientific racism: “To the typologist, every individual human being belonged in some way or another to an undying essence or type. . . The result was to give a ‘mental abstraction an independent reality’, to make real or ‘reify’ the idea of social type when in fact the type was a social construct which scientists then treated as though it were in fact ‘in nature’.”[22]

While rejecting ‘race’ as either real or an explanatory concept or useful category for understanding social relations, Miles is vitally concerned with racism. This, he argues, must be contextualised “as a process of signification”, which is linked to mechanisms for the allocation of economic positions to some and the exclusion of others from “economic rewards and political rights.” He also argues that a “particular process of signification” frames “class relations and class struggles in a particular cultural form” and creates “the ideological foundation for the organization of political alliances between and within greater or smaller sections of different classes.[23] Therefore, “these allocative and exclusionary processes” are “dimension(s) of the historicity of capitalist development.”[24] In other words, whereas earlier liberal race relations sociology tended to focus on individual attitudes of, for instance, whites, Miles is chiefly concerned with the connections between ideology, racism and exclusion and the “wider structure of class disadvantage and exclusion”. Miles is interested in the articulations between forms of discrimination – such as racism – and nationalism and examining the way in which exclusionary practices are derived from racist and nationalist ideologies “in the context of the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production.”[25] With the rapid development of science following the industrial revolution and the application of scientific principles to the natural world, “‘race’ increasingly came to refer to a biological type of human being, and science purported to demonstrate not only the number and characteristics of each ‘race’, but also a hierarchical relationship between them.”[26]

Nevertheless there are some problems with Miles’ use of the concept of reification, which is itself a term used by Georg Lukacs and derived from Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism. For Miles, reification suggests that there is no reality to the object or phenomena, it is a social construction, and thus the word ‘race’ itself should be banished. Yet Marx’s own view of the surface appearances of capitalism is rather different. In Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Marx notes that “it is a characteristic feature of labour which posits exchange-value that it causes the social relations of individuals to appear in the perverted form of a social relation between things.”[27] That commodity fetishism involves a mystification rather than a pure invention is made more explicitly clear when Marx explains how in the case of money,

“A social relation of production appears as something existing apart from individual human beings, and the distinctive relations into which they enter in the course of production in society appear as the specific properties of a thing – it is this perverted appearance, this prosaically real, and by no means imaginary, mystification that is characteristic of all social forms of labour positing exchange value. This perverted appearance manifests itself merely in a more striking manner in money than it does in other commodities.”[28]

In other words, Miles’ concept of reification is that the object, here ‘race’, is like a mirage and exists only in the mind; but in Marx what is involved is more like a distorted mirror image, where the image is real, but we cannot, merely by looking at the image, derive the actual content of what is being reflected in the mirror. In particular, Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism involves the analysis of how relations between people (social relations) are expressed in capitalist society as relations between things (commodities). It is specific to capitalism, because capitalism is the system of generalised commodity production. It is the first human society in which commodity production is dominant; i.e., most of the goods and services necessary to sustain life are produced for sale on the market to realise a profit, rather than being produced and consumed directly as use-values. And here in Marx is the two-sidedness of reification: what is reified ‘ghostwalks’ as a social character and at the same time as a mere thing.

This is a particularly useful approach for analysing ‘race’, which, given that it has no basis in biology – or any other science – is a fetish. In the case of ‘race’, what is a social relation (i.e. a relation between people) specific to capitalism appears as a ‘natural’ relation derived from/defined by physical characteristics, namely characteristics of ‘difference’. Thus it is also transhistorical – and, thereby, ahistorical. If we extend the approach of commodity fetishism to ‘race’, our approach would be to find out how specifically capitalist social relations produce ‘race’ as a phenomena which appears in both social and natural forms and takes on the appearance of being self-standing or given, that is, it appears independent of the specific social relations which produced it. Since most people, in the course of everyday life, have no more need to question the inner workings of the social system than they do the inner workings of the solar system, the surface appearance remains unquestioned. And, since it is a real appearance, it is assumed to be self-explanatory. This also explains why no capitalist conspiracy is necessary to ‘hoodwink the masses’, as is often suggested in crude left-wing analyses where the mass media is seen as the tool of capital pulling the wool over the eyes of the masses. It also explains why, “Most (of the scientists who constructed racial ideas) were not racist.” Often they were humane people, including opponents of slavery. Essentially, “(t)he scientists who gave scientific racism its credibility and respectability were often first-rate scientists struggling to understand what to them appeared to be deeply puzzling problems of biology and human society.”[29]

2. Labour migration, unfree labour and ‘race’

Gilroy notes that ideas about race have an “intimate association” with “the employment of unfree labour” and that this “should be a warning against conceptualizing racial ideologies as if they are wholly autonomous.”[30] The ‘political economy of labour migration’ has provided one of the principal challenges to ‘race relations’ approaches, approaches which see ‘race relations’ as things-in-themselves. The political economy approach developed initially as a form of analysing post-World War II labour migration, particularly from Third World to First World countries and the racialisation of the migrants. In the seminal work, produced in 1973, Castles and Kozack argue:

“Historical and international perspectives on the position of immigrant workers and similar underprivileged groups cast doubt upon the validity of the race relations approach. Virtually every advanced capitalist country has a lower stratum, distinguished by race, nationality or other special characteristics, which carries out the worst jobs and has the least desirable social conditions. . . race and racialism cannot be regarded as the determinants of immigrants’ social position. Instead. . . the basic determinant is the function which immigrants have in the socio-economic structure. Through this function immigrants have an important effect not only on economic and social developments, but also on the political situation, and hence on class structure, class consciousness, and class conflict.”[31]

The specific function of immigrant workers is to do the least desirable work, thus they form a “bottom stratum” of the working class.[32] Their lower position in the labour market is reflected in poorer housing and social facilities and often segregation.[33] Other workers react by seeing such immigrant workers as “an alien competing group. Prejudice hinders communication and prevents the development of class solidarity”, while the very existence of a lower immigrant stratum allows “social advancement to large sections of the indigenous working class.”[34] There is either upward mobility through promotion in their jobs and higher incomes, or a subjective mobility where they gain a higher status due simply to the existence of a lower status group, an interesting point when considering the relationship between Chinese and European workers in late Victorian and Edwardian New Zealand. In this situation the local working class may cease to see society in terms of itself and the class of employers and, instead, view themselves as part of a hierarchy where the immigrant workers occupy the lowest place. “This view of society,” they note, “is conducive to acceptance of ideas of individual advancement, rather than collective advancement through class struggle.”[35] We might note that this could be particularly so in a colonial society, where there are already better prospects for individual advancement than in the older, more rigidly stratified, colonial power.

In the view of Cohen, one of the other leading figures in this field, “capitalism successfully combines labour of differing statuses.”[36] It has a strong tendency to use “substantial numbers of unfree or semi-free labourers.”.[37] This was “characteristically” done “at the edges of the regional political economy.”.[38] Piore notes that one of the characteristics of the process of migration from underdeveloped to developed countries is that “for all practical purposes, the supply of potential immigrants is completely elastic, or. . . inexhaustible.”[39] This is an interesting insight, because the abundance of Chinese labour was one of its attractions to employers in the white dominions; and yet this very abundance came to be perceived – fairly quickly in the eyes of white workers and later in the eyes of the white elite – as threatening. China became the site not of a usefully abundant supply of labourers, but of teeming hordes threatening civilisation in the mainly white Pacific Rim countries.

Piore also outlines characteristics of migrants from underdeveloped countries – that they take up jobs which the local workers refuse to perform; that they see themselves as temporary migrants and plan to return home, although many fail to do so; they are generally unskilled and often even illiterate in their own language.[40] These characteristics are generally true of the Chinese immigrants in late nineteenth and early twentieth century New Zealand. His view of the relationship between immigrant labour, its plentifulness, low wages and the resulting reaction of labour in the host country is also of use. He notes, “The supply of migrant labor is, in the long run, virtually unlimited at any conceivable wage. Without some regulation, the wage therefore is likely to fall eventually to a level which threatens the employment of the native workers and offends their sense of equity.”

This was certainly how white labour in New Zealand perceived the Chinese, although whether the perception went beyond the surface appearance is another question altogether. In Piore’s view it is reasonable to expect society to prevent such threats to native – i.e. white – workers. And whereas, with the local workers, falling wages might lead to less labour being less available, in the case of migrants the labour supply increases as each worker now has to stay longer in order to earn the same money.[41]

Robert Miles is also vitally concerned with labour migration, the use of unfree labour and the relation between these and ‘race’. He argues that acquiring and retaining labour-power requires “judgements about the characteristics and capacity of the human beings to deliver it”, including judgements about “the signification of real or imagined differences of the labourer and the development of an explanatory system linking those characteristics with the capacity to provide labour power.” These are made in a range of situations, including “where there are immediate shortages of labour and therefore where labourers have to be recruited from other social formations. . .” Thus signification of specific characteristics is “a necessary and inevitable feature of the process of labour recruitment and retention, while racism is a historically contingent mechanism of signification.”[42]

Unfree labour was necessary for capitalist production in a range of colonial settings. This had a particular effect on racial stereotypes. For instance, “emigration under relations of indenture of dispossessed Indians was accompanied by an image of the docility of Asian ‘races’” and Chinese labour “was considered suitable because of its alleged docility.”[43] In other words, people were placed in the position of being unfree labour and the very condition of their being unfree – a product of the social system – was interpreted as a natural or biological feature of their skin colour or nationality; in more general terms, their ‘race’. The more “embedded” the unfree labour, the more it was “sustained by racialization”.[44]

In her study of the world labour market and immigration, Lydia Potts notes that a substantial coolie system came into being in the second quarter of the nineteenth century and that Chinese were those most widely used. Some were contracted, others were abducted. Coolies’ conditions “were characterized by a total lack of rights”. She reprints, as well, a coolie contract from Cuba in the 1880s, which states “I furthermore declare that I am in complete agreement with the wage stipulated, although I know and understand that the free wage workers and slaves on the island of Cuba earn far higher wages.”[45] By the late 1800s, many tens of thousands of Chinese were serving as coolie labour across the globe from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia and the Pacific.[46] In the most advanced capitalist economies, such as the United States, their conditions were still extremely hard. Indentured labour was widely regarded as more oppressive than slavery. In 1871, Lord Olivier noted how in British Guiana black slaves looked down on indentured labour.[47] Moreover, the desire of the Imperial authorities was that such labour remain without the benefits of ‘free men’, which were slowly being extended to sections of the working class in Britain and the white-settler colonies. As Sir Thomas Hyslop put it, “We want Indians as indentured labourers but not as free men.”[48] The same applied in relation to the Chinese.

What is significant about all this is that the widespread need in the capitalist colonial economies for unfree labour placed the Chinese in a subordinate position. The existence of this labour could then form the material basis for white labour in countries like Australia and New Zealand to begin viewing Chinese workers as degraded labour, even if only a small minority of Chinese labour in Australia and none in New Zealand was actually coolie labour. In other words the pre-existence of relatively large-scale Chinese coolie labour formed the basis for the view on the part of European/white workers in Australia and New Zealand that equated the Chinese as a people with degraded and servile labour. The idea came after the reality.

This could offer us several supplementary insights. For instance, that once the idea of the Chinese as degraded labour became entrenched, its truth content in the Australian and New Zealand contexts became almost irrelevant. The stereotype could become a powerful force in its own right, influencing European/white workers’ actions towards Chinese labour in countries such as New Zealand.

Several things would still have to be explained, however. For example, how the view endured, given that a flood of degraded and servile Chinese workers descending on Australasia – which was the fear – did not eventuate. Indeed, the fear of such an occurrence seems to have been in inverse proportion to its actual occurrence. Fears among sections of society, especially fears which appear as irrational and/or out of all proportion to actual events constitute a form of moral panic. These usually reflect broader social changes over which people feel they have little control; insecurities and frustrations increase and find some vent or scapegoat and become

3. The nation state, nationalism and ‘race’

Chinese migrant labour was first considered as a means to overcome a shortage of workers. Racial thinking in general also emerged around this time, or slightly before, in Europe and was brought to New Zealand through British colonialism. As Spoonley notes, “The dominance of British colonial links saw explicit ideologies concerning ruler and ruled reproduced in the New Zealand context.” Spoonley sees these as focussed in part on British notions of superiority and the right to rule over others, which had relevance in the New Zealand context as the local elite had visions of their own colonial empire in the southern Pacific. Ideologies centred on ‘race’ “were critical to the political agenda (in New Zealand) from the 1870s. . . through to the Second World War.”[49] Indeed he argues that racism against groups such as the Chinese “dominated national politics at various points” and were bound up with “petty-bourgeois beliefs that ‘race’ was a key variable in political and economic relations.”[50]
…………..

http://rdln.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/analysing-the-white-new-zealand-policy-developing-a-theoretical-framework/

So Spoonley thinks racism is an ideology bought (taught) by British Colonialism. No wonder he wants to see an end to Pamela identity (with West pay assistance*).
*Population forum.
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December 7, 2014 9:50am
kowtow

The international media are a bit miffed the latest typhoon to hit the Phillipines hasn’t met the warmist expectations and killed thousands.

We’ve had a lot of misinformation (propaganda) about Typhoon haiyan.

Funny how the media portray it.

From the NBC

Super Typhoon Haiyan – Samar, Philippines, 2013

“Winds roared at a calculated 220 mph and Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla reported a 10-foot surge in one village in Leyte. “It is the most powerful storm ever to make landfall,” Weather Channel lead meteorologist Michael Palmer told NBC News. “It is as strong a typhoon as you can get, basically.” ”

From the Guardian

“This would make it the fourth most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded and possibly the strongest to have ever hit land. By comparison, St Jude, the storm that hit in southern England last month, had winds gusting to 99mph.”

But from the Phillipne authorities when it made landfall the windspeeds were nothing like that.It was 145 mph,not 220 or 195 as they want you to believe.

“At 2040 UTC on November 7, Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in Guiuan, Eastern Samar at peak intensity with ten-minute sustained winds of 230 km/h (145 mph) as measured by PAGASA”

Windspeed at landfall of 145 mph. But how does that reconcile with the Guardians “calculated” windspeeds of 195 landfall windspeeds? Someones making things up to suit an agenda.

” As Masters explains, Haiyan although the strongest tropical cyclone on record to make landfall in world history, it is actually the fourth strongest tropical cyclone in history. We’ve put the list of official strongest cyclones in world history that Master cites into the table below:

“The strongest tropical cyclones in world history

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/nov/08/typhoon-haiyan-philippines-tropical-cyclones
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December 7, 2014 9:51am
OneTrack

“What would be th ideal qualifications to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment? Or to be the PM’s science adviser?”

Somebody who understands the scientific method, understands that a hypothesis must backed up by empirical evidence that matches the predictions and that science is not decided by a vote?
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December 7, 2014 9:52am
waikatogirl

What would Kiwiblog be, waikatogirl, if we couldn’t advocate here for peaceful change to stupid laws?

***

All good on advocating changing laws. I think KB is wonderful for guidance and stretching the imagination of our law makers.

Somehow I doubt watd would get a law passed to allow “… people to engage in peaceful voluntary transactions.”

Yep, open the boarders to allow hundreds of kilos of meth, cocaine, etc into the country. You think society is f’d now, just wait till illicit drugs are legal to every self-indolgent idiot.

Me, I will stick to gardening and the odd glass of cool wine 😉
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December 7, 2014 9:53am
hj

That was only meant to be the last paragraph. Done on a tablet using multi window.
Sorry about the inconvenience.
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December 7, 2014 9:56am
mikenmild

There is very little evidence to suggest that if the currently widespread use of illicit drugs were legalised that there would be any increase in overall harm. Indeed, there appears to be evidence to the contrary. Criminalising the conduct of consenting adults should require a strong justification.
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December 7, 2014 9:57am
Dave Mann

@hj 9.50 I have reported this as an abusive comment… not because of the content (which I couldn’t be bothered reading on full), but because filling up this blog with PAGES AND PAGES of someone else’s work is an abuse of the comments process and it’s spirit.

Why the hell couldn’t you have posted a link and made some sort of comment about it instead of hijacking the whole blog?
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December 7, 2014 9:59am
Nookin

Dave, we got the link and the full copy but to be fair to hj, he did apologise and say that he only intended to paste a smaller paragraph.
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December 7, 2014 10:02am
wat dabney

waikatogirl,

“It is the law, take your concerns to parliament if you dont like it. ”

That is to entirely miss the point. And dangerously so.

If this same Chinese government locks up Christians for practising their faith are you equally going to dismiss any discussion with a terse “It is the law, take your concerns to parliament if you don’t like it. “?

It is this very illegality which is under discussion.

“No use ranting about CRIMINAL activity that the majority of the population disagree with you about.”

If a Muslim country hangs a Christian for blasphemy in front of a vast baying crowd we have no legitimate complaint?

It doesn’t matter if 99.9% of the population disagree when we’re talking about the activities of consenting adults. That’s what it means to be free, and that’s what you are arguing against.

“Drugs aren’t a necessity of life unless they are prescribed medication. ”

Why on earth would you think that this is in any way relevant to anything? You are arguing for prohibition which could see people shot by police for ingesting anything they take for pleasure rather than for sustenance.

“They are a stupid choice by stupid indolgent people.”

And this is why you are forced to use violence to control them? Because you know best?

It must be quite a burden for you.

And you have yet to address the utter devastation resulting from your vaulted prohibition.
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December 7, 2014 10:02am
OneTrack

agw converts – Have you sold your car and only travel by pushbike? Do you refuse to travel by air? If you have kept your car (evil planet killing person in that case), do you pay an additional 50% on the petrol when you fill up?

If not, why not? Because nobody else is doing it? Well no other countries are doing it either? But but, we could be “world leaders” (in trashing our economy), like we were with the anti-nuclear legislation. Oh, wait, nobody followed us them either. Leaders who go off on a tangent, which everybody else laughs at, aren’t really “leaders” at all.

But, hey, get your “science” to work and make testable predictions which are verified in real world results, and we’ll talk. Until then, keep your grubby. left-wing tax and spend policies away from my pocket. I know what to spend it on better than a PhD in Political Studies or a clothes horse or a cohort of public servants in Wellington.
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December 7, 2014 10:03am
mikenmild

Lay off those public servants, OneTrack. Most of them are doing their very best to help you and everyone else.
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December 7, 2014 10:07am
tom hunter

Why the hell couldn’t you have posted a link and made some sort of comment about it instead of hijacking the whole blog?

“hj” has been told about this on multiple occasions and apparently just doesn’t give a damn. Regrettably I’m no longer using an RIP-equipped browser, so I’m back to being dependent on the common sense and manners of other commentators – and the scroll feature. I have a policy of not reporting commentators, and in the case of hj simply scroll past the screeds of one-note monomania (as with She Who Must Not Be Named), but I’ll have no regrets the day DPF vanishes you.

@ hj
The thing is that you actually could be contributing to these debates, in that the things you’re concerned about are worthy of debate. But you’re not going to get responses – even from people who might agree with you – with the Biblical Tomb approach. You just don’t seem to get what a blog comments section is about: it’s not a damned newspaper for you to cut-and-paste your obsessions into.
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December 7, 2014 10:09am
mikenmild

Same goes for Hugh Pavelitch about Christchurch and local government.
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December 7, 2014 10:11am
waikatogirl

There is very little evidence to suggest that if the currently widespread use of illicit drugs were legalised that there would be any increase in overall harm. Indeed, there appears to be evidence to the contrary. Criminalising the conduct of consenting adults should require a strong justification.

***
Tell that to the citizens and authorities of the towns that had such a horrific time with Legal High shops. Good people stopped shopping near these drug outlets due to harassment and abuse and begging for money by the upstanding frequent users of these so-called harmless drugs.

The police were so sick of being called that the shops had to provide security to stop their patrons from abusing the shopping public, and the councils had to devise ways of removing these shops from high traffic areas because of the huge problems their so-called customers were causing.

While we are on this line of justification, there were also the costs of hospital admissions, the rise in burglaries for money to buy these so-called legal highs… Well, you get the picture, or do you still believe “There is very little evidence to suggest that if the currently widespread use of illicit drugs were legalised that there would be any increase in overall harm.”
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December 7, 2014 10:13am
wiseowl

It is painful listening to Grocer Tim weedling his way around low carbon strategies and climate change fantasy.

Just tell it like it is Tim.The biggest con ever.
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December 7, 2014 10:14am
mikenmild

waikatogirl
Concentrating the sale of previously illicit substances on a very few legal outlets is likely to have bad consequences. Imagine if alcoholic liquor were sold on the same principles, or even banned altogether. Do you think people would just stop drinking?
All psychoactive substances come with costs to the users and to others. The debate should surely be about reducing harmful consumption and managing the adverse personal and social consequences.
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December 7, 2014 10:19am
Yvette

Either keep the Parliamentary Prayer as it is or remove it completely. 
Don’t replace it with some weasel worded Maori alternative. 
The choice should be: Christianity [as is], or nothing.
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December 7, 2014 10:19am
waikatogirl

We will obviously never agree Milky. I am going out to do some gardening and listen to some good music. You should try it. 🙂
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December 7, 2014 10:22am
wat dabney

Griff,

“why haven’t you explained why you use only the lowest and known to be unreliable method of Temperature measurement. ”

I have clearly demonstrated that the numbers you cite are not raw temperature record but are the result of vast fabrication. This is a matter of record.

Not only that, but these terrestrial records are subject to the urban heat island effect (UHI) which significantly skews and distorts them upwards to give a completely false warming signal. Adjustments downwards should be made to compensate for this, yet instead we see the reverse with additional upwards distortions being added.

For these reasons the raw satellite record is by far the most accurate: it is not subject to the UHI and no huge false warming trend is applied to it.

“Criss Monckton has been caught lying many times care to discus ?:”

I believe this to be false. I know he has been accused by certain alarmists from time to time, but when the facts were analysed it was seen that he has been scrupulous and that the claims were nothing more than smears. He is very very careful in everything he says.

“Steve Goddard is a anonymous blogger not even a real person care to discuss ?”

As has been explained to you, the only thing that matters is the official data he cites. You still appear to be completely unable to grasp this essential point. You seem to imagine that if someone you don’t like accurately cites official data (on a blog!) then you can choose to disregard it because, er, well, you don’t seem to have thought it through that far.

Oh, and by the way, he is not anonymous.

But thank you for the opportunity to again post more damning evidence. To anyone interested in the truth this is one of the most shocking charts you will ever see on the subject. It shows, using official data, how the false warming trend applied by NOAA correlates almost perfectly with the increase in atmospheric CO2. In other words, as the level of CO2 increases so they need to apply a greater false warming trend to the data in order to perpetuate the lie:

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/08/02/proof-that-us-warming-is-mann-made/

The point is extended in this post, showing the level of tampering:

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/proof-that-us-warming-is-mann-made-part-2/
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December 7, 2014 10:23am
wiseowl

Agree Yvette.
Just another attempt at destroying more of our tradition and culture by the Progs.
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December 7, 2014 10:26am
waikatogirl

Watd, stop blaming me for everything on the planet you disagree with. Idiotic!
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December 7, 2014 10:27am
wat dabney

“Lay off those public servants, OneTrack. Most of them are doing their very best to help you and everyone else. ”

Again milky, enough with the weasel term ‘public servant’. You are state-sector employees.

And I’m sure many state-sector employees are indeed helpful. But that’s to miss the point entirely. We are helpful in the co-operative (private) sector too. The difference is that we don’t organise politically to form a vast special-interest group so that we are paid above market rates at the expense of others.
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December 7, 2014 10:28am
wat dabney

“Watd, stop blaming me for everything on the planet you disagree with. Idiotic!”

Jesus lady. Take a pill.
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December 7, 2014 10:29am
publicwatchdog

Where’s ANY ‘cost-benefit’ analysis EVER of the Council Controlled Organisation (CCO) model?

Penny Bright
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December 7, 2014 10:33am
itstricky

The difference is that we don’t organise politically to form a vast special-interest group so that we are paid above market rates at the expense of others.

Public servants are paid above market rates?

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

If forming a “special interest group” to get above market rates is advantageous, why don’t you do that wat? I mean c’mon – you’re going to tell me that you do your work just for the love it next, aren’t you? Oh my golly gosh you’re such a kind and giving citizen.
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December 7, 2014 10:36am
publicwatchdog

Although I regard Transparency International’s ‘Corruption Perception Index’ as a meaningless crock, based upon the subjective opinions of anonymous business people, I do find it fascinating that on the watch of Mr Popular Prime Minister John Key, that New Zealand is no longer ‘perceived’ to be ‘the least corrupt country in the world’?

No surprises there.

However, at the end of the day, I’m sure our ex-Wall St banker Prime Minister (when he chooses to wear THAT ‘hat’), feels quite comfortable and relaxed about that ….?

Penny Bright
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December 7, 2014 10:41am
publicwatchdog

Paul Buchanan is speaking out now on Radio Live against extending the surveillance powers of the SIS based upon ‘suspicion’…

I totally agree with him.

Where do all the freedom-loving Libertarian Kiwibloggers stand on this?

Penny Bright
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December 7, 2014 10:49am
OneTrack

mikenmild – “Lay off those public servants, OneTrack. Most of them are doing their very best to help you and everyone else.”

That may be true, but we don’t need/want a complete new ministry of them just to administer climate change ( which is where my comment was trying to go but didn’t quite get there 🙂 ).
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December 7, 2014 10:50am
wat dabney

Will someone please give some attention to Penny.

She’s desperate.
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December 7, 2014 10:51am
OneTrack

itstricky – “Public servants are paid above market rates?”

Most of the public servants I have come across are on a better wicket than they would be on in the private sector. You are wistfully thinking about the 70’s again.
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December 7, 2014 10:52am
kowtow

“Lay off those public servants, OneTrack. Most of them are doing their very best to help you and everyone else”
or the nine most feared words

I’m from the government and I’m here to help!
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December 7, 2014 10:55am
Yvette

New Zealand’s “Least Corrupt ” score at 91 is unchanged, so still 91.
Denmark, scoring 92, is of course 1 above New Zealand.
Transparency International’s ‘Corruption Perception Index’ may be “a meaningless crock” but anyone [media mainly] suggesting New Zealand has changed in their rating, is themself corrupt.
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December 7, 2014 11:00am
mikenmild

Sorry for calling myself a public servant, wat, but I use it almost interchangeably with state service or state sector, although I tend to regard the state sector are somewhat broader than the core public service.
As for public servants operating some kind of racket just for personal benefit, I find that laughably incorrect. Did you swallow a textbook on public choice theory? No one would deny that public servants can act from selfish motives, but in my experience they tend to do what the taxpayers, through their elected representatives, ask of them.
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December 7, 2014 11:02am
Redbaiter

“Will someone please give some attention to Penny.”

Don’t worry.

Her fan club will be along soon.

And then the drone Nasska will turn up with his self appointed Kiwiblog funny guy act.

And then he you and Griff can all start your usual obsessive sneering at religion.

And then Sheriff Shawn will be along to defend, and that will be GD fucked for another day.
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December 7, 2014 11:03am
mikenmild

It is almost as if your expectations of GD are so low that you would be questioning why you waste some much time here, Redbaiter.
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December 7, 2014 11:07am
publicwatchdog

If the true purpose of the Countering Foreign Terrorist Fighters Bill is to help stop New Zealanders leaving to fight for ISIL in the Middle East – then why the rush to railroad through this legislation before the Cricket World Cup – which is being held in NEW ZEALAND?

DUH?

Smells like BULLSH*T to me ….

What do intelligent, thinking Kiwibloggers think?

Penny Bright
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December 7, 2014 11:07am
Redbaiter

“but in my experience they tend to do what the taxpayers, through their elected representatives, ask of them.”

The opposite actually. In the face of a directionless namby pamby government, faceless dictatorial bureaucrats are running riot. A govt with a few balls would sack 50% of them and close down their unwanted departments and roll back their unwanted regulations.
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December 7, 2014 11:08am
mikenmild

Fee free to vote for such a government or start your own political party to pursue those ends, Redbaiter. Meanwhile, the public servants will get on with running things while you whistle in the wind.
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December 7, 2014 11:11am
Redbaiter

“It is almost as if your expectations of GD are so low that you would be questioning why you waste some much time here, Redbaiter.”

Maybe you haven’t noticed, but unless I’m desperately bored, I’m never that interested once Nasska and his team of boring unamusing narcissistic idiots show up. Their conversational crap makes this a chat room not a discussion forum. Whaleoil would sort the silly pricks out in an instant.
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December 7, 2014 11:13am
publicwatchdog

Your spin machine is jammed on ‘turbo drive’ Yvette?

The RANKING of New Zealand on Transparency International’s ‘Corruption Perception Index’ has DROPPED from 1st equal to SECOND.

FACT.

Kind regards

Penny Bright
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December 7, 2014 11:13am
Redbaiter

“Fee free to vote for such a government or start your own political party to pursue those ends, Redbaiter. Meanwhile, the public servants will get on with running things while you whistle in the wind.”

Talking of the wind Milky, you must be able to feel it gradually changing direction. Enjoy the sun while you can, but you might need to check with the weatherman as to what might be coming up.
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December 7, 2014 11:15am
mikenmild

I’m still wondering what you might do in your first 100 days of power, Redbaiter. Got any more thoughts on a comprehensive reform programme? Copy Singapore, BC, somewhere else?
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December 7, 2014 11:18am
RF

Longknives. 9.03am. You did not mention that Auckland duo of the anorexic wild eyed mother & daughter who crave publicity and cry poverty.

Must be time for another Woman’s Weekly sob story.
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December 7, 2014 11:20am
wat dabney

milky,

“No one would deny that public servants can act from selfish motives, but in my experience they tend to do what the taxpayers, through their elected representatives, ask of them.”

Again, all this is to entirely miss the point. And believe me, workers in the private sector do a lot more than “tend” to do what their customers demand.

The point is their organisation to create the most politically powerful group of rent-seekers in the land.

Perhaps the most disgusting of all these are the teacher unions, which readily throw the poorest and most disadvantaged children under the bus so that they can continue to enjoy their self-serving monopoly. I’m sure all member teachers like to think of themselves as wonderful, caring people, yet it doesn’t stop them damning these children to a lifetime of continue poverty in order to maintain their own above-market benefits.
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December 7, 2014 11:25am
wiseowl

Public servants and council staff are paid way over the top.

Things are way out of kilter with the private sector and in particular small business that is being crushed with rules and regulations that are being built on daily.
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December 7, 2014 11:29am
mikenmild

wat
I have a diametrically opposed view about the value of the teacher unions and do not for a second believe that voluntary associations of education sector workers constitute a monopoly. I think your views are so out of date that you would have cheered the deportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
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December 7, 2014 11:29am
mikenmild

wiseowl
You are free to abandon your present employment and seek a lucrative sinecure in the public service if that’s what you believe you will find.
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December 7, 2014 11:31am
Yvette

Transparency International’s ‘Corruption Perception Index’

New Zealand’s score, 91, is unchanged – FACT
that is hardly a “spin machine jammed in turbo drive – we leave that sort of thing to you, Penny

Try DENMARK NOW PERCEIVED LESS CORRUPT THAN LAST YEAR. NEW ZEALAND UNCHANGED.
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December 7, 2014 11:34am

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