About
Contact
Advertise

Facebook
Twitter

January 28, 2025 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 28 January 2025

Like this:

Like Loading...

Email
Facebook
Twitter
Comment351

Uncategorized
General Debate

Comments (351)

Login to comment or vote

NeverMindTheBollocks

One of the busiest roads in Wellington, running past the front of & main access to the hospital, has one of its two lanes reserved for buses, 24/7. It’s worse than that, actually, since the road then forks into two major roads: all non bus traffic is forced into one lane. Its one of the two main roads from the Eastern suburbs to the city, and effectively they’ve halved the capacity on one of them via this bottleneck.

There may be a case for the bus lane during morning rush hour traffic, but not at other times. Hence $220k in tickets in little more than a month.

‘Director of the Greater Auckland Transport website Matt Lowrie (not sure why the journalist asked an Aucklander) said the number of tickets being issued highlighted why enforcement was needed in the first place.
“If they [cars] are travelling more than a short distance in them they are delaying buses, they are delaying bus passengers.”’

Its comments like these that infuriate us peasants, and lead to metaphorical burning brands and pitchforks.

http://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/540100/bus-lane-camera-clocks-up-220k-in-fines-in-just-over-a-month
44 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:01am
- sirknz
  
  Is he the pecker head that operates the ‘Greater
  Auckland’ X account as well? He is usually ripped apart in his comments because he is more one eyed than a Christchurch rugby fan.
  
  37 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:21am
  - RoboRob
    
    I’m not sure its possible to be more one eyed than a Christchurch rugby fan but great analogy!
    
    20 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 11:03am
- Ehlana
  
  Is the bus lane serving one or more frequent bus service routes? If so, surely the buses coming along every 10 minutes or less are enough to keep other vehicles out of the lane?
  
  13 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:35am
  - Nigel Kearney
    
    The timetable for the stop outside the hospital is here:
    
    https://www.metlink.org.nz/stop/6055
    
    There are more buses during rush hour but also lots of cars.
    
    13 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:52am
- cmm
  
  “If they [cars] are travelling more than a short distance in them they are delaying buses, they are delaying bus passengers.”’
  
  I will admit to sharing that attitude for many years.
  
  Whenever I saw a bus indicating to take off from a bus stop, I would stop and let them go first. Makes sense – a whole bus load of people’s time is worth more than mine.
  
  Then I realised that there are just one or two passengers on the bus and they’re probably non-productive people (bludgers or Gold carders). My time is worth far more than theirs. Even the tax and rates I pay to subsidise their bus trip by 90% is worth more than their time.
  
  They can bloody wait!
  
  The same applies to the people being “held up” in bus lanes. Nope, got that wrong. It is the buses and the bus lanes holding up productive people.
  
  21 2
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 1:04pm
  - Conservatarian
    
    Further to this and related to your point about non-productive passengers, each such passenger gets on the bus so early in anticipation of the trip taking a very long time.
    
    9 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 1:38pm
    - cmm
      
      Quite.
      
      If they were worried about time they’d take a taxi – or buy a friggin car!
      
      7 2
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 2:20pm
- PurplePen
  
  What he should be asking is why are so many tickets being issued, what lies behind that, not ‘we need more enforcement’ which is a bit stasi.
  
  And where’s town planning in all of this. If they were doing there job, there would be no traffic issues at all.
  
  8 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 3:31pm
Bridgenag

Supporting RFKjr
A Science-based Petition is being circulated!

https://open.substack.com/pub/criticallythinking/p/supporting-rfkjr?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
23 6
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:03am
- Benedict Yu
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  The guy is a grave menace to public health. A blight on the otherwise sound appointments of Trump.
  
  13 61
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:30am
  - Anthony Melchett
    
    Why, because he dares to question the pharmaceutical companies?
    
    Because he dares to call out Anthony fauci (who should be locked up)?
    
    We need more people like him not mindless sheep taking the potion they are prescribed.
    
    When the current regime results in excess deaths from cancer doubling, someone has to investigate it.
    
    57 6
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:23am
    - Benedict Yu
      
      Why? Because he is an anti vaxxer.
      
      2 6
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 8:02pm
  - JackRabbit
    
    Benedict my definition of public health is keeping people alive, healthy and well. You could only see RFKjr as a menace to public health if your definition of public health was population reduction.
    
    So specifics please:
    [1] What is your definition of public health?
    [2] Why is RFKjr a menace to that public health?
    
    40 7
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:27am
    - Benedict Yu
      
      RFK Jr was I pivotal to discouraging vaccination in Samoa. His actions have killed scores of children. Why do I even need to explain this?
      
      3 5
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 8:04pm
  - judith8409121
    
    The vaccine status quo is not ok – the cult of the vaccine is not going to succeed. [Mod – debate without abuse] This will only end badly for the lawyered-up big pharma vaccine industry. This scab needs lancing and the only way it can be cleaned up is by opening up the data and reviewing the injuries and facing the fact its not reasonable to continue with the belief that its ok to injure or kill with vaccines so others can be saved from illness.
    
    17 6
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 11:27am
    - Pope Punctilious II
      
      “The cult of the vaccine”? Vaccines have all but eliminated diseases like poliomyelitis that crippled millions of people until the mid 20th century. Even if the case for the Covid vaccine is debatable, rejecting vaccines in general is rejecting modernity.
      
      0 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 29, 2025 7:11pm
  - Rodney Hide
    
    Well, something is not right. Compare a photo of kids at school 50 years ago to kids now. Or a photo of people in the street or at the beach compared to now.
    
    Compare the mental health of kids today compared to 50 years ago.
    
    If Public Health was such a success we would be better now, not worse.
    
    RFKjnr is asking the questions.
    
    Trump is a God send and RFKjnr may be the best of his many great appointments.
    
    Rodney Hide
    
    54 6
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 11:50am
    - Benedict Yu
      
      No he is a stand out catastrophe in the making.
      
      2 6
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 8:05pm
  - bythesea
    
    I think Vinay Prasad MD has a pretty good run down on the pros and cons of RFK policy positions. He agrees, doesn’t mind, and disagrees with them variously
    
    https://x.com/VPrasadMDMPH/status/1884060866771050526
    
    One of Vinay’s critiques is why not compare RFK position to European position eg number of vaccines / food additives and so on
    So where the position aligns with a European perspective it cannot be considered outlandish, even if its contra the US current state.
    
    6 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 4:52pm
  - kiwimike
    
    BY
    If he gets the vaccine injured Justice, he will have done a good Job.
    
    Sad we have no one but NZSOSDRs here, who are being gaslit by MOH and our so called govt who seem to be protecting their pollie mates from last time.
    esp Jacinda and Hipkins
    
    2 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 10:35pm
Sparrow

Lest We Forget- Auschwitz-Birkenau
50 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:03am
- GazzaW
  
  John Minto needs a reminder.
  
  62 2
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:23am
- Tomtoddy
  
  I do not have an ounce of embarrassment or shame in saying I stood at Auschwitz tears running down my face. That humans could treat other humans in such a gross, inhumane and horrifying manner is incomprehensible. Yes, we do need to be reminded, Sparrow.
  
  57 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:34am
  - pdm
    
    I didn’t quite have tears TT but it was a humbling and unbelievable experience.
    
    Almost 20 years since we were there but still have clear memories of many of the things we saw.
    
    34 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:46am
  - John Loveridge
    
    I’ve had my kids read Elie Wiesel’s “Night”. What a heart-rending story.
    
    9 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 11:23am
  - NothingLeft
    
    The behaviors demonstrated at Auschwitz are utterly normal by the standards of 99% of human history. It’s everywhere you look and a fantasy to believe otherwise – we are evolved to treat competing out-group individuals brutally to optimize the survival of our own genes, generosity and altruism are bought out only by prosperity. When such behavior would best strengthen your tribe against future privation.
    
    The comfort and safety of modern times are the only significant time in history where average life expectancies have risen above 35. In all other times and places food resource limitations necessitated the death of 50%+ of the average >5 kids born per woman before they could reproduce – be it by disease, famine, or violence. Post industrial revolution humans are highly anomalous in that regard.
    
    When times are tough we are monsters to each other, as we see time and again everywhere in history and even today in the poorest parts of the world. Homo lupus homini. So if we are to prevent such horrors happening again we must be damned sure and vigilant to never allow our wonderfully safe and secure social and economic conditions to devolve to the survival-threatening depths that bring out our monstrous natures.
    
    14 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 12:25pm
    - Sparrow
      
      ” The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”
      
      8 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 2:16pm
      - NothingLeft
        
        Human behavior is, on average, driven by individual and social instincts optimized by evolution to maximally spread our genes and generally discernable via monte-carlo style game-theoretic analyses. Morality, ethics, religion, politics and economics merely capture and codify those behaviors in textual rules, but they are downstream of evolution, and we see many of them evidenced in social behaviors of other social animals.
        
        4 1
        Report
        January 28, 2025 4:11pm
      - GazzaW
        
        ‘Never again’
        
        3 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 5:40pm
    - ISeeRed
      
      Yep. Covid proved this. There were some otherwise “normal” people who were quite OK with “anti-vaxxers” getting ostracised, bullied, banned, denied healthcare, made jobless and homeless, rounded up and put in camps etc. And posted such sentiments publicly on social media under their actual names! For shame.
      
      10 2
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 2:25pm
      - kiwimike
        
        we need all the
        mandates cancelled
        people sacked reinstated
        compensation (like Trump has done for his military being brought back.
        
        14,000 got exemptions (who and why?)
        
        11,000 got sacked Who and have they been compensated.
        
        they can take it from Cindy’s and Chippies pension funds…
        
        2 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 10:40pm
  - Sir Henry Morgan
    
    When I visited Auschwitz I found myself disturbed by our guide endlessly repeating it was a death camp only for the Jewish prisoners, with the thousands of non Jewish deaths (Soviet POWs, gypsies, etc.) being somehow incidental.
    
    Apparently the first test run with the gas chambers saw them used on Soviet POWs. In another incident, Soviet POWs were hosed down in the courtyard on a freezing night and left outside to die.
    
    Yet according to our guide the place was a death camp only for Jews.
    
    3 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 4:26pm
    - Don Beckett
      
      The ‘death camps’ were in operation before the Germans broke the Warsaw pact with Soviet Russia. They were used on Jews, but also dissenting Catholic priests & other dissidents, and included the mentally disabled .
      
      7 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 5:15pm
- thirteenstars
  
  From 2023, The Zone of Interest:
  
  “Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden beside the camp.”
  
  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7160372/
  
  I’m a student of the Holocaust and this is a truly horrifying film in that it captures so much about the sociopathy of the Nazis. As Hannah Arendt said of Eichmann, a true representation of the banality of evil.
  
  The sound design in particular is impressive and terrifying.
  
  20 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 10:53am
- Paulus
  
  Liberated by the Russian Army remember.
  
  9 2
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:03am
  - Taieri
    
    Liberated by the Soviet Army.
    
    15 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 11:07am
    - Colville
      
      The same Soviet Army that slaughtered 20,000+ of the Polish leadership at Katyn Wood and piled them in mass graves circa 1940.
      
      13 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 3:13pm
      - Taieri
        
        Katyn Forest murders were NKVD (Soviet secret police) doings, regular Soviet Army was not involved. Katyn Forest was just one place where this took place, other mass killings were conducted in Miednoye (about 6000 victims), Kurapaty (about 4000 victims), Kharkov (about 2800 victims) and several other places. Several thousand of Poles missing in the USSR have not been accounted for to this day. In total, well over 1 million Poles were deported to the USSR, of which, an estimated 150000 were killed.
        
        13 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 4:35pm
- KiwiSapper
  
  Only 2…..?
  There were 23 main concentration camps,
  Arbeitsdorf Auschwitz Bergen-Belsen Buchenwald Dachau Flossenbürg Gross-Rosen Herzogenbusch Hinzer tKaiserwald Kauen Kraków-PłaszówMajdanek Mauthausen–Gusen Mittelbau-Dora Natzweiler-Struthof Neuengamme Niederhagen Ravensbrück Sachsenhausen Stutthof Vaivara Warsaw
  BUT most had “Satellite Camps. ” Including the satellite camps, the total number of Nazi concentration camps that existed at one point in time is at least a thousand………
  
  6 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 7:57pm
artemisia

Spud Motors (great name) in Masterton takes on the council after building consent was declined because not enough loos. Spud Motors incorrectly told it needed more toilets by council

Despite a maximum of four people being on the premises at any one time, the council said “future use of the building” needed to be considered and argued the correct occupant load for the floorspace was 40 people.

Even though the council argued 40 occupants they then decided, OK, 7 occupants will do because reasons, so only one extra ‘accessible’ loo required. Whew! Until Spud applied to MBIE for a determination.

Council has now been smacked hard by MBIE who mentioned the Building Code. The council will, one hopes, be taking ‘learnings’ and adding a spot of staff training. And also hopefully compensating Spud for delays, costs, and council incompetence. The Ministry for (a lot less) Regulation should be making sure this council is on its little list.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/540095/spud-motors-incorrectly-told-it-needed-more-toilets-by-council
62 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:03am
- Mod88
  
  The Ministry of (a lot less) Regulation needs to seriously look at Councils across the board Rating Regimes. Never have so many been ripped off by so few.
  
  38 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:06am
- Blog-aholic
  
  A Council paying compensation? LOL.
  
  20 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:13am
- peterwn
  
  Woolworths provides toilets in new builds/ alterations then lock the door or re-purpose the space.
  
  32 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:25am
  - OlderChas
    
    Many years back – in a military training establishment I served in – a new building was erected. Despite us pointing out that no one outside of the military personnel would use the building, and that no military personnel were using wheelchairs, a Disabled Toilet was insisted upon by Council wonks. It became one of out best storage spaces.
    
    0 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 29, 2025 8:47am
- Colville
  
  In their district plan there will be a table clearly stating toilets per floor area. I don’t understand how there can be any confusion.
  
  10 5
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:28am
  - wsk12345
    
    Most of the floor area will be for cars which don’t use toilets AFAIK.
    
    It would be dumb to have a specification of toilets per m2 without doing so by building use.
    
    26 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:40am
    - sirknz
      
      “It would be dumb to have a specification of toilets per m2 without doing so by building use.”
      
      This is a council being talked about, dumb specifications seem to be a speciality of the sector.
      
      15 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 10:41am
  - pdm
    
    What about giving cognisance to actual use Colville?
    
    Fewer customer/public toilets will be needed at a Car Sales building than a supermarket, Mitre 10 or Spotlight store.
    
    12 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:49am
    - Colville
      
      It comes down to the zoning of the land under the building. I suspect its in either a retail or commercial zone so can be used as a office or retail.
      
      I suspect the problem arose because the applicant went cheap on the application documents (builder did application rather than a planner) and didnt cover off the issue of the future possible use by offering a condition that IF the use was changed then a new Resource Consent would have to be applied for .
      
      Council (probably a first year planner) then raised the issue and the applicant got snotty and dug heels in without fixing the actual problem.
      
      I would begrudgingly support the Council on this.
      
      Also, building owner is a total retard not to future proof building by allowing for more toilets so use can be changed later but that is another issue.
      
      1 17
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 10:20am
      - kiwikidsnz
        
        “I don’t understand how there can be any confusion”
        
        Which part of “Under the Building Code, there was no requirement to consider the future or potential use of the building,…” didn’t you understand?
        
        14 1
        Report
        January 28, 2025 10:37am
      - Colville
        
        The Building Code is for how you build a building, it’s not what must be built. It won’t cover how many car parks or where the vehicle crossing goes, how much signage they are allowed, how close to the street, what ratio of office to workshop, how much glass in the frontage, or even how many car parks.
        It will tell you what spec reinforcing and what length nails to use.
        This is typical Kiwiblog. People ranting about something they know fuck all about 🤣
        
        2 11
        Report
        January 28, 2025 11:05am
    - david
      
      pdm what you say seems counterintuitive to the extent that you would expect people to spend more time deciding on a car purchase than choosing asparagus or a punnet of strawberry plants.
      
      3 1
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 11:30am
- Simon
  
  Spud Motors, a productive and useful private service. MBIE, Masterton DC, & RNZ. 3 useless govt departments.
  
  National party: Well, oh well NZ is going to become an economic powerhouse.
  
  25 3
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:02am
  - Ghost
    
    it was mbie that told the council they were wrong
    
    15 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:55am
- Steve Otto N Shore
  
  It is an automotive workshop of 197 sq meters. Twice the size of my house. With other machinery (drills, presses, lathe, Tool chests etc), office and storage and 8 vehicles it will be crammed full.
  No idea where the number of 40 people came from.
  It does not need more than one toilet, and it has a shower!
  Ridiculous council.
  
  35 2
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:10am
  - Anthony Melchett
    
    Steve Otto – Not many automotive workshops have lathes any more, or people that can use them sadly…
    
    Panic! I need to make a bracket with a spacer, get the engineer in…
    
    6 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 2:48pm
    - Steve Otto N Shore
      
      Wrong sorry. In the area I used to work oh (Rosedale North Shore) I know of 3 vehicle workshops and 2 panelbeater shops who have lathes.
      On an older vehicle it is needed to make say even a small spacer to line up an aftermarket alternator. That is of course for tradesmen who know what they are doing – and not just parts assemblers.
      
      4 1
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 4:03pm
- Ehlana
  
  Future use of the building? If it has been built as a workshop with a small office area, it probably can’t be used for anything else without an extensive rebuild. You can’t just put desks in a workshop to make it an office.
  
  So all that is actually necessary for future proofing is to say, if it were converted to an office building, then it would need extra toilets, so the space where those would most efficiently and logically go should not be made into something which permanently excludes future toilets. You don’t need to build the toilets, but you might designate that space for storage, and not put the electrical powerboard for the building in there.
  
  Kind of like the way you might build a two storey house with a storage closet in the same place on each floor which could, one day, become a lift.
  
  24 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:43am
  - Debsta
    
    Far too much sensible thinking there Ehlana, can’t have that!
    
    16 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:54am
  - Steve Otto N Shore
    
    Ehlana, the owner is the owner. The building is not leased to the business owner.
    Surely the land and building owner can build for himself and not for some future purchaser?
    
    3 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 4:06pm
    - Ehlana
      
      I don’t disagree with your principle, but apparently in this case there are Council rules that say otherwise. I’m simply trying to suggest a sensible interpretation of them.
      
      2 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 7:39pm
- slijmbal
  
  Own a small commercial property in Hamilton. Tenant is a restaurant. During fitout the tenant was told to put in a wheelchair capable toilet (thus reducing the number of available toilets) at additional cost.
  
  Pointing out that the restaurant is up a flight of stairs and thus no wheelchair access to the actual restaurant didn’t seem to make a difference to the council demands……..
  
  18 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 12:51pm
  - artemisia
    
    The Ministry for Regulation is calling for examples, slijmbal.
    
    4 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 2:38pm
Simon Ford

1973: Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir gives a poignant history lesson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q5PZIBkQck
9 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:04am
Maggy Wassilieff

Elizabeth Rata’s clear and concise presentation on the Treaty Principles Bill:

This is what makes liberal democracy remarkable. As citizens we have the same political and legal rights. As members of civil society we are free to be different. This is an enormously important point. It is the combination of rights, responsibilities and freedom within democracy’s governance and laws that makes the modern world vibrant and prosperous.

https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/post/elizabeth-rata-oral-presentation-to-the-parliamentary-justice-committee-on-the-principles-of-the-tr
62 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:04am
- Cassandra
  
  The Principles Committee hearing was predictable – two groups talking past each other. It’s plain that the Moxon/Modlik side has the ill-disguised motive of co-governance via a bicameral parliament and possible a 50/50 Upper House. The opposition to the Act Bill is just theatre to set the stage. The useful idiots as Lenin described them – Luxon, Finlayson, Asians for the Treaty and so on, are just too timid (or in the case of Finlayson preserving employment) to see the wood for the trees. Is it a partnership? Did the chiefs cede sovereignty? These are the big and unavoidable issues.
  
  58 2
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:07am
  - Observant Octagenarian
    
    Yes. Co Government is the real goal.
    
    29 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 8:36am
    - Scooter
      
      But it won’t be co governance in the end, it will be Maori or Iwi/Elites having veto over governance of NZ. They want final say and it’s happening in councils as we speak.
      
      48 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 9:39am
      - Pope Punctilious II
        
        Yes. “Co-governance” is really a euphemism for a Maori ethnostate, as iwi will have veto powers over just about everything. As it is, nobody can do research on DOC land without iwi consent, and look at what happened to Janet Dickson who objected to tikanga/treaty principles training for real estate agents.
        
        35 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 10:20am
      - Paulus
        
        How just approximately 16% of people who call them selves Maori, although there are no full Maori, can want to have an overeaching position against the 84% of others is beyond me !
        Apartheid ?
        
        15 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 1:57pm
  - pdm
    
    Outstanding presentation by Graeme Edgeler who covered several area succinctly and pointed out how ill prepared the Justice Select Committee were if either the Bill went to referendum or a if Citizens Initiated Referendum followed if the Bill was lost.
    
    He was quite clear that these contingencies should have been covered and they obviously were not.
    
    44 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 8:40am
    - wsk12345
      
      Link?
      
      6 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 9:04am
      - DimChappie
        
        Here is a link to the Vimeo site where the videos are kept. Edgeler is from the 1:40 mark on the second colourful video top of page.
        
        https://vimeo.com/showcase/10758261
        
        Also on this video: David Seymour at the start. Well worth seeing all these submissions if you have time.
        
        9 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 11:06am
    - pdm
      
      Haven’t got one and didn’t bother to look – you will need to track one down at Parliamentary website or it may appear at You tube.
      
      Or mods might oblige if they have time.
      
      9 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 9:52am
  - KH
    
    The chiefs ceded sovereignty – of this there is no doubt.
    
    55 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 8:42am
    - Cassandra
      
      You might be surprised by the number of people eg Ned Fletcher and probably his mum, who disagree with you.
      
      15 3
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 9:22am
      - Taieri
        
        You might be surprised by the number of people eg Ned Fletcher and probably his mum, who disagree with you
        —————
        
        That would imply that every NZ government since 1840, including the current one, has been illegal?
        
        15 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 11:11am
    - Colville
      
      ….the bulk of Taupo, Waikato, Tauranga and Northland didnt sign. 39 paramount Chiefs.
      
      How about them?
      
      8 8
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 9:34am
      - Swifty
        
        Rule by conquest – something completely accepted by Maori at the time, and for centuries, especially when it was them doing the conquering.
        
        38 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 9:40am
      - Paulus
        
        Then as per normal circumstances they were conquered and captured, and given their freedom and citizenship, along with all others, to live here afterwards and ever since.
        
        9 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 2:00pm
      - Grunter
        
        Of course, a number of Tribes didn’t sign the Treaty. So what happened after that becomes the key question.
        
        All of those that didn’t sign either assimilated, mostly peacefully, into the new country called New Zealand, or they were conquered in land wars – some died in those wars.
        
        In 2025, some of their ancestors now live in New Zealand and have some portion of non-Maori genes along with their Maori genes (their Ancestors got on so well with white people they married them and had kids!).
        
        So, despite not signing the Treaty in 1840, all the ancestors of those Tribes now live as citizens of New Zealand.
        
        Simple really…..(or it should be until the socialist gravy train cranks up!)
        
        8 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 2:16pm
      - Don Beckett
        
        The Tauranga chiefs signed, but they weren’t at Waitangi – they signed a few months later.
        
        5 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 2:52pm
    - cmm
      
      The chiefs ceded sovereignty – of this there is no rational doubt.
      
      Fixed that for you.
      
      38 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 9:43am
    - Ehlana
      
      Whether or not they ceded it, they have arguably lost it.
      
      It now lies in the hands of all the citizens of New Zealand and we elect representatives to make our laws and govern under them.
      
      I don’t see how you can “honour the Treaty” without returning us to heriditary chiefly rule – something we abandoned because heriditary chiefs turned out to be too likely to rule for themselves rather than their people. (For examples, see human history).
      
      28 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 9:47am
    - Nobby2
      
      I agree they ceded sovereignty. Since the signing of the treaty on 1840 until the mid 1970’s (130+ years), none of the illustrious maori leaders and maori politicians brought up the ceded / not ceded sovereignty argument. Because they recognised that the treaty signed by their ancestoral chiefs meant what it said and maori and everyone else understood what it said and meant until some pissed off, radical maori with an anti-white agenda and a huge chip on their shoulders, decided that they didn’t like it.
      
      16 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 1:45pm
    - kiwimike
      
      As a consequence all the Maori became British citizens and Maori slavery and canabilism became illegal as the chiefs intended…
      
      very simple.
      
      2 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 10:49pm
  - kowtow
    
    I wonder if the likes of Finlayson et al are “useful idiots” or shall we say interested parties given the group he represents will/do make a fortune out of infinite litigation.
    
    And running alongside the lawyers bus is the ethno nationalist locomotive . Remember how “full and final” morphed into a process and then into co governance and then to separate sovereignty .
    
    31 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 8:54am
  - Simon
    
    “These are the big and unavoidable issues”
    
    lol – just watch your “unavoidable issue” being flushed down the shitter by National.
    
    17 3
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:07am
    - Cassandra
      
      It’ll still be there. It is unavoidable and will have to be addressed sooner or later.
      
      21 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 9:41am
    - sirknz
      
      I expect it to get it caught in the pipes.
      
      6 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 10:44am
      - Phronesis
        
        That’s more or less where they found the only physical copy of the treaty isn’t it? I have books that are older than the treaty and are in excellent condition. They were looked after because they had some value. The same can’t be said of the treaty…
        
        9 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 12:23pm
      - Paulus
        
        It would be in a burst pipe if in Wellington, awaiting repair.
        
        7 1
        Report
        January 28, 2025 2:02pm
  - lastmanstanding
    
    Remember the End of Life Bill proposed by Seymour. Much opposition at first. A dear friend of mine with terminal cancer is taking advantage of it Monday 10 February.
    IMHO the Treaty Principles Bill will become law and with it a referendum on the future of the ToW.
    
    21 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:42am
  - thirteenstars
    
    Yes, the goal is an upper house which will be nothing less than a Waitangi Tribunal with veto powers over all law.
    
    16 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 11:01am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    50/60 upper parliament, oh well, sadly that’s what will happen when this government is dumped next election
    
    3 5
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 12:20pm
  - PurplePen
    
    There are, I’m assuming, highly intelligent people on both sides. It’s interesting then that they don’t come to the same conclusions. I’m not quite sure what that means. Does it mean for those intelligent people from whom we’ve heard there’s something else at play or influencing their logic, if indeed they come to their conclusions via logic.
    
    4 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 3:49pm
- kiwikidsnz
  
  “You can’t have a liberal democracy if two babies born on the same day already are determined to have preexisting grievances against each other.”
  
  Thomas Sowell
  
  53 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:08am
  - Grunter
    
    That’s a great quote!
    
    22 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:49am
- Swifty
  
  I’ve seen quite some vile personal abuse online aimed at Elizabeth Rata.
  
  It’s funny, if Rata wrote those exact same words but against some Lefty enemy she would be lauded by the Left and heralded as a freedom fighter. She would be a great lefty shining star who’s writings would be taught to our kiddies in schools.
  
  But because she writes in opposition to the left cause du jour she is a reactionary water-carrier for dark forces and worthy of the most appalling personal abuse and attack.
  
  The NZ left have no principles.
  
  And when NZ all turns to crap over this issue and we are broke with two tiers of citizenship, and tribal elite rule, with collapsed bridges and roads and assorted broken infrastructure and systems we used to take for granted, they’ll not accept any responsibility whatsoever – they’ll blame the right.
  
  “Capitalism has failed!” they’ll scream as they tear at their clothes.
  
  50 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:36am
  - Paulus
    
    Rata remains to Maori the wrong sort of Maori, albeit she is probably the only real one.
    Talks sense .
    
    10 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 2:05pm
    - Tokerau
      
      I don’t think Elizabeth Rata claims Maori whakapapa – possibly her husband does.
      
      6 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 2:52pm
- Philview
  
  I watched TVNZ News last night and noted people who had the appearance of being fairly recent immigrants condemning the Bill and New Zealand’s racist past. It was annoying but at least they did show some discussion from people for the Bill.
  
  12 2
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:28am
  - imalwaysright
    
    It’s not unknown for tvnz to interview their own employees and present them as random members of the public.
    
    12 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 1:05pm
Yvette

Not long ago, democracy seemed the inevitable endpoint of government. Now, with Donald Trump’s election the latest example of dissatisfaction, it is in crisis, writes a former prime minister

Sir Geoffrey Palmer –
What are the factors that have produced this global crisis for democracy, not long ago thought to be the final and inevitable form of government?
Here are some likely factors:

• Repeated lying and misrepresentation of the facts by people in authority
• Populist appeals to prejudice and ignorance by demagogic efforts to stir up passion and division, including the articulation of false conspiracy theories
• The sense that democracy has not provided what people want and authoritarian leaders are more likely to do so
• Appeals to racial prejudice and white supremacy
• Serious failures in public policy, neglecting to address important policy issues and chaotic decision-making processes
• Big gaps between the most well off and the least well off in a society, fracturing the sense of community and common purpose.

https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/01/27/geoffrey-palmer-democracy-falls-out-of-favour/

So which of those factors did the Ardern / Hipkins Labour Coalition not do, towards “an end of the golden democratic weather”? Yep – “I recognise it when I see it. It is what it is”

Or slightly autocratic Luxon’s blind (for us, as we do not see his reasoning) response to the Treaty Principles Bill, which intended to clarify equal democratic rights for all New Zealanders.

• Select committees normally invite public submissions on a bill. Then they hold public hearings to listen to some of those who made submissions. After hearing submissions they work through the issues raised, and decide what changes, if any, should be made to the bill.
Whereas this time, there is the obstructive constraint that it is all a waste of time.

• The House based its general definition of contempt on Erskine May, which is the authoritative treatise on parliamentary law and practice in the United Kingdom. The House may treat as a contempt:
… any act or omission which—

(a) obstructs or impedes the House in the performance of its functions, or
(b) obstructs or impedes any member or officer of the House in the discharge of the member’s or officer’s duty, or
(c) has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such a result.

This definition refers expressly to the House, members and officers; but contempt may also embrace conduct involving other persons, such as witnesses before select committees and persons who petition the House, or strangers who obstruct or impede the House in discharging its functions. An action that produces, or tends to produce, this result may constitute a contempt of Parliament.
https://www.parliament.nz/mi/visit-and-learn/how-parliament-works/parliamentary-practice-in-new-zealand/chapter-46-contempt/

• Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has promised to “spike” and “kill” the bill after public submissions are considered. which may slightly “obstruct or impede the House in discharging its functions”

So why are utterances like Luxon’s exempt from being considered Parliamentary contempt?
Even although it is his own Government’s bill?
Is Luxon actually leader of the wrong party?

_________________
Meanwhile in that other “democracy”, the final and inevitable form of government –
🇺🇸 WHAT’S DONALD GONNA DO TODAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsKDO-r5STc
23 2
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:06am
- Swifty
  
  Any respect I had for Palmer is long gone.
  
  He’s a one-eyed partisan hack.
  
  If he is so concerned about democracy where are his eviscerations of Labour 2017-23? They who perverted our public institutions with political partisanship, funded friendly news media with taxpayer money, presented us co-governance as a fair accompli (‘democracy has changed’), promoted hate speech laws to stifle public debate, brought in racially discriminatory laws and regulations, bought political support and votes with billions of borrowed public dollars, enabled political character tests in government employment, stacked our public bodies with political mates and turned those bodies into Labour policy advocacy outfits – the list just goes on and on.
  
  Where are Palmer’s denounciations of those anti-democratic actions?
  
  Nowhere.
  
  He has a massive blind spot and has no credibility as a result.
  
  36 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 10:29am
  - sirknz
    
    “Any respect I had for Palmer is long gone.”
    
    No respect for the person who is probably New Zealand’s third worst constitutional lawyer?
    
    Can’t blame you there.
    
    27 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 10:47am
    - nigel2010
      
      3rd worst!!!! how bad are the other 2
      
      10 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 12:23pm
      - sirknz
        
        That is just how bad I think he is, that he can’t even make it to the level of ‘the worst’.
        
        6 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 2:49pm
Chuck Bird

Poland is acknowledging it is 80 years since Auschwitz was liberated and the PM of Israel, Netanyahu cannot attend. This is an outrage.
34 3
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:08am
- Benedict Yu
  
  Has the polish government pledged to arrest him?
  
  12 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:35am
  - Chuck Bird
    
    I believe that is the case. They definitely have not stated that they will not arrest him. That is why Netanyahu is not there. Our PM said he would be arrested if he came to NZ.
    
    17 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 8:40am
- Matt Long
  
  Could be worse, Ireland held a Holocaust Museum Memorial and forgot it was a supposed to be a remembrance with connotations of mourning, not a celebration of their antisemitic past. (Apparently Ireland allowed no Jewish refugees at all from National Socialists.)
  Higgins used the occasion to support Hamas, and the pregnant grand daughter of a holocaust survivor was dragged away in an Nazi enactment.
  https://x.com/RachelMoiselle/status/1883593957021565081
  
  22 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:44am
  - kowtow
    
    A bit rich them holding a memorial at all , given how as you say the govt which didn’t take any refugees was so feral that they stayed out of the stoush and then went so far as to vilify and ensure any Irish servicemen who deserted the army in order to fight the fascists were put on “starvation lists” , never to be employed by the state again.
    
    Lest we forget.
    
    21 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:03am
  - cmm
    
    “(Apparently Ireland allowed no Jewish refugees at all from National Socialists.)”
    
    I assume that was during the war. That was part of them being neutral.
    
    4 8
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:45am
    - kowtow
      
      So neutral that the PM , De Valera , went to the German Ministry in Dublin ,May 1945 to officially offer condolences on the demise of one Adolf Hitler .
      
      Ireland was officially a member of the Commonwealth at that time.
      
      17 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 10:15am
    - Matt Long
      
      Switzerland was actually neutral and people could escape the Nazi by getting over the Swiss border. Ireland was more complicated, but I suspect they would have been comfortable with a German win.
      
      11 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 10:16am
      - kowtow
        
        ‘comfortable with a German win’
        
        There were a lot of factions in ireland at the time . So they played a very complicated game , even deceitful ( Devalera turned heavily against his old “comrades” in the IRA during this period ) game . Downed Allied fliers could quietly escape internment and get across the border to the North , Germans not ( but who knows , maybe that was an accident of geography) . There is no doubt that a weather station in Ireland played a crucial role in that weather forecast that informed the decision for June 6 D Day go ahead.
        
        ‘Maureen Sweeney, the Irish woman whose weather forecast changed the course of the D-Day landings has died at the age of 100.’
        
        https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czkjr34r2zzo
        
        Swiss neutrality and the air war is a whole other topic in itself.
        
        15 1
        Report
        January 28, 2025 11:34am
      - cmm
        
        A German Jew friend of mine escaped to Switzerland as a child. He said that the Swiss were not actively helpful in any way, but they turned a blind eye to most of the Jewish escape support people.
        
        I would expect the Swiss didn’t care who won the war either and had a bob each way.
        
        The sentiments might be split along language boundaries (German Swiss being more pro-German), but that is pure speculation.
        
        9 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 1:18pm
    - cmm
      
      Hey, I am not saying that Ireland should have been neutral, but they took their neutrality pretty seriously.
      
      If British or German soldiers/sailors/airmen turned up on Irish shores they were all interred for the duration of the war.
      
      There is an anti-British element in Ireland and by the “your enemy’s enemy is your friend” principle they made strange bedfellows.
      
      Irish people fought for both the Brits and the Boers in the Boer War. They fought for both in WW1 and WW2 also. No doubt many Irish were spying for Germany in WW1 and WW2 also.
      
      But, officially, they were neutral and “played the game”.
      
      9 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 1:14pm
      - kowtow
        
        cmm
        
        The Allied airmen were quietly allowed to x the border back to NI. In large numbers .
        
        Germans not.Strictly interned.
        
        DeValera took neutrality “seriously” in that he didn’t want to give Churchill an excuse to invade , something he would have done if necessary .
        
        DeValera severely interned ‘Old Ira” types who were actively on Germany’s side , to ensure the above .
        
        German spies dropped or landed into the south were hunted down and locked up for the duration.
        
        See the weather station report above re DDay .
        
        Ireland put huge “EIRE” markers on the coastline ; for the US air force as navigation markers . To aid them. Some I believe are still there and touched up.
        
        Very few Irish POWs in both WW1 and 2 signed up to the Germans , despite active efforts to recruit them. Possibly proportionately less than their mainland counterparts!
        
        Boer war ; there were so many Irish regiments fighting against the Boers that Good Queen Vic agreed to create the Irish Guards as a tribute. ( yes some republican types did go there and helped the Boers . but their numbers compared to Crown forces Irishmen was negligible.)
        
        ww1 hundreds of 000’s volunteered . There was no conscription.
        
        Same ww2 ; tens of 000’s volunteered .
        
        ‘No doubt many Irish were spying for Germany in WW1 and WW2 also.’
        
        Citation required.
        
        7 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 2:31pm
      - Don Beckett
        
        The thing about the Irish is that they love a stoush.
        Irishman seeing a couple of guys fighting: ” Is that a proivate foight, or can anyone join in? ”
        
        Chesterton had a good analysis of the Irish:
        “The Gaelic men of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
        For their wars are always happy, and their songs are always sad.”
        My grandfather came out from Cornwall in 1912 & worked in Te Kuiti with other farmworkers etc., among whom were a number of Maoris. His mother wrote to him, and one of her questions was “what are the native Maori people like?”
        My grandfather replied, “Well Mother, they are just like sunburnt Irishmen.”
        A classic & true reply. 🙂
        
        5 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 5:30pm
      - kowtow
        
        Don
        
        Can’t agree with GK on that at all.
        
        ‘For their wars are always happy,’
        
        The current state lauds the rebellion / Easter Rising of 1916 and subsequent terrorism as “the war of independence”.
        
        The first to die in Easter 1916 was a working class Dubliner , shot out of hand when he refused to surrender his cart needed for his livelihood but wanted by the murderer for a street barricade.
        
        The next murdered was an unarmed policeman on guard duty at Dublin Castle . A Catholic presumably by his surname , O’Brien.
        
        Whatever about other incidents there were also pogroms against Protestants , notably in Co Cork where large numbers of men were murdered for reasons unknown .After the truce.
        
        ‘Though revenge was widely acknowledged as the motive for these three killings, the basis for the murder of a further 10 West Cork Protestants over the course of the next three days continues to divide historians, some pointing to a sectarian agenda, others arguing that the victims were targeted for their real or perceived loyalist sympathies.’
        
        https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40857488.html
        
        Not to mention the IRA’s own terror campaign against the people of NI .
        
        Look up the tv series “Say Nothing” .
        
        All very disturbing .And nothing “happy” at all.
        
        4 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 6:27pm
- Simon
  
  Its ok, only the boomers care about Auschwitz. In 20 yrs time no one will care.
  
  7 16
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:44am
  - kowtow
    
    The way things are going in Europe there’s a demographic who will care so much so that in 20 years time Holocaust memorials will go the way of the Bamiyan Buddhas.
    
    12 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:31am
  - Quail
    
    There is quite an Irish flavour in the South island iwi.
    The O ‘ prefix is present.
    
    3 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 8:30pm
- Taieri
  
  This is an outrage
  ————–
  
  Strangely enough, under the Polish law, Netanyahu could claim Polish citizenship, since his father , Benzion Mileikowsky (later Netanyahu), was a Polish citizen born in Warsaw, Poland.
  
  15 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:15am
  - Groggy
    
    that wouldn’t stop them arresting him, he just wouldn’t need to be deported to face the charges.
    
    8 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 12:22pm
Grunter

The Nats come back after the New Year break chanting “Growth! Growth! Growth!”

And what do we get as the first big growth initiative……..?

Tourists can work on their laptops for 9 months! (As if they aren’t already doing that!)

Are these guys for real? We are in an economic crisis and all they can come up with is this!
27 10
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:09am
- Colville
  
  There is significant research that shows that when young people holiday here a lot of them move here later in life if they can or at least come back for an extended holiday when they can afford to do it properly.
  By allowing young people to work here we are basically encouraging them to shift here later…and they will be wealthy and smart.
  Its a good move and costs SFA.
  
  22 3
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:42am
  - mandk
    
    That’s why Stuart Nash was so stupid when he was Tourism Minister.
    
    He was constantly disparaging backpackers. Although he did stop short of calling them rivers of filth.
    
    22 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:47am
    - rouppe
      
      The mounds of shit left behind by those backpackers in their “self contained” Juicy rentals wasn’t welcome.
      
      2 1
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 9:51pm
  - Grunter
    
    I don’t disagree with what you’re saying – but let’s not pretend that yesterdays ‘announcement’ changed SFA.
    
    Tourists come here now and do work on their laptops and/or phones. Some numpty in Wellington can never stop that.
    
    My main point is – where are the real GROWTH initiatives…..?? More bumper sticker slogans with no substance from Luxon & Willis.
    
    17 5
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 10:31am
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      It is one small piece of the pie, they many be several ways of luring tourists here, let’s not forget the previous rotten regime blocked tourists from coming here for over a year, then they canned the every day tourist they use to do fruit picking to help our economy, thanks to Labour several tons of fruit were simply thrown on the ground
      
      8 1
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 12:58pm
- mandk
  
  (As if they aren’t already doing that!)
  
  That was my thought.
  
  Who would know if they were working?
  
  15 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:44am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    They css as not come here for 9 mi the without visas, yes some maybe here for a month doing it
    
    1 8
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 12:59pm
    - sirknz
      
      Anybody got a G to English translator? Google translate has let me down on this one.
      
      7 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 2:51pm
- Ghost
  
  Wasn’t a good look when a youtuber came here and was in the media for working while here creating videos that basically promoted nz.
  
  6 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:47am
- cmm
  
  Grunter, it is not clear that there really are any real levers to pull.
  
  I doubt that “Digital nomads” will be adding to the tax base since all their operations are in the cloud and are operating overseas.
  
  I don’t see any growth really, other than maybe a few tourism social influencers telling people to come travel NZ.
  
  10 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:51am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    If a tourist is able to come here for 9 months instead of 2 weeks surely they will be spending and paying tax gst for a start
    
    0 8
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 1:01pm
    - cmm
      
      I would expect that most digital nomads are running on a low budget. Sure they will be paying GST, but that’s not much.
      
      5 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 1:20pm
    - Southtop2
      
      Agree G – many decades ago I was involved with growing Tobacco around Motueka. There was a scheme where Fijian workers came to help harvest the crops. Good for the growers not so much for the region. We now have this repeated in a number of regions around NZ with workers from other Pacific countries. Between the Fijians (1970-80s) and tobacco growing stopped, there was an arrangement where young people, usually from Europe/US/Canada would travel, work in say Nelson apples and then go onto Queenstown in May before going back to Europe in Sept – probably to continue studying. They likely spent all they earned in shops, bars, activities etc. The current PI employees send almost all they earn home. I have no problem with the RSL scheme continuing but opening up to more foreign workers would assist the regions.
      
      5 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 2:27pm
      - Colville
        
        My Mum ran away from home with her sister in the early 50’s (when she was “maybe” 15 yrs old!) ending up in Motueka picking tobacco and fruit … Mum moved over the hill to Takaka to cook in the pub and met Dad… and as they say…the rest is history!
        
        6 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 3:30pm
    - sirknz
      
      Most of them are working out of low cost countries like Thailand, Vietnam, and The Philippines to maximise their income, paying in local prices with a western income. Why would they come here for more than a holiday to spend so much more on food, accommodation, and transport?
      
      Some of these locations have large houses or apartments, fully furnished, with utilities included, in a good part of town for $500USD a month. Why would you come to NZ where you would be lucky to pay that for a week, unfurnished in an average part of town?
      
      4 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 3:35pm
- NoFax
  
  To me this was a bit of a tidy up; maybe something put into an Omnibus Bill that clarifies a few things and isn’t controversial at all. Although the spokesman for Labour, Barbra Edmonds, did attack it in a very confused and incoherent rant. However, while I am not opposed this it does not seem like the thing to start their “Going for Growth” campaign. But we should not expect much from the government. In their minds NZ is fundamentally fine, a few tweaks here and there will right the ship.
  
  7 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 10:02am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    It’s a small slice to the pie, surely you see that
    
    0 7
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 1:02pm
    - NoFax
      
      But this is the first of their “Going for Growth” campaign. So a very small slice of the pie – but where is the big slices? Concerts? Waffle about increasing science while Universities incorporate Maori knowledge.
      
      4 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 1:14pm
- Quail
  
  You forget Taylor Swift or similar caterwauling concerts for Auckland!
  
  8 3
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 10:38am
  - David Garrett
    
    Quail: “caterwauling”…great word! (I personally have no idea if labeling the noise Ms Swift makes as caterwauling is justified)
    
    8 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 12:56pm
    - cmm
      
      Is lip-syncing still caterwauling?
      
      6 2
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 1:21pm
- Damocles11
  
  I’m surprised people cannot see what the plan is here:
  
  1/ Talk a lot about ‘going for growth’.
  2/ Announce a series of token measures aimed at ‘going for growth’.
  3/ In the meantime, inflation falls and interest rates fall and the property market picks up steam. Ramp up immigration. Continue big government spending.
  4/ When the GDP numbers lift off the back of the same old gimmicks, claim that the numbers are up because the ‘going for growth’ strategy has been a success.
  Both National and Labour have experience if running a false economy based on the property ponzi scheme / high immigration / high government spending.
  
  15 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:48am
  - Anthony Melchett
    
    I sure hope that’s what’s going to happen…
    
    How long you reckon, in time for re-election in 26?
    
    2 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 3:00pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  That’s where you are wrong, most countries need a visa, more bollocks on here, I know several people working over seas doing this, but guess what? They are NZers. Some countries won’t need a visa, but Aussies won’t bother with this, I think even an British citizen will have to stipulate if they are staying here for 9 months snd their intentions
  
  0 7
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 12:23pm
  - cmm
    
    It is not very clear what you are responding to as “wrong”, but “digital nomads” do not form local businesses and pay local income tax. They will still be tax resident elsewhere.
    
    They are even less economically active than backpackers.
    
    Backpackers will at least work in the NZ economy (eg. picking fruit or work in motels etc). Digital nomads do not. They are working on their websites and youtube videos and such and operate completely outside of the NZ economy.
    
    Sure, the digital nomads will pay some GST and spend into – but that’s it. Woop, woop – so do beneficiaries!
    
    3 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 6:08pm
NeverMindTheBollocks

Shell Lane (The Terrace) bike rack report:

At 8.25am, four bikes! A new record – just the 20 empty slots to fill.

A calm, coolish morning in the Capital, almost autumnal in fact, ideal for cycling.
41 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:27am
- greybeard
  
  Does that mean that 4 council “workers” have turned up today ?
  
  14 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 10:33am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Greenies have a van they drop bikes off to make them look good, driving diesel van of course
    
    8 3
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 12:25pm
- Apteryx
  
  Your dogged promotion of this wonderful facility is beginning to produce results. Keep it up! Think of the emissions being saved!
  
  16 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 12:13pm
- rouppe
  
  Is it possible to request 24 hours of the security footage via the LGOIA just to make sure it isn’t a hoax? 😉
  
  2 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:48pm
Benedict Yu

Excellent study on COVID vaccines. It is from 2022. It covers linked data sets in The Netherlands.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10247887/

No surprise in the findings. Those who received the COVID vaccines had much lower COVID related morality. Those who were vaccinated experienced no increased mortality from causes other than COVID.

It is that simple.
17 42
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:34am
- hookerphil
  
  I joined the down voting you group. Can not be bothered reading it – over it. I know what I believe, I know what you believe.
  Good for you, not going to change your mind, I’m not going to change mine.
  Move On.
  
  39 6
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:51am
  - Cassandra
    
    No, hooker, let’s look at evidence as it is presented. “When the facts change………….”.
    
    7 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:27am
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      HP does not usually reply. I will say it for him. The article is from 2022, no one cares a f….k.
      
      Hope my spelling is up to your standards today 😊
      
      8 3
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 12:27pm
      - Cassandra
        
        Well done, G!
        
        5 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 4:07pm
- herb1
  
  I know COVID vaccines are contentious but WOW I did not know it lowered people’s morality . That could explain why people voted Labour/ Greens
  
  20 2
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:00am
  - cmm
    
    Low blow, but I did snigger at that.
    
    I did notice more skimpy undies on our neighbour’s clothesline after she got vaxxed.
    
    15 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:53am
- Grunter
  
  Bene
  IMO – most people have made up their mind regards COVID jabs (it’s clearly not a vaccine). They either continue to take it, or they don’t.
  
  You won’t believe anything that says the jab is bad. Likewise, I won’t believe anything that declares it ‘safe & effective’.
  
  So, No – It is not that simple. Trust is not a simple mechanism to fix.
  
  35 5
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:04am
- wsk12345
  
  God how boring – another day of arguing over studies produced and paid for (albeit indirectly) by the pharmaceutical companies.
  
  After all that has been I can’t believe there is any trust in so called medical journals, 3 letter government agencies, the media, Big Pharma, etc.
  
  25 3
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:09am
- Ghost
  
  Can we just have one f’n day without this constant bullshit.
  
  We get it, one side is pro vaccine
  One side is against the covid vaccine
  
  Neither of these sides are going to budge
  
  Give us a break
  
  27 15
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:12am
  - Skippytony
    
    As I have suggested previously, please set up another forum where these folks can debate. Fuck Im over it and this debating is changing no ones minds…..
    
    16 11
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 10:08am
  - Master Mariner
    
    Look at the Bigger Picture,
    Billions squandered, Businesses and livelyhoods destroyed, Cost of living through the roof, Inflation still rampant, Violent crime , Kids not going to school, Break down of the social contract, Health systems in dissarey, Breakdown in the family unit. ( feel free to add).
    
    This is all one and the same.
    Look through the trees sometime and maybe a you will see the forest.
    All roads lead to Rome.
    
    22 3
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 10:19am
    - Ghost
      
      There is no bigger picture with the vaccine on this site it’s always the same daily beat off. One side is against the vaccine, one person is for it. That’s it. Nothing you state is ever mentioned, just repeat rinse every day after day. The vaccine kills, the vaccine saves lives, day after day after day
      
      12 10
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 10:27am
      - rouppe
        
        You’ve missed his point.
        
        Leaving aside Pfizer jab efficacy, the consequences of the covid era extend far beyond the medical.
        
        The damage to the fabric of society that the then government did is huge.
        
        5 1
        Report
        January 28, 2025 9:45pm
      - Ghost
        
        No, nothing to miss because that is rarely discussed. Just a daily beat off of the vaccine kills, the vaccine is safe it saved lives I’ve had booster number bla bla.
        
        I think most people would welcome discussing the damage the governments have done with how they acted. But no. It’s the same day after day. Today it’s BY bringing up research released over a year ago. Tomorrow it will be the same thing.
        
        The good thing about clan was he presented the facts. Sadly some here like to fabricate stories. By all means let’s get away from that and discuss the damage that the past several years did to the economies, to the trust in governments and pharmaceuticals, to the generations going through school, etc. No, tomorrow it will be the same as it’s been every day for the last few years.
        
        0 3
        Report
        January 28, 2025 10:40pm
  - Keith White
    
    There is a scroll bar…
    
    12 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 11:16am
    - Ghost
      
      Is also a time to give it a break. What do you think you are going to accomplish here day after day repeating this over and over again. Nothing, you will accomplish nothing.
      
      9 10
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 11:42am
      - wsk12345
        
        I dunno, trump is giving all the servicemen and women who were fired over not having the jab their jobs back -plus back pay.
        
        So something might happen. Just need a govt with a back bone. Oh hang on …..
        
        7 1
        Report
        January 28, 2025 2:16pm
      - Ghost
        
        Again, what do you think you will accomplish here day after day? If you want to accomplish something you would be contacting politicians, media with your evidence, not posting on a blog where you are starting to turn people off the topic because it is so overdone here, day after day.
        
        You are accomplishing nothing on this blog rehashing this over and over every day. It’s been done for several years now, and still you’ve accomplished nothing.
        
        5 7
        Report
        January 28, 2025 2:29pm
      - RightNow
        
        Yes and no…
        I think I’ve been on Kiwiblog about 17 years now. For the first decade or so I’d engage and post eagerly, and while I probably had little impact externally, it did cause me to do a lot of research to support my positions, and sometimes it caused me to even change my position.
        Now I’m mostly just lurking again because I’m tired of the same old arguments and have better things to do with my life.
        I made the effort to comment today in the hope a few more of you spend less time on blogs and more of your life out in the real world.
        
        9 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 2:32pm
      - kevn
        
        Ghost… Problem is that fresh (hidden) information is continuing to ooze out.
        Good to see it shared.
        Head in the sand doesn’t quite cut it for most.
        Scroll down.
        
        6 2
        Report
        January 28, 2025 3:01pm
      - Ghost
        
        Only problem is there is nothing new. Todays post from BY published over a year ago.
        
        2 3
        Report
        January 28, 2025 3:31pm
- Simon
  
  120 is a good sample size. Didnt make it through moderation a few years ago. But 120 is a good number to review after a few years. It anit looking too good.
  
  Covid jaxx were a cattle grade “vaccine.”
  
  16 4
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:13am
- JackRabbit
  
  Benedict, I keep reminding you that copying and pasting confirmational bias links IS NOT research.
  
  I can find dozens of actual studies from multiple countries that show the opposite, and how to “show” that the unvaccinated had greater deaths from Covid, simply by including all deaths prior to the rollout of the vaccine as “unvaccinated”.
  
  And that is NOT an opinion. It is information shared by medical professionals i.e. doctors both here and abroad.
  
  Research involves accessing source data, not cherry picked massaged summaries.
  
  I have spoken to hundreds of people in NZ, and:
  [1] No-one knows anyone that died of Covid.
  [2] Most people know multiple people that died or are suffering from the vaccine injections.
  [3] They know multiple people who were vaccinated and that suffered unduly with Covid several times.
  [4] They know multiple people who died from sudden onset of other causes.
  
  When data in real life, on the ground, is consistently contrary to the promoted media narrative, you know the media is shoveling brown smelly stuff.
  
  There are $hundreds of billions of reasons why Big Pharma will not volunteer that their products didn’t work or are killing people.
  
  As I consistently say to you, and will keep saying to you, do some actual research – copying and pasting is not research.
  
  25 10
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:42am
  - Cassandra
    
    Speak to me! A friend of mine died horribly from Covid. Early in the piece, got it in China.
    
    9 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 10:54am
    - Keith White
      
      If we are doing “Data is just lotsa anecdotes” – One of our previously well, marathon-running children is now a lifelong cardiac cripple from the mandated jab, without which could not graduate a thesis or hold a job. Now has myocarditis and heart failure. Have also seen many patients in similar positions, none of which were of an age or with comorbidities that made the jab a good trade off. Especially as Sven the staunch jab defenders now admit it was not safe, never stopped transmission, and had to be boosted every few months like no other vaccine in history ever.
      
      How do you move on when lying liars crippled your child? And are still proud of it and still lying about it.
      
      20 2
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 11:21am
      - kevn
        
        Keith… From the horses mouth… words as well.
        Give them a gong.
        https://x.com/2ETEKA/status/1883304160671732190
        
        6 1
        Report
        January 28, 2025 12:42pm
    - Miritu
      
      Are you sure your friend died ‘from’ ‘covid’, not ‘with’ ‘covid’?
      I’m sorry for your loss, but the truth is important to all of us
      
      8 3
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 1:04pm
      - JackRabbit
        
        I have friends and clients that had parents “die from Covid”. Elderly people in hospital on one way ticket to meet the grim reaper, e.g. heart failure, renal collapse, terminal cancer, etc etc and after several weeks in hospital, “tested positive for Covid” a day or two before they shuffled off this mortal coil, so were written up as a Covid death.
        
        Even the corrupt CDC, revised their covid death stats on the website in 2020, stating that only 6% of Covid deaths were actually by Covid, and the rest were “deaths with Covid”. And that revised figure was very similar to the annual flu deaths that suddenly disappeared over the pandemic.
        
        Covid deaths (flu) were increased slightly increased courtesy of the ‘gain of function’ flu variant that ‘escaped’ from the Wuhan Lab.
        
        4 2
        Report
        January 28, 2025 2:16pm
    - JackRabbit
      
      Some people did. If they got it in China they got the turbocharged ‘gain of function’ version, and probably part of the October “lab leak”, or earlier trials.
      
      But the actual Covid deaths pale into insignificance compared with the ‘induced Covid’ vaccine deaths.
      
      7 4
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 1:35pm
  - kevn
    
    Jack… With the hundreds of people you have met (and talked jab) with, how many are pleased to have undertaken the experimental jab and are happy to have endless ‘boo$ter$’?
    I have only met ‘1’ (one) who just does the boosters because…
    Not the one on KB.
    
    11 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 11:01am
  - Greenheart
    
    If you believe speaking to some people is research then you should read up on the subject.
    To repeat what others have said this subject is boring.
    Get over it.
    
    3 6
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 11:11am
    - JackRabbit
      
      It is you that needs to read up on research.
      
      Ongoing discussion of something that results in death and injuries is only boring if you have no empathy, and/or no respect for human life.
      
      Most research starts with outliers, and that is found out by ….. communication.
      
      Formal research involves talking with people to get symptoms or results. Research does not consist of groups people in white coats navel gazing or producing endless models.
      
      If you are dealing with medications that affect people, talking with people, and getting the results is the only you know the effects. It is not like the medications have self assembling nanobots that connect to your Wi-Fi and phone home and report the results by themselves.
      
      4 3
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 2:05pm
      - newview
        
        So Jack you help the world by talking to a few hundred people and then making up your own stats. Like in your opinion the actual Covid deaths pale into insignificance compared with the ‘induced Covid’ vaccine deaths. BS imo.
        
        4 4
        Report
        January 28, 2025 2:55pm
      - JackRabbit
        
        @newview
        
        [1] I don’t make up my own stats. I access source data from medical professionals.
        
        [2] However anecdotal information is critical for research and getting indicators of where things are headed. Anecdotal information obtained through communication is critical when following the scientific method.
        
        You don’t have to be a doctor or medical professional to know that if 10% of 50 vaccinated people (5 people) have vaccine injuries then it is unlikely that those 5 people are the only 5 people in the world or in NZ, or in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch that are affected.
        
        If 5 people out of 50 are affected, it warrants further investigation, and if similar stories are being relayed elsewhere then you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out something is radically wrong.
        
        Like in your opinion the actual Covid deaths pale into insignificance compared with the ‘induced Covid’ vaccine deaths. BS imo.
        
        BS imo back at you.
        
        3 4
        Report
        January 28, 2025 3:30pm
  - Taieri
    
    [1] Yes
    [2] No
    [3] No
    [4] No
    
    5 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 11:20am
  - imalwaysright
    
    I wonder if the Emergency Use Authorisation is still in force to enable sale and promotion of the jab.
    Are they still saying it is safe for 6 month old babies and pregnant women?
    
    7 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 1:45pm
- judith8409121
  
  strange how the netherlands excess mortality stays high when they state that its not?https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores-average-baseline?country=~NLD
  
  7 2
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:50am
Cassandra

Sen Hubert Humphrey re the Civil Rights Act of 1964: “If the senator can find … any language which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color, race, religion, or national origin,” Humphrey memorably vowed, “I will start eating the pages one after another, because it is not in there.”
How the world has changed. How New Zealand has changed. Rich Maori claim that all Maori (including them) are disadvantaged! Poor Europeans not so much. The evidence shows otherwise. Disadvantage is a matter which starts in the hip pocket. Get that right and everything else will fall into place. Helmut Modlik and John Tamihere looked pretty robust.
32 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:40am
- Blog-aholic
  
  Indeed the list is long of thos that claim to be maori (or mostly part thereof) who are robust….we could just start in parliament, sport, arts, business, well across the spectrum really.
  
  13 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 8:59am
Simon

That tornado across Mangawhai was amazing. No reported crime by MSM for around 36 hours. NZ was crime free for 36 hours. Need more tornados.
13 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 8:57am
MCōs

An interview with a bowling champion that’s worth a read
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/matt-berry-national-lawn-bowling-champion-from-near-qualifying-exit-to-major-upset/PXSWWZRVWBGE5JNR53M65UQJMU/
3 3
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 9:01am
Chuck Bird

Did anyone hear Hosking talk about the 4.7 million spent on whale sounds in an attempt to stop kauri die back?
25 3
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 9:16am
- sirknz
  
  No. This is the first time hearing about it today.
  
  It’s not like it hasn’t been discussed on here for the last week or so…
  
  12 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:25am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    He is trying to suggest it was National doing this, it was canned, but started under Labour
    
    7 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 1:05pm
- Yvette
  
  Chuck, it is indeed interesting that New Zealand’s ~~first nation’s~~ first tribal immigrant peoples discerned that whales earlier evolution saw the mammals as land based creatures, after presumably emerging from the primordial ooze, but Maori failed to invent the wheel, metallurgy, the grand piano or the typewriter (remember those) or anything to type, or type on.
  Obviously the whales were a mere intellectual hiccup – until now.
  
  26 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:39am
  - Chuck Bird
    
    They can believe what they like but not on the taxpayer’s money. $4.7 million.
    
    20 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 10:46am
- imalwaysright
  
  Do the recipients of the millions of dollars of public money have to keep accurate records of how the money was spent?
  It wouldn’t cost much to get an accountant to hold the money in an account and pay it out as necessary.
  
  15 2
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 1:50pm
Cassandra

Interesting development in Germany. Merz, leader of centre right CDU, has tabled a motion in Parliament to stop undocumented immigrants at the border, contrary to current German and European law. 66% approval by voters but also AfD policy so anathema to German lefties. Game changer! One CDU spokesman, asked about opposition from Brussels said “What are they going to do? Send in their tanks?”
25 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 9:20am
- GazzaW
  
  Now that would be a very novel experience – Belgian and French tanks heading EASTBOUND through the Ardennes.
  
  13 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:31am
  - Blog-aholic
    
    New Zealand needed some tanks through the Arderns………..
    
    19 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 10:14am
- kowtow
  
  Yep , while “centrist” CDU /CSU types refuse to go into govt with the Afd types they know the electorate really want change so steal their policies . But only when forced to , not out of genuine concern for the country .They know it’s their path to the feeding trough.
  
  Same in Denmark , their labour party has gone common sense on immigration. ( of course had it been a “populist” party doing the same thing the media would brand them far right. )
  
  9 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:36am
igm

Nick Mills: Was feeling sympathetic to you and your plight with IRD created by Ardern and Labour during Covid.
When you came out stating if Labour was in power you are sure you would not have been wound up, shows you are possibly commercially naive, and should not be trading.
Who the hell put you in this position?
Not National!
26 2
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 9:21am
- pdm
  
  The few times I have heard Nick Mills on The Huddle or filling in for someone he comes across as a lefty to his core.
  
  20 2
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:59am
Steve Otto N Shore

Strange things happening.
Asteroid found is not an asteroid.

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/new-asteroid-found-to-be-tesla-car-shot-into-space-in-2018/ss-AA1xX41N?
4 2
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 9:32am
- Yvette
  
  Steve, Elon Musk was driven [sick] to show a Tesla could go further than 2 wee stops, 1 masterpiece and 5 dead possums
  
  11 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 9:47am
  - Flossie
    
    Good one Yvette!!
    
    4 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 10:27am
  - Steve Otto N Shore
    
    Very good!
    
    2 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 4:08pm
- Jethrod
  
  Is this the whole truth SteveO?, or just a bit of stirring by anti-Muskies?
  
  2 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 1:10pm
  - Steve Otto N Shore
    
    The author is a freelance journalist so who knows?
    
    2 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 4:12pm
    - Jethrod
      
      Ok thanks:)
      
      1 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 4:33pm
pdm

Most useless Select Committee Member that I saw yesterday was Virginia Anderson.

The times I saw her speaking she was focused on attacking Christopher Luxon and National in her questioning.

I did not agree with Ngarewa-Packer or Ferris but they were very clear most times on what their agenda was and their motive for it.
23 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 10:02am
igm

Andersen is a communist and her ideology is to destroy NZ so-called capitalist system at all costs. Her Uncle Bill would be proud of her . . . hard working decent taxpaying Kiwis are not.
31 4
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 10:19am
- Pope Punctilious II
  
  Her great uncle Bill was a well-known communist. But what is your evidence that “Ginny” is a commie who wants to destroy the NZ capitalist system? The NZ Labour Party gave up on communism a long time ago, and clearly has no beef with Maori capitalism. Their focus now is on overthrowing the “white heteronormative patriarchy”.
  
  12 7
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 10:39am
  - Chuck Bird
    
    “The NZ Labour Party gave up on communism a long time ago”
    
    What about Comrade Ardern who used the term comrades about 15 times in 7 minutes? She was head of some socialist group at the same time she was an MP if not PM.
    
    19 3
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 11:58am
    - Pope Punctilious II
      
      Talk is cheap. Did she enact communist policies during her time in power?
      
      0 4
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 4:44pm
      - rouppe
        
        Ardern authorised police forced entry into your home without cause or a warrant during covid, if one of your neighbors anonymously accused you of having “too many people” in your house.
        
        That’s pretty Stalin-esque Communism.
        
        3 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 9:27pm
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    She has been tied to the very same Marxist union
    
    7 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 1:08pm
    - Pope Punctilious II
      
      Evidence?
      
      1 4
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 4:44pm
  - Jethrod
    
    I attended a union meeting in Kawerau in the sixties. Bill Andersen was an invitee. The meeting was not going the way the secretary wanted, lots of push back on the motion. Bill, who happened to be on the stage, and spoke to the meeting, putting forward another motion calling for a secret ballot on the original motion, which said secret ballot had previously been denied.
    Such a clever move by Bill, who had read the room, was unanimously adopted.
    The secret ballot then proceeded and the motion was passed, about 80/20 in support of the original motion, which was to strike.
    A secret ballot was usually the anathema of the pulp and paper workers union, but a cunning and sly move by the foremost union person in the country achieved what the secretary wanted.
    The Kawerau P and P union was separate from other p and p unions in NZ. The secretary was one John Murphy who was a rabid leftist.
    I didn’t support the secretary or the motion.
    
    12 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 1:26pm
- Blog-aholic
  
  Uncle Bill was and is the only NZ Unionist to ever visit the Soviet Socialist Republic…….an apple, gravity and a tree springs to mind.
  
  16 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 10:43am
  - David Garrett
    
    Blog: That’s not correct. Numerous NZ unionists visited the USSR, including an old friend of mine who was secretary of the carpenter’s union in New Plymouth in 1976. Someone said here the other day that they often went for medical treatment.
    
    14 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 10:54am
    - Swifty
      
      Ken Douglas and my old man were born six weeks apart and went through Wellington College together but had known each other for some years before that.
      
      They remained friendly their entire lives.
      
      Douglas visited the Soviet Union, and China, multiple times.
      
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Douglas
      
      12 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 11:11am
    - Blog-aholic
      
      I stand corrected, albeit mine makes a better story lol.
      
      8 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 11:19am
    - kowtow
      
      Not to mention the lionising of Rewi Alley by our left.
      
      I enjoy how Springfield which has some memorial or other to him has adopted a much more prominent ( and ugly ) donut as its icon!
      
      8 1
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 11:49am
      - Jethrod
        
        More on the Springfield donut
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield,_New_Zealand
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Doughnut
        
        4 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 1:31pm
      - Countrygirl
        
        Rewi Alley lived for a time in the early 1900s up the road from our place in Waverley. A remote valley called Moweawatea. FWIW.
        
        5 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 3:03pm
Pope Punctilious II

Is anyone else worried about how the US military will cope without their quota of disabled black Muslim lesbians?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-order-end-dei-military-reinstate-troops-who-refused-covid-vaccines-hegseth-2025-01-27/
16 3
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 10:21am
- Phronesis
  
  I’d imagine their enemies are pretty worried about it.
  
  10 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 12:37pm
- MCōs
  
  I wonder how hillbilly JD Vance managed to get into Yale Law School?
  
  0 9
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 4:38pm
  - imalwaysright
    
    Mcos,
    Are you still trying to get into Yale Lock School ….!?!
    
    6 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 4:47pm
  - All_on_Red
    
    What a dumb comment
    He earned his way into University due to his service in the Marine Corp and he was smart
    His results got him entry to Yale
    ‘In 2007, Vance left the military and used the G.I. Bill[14][15] to study political science and philosophy at Ohio State University.[16] He graduated in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude.’
    
    Wrote for Yale Law Journal too
    
    7 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 5:19pm
sungsamning

https://nypost.com/2025/01/27/business/nvidia-shares-fall-12-as-chinese-ai-startup-deepseek-triggers-panic/

Nightmare on Wall Street as tech stocks set to lose $1T over Chinese AI startup DeepSeek.
Major US tech stocks like Nvidia, Microsoft and Tesla were set for a stunning $1 trillion rout on Monday as fears over an advanced Chinese artificial intelligence model triggered hysteria from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.
Shares of Nvidia plunged nearly 13% in early trading, erasing hundreds of billions in value as investors learned about DeepSeek — a China-based startup which has made waves in the industry after launching a free, open-source large-language model in December.
DeepSeek claims to have developed the advanced model in just two months at a cost of under $6 million — and without access to Nvidia’s best computer chips. That’s a stark contrast to the billions of dollars typically spent by Western tech giants on AI research and chips. [Color me surprised if it turns out to be anything but smoke and mirrors.]
7 2
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 10:33am
- kevn
  
  sung… I wonder what Warren Buffets $tance is? Would he see opportunity?
  
  5 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:17am
  - sungsamning
    
    Maybe, however it seems to be very cheaply developed, and doesn’t like certain questions. It could just be a nine day wonder.
    
    3 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:58pm
- My-Gumboot
  
  Yeah, smoke and mirrors all right.. they won’t let TikTok in. Not much chance for DeepSeek..
  
  9 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:22am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Trump has halted the cancellation of Tic Tok
    
    2 6
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 1:10pm
    - Ghost
      
      trump has delayed it, not halted it. They have at the moment a 75 day extension
      
      https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/application-of-protecting-americans-from-foreign-adversary-controlled-applications-act-to-tiktok/
      
      8 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 1:26pm
- mogg
  
  The timing is very interesting, to coincide with Trump’s inauguration. Everything that comes out of China is laced with propaganda and outright lies.
  Have they made AI systems for $6 million to match Silicon Valley’s $ 100 B investments?
  If this is true for how long can they compete with US tech companies which have access to the very latest and rapidly evolving AI chips which China cannot produce or buy.
  
  8 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:58am
  - sungsamning
    
    Yes, I agree with your analysis. Don’t buy a ‘Rolex’ off a street vendor in Shanghai.
    
    3 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:59pm
sungsamning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-98Uivmac
Germany’s Firewall Is Completely Collapsing.
That ridiculous “firewall” will not hold anyway, because to become Chancellor, he will need the party to his right – the rest of the political landscape won’t make him Chancellor together. And not to become Chancellor no matter what isn’t an option for Frieder Merz.
5 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 10:33am
Scooter

No doubt the Octopus this brainless teen bashed is more intelligent than him. Also no doubt he will go onto abuse any kids he unfortunately brings into this world.

https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/invertebrates/why-octopus-brain-so-extraordinary#:~:text=They%20can%20complete%20puzzles%2C%20untie,their%20arms%2C%20not%20their%20head.

https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/teenage-boy-punches-kicks-live-octopus-on-bay-of-plenty-beach-in-disgusting-attack/
10 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 10:58am
- kowtow
  
  The number of animal “welfare” stories te meedia paahti assail us with these days ……..
  
  ……..babies on sluice tables ,in our “caring” , ‘be kind’ health system , not so much.
  
  Funny old world .
  
  8 3
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:43am
Jack5

A low-cost Chinese artificial intelligence company’s product has caused a dive in US technology shares, but it has also a nostalgic aspect for NZ.

Chinese upstart DeepSeek’s high performing artificial intelligence (AI) models, made cheaply and with less advanced gear, have shocked the
AI boom in American technology shares.

Nvidia, whose products are a key tool for AI developers, had risen from being a maker of personal computer video card maker to a tech giant alongside Microsoft and Apple. In Monday trading, Nvidia shares fell the equivalent of $NZ1.034 trillion (thousand billion).

The Wall Street Journal reports Zack Kass, a former executive at OpenAI, said DeepSeek’s advances despite American restrictions “underscore a broader lesson: Resource constraints often fuel creativity.”

NZ once prided itself on having “No. 8 wire” technology, meaning making do with cheaper tools or material.

Don’t hear that much these days, but that’s what seems to be what’s happening in Chinese technology.

DeepSeek AI products are being used on mobile phones. Anyone following Kiwiblog using one?
2 3
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 10:59am
- thirteenstars
  
  What happened in “Chinese technology” was the wholesale application of non-Chinese, mostly US, technology including Nvidia chips.
  
  Try asking Deep Seek about Tiananmen Square or Taiwan and you’ll get a dial tone.
  
  11 3
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:08am
  - Ghost
    
    Try asking ChatGPT about the USA election last year, it refused to answer.
    
    8 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 12:00pm
    - thirteenstars
      
      Ask ChatGPT who the president is and it gives:
      
      “The current president of the United States is Joe Biden. He was inaugurated on January 20, 2021.”
      
      The problem for AIs and the underlying LLM is they need to be trained on data. They often refuse to report data because they have not been trained on it or the data is still in flux.
      
      The refusal of Deep Seek to give certain information is directly due to its programmers refusing to make that information available, which is due to ideology and under pain of finding themselves in disfavour with the Communist regime.
      
      11 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 12:10pm
      - NoFax
        
        I just asked ChatGPT “Who is the president of the US?”. The answer I got was:
        
        “As of January 28, 2025, the President of the United States is Donald J. Trump. He was inaugurated for his second, non-consecutive term as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.”
        
        3 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 5:42pm
  - Jack5
    
    13star’s ….non-Chinese, mostly US, technology including Nvidia chips.
    
    America kicked off the current technology revolution 77 years ago when William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain, all of Bell Laboratories, invented the transistor. Then Robert Noyce, more than 60 years ago, invented the first integrated circuit chip.
    
    However, Jen-Hsun “Jensen” Huang, the founder of Nvidia, a leader in AI, is Chinese American. He spent his childhood in Taiwan and Thailand.
    
    When Huang was nine, his parents sent him to America to live with relatives.
    
    5 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 12:10pm
    - thirteenstars
      
      I’m not sure what your point is.
      
      Huang is not a Chinese-American, he is a Taiwanese-American at best but more properly he is an American citizen who has achieved all he has achieved as a result of being sent by his parents at a young age to reap the rewards of living in the United States.
      
      There is nothing Chinese about Huang’s success and Nvidia technology.
      
      9 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 12:46pm
      - Jack5
        
        Nvidia investing half a billion US dollars into an AI research laboratory in Israel …
        
        https://www.timesofisrael.com/chip-giant-nvidia-to-invest-more-than-500m-in-new-israeli-ai-research-data-lab/
        
        And this Harvard Gazette article is about 20 months old, but it’s interesting on Chinese AI research:
        
        https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/03/why-china-has-an-edge-on-artificial-intelligence/
        
        4 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 1:48pm
- Jack5
  
  America’s technology shares price dive has spread to other countries, Reuters reports.
  
  American’s technology sharemarket, Nasdaq in Monday trading fell more than 3 per cent. The total value of Nasdaq listings fell about $US1 trillion (more than $NZ1.75 trillion). Microsoft fell 2.1% and Google parent Alphabet ended down 4.2%.
  
  Reuters says nvestors sold technology stocks across the globe. In Asia, shares in the big Japanese tech investor Softbank fell 8.3%.
  
  3 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:55am
  - bennerg
    
    DeepSeek live censoring:
    
    https://x.com/rohanpaul_ai/status/1883601254318039148
    
    3 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 2:57pm
    - Jack5
      
      In editorial commentary, the Wall Street Journal says today that an economist asked DeepSeek’s product, R1, how much Donald Trump’s proposed 25 per cent tariffs will affect Canada’s GDP, and it spat back an answer close to that of a major bank’s estimate in 12 seconds. Along with the detailed steps R1 used to get to the answer.
      
      The editorial comment adds: “…. DeepSeek required far fewer chips to train than other advanced AI models and thus cost only an estimated $US5.6 million to develop. Other advanced models cost in the neighborhood of $US1 billion.”
      
      1 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 4:29pm
  - cmm
    
    Having been in the AI space on and off since the 1980s, I doubt very much there has been a massive algorithmic advance in machine learning in the last few months. What is suggested here is over an order of magnitude improvement. Claims like that need a significant back up.
    
    This is a field that really does not want to give up its fruits easily.
    
    Learning is what consumes the most energy and fancy electronics in AI (and thus costs the most).
    
    The last estimate I saw for AI electricity usage in USA was 80GW. That is approx 8 times the maximum winter power usage for the whole of NZ.
    
    1 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 29, 2025 8:40am
    - bennerg
      
      Also had work in AI since 2000 when we called it neural networks haha, the devil is in the details, and look forward to seeing what really is behind DeepSeek.
      
      Perhaps time to review the cost effectiveness of of selling all that cheap electricity to Rio Tinto down south. Cooling owuld be cheaper too 🙂
      
      0 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 29, 2025 10:39am
- bennerg
  
  DeepSeek, while appearing to require less resources (and as we know with technology that will be shortlived as others catch on) still has been trained on a “chinese approved” Language Model.
  
  The result being was that when asked about “the guy holding a shopping bag in front of tanks”, started giving a full reply about Tianamen Square etc, and then promptly deleted it all, and gave back a “I know nothing” reply worthy of Sgt Schultz.
  
  But someone found a way around the censore haha
  
  https://x.com/venturetwins/status/1883927742183530695/photo/1
  
  Sometimes the markets are just plain dumb ….
  
  4 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 2:48pm
  - NoFax
    
    In regards to DeepSeek, people are getting excited but really they are relying on the word of the CCP. Anything, and I mean anything, the comes out of China will be controlled by the CCP and most likely either be a lie or stolen IP or both. DeepSeek is a con in the same way Huawei, Temu, and Wish.com were – lies and stolen IP.
    
    6 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 5:47pm
Swifty

John Minto claims that he speaks for all New Zealanders and that all New Zealanders support him and his cause:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/jewish-groups-slam-hotline-for-reporting-israeli-soldiers-holidaying-in-new-zealand/EZPNFCSH6BHQPB66JQ7PFPHSVA/

What a bitter, twisted person he has turned out to be. His hatred for the US and his love of communism infects all his thinking. If he had his way everything would be state-run and directed from Moscow.

Or Tehran.
46 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 11:01am
- Blog-aholic
  
  Bitter and twisted has been his default position since he became aware of his sentience…..
  
  18 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:10am
- kowtow
  
  Interesting nzme running this .
  It was on The Platform the other day , first perhaps?
  
  7 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:36am
- cmm
  
  A hotline for DOXing Israeli soldiers?
  
  I suppose then some Palestinian scum will be sent to stalk them, abusing them and throwing things at them.
  
  What bullshit. And, I suspect, rather illegal.
  
  Soldiers execute policy. They don’t make policy. Hassling soldiers, of any stripe, is as pointless as abusing street cleaners because there’s litter.
  
  Anyway, how can you even tell it is an Israeli soldier on holiday? Every Israeli is a member of the military and might be deemed “a soldier”, even if they have lived in NZ for 30 years.
  
  18 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 12:03pm
  - Libertarians are right
    
    They know every Israeli is considered a soldier, that’s why they explicitly included “reservists” just so it was obvious they were talking about all Israelis.
    They can’t say “hunt down and abuse all Jews” so they say this instead.
    
    15 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 1:28pm
  - Ghost
    
    Race relations commissioner is releasing a statement on it today, it’s also been referred to the police.
    
    12 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 1:32pm
  - cmm
    
    Perhaps the Jews should be required to make themselves easy to track?
    
    Maybe immigration could hand out yellow armbands. Why mess with a successful recipe?
    
    I never officially resigned from the South African army. I am probably still, officially, a South African “reservist”. The same applies to Israelis who left Israel in the 1990s and have lived here for over 25 years.
    
    Until 1994, and maybe even still, I suppose Minto would consider me an “apartheid soldier” worthy of his DOXing programme – even though I had been forced into the military and had not been involved in an active call up since 1987.
    
    My last call up was in 1992 when I was already a NZ permanent resident. I didn’t go, so officially I was on AWOL and still am.
    
    I detest people who politically attack soldiers, retired or current, no matter their nationality or allegiance.
    For clarity – terrorists are not soldiers.
    
    15 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 2:18pm
- Tom Hunter
  
  There’s always been a creepily robotic vibe about Minto; he just picks the sound bites/protest slogans and then relentlessly repeats them, while never responding to criticism.
  
  It adds to the view that he’s basically just a communist of one shade or another as he’d have fitted in well with any of Lenin’s, Stalin’s, Mao’s, Castro’s or Pol Pot’s teams.
  
  19 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 12:53pm
  - kevn
    
    Tom… and he was a teacher apparently.
    Hornby High school, retired 2018.
    I wonder if they were sorry to see him go?
    
    12 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 2:05pm
  - peterwn
    
    George Orwell would call him a doubleplusgoodduckspeaker – “To quack like a duck (usually indicating one’s delivery of newspeak, delivered without any active thought from the speaker, sounding very much like nothing but noise, but very clearly fully in line with Party [Minto’s] ideology).”
    
    12 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 2:06pm
  - Pope Punctilious II
    
    Bob Jones dubbed Minto “The Screaming Skull”, and it seems apt.
    
    9 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 4:48pm
- Tom Hunter
  
  We should help Minto out with the following:
  
  – Provide a list of characteristics that can help identify these Jews. The Daily Stormer will know.
  
  – Organise a mass call-in to the Minto Hotline. Mossad can help here: if they can organise putting thousands of beepers into the hands of Hamas members then a mass call-in should be easy.
  
  – Provide designs for the camps where they will be held pending their transport out of the country.
  
  8 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 5:39pm
  - Tom Hunter
    
    I forgot that his Hotline staff will need uniforms as they deal with the calls, texts and emails.
    
    Luckily for him these too have already been designed.
    
    6 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 6:35pm
- NoFax
  
  Minto simply hates the West – doesn’t really matter the cause. He will side with anyone and in this case terrorists to cause harm to the West.
  
  7 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 5:48pm
  - Tom Hunter
    
    Exactly. It didn’t become clear until the 1990’s after his meeting with Mandela but he never gave a shit about South African Blacks. They were a means to an end.
    
    The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.
    
    8 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 6:12pm
- Tom Hunter
  
  Admittedly this could just be his attempt at generating a Streisand effect for his protest?
  
  Cause outrage, maybe get it into the news. Perhaps get the government getting into the story. Then, international outrage.
  
  Of course in this case it might not work, given how many jew-haters globally will cheer this effort to the rafters.
  
  6 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 6:33pm
judith8409121

Yet another bill being introduced that has ancestor land rights deep at its heart – this rot will never end and is not ending with National any time soon
https://www.nzcpr.com/doc-promotes-ancestral-privilege/
12 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 11:30am
- kiwimike
  
  National are racist if they weren’t we’d not have Co-Governance.
  
  0 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:26pm
Ghost

Maybe the parents should teach the children they can’t always get what they want

A woman reportedly plans to sue an airline and a fellow traveller who filmed her refusing to change seats with a crying toddler.

Brazilian bank worker Jeniffer Castro was filmed on a GOL Airlines flight from Rio de Janeiro to Belo Horizonte, Brazil on December 4, the Sun reported.

Article
6 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 11:54am
- Ehlana
  
  “I even asked if she has some kind of syndrome or something. If someone has a problem, some disability, we understand,” said the mother.
  
  Sitting in your assigned seat on an aircraft is what you are supposed to do as a passenger. How is it the mother doesn’t understand this?
  
  11 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 12:24pm
  - Paulus
    
    I was once asked to release my seat on an aircraft (Continental, I believe) on early morning sector Auckland Melbourne, to a young woman, with babe in carry on, on the flight starting in Israel.
    What a journey however, via London I believe.
    She had moved to my reserved seat before I got on and would not move.
    Crew told her to return to her seat as it was an illegal move. No way was she going to move.
    As she was highly distraught with baby, being me, I moved, but sadly down the back, as only single sector.
    Upon reflection taking such a flight in those days would have been trying, could be to say, the least distressful.
    I would believe the airlines of today would be more thoughtful.
    
    6 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 3:46pm
    - kiwimike
      
      Coming from RSA to NZ we were asked to move by Singapore Airlines with our 2 yr old son.
      we had a bassinet seat in the front row.
      
      they wanted to let a Chinese couple into our seats.
      it became apparent that the person doing it was from Ground staff not cabin staff but he was senior.
      
      we said no. I think I said fk off to his face after he wouldn’t listen for the nth time..
      I asked for his name and staff no and we complained to both the onboard burser and Singapore Air
      
      Singapore Air swapped us to Business class for the leg to NZ.
      don’t know what happened to him.
      
      the sight of our 2 yr old asleep in my wife’s arms on the big business seat was a joy.
      
      1 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 11:32pm
infused

I must say, I’m getting a little tired of this National government.

Are we really back to just letting in immigrants and asset sales to pump the books?

Come on man.

This country needs some real leadership.
21 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 11:56am
- Blog-aholic
  
  Sadly is is pretty played out play book…..
  It’s like going to the same movie night after night and expecting it to end differently.
  
  11 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 12:32pm
- NoFax
  
  Yip that’s the plan – 100’s of thousands NZers leave and even more Chinese, Indians, and Filipinos to replace those that leave. Rember, it is all about “NZ Inc” and not protecting the interest of New Zealanders – to those running our countries we are just “interchangeable labour units”.
  
  15 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 1:17pm
  - Steve Otto N Shore
    
    So all of the productive leave New Zealand, and the Govt can Tax all of those on a “benefit”
    Yep, that will work just fine.
    
    4 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 6:21pm
- BananaLlama
  
  Pretty much, may as well get on board or get run over by it.
  
  3 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 4:01pm
- Pope Punctilious II
  
  John Key’s “rockstar” economy 2.0!
  
  3 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 4:50pm
- kiwimike
  
  you won’t get it from Luxon, I think he is substandard, which doesn’t say a lot for the rest of the caucus…
  
  0 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 11:33pm
cmm

It is amazing how much energy is wasted arguing about inconsequential stuff like whether Covid started in a lab or how the LA fire started.

There will be pandemics. There will be more fires. Don’t try to get fixated on how they were started because they will happen again.

Rather focus on how to manage them. It is a fiction that you can stop pandemics or LA fires or financial cycles or whatever.

When the next pandemic comes along I rather think most people will be extremely un-trusting of anything that any government “leader” has to say. Fool me once etc.

I think it will be much harder to get compliance because people have now seen the movie and seen how it ends.

Government people seem to think they can lie to us – for our own good of course because we can’t handle the truth. This is a very poor policy because it destroys trust and has a splatter effect.

For example, trust in ALL vaccines (even those that most people should be having) has gone down.
13 3
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 12:29pm
- Phronesis
  
  Don’t worry about (or even understand) the underlying problems, just manage the consequences better? You sound like Luxon!
  
  5 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 12:43pm
  - cmm
    
    No, it is fine to understand the underlying problems, but starting a fire is not the underlying problem in LA.
    
    There are literally multiple fires in LA every single day. Two weeks before the Big One, there was a huge fire within 200 metres of Mel Gibson’s house and he thought they might have to evacuate then.
    
    Therefore it is ridiculous to think you can prevent fires from starting. It really doesn’t matter how one starts, because there are so many ways they start. All you can prevent is fires getting out of hand – by controlling the brush etc.
    
    The situation with Covid is analogous. I think it is beyond ridiculous to think the virus got into the population by any mechanism other than a lab leak. But so what? Whether it got out via a lab leak or by natural means the virus got going and we ended up with a pandemic. We’ve had many pandemics in the past without lab leaks and we will have more. The Spanish Flu (far more deadly than Covid) was not from a lab leak.
    
    Again, what matters is the mitigation. How to deal with it. The mechanisms of lying to people and draconian policies do not work and are even less likely to work next time.
    
    It’s a bit like airline safety. You don’t try to prevent having component failures. You spend more time focusing on putting procedures in place so that faulty parts are found and replaced and on training the pilots to recover from something going wrong (eg. hundreds of hours in simulators).
    
    5 2
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 2:38pm
Maggy Wassilieff

Public Service Commission report on protection of personal information will be released on Monday 3 February

https://www.publicservice.govt.nz/news/inquiry-into-protection-of-personal-information-update
9 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 12:33pm
G the giant from Dunedin

1.11 PM and no mention of Nats openly discussing asset sales at the next election. Such a leftie same as Labour thought. Hahahahahahaha
4 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 1:13pm
- fightingtemeraire
  
  TV NZ, RNZ, Maori TV and NZ Rail for a start.
  
  5 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 1:29pm
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    Who the hell were of buy them
    
    1 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 5:09pm
    - AitchW
      
      Asset strippers?
      
      0 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 5:40pm
Miritu

Non-US innovator, Roger Ver (“Bitcoin Jesus”) is facing the full force of US lawfare and life in prison because he threatens the fiat monetary system and those that control it
A must-watch 20 minute documentary:
https://rumble.com/v6dzqry-bitcoin-jesus-roger-ver-documentary-a-brief-summary-of-the-lawfare.html

Trump has pardoned Ross Ulbricht. I’m hopeful that Roger Ver will be pardoned too.
Please sign the petition:
https://www.freerogernow.org/
1 4
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 1:13pm
- SoloView
  
  Is Roger Ver “facing the full force of US lawfare” because he “threatens the fiat monetary system” or is he being prosecuted for evading taxes on money made through the bitcoin?
  
  https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/early-bitcoin-investor-known-bitcoin-jesus-indicted-allegedly-committing-tax-fraud-and
  
  4 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 2:11pm
G the giant from Dunedin

Hmm, looks like the noose around TPM’s corruption is tightening, note it says the findings on the inquiry will be released on Monday, yes it has been sent on to other agencies for deeper investigation I suggest the police.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360561595/inquiry-marae-data-use-raises-concerns-requiring-investigation
9 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 1:23pm
- AitchW
  
  Cue the howls of racism and colonial oppression.
  As predictable as the rising of the sun.
  
  5 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 5:39pm
Chuck Bird

This is 80 minutes long but is worth watching. Many sceptical climate scientists show there is money to be made with alarmism.

Climate: The Movie

The film that lifts the lid on the climate alarm, and the dark forces behind the climate consensus.

Produced by Tom Nelson. Written and directed by Martin Durkin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDwCUAueLUU
8 2
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 1:47pm
kevn

Chuck… Say goodbye to the hydrogen option as well.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/01/27/miracle-of-green-hydrogen-becomes-fading-mirage/
8 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 2:04pm
- cmm
  
  To anyone with the most basic understanding of energy, chemistry and physics it is obvious that the “hydrogen economy” stuff is bullshit.
  
  With a PhD in wimminz studies, Dr Megan Woods was not equipped to understand that hydrogen is never going to power Aotearoa’s pie warmers.
  
  16 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 2:42pm
  - JackRabbit
    
    Well said.
    
    Anyone with said understanding would know, that at very best, that hydrogen is just a store of energy, and requires an energy source to create said hydrogen in the first place.
    
    Unfortunately, many people don’t understand science, and are gullible enough to believe most marketing hype.
    
    She also believed that Lake Onslow would solve our electricity production crisis.
    
    7 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 3:45pm
- NothingLeft
  
  There’s a place for ‘green hydrogen’ in future, with cheapest electricity now being 3rd world desert PV (~NZD $0.03/kWh), but it is sited a long way from valuable OECD wholesale electricity markets where that power frequently sells for $0.15-0.20/kWh. Or Aviation where kerosene produces engine shaft power for about $0.22/kWh.
  
  That presents an obvious huge opportunity for arbitrage, even if round trip power-hydrogen-power efficiencies are only 35% and Green electrolysis + liquefaction capital plant adds ~ $.10/kWh for end use power.
  
  That’s also close to competitive with fossil fuels for off road (including agriculture and coastal boats) given lower efficiencies of IC engines (25-45%) vs 55-60% for PEM fuel cells.
  
  Long term liquid hydrogen is a better aviation fuel than kerosene for long range intercontinental flight as it is ~1/3 the mass for same energy. Eg could make a scaled up Concorde that can travel NZ-UK non-stop.
  
  And with scaling + learning curves electrolysis is expected to get much cheaper on a capital basis as well as more efficient.
  
  1 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 4:34pm
  - Handyman
    
    The advantage of hydrogen is that it is storable to be used on demand. Recently, the wholesale electricity price across northern Europe was NZD 2.00 kWh because there was no on-demand generation.
    
    The disadvantage of hydrogen is that its small molecules pass through metal of pipes, making them brittle and so making hydrogen reticulation impossible.
    
    0 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 5:09pm
    - AitchW
      
      Not sure that it’s impossible, the lines and cylinders can be lined to prevent embrittlement and loss. Not sure what the lining is, possibly Teflon.
      
      0 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 5:37pm
kevn

Some Californians determined to go down… and out.
https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/world/californians-collecting-signatures-for-secession-from-the-us/
5 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 3:03pm
- JackRabbit
  
  Calexit – before or after the Govt bails out California from the fires?
  
  2 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 3:48pm
Sparrow

Would recommend that NZ WW11 vetrans don’t read the January edition of the BBC History magazine. It’s another beatup of General Freyberg about the battle of Monte Cassino. There was a similar beat up several years ago from memory. I know the General was very respected by his troops. I find it interesting that the British historian was born 26 years after the battle. Presumably another
revisionist historian
12 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 3:15pm
- cmm
  
  That sort of analysis tend to ignore the fact that what we can see now looking back in time is different to what information was available at the time.
  
  Generals, and other decision makers (eg. pilots) are often castigated for making the “wrong decision”, when they actually made the best decision (ie the “right decision”) – even though it was the “unlucky decision”.
  
  The “right” decision does not become the wrong decision just because of luck
  
  Freyberg seems to have been a popular general and I would argue a good general, for taking care of his troops and for being an NZ general rather than the less trusted Pom generals who seemed to have a reputation – deserved or not does not really matter – of using colonial troops as cannon fodder.
  
  I am not very familiar with Monte Cassino, but it seems to me that a call had to be made as to whether or not to put troop lives ahead of preserving an historic building. Generals do not get to call time-out on the war and start up 6 month investigation panels. They have to work with whatever info they have available. I know which way I’d decide on this: It’s a war, the mission is to win the war. Winning the war needs soldiers. The mission is not to keep a monastery which is potential cover for German troops.
  
  12 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 4:04pm
- Jack5
  
  The Monte Cassino was about 81 years ago.
  Are any NZ veterans of it still alive?
  
  5 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 4:19pm
- AitchW
  
  Probably another upper class twit who has no idea which of the colonies New Zealand is. He is most likely equally convinced that no colonial could possibly command an army.
  
  5 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 5:12pm
  - kowtow
    
    AitchW
    
    I think you’ll find the “upper class twit” has a much greater appreciation of the colonies , the military , of history etc than some cough cough lefty , self loathing , arrivist , parvenu socialist drop kick.
    
    2 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 6:58pm
- kowtow
  
  The BBC ?
  
  They spend nearly all their time tearing away at the very fabric of British history ,society, traditions etc
  
  I wouldn’t give it another thought .
  
  7 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 5:25pm
cmm

Earlier this afternoon I was speaking to an Israeli and an Isreali-sympathetic person and I heard two very alarming stories.

Yesterday there was a Holocaust Memorial event observed in many locations around the world. Unlike previous years, this year there was huge secrecy surrounding the place and location due to the threats of attack. Attendees had to sign up and were screened to make sure they were not trouble causers. The final location was only told to people an hour or two before the actual event.

Yup, even in little old Christchurch.

A few days back an Israeli backpacker was refused accommodation in Christchurch when he presented his passport. He was then “reported” to someone and hounded. He found support and accommodation but I won’t say where or with whom.

That this is happening is bad enough, but there are always fuckwits in society so we should expect, but not tolerate, a few crazies.

But a reasonably large % of people are OK with this is much worse and those on the fence are even higher. This is where the bigger problem lies.
19 2
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 3:27pm
- Ghost
  
  https://tikatangata.org.nz/news/promotion-of-potentially-harmful-hotline-must-end-chief-human-rights-commissioner
  
  9 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 3:51pm
  - AitchW
    
    Sadly Minto and his equally bitter and unhinged followers will, in their own special way, see this as some sort of validation of their despicable hotline.
    They would love to be ordered by the court to close down it down because they see themselves as eternal victims.
    
    8 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 5:07pm
  - cmm
    
    Well that’s pretty useless. I can’t see Minto’s Mob quivering in their boots because HRC said something.
    
    Unless it is actually illegal and the cops make some arrests this will continue.
    
    That they were so brazen about it shows that Minto’s Mob believe they are above the law and there will not be any repercussions.
    
    On this, I think Minto is right. He’s not going to see the inside of a jail cell over this.
    
    5 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 6:17pm
- AitchW
  
  Name and shame the accomodation provider. Let’s see how they like it.
  I despise these keffiyeh wearing morons.
  
  13 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 5:09pm
  - kowtow
    
    Too right.
    
    Chris Lynch should get onto this .
    
    Furthermore that ( banned noun) Minto was on ZB , Ryan Bridge . Encouraging hostelries to “report’ them.
    
    Now imho that is incitement to commit some offence against privacy ( or other) laws .
    
    He also very cheekily said ” Israelis” look like any other European .
    
    OK , what about the 20% Arab Israeli citizens ( I know they’re not generally army) but they are Israeli .
    
    The Druze .They serve , bravely in the IDF.
    
    Then the millions of descendants of Jews expelled or escaped from the countries ahem of the region. They actually look like Arabs or Ethiopians .
    
    But of course that p o s is implying the Jews are “European colonists ” and of course that delegitimises their presence there .
    
    Give Ryan his due , he cut the interview early , finding it all too much!
    
    8 1
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 6:12pm
Ghost

Hmmmm

YouTube

Well, Elon wasn’t too far off…….
0 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 3:49pm
Chuck Bird

Just 2 minutes

Mike’s Minute: Trump is fantastic. Nuts, but fantastically nuts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtryC4DW1uQ
5 3
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 3:55pm
- Steve Otto N Shore
  
  But but but what about Trump’s lies the left say.
  Can we have just one example please?
  
  4 2
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 4:18pm
  - gorse
    
    Will stop the Ukraine invasion in 24 hours, now 100 days. Pretty big lie.
    
    5 5
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 5:35pm
    - kowtow
      
      How’s about all the pollies taxing us to oblivion to ‘stop” the seas rising and keeping the temps down.
      
      That’s bigly bullshit , and a very long list.
      
      5 1
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 6:01pm
    - Ghost
      
      Remind us what the previous president did to bring about peace in the area? Apart from massively funding the war while America was going to shit
      
      6 0
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 6:08pm
    - All_on_Red
      
      “now 100 days”
      Umm he was inaugurated just few days ago
      Now you are telling lies
      LOL
      BTW- I see Putin is interested in talking
      Thats better than Biden achieved.
      
      7 1
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 6:21pm
      - kevn
        
        All on… Plus zed is keen to bail out. His money box is full. So, Putin is up for it to stop, finale must happen and will.
        
        4 0
        Report
        January 28, 2025 7:24pm
    - Steve Otto N Shore
      
      24 hours from when?
      
      0 1
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 6:28pm
      - MCōs
        
        24 hours from Tulsa
        
        1 1
        Report
        January 28, 2025 6:33pm
  - Groggy
    
    Off the top of my head from this week: America Split the Atom. Admittedly more a complete lack of understanding of science than a lie, I assume he is confusing building the atomic bomb with splitting the atom, but it ain’t true.
    
    1 6
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 5:53pm
    - All_on_Red
      
      The US did split the atom.
      Trump never said they were first.
      Is that all you got?
      Sad
      
      11 1
      Log in to Reply
      Report
      January 28, 2025 6:19pm
- AitchW
  
  Heard that this morning, loved it! Heads would have exploded all over the left!
  
  5 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 5:04pm
Jethrod

All on in little old One-hunga
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360562434/police-cars-swarm-auckland-suburb
4 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 4:48pm
Jack5

Roads are reverting from bitumen to gravel in Southland while Auckland gets more than twice as much Government transport funding as the whole South Island.

Obviously regional political parties are a possible development under MMP fragmentation.

Perhaps that’s why PM Luxon created the role of “Minister for the South Island” (outside Cabinet) for James Meager, National MP for Rangitata, who is also Minister for Hunting and Fishing and for Youth.

Heading off a “South Island Party”?

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/540168/will-sealed-roads-become-a-luxury-in-the-south

And…

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/526958/south-island-missing-out-on-fair-share-of-transport-funding-commentators-say

And …

https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/refreshed-team-drive-economic-growth-2025
3 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 5:10pm
- Ghost
  
  Thanks labour. We had a state highway to be resealed in 2018. National had put the money aside for it while still in government. Asked a Fulton hogan manager what happened, labour took the funding away. Now they are starting to do it.
  
  6 0
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 5:55pm
MCōs

Anti semitism is on the rise once again in Germany and these guys don’t like it
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFLDKSUJ6ER/?igsh=MTRoaHJ4bzA5bDBjag==
1 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 5:55pm
Jethrod

Just seen that little a…seh…le, John Minto, on TV3 NEWS.
HE is against Israeli soldiers coming to NZ for holidays after the war with Hamas and is running a campaign asking people to do them in, and then they will be in touch with the visitors to explain to them why they are not welcome.
Winston Peter’s was on there saying it’s wrong and illegal and then denigrated him very nicely.
He is just a very not nice person and has been for the last FIVE DECADES.
11 1
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 6:09pm
- kowtow
  
  What’s peters doing , has he passed it onto the Minister of Police .
  
  btw What’s Minto saying about the SA police these days . Why isn’t he tracking them down , the amount of unlawful killing and corruption amongst them!
  
  8 1
  Log in to Reply
  Report
  January 28, 2025 6:34pm
  - Jethrod
    
    Peter’s was talking from his position of Foreign affairs .
    
    1 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 9:35pm
  - Ghost
    
    Police already have complaints.
    
    0 0
    Log in to Reply
    Report
    January 28, 2025 10:28pm
greybeard

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360556997/why-auckland-council-still-consenting-hundreds-new-homes-flood-zones
The real reason for the huge number of approved consents is the money going into the Council’s coffers.
7 0
Log in to Reply
Report
January 28, 2025 7:32pm

Add a Comment Cancel reply

Login to comment or vote

« Guest Post: Was the tobacco tax change done with industry knowledge?

Greens use council logos for fundraiser »

Donations

You can now donate to Kiwiblog

Exclusive content from DPF on Patreon

Become a Patron!

Never miss a post

Email Address

Join 37.4K other subscribers

Highlights

Health Target 5 – elective treatments
Health Target 4 – Specialist appointments
Health Target 3 – Emergency Dept Waiting Times
Health Target 2 – Immunisations

Links

Open mike 18/03/2025
The Standard
Is free trade with India actually a good idea? What we should be focused on instead
The Daily Blog
"Capital poor"
No Right Turn
John Bolton's Advice for Winston Peters
Not PC
EPA questions 31 major energy regulations
Utopia
Commentators are bemused by proposed US ban on travellers from Bhutan – but is exposure to happiness Trump’s concern?
Point of Order
A Return to a US Gilded Age?
Kiwipolitico
Word of the day
Hompaddock
Fully Approved South African Racism
No Minister
It’s time to stop the act, drag queens
Bob McCoskrie's McBlog
Eliminating Woke
NZCPR
Denominators
Stats Chat
THE WAY WE ARE
No Punches Pulled (Bob Jones)
On the way ahead
Croaking Cassandra
Maybe allow competition?
Offsetting Behaviour
Tory Whanau may have to sell Wellington mayoralty to make ends meet
The Civilian
The Accidental Engagement
Imperator Fish
Legal Beagle: Election '23: The Special Votes
Public Address
Making this movie might have been a mistake
Liam Hehir
Why I am retiring from political blogging
Kiwi FireWalker
Angie Warren-Clark: Meet the Newbies
Dan Moskovitz

[email protected]

PO Box 12270, Thorndon, Wellington 6144

Facebook
Twitter
FourSquare
Instagram
LinkedIn
Google+

Archives
Disclosure Statement
Editorial Policy
Privacy Policy
Complaints Policy
Comments Policy

Design by cre8d

%d

Share this:

Like this: