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November 1, 2023 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 01 November 2023

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General Debate

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Warren

One more sleep and tomorrow night we should have a inkling of how the next Government will be formed without
having to guess or read columns from Jo Moir or Audrey Young on how they view the facts or rumours on who will have what.
Whatever happens we will all be in for arough ride over the next three years because it will take a genius to get out of the hole Grant Robertson and the Labour Government have dug for whoever followed his creative accounting.
The problem they have is the Media that were brought and paid for by the outgoing Government that will go out of their way to hold the National coalition to account something Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins, Grant Robertson didn’t have to do with the bunch of no hopers they called the Cabinet when Labour was the Government.
We need a Strong Government for the people not for themselves like the previous Government so that means financial responsibility and making hard decisions that favour all not just a
few like happened under Labour, race cannot be a factor its everyone or none we cannot let it divide New Zealand any longer.
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November 1, 2023 8:00am
- pdm
  
  2pm Friday so two more sleeps for you Warren.
  
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  November 1, 2023 8:22am
  - kowloon
    
    Counting was a core curriculum subject when Warren was at school.
    
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    November 1, 2023 9:59am
    - kowloon
      
      erratum…..correction
      counting wasn’t a core
      
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      November 1, 2023 10:34am
- krazykiwi
  
  “it will take a genius to get out of the hole Grant Robertson and the Labour Government have dug for whoever followed his creative accounting”
  
  I suggest our economic malaise, while very dire, does not come close to the toxicity of social and racial breakdown that New Zealand is facing. Nothing less than restoration of personal agency, liberty, and the comprehensive rejection of ethnically divisive entitlement is needed to begin societal restoration.
  
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  November 1, 2023 8:30am
- Taieri
  
  We need a Strong Government
  ———-
  
  We don’t need a Strong Government. We had one, run by Jacinda Ardern; virtually a dictatorial one.
  What we need is an efficient and effective government.
  
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  November 1, 2023 8:35am
  - Pope Punctilious II
    
    That’s a perverse interpretation of Warren’s comment. Repressing the population isn’t a sign of strength, and Ardern and her fellow sickly white liberals were too weak to oppose the ethnostate agenda of the Maaori caucus.
    
    We do need a strong government that’s prepared to take tough decisions, to clean the neo-Marxist ideology out of our institutions, and to stop the ethnostate agenda. Otherwise, we’re headed for the 3rd world.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:04pm
- [email protected]
  
  Those billions upon billions of dollars Labour spent went somewhere, they didn’t just dissapeared into thin air.
  
  Hope the next government can figure out where most of it went and maybe get some of it back.
  
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  November 1, 2023 8:36am
  - Thought Criminal
    
    Just off the top of my head.
    
    14,000 extra back office bureaucrats
    Media companies
    Locked down companies
    Consultants got 1.2 billion a year
    Tribal elite
    
    You aren’t getting anything back. It’s gone.
    
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    November 1, 2023 9:25am
    - Mark Hanley
      
      There is always a trail to Stolen Money. We need the new government to commit to walking down that trail, getting our money back, then prosecuting the thieves.
      
      Otherwise… Our money will disappear again when the next labour government comes along.
      
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      November 1, 2023 9:33am
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        The money won’t disappear because Labour will do it different next time.//
        
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        November 1, 2023 10:53am
  - cmm
    
    “Hope the next government can figure out where most of it went and maybe get some of it back”
    
    Dreams are free.
    
    There is no way that would happen.
    
    Do you really think they will close down the troughs and demand that the troughers (now dole bludgers) all pay back their last 5 years of salary at $20 a week?
    
    That money really has gone.
    
    Remember a vast % of money goes offshore (eg. every time someone buys a new car or buys any imported product or service). That money is never coming back, but the debt will be there for our great grand kids to pay back.
    
    Before then Labour will get in again and dig the hole even deeper.
    
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    November 1, 2023 9:40am
- Nigel Kearney
  
  We have such a genius in NZ. In fact he has previously accomplished what is required now. But I think the new government is likely to prioritise short-term popularity over long-term effectiveness.
  
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  November 1, 2023 8:42am
  - krazykiwi
    
    I have seen little evidence from any recently installed government of any resolve to address deeply seated issues at the cost of popularity.
    
    When any principle vs popularity trade-off is contemplated the Wayne Mapp defense of first resort is used: “It would be political suicide to [insert principled action]“.
    
    That, bluntly, is why New Zealand is in such a mess.
    
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    November 1, 2023 9:19am
    - imalwaysright
      
      Kraz,
      
      Spot on.
      
      The first priority of any government is themselves .
      
      The first step would be for them to realise that they aren’t leaders, they are functionaries employed by the public.
      
      Maintain the border and maintain public order.
      
      Every thing else is the prerogative of the individual.
      
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      November 1, 2023 9:29am
      - Ian Boag
        
        Every thing else … individual
        
        Yep. Welfare, health, education, pensions …..
        
        Starting tomorrow 🙂
        
        19th century was the greatest.
        
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        November 1, 2023 4:34pm
    - Mark Hanley
      
      Krazy, isn’t it a little too pessimistic to criticize the incoming government before they are in power?
      
      National and ACT’s policies appear to be sensible to me, and dare I say it, with Peters’ covid inquiry thrown into the mix; we might just have the best government ever.
      
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      November 1, 2023 9:36am
      - imalwaysright
        
        Mark,
        
        Yes, It seems premature to outline concerns about employees who haven’t started work yet.
        But the problem is the employees ability,and will, to get the desired outcome.
        
        Luxon and the coalition are going to try to give New Zealand a tune up when what is needed is a total strip down and rebuild.
        
        Anything less is not only delaying the inevitable, but making it worse.
        
        The incoming government will be better than the last, but we need more than just better.
        We need radical and unpopular change, starting with waterblasting the pigs from the publically funded trough.
        
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        November 1, 2023 9:59am
      - krazykiwi
        
        I said ‘from any recently installed government’. That’s here, and aboard. I agree that National and ACT policies appear sensible. But the proof is in the pudding, and history shows us that the hard choices are routinely avoided no matter how noble the acceptance speech promises.
        
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        November 1, 2023 10:03am
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        @imalwaysright,
        You won’t get fresh water until you remove the dead pigs from upstream – meaning the bloated Public Sector and all of the deadwood that has been there for decades.
        
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        November 1, 2023 10:57am
      - Stu2
        
        National and ACT’s policies appear to be sensible to me
        
        ————–
        
        Except Winston is about to insist they be watered down
        
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        November 1, 2023 11:47am
      - Mark Hanley
        
        Maybe I’m optimistic but I have never seen an incoming government make the dual promises of tackling gangs (with a set of gang eradication policies that have worked in Australia) and bringing down house prices.
        
        These are vital, bold, and difficult policies and not the words of a prime minister and government who aren’t prepared to rock the NZ boat.
        
        As for sacking everyone and tearing the institutional walls down. MPs and voters will get scared (just ask Roger Douglas) and the changes will be reversed by the next corrupt labour government.
        
        NZ needs sensible measurable goals (National and ACT’s policies provide these goals), then solid incremental changes, which bring the public along, which are cemented in so they can’t be reversed without voter approval (as you probably all know my preference is for citizens’ referenda, they worked so well for the end of life and marijuana legalization issues I am amazed National and ACT haven’t locked in more referenda), which increase income for NZ (trade and immigration) and which decrease our expenses (eradicate government wasteful spending/corruption).
        
        I expect immigration will step up as more professionals look to escape to a relatively safe country away from the extremist furore. Increased immigration = increased GDP which will buy the new government time as they seek to balance the books and get the infrastructure program underway.
        
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        November 1, 2023 12:53pm
      - wsk12345
        
        The government have already said they won’t deal with treaty principles bc it would be decisive!!! Without that the country continues down the “f@cked route”
        
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        November 1, 2023 1:13pm
      - Mark Hanley
        
        How can a government which doesn’t yet exist say anything?
        
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        November 1, 2023 2:14pm
      - mawm
        
        Mark – Just the one thing promised will prevent NZ recovery – Net Zero.
        
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        November 1, 2023 2:52pm
      - Mark Hanley
        
        Mawn. There is nothing wrong with net zero done sensibly.
        – Reduce pollution
        – Reduce NZs current account deficit
        – Reduce the power and influence of middle east despots
        
        And the net zero ideas floated by Luxon look ok.
        – recognize existing wetlands and the seas carbon sequestration in our net zero equation
        – more renewable energy generation
        – infrastructure for electric vehicles which we will dominate sales within the next ten years.
        – return the money paid by polliters to NZ taxpayers.
        
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        November 1, 2023 4:38pm
      - mawm
        
        Mark – I doubt that sensible and Net Zero belong in the same sentence.
        
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        November 1, 2023 5:29pm
    - edhunter
      
      Surely then that’s an argument for longer terms of government, in my life time there’s only been one one term government. If you were to give them a 5 year term would it enable them to enact ‘game changing’ policy with enough time to elapse to start to see if they are indeed beneficial or detrimental, rather than the pussy footing around the edges we’ve seen for the last 30yrs?
      
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      November 1, 2023 10:29am
      - Flossie
        
        I would not have been able to stand the current/ex government (Hipkins Labour) for any longer than three years. I was previously keen on changing to four year terms, but not now.
        
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        November 1, 2023 3:08pm
      - cmm
        
        Well maybe, but that would mean those “oh shit” decisions like 2020 last 5 years instead of 3.
        
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        November 1, 2023 3:55pm
      - Stu2
        
        Four years would be good – at present it is one year to get going, one year to do things, one year of election. Not a great recipe.
        
        Doubling the doing things period would get us in line with many countries. With the demise of first past the post minority govts (majority of seats, minority of votes) it becomes a far better option.
        
        Flossie above says he couldn’t have stood Hipkins for four years. Wrong issue.
        
        Would labour have got re-elected after 4 years in Dec 2021? The frustrations from lockdowns and border restrictions were bubbling by then.
        
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        November 1, 2023 11:08pm
- lastmanstanding
  
  One hopes the new Government will be a bit more discerning about who its imports. One can only wonder at how many Hamas and Hezbolah supporters the Labour Government imported over ther past 6 years. And when they will rise up to kill the Jews and the Infidel.
  I hope our Security services have good tabs on each and everyone of them and can prevent them in their endevours.
  A message to the incoming Government. Do not import people who then secret themselves away in enclaves and refuse to intergrate with NZ society. You have been warned.
  
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  November 1, 2023 8:57am
  - MCōs
    
    You mean like Tarrant?
    
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    November 1, 2023 9:37am
    - Jack5
      
      We don’t “import” Australian citizens, they’re allowed in by right.
      
      We get the better part of the deal, as far more of us want to enter Australia visa free, than Aussies who want to move to New Zealand.
      
      If New Zealand residents couldn’t move to Australia so freely, this country would be a less popular migrant destination.
      
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      November 1, 2023 10:27am
      - waikatosinger
        
        All those lovely people chanting “gas the jews” outside the Sydney Opera house could also come here as of right. Luckily for us they seem to like it in Australia.
        
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        November 1, 2023 12:29pm
    - Fuzzysnuggleduck
      
      He probably means more like those NZers who died fighting in Syria for the Caliphate, or the one who tried to saw off the head of a woman in a supermarket, or others who planned to attack NZers and were intercepted during planning, or those who have been prosecuted for having ISIS videos and sharing them, etc. etc.
      Those sort of people in NZ.
      
      On a Venn diagram there is an overlap with those people and the mobs calling for death to Jews or the destruction of Isreal.
      
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      November 1, 2023 11:40am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Queen St last Saturday. Where did they all come from before NZ?
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:59am
    - MCōs
      
      I don’t know the composition of that particular crowd and I doubt you do either
      However
      A few years ago I met a Syrian refugee who was delivering windows to a house where I was working
      He told me he didn’t want to be in NZ because he loved his country, but staying there had become untenable and he was grateful to be able to come here.
      
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      November 1, 2023 12:19pm
      - cmm
        
        “He told me he didn’t want to be in NZ because he loved his country”
        
        That’s a refugee, not an immigrant. He has no intention of settling here and will be off to Syria as soon as he feels he is safe.
        
        The problem with people like this is that they generally don’t realise that what is broken in their countries are the value sets they carry around. They ARE the violence they say they are running away from. If too many people like that move to a new country then that new country just becomes the old country they ran away from. See parts of London.
        
        It’s really no different to the Californians fleeing to Texas – only to Californicate Texas.
        
        PS: It is also why I don’t hang out with other South Africans and I view myself as an ex-South African – not a South African – and got rid of my South African citizenship and passport as soon as I could.
        
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        November 1, 2023 3:54pm
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        Obvious you don’t own a TV or read any social media MCos.
        
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        November 1, 2023 4:12pm
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        @cmm,
        They love their country so they want to turn NZ into the same shithole they came from.
        
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        November 1, 2023 4:14pm
  - Ra Henare
    
    I have never understood the logic of the Hamas “”military”” style terrorist attack on the festival goers, knowing that the Israelis would bomb the crap out of the Gaza strip. The same as they have done in the past. eg 2014
    Stumbled across this Video which gave what I thought was a reasoned explanation.
    Watch the first 10 minutes if you are short on time.
    youtube.com/watch?v=2MnwX49UDiM
    
    For some reason this link starts at minute 37??
    So go back to the start.
    
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    November 1, 2023 1:55pm
  - goNZ1
    
    The Mossad will hunt them down eventually a la the 1972 terrorists
    
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    November 2, 2023 1:46am
- Simon
  
  National cant get NZ out of the hole. If National wanted or could get NZ out of the hole first thing they would fire the bozos taking weeks to put together the final vote count.
  
  The incoming PM stifled the very first minute by out of control bloated state bureaucracy. PM having to swallow what ever lame excuses the electoral commission come up with.
  
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  November 1, 2023 8:58am
  - Flossie
    
    I guess “he” is not yet in a position to fire anyone.
    
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    November 1, 2023 9:26am
  - rouppe
    
    My understanding is that it is a legislative problem.
    
    Legislation allows for 11 days for special votes to get from wherever they were cast to their electoral office, and 10 days (go figure) for overseas votes to get back.
    
    All of this can be solved by putting some common sense changes into law to make the process more efficient.
    
    Germany can do it. So could we.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:38am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      My understanding is the counters are not getting the result they want, so keep recounting. Tell me I am wrong.
      
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      November 1, 2023 4:17pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        Tell me I am wrong
        
        Maybe you could tell us where your “understanding” comes from? So we know you are right.
        
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        November 1, 2023 4:39pm
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        @Ian,
        Ever heard of the Democrats?
        But Labour are not smart enough to watch Democrat tricks right?
        
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        November 1, 2023 6:18pm
      - Ghost
        
        So you are calling the electoral staff corrupt.
        
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        November 1, 2023 6:27pm
      - NZer In Exile
        
        Ghost: “So you are calling the electoral staff corrupt?”
        
        I’d say (don’t) trust, but verify (forensically, with extreme prejudice) given that probably every corner of civic life is now infected with the woke self righteousness that makes people think corruption is OK as long as it defeats the “far right” bogeyman the woke left have created.
        
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        November 1, 2023 7:39pm
      - goNZ1
        
        Hence why they are called ” special” votes
        
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        November 2, 2023 1:48am
  - Ghost
    
    If you want to blame someone for the time the count is taking it is labour who shifted it from two weeks to three. You and Steve must drink the same kool aid
    
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    November 1, 2023 5:24pm
krazykiwi

The Gato dishes up a fine exegesis of woke canon, with a side of rationalism vs religion. A few favorite bits: –

the unifying stories, parables, and morality of theistic religions and longstanding culture are rooted in the human condition, its needs, its questions. but these cults of purported modernity and progressivism are bleak, inhuman things that do not satiate but rather starve us. they do not fulfill human need but rather drill yawning caverns of entitlement and false moral outrage where one’s humanity should be.

:::

the first rule of this sort of secular cult club is nearly always “you do not know you’ve joined cult club.”

:::

we must push back against these aggressive secular sects. what they are peddling is neither progressive nor progress: it’s anti-human discord sown by the damaged and dissolute. we are quite literally fighting to retain civilization and enlightenment from inclusion orcs who took a once good idea much, much too far. and so ridicule shall be our spear and laughter our medicine because not only does this buffoonery lose its power when called by its true name, but we can have a good time doing it.

I am curious as to the extent to which Luxon can, or even wants to retrain the woke attitudes of his young team. Perhaps he could read Gato a bit, to get is head around the idea the woke is less of a tame kitten, and more of a savage, starved lion.
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November 1, 2023 8:01am
- ClanMcleod
  
  I loved it when the cat said:
  
  ….and that is why the art of making fun of these people has become a social and moral duty
  
  Followed by the clip from Southpark where Cartman has nightmares about being replaced by a diverse black woman.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89cto-IvD98&pp=ygUadGhlIHBhbmRhdmVyc2Ugc291dGggcGFyayA%3D
  
  It’s going to be called ‘The Pandeverse’ – Cartman becomes a black woman. Kyle is a native Indian woman. Kenny is a purple haired Asian woman. Butterworth is in transition…….😂😂😂
  
  I cannot wait to watch it. It will cause screams of outrage across the DEI community and they deserve everything coming their way.
  
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  November 1, 2023 8:49am
  - sirknz
    
    It is one of the best South Park episodes I have seen. I was genuinely laughing out loud all the way through it, so much so that the wife had to come and see what i was laughing at.
    
    The B story is just as good with the skewering of university educated people who are unable to do simple things around their house anymore, like basic home maintenance while the ‘uneducated’ handyman types wind up as the new billionaires, buying up social media platforms and other white collar companies.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:00am
    - ClanMcleod
      
      I’m guessing you’ve seen the ‘Pandemic Special’? It was absolutely brilliant.
      
      https://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/yy0vjs/south-park-the-pandemic-special-season-24-ep-1
      
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      November 1, 2023 11:12am
    - NZer In Exile
      
      I liked “the biggest douchebag in the universe” episode.
      
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      November 1, 2023 7:42pm
- Colinxy
  
  One slight quibble, Wokeism isn’t secular, it is fully religious.
  
  (From Dictonary.com)
  adjective
  1. of or relating to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal:
  secular interests.
  
  2. not pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to sacred):
  secular music.
  
  And no members of a cult think they’re in a cult be they secular (e.g., NXIVM) or religious (e.g., Marxism or any of its variants).
  
  Antonio Gramsci even stated that Marxism was the religion to replace Christianity.
  
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  November 1, 2023 11:06am
Flossie

I have lived in five different countries over my life time and noted how insular their news broadcasts were. Very focused on local events. Up until recently I have been proud of how well versed in international news New Zealanders were. Now we are as bad as any of those other countries as our television news programs dish up sports and drivel as prime items night after night.
Thankful that as news reporting has declined our opportunities to source world events via alternative sites has increased.
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November 1, 2023 8:11am
- Paulus
  
  Now that it appears that Barry Soper has retired there are no men left in the Parliamentary Press gallery so what can we expect ?
  
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  November 1, 2023 8:45am
  - kowloon
    
    what can we expect…
    Not a lot from the remaining incumbents, I’m afraid!
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:22am
- Ra Henare
  
  Haha Flossie.
  Sort of like commenters on KB.
  There used to be reasoned discussion, now it has turned into an echo chamber for the 20? regulars.
  
  Thank goodness there are other blogs with other views.
  
  As previously stated I scroll thru for yellow highlighted comments plus comments from Benedict(who seems to be drifting into the chamber) and Maggie Pie, always refreshing.
  
  It was sobering to visit the Bali bombing memorial in Kata last week.
  
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  November 1, 2023 2:02pm
Swifty

Yet another BLM grifter and thief jailed – this time in the UK:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12693877/Black-Lives-Matter-fraudster-Colston-statue-Bristol.html

Who would bet that the same thing isn’t happening here with the huge sacks of taxpayer cash delivered by the truckload to separatist organisations over the last six years?
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November 1, 2023 8:12am
- John Loveridge
  
  Look at all her pathetic excuses too. The simple truth is that she’s a thief.
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:35am
Matt Long

I’ve been thinking about Clan’s post yesterday with regard to targetting civilians in WW2, as both the Axis and Allies did with bombing.
I ask myself as a commander of a defensive existential war, how many amongst my army and civilian casualties would I accept, or would I accept the possibility of losing a war, compared with losses on the enemy side?
Would I let 1000 of my soldiers die to save a similar number of an enemy civilian population? Would my soldiers rightly condemn me if I did?
I find that I would do whatever it took to preserve the lives of those I represent within the bounds of the Geneva convention.
Especially if the enemy population was strongly in support of the aggressor.
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November 1, 2023 8:13am
- Simon
  
  Didnt see Clan post yesterday. But the Allied bombing of German civilians during WW2 was an extension of the Allied enforced food blockade of WW1 which killed around 700,000 German civilians.
  
  The food blockade of WW1 was carried out by “a commander of a defensive existential war” and directly contributed to the rise of the Nazis in 1920s and into power in 1930s.
  
  Nazi German V3 rocket program would have flatten London in 1944 or 1945. The Allies won by the skin of their teeth.
  
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  November 1, 2023 8:26am
  - NothingLeft
    
    the V weapons were militarily ineffectual, and V3 was a long range gun not a rocket, that only got off a few test shots. They were a last ditch attempt to regain some offensive capability after the Luftwaffe had been depleted. The Allies won easily once USA was engaged in the European war, and Japan knew they would lose from the outset.
    
    Geneva convention clearly only holds in practice in limited theatre wars amongst ‘nice’ countries where both sides are concerned about post war involvement in international order, diplomatic relationships and international travel. Russia, China, Iran, some of Africa take big steaming dumps on human rights daily, and don’t care about such niceties – they are only held in check by the fear of being smacked down by USA.
    
    Russia has shit all over the Geneva convention in Ukraine, torturing, raping and murdering civilians and soldiers, targeting civilians in bombings, and helped Assad with poison gas attacks. North Korea and Russia have used nerve gas/agents as assassination weapons on foreign soil.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:05am
  - Jack5
    
    If the Germans had flattened London, the A-bomb would most probablly have been tested on Berlin rather than Hiroshima.
    
    There would still have been airfields in the UKfor the US bombers, and increasingly in France.
    
    The Red Army would still have pulverised the German Army and the SS, with a freed France and Allied troops pushing from the south.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:32am
    - ClanMcleod
      
      Good job ‘we’ got the bomb first then, and nobody else had one eh?
      
      Things might turn out a tad differently these days.
      
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      November 1, 2023 11:23am
    - Simon
      
      “the V weapons were militarily ineffectual”
      
      The clue is in the name………… V3 weapons would have leveled London. No defense.
      
      “tested on Berlin rather than Hiroshima.”
      
      A bomb couldnt be used against Berlin, too far to the East.
      
      Going back to original point German WW2 war aim Lebensraum from Allied blockade in WW1.
      
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      November 1, 2023 12:27pm
      - Jack5
        
        Simon’s … A bomb couldnt be used against Berlin, too far to the East.
        
        Not sure what you mean, Simon.
        
        Air distance Guam to Hiroshima (the A bomber’s route) about 2628km.
        
        Air distance from, say, Durham to Berlin, 1018km.
        
        Interesting you highlight the Royal Navy blockade in World War 1. Some (I disagree) would say the German U-boat campaign against civilian ships was morally justified by the blockade.
        
        The naval war in World War 1 is often overlooked.
        
        Churchill said of Jellicoe, the British commander: “the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon”.
        
        If Jellicoe had lost, the blockade might have been reversed on to the British Isles.
        
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        November 1, 2023 1:06pm
  - Dave
    
    The food blockade … directly contributed to the rise of the Nazis in 1920s and into power in 1930s.
    
    Though some/many Germans were angry that the food blockade continued after the armistice until the Versailles Treaty, the Nazis’ rise in popularity owed much more to post-war inflation, economic instability and unemployment, and the party became a major contender for power in the economic crisis at the end of the decade, rather than the beginning.
    
    The officer corps was prepared to support the Nazis because of their commitment to reversing the shameful ‘injustice’ of Versailles, ie, they considered, with some reason, that the punitive and one-sided outcome of Versailles did not accurately reflect the military situation at the end of 1918 – the Reichswehr, while definitely struggling in an unwinnable war, could have recovered in winter and fought on well into 1919 behind new defensive lines at considerable cost to the allies, had civilian morale not collapsed. Part of the explanation of the Wehrmacht’s loyalty to Hitler rather than to the German people 25 years later when the war was clearly lost was their belief that the military had been dishonoured by Versailles.
    
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    November 1, 2023 8:06pm
- kowtow
  
  One issue that is nearly always overlooked by the folk who criticise the strategic or area bombing campaigns of WW 2 , and Arthur Harris in particular ( Churchill gets chucked in too as a “war criminal”) is that there was a theory about aerial warfare as an instrument to end war .
  
  An Italian General , Douhet , was the proponent of this theory .
  
  It wasn’t designed to murder civilians , its intent was to shorten wars and save lives.
  
  As such it was counter intuitively , humanitarian .
  
  Like the atomic bombing of Japan .
  
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  November 1, 2023 8:38am
  - bennerg
    
    As such it was counter intuitively , humanitarian .
    
    When you accept that there is a war going on, you want it to be as short as possible – ceasefires only delay the inevitable. People are going to die, and that has been the way of the world since it’s inception. Let’s hope it is short , sharp, and successful.
    
    As much as we wish and hope for, there are people (or “groups” of people – whether that be religious, political etc) on this earth that view and value life differently. They will challenge those whose societies have been through “The Enlightenment” (the idea that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and advocated such ideals as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state).
    
    Israel will be left to sort out Palestine – for whatever reason no-one else has wanted to – (where are the countries wanting to take Palestinian refugees? Nowhere, as they know they will be importing Hamas …).
    
    I just hope that the presence of the USA military might will lessen the chance that opportunists like Iran will get involved in a major way.
    
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    November 1, 2023 9:47am
  - Fuzzysnuggleduck
    
    Yes, the firebombing of Japanese cities meant that if the A-bomb shortened the war even by weeks (which it surely did) then it avoided a net death-count via conventional means which would have been higher on Japanese lives alone.
    I wrote on this topic at Uni as part of history of Imperial Japan, and from memory the deaths from ‘regular’ bombing were not inconsequential, aside from looming collapse and famine, plus the expected ground invasion cost in Allied lives’ Calculated based on Okinawa, Allied losses were suggested to be astronomical, and the Japanese always died at a much higher rate by that stage of the war.
    
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    November 1, 2023 11:57am
- ClanMcleod
  
  Matt Long – I understand the concept. I’m simply pointing out my point of view that it’s morally wrong and that I don’t think it makes anyone a ‘winner’. This is what the forum is for isn’t it? Discussion and opinions?
  
  I don’t have a solution. Never pretended to. If all the great ‘leaders’ of the last hundred years can’t come up with a solution how am I supposed to?
  I’m saying it only leads to more of the same. That’s why in my sarcastic response to ISeeRed I said we should just stop pretending we have rules.
  
  Drop the Geneva Convention, stop pretending we care about ‘war crimes’, forget about arms control or ‘prohibited’ weapons. Don’t get outraged at the horrors inflicted on innocent people.
  
  Let’s just have at it until there’s only one winner or we wipe out the species.
  
  But it’s not sarcasm. It’s the ultimate outcome of the current direction our species are headed in. Maybe that’s what we deserve?
  Who knows, I’m just giving my opinion. It’s not my job to find a ‘solution’. The universe will still be here long after we’re gone. I just feel sad at what we’re seeing.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:01am
  - imalwaysright
    
    Clan,
    You are correct.
    
    We are so far down the track of insanity that sarcasm and reality have become interchangeable.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:12am
  - Matt Long
    
    Of course it’s a forum for ideas and discussion, I value your opinion.
    
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    November 1, 2023 11:05am
    - ClanMcleod
      
      Matt Long – cheers. There are times when I hesitate to post my opinion because I know it will potentially be ‘controversial’ to some people.
      
      Then I remind myself, once we lose the right or the ability to express our thoughts, even though others dislike them, we are in serious trouble as a society.
      
      Conflicts rarely have binary answers.
      
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      November 1, 2023 11:26am
  - Stephen Russell
    
    @Clan
    I sympathise with your frustration and your sadness. But if humans didn’t keep struggling to be a little more civilised, we’d be back to barbarism in no time. Then everyone would lose.
    
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    November 1, 2023 5:07pm
- cmm
  
  I think you are looking at it wrongly.
  
  During a war, resources are few and need to be expended efficiently. Therefore the focus is on attacking the targets with the greatest military value.
  
  If you can do a bombing run, which is going to win you the war:
  * Bomb a residential area of no military value.
  * Bomb a tank factory or railway yard.
  
  There are few benefits in deliberately targeting civilians. Therefore it is seldom done (except as a way to try to attack morale which is generally a waste of resources).
  
  But there are times when the civilians are part of the war machine. eg. factory workers. Factory workers working on war supplies are a legitimate military target because they are part of the military supply chain.
  
  I think you will find that almost all civilian bombings can be explained by:
  * Mistakes: poor navigation etc resulting in bombing the wrong buildings/area.
  * Collateral damage: eg. attempting to bomb a factory/rail yards and hitting closely located residences.
  * Bombing workers’ accommodations because they are part of the war machine.
  
  Similarly many people make a song and dance about Boer women being put in internment camps during the Anglo Boer war. I don’t see a problem with that. These Boer women were part of the Boer war machine. They were feeding and supplying Boer combatants. In doing so they were a legitimate military target and interning them was valid (as was destroying the boer supply bases – the farms).
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:12am
  - I remember when
    
    At the end of the conflict the Palestinians in Gaza will have plenty of examples to remind them of the folly of attacking Israel.
    
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    November 1, 2023 9:43am
    - MCōs
      
      When you say ‘the end of the conflict’, what do you mean?
      The conflict has been going on there since forever
      This is just another flare up . . . . .
      
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      November 1, 2023 10:23am
      - Cassandra
        
        It’s much more than that this time. For sure it’s not the end, apart for Hamas for which this will be their final solution, just not the one Hamas wants.
        
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        November 1, 2023 10:35am
      - bennerg
        
        To use another medical analogy, Hamas are like herpes, once you got it, you can not get rid of it, you can only manage it.
        
        And yes it will flare up from time to time, especially when you are not vigilant.
        
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        November 1, 2023 10:37am
    - imalwaysright
      
      Its looking like the only thing the Jewish leadership has learned from WWII is that imitation is the greatest flattery.
      
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      November 1, 2023 10:23am
      - Fuzzysnuggleduck
        
        So the Jews kidnapped and burnt and executed German civilians in a sneak attack before the start WW2? I must have missed that part, since you seem to be implying Isreal is imitating Nazi Germany? (as is the old trope) or are they copying the Allies strategic bombing? (that doesn’t make much sense either, as the technology and the aims/policy of massed bomber formations then does not compare to the present)
        
        Israel is making a better case in comparing the Hamas surprise attack to Pearl Harbour.
        I think you are mistaking who had broken the peace here.
        
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        November 1, 2023 12:15pm
    - Ra Henare
      
      IRW. I suspect Palestinians will have a different view. Many will see Hamas as fighting for Palestine.
      
      As I have mentioned before. Mass bombings in Palestine will create more Hamas recruits.
      ergo my experience in Vietnam.
      Bomb the crap out of a Town in Vietnam. Kill lots of locals. The surviving teenage boys then all helped/joined the Vietcong.
      
      This is a conflict based on ideology.
      Each side thinking they have rights and wanting freedoms.
      
      It has been a conflict for centuries(check your history) it did not start on October 17th and will not be solved by high explosives.
      
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      November 1, 2023 2:12pm
  - ClanMcleod
    
    cmm – we could go back and forth on it all day. In the end, we’re keyboard commentators, the vast majority of whom have zero concept of what it is actually like living in a place where innocent people are targeted, and the inevitable outcomes of those actions. I have. It’s why I no longer live in that place.
    
    As for the idea that almost all civilian bombings can be explained as mistakes, no offence, but that is patently incorrect. Pretty much all ‘official’ armies and all terrorist groups have deliberately targeted civilians at some point.
    
    The blitz of London and the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo are three quick examples, even without going into the atom bomb. There are many more.
    The whole idea that bombing civilians to save military lives is acceptable is gross.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:31am
    - Cassandra
      
      Nonsense. Wars are between countries so everyone is involved, not just the soldiers. As a former soldier I was simply doing what you, the people, wanted. You were just as involved.
      
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      November 1, 2023 10:52am
      - ClanMcleod
        
        Nonsense? – ‘everyone is involved’ No they aren’t. If that assuages your guilt then fill your boots.
        
        Wars are between corporations and financially vested interests who use manipulation and propaganda to ‘get people on their side.’ To get young people to volunteer to kill others and to die for them.
        
        As General Smedley Butler wrote – war is a racket.
        
        War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
        
        Butler confesses that during his decades of service in the United States Marine Corps:
        
        I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
        
        All wars are about money and resources and those who finish up with the benefits of these things are rarely the ones doing the fighting and dying.
        
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        November 1, 2023 11:43am
    - bennerg
      
      Clan, for whatever reason or method a populace enables or facilitates, elects a leadership in any country, they have some degree of responsibility for the actions of that leadership, however small.
      
      When that leadership embarks on a violent campaign against another country, then there is collective responsiblity for any outcome / retaliation.
      
      We have a sort of agreement between countries about national borders, and their integrity. There are obvious cases where this is in dispute, and has been (in some cases) for millenia.
      
      Our international body (The UN) seems incapable of dealing with these disputes, despite all the billions of $$$ spent in it’s operation, because it has no independent might, or any way to corrall some of the major players, who have the power to exercise a veto.
      
      It’s like we are in a schoolyard with no teachers to supervise, so anything goes basically. The world has no supervising authority, so it is up to ourselves, and “our friendships” – which I remember at school kept us “safe”.
      
      The challenge we have now is that unlike in the previous world wars, the weapons and battles were obvious. We now have technologies and techniques that mean that war can be waged without a declaration. And I believe that for the last 50 years our western civilisation has been under attack, under the radar, from within and without. We are now moving into WWIII in an overt way.
      
      But sadly still some fail to see that even our local political landscape is one of the battlefields.
      
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      November 1, 2023 11:03am
      - Ra Henare
        
        Ben. Thanks for this gem.
        Clan, for whatever reason or method a populace enables or facilitates, elects a leadership in any country, they have some degree of responsibility for the actions of that leadership, however small.
        
        Reminds me so much of the Jacinda lead gummint. So the Covid crap was all our fault!!
        Plus Maorification, Wild Inflation, crap health systems and eductation…blah blah blah
        
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        November 1, 2023 2:17pm
    - cmm
      
      Clan.
      
      You might think it is “gross”
      And it is.
      But that’s war and how it works.
      
      PS “terrorist groups” are not the same as military.
      
      Soldiers the world over welcome each other into sort of veterans’ brotherhood. Terrorists are not welcome.
      
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      November 1, 2023 12:02pm
    - Fuzzysnuggleduck
      
      Israel is not bombing civilians, but as CMM accurately point, as a secondary effect there is ‘collateral damage’.
      Sounds trite to use the term, but it is not new or mysterious, even during the recent War on Terror (tm.). It is a bad thing, but is also is a thing.
      
      If Palestinians don’t like being bombed, they should consider democratically elected Hamas has drawn the wrath upon them and cynically fled back into their civilians centres instead of dying on the field of battle like martyrs. Hospitals have tunnels and command centres underneath them. Hamas is truly an evil scourge, and the comparison to herpes made above was a good one too.
      I am 100% with Israel on this. And to the Palestinians I can only say ‘It sucks to be you’.
      …..Maybe Saudi Arabia can take in their co-religionists for the duration of the ground offensive, since they have excess accommodation laying idle from hosting the Haj pilgramage.
      
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      November 1, 2023 12:23pm
      - artemisia
        
        I doubt the Saudi government would be too keen on hundreds of aid trucks arriving every day to feed and support hundreds of thousands of angry homeless.
        It would be like Roach Motel.
        
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        November 1, 2023 4:13pm
      - goNZ1
        
        None of the Arab states will let Gazans in, because they are terrified of the mayhem the radical Islamics will cause in their fiefdoms
        
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        November 2, 2023 2:03am
- I remember when
  
  There is always the suggestion that the attacking of civilians is immoral.
  However, if you, or your fellow countrymen, have voted the enemy into power where is the line that must not be crossed?
  Do the family of the soldiers have a right to indemnity?
  Those that contribute in any way?
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:52am
  - ClanMcleod
    
    No, it’s not a suggestion that ‘attacking civilians is immoral’. It’s prohibited by many international laws and treaties that have been worked on for many years by highly educated and trained people. Some of those laws and treaties can be read about here.
    
    https://www.redcross.org.nz/about-us/what-we-stand-for/international-humanitarian-law
    
    Worth a read, though these laws are rarely adhered to and rarely is anyone prosecuted for breaking these laws.
    
    The lieutenant in charge of the Mai Lai massacre being an exception that comes to mind.
    
    Between 347 and 504 civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment and Company B, 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd (American) Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, and some soldiers mutilated and raped children who were as young as 12.
    
    Of the 26 soldiers charged, only Lieutenant William Calley Jr was convicted. The rest were clearly ‘just following orders’.
    
    Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of murdering 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after U.S. president Richard Nixon commuted his sentence.
    
    This isn’t ‘whataboutism’. Just an example of stuff that happens that I don’t believe can ever be excused. Same with what Hamas did on 7/10. Same with what the IRA did in the Enniskillen bombing which took place unironically on ‘Remembrance Day’.
    
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day_bombing
    
    I’ve stated my position repeatedly – that I don’t care who is doing it, I oppose, am saddened by and struggle with the abuse of innocent civilians in conflict.
    I find it hard to understand those who try and justify it.
    
    I understand it happens. I’m not an ideological puritan, but these things are wrong and they aren’t defensible.
    
    So, once we admit that these things happen and always will, we need to stop pretending it’s only ‘them’ that do it, that every time it happens it extends and amplifies the cycle of violence.
    
    I said in a previous post, I’m a believer in democracy. If it’s decided killing civilians isn’t immoral then let’s stop pretending it is.
    Get rid of all the ‘rules’, declare open slather on anyone of any age, race or religion who we oppose and don’t pretend to be horrified or outraged. Get on with it and stop dragging it out. Let’s get primal. Or let’s try and find ways to stop it?
    
    As for the logic that, you’re voting people in ‘so it’s your fault if bad things happen’, aren’t we told repeatedly that all these people we oppose are dictators? Assad? Putin, Xi, Maduro?
    
    Make your mind up, did the people vote them in and deserve anything that happens to them, or are they innocent victims of tyrannical despots who need protecting?
    
    I don’t ‘support’ anyone. I’ve got opinions and beliefs that I think they are balanced and rational.
    
    Just tell me what the rules are and as long as they’re the same for everyone then I’m down with it. I may not agree with them, but don’t try and tell me that depending on who does it, one thing is a ‘war crime’ and the other isn’t.
    
    I’m done with this conversation. It’s probably one that has been repeated for thousands of years without a solution or compromise being found. Like war and violence, seems like an endless cycle.
    
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    November 1, 2023 12:20pm
KH

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
Good post Matt. The aggressor here is Israel, and has been for decades. Currently undertaking outrageous action with it’s “Settler” programme in the occupied territories, with no provocation at all from Palestine.
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November 1, 2023 8:24am
- RightNow
  
  Lol
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:23am
- Nukuleka
  
  Yes KH. No doubt you believe there’s a final solution that will solve the issue of those pesky Israelis.
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:11am
- Matt Long
  
  The aggressor is the one who keeps breaking ceasefires and peace agreements like Hitler broke his agreement with Chamberlain. Pp
  
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  November 1, 2023 11:00am
oldpark

in Luxury Hotels Amid Gaza Devastation
Hamas leaders direct Hamas massacre against Israelis from Luxurious surroundings .
Talk about telling the People in Gaza to Eat Cake .

As the Gaza Strip continues to be pounded by IDF airstrikes, there is increasing discussion in Israel and foreign media about how to get to the hiding places of the Hamas leaders in tunnels under Gaza’s hospitals, schools, and mosques.

But Hamas’s true leaders, at least on paper, aren’t even in the Gaza Strip. They instead lead a jet-setting lifestyle in the luxury hotels of the region, in Doha, Beirut, and Istanbul.

Ismail Haniyeh in 2017 became the head of Hamas’ political bureau, the highest position in the terror organization’s leadership structure.

He and many other senior Hamas leaders for years have lived in Doha, the capital of the Gulf Emirate of Qatar.

Haniyeh’s “victory speech” and prayer of thanks after the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, along with other Hamas operatives, was broadcast live from a luxury hotel by the Doha-based and state-owned TV station Al Jazeera.

Shortly after, the Four Seasons Hotel chain was forced to issue an official denial that Haniyeh lived in its Doha branch after reports indicated it was Haniyeh’s main residence.

Haniyeh moved to Doha a few years ago, leaving behind his luxurious Gaza residence in the now-destroyed financial neighborhood of Rimal, where many Hamas leaders possess large homes.

The decision to move Hamas’ operations to Qatar was taken by Haniyeh’s predecessor Khaled Mashal in 2012.

He transferred the Hamas headquarters there after the Syrian civil war complicated the situation in Damascus, where they resided before.

A Qatari official told the French news agency AFP that the establishment of Hamas’ political bureau in Qatar was coordinated with the U.S., which continues to maintain its largest naval base in the region in the Emirate.

Hamas’ leadership also spends a lot of time in Turkey, where Haniyeh and his number two Saleh al-Arouri have received residency status and Turkish passports from the authorities, allowing them to travel internationally.

Another important outpost of the terror organization is in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon.

There resides Saleh al-Arouri, whose former home in Samaria was razed by the IDF on Monday.

Arouri also regularly meets with the other arch-terrorists who call Beirut their home, for example, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhala.

Hamas’s official representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, also lives in Beirut.

However, relations aren’t as harmonious as they seem to be.

After Khaled Mashal recently called on Hezbollah to contribute more to the war between Israel and Hamas, he was criticized in Lebanon.

Sources close to Hezbollah called Mashal “a man who sits in a seven-star hotel,” who should be ashamed to call on Lebanon to start a war against Israel, Ynet News reported.

“This story is not welcome. Someone is sitting in a hotel in a Gulf state and dares to say to Hezbollah, ‘Thank you, but it is not enough.’ Khaled Mashal does not have a good influence on our environment in general and in particular after what happened in Syria,” a Lebanese journalist commented.

–

.
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November 1, 2023 8:35am
- ClanMcleod
  
  oldpark – if you apparently know where the Hamas leaders are, how come Mossad doesn’t?
  Wouldn’t it be easier (and better PR) for the Israelis to ‘cut the head off the snake’ as they say and put an end to this conflict quickly and without so much collateral damage?
  That’s how the Israel I grew up understanding used to operate. They were extremely good at identifying and targeting the people they wanted to target.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:30am
krazykiwi

‘Coincidences’ appear to be quite deadly: Mark Groeneveld, 20, Becomes Fifth Dutch Cyclist to Die or Suffer Serious Heart Problems This Year.

Meanwhile in New Zealand, “Everyone in Aotearoa New Zealand aged 5 and over can get a free COVID-19 vaccine now. You can get a booster if you are aged 16 or over.”

Official advocacy of the mRNA poison is a crime against humanity.
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November 1, 2023 8:50am
- krazykiwi
  
  more …
  
  Vaccination for children
  
  The COVID-19 vaccine protects your child [kk: A proven lie], your whānau [kk: a proven lie] and your community[kk: a proven lie]. It is free and available now for everyone aged 5 and over [kk: a crime against humanity].
  
  Public ‘health’ apparatchiks should be compelled to put their name alongside these statements. We demand it of party political statements, and in respect of ‘Duty Manager’ where liquor licences are active. Why not for health edicts?
  
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  November 1, 2023 8:57am
  - ClanMcleod
    
    Then we have this wet bus ticket from the Auditor General.
    
    The Office of the Auditor General has made a series of recommendations to the University of Auckland in the wake of a Covid-era contracting process that involved an “inappropriate” procurement process and a multifaceted “potential conflict of interest”, at the centre of which sat the spousal relationship of Dr Nikki Turner and Dr Tony Dowell.
    
    Well, that’s them told off in no uncertain terms, innit?? //
    
    Paywalled.
    
    https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/zb-plus-national/auditor-general-finds-covid-contract-related-to-dr-nikki-turner-inappropriate/
    
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    November 1, 2023 9:37am
- Inandout
  
  krazy, on ZB there is an ad for covid vaccine (‘know your health’) with all the expected coercion we have become used to, but at the end of the blurb in hushed tone was ‘Pfizer Auckland’. Please correct me if I am wrong.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:27am
- I remember when
  
  Are you suggesting that the cycle network is a WEF/WHO plan to reduce the world’s population?
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:37am
- Jack5
  
  Re Krazykiwi (8.50 post) on Dutch cyclists and heart problems …
  
  Netherlands population: 17.6 million.
  
  The source below reckons the Dutch own 23 million bicycles, and that 65 per cent of Dutch people ride a bike at least once a week.
  
  https://discerningcyclist.com/bicycle-usage-statistics-by-country/
  
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  November 1, 2023 11:30am
  - krazykiwi
    
    Yeah, they’ve been cycle crazy since whenever. Not too many hills to bother them! The article was referring to professional cyclists dying or retiring due to heart conditions. Here’s the general cycling deaths chart. 2022 wasn’t a great year to riding past windmills!
    
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    November 1, 2023 12:51pm
    - ClanMcleod
      
      Better cancel those cycle lanes in Wellington, bikes are clearly deadly….//
      
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      November 1, 2023 1:05pm
cmm

I am by no means a Treaty expert, but my incomplete, and possibly incorrect, understanding is that:
* It says something about Maori being treated as British subjects (ie. like white people).
* It doesn’t say anything about promoting Maori folklore.

Part of being treated as a British subject is clearly getting access to the “white man’s magic” and what has made Westerners successful. Some of that means access to, and the promotion of, proper science-based education, fiscal responsibility, proper governance and oversight, democracy, health system, judicial system etc.

You know, all the things that make a country and its people successful.

The chiefs saw the benefits of how the white man operated and wanted in.

Nowhere does the Treaty say that these things should be suppressed and replaced by Maori values/systems. Doing so would go directly against the intentions of the Treaty.

Therefore I think that the current “Treaty led” approach to everything actually has it the wrong way around. It is not actually “Treaty led’ but the opposite. It is gross violation of the Treaty because it is taking away the “white man’s magic” – the very stuff the Treaty was supposed to provide.

The way to fix this and be really “Treaty led” is to put Western values and Western systems first.

Sure, keep the Maori folklores and customs alive, but relegate them to the same tier as other customary activities like Morris dancing etc,
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November 1, 2023 8:50am
- krazykiwi
  
  cmm, this kind of common sense won’t cause liberal whites to be wracked with guilt such that they open their wallets for the benefit of the tribal elites.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:10am
- NeverMindTheBollocks
  
  Make no mistake, the chiefs that signed the Treaty wanted white man’s magic above all else.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:17am
- Libertarians are right
  
  Actually, the biggest difference between the two versions of the Treaty is that the English one in Article 3 gives Maori all the rights and protections of British subjects, the Maori version gives everyone those rights.
  
  Maori argue that Article one only gave Governance, not Sovereignty but in Maori culture back then it was the same thing.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:22am
  - fernglas
    
    The English version of Article 3 gives Maori the rights and protections of British subjects. The Maori version gives the rights and duties of British subjects. To my mind, the latter imposes obligations in exchange for rights, whereas the former merely grants passive benefits. Many suggest that the Maori version of the Treaty should prevail, but the only effort I have seen that attempts to grapple with the differences between the two versions of Article 3 claims that as Maori would have had a very limited understanding of the duties of a British subject, the reference to duties should be ignored. But if it’s the case that Maori knew what they were signing up to, and there’s no reason to believe that they didn’t, then there is a clear acceptance of a positive responsibility to uphold civil responsibilities in the same way as others. Included is equality under the law and upholding the rules governing society.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:19am
- Taieri
  
  “He Iwi Tahi Tātou – We Are Now One People”.
  This is, now often forgotten (and some say apocryphal), the only explicit principle of the Treaty of Waitangi.
  Can and should it be resurrected?
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:24am
- RoboRob
  
  Hi cnm
  
  Actually it is not treating them as british subjects, its they become british subjects with all the same rights (note not extra rights).
  
  You should really read the original, english treaty (be careful to avoid updated ones). Its only three paragraphs and once read you then start wondering where all this other crap comes from. Hint it is well meaning politicians over the years and academics.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:40am
  - cmm
    
    Thanks for the clarification.
    
    I was not trying to draw a distinction between being british subjects and being treated as british subjects.
    
    For the purposes of what I wrote I don’t think this distinction really matters other than, as Taieri writes, beyond that point “We are all one people” afterwhich there should be no Maori roll, no special anything for anybody.
    
    I agree somewhat with the original reason for the Maori roll because the land ownership rules prevented more Maori from voting. But once the land ownership restriction was removed (over 140 years ago) there was no further need for this distinction.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:58am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      For those above interested in how the Treaty was created, what happened, The Waitangi Tribunal re=written Treaty, the input of Hugh Kawharu and Geoffrey Palmer and the 45 years of corruption, it is all here:
      
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVgY03s6Tqc
      
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      November 1, 2023 11:16am
Maggie Pie

Wonder if the ‘Rainbow Greens’ were aware of this?

‘Gay Palestinian Beheaded In West Bank’

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63174835
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November 1, 2023 8:57am
- krazykiwi
  
  Queers for Palestine. Bok. Bok.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:01am
  - Maggie Pie
    
    LOL!!
    That’s about as convincing as ‘Minks for Fur Coats’
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:15am
  - NZer In Exile
    
    “Queers for Palestine”
    
    Computer says no.
    
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    November 1, 2023 7:49pm
- kowtow
  
  Across the west , the type of people currently chanting for Palestine , particularly Green and tertiary education types are exactly the kind of young folk who were targetted by the terrorists at the Supernova music festival.
  
  Very strange .
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:10am
  - Benedict Yu
    
    That’s because they have no idea. They are fed this line that “fascist” Israel is practicing apartheid against Palestinians. Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. The only Arabs who can benefit from democracy in the region are the 2 million Arabs, nearly all Muslim, who live in Israel with all the benefits and rights of Israeli citizenship.
    
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    November 1, 2023 9:19am
    - kowtow
      
      No , they have an idea .
      
      They are ‘Green” or support Green ideology and/or they are tertiary students , who’re the “future” and are alleged to be clever .
      
      They support terror , rape , torture , murder , misogyny , extremist religious ideology , looting of a class of people they see as an enemy.
      
      The property owning , fossil fuel using folk of the west need to wake up to how very evil the new left is.
      
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      November 1, 2023 9:29am
    - mandk
      
      Arguably, Arab Israelis enjoy superior rights to non-Arabs.
      
      They don’t have to serve in the military.
      
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      November 1, 2023 9:39am
- Benedict Yu
  
  The irony is that Israel has periodically granted asylum to gay men in Gaza and the West Bank who are at risk of being killed.
  
  https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-to-allow-lgbt-palestinians-granted-asylum-to-work/
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:13am
  - cmm
    
    The case of Wafa al-Biri in 2005 really underlines what they are up against.
    
    A Gazan woman got badly burned in a gas cooker explosion in Gaza. She gets taken to an Israeli hospital for life saving treatment.
    
    Does she say thanks?
    
    Nope, when going back to the hospital in Israel for a follow up she puts on a suicide vest – her greatest wish being to kill “30 to 50” Jews.
    
    This is what they are up against. There is no interest in peace.
    
    How do you deal with a bunch of people who have the mission statement of:
    1. Kill Jews.
    2. See 1.
    
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafa_al_Bass
    https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna8330374
    
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    November 1, 2023 9:31am
    - kowtow
      
      “One kibbutz resident who was kidnapped, Vivian Silver, 74, is a leading activist in the Women Wage Peace group.
      
      It has long helped Gaza Palestinians get hospital treatment outside the besieged territory.
      
      Other women in the group were also killed or abducted, said Gold.”
      
      https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231021-kibbutz-beeri-near-gaza-a-symbol-of-israel-s-trauma
      
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      November 1, 2023 9:41am
      - NothingLeft
        
        Always good to see serious real-world consequences visited directly upon people who push delusional/unrealistic viewpoints.
        
        All Green voters should be required to spend a year or two living unsupported in Venezuela, Cuba or other socialist paradises.
        
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        November 1, 2023 10:16am
- 7kiwi11
  
  It’s obviously a Mossad/USA hit job to discredit the freedom fighters from the religion of peace //
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:19am
- ClanMcleod
  
  The western liberal left are a very confused group of young people right now. The blogger Eugyppius skewers them in their most recent post. Paywalled, but you’ll get the gist from a few selected paragraphs.
  
  German Fridays for Future, after years of redefining climate activism as an anticolonialist struggle, now scramble to distance themselves from the pro-Palestinian rhetoric of their own organisation
  
  These muppets are always scrambling for the latest ‘thing’ and a new Facebook frame to show the world how much the entitled idiots ‘care’.
  
  Fridays for Future, the personality cult that emerged around the eccentric angry Swedish child Greta Thunberg in 2018, and which is supposed to be the face of reasonable mainstream climate activism in Germany, is in crisis. Gone are the halcyon pre-Covid days, when Europe was eager to differentiate itself from the American politics of the Trump era and signal its virtuous climate responsibility to all and sundry. Back then, it was fashionable to strike for the climate every Friday, primarily by squandering one’s lunch break to march against carbon dioxide with a lot of idealistic young women and the embarrassing green slogans they had crayoned onto torn bits of cardboard. Now that we face an unending treadmill of crises which again and again force climate out of the headlines, Fridays for Future must compete for relevance on other fronts. This explains the growing dominance of third-worldists in the organisation, and the decision of Thunberg and her autism octopus, after the Hamas attacks on 7 October, to abandon the climate in favour of solidarity with the Palestinians.
  
  It’s getting messy. Trying to conflate everything with ‘colonialism’, ‘white male patriarchy’ and ‘toxic masculinity.’ I almost feel sorry for the poor little diddums. What a challenge! Like trying to play Twister with one of your arms in a cast…..
  
  In this photo posted to Thunberg’s Twitter account on 27 October, to mark 271 weeks of whatever it is that Fridays for Future is supposed to be doing, we see the majority of our erstwhile climatoids holding signs about the Gaza conflict or equating climate activism with “justice for Palestine.”
  
  They really do look like they ‘care’ don’t they?
  
  The more time passes, the more these ‘liberal left’ wannabe revolutionaries expose themselves as the delusional, narcissistic useful idiots they actually are. Laughing at them is all they deserve.
  
  After belly laughing long and hard, the task will be finding out who is funding this destruction of civilised society.
  
  https://www.eugyppius.com/p/german-fridays-for-future-after-years
  
  Paywalled as stated above, but well worth the dollar a week to subscribe. Some of the best analysis of current politics you will read anywhere. It began with covid, hence the name ‘Eugyppius – a plague chronicle’, but it covers most of the major issues we are witnessing in an ever turbulent world.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:57am
- Notsofast
  
  As I keep trying to point out. The gay conversion law here is designed to transition gays to the other sex, an impossibility, and Parliament was too stupid to see it. So no sanity here.
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:14am
  - ISeeRed
    
    Yep. They’re sterilising the gays. We’re essentially no different to Iran.
    
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    November 1, 2023 12:50pm
    - Notsofast
      
      These clips are coming thicker and faster.
      Listen up and challenge your mps, they know not what they did. A minor issue till a kid near you gets claimed by the cult
      
      https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1719077000483066319?t=K-_GhN2EGLEwlMKBxABEKQ&s=19
      
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      November 1, 2023 1:43pm
    - Notsofast
      
      Correct Clio
      
      https://youtu.be/9P3Eg7zeUwI?si=MnEBVBAezA0v0K3r
      
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      November 1, 2023 4:48pm
Benedict Yu

I had to visit a private hospital yesterday for some tests. The carpark was packed so I was circling past the parks reserved for “DOCTORS”. It was entertaining. I did not see much evidence that the doctors and surgeons had embraced the need to fight the “climate crisis”. Not an EV in sight. There were the usual Porsche Cayennes and Range Rovers. However, the V12 Aston Martin was a bit of a surprise. Looks like the cardiac surgeons and anaesthetists are not experiencing the cost of living issues. 🙂
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November 1, 2023 9:07am
- Taieri
  
  Any congestion in the bicycle racks?
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:25am
- RoboRob
  
  My mates ex wife was a doctor / specialist. I can confirm money is not an issue.
  
  I think about 6yrs ago her pay from public work was around 400k and that was the ‘lower paid’ part of her income, which her hourly rate for private work being far more profitable.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:30am
  - mawm
    
    Here is the pay scale for full time medical specialists as negotiated by their union.
    https://asms.org.nz/meca/12-salaries/
    
    You are a bit out with your guess. For 2022 a full-time specialist at step 15 (ie with 15 years experience) earned $250,560 as a base for 40 hour week. Night and weekend work is additional. Private work would require a reduction in public hours and a decreased salary.
    
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    November 1, 2023 3:28pm
    - RoboRob
      
      Well she was on call 24hrs a day and often did night and weekend work due to her specialty.
      
      Let me just say, when they had children he gave up his well paid partner level position in a very alrge firm to look after the children. His moeny was the pocket money in the relationship.
      
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      November 1, 2023 3:49pm
- RoboRob
  
  Oh and re parking. What a joke. The government pulled down the old parking building post earthquake (the one that was connected to the hospital by an undergroud tunnel) and chose not to replace it.
  
  For a small capital cost the hospital would have had safe parks for staff and visitors in a profit making car parking building. Now it pays for security to escort staff to parks at night and shuttle buses between other parks for visitors. So it has cost the hospital money to not rebuild the car park.
  
  Probably the people who made the decision were the same who choose (about 20yrs ago) to build a new maternity hospital with the same number of beds as the 100yr old one it replaced.
  
  What a bunch of fucking morons.
  
  p.s. Sorry I’m obviously in a bad mood today!
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:35am
- krazykiwi
  
  Cost of living issues? Ah, yes. The Aston Martin 7 piece leather luggage set is currently $US9,000, almost double what it was 5 years ago. It’s outrageous. I don’t know how they can afford to holiday these days 😉
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:53am
  - Don Beckett
    
    $US 9,000 is a very cheap Aston Martin. You probably mean $ US 90,000. 🙂
    
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    November 1, 2023 11:59am
    - RalphT
      
      Don, kk said the luggage set, not the car which I’m sure will cost a lot more than US$90,000.
      
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      November 1, 2023 12:20pm
      - Don Beckett
        
        Thanks Ralph – dum dum me. 🙁
        
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        November 1, 2023 1:41pm
- lifesgood
  
  Try getting a car park at Green Lane hospital. It’s insane, you just can’t. There is no parking out on the road either so what can you do? We circled the car park for half an hour along with several other cars doing the same thing. In the end I dropped my friend at the door and drove a few kilometres away telling her to text me when she was ready for pick up. Something has to be done. They need a multi story car park at the very least. It’s a nightmare.
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:02am
  - Close Hen Counters
    
    It is a wee walk but park in Cornwall park and amble along the paths that go through a couple of paddocks and past cricket club 🌵
    
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    November 1, 2023 12:49pm
  - Close Hen Counters
    
    The geniuses at north shore hospital have built a huge surgical centre but no extra car parks to cater for staff and visitors – we suspect because they still want everyone to take public transport instead … the same hospital bans chocolate from any vending machines …. They are fundraising over a million bucks for an inside garden lol
    
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    November 1, 2023 12:53pm
cmm

Chop someone up with a sword and leave them for dead is a minor crime. Not even being appealed.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/133181497/crown-law-wont-appeal-sentence-of-samurai-sword-road-rage-attacker
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November 1, 2023 9:18am
Maggie Pie

Recall about a month ago, Te Maori Pardy candidate Hana-Rawhiti Mapi-Clarke reported a disturbing ram raid on her home?

TMP President John Tamihere was quick to come out and say…. “It’s an unacceptable feature of our politics. When politicians licence others to hate and despise one another, things like this will happen”

Hmmm. Well appears it didn’t….

https://twitter.com/Suitandtie9999/status/1719239053709873296
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November 1, 2023 9:20am
- cmm
  
  This was a blatant attempt to polarize the elections.
  And it worked.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:33am
- krazykiwi
  
  Stunning. A brazen lie designed to foster sympathy and support prior to the election. These immature children live in a fantasy world where we are expected to join them. Disgraceful.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:36am
  - peterwn
    
    I would not be surprised if she is not packing tantys because she cannot get her own way on things. Doubtful she will accept Kiwi Keith’s advice to new MP’s – breathe through your nose for the first three years.
    
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    November 1, 2023 9:46am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Who is going to believe anything she says now?
  
  https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/police-respond-to-hana-rawhiti-maipi-clarkes-investigation/KGJAYA3KNZG6TJF3J4E6NKUR3Q/
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:50am
  - Flossie
    
    Can she not be charged with something? At the very least wasting police time.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:15am
    - Suze Wainwright
      
      I’m sure the poor young dear would have believed (or been told to believe) that what she did was for the ‘greater good’…
      
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      November 1, 2023 11:13am
  - NothingLeft
    
    Her credulous voters, and listeners in the Maori wonderfulness media echo chamber.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:20am
  - Suze Wainwright
    
    I think you’re being a bit harsh.
    
    A new era of understanding the intricacies of the Maori calendar and weather forecasting is about to begin at Parliament.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:25am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Advertising stunt that worked. Mahuta will be waving the taiaha around, but she would have known anyway.
  
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  November 1, 2023 11:32am
RoboRob

Struggled to watch the new Childrens commissioner talk about baby Ruthless Empire this morning. A brand new appointee starting today, she represents everything wrong with the progressive movement. Someone whose entire job, and those of her expensive tax paid staff, is solely to advocate for children. Read ‘put out press releases, reports and do tv spots on quiet news days. Representing Aotaeroa – New Zealand, she plastered a clownish smile on her face and splattered her comments with Te-Reo in an attempt to add gravitas to her statements.

She represents an organisation, that we would call the Childrens commission but of course it’s not. It is ‘Mana MokoPuna’, https://www.manamokopuna.org.nz/. An agency that clearly cares more about Maori children then any others based on its practice of putting Maori first in all ‘Rao-engrish’ statements on their web site and all the imagery being Maori people and symbols. You have to scroll down the web site before you even see the word Children. Does anyone really think that any of this Maori tokenism helps Maori kids? it certainly isn’t helping any of the other kids, be they ‘english’, Asian or other.

An agency so well organised that it hasn’t even updated its web site to remove the previous head with the new lady, which was why I went to the site in the first place.

This is truly our tax payers money going down the toilet so lucky academics can suck at the teat of the state and earn big money for very little. It is our money being used by academics to flag their woke virtue signalling at the expense of those they are supposed to represent.

Why do we need to pay for people to ‘advocate’ for children’(or Woman, PI, Maori, Elderly etc)? Aren’t our politicians elected to represent us? If not where are the rest of the agencies?
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November 1, 2023 9:22am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Well she’ll need to start advocating a bit more strongly because it doesn’t look like our present system is protecting mokopuna from their violent care-givers.
  
  https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300998907/57-kids-in-seven-years-our-shocking-child-death-toll
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:56am
- krazykiwi
  
  I agree with almost everything you’ve said. I also know Claire personally, and she’s a genuinely nice person who does care for the welfare of kids. I do think her ‘rights’ angle is excessively played, but this reflects her personal convictions, and her PhD thesis.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:56am
  - RoboRob
    
    I tried to get more info on her by going to the sommisions web site, thats when I discoverred the racist crap and totaly laziness that they havent even bothered to updated the leadership info on the site.
    
    She, like mny in education, seem to think that shotgunning Maori into their speach adds something. It certainly does not. If she was maori affairs I would give that to her but as childrens commisioner its just a joke.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:46am
- ClanMcleod
  
  I don’t mind Maori being an ‘official’ language, I detest the underhand move to make it our primary language. It isn’t and it never will be.
  I used to try and pick up bits and pieces over the years, now I deliberately go out of my way never to use it and to refuse to reply to emails which begin with a long winded greeting in Maori.
  
  I’m over being coerced or manipulated into doing shit I don’t want to do.
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:06am
  - imalwaysright
    
    Clan
    
    Have a look at the new childrens commissioner on tv3 this morning about 7.20.
    A complete flake whose only talent seemed to be integrating maori words into an interview conducted in English .
    She called the 2yr old murder victim, Ruthless Empire, a ‘peepee’.
    I assume that peepee is a bastardisation of the word baby.
    He wasn’t a baby .
    Nothing quite like patronising a misinterpretation.
    Maori for mum seems to now be maamaa. And dad is paapaa. Both pronounced with an anguished tone.
    What a coincidence .
    
    Maori language is great for those who wish to partake, but be aware that the Irish, Scots, and Welsh found their true potential when they learned English.
    We learned that we could retain our culture whilst engaging on equal terms with others.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:47am
    - RoboRob
      
      Thats the exact interview I am referring too!
      
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      November 1, 2023 11:06am
  - RoboRob
    
    I’m all for maori being an official language, and sign language too.
    
    I have major issues with the shotguning of Maori into communications. It reduces and worsens the recipients understanding of the message being conveyed.
    
    I DETEST Moari in graduation ceremonies. I think its disgusting that 99% of students get a clap, often one clap to a group, yet Maori (and Island) studnets have friends and family give a 2-3 minute haka or Waiata for their loved ones. Its unfair to those others graduating. Oh and it also massively drags out ceremonies.
    
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    November 1, 2023 10:51am
I remember when

Must be getting old.
I can remember when the only thing/people testing positive for meths were down and out alcoholics.
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November 1, 2023 9:26am
- MCōs
  
  Testing for drunk driving came in in 1969
  I remember when a positive test meant you’d passed School Cert
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:08am
leoj

Pigs Do Fly!
Incredibly, I agree with Hillary Clinton regarding Israel and Hamas. She is EXACTLY RIGHT!

“People who are calling for a ceasefire now do not understand Hamas. That is not possible,” Hillary said, factually. “It would be such a gift to Hamas because they would spend whatever time there was a ceasefire in effect rebuilding their armaments, you know, creating stronger positions to be able to fend off an eventual assault by the Israelis.”
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November 1, 2023 9:35am
- MCōs
  
  She’s running
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:58am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Running away or running 2024.
    To see Trump embarrass her again will be delicious., and she can’t cheat like 2020.
    
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    November 1, 2023 11:41am
- surfing
  
  If Israel stops, Hamas will restart the war by committing further atrocities. Despots and dictators around the world are rejoicing!
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:09am
rjay

I see Newsroom is suddenly against third party contributions to the election process. Hit job on TPU but no mention of CTU.
Poor old Bomber Bradley is referenced but his role isn’t explained.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/pro/chiding-in-plain-sight?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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November 1, 2023 9:54am
- goNZ1
  
  Yes. Israel was surprise attacked on all sides in 1973 but still ended up winning the war and gaining Gaza,Golan Heights,West Bank etc.
  The aggressors and their brethren can’t complain about being ” occupied” now ,they triggered it!
  On another point,when a small nation like Israel has 1400 of its citizens murdered on one day is it any surprise there is a massive reaction! What would hypocritical Russia or China do if it happened to them today?
  
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  November 2, 2023 2:19am
Maggie Pie

Thort this worth sharing.

‘X’ bestie Elon Musk has a message for Marama….

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1719077000483066319
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November 1, 2023 10:02am
surfing

FBI chief Christopher Wray says 2.4% of Americans are responsible for 60% of religious hate crimes. No guesses which religion is behind this!

NZ needs to check Muslim immigration because as a group they support terrorism and the destruction of all Jewish people. Kiwis should not accept people with such hateful views.
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November 1, 2023 10:08am
- Jack5
  
  Sadly, New Zealand has let the United Nations decide for this country which of the world’s 108.4 million displaced people (June figures) we will accept.
  
  We have overwhelmingly ignored Christians and other non-Muslim people driven out of the Middle East.
  
  NZ Catholic journalist Pat McCarthy has written against this discrimination, which is described here:
  
  https://www.hudson.org/human-rights/should-middle-east-religious-minority-refugees-be-prioritized
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:50am
- RoboRob
  
  Its likely you misunderstand Wray. He probably means Christians. After all the FBI 100% believe that white hate groups are the biggest terrorist threat facing the US.
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:53am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  So who where all of those people in Queen St on Saturday and where did they come from?
  
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  November 1, 2023 11:45am
surfing

My son spent an entire college science class the other day where they had to learn Maori names for English scientific terms. Colleges are peppering maori words in science schooling, and sometimes my son does not know the meaning of the word.

The education department has been handing out questionnaires to students about the amount of Maori their teachers are using.

This is disgusting, those with pre-college students, move to private schooling if you can afford it. State schooling is dead!
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November 1, 2023 10:14am
- Jack5
  
  Racism is rife even in trades training.
  
  Unitec is advertising fully fees-free courses for Maori and Pacific Islanders between the ages of 16 and 40.
  
  https://www.unitec.ac.nz/career-and-study-options/mechanical-engineering
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:40am
artemisia

A lot of media attention on failed supplier Supie. A whole lot more than other business failures. Of which there have been very many. Like for example construction companies, some big, that figure in recent liquidation numbers.

Businesses fail all the time, mostly with no laid off staff crying on camera.

Sounds political, who is driving it?
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November 1, 2023 10:15am
- RoboRob
  
  The left. They 100% believe the supermarkets are evil empires that need to be taken down. Without seeming to realise that Supie went bust becuase they couldn’t make a profit selling at lower prices.
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:56am
  - Jack5
    
    Nicola Willis, deputy leader of National and likely to be the new Finance Minister, seems to have joined the outcry against supermarkets, assuming a new chain is needed.
    
    So does the incoming PM, Christopher Luxon, who believes that slashing regulatory rules and red tape might attract a big foreign firm to set up a new chain.
    
    Meanwhile, two points are being overlooked in discussion of NZ supermarkets …
    
    1. NZ had three supermarket chains. When one was sold to another of the three, the Commerce Commission declined to block the deal on competition grounds.
    
    2. One of the two existing chains, New World, comprises two co-operatives, one of North Island supermarkets, and the other of South Island supermarkets.
    
    The owner of the other of the two big supermarket chains, Countdown, is Woolworths New Zealand Group.
    
    It reported for its last full financial year (2022) a bottom-line profit of $162.36 million on total sales of $7.58 billion. That is 2.1 per cent.
    
    Cost of sales took up 74.6 per cent of revenue. That is before store expenses of $1.2 billion and administration and warehousing costs of $486.8 million.
    
    Apart from international bulk buying, where could savings come from for a new chain? International transport? Transport within NZ? Mmm.
    
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    November 1, 2023 12:04pm
    - Ghost
      
      A third chain is coming, it’s iwi owned. It’s claiming it will be up to 20% cheaper than the current mobs
      
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      November 1, 2023 12:13pm
      - artemisia
        
        May be coming. I did hear that it would require the duopoly to sell 15% of their premises to the iwi group, assume mandated by government. Would that be about 30, depending on what is counted? And the new group would be fussy about the ones they want.
        
        20% cheaper than the current big 2 is a big ask and unlikely central government would subsidise or bail out. Some local government, OTOH, different story.
        
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        November 1, 2023 12:55pm
      - RoboRob
        
        There is absolutely no way the new chain could be 20% cheaper for the same products. As mentioned above, the profit margin for Woolworths was 2.1% with the vast majority of the expenses being the actual product. Are we expecting a new competitor to be able to screw suppliers so hard they can buy them 20% cheaper than the existing chains.
        
        If they really do come in 20% cheaper expect them to fail the same way supie did.
        
        The reason we (and even Australia complains) pay more is economies of scale. For we had 400m people like the USA we too could have multiple chains and vastly cheaper prices.
        
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        November 1, 2023 1:58pm
      - artemisia
        
        Part of the iwi owned plan is to support Maori suppliers. But pay them a lot less than equivalent products from other suppliers to meet the 20% cheaper target?
        
        Do even the proposed iwi owners think that will work well?
        
        Suspicion is that plan will be used to score taxpayer funding. There has been a lot of it about in recent years, so maybe realistic back then.
        
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        November 1, 2023 3:45pm
Surely Knott

Things I learnt yesterday.

Apparently Islamic Scholars tell us that the beautiful virgins in paradise created for the believers….have no mucus and no saliva.

🤔Hmmm.

https://twitter.com/TarekFatah/status/1273906799394127874?lang=en
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November 1, 2023 10:19am
- krazykiwi
  
  At the gate to paradise…
  
  Allah : What is that you are carrying in your hand, Shaheed?
  
  Shaheed: KY Jelly
  
  Allah: Welcome, and enjoy your stay.
  
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  November 1, 2023 11:13am
- cmm
  
  Many people refer to 72 virgins, but this is actually incorrect. The true text is far more chilling than that.
  
  It is actually two virgins.
  And 70 wives and concubines of the defeated enemy to be raped.
  
  Remember that women are just seen as chattels. Raping a woman is not seen as a violent act against a woman. It is actually an act of humiliation on the man that “owns” her. eg. her father, husband, brother or son.
  
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  November 1, 2023 11:37am
  - Jack5
    
    Arabs and other Muslims were active early in the development of mathematics.
    
    That was so long ago that all they can link the number 72 to now, is eternal copulation and rape.
    
    Here are more substantial facts about the number 72:
    
    https://numeraly.com/about-the-number-72/
    
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    November 1, 2023 12:11pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Stop Co-Govenance. Julian Batchelor.

Luxon does not want to touch the Treaty because is will cause division.
The Treaty is the cause of the division and corruption of the last 45 years.
Luxon may be a good manager, but he is not a leader. He is only there because NZ wanted change.

https://stopcogovernance.kiwi/blog/i-told-you-so-luxon-shows-he-is-a-coward-by-refusing-to-deal-with-new-zealands-most-serious-issue/
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November 1, 2023 10:40am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Included is an item by Don Brash – and comments.
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:46am
- Matt Long
  
  Luxon also back to rebuking his MPs for not being woke enough, this time Chris Bishop(!!!!)
  https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/301000030/chris-bishop-spoken-to-by-christopher-luxon-about-strongly-worded-email-comparing-hamas-attack-to-holocaust
  
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  November 1, 2023 10:54am
  - krazykiwi
    
    What Luxon is facing is the predominantly millennial+ generation’s tendency to spill personal thoughts into the public domain thinking readers will clearly distinguish personal from professional commentary.
    
    They don’t.
    
    MPs like Bishop should be smart enough to keep mum on matters that relate to foreign policy, so I support Luxon for giving him a serve since he wandered naively into that minefield.
    
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    November 1, 2023 11:23am
    - cmm
      
      Bishop has the terminal political problem of saying and doing numpty things.
      
      Having shilled for the tobacco industry he is immensely politically vulnerable to negative messaging.
      
      eg. It is extremely easy to make a statement like “Chris Bishop got $50 for each cigarette smoker that died of cancer. Do you really want him to be PM?”
      
      But on this matter many people, including Israeli Jews I have communicated with, would agree with Bishop – that, in many ways, the latest attack was worse than the Holocaust.
      
      I’m not trying to make light of the Holocaust, but the absolute brutality of the latest Hamas attacks was done with more savagery than the Nazis did.
      
      The Nazis killed many, in nasty systematic ways, but for the they did it behind closed doors. It would be reasonably fair to say that most Germans would have been horrified of what was being done in their name if they had been fully aware. And the rest of the world was shocked for a generation.
      
      Hamas have been far more savage and proud of it, splattering everything on social media. The world watches and many, especially Muslims have picked up the “kill the Jews” chants around the world – even in NZ.
      
      Sure, the numbers are lower but that is only because the Israelis have an effective military. If they did not, then Israel would not exist and every Jew in Israel would be killed with a good 30% of the world’s population happy to drag their bodies through the street.
      
      So, yes, this is in many ways a worse situation for Jews than the Holocaust.
      
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      November 1, 2023 11:56am
  - Jack5
    
    I wonder whether Luxon did actually rebuke Bishop, as this Stuff headline implies: “National MP spoken to about ‘strongly worded’ Holocaust email”.
    
    The description “spoken to” has connotations of a rebuke, but perhaps Luxon just said he discussed the matter with Bishop. That has different connotations.
    
    Either Stuff is being biased, or Luxon is still in CEO mode rather than PM mode.
    
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    November 1, 2023 11:36am
    - Ghost
      
      I’m reminded of Mike hosking during the election said he spent a day watching what Luxon was saying live on the internet. He would then go and read what the media reported and it was completely different to what was said by Luxon.
      
      Anything reported about national by the media has to be taken with a truck load of salt.
      
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      November 1, 2023 12:47pm
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      CEO mode is where he will stay – unless he wakes up.
      What Luxon needs to take on board is NZ voters did not vote for him, the voters voted for a change. Down off your high horse Luxon.
      
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      November 1, 2023 4:22pm
Maggie Pie

Time to call for a ‘ceasefire’?

‘Shocking death toll. Data shows that there has been at least 57 child homicides
since Oranga Tamariki was created in 2017’

– NZ Stuff
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November 1, 2023 10:45am
- NothingLeft
  
  10 a year. What percentage were by drug users beneficiaries and gang affiliates? (I’m guessing >80%). Any women living on a benefit should be required to be on long term contraception (no point doing it to guys as there are always other sperm donors available).
  
  I’d like to see a law whereby you can’t have kids until you have paid more than $50k in income tax, with any benefit drawn being taken off the total – proving you are a net useful contributing human. Rule breakers to have babies taken for adoption.
  
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  November 1, 2023 11:11am
  - Nickc2
    
    Wow, that’ll put the Pigeons among the Cats!
    
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    November 1, 2023 12:01pm
  - krazykiwi
    
    If you think multi-child beneficiaries are a public nuisance, just wait until we grant politicians the right to determine who should be permitted to breed.
    
    Remember this challenge: Think about the power you’re about to grant a politician being wielded by the politician you despise the most. Because one day it will be.
    
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    November 1, 2023 1:56pm
- Blog-aholic
  
  Dr Claire Achmad looks and sounds like the sort of person that really doesn’t know what war is going on and therefore cannot understand what a cease-fire might be.
  
  Her claim to fame seems to be in advocacy rather than in action-acy.
  
  One thing you can bet on. In another wee while another wee one will perish, and then another and another.
  
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  November 1, 2023 11:45am
I remember when

Auckland school wins suppression battle over child sex abuse image deputy principal case: NZ Herald.
Lawrence Peter Stephens was jailed for 24 months on August 18 in North Shore District Court.
This type of decision always seems to walk a very fine line.
Dilworth have taken the right approach by getting someone that the public trusts to oversee their future procedures.
Never easy but vital.
Unfortunately there is very little schools can do until offending is identified.
There should always be an Education Department investigation to ensue any early signs, perhaps at previous school/s, were handled appropriately.
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November 1, 2023 11:15am
Drone

In amongst all the gloomsters and doomsters wailing about the poor performance of Wellington’s dysfunctional city council there comes a glimmer of hope, a small spark in the dark, the Greater Wellington Regional Council (yes, a second council because one isn’t enough) are about to release their annual report. This will show you where some of your rates have ended up I hope, but as a precursor have a look here. https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=156254 Remember as you read about the progress being made in bringing electric buses to the city that they were the group that replaced the original electric buses with diesel buses, and as they crow about bringing in electric trains that we’ve had electric trains for decades. The only warning I can give you is that possibly much of the annual report will be in minglish.
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November 1, 2023 11:41am
- Stu2
  
  The replies are better than the self congratulations. Here are a couple:
  
  – zero acknowledgement of the 16.94% rates increase this year amongst all this backslapping I see
  – I’ll also point out that when it comes to the buses, the annual report says they’ve only achieved 3 of their 13 targets for public transport. This includes missing almost every customer satisfaction metric and the punctuality metric.
  
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  November 1, 2023 12:16pm
- Stu2
  
  “as they crow about bringing in electric trains that we’ve had electric trains for decades”
  
  —
  What they said was “the wheels are firmly in motion to bring electric trains into the future network”. Looks like code for light rail
  
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  November 1, 2023 12:17pm
  - peterwn
    
    The reference was to extending electric train services to Masterton and Otaki (or north) by hybrid battery trains with battery power being used beyond Upper Hutt and Waikanae.
    
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    November 1, 2023 12:27pm
- peterwn
  
  In fairness to the Council, the trolley bus system had become untenable since the mercury arc rectifiers and associated transformers supplying the power were at end of life. These were the property of Wellington Electricity and WE would have required a guarantee of revenue if it purchased and installed replacement equipment. WE may have required the Council to meet part or all the cost of this. There were other issues that contributed to the demise of the trolley buses.
  
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  November 1, 2023 12:24pm
  - cmm
    
    The trolley bus could run fine, and more efficiently, with a solid state rectifier. It would probably cost less than $2k to install one and would probably pay for itself in reduced electricity wastage in a year or so.
    
    The mercury arc rectifiers just look cool from a historic perspective – they have no redeeming technical properties.
    
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    November 1, 2023 12:46pm
    - peterwn
      
      The transformers, circuit breakers and other ancillary equipment were also at end of life. Usual transformer size was 750kva for the sites and output current was 1200 amps. The all up estimated cost was far, far greater than $2k per site. The existing equipment would have been 70 years old when decommissioned or even older if it was previously used for trams (same voltage).
      
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      November 1, 2023 2:55pm
Maggie Pie

And I’ll tell you something else that really rips my panties…
hearing ZB political reporter Jason Walls continually referring to Chris Luxon as… “Chris Hipkins”. And it’s usually on more than one occassion!
He quickly corrects himself with a silly little larf and carries on.

Since this has been going on for more than a year now, I’m starting to think he does it deliberately 🙁

Anyone else picked up on it?
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November 1, 2023 12:40pm
- cmm
  
  “You are listening to ZB. Click”
  That’s about as far as I have ever got.
  
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  November 1, 2023 12:42pm
- lifesgood
  
  ZB has got some weird hosts. Some of them are so sensitive for alternate views they quickly cut the caller off. Marcus Lush can be like that, rude actually, and Roman Travers dancers around with his fingers in his ears if anyway suggests that we were all conned by covid rules. Tim Beveridge can be a really grumpy, sour individual too. Jason Walls has a most peculiar accent as was mentioned on Bassett Brash and Hide a few days ago. Love to know where he got it from. He sounds like a kid fresh out of school. How did he get to be “senior” political editor? The pool must be shallow.
  
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  November 1, 2023 12:54pm
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    Love to know where he got it from.
    
    From Mt Roskill……
    
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/central-leader/4135304/Teens-fight-binge-culture
    
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    November 1, 2023 1:11pm
  - Maggie Pie
    
    I know they say Paddy Gower’s got issues ….but that RoeMan Travis. OMG!
    A few of girls at tennis call him ‘the nightcrawler’
    He’s often just finishing off when we tune in to Katie Hawkesby. You can tell from Kate’s body language she can’t stand him either.
    
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    November 1, 2023 1:26pm
  - oldpark
    
    You left out the other clown, Tim Roxburgh .
    
    It would be so special to rid the night airwaves of the aptly named Lush .Newstalk must be sooo desperate
    Keeping Clown “One”Lush in employment.Then sometimes followed by Clown “Two” a guy called Travers .
    Where have all the good talkback hosts gone .
    We all miss the Super Star Bruce Russell RIP.
    
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    November 1, 2023 3:22pm
    - Maggie Pie
      
      We’d really luv to see Banksy back on the airwaves.
      He was such a breath of fresh air on TodayFM…. had the top-rating talkback show in Auckland.
      
      Look what happened to those clowns when they went all woke and gave him the DCM.
      
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      November 1, 2023 3:47pm
    - lifesgood
      
      Loved Bruce. He was the best. Jim Snedden is pretty good too.
      
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      November 1, 2023 4:45pm
Inandout

Air NZ has emailed me saying they are doing away with paper coffee cups to help save the planet. Unbelievable when they use tons of fuel on every flight. Well on a five-hour flight, a Boeing 747 will burn around 65,000 litres of fuel.
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November 1, 2023 1:01pm
- David Garrett
  
  Inand: What sort of cups are they replacing the paper ones with? (Although I fly with Air NZ often, I have not received this email)
  
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  November 1, 2023 1:06pm
  - cmm
    
    You probably need to bring a ceramic mug.
    The extra weight will result in burning an extra 5 litres of fuel per passenger per trip.
    But feel the smugs.
    
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    November 1, 2023 1:08pm
  - Inandout
    
    DG, we have an upcoming flight and Air Points so maybe that is a factor. The message:
    
    ‘Kia ora XX,
    We want to let you know that we are moving away from single-use cups in our airport lounges. The roll out will begin in Invercargill today, with all New Zealand lounges (excluding Christchurch Regional Express) to follow.
    We use nearly one million single-use cups each year in our lounges and a further nine million on our aircraft. While the cups are commercially compostable, infrastructure across the country that will accept them is limited. And because of this, most of these cups are ending up in landfill. We need to address some of this waste, especially when there is a good option available to avoid it.
    At Air New Zealand we have set some very ambitious sustainability goals, including net zero carbon emissions by 2050. These will require significant changes to our fleet and operations to transition away from fossil fuel as much as we can.
    But as we see the impacts of climate change accelerating, we can’t just wait for these big initiatives to come to fruition. We also need to take whatever small steps we can to reduce our impact on our country and the planet now. Removing single use-cups from our lounges is one of these steps.
    We know that having a hot drink in our lounge before you fly is something many of you enjoy. And don’t worry, you will still be able to enjoy a hot drink in our lounge using our ceramic cups. If you want to take a coffee onto the aircraft, you are welcome to bring your own cup with a lid. We’d be delighted to still make you a hot drink to go!
    We know this will be inconvenient for some, but we hope you will support us in taking this step to reduce our waste footprint.
    We really appreciate your support to remove nearly one million single-use cups from our waste stream’.
    
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    November 1, 2023 1:29pm
    - krazykiwi
      
      “But as we see the impacts of climate change accelerating”
      
      *sigh*
      
      … and I trust these evidence-free morons with my life when I board their aircraft
      
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      November 1, 2023 2:27pm
    - lifesgood
      
      Prefer ceramic anyway.
      
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      November 1, 2023 2:47pm
    - Groggy
      
      In the lounge is very different to onboard
      
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      November 1, 2023 5:56pm
- krazykiwi
  
  A full A380 departing AKL bound for DXB weighs 390 tonnes. When it lands it weighs 200 tonnes.
  
  If every passenger used 5 paper cups on the 17 hours journey this would require approximately 6.9kgs of paper cups. So not carrying those cups would reduce the takeoff weight by 6.9kgs (0.00179%), and result in a saving of about three drops of Jet-A fuel.
  
  The planet thanks you.
  
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  November 1, 2023 2:44pm
  - Ghost
    
    So they need to save more paper products to save the planet, toilet paper next?
    
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    November 1, 2023 2:53pm
I remember when

‘Officer Underpants’ wins job back: Italy. Telegraph Group. Manawatu Standard.
Alberto Muraglia, 61, a police officer in Sanremo, was filmed by hidden cameras descending the steps from his service flat above his offfice in Y-fronts and T-shirt, clocking in, then returning home.
When he was sacked, a court aquitted him in 2020, ruling that getting dressed in the morning is part and parcel of an employee’s duties.
The judge ruled, Muragliawas therefore within his rights to clock then return home to get dressed.
However, the town of Sanremo refused to give him his job back, prompting him to return to court, where he won again.
It was ruled that not only should he be re-employed but receive back-pay of E250,000 (NZ$454,000) minus any money earned in the intervening years.Muraglia said he would now be clocking on fully clothed.
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November 1, 2023 1:10pm
ClanMcleod

In the UK it turn’s out Bojo might have had more of an idea about covid than first assumed.

In an inquiry into the handling of covid there is an apparent attack on Johnson.

Boris Johnson said old people should accept Covid fate, inquiry shows

But if you read on you can see that behind closed doors, Johnson spoke with refreshing honesty and absence of hyperbole.
He also spoke factually, something that was absent from all government spokespeople when speaking publicly or to the media.

In a series of WhatsApp messages, Johnson said “I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff” as he resisted pressure for a second nationwide lockdown.

The remarks shine a light on Johnson’s reluctance in the autumn and winter of 2020 to announce a second and then a third nationwide lockdown to stop the spread of Covid.

Johnson’s delay in doing so, and its impact on the number of people who lost their lives to the virus, is a key question which the Covid Inquiry is investigating.

A line from Vallance’s entry on December 14, 2020 reads of Johnson: “He says his party ‘thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just Nature’s way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them’.”

One message from Johnson read: “I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on covid fatalities. The median age is 82 – 81 for men and 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get Covid and live longer.

“Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 per cent) and of those virtually all survive. And I no longer buy all this nhs overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to calibrate.”

Johnson added: “There are max 3 m in this country aged over 80.” He later wrote: “It shows we don’t go for nation wide lockdown.”

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/boris-johnson-said-old-people-should-accept-covid-fate-inquiry-shows/3GTY73GRHFETVKZSAP346UWOY4/

Everything he said is 100% correct. Maybe not PC, but absolutely accurate, as was his comment that there was no need for lockdowns.
I may have to change my estimation of him.
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November 1, 2023 1:17pm
Chuck Bird

Bishop is right and Luxon is wrong. Is Luxon thinking there are a lot more Muslims that Jews. Luxon’s morality on this issue is appalling.

Chris Bishop spoken to by Christopher Luxon for ‘strongly worded’ email comparing Hamas attack to Holocaust

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/chris-bishop-spoken-to-by-christopher-luxon-on-strongly-worded-email-comparing-hamas-attack-to-holocaust/XZIHTJHNVZCTFOCP5DOKYB4HEI/
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November 1, 2023 1:18pm
- gorse
  
  He wasn’t comparing it to the holocaust. In fact the Israelis themselves are saying it is the worst atrocity carried out on the Jewish people since the holocaust. A statement of fact. Not sure where Luxon is coming from.
  
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  November 1, 2023 1:42pm
  - Ghost
    
    This is what Luxon said, I doubt many would disagree. National mp’s do need to be mindful what ever they say privately will be pushed to the media
    
    “He’s responding to a private email. My conversation with him was like, ‘I think you’ve got to be a bit more careful about that language’.”
    
    Article
    
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    November 1, 2023 1:57pm
    - David Garrett
      
      Ghost: Please tell me that Luxon DIDN’T use “like” as the teenagers do…
      
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      November 1, 2023 2:11pm
      - David Garrett
        
        OMG… if he is quoted accurately, he did indeed say that…And this guy is our next PM FFS…does he think inserting “like” into a sentence like that is cool? Is he trying to, like, capture the “vapid teenager” vote?
        
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        November 1, 2023 2:19pm
      - slightlyrighty
        
        If he was saying “Like” as in “Something along the lines of” then it’s perfectly correct.
        
        If he was saying “Like” and in “Like-Gross!” then that’s the teen vernacular.
        
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        November 1, 2023 2:24pm
  - Maggie Pie
    
    It was only last week that Helen Clark called for…. “a final solution to the problem”
    
    Anyway, I’m with Bish on this.
    
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    November 1, 2023 2:53pm
- krazykiwi
  
  The issue for me isn’t if the content of the message was “right” or “wrong”, and for the record I agree with what Bishop said. The issue more one of should Bishop have been venturing to make a public statement on something that should have been curated by the government and released officially. That’s a team discipline thing, and assuming the media haven’t screwed this reporting I think Luxon was right to clap Bishop around the ears.
  
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  November 1, 2023 4:33pm
I remember when

Neighbourly are running a poll asking ‘is there a place for Halloween in NZ.’
To date the result is an 80% ‘No’ vote.
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November 1, 2023 1:50pm
- slightlyrighty
  
  OOO a self selecting poll!!!
  
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  November 1, 2023 2:22pm
  - ISeeRed
    
    Yep. All online polls are crap.
    
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    November 1, 2023 3:29pm
Right of way is Way of Right

This will put the cat amongst the pigeons.

There are some Maori out there who will attempt to claim anything and everything. They have claimed or attempted to claim parts of land, foreshore, seabed, waterways, rivers, water, the electro-magnetic spectrum, space, airspace, fisheries, and so on, and so on…

There is only one thing they seem continually averse to claiming.

Any responsibility for their share of the appalling child abuse statistics in this country.
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November 1, 2023 2:22pm
slightlyrighty

I see that Oranga-Tamariki was warned 11 months ago about the situation regarding Baby Ru, and nothing was done….

Stuff also approached Kelvin Davis for comment about the uncle’s complaint. However, the Minister for Children said it would not be appropriate for him to comment on the basis he is in the role in a caretaker capacity, while a new government is formed.

Stuff should be pointing out to Kelvin that he was the minister responsible for the entirety of this baby’s life, so it’s inappropriate to say “Not my problem” and you pass this on to the incoming minister that is going to inherit this ungodly mess.
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November 1, 2023 2:27pm
- geoff3012
  
  Kelvin’s a F…g idiot.
  
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  November 1, 2023 4:30pm
Gravelroad

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/133215639/baby-ru-death-uncle-says-he-made-a-formal-complaint-to-oranga-tamariki-almost-a-year-ago
What sort of self serving nonsense is this coming from the Oranga Tamariki boss, Mr Te Kani, about this dead child?
It’s weighing heavily on his mind, but everyone’s right to privacy the most important, says Mr Te Kani.
Just a lot of trite platitudes : “thoroughly reviewing”, “can’t go into details”, “staff feel it deeply” blah, blah.
Just trot a few phrases and do nothing.
What an embarrassment.
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November 1, 2023 2:34pm
- Ghost
  
  While blame will be placed on Oranga Tamarik it belongs with the person who killed the child and the family.
  
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  November 1, 2023 2:59pm
  - cmm
    
    OT are not blameless.
    
    OT are supposed to be providing a safety net for these children, but they are preferring a game of “don’t upset the whanau”.
    
    If family members did indeed go to the extent of making formal submissions for intervention, and they did not get it coz feelz, then OT really need a good look in the mirror to decide if they really are the best people for the job.
    
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    November 1, 2023 3:43pm
    - Ghost
      
      Let’s see, your relative is taking their baby to a drug house do you
      
      Lay a complaint and then do nothing when nothing is done about the complaint. Wait a year until the child is killed then tell the media, well I laid a complaint
      
      Or do you get involved and make sure the child is safe?
      
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      November 1, 2023 5:21pm
  - igm
    
    This is the outcome of paying/housing/feeding ferals to breed more Labour voters.
    
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    November 2, 2023 3:19am
- Countrygirl
  
  It’s fortunate that Maori are in charge of OT. If it was anyone else there would be hell to pay.
  
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  November 1, 2023 4:33pm
Northshore

“Deadly Israeli airstrike hits Gaza’s largest refugee camp.”
Hundreds of charred bodies.
Just to kill ONE Hamas leader.
This is the My Lai massacre scenario all over again: “it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”
The Israeli propaganda machine will be have to do some real double-talk to wriggle out of this.
Let us call it what it is: a war crime.
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November 1, 2023 2:47pm
- kowtow
  
  Hundreds?
  
  You know you’re simply repeating exagerated terrorist propaganda.
  
  Er , like to comment on the Supernova festival , rape , murder and hostage taking , perhaps ……
  
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  November 1, 2023 3:04pm
- sirknz
  
  Are they actually dead civilians or are they still moving like the regular ‘dead civilian’ videos that are posted daily by Hamas?
  
  I liked the hospital one where a Dr was performing CPR on a a guy who was supposedly dead, being wheeled through the corridors with onlookers while the dead guy was still holding his cell phone which was on, all filmed on a very steady camera that wasn’t bouncing anywhere.
  
  There was also the one where one of the dead kept scratching his nose and was having a jolly good time whenever they pulled the sheet back off his face.
  
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  November 1, 2023 3:52pm
- Countrygirl
  
  The latest I heard was 50 dead.
  
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  November 1, 2023 4:31pm
Ghost

What a bunch of bloody idiots

AM hosts have been left questioning the parents of a group of Napier trick-or-treaters who ran into a dairy wearing balaclavas and fake guns, causing a worker to “shat my pants”.

Nicole Mcleod was working when she heard something outside the store and saw an intermediate-aged boy before the rest of the group of seven rushed into the shop.

“They had their balaclavas on, all dressed in black with their guns and I just lost it. I shat my pants,” she told Stuff.

Article
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November 1, 2023 3:10pm
Maggie Pie

TRENDING

Thank-the-Lord for the change of government here!

British police enter a man’s home and arrest him for posting a vid to Facebook, of him criticizing migrants in his area for putting up Palestinian flags everywhere around his hood…..

WATCH

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1719509199162413334
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November 1, 2023 3:22pm
- Ghost
  
  Hate speech.
  
  We nearly went down that path
  
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  November 1, 2023 3:25pm
- cmm
  
  Be careful what you wish for…..
  
  I hope you are right, but the true colours are still to emerge.
  
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  November 1, 2023 4:25pm
Northshore

Kowtow – its on CNN.
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November 1, 2023 3:36pm
rouppe

So what’s the solution here?

We have a OT uplift controversy of 2019 where uplift of babies is systemic racism.

“It was Māori looking at Māori and we were very keen to establish at that time that you don’t need a government department to lead the way to tell you how to bring up Māori children, or children full stop, that if you mobilise the community to get the recognition that there is a job to be done, then quite clearly it should have been done under Māori leadership,” he says.

So here we are. Hoops to be jumped through, consultations with ~~whanau~~ family to be had, not to mention loads of "wrap around support".

Now it’s OT’s fault Ruthless died because they “didn’t do more”.

He believed Oranga Tamariki “failed our Baby Ru”, and did not feel like they listened to the whānau’s concerns.

I feel that baby’s death is because of the complaints about prior uplifts and the media presentation of that situation at that time.
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November 1, 2023 3:38pm
- cmm
  
  “So what’s the solution here?”
  
  Well it’s bloody obvious innut….
  
  Go back to first principles (no, NOT the Tiriti principles).
  Why does OT exist? ie. Why were they created (before they got the stupid woke name)?
  
  They were created to protect children in vulnerable situations. They were not created to protect the feelz of the whanau.
  
  Therefore that’s what they should do: focus on protecting children from dangerous situations.
  
  That will often mean taking them away from dangerous family situations regardless of whether it upsets people.
  
  So be it. Children first!
  
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  November 1, 2023 4:24pm
sirknz

Just read about a carjacking/short term kidnapping overnight in Auckland in the Herald.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/man-steals-car-at-dominion-rd-petrol-station-driving-off-with-mother-and-her-two-young-daughters-still-inside/WKBBBWVIN5GWHBN4B2AS2NANWM/

Just a few things missing from the article which is supposedly a plea for help from the public.

No mention of the direction the offender drove off.
No description of the offender which indicates it is likely a special person under the neo-principles of Te Tiriti.
No helpful identifying features of the car like a rego and colour, just a make, model, and year.

Somehow this will be National’s fault to all the usual voices though.
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November 1, 2023 3:45pm
- Maggie Pie
  
  Mt Roskill 🙁
  
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  November 1, 2023 3:52pm
  - MCōs
    
    Mt Eden as it happens
    
    4 1
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    November 1, 2023 5:10pm
    - Maggie Pie
      
      It’s not often you’re right Cossie… but you’re wrong this time.
      
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      November 1, 2023 6:44pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  No CCTV. Now I wonder why not?
  The car may not have had a WOF or Rego, heaven forbid.//
  
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  November 1, 2023 4:27pm
- JackRabbit
  
  A good reason to lock your car when you go to pay. I do, even with my partner inside. You never know what trolls live under the bridge.
  
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  November 1, 2023 4:56pm
- Inandout
  
  sir, the moral of this story is to not leave your bloody keys in the ignition when you get out, even if your family is in the car. But yes no rego or offender description, hopeless. We can only hope when Mitchell takes over the police role things will change.
  
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  November 1, 2023 5:02pm
Fisiani2

When we are in a financial hole like now and spending more than we earn it is time for radical change rather than minor tinkering. Can we significantly reduce government spending? We must.
Nice to have is not need to have.
Just because it has been there does it still need to be there.
Ask every Department to make savings of 6% and offer a bonus for spending cuts over this.
https://www.publicservice.govt.nz/system/central-government-organisations/. Do we still need all of these agencies?
if we stop Wellington cycleways and The Golden mile we would save many millions.
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November 1, 2023 4:17pm
Ghost

I’d support this with one condition, they take the Māori party with them.

Te Pāti Māori calls for US Ambassador to NZ to be expelled amid “genocide” in Gaza
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November 1, 2023 7:31pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Partner just told me,
“Do you ever get asked what it is like being ‘old people?’
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November 1, 2023 7:37pm
NZer In Exile

I’m thinking unless NZ adopts a Swiss style democracy where both sides of an issue are allowed to be thrashed out in the open, completely uncensored, warts and all, and a binding referendum follows, then NZ is doomed to slowly but surely go down the totalitarian/failed-state gurgler with the far-left ratchet phenomena.

IE Labour/Greens/(+ assorted other totalitarian shonks) launch a virtual coup like the sleazy stunts we’ve just seen over the last six years, then get booted only for the scaredy-cat “centre right” to hold the fort for a while, then, rinse and repeat with the far left again.
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November 1, 2023 7:59pm
- septic skeptic
  
  I don’t think referenda is the answer, but we certainly need open debate and a circuit breaker.
  
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  November 1, 2023 9:29pm
Ghost

Two good shows worth watching

Mark “Oz” Geist – 13 Hours Survivor Reflects on the Deadly Benghazi

Sarah Adams – CIA Targeter Exposes How Hamza bin Laden is Alive

Part 2 tomorrow
Sarah Adams – Barack Obama Visited Beyonce and Jay-Z During the Benghazi Attacks
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November 1, 2023 8:06pm

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