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January 29, 2025 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 29 January 2025

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NeverMindTheBollocks

Why bureaucrats shouldn’t pretend to be entrepreneurs. Yet another failed punt at Wellington’s new convention centre. Will the exhibition’s commissioning manager be sacked? Will they what!

WCC are refusing to release the numbers, citing commercial sensitivity. Horseshit! This is ratepayers’ money here. And, I’m interested to know what level of overhead was assigned to the exhibition. It’s easy to make the numbers look better (less worse!) if indirect costs are ignored.

http://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/540213/dr-who-exhibition-joins-list-of-loss-makers-at-180m-takina-convention-centre
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January 29, 2025 8:00am
- thirteenstars
  
  “Why bureaucrats shouldn’t pretend to be entrepreneurs.”
  
  Oh, but they do. All over this country, for twenty years, since local government powers were expanded greatly, they’ve been building little empires with public money.
  
  From waste management to property acquisition, from entertainment complexes to commercial developments masquerading as swimming pools, shiny new projects have been built while roads, parks and basic infrastructure have been neglected, and at the same time the debt and rates have risen, risen, risen.
  
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  January 29, 2025 10:41am
- cmm
  
  It’s all part of governments of all stripes having the Messiah Complex – they can go into any area and “fix” it or “improve” it.
  
  Generally speaking, government dabbling breaks more than it fixes.
  
  Government (SOEs etc) competition with the private sector is particularly bad. The government draws on near infinite reserves and has zero risk which tilt the playing field in their benefit and this makes the market less attractive for private investment.
  
  We see this everywhere – especially in public transport, provision of convention centre facilities, housing and such.
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:37pm
  - Paulus
    
    My rellies in the Wellington Public Service, when asked whether they would consider moving to the Private Sector, screamed with laughter,
    No b. likely, as they are, it is believed, 24% higher paid than the Private sector, and they have much more freedom.
    
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    January 30, 2025 11:13am
- GJM
  
  I was at a conference there while it was on. Looked pretty dead for the 3 days I was there. It was also pretty expensive to get in and so were the souveneirs.
  My wife went to it to fill in some time. It didn’t take long to get around.
  
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  January 29, 2025 2:43pm
- coge
  
  From the same outfit that brought you Sesqui.
  
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  January 29, 2025 3:45pm
  - AitchW
    
    Dr Who appeals to a relatively small number of people, probably even fewer now that it streams on Disney rather than free to air. Who on earth thought that it could sustain a 5 month run in one of our smaller cities?
    Utter madness.
    
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    January 29, 2025 5:34pm
Benedict Yu

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
Yesterday I commented that RFK Jr is a catastrophic appointment to the Trump administration.

This recent article in the Lancet is a timely reminder of the danger he poses.

“A stark example of the devastating impact of vaccine misinformation is Samoa’s 2019 measles outbreak. In this island nation of 200 000, more than 5700 people were infected and 83 people died, most of whom were young children. Samoa’s Ministry of Health cited Kennedy’s visit and his rhetoric as exacerbating vaccine hesitancy at a crucial moment. Kennedy’s non-profit, Children’s Health Defense, contributed to this atmosphere of mistrust just months before the outbreak. Samoa’s experience underscores how even one prominent anti-vaccine figure can ignite a public health crisis.”

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02603-5/fulltext

Anti vaxxers are a menace. All of them. Putting one in charge of United States health policy is a disaster.
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January 29, 2025 8:01am
- igm
  
  Pro-vaxxers will change their minds when they, or one of their family, have a clot as the result of the filthy vaccine.
  Every day there are more decent and honest doctors, specialsts, etc., releasing information as to the danger of the Pfizer poison.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:07am
  - Don Beckett
    
    The Lancet ???
    If I remember correctly, this is a left wing medical rag that promotes the “Jacinda” type ideology, so I would take it with a large grain of sodium chloride.
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:30am
- Bridgenag
  
  Read the comments about the marvelous Lancet
  Links to Wuhan etc
  
  Why a pardon for Anthony Fauci?
  Full presidential preemptive pardon for Anthony Fauci by Joe Biden – what is it for and why does it go back to 2014?
  
  https://open.substack.com/pub/freedomresearch/p/why-a-pardon-for-anthony-fauci?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:16am
  - Colville
    
    What about that whataboutism? !
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:31am
    - sirknz
      
      What about it?
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:20pm
  - imalwaysright
    
    Faucci’s absolution should go back to 1987 when he was instrumental in denying permission for a cheap and effective antibiotic to be used to treat sufferers of AIDS who were dying of pneumonia.
    Instead they had to use the very expensive AZT.
    Sound familiar?
    Thousands died needlessly, but it was financially profitable.
    Evil bastards.
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:18am
    - cmm
      
      “Thousands died needlessly”
      
      I think it is more likely that “Thousands needlessly died painfully”
      
      If you’ve got AIDS and pneumonia it is unlikely you are going to recover from that, but at least you don’t need to die in needless pain.
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:41pm
  - Master Mariner
    
    “what is it for and why does it go back to 2014?”
    
    My understanding this was when it was first “outsourced” after Obama banned Gain of Function.
    
    NIH was used as a cover for the US Defense Department under the Guise of Health explicitly for Biological Warfare.
    
    Another interesting Fact is this was all known by both Australia’s and US Government for the best part of 5 years. 2/3 into below clip.
    
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJGQriBNbaY
    
    ‘Much more’ information on the origins of COVID-19 to potentially ‘come out’
    
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    January 29, 2025 11:12am
- kowtow
  
  Not all vaccines are equal.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:18am
  - Don Beckett
    
    Some vaccines are proper vaccines.
    Other “vaccines” that are called vaccines (dependent on the changing of the meaning of the word ‘vaccines’) are not vaccines in the true sense of the word.
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:33am
    - Steve Otto N Shore
      
      I am convince some covid vaxes are just saline.
      Is Ms Safe and Effective up to date with her boosters?
      
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      January 29, 2025 1:26pm
- Bridgenag
  
  Making Each of Us Healthy Again
  January’s Open Thread
  
  He writes long posts but there is very useful information for the critical thinkers
  
  ”Significant opposition to RFK Jr.’s nomination has thus arisen as it is an existential threat the parasitic industries which have sacrificed America’s health to enrich themselves.”
  
  https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/making-each-of-us-healthy-again?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:29am
  - kevn
    
    Bridge… ‘He’ seems have ignored the other US health concern areas of RFK. There are many and indisputable.
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:54am
- BarryB
  
  Oh – the Lancet – once a respectable journal.
  In 2023 they published a graph attempting to show how dangerous increased temperature was because they claimed more people died due to heat that due to cold.
  The trouble is they changed the scale on the graph (which no honest scientific paper should do) to make it look like heat was the problem. However actually cold killed ten (10) times more people than heat did.
  Conclusion: a bit of warming would be very beneficial to humanity.
  
  I think anyone has to look at ANY study on climate with the aid of buckets of salt.
  
  The Lancet story was more level headed than the graph – but the MSM only published the graph – dishonest bastards.
  
  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196%2823%2900023-2/fulltext#fig3
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:29am
- newview
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  The down ticks are a bit sad Ben. They like RFK regardless.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:39am
- Anthony Melchett
  
  What Kennedy wants is vaccine safety and asks why vaccines contain unnecessary chemicals. He then dares to ask whether those unnecessary components in vaccines (mercury for one) have caused health issues in kids such as autism.
  
  He raises valid points and wants big pharma better policed and more transparent. Doesn’t sound like a monster to me.
  
  We should all know exactly what we are forced to put into our bodies and especially our children’s bodies as they are forced before they can make their own decisions.
  
  But you just keep pumping yourself up with what they give you blindly.
  
  What is really interesting now is all fair and reasonable articles about rfk have been removed from Google searches and it’s now just attack pieces from left biased media (trying to get at trjmp) and big pharma supporters who stand to lose money if people start questioning the narrative.
  
  For him to be attracting this much heat means he is on to a good thing.
  
  Benedict, if there is nothing to hide in the vaccines then surely you aren’t afraid for him to go looking?
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:41am
  - imalwaysright
    
    AM
    Agreed.
    RFK is questioning the side effects of the delivery mechanisms of vaccines. Mercury, as you say, being a key one.
    Gate’s results of his vaccinations in Africa showed good results against the targets of the vaccines, however the children started dying from unrelated, and novel, conditions at greater rates than pre vaccination.
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:29am
  - JackRabbit
    
    Mercury, Aluminum, Formaldehyde – all products toxic to humans, but even more toxic to children.
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:30am
  - General
    
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQfIo75KHII
    
    00:00:00 Introducing Dr. Toby Rogers
    00:02:20 Autism is an Epidemic
    00:08:07 Is Autism Genetic?
    00:17:55 Sponsor: Jolie
    00:19:48 Following the Money
    00:29:12 This is a “Radioactive” Topic
    00:31:11 Environmental Causes in Autism
    00:42:43 Heavy Metals in Vaccines
    00:52:10 Profiting from the Vaccine Schedule
    00:56:01 A Red Flag
    00:58:45 The Key Point to this Discussion
    01:14:21 The Culpability of Those Involved
    01:24:25 Liberals & Libertarians
    01:36:01 The Economic Costs of Autism
    01:47:40 Closing
    
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    January 29, 2025 6:07pm
- Spam
  
  That article is pretty weak, Benedict.
  
  The article fails to mention that two children died in 2018 immediately after receiving the MMR vaccine, due to an error by nurses. That seems a lot more proximate to the 2019 measles outbreak than Kennedy’s visit.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:43am
  - kowtow
    
    Didn’t some unvaxxed people travel from NZ to Samoa to kick it off ?
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:05am
  - slightlyrighty
    
    The error in question was the burses mixing the powdered MMR vaccine with expired muscle relaxant, instead of water.
    
    The nurses in question were convicted of manslaughter and imprisoned, but the Anti-Vax movement seized on this event and misrepresented the narrative.
    
    This resulted in 83 deaths as vaccination rates dropped.
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:39am
    - Spam
      
      And wouldn’t this be useful context for the Lancet article, rather than RFK visited therefore people died?
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:12pm
      - slightlyrighty
        
        https://www.protectourcare.org/timeline-rfk-jr-s-deadly-visit-to-samoa/
        
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        January 29, 2025 12:30pm
- kevn
  
  BY… Keep it up.
  https://dailysceptic.org/2025/01/28/the-evidence-free-claim-that-the-covid-vaccines-saved-20-million-lives-is-easily-debunked/
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:46am
- cmm
  
  BY you really have seem to have a fixation here.
  
  RFKj’s words only find traction because of one thing, and one thing only.
  
  The pro-vax people lied. They wrecked any trust people had in them with the Covid bullshit (ie. equating the Covid “vax” with real vax),
  
  If it wasn’t for that then people would laugh off RFKj.
  
  It is easy to fall into the “one bad apple” trap. RFKj is not causing this. It is the lying that has caused the conditions that make people receptive to it.
  
  He didn’t invent the vaccine hesitance, though he possibly contributed.
  
  Undoubtedly the biggest contributor are the liars like Ardern etc saying that Covid vax was as good as other real vax. People see how shit Covid vax turned out to be and lost their faith in the vaccinations and the people pushing them.
  
  Many people, including myself, predicted this outcome. It was inevitable and blaming RFKj for it is counter productive.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:54am
  - Nigel Kearney
    
    In the Covid case, health authorities lied outrageously. That does not excuse people like Kennedy spreading misinformation about vaccines that actually are worth taking. It does make his misinformation more likely to be believed, but that is not relevant to the blameworthiness of his conduct.
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:04am
    - john1234
      
      For the record: RFKJr is not anti all vaccinations and has stated that his children are vaccinated.
      He’s against some vaccines and against big pharma with political backing running over the top of scientific and medical best practice. He has had some weird ideas about vaccines and other issues such as fluoridation.
      We were lied to about COVID vaccines by politicians, government health organisations and drug companies. Doctors too, although many of them probably just naively trusted the above.
      
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      January 29, 2025 9:12am
    - wsk12345
      
      If the relevant authorities would release the safety data on all vaccines then he might not gain so much traction.
      
      Did you know that when the manufacturers moved from mercury to aluminium adjuvants in most vaccines, the only testing of the safety of the aluminium adjuvant was on FOUR RABBITS. Oh and they “lost” the post mortem data for one of the four.
      
      Once the safety of aluminium had been demonstrated so “comprehensively” they could carry out vaccine trials with a placebo of adjuvant only. Sound like a well designed study? Only if you make money out of vaccines.
      
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      January 29, 2025 9:47am
      - kiwimike
        
        I am against the pharma companies being given immunity for their products.
        
        for that alone I think Jacinda Adern should be jailed.
        
        if the companies didn’t have immunity then we could be better assured that they would do a better job.
        esp with concealing test results.
        
        It would be lovely to see Pfizers Board in orange jumpsuits
        
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        January 29, 2025 11:59am
      - cmm
        
        kiwimike: That was a requirement from Pfizer. If they had been open to prosecution then they would not have sold to NZ.
        
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        January 29, 2025 12:43pm
  - imalwaysright
    
    Adern certainly did the damage to the trust of kiwis but the current government seem to be in agreeance, with the Health dept still promoting the jab for what they are calling Te KOWHEORI-19 !.
    Who knew there was a maori word for Coronavirus disease!
    
    https://info.health.nz/immunisations/vaccines-aotearoa/covid-19-vaccines/covid-19-vaccines-aotearoa
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:14am
  - kevn
    
    cmm… More data.
    https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/1884202475839738218
    
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    January 29, 2025 3:09pm
- Ra Henare
  
  Glad to see you continuing your crusade, Bene.
  I support your attitude using freedom of speech.
  
  You have an opinion.
  RFK Jnr and others have an opinion.
  
  I think it’s best left to the grown-ups in the room to makeup their own minds, given a dash of critical thinking.
  
  Last time I checked, it’s called democracy.
  
  But I applaud your tenacity
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:55am
- Grunter
  
  There’s more to it than what you have been brainwashed to believe, Bene—a lot more.
  
  https://brownstone.org/articles/rfk-jr-and-the-samoan-measles-outbreak/
  
  As usual, the LLM (Lying Legacy Media) only reveals what is consistent with the Leftard narrative.
  
  Just one fact from the link above to give you a sense of how wrong you are:
  “Neighboring Pacific island countries, Tonga and Fiji, which had concurrent outbreaks of the virus — and had a different source of the measles vaccine — did not suffer the same dramatic mortality rates. This should have raised concerns, yet there hasn’t been an inquiry into why the Samoan government switched vaccine sourcing from India to Belgium midway through the crisis.”
  
  The Samoan government’s response was not driven by factual analysis; the effort focused on promoting the vaccine and silencing those questioning authority (sound familiar??!!).
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:06am
  - [email protected]
    
    Sorry, readers should know that I meant to hit the uptick button but accidentally pressed the downtick button.
    
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    January 29, 2025 1:10pm
- David Garrett
  
  Bene: While my position is not quite as stark as yours, I basically agree – certainly when it applies to those anti-vacciners who still believe the long debunked nonsense claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism.
  
  Anti-Covid vacciners may or may not have a point – anti MMR and other child diseases vaccines are just nuts – actually criminal nuts.
  
  But as someone here said the other day, neither side is going to convince the other on this issue – the Covid “vaccine” issue I mean.
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:18am
  - bennerg
    
    David, it is not “nuts” to demand true and proper certification of any drug.
    
    From what I read, Kennedy insists that his stance is not anti-vaccine but pro-vaccine safety.
    
    He states that vaccines should undergo the same kind of testing as other medications, specifically highlighting the need for true placebo-controlled trials, and argues that many/most vaccines seem to have been “exempted” from such testing.
    
    His position is that there are “huge deficits” in the science on vaccine safety and that this needs to be addressed for public trust and safety.
    
    Given the absolute s***show with Covid-19, this implicates the whole pharmaceutical industry in their practices, and cosy relationships with the authorities in the USA.
    
    I just hope that total transparency can be achieved, so we can again start to trust what our medical professionals tell us.
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:56am
  - General
    
    [Mod – debate topics and stop the abuse]
    
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    January 29, 2025 6:15pm
- Inandout
  
  As regards Fauci, this Sen. John Kennedy in his homely manner, theorises that Fauci was scared of people discovering his attachment to the Wuhan Lab. It seems plausible Covid did eminate from that lab and despite Benedict’s almost total belief in the effectiveness of multiple vaccines I consider Pfizer’s role has a dark side.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U-bmSD3_uE
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:24am
  - JackRabbit
    
    Even the CIA have not ruled out a lab “leak”.
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:27am
    - kiwimike
      
      they probably paid for it through Fauci and Danzak !
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:01pm
- Yvette
  
  Benedict Yu’s position suggests a vast portion of the population is rather gullible.
  The other position says another portion is also gullible
  So it is frightening how many, in total, gullible persons are out there
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:35am
  - imalwaysright
    
    Yvette,
    I looked up gullible and it means easily tricked because of being too trusting.
    That was the keystone to the covid scam.
    First they instilled fear, and then they abused the trust.
    There are still some who can’t or won’t acknowledge that some within the state could do this.
    For those who won’t acknowledge it, I would say that their gullibility is now self inflicted.
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:44am
- Tom Hunter
  
  I’ve long had no time for RFK Jnr’s anti-vax “questions”, but you have to admit two things.
  
  First, it was public health authorities world wide that dumped fuel on this fire via their Covid-vaccine actions, not Kennedy. In the wake of that continuing to try and stamp on such people is not going to work.
  
  Second, if you’re the Samoan Ministry of Health and you’ve had 83 people die from measles on your watch you’d have every motivation in the world to blame someone else. They talk of RFK Jnr exacerbating vaccine hesitancy at a crucial moment, but with a long-standing vaccine that works why would there be a “crucial moment” in the first place? It means that they hadn’t done what public health authorities, like NZ’s, had been doing for decades; implementing a comprehensive measles vaccine program for kids. That failure is on them, not RFK Jnr.
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:46am
- imalwaysright
  
  Conspiracy theorist?
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:51am
- JackRabbit
  
  That’s disinformation Ben.
  
  There are reasons why there are outstanding arrest warrants in several countries for those that push unsafe vaccines.
  
  Vaccines peddled like snake-oil have killed or harmed millions.
  
  Even the criminal organisation WHO marxist head, Tedros has admitted that the current Polio outbreak in Africa was caused by the Polio vaccine.
  
  Many from my generation never got a measles vaccine as it wasn’t developed until decades later.
  
  But in NZ most people have herd immunity from measles. I get my herd immunity from my mother who got hers from her brother when he was infected as a child.
  
  If there is an outbreak of Measles, Polio, Ebola etc in various countries, it is not the virus that hitched a ride in the landing gear or on frozen boxes and landed. It is most likely from the vaccine itself.
  
  Kenya: Tetanus sterilized vast quantities of women. Or caused miscarriages. Kenya is on record regarding those vaccines.
  
  Congo: The mRNA Ebola vaccine, distributed without approval, caused an Ebola outbreak that had to be handled by conventional remedies supplied by Merck.
  
  Polio, Ebola, Malaria, th ebulk of tropical diseases, and up to 85% of all diseases, are caused by Helminths (parasitic worms) often carried by insects. You cannot vaccinate against Helminths. Even many cancers are caused by Helmintsh that invade the human liver, pancreas, brain etc. Which is why Ivermectin works as it kills Helminths.
  
  African Polio Outbreak here:
  ‘Unqualified failure’ in polio vaccine policy left thousands of kids paralyzed.
  https://www.science.org/content/article/unqualified-failure-polio-vaccine-policy-left-thousands-kids-paralyzed
  
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  January 29, 2025 10:02am
- In Vino Veritas
  
  Ben, you could well be right about RFK, but time will tell. However, Samoa’s Ministry of Health is just using RFK and his organisation as a convenient excuse for their own gross ineptitude.
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:35am
- Jake Dee
  
  What I am not seeing, either here or in the Lancet article is any direct quote from RFK Jr. or the context in which it was made.
  That is very telling.
  We judge people on their specific words and deeds, not neat little labels other people assign them.
  “Anti vaxxer”, like “Conspiracy Theorist” or “Climate denier” looks like a fitted jacket and an escape from an argument.
  Give a dog a bad name and hang him
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:12pm
- bythesea
  
  a review of articles about the Samoan epidemic, and the contributing factors by year of publication
  
  https://www.sensible-med.com/p/is-rfk-jr-to-blame-for-the-samoa
  
  As you can imagine there are multiple possible factors but RFK gets in the picture right in 2024 after announcing running for president.
  
  I think you are reacting to a campaign
  
  Like i put yesterday, there are sensible medical people like Vinay Prasad who agree / don’t care / disagree with his various policies and outline why that is so. But their position is that the status quo is broken and needs a change agent for a while
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:37pm
Cassandra

John Minto’s “genocide hotline” is still online, despite outrage from the public and criticism from the Race Relations Conciliator. Why does the Police Force not arrest the sick John Minto and put an end to this crime? I mean sick as in sicko – he’s a strange man – although it may well be that he’s actually unwell. Harassing Israelis in NZ is billed as “saving Palestinian lives” – it’ll do nothing of the sort, of course. It’s much more about publicly promoting Minto’s anti Israel obsession. Palestinian lives will be greatly secured and improved when Arabs, other Moslems and their countries accept Israel’s right to exist and stop committing violence against Jews. The Israelis will then stop committing violence in their defence. Pretty simple really.
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January 29, 2025 8:02am
- Benedict Yu
  
  New Zealand should welcome members of the Israel IDF here.
  
  I heard him on the radio yesterday. There is something badly wrong with him. He wants the public to phone a hotline if they spot an Israeli soldier.
  
  How will the public know? They are not going to be in uniform.
  
  If they do spot someone what happens next?
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:09am
  - John Loveridge
    
    John Minto will personally tell them they’re not welcome here, that’s what.
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:12am
  - john1234
    
    Mandatory military service so effectively all adult Israeli citizens are soldiers.
    Ipso facto Minto wants any and all Israelis to be dobbed in, rounded up and transported out.
    Sound familiar?
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:14am
    - kiwimike
      
      It seems those that served in Gaza get declined.
      
      personally I think it is an affront to target Jews like this.
      
      Sure so called Palestinians also get declined, but how do we sort the wheat from the chaff there.
      The IDF, Shin Bet are the holders of the info about the terrorists….
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:07pm
  - herb1
    
    If a Minto adherent confronts an Israeli soldier it could well go wrong for the Minto adherent. Woke vs Warrior sort of thing
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:16am
    - newview
      
      Yes H1. I wonder whether Minto has heard of
      Mossad.
      
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      January 29, 2025 10:37am
      - jon
        
        Yes newview, Mossad, usually are a few steps ahead of their enemies and get the results they want. I imagine Minto is aware of the risks.
        
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        January 29, 2025 2:39pm
  - Scott
    
    Perhaps Minto would like Jews in NZ to wear a star of David so they can be easily identified?
    
    I’m sure it’s been done before? Sometime in the 1930s I think –
    
    https://theconversation.com/nazi-orders-for-jews-to-wear-a-star-were-hateful-but-far-from-unique-a-historian-traces-the-long-history-of-antisemitic-badges-199654
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:21am
    - David Garrett
      
      Scott: That link is absolutely fascinating… obtaining information like that which others have but I don’t is one of the major reasons I am a regular on KB.
      
      One minor point: the last sentence says that under the Nazis “there were not exceptions, not even for large payments”. That is contrary what I have read, at least with regard to those who were only partly Jewish. In fact I have read that Herman Goring himself obtained or at least granted exemptions for several such people.
      
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      January 29, 2025 10:52am
    - Don Beckett
      
      I’m open to correction, but I think the wearing of an identifying symbol – such as the star of David, actually reaches back into biblical times, when the Egyptians made the Jews wear one – I don’t know though, whether the star of David was used then. That goes back about 2,200 years, around 1200 BC, prior to Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt – The Exodus.
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:40am
  - Simon
    
    “New Zealand should welcome members of the Israel IDF here.”
    
    lol –
    
    Israelis applying for a tourist visa are being asked about the dates of their service, the locations of their bases, and whether they have ‘been involved in war crimes’
    
    https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-zealand-requires-israelis-to-disclose-idf-service-details-as-condition-for-entry/
    
    National party types divorced from reality
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:22am
    - Eastlander
      
      One more reason to withdraw New Zealand from the ICC. There’s no benefit to New Zealand in taking sides against Israel, and it’s all the more daft to do so when Saudi is on track to resume normalisation talks with Israel this year once the Gaza ceasefire is formalised – if even the Gulf monarchies aren’t willing to oppose Israel anymore why on earth should New Zealand do it?
      
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      January 29, 2025 10:45am
      - kiwimike
        
        Remember that the ceasefire is a hudna, it is temporary.
        
        I support Israel finding all the leadership of hamas/hezbollah, wherever they are in the World and executing them for Oct 7th for Justice to prevail.
        
        after the bodies are returned of course.
        
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        January 29, 2025 12:12pm
    - Raphael
      
      Israelis applying for a tourist visa are being asked about the dates of their service, the locations of their bases, and whether they have ‘been involved in war crimes’
      
      The war crimes one is a standard visa question.
      see page 11
      https://www.immigration.govt.nz/documents/forms-and-guides/inz1017.pdf
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:16am
      - kiwimike
        
        No, it is racist against Jews.
        
        we should ask for sensitive security information like that of all visa applicants to be fair.
        
        Our own official secrets act would preclude a Kiwi for giving sensitive data out.
        I suspect we’d have corps of transport drivers suddenly.
        
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        January 29, 2025 12:14pm
    - Tom Hunter
      
      When National policies have the support of “Bomber” Bradbury/John Minto types, I’d say it’s time for some serious reflection.
      
      After all, they’ll still never vote National, whereas those who support Israel in this fight, may still do so.
      
      The word “may” is carrying a lot in that sentence.
      
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      January 29, 2025 1:22pm
  - NoFax
    
    I think if you pushed him he would come up with the worse tropes imaginable – right out of the National Socialist playbook.
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:38am
  - Colville
    
    I spent a fair bit of time diving with an ex IDF sergeant here and in Oz. Apart from being jaw droppingly gorgeous she is as hard as a coffin nail and could go from funny to cold in a heartbeat and would insesently take the piss out of me because I couldn’t tell when she was joking. She would happily smash Minto to a red paste given half a chance.
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:40am
    - NeverMindTheBollocks
      
      Yeah nah, wouldn’t really be a good thing.
      
      The best response to the likes of John Minto is not violence but ridicule, of his ideas.
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:49pm
    - Steve Otto N Shore
      
      Minto has been bashed up many times. 1981 Rugby Park in Hamilton. The fences got pushed down – there was even glass on the field.
      Minto got one hell of a hiding after that. Maybe that is what is wrong with him – or he just likes the biff?
      
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      January 29, 2025 3:33pm
  - cmm
    
    “How will the public know?”
    Easy. Every Israeli.
    All Israelis are either active or reservist soldiers.
    
    But do you think Minto actually cares about being right? He’s a rabid activist. Collateral damage is just par of activism.
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:58am
  - G152
    
    The IDF have specialised troops who would love to meet the nazi Minto but I doubt that he would enjoy the experience
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:31am
    - cmm
      
      More likely Mossad who have a bit more, shall we say, “operational flexibility” than IDF do.
      
      I would think though that Mossad are rather busy at the moment and a screaming skull in Christchurch would hardly ping on their radar.
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:46pm
- kowtow
  
  Can you imagine the tech sites hosting him , and indeed whatever bank he uses , not cancelling him , if he had been cough cough described as “far right” and racist .
  
  Nope ,he’d be gone in a DEI flash .
  
  It’s also particularly ironic given the other news at the moment is 80 year commemoration of Auschwitz.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:15am
- Dave
  
  Does Minto’s hotline incite imminent violence against IDF visitors? If not, for what crime should he arrested?
  
  Those are genuine questions. That I, and I hope most NZers, detest his opinions does not make his delusions illegal.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:54am
  - Dave
    
    …should he *be* arrested…
    
    Today’s lesson: do NOT write hurried comments as I am about to rush out the door. ☹️
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:30am
  - imalwaysright
    
    “We need your help to track them down and let them know they are not welcome here” -PSNA
    
    At face value there is no mention of hatred or violence therefore its not criminal.
    The Human Rights Commissioner has managed to extrapolate this into multiple future events:
    “The primary concern is really around the precedent that this creates in terms of encouraging people to indulge in behaviours which could lead to some tragic consequences.
    
    “While the target of this particular post might be one group, there could well be other groups who could be targeted in future and that is not helpful from a human rights perspective in terms of keeping people safe”- Stephen Rainbow.
    
    It may be offensive, but it is essential that speech remains as free as humanly possible.
    
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    January 29, 2025 12:43pm
    - kowtow
      
      It’s not “speech”
      
      It is asking people in the tourism industry and others to report to his “hotline” where IDF folk are . Implied is a future ( unspecified) action by him/supporters .
      
      It’s borderline incitement. To what we don’t know specifically but there’s a real threat implied .
      
      On his facebook page there’s a post by someone with a name that I don’t recognise as a former crofter from the Highlands demanding where to find some ( ok that one’s missing now)
      
      I reckon that he’s inciting breach of the peace , judging by what some of the drongoes on his page are saying they’d do.
      
      ps His site also encourages people vandalising Israeli food in our supermarkets ; that crosses yet another legal line.
      
      Don’t believe , have a look.
      
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      January 29, 2025 1:38pm
      - imalwaysright
        
        I agree with you and I’ve seen the website, but my point is that nearly breaking the law is a precedent we can’t afford to set.
        If they break the law then the cops and the courts should act.
        
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        January 29, 2025 2:32pm
  - cmm
    
    It is DOXXing.
    
    This is illegal under the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 (HDCA).
    
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    January 29, 2025 12:50pm
    - Dave
      
      Thank you, cmm, I should have thought of this myself, or tracked down the relevant news report.
      
      One brief, specific answer is more informative than the 10 downticks my 8.54 questions incurred, or were the downtickers upset by my disparagement of Minto?
      
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      January 29, 2025 2:04pm
- Ra Henare
  
  And of course, thinking people will discard this as another Minto Moment, and move on.
  
  They have been happening for years.
  
  Gives the MSM something to bang on about.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:57am
  - David Garrett
    
    Ra: Yes indeed…an old joke – it may even date from the 1981 tour – used to go “at moments like these you don’t need Mintos” – a play on an ad for the minties sweets from the same time.
    
    Imagine the live the guy – and more importantly those around him – must have? Every day a new “cause”, something new to oppose. Does anyone know if he is married, or God forbid, have children?
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:56am
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      He has 2 sons
      
      and is now married to Bronwen Summers.
      
      https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/houses/119992827/at-home-with-john-minto
      
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      January 29, 2025 1:32pm
- Tom Hunter
  
  Why does the Police Force not arrest the sick John Minto and put an end to this crime?
  
  Nope. He’d love that and so would his followers. It may even be part of the plan.
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:48am
  - PurplePen
    
    The thing is, arrest him for what crime? He’s asking people that when they identify someone here belonging to a specific organisation to say to them “go home visitor, you’re not wanted here”.
    
    Barcelona has a people-driven campaign that asks locals that when they identify people from a specific group to say or express exactly the same. In that case the specific group is tourists.
    
    I’m genuinely asking. BTW, not in any way a supporter of Minto or his cause.
    
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    January 29, 2025 11:48am
    - kiwimike
      
      don’t be stupid, it is targeting info.
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:17pm
    - cmm
      
      DOXXing is illegal in NZ.
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:51pm
      - PurplePen
        
        I didn’t know that. Ta
        
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        January 29, 2025 5:00pm
    - cmm
      
      I think it is laughable thinking someone is going to stand there and calmly say “go home visitor, you’re not wanted here”
      
      More like it would be a mob of crazies screaming “Fuck off baby murderer!” and throwing red paint on them.
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:53pm
      - PurplePen
        
        Agree. I just wasn’t sure what the actual crime was.
        
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        January 29, 2025 5:00pm
- Tom Hunter
  
  I reckon Grok or one of the other AI tools could do a good version of Minto and Bradbury drawn as Himmler and Goring.
  
  The diseased look and the bloated look being the key features respectively.
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:27am
- rockape
  
  Maybe we should start an alternative “ hot line “ reporting Minto’s home address and whereabouts so we can get in his face and tell him our views. I am sure we could make his life far more miserable than his bitter views already make it.
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:16pm
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    He doesn’t keep his home address private.
    
    It’s usually printed on any official document he’s submitted for Electoral or Political purposes.
    
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    January 29, 2025 1:39pm
  - imalwaysright
    
    Rockape
    Now you are doing exactly what he is trying to do, but for a different reason.
    That’s the danger of banning or prosecuting this behaviour.
    Once the precedent is established the bar is lowered and then we are all vulnerable.
    Better to criticise, rebut or mock him.
    
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    January 29, 2025 2:41pm
    - Tom Hunter
      
      Agree.
      
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      January 29, 2025 3:34pm
- Hugh Jarse
  
  John has had a new black uniform especially designed and tailored for this occasion along with a lovely cap and shiny silver badges. His moustache is coming along well. He is in his element.
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:29pm
- Conservatarian
  
  I heard John the Jew Hunter interviewed by Ryan Bridge on Newstalk ZB last night. He is a certified loon. He was shrieking about “genocide” and was, in his own mind, already well into planning the train schedules for “resettlement to the Ost”.
  
  He sounded like a far less erudite version of a fictional Jew hunter, Hans Landa, the SS colonel from Tarantino’s film “Inglourious Basterds”.
  
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  January 29, 2025 3:15pm
  - AitchW
    
    Why does he not go to Israel to make his point in person if the Israelis are as awful as he claims. I’ll kick in a hundy for a one way ticket. While he’s there perhaps he could do a fact finding mission to Gaza and ask those poor oppressed Hamas people if they wouldn’t mind not killing, raping and abducting Israelis?
    He’s a bully, picking on those unable to respond to his protesting. Remember the disgraceful display at the Auckland tennis open, attempting to disrupt play when an Israeli player was on court?
    
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    January 29, 2025 5:47pm
  - DaleK
    
    He needs the Bear Jew to come a knocking.
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:05pm
- KH
  
  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2004/7/15/israeli-agents-jailed-in-nz-over-spy-case
  
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  January 29, 2025 7:42pm
- Manu-Rau
  
  Bottom line, up front.
  
  Minto is a snivelling coward. I’ll never forget him trying to hide under a table in his ‘safe house’ on the evening of 25 July 1981, after the Waikato-Springbok game cancelled. He was whimpering like a frightened puppy.
  
  I’d pay to see him take on a member of the IDF – male or female.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:01pm
CJames

Several days ago, I posted a paper’s article on how police were cleaning up Rotorua by clamping down on supermarket trolley thieves. Now and tiresomely predictable, the local Maori Party MP is claiming it’s a direct attack on poor people.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/rotorua-polices-operation-trolley-prompts-political-war-of-words/HNQTH4QSZFFOPKWQ3QZA46EITI/
Fairly obvious that he isn’t aiming to get the votes of local residents.
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January 29, 2025 8:05am
- john1234
  
  The trolleys are stolen. End of story!
  In today’s Herald (I know, I know) GollyG is bemoaning the fact that she was pinged for shoplifting at the supermarket and that she’s getting victimised. The entitlement is gobsmacking. She actually believes she should be left alone to shoplift.
  
  We live in strange times.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:22am
  - PurplePen
    
    Wouldn’t ever be allowed by police in Singapore. Our system that allows people to get off scott free for all manner of misdemeanours is a serious contributor to why we have the anti-social public behaviour that we do of so many. Based on living a real life, no empirical evidence.
    
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    January 29, 2025 11:49am
    - kiwimike
      
      I’m a believer in 1-3 month sentences suspended for 2-3 years.
      
      It would have been good for GG as if the company had stopped her outside with goods, she would go directly to jail.
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:20pm
- 7kiwi11
  
  Expecting shopping trolleys not to be stolen, is a clear breach of Te Tiriti. //
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:43am
  - kowtow
    
    In the interests of te ao whatever I suggest a two tier shopping trolley system.
    
    Post colonial , with wheels .
    
    And yes you guessed it , te ao trolleys without .
    
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    January 29, 2025 1:17pm
- Gravelroad
  
  A takeout from the article about the shopping trolley thieves>
  “Yes we need solutions but criminalising those most vulnerable in our society is not the society I want my moko [grandchildren] growing up in. We need to be better, we need to do better, ‘out of sight out of mind’ is not the solution.”
  
  Bhana said it was a complex issue that needed a complex answer.
  
  “As a community, we need to do better for the most vulnerable.”
  Rawiri Bhana 2024 Kiwibank Heros medalist.
  How often have we heard about it being a complex issue and as a community we need to do better for the most vulnerable etc etc?
  So when are the communities actually going to do something rather than just talk virtue signalling about complex issues?
  “We need to do better”, he says.
  Well do it then.
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:54am
  - Bridgenag
    
    They could help with the millions earned every year by the non tax paying “charities”
    
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    January 29, 2025 12:16pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Yep. Bhana could make a start by purchasing shopping trolleys and distributing them to the needy.
    
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    January 29, 2025 12:52pm
  - cmm
    
    ” criminalising those most vulnerable in our society”
    
    They criminalise themselves by becoming criminals. If they are victims they are only victims of their own actions.
    
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    January 29, 2025 12:56pm
  - Countrygirl
    
    On zb today someone suggested the Maori party start up a charity to supply trolleys to the homeless as they are do worried about them. It would certainly be better than condoning theft.
    
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    January 29, 2025 4:38pm
Benedict Yu

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
I frequently read claims that climate change is a good thing because it will save lives. This is because mortality rates are higher in winter. Cold kills people. So global warming will avoid some such deaths.

An excellent study has just been released which calls that belief into question. The authors conclude that under any plausible global warming scenario, deaths in Europe from heat stress over the remainder of this century will be far greater than any avoided cold related deaths.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03452-2

The outlook in places like Australia and south western USA is likely to be even worse than the European scenario.

Of course, nothing New Zealand can or should do will make any difference. However do not believe anyone who tells you that climate change is a good thing. It is happening faster than predicted 20 years ago and its effects will be severe.
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January 29, 2025 8:05am
- Matt Long
  
  “It is happening faster than predicted 20 years ago and its effects will be severe”
  Predicted by whom? Because as I recall the Arctic was going to be ice free in summer by now.
  My intuition is that someone credulous has been to a presentation.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:11am
  - mandk
    
    Al Gore predicted it was going to be by the year 2000.
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:16am
    - Conservatarian
      
      Al Gore now has a billion dollars and waterfront mansions.
      
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      January 29, 2025 3:34pm
  - All_on_Red
    
    ‘However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
    
    “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.’
    
    The Independent March 20 2000
    https://web.archive.org/web/20130422045937/http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
    The Nature study is just another effing Modelling exercise.
    They predict an increase in warming of 3-4C (!)
    over the next 50 or so years when observed Data shows warming is around .75-1C per Century
    Multiple Datasets in this link
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/global-temperature/
    If only there was a vaccine for gullibility
    //
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:27am
    - pdm
      
      ‘However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers.’
      
      I am not sure many people in Scotland and in a number of US states would agree with that at the moment Red.
      
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      January 29, 2025 8:37am
      - All_on_Red
        
        Exactly.
        So many predictions.
        So many wrong.
        
        24 1
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        January 29, 2025 9:06am
      - Graeme Hall
        
        The Winter we have iced roads in New Orleans & snow in Texas. Saw a guy skating with a hockey puck up & down a road in New Orleans & not a climate activist in sight.
        
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        January 29, 2025 9:15am
      - slightlyrighty
        
        Ice Skating on the streets of New Orleans.
        
        Who would have thought.
        
        17 0
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        January 29, 2025 9:46am
      - Don Beckett
        
        I understand that studies of ice cores & tree rings have shown that during the Medieval Warm Period temperatures were 1 – 1-1/2 degrees warmer than they are today. So we’ve got a way to go.
        But other scientists tell us that due the the Melankovich cycle, earth polarity changes etc., we will be entering a cooling period.
        I say what will be will be, and let us devote our attention to mitigating any possibly detrimental climate changes, & focus more on our environment.
        
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        January 29, 2025 10:53am
    - BarryB
      
      The University of East Anglia is the very same outfit that started the whole Michael Mann hockey stick affair. There were some ‘unusual data’ involved.
      https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/07/05/michael-mann-and-the-climategate-whitewash-part-ii/
      and
      https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna45405456
      
      Im not sure I would place too much trust in anything from the East Anglia University.
      
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      January 29, 2025 9:29am
      - cmm
        
        Somewhere in my pile of stuff I have the source code for the East Anglia mathematic models from many years ago.
        
        I have not looked at them in 15 years, but from what I recall they were pathetic stuff you’d expect from a first year computer modelling assignment.
        
        Pure Garbage In, Garbage Out models.
        
        Even worse than NZ’s 80,000-grannies-will-die Covid models.
        
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        January 29, 2025 12:59pm
    - Jack5
      
      For climate worriers …
      
      What we used to call the Gulf Stream — the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) — hasn’t declined in the last 60 years.
      
      Some commentators had been forecasting that a decline in the AMOC could trigger a new Ice Age in northern Europe.
      
      The fear seemed to be: carbon emissions causing “anthropogenic warming” would slow AMOC currents.
      
      https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/no-amoc-declin
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:01am
      - NeverMindTheBollocks
        
        One effect of that would be that Cornwall would become akin to the coast of Labrador. I used to tease the Poms with that little gem.
        
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        January 29, 2025 4:01pm
  - Matt Long
    
    Sean Plunket, X poll on NZ pulling out of the Paris scam. 94% in favour.
    It would be very interesting to see a scientific poll of whether people understand the true costs of the Paris Accords to New Zealand versus their support for being part of it.
    https://x.com/SeanPlunket/status/1884051850003173519
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:35am
    - pdm
      
      Matt – if withdrawing from the Paris Accord the we should get out of the Kyoto one as well.
      
      Pointless and to New Zealands detriment – both of them.
      
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      January 29, 2025 8:38am
    - All_on_Red
      
      I dont always agree with Benedict but he is right that we would be punished terribly financially and our Trade would be penalised if not blocked by places like the EU if we did that.
      We helped make the Agriculture rules and agreed to it all and signed up.
      We don’t have the luxury of a Gorilla like the US to just ignore these things
      Sadly this means we are screwed either way.
      All we can hope for is a cascade of Countries deserting it and we get to go along for the ride.
      Alas the EU doesn’t look like it will change course.
      Quite the opposite in fact. They seem to be doubling down.
      
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      January 29, 2025 9:13am
      - Graeme Hall
        
        With China, India & the US not participating they account for about 50% of global emissions. That makes it an almost impossible task to have any effect on total emissions without collapsing the European economy & ours.
        
        20 1
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        January 29, 2025 9:18am
      - john1234
        
        Will the EU be blocking trade with the USA once they are formally withdrawn from the accord? I doubt it.
        
        23 1
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        January 29, 2025 9:44am
      - wsk12345
        
        You can take quite a bit of “punishment” for $20 billion or whatever the number is we have to pay for our sins.
        
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        January 29, 2025 9:52am
      - Don Beckett
        
        It is my opinion that the EU is on it’s way to self immolation – so I wouldn’t concern myself too much with the EU.
        
        13 1
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        January 29, 2025 10:56am
      - NeverMindTheBollocks
        
        The EU has problems of its own. Economic powerhouse Germany being unable to operate its factories due to gas & electricity supply problems, for example.
        
        The EU Commission may not want to back down, but individual EU States will, I think, force their hand.
        
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        January 29, 2025 12:57pm
      - cmm
        
        “he is right that we would be punished terribly”
        
        Would we? For how long?
        
        It seems to me that doing one painful and scientifically wrong act just because of peer pressure is not the best way to make policy.
        
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        January 29, 2025 1:01pm
      - Countrygirl
        
        It’s time then that we started including grass and native bush etc in our mitigating factors. Carbon credits are a waste of time, no one wants to buy them. Also in the Paris agreement I understand there was a clause, don’t interrupt the food supply. Most of our efforts seem to have been designed to do just that. We have a wonderful climate that allows natural growth for feeding animals and then humans. Why would be penalise farmers who are well aware that to be profitable they have to care for their land. We have been feeding 40 million people with our food production.
        
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        January 29, 2025 4:45pm
    - coge
      
      Such a move would give National a major shot in the arm. But they are too wedded to being woke. The politics of 2007. So they won’t alter course.
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:38am
    - Handyman
      
      When the time comes to pay the emissions tax, we should substitute all foreign aid with our emissions tax.
      Then all remaining should be donations in kind. eg wool blankets.
      
      We could also agree that the heat will kill you and discourage anyone from flying to hot places like the Seychelles or France.
      
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      January 29, 2025 4:02pm
  - David Garrett
    
    Matt: I saw a vid on Youtube a while ago which listed IIRC 30 climate predictions – going back to the 1970’s – which just have not come to pass.
    
    I notice little Asbergers Greta has gone very quiet of late…anyone know what the story is?
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:21am
    - Matt Long
      
      Antisemitism is the new black amongst the virtuous. Great has higher concerns at present.
      
      25 1
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      January 29, 2025 9:38am
    - Tom Hunter
      
      Turns out that she hates Jews more than she hates fossil fuels.
      
      24 1
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      January 29, 2025 9:53am
    - JackRabbit
      
      Asbergers Greta.
      
      A real live hate filled Chucky.
      
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      January 29, 2025 10:05am
    - bennerg
      
      I notice little Asbergers Greta has gone very quiet of late…anyone know what the story is?
      
      Puberty.
      
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      January 29, 2025 10:57am
    - Ghost
      
      No, she’s still yapping. She’s expanded to other areas
      
      https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/a-fraud-tv-host-reacts-to-crackpot-greta-thunberg/ar-AA1xrBLM?ocid=BingNewsVerp
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:36am
      - David Garrett
        
        Ghost: I dont see anything in that link other than little Greta with an Arab tea towel round her neck and a one sentence piece describing her as a crackpot…help me out here.
        
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        January 29, 2025 12:35pm
      - Ghost
        
        Here’s a better article for about ~~climate~~ Palestine saviour Greta
        
        https://www.msn.com/en-xl/general/general/after-visiting-the-tindouf-camps-greta-thunberg-becomes-an-advocate-for-polisario-online/ar-AA1xnZMn?ocid=BingNewsSerp
        
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        January 29, 2025 12:38pm
- mandk
  
  “… nothing New Zealand can or should do will make any difference.”
  
  I agree.
  
  We should stop punishing ourselves and exit the Paris Agreement.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:16am
  - David Garrett
    
    mandk: As I have said here a number of times I had a half day briefing from an actual climate scientist when I was a candidate for ACT back in 2008.
    
    She told me that if the world’s greenhouse gas emissions for a year were a two litre jug of milk, our share of that jug would be one half of one drop.
    
    I used that analogy at several candidate forums where Green candidates were on the panel. Not once did any of them argue with me. Therefore, as you quite rightly say, we could go back to the stone age tomorrow and it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference.
    
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    January 29, 2025 11:02am
    - NeverMindTheBollocks
      
      The homeopathy approach to climate change
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:59pm
  - coge
    
    The Earth’s atmosphere in an open chaotic system. This is a scientific fact. It’s not possible to separate climate from the atmosphere. The system where it exists. It’s erroneous to try and produce accurate predicative calculations for such a system.
    
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    January 29, 2025 11:46am
- Chuck Bird
  
  The research of many sceptical scientists is that the increase in temperature will be in the winter rather than the summer so it will mean a milder world and not a hotter world.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:17am
  - JackRabbit
    
    Chuck these are snake oil predictions based on extensive computer modeling that never comes to pass, and easily disproved.
    
    The sun is the main source of heat for planet earth. The distance between the earth and the sun varies according to various short term and long term cycles.
    
    Warming or cooling is caused by:
    [1] Variations in distance.
    [2] Sunspot activity.
    
    To warm in winter but not summer is illogical because the energy from the sun is consistent in its impact on earth. If it warms say the earth in the Northern Hemisphere Winter due to increased radiation, it is also warming the earth in the Southern Hemisphere summer.
    
    Besides which, even if it was theoretically possible, the winds and water, and the mass of the earth will redistribute energy.
    
    Winter and summer, and the temperature extremes are caused by the angle of inclination to the sun, among other factors, including El Nina and La Nina, which cause localised / seasonal variations.
    
    And all the weather / atmospheric / ionospheric weather modification experiments that are being / have been conducted around the world for 120 years, are likely to cause more damage than any other source. Crap scientists like to blame everyone else but themselves, It is no different to Little Johnny making stink bombs with his chemistry set in the garage and then blaming the cat farting for the pungent smell.
    
    Whoever put out that theory, is doing so purely to get govt grants. They are unaware of the stupidity of their statements. They probably spend their research time playing on the internet or watching youtube videos, and come up with a new “theory” when their cash is running out. Just like Big Pharma.
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:22am
    - Chuck Bird
      
      Have you viewed this? The climate scientist in this movie do not get government grants.
      
      Climate: The Movie
      
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDwCUAueLUU
      
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      January 29, 2025 1:58pm
- Cassandra
  
  Europeans die of heat stress because they’re not used to it. Singaporeans and Thais don’t die from the heat. You’ve got to adjust to changes in the environment. Wind farms are not the solution. Adaptation is.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:20am
  - pdm
    
    Cass – neither do Pacific Islanders.
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:40am
    - Cassandra
      
      It’s actually quite a long list. I found Singapore, Malaysia etc to be hotter than the Islands. But they’re all hot! Tauranga nicer.
      
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      January 29, 2025 8:56am
    - David Garrett
      
      pdm: Although it’s changed a bit as the economy has become more “western”, when I first came to Tonga very few Tongans were “out in the midday sun.” They left that to the proverbial mad dogs and Englishmen.
      
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      January 29, 2025 9:25am
      - pdm
        
        Fijians too GD when we lived in Suva in the mid 70’s.
        
        Apart from cricket and bowls of course.
        
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        January 29, 2025 9:51am
      - David Garrett
        
        pdm: it used to be quite amusing watching Tongan digger operators asleep at the controls, and bank and airline staff – the only offices to be open in middle of the day – fighting to stay awake. Everyone else was home having a siesta. As I say, that’s changed a bit now.
        
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        January 29, 2025 11:06am
  - cmm
    
    It isn’t so much the heat but the humiture (humidity + temperature). In low humidity high temperatures don’t feel so bad because your sweat cools you down better.
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:02am
    - Raphael
      
      Yep. When I lived in South Africa, summer temps were often upper 30s, occasionally low 40s with a lower humidity than NZ.
      I found that was more bearable than a 27°C with 97% humidity.
      
      Fun story, where I worked in Pietermaritzburg, the receptionist liked to wear a light jumper so she would keep the entrance foyer at about 18°C. Which was nice until you walked into the brick wall of 40°C hot air as you went outside.
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:23am
      - Don Beckett
        
        Exactly. When I was working as a roof contractor/builder in Oz – temperatures outside being anything from 25 deg. to 38 – 40 deg.C and had to go to the bank in the early afternoon to do banking or collect guys wages, walking into the bank was like walking into a freezer, with aircons. setat around 18deg.C – I actually preferred being out in the 40 C.
        
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        January 29, 2025 11:49am
  - Steve Otto N Shore
    
    Pacific Islanders, and Hawaiians. Leave Auckland at a cold miserable 5 degrees and walk into 34 degrees at Honolulu, at 11pm or so. Locals said it was not hot.
    Go for a swim at Waikiki to cool down? Ambient temp was 31 degrees, water was 33.
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:13am
  - Jules99
    
    More French people than Germans die of heat related causes. Why? The French don’t use air conditioning. Many believe it is unhealthy.
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:26am
    - kowtow
      
      They don’t like showering either.
      
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      January 29, 2025 3:17pm
  - kiwimike
    
    planting more fruit trees probably is and you can eat them too.
    
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    January 29, 2025 12:30pm
  - rockape
    
    As a soldier who had a Worldwide role I served in many climates. From Greenland and the North of Norway to desert countries and the jungles of Malaysia. Never had any bad effects from that. All I did was change to more appropriate combat kit!
    
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    January 29, 2025 12:33pm
    - NeverMindTheBollocks
      
      We tell our kids that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing choices.
      
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      January 29, 2025 1:02pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Having said all of that, global heating or global cooling, NZ is a great place to live.
    
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    January 29, 2025 1:01pm
- kowtow
  
  ‘However do not believe anyone who tells you that climate change is a good thing.’
  
  For most of the planet’s history it’s been covered in ice .
  
  Without ‘climate change’ there’d be no human life on it.
  
  Meanwhile enjoy the holocene , it won’t last long .
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:23am
- john1234
  
  A study that is guessing about the future vs hard facts about the past? I know which I would place more weight on.
  
  Europe is cold and populous so it is erroneous to compare their cold risk to Australia’s heat risk.
  
  We see many cold related deaths world wide every year and comparatively few heat related deaths because heat can be avoided more easily than cold.
  I’d be far more concerned about access to water. And far more concerned again about antibiotic resistant bacteria.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:27am
- Ra Henare
  
  Its always hard to debate someone who has, shall we say, firm beliefs.
  
  I was amused by your dictate.
  
  “”However do not believe anyone who tells you that climate change is a good thing””
  
  So the extra vegetation created by increased CO2 in the atmosphere is NOT a good thing? Increased crop yields are NOT a good thing?
  
  As mentioned repeatedly. Look hard enough and you will find a study/academic paper that will support any point of view.
  
  I read recently that males masturbating or having sex at least 3 times a week will live longer…..
  Drilling down….
  There were many maybes could bes, all combined with a small number of volunteer participants.
  
  Mmmmm
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:03am
- Grunter
  
  Actual history shows that the opposite is true. More people worldwide die from the cold than those that die from the heat. That is a fact.
  
  Some numpty builds a model that shows ‘plausible’ global warming over the next century will kill more people than it saves……OK, believe what you want I guess.
  
  Trump has just smashed the Global Boiling scam, joining India, China, Russia, Africa and most of Asia in ignoring the obvious BS. Game over – common sense has begun!
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:30am
- Inandout
  
  BY, it appears Pfizer is in agreement with your opinion; or perhaps vice versa?
  https://www.pfizer.co.uk/news/news-and-featured-articles/how-pfizer-is-fighting-climate-change
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:51am
- slijmbal
  
  @Ben
  
  the problems with these ‘studies’ (they’re really models typically) is that they are just putting numbers around the authors’ assumptions making them look scientific. Still assumptions.
  
  Now, I have no idea whether they are correct (but seriously doubt it based on existing temperature caused death numbers) but to date climate predictions have been just plain wrong. I have watched the IPCC become very political over the last 30+ years. I have been interested in this stuff since the 80s because I have a science background. The IPCC models have historically ran ‘hot’ plus we’ve all seen so many studies/headlines/models since the 90s that have turned out to be utter nonsense. From no more snow in the winter in Europe to parts of New York being under several feet of water by now. The Maldives are still there etc etc
  
  Someone put together a collation of all the nonsense climate related headlines from the Guardian for the last 30+ years. There were a lot and, ironically, none had occurred. I tell my friends who don’t have a scientific background if you want to know what will not happen climate wise, read the Guardian.
  
  Don’t get me started on the stupid, expensive and ineffective approaches to Net Zero.
  
  There is a reason people are becoming suspicious of the ‘death warming cult’ because, frankly, that’s what it looks like.
  
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  January 29, 2025 10:43am
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Whoops – FFD – apologies!
    
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    January 29, 2025 4:05pm
- PurplePen
  
  Is the change part of a cycle or not, such as planetary and solar orbits etc and earth wobble etc; and then if that is the case are we accelerating it but won’t actually change the final point in the cycle. And if we are accelerating it, by how much. Is it a great deal or is it a negligible amount. And is there actually permanent change or is it a short-term cycle. By short-term I mean 100 or 200 years perhaps.
  
  In any case, mitigation is the best approach. We do manage to survive quite well in temperatures that range from -50 to +50 degrees celsius.
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:59am
- kiwimike
  
  Climate change doesn’t exist BY
  
  Patrick Moore covered it clearly years ago and got cancelled for it.
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:21pm
- Handyman
  
  Just some information for those who don’t follow this climate thing closely….
  
  The official temperature recorded at each location around the world is taken as the mid-point between the minimum and maximum of each day.
  Thus, if the minimum temperature increases and the maximum temperature does not, the official temperature record will show an increase.
  
  Where does this happen?
  As cities grow the overnight minimum doesn’t reach the same low levels as recorded in the nearby countryside. This is due to concrete, warmed during the day, radiating its heat during the night. The millions of Kw of heat generated by large cities on calm mornings also has an effect on higher minimums.
  
  This explains a proportion of the global warming increase. Researchers disagree on how much.
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:50pm
- RightNow
  
  Now I’m certain this is a parody account
  
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  January 29, 2025 10:05pm
Maggy Wassilieff

I’m not sure if this should be read on an empty or a full stomach…… I’m off to have a shower after reading it.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/28-01-2025/what-the-critics-are-saying-about-the-jacinda-ardern-film-that-just-premiered-at-sundance
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January 29, 2025 8:08am
- Matt Long
  
  Is the Stuff poll still showing Trump as more popular than Ardern in New Zealand?
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:12am
  - wsk12345
    
    56% for trump this morning and in the 20s for jaxxie!
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:54am
- pdm
  
  Thanks for the link Maggy but, I have no inclination to read any article about Jacinda Ardern.
  
  Very brave of you to take it on – scrub well.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:15am
- John Loveridge
  
  Dear Jacinda! She’s SO humble. Awww…
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:16am
- Yabster
  
  not going to bother reading that dribble- NZers know the truth- hopeless, far from kind (the opposite), a fake and not very bright, easy lead by the Maori caucus also.
  
  Most in the film industry are rich socialist fools not living in the real world- so its not surprising they think the sun shines out of cindys ass…
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:26am
- Jethrod
  
  One critical says it verges on being “hagiographic”
  Mmmm….that’s a bit mean! //
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:26am
  - Sponge
    
    And one said:
    
    “in resigning as PM, Ardern opened the door for Labour to suffer a landslide defeat in the next election,”
    
    FFS “opened the door”? She fled as she knew that she was going to have her ass handed to her at the next election!
    
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    January 29, 2025 1:59pm
  - Conservatarian
    
    The critic certainly got the “hag” part correct.
    
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    January 29, 2025 4:12pm
- cmm
  
  I misread that and now have a vision of a showering Jacinda in my head.
  This is going to need a lot of mind-bleach.
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:04am
  - imalwaysright
    
    I envisioned the Karaka sales…
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:20am
  - G152
    
    Depends on what shes showering
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:35am
- Cassandra
  
  I read this. I feel quite ill.
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:40am
- Philview
  
  I doubt the documentary will be discussing the carnage she left in her wake. In particular destroying race relations by implementing a secretive agenda designed to replace democracy with tribal rule.
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:53am
  - kowtow
    
    Mockumentary.
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:43am
    - imalwaysright
      
      Correct.
      According to Michael Laws, the doco was started while she was in office and apparently many of her public appearances were staged specifically for the doco !
      That includes her in the back seat of the limo cooing at the new daughter.
      The husband was a producer/cameraman.
      Such foresight!!
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:40am
      - Bridgenag
        
        They should be great friends with Meg and Ginger. They are good with stunts
        
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        January 29, 2025 6:27pm
- Philview
  
  I just read at the Herald that the producer is a guy with the surname Gayford. I wonder if his first name is Clarke. If that is the case I shake my head.
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:56pm
- Keith White
  
  It should definitely be viewed only after a solid dose of Stemetil.
  
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  January 29, 2025 7:32pm
artemisia

Wellington City Council OIA request receives Town Hall related consultancy costs to date.

$22,212,715 + GST to date.

There is a long list of types of consultants ‘included’, so not necessarily a complete list. I get it is a big project but the council has nearly 2.000 employees so have to wonder why all this expertise has to be brought in. Is there none of this expertise internally on board or at least being developed?

The consultants engaged on the project so far have included the following:
Project Management
Quantity Surveyor
Engineer to Contract
Architect
Structural Engineer
Building Services Engineer (Electrical / HVAC / Hydraulic / Vertical Transportation / ICT / Fire Protection)
A/V Design
Fire Engineer
Geotechnical Engineer
Asbestos Specialist Consultant
Peer Review Structural Engineer
Heritage Architect
Acoustician
Planner
Legal Services
A/V Design
Façade Engineer
Waterproofing Consultant
Programmer
Archaelogical Consultant
Production Consultant

With thanks to requester Chris McCashin.

https://fyi.org.nz/request/24343-town-hall-consultant-costs?nocache=incoming-93482#incoming-93482
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January 29, 2025 8:09am
- Gussy Fink-Nottle
  
  “Is there none of this expertise internally on board or at least being developed?”
  
  No. Nor should there be.
  
  You’ve listed a number of specialist construction professions, not council staff positions.
  
  The days of effective ‘Ministry of Works’ types are long gone.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:28am
- Burtland
  
  you list out the coloniser classes
  – having these people in your organization upsets your diversity quotas
  
  many will be skilled ex-employees who left the council due to DEI discrimination
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:36am
- MCōs
  
  As a comparison the last National administration spent $50mil on consultants for the design of EW Link in Auckland. The project was shelved when they were shelved, but I believe a lite version is now back on the cards.
  I wonder how much it’s going to cost to rework the design?
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:28am
- Dudley Quaffquaff
  
  Which of these skills do you think the Council should be employing full-time?
  
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  January 29, 2025 10:01am
  - greybeard
    
    Most Councils already have their own staff who were employed because of those very skills. So why the consultants ?
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:41am
    - Don Beckett
      
      The council staff with those skills will be for residential construction only, to a large extent. For these larger projects much more expertise is required.
      It’s a very expensive cost though – although architects usually work on a %age – usually around 7%, .
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:04pm
      - Graeme Hall
        
        An architect’s fee of 7% seems high. Donald Trump paid his own architect much less (less than 1%). See his testimony below to Congress in 2005 about the proposed costs of refurbishing the UN building. He gives them a lesson on what a top developer can do ($300 million to build a new bigger, more complicated building in a major city vs $1.5billion proposed for the UN refurbishment.
        
        The first architect, an Italian, the UN hired got paid $44million for doing nothing. Donald Trump told Congress he wanted to meet him to find out his secret.
        
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SgSno0JtiI
        
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        January 29, 2025 3:25pm
Chuck Bird

FYI – Not paywalled.

Former MP Golriz Ghahraman critical of police’s ‘weird’ pursuit of Pak’nSave alleged shoplifting incident

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/former-mp-golriz-ghahraman-critical-of-polices-weird-pursuit-of-paknsave-alleged-shoplifting-incident/QMKWLXKEK5BPDOJU3GTZCK6IMU/
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January 29, 2025 8:10am
- Tony Stuart
  
  Written by Kim Dotcom’s biographer, David Fisher. Read into that whatever you will.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:48am
  - David Garrett
    
    I notice Fisher is now “based in Northland”…where I suspect he is “working from home.”
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:31am
    - Tarquin North
      
      No!!! Please say it isn’t true! We’ve already got Hone and a truck load of activists warming up for Waitangi day, haven’t we suffered enough already without having the worlds most sanctimonious ” journalist ” turn up?
      
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      January 29, 2025 9:43am
      - David Garrett
        
        Tarquin: Nice to see you back here old boy…you have been absent for a while. I hope you are well.
        
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        January 29, 2025 11:09am
    - Dudley Quaffquaff
      
      So what, exactly? To both this and the preceding point
      
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      January 29, 2025 10:02am
  - RoboRob
    
    Yeah, the implication that becuase police hadn’t caught people making threats to GG when she was an MP there response to catching her ‘alledgedly’ shoplifting is just weak ‘whataboutism’.
    
    Of course an MP shoplifting at paknsave after being caught and prosecuted elsewhere is more important then a generic shoplifter.
    
    That said, police should not be leaking this information and anyone found doing so should be treated harshly.
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:49am
- 7kiwi11
  
  It’s amazing talent how she can turn everything around to make out she is the victim.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:51am
- PurplePen
  
  She can’t seem to stay out of the MSM news. I wonder what’s next.
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:22pm
- NK
  
  Another puff piece from Fisher. Cam Slater gave him the best advice a short while back when Fisher sought to speak with him – g f y (I understand this means “good for you”).
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:55pm
- John Loveridge
  
  Golriz is finding out the hard way that once a thief, always a thief.
  
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  January 29, 2025 3:01pm
sungsamning

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2025/01/27/trump-delivers-hope-to-western-north-carolina-n4936394
Trump Delivers Hope to Western North Carolina.
Five days of Donald Trump gets more done than four months of the cabal that illegally acted in Joe Biden’s name — if the Army Corps of Engineers’ sudden appearance in devastated western North Carolina is anything to go by.

Trump announced last week that he’d ordered the deployment of the Corps to the hurricane-wrecked region. “We have a lot of things in mind, and we’re getting the Army Corps of Engineers all set,” Trump said. “You need your riverbanks fixed. You need a lot of roads fixed. And, we’re going to get it done in rapid time.”
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January 29, 2025 8:11am
sungsamning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGcz0clUNIk
“47% Funded By Big Pharma” – Paul Saladino BLASTS FDA Corruption & SNAP’s Junk Food Agenda.
Patrick Bet-David and Paul Saladino explore the surprising ways SNAP benefits (formerly food stamps) are spent, with 75% going to processed food and 10% to soda. They discuss systemic issues with lobbying, FDA funding, and the potential for healthier alternatives, including using HSA funds for single-ingredient foods. [RFK might have a thing or two to say about this if he is confirmed.]
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January 29, 2025 8:12am
Bridgenag

Climate Change and The Corruption of Science – Part 2
Doug Brodie follows up…

`
https://open.substack.com/pub/metatron/p/climate-change-and-the-corruption-494?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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January 29, 2025 8:14am
Cassandra

The Trump administration has implemented “FAFO” as a diplomatic tool. “F———- around, find out”. A 50% tariff on Colombian exports to the US persuaded its Government to change its mind regarding the reception of Colombians deported from America. It’s an interesting approach. The British used to send a gunboat. FAFO is much less aggressive. I wonder if we might see an increase in NZ’s defence expenditure? USN ship visits might be a step too far just now but in a couple,of years perhaps? Taxing our beef exports would be a powerful persuasion.
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January 29, 2025 8:15am
- kowtow
  
  The EU actively uses tarriffs to protect its industry and agriculture , China uses all manner of cough cough methods in its “diplomacy” , Russia uses open war as well as terror and murder , Iran uses violent terrorist proxies as the principal means of its diplomacy etc
  
  And yet te meedia paahti et al ; TDS.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:46am
- Colville
  
  Having a Virginia Class submarine surface in the harbour then dissappear without a trace or mention might send a message too.
  
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  January 29, 2025 8:47am
- cmm
  
  FAFO is far more effective and immediate. Sending a carrier group to threaten Colombia takes months and costs billions.
  
  On NZ defence, I think we need to look at it completely differently than other countries. I really don’t think we need expeditionary forces and we should rather focus on a defence-only strategy (Switzerland style). It would of course not be a mirror of what the Swiss have because the threats are entirely different.
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:09am
  - Cassandra
    
    NO. We are dependant on lines of communication for our survival, mainly sea lanes. We need to work with Australia and others to ensure that. A national militia would be useless. We need a navy equipped to work in conjunction with the RAN.
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:36am
    - Jake Dee
      
      Clearly we need a navy but a national militia would be far from useless. It could be integrated into the navy and provide a framework for training people in military systems.
      Instead of only thinking about how to get and spend money we need to think it terms of organizations that will serve the country for generations.
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:24pm
      - Cassandra
        
        A national militia would be frighteningly expensive and militarily useless. Socially it might be okay but the cost would be huge. CMT was expensive and a militia would be 10 times as much. Where do the camps come from? The NCOs? Officers?
        
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        January 29, 2025 2:04pm
    - kiwimike
      
      ICBM’s project force too
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:41pm
    - Jake Dee
      
      Very little of what the military actually does is unique to the military, really only the warfighting. Notice how our own Mark Mitchel could transfer from police to military work?
      Are you a mechanic? Excellent now here is how to be a mechanic in the military.
      drivers, pilots, medical workers of all types are also excellent choices for people who could make a real contribution to defense if they could rotate from civilian to military and back again through some sort of militia system.
      Helicopter medical evacuation was invented BY the military, how difficult would it be to integrate in back into the military through some sort of paramilitary organizational structure?
      How many helicopters, qualified pilots and support crew are there in New Zealand RIGHT NOW? They could be made extremely useful to all sorts of operations with some additional training.
      A citizen/soldier model with a small cadre of full time professionals is an excellent choice for a small nation with a small budget looking to expand its military capacity,
      
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      January 29, 2025 3:51pm
  - Quail
    
    CMM
    The Switzerland style of defence would not work here as NZ Governments would not accept an armed (trained) populace.
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:47am
NeverMindTheBollocks

Shell Lane (The Terrace) bike rack report:

At 8.15am null bikes once more.

A windy, coolish morning in the Capital, not the best for cycling if I’m honest. But, the bank still want’s loan repaid, regardless of the weather.
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January 29, 2025 8:16am
CJames

Jeremy Coyne is deciding to poke the bear again with another article on “Maori Science”.
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2025/01/28/trying-to-reconcile-indigenous-ways-of-knowing-with-white-ways-of-being-in-new-zealand/
He also notes the kauri whale stupidity.
This should start another round of racism accusations in the academic establishment.
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January 29, 2025 8:19am
- wisteria
  
  Reply to CJames. Surely “Maori science MS” is half science since all Maori are half + another race most likely European. Good science has been evolving for thousands of years and has been refined by competent researchers in many countries instead of MS which only relies on a handfull of people living in one country.
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:30am
- Graeme Hall
  
  As an early example of DEI, we had a chap claiming Maori heritage appointed to the board of Landcare Research (now Manaaki Whenua). I recall he was once interviewed by Kim Hill on National Radio and he suggested a Maori scientific solution to the possum problem in native forests – eat them. Kim Hill asked him to eat her share too.
  
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  January 29, 2025 3:43pm
Matt Long

The Liberal National Party barely has its feet under the table in Queensland, but has already taken notice of the Cass report and halted the use of Hormone Treatment and Puberty Blockers in minors. And is investigating illegal use in Cairns.
The New Zealand government?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-28/government-halts-gender-hormone-treatment-new-trans-patients-18/104867244
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January 29, 2025 8:19am
Steve Otto N Shore

THOR’s Greenland Quest. A parody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWKy3V_HwRI
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January 29, 2025 8:28am
Simon

Can Luxon sell NZ out to international capital, thus securing a cushy post political job, before he gets rolled?
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January 29, 2025 8:30am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  Oh the setback had to start with someone, so now you bitch about asset sales
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:09am
- RoboRob
  
  No. Jacinda was more successful selling out to Blackrock.
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:13am
  - imalwaysright
    
    Don’t forget her visits to Blackrock made good footage for her new vid!!
    
    I’m hoping she narrated it herself. That would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic.
    
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    January 29, 2025 1:55pm
I remember when

“White privilege ignores Implicit Bias.
The truth is that growing up as a white person means near having to consider race for the majority of one’s life.”

So, like growing up in India if you are Indian?
Or, China if you are Chinese?
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January 29, 2025 8:34am
Tony Stuart

It would appear that the excrement is about to hit the air conditioner next Monday:

The Public Service Commission says its inquiry into alleged misuse of private information, gained through the Census and Covid-19 vaccination campaigns, shows issues requiring further investigation by “other authorities”.

The Commission started its inquiry in June, after a number of concerns were raised about Manurewa Marae, Te Whānau o Waipareira Trust and the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency.

Those three organisations had contracts with Government departments such as Stats NZ and the Ministry of Health, which gave them access to personal information and contact details.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360561595/inquiry-marae-data-use-raises-concerns-requiring-investigation

I wonder which “other authorities” are going to be asked to take a look here. Could it be that the Police, SFO and/or Auditor-General might be asked to investigate what are clearly some serious findings?
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January 29, 2025 9:06am
- Grunter
  
  Let’s hope so. The Tamihere Crime Family and their money flowing into The Maori Apartheid Party need to be stopped.
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:38am
  - david
    
    Someone needs to check for links with the Bidens. 10% for the “big guy” seems to have been taken to a whole new level.
    
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    January 29, 2025 11:10am
  - Quail
    
    G,
    Not “their money” it is Taxpayers.
    
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    January 29, 2025 5:00pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Or in other words…just shunt the problem off to separate agencies who will never get the whole picture.
  
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  January 29, 2025 10:56am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    They have finished the inquiry, the results will be made public next week, the other agencies will look at charges surely, how is this kicking it down the roads, these criminals should be in jail
    
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    January 29, 2025 11:13am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  They are already looking
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:10am
PurplePen

ODT today “Charter schools struggle to cater for demand”.

Interesting that the Tipene school in Auckland’s Bombay, the first Maori boarding school I’d oversubscribed.

There are other schools for those with learning difficulties. Also oversubscribed. Makes sense. Why burden a ‘standard’ school and it’s teachers with special students. Not expressed that the best way.

It just occurred to me you could have a charter school for those with parents that don’t or can’t feed their children. That way you could remove the current school lunch catering and save a heap. //sarc
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January 29, 2025 9:28am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  Māori know from last time that their kids were better off, Jackson and Henare were attending these schools and were happy with them, Jackson I think even operated some
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:15am
- Paulus
  
  Why was it closed down before some years ago ?
  Not a pretty picture of male Maoridom.
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:46pm
PurplePen

A small bugbear of mine is overuse of the phrase “calls on”. ODT headline today “Ukrainian ambassador calls for more NZ aid”. When in the article it says “Ukraine is asking for more help”.

“Calls on” is dramatic for “demand”, in fact overly dramatic as if the person using it is in a position to dramatically demand. I see it often used in letters to the editor “I call on the government to …” As if anyone is going to take any more notice of you.
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January 29, 2025 9:33am
Philview

I will not be putting the DeepSeek app on my phone but Stuff is being very hypocritical on this topic. Stuff saying today that DeepSeek filters out questions on topics the Chinese Government doesn’t like. Stuff does the same of course for its own ideological favourite topics and was under the thumb of the Ardern Government.
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January 29, 2025 9:42am
- PurplePen
  
  You know what there isn’t any tech behind DeepSeek. The Chinese govt just put about 500,000 people in front of a whole lot of desktop computers and they all provide the answers. Hence the low cost and quick implementation time.
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:28pm
  - kowtow
    
    For gawd’s sake don’t let them all jump off a chair at the same time.
    
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    January 29, 2025 1:06pm
Ian Boag

And for something completely different … Nicola on mining – it can be done in ways that are environmentally sustainable – whether that’s rare earth minerals ..

REMs are of course vital for lots of things, but their extraction is one of the dirtiest operations on the planet. Most of the world’s supply comes from Mongolia and the environmental destruction is mega.

I’m not blindly anti-mining. I would guess that it is mainly about digging up more coal and maybe a new gold mine or two and perhaps the antimony around Reefton. I imagine the Coromandel might be a gold prospect. Looking round some of the current mining operations it would appear that the big Otago gold mine is a bit messy and not meeting its consent conditions. We won’t talk about the Tui mine near Te Aroha and the mess left behind there when the company folded and the tailings dam started leaching heavy metals. Good ole taxpayer picked up the pieces.

The seabed mining ideas sound good. I do wonder why noone else in the world seems to be doing it. Our track record being first to try something is not all that great. Think Motonui …

Other than that it’s all sweet 🙂
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January 29, 2025 9:42am
- RoboRob
  
  NZ is vast and mostly unpopulated. Greater then 99.9% of the population have never seen any of the mines that are a ‘bit messy’ you refer to. The miners at Pike would still be alive if the original mine plans had been allowed rather then the ‘green’ option.
  
  Decades ago a friend who worked for Timberlands on the West Coast (SI) took me into the woods to show me the tree harvesting operation. Had to walk for miles into the middle of knowhere to see where dead trees were identified and then lifted out by helicopter. This process was used because of environmental concerns that just chopping down and planting new trees was ‘bad’. Some few years later the Labour govt cancelled ALL harvesting becuase of an outcry from Auckland suburban greenies who have never even been to the West Coast. Lots of job losses and income lost. No impact on the forests, except for more dead trees rotting out.
  
  So long as money is set asside in a trust to ensure cleanup at the end (even if the company folds), I say go for gold.
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:54am
  - Ian Boag
    
    So long as money is set aside in a trust to ensure cleanup at the end (even if the company folds), I say go for gold.
    
    Good thought. Aspirational although Shane hasn’t (yet?) mentioned it as a condition for consent. I can’t see it happening … the money would have to be mainly put in up front so I’m not holding my breath.
    
    The thing with hard rock mining is that the rock gets ground up fine and is treated (with cyanide in the case of gold) to extract the desired metal. The fine ground up stuff generally contains other toxic heavy metals. It is dumped into “tailings dams” which have a habit of leaking nasty stuff. If you are all good with that ….
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:19am
    - RoboRob
      
      You need to do some more research Ian. Shane doesn’t need to mention that as a condition for consent as it is already standard practice and has been in place for some years.
      
      ‘ The Health and Safety at Work (Mining Operations and Quarrying Operations) Regulations 2016 and the Crown Minerals Act 1991 include provisions for mine closure plans and financial assurance’.
      
      Re tailings clean up. Also coverred by the above.
      
      Other advantages of mining are, new roading and bridges created for the mine and left for the community.
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:19am
  - Ian Boag
    
    This process was used because of environmental concerns that just chopping down and planting new trees was ‘bad’
    
    As I recall it was felt by some that clear felling native bush was a bad idea. The jobs would have lasted until the forest was all gone – nothing sustainable about it. A high rainfall area and one could end up with a lot of the hillsides at the bottom. The timber (native hardwoods) was relatively high value so the helicopter extraction sums worked. Replanted natives would have been good to hold whatever soil was left after a hundred years or so if they didn’t wash down the hill first.
    
    Possibly I have that all wrong?
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:30am
    - RoboRob
      
      I believe you do. There were pulling them out (native hardwoods) and replanting. That was stopped. To harmful.
      
      People who clean fell native bush do replant, thats what farming timber is. You chop down and replant. Admittedly they replanting would likely be pine. The advantage is that by doing this you lock the carbon up for 50+ years and plant new trees that absorb CO2. Trees absorb the mostly CO2 early in their life.
      
      This was stopped by a ground swell out of Auckland that wanted to protect the clean West Coast. It was virtue signalling primarily by city dwellers. Almost none of those people had ever been to the West Coast. Have you?
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:27am
      - Don Beckett
        
        NZ does not have any native hardwoods – they are mainly medium density, some softwood.
        
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        January 29, 2025 12:17pm
      - mogg
        
        Softwood in name only, Matai, Totara, Rimu heart timber is as hard as the hobs of hell. Will very quickly take the edge off tungsten tip blades.
        
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        January 29, 2025 2:11pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        NZ does not have any native hardwoods
        
        Yes, we do..
        
        The problem is that there has been no serious investment in managing our native hardwoods (especially after the 1980s).
        
        Black maire is our hardest hardwood.
        
        Other native hardwoods with production forestry potential include: puriri, rewarewa, kohekohe, Mangeao, tawa, Red beech & silver beech
        
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        January 29, 2025 2:16pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        been to the West Coast. Have you?
        
        I was born in Greymouth and have been there a few times in the last 75 years ….
        
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        January 29, 2025 5:21pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        @Maggie
        
        I think tawa was logged out for papermaking. When I was a student engineer 300 years ago, we visited NZFP and someone told us that. Long staple fibre for high quality paper and stuff. NZFP were looking at planting eucalypt (regnans?) as a replacement. Dunno what came of that – you know more about this sort of stuff than I do …. 🙂
        
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        January 29, 2025 7:14pm
    - AitchW
      
      Correct me if I’m wrong, but are most of our hardwoods not painfully slow growing? There may be one or two exceptions, but the majority are very slow. That’s what makes them so hard.
      We should be planting rata, totara and rimu now to be harvested in a couple of hundred years. Of course there may be no market for timber by then.
      
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      January 29, 2025 6:04pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        That’s sort of what I said. If you clear fell a native forest that is on hilly ground where it rains a lot, the replanted shoots will be flushed down the slope long before they get to viable size.
        
        Even pines will find it hard ….
        
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        January 29, 2025 7:06pm
      - Don Beckett
        
        Totara & Rimu are medium density. My father owne a joinery factory where I worked in the 1960’s – we used mainly rimu & matai for our window frames – totara ( bordering on softwood) for window sashes & doors.
        Tawa is about the same density as matai, and is ideal for strip flooring (T & G).
        Kohekehe is our closest to mahogany but wasn’t then classified as a hardwood – used for furniture making. Other timbers like rata (it is actually a parasite ‘vine’ that takes over another tree) & puriri aren’t useful for joinery etc.
        Miro was used as a substitute for rimu.
        
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        January 29, 2025 7:39pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        Correct me if I’m wrong, but are most of our hardwoods not painfully slow growing?
        
        Only when you compare them to Pinus radiata.
        
        That’s the problem here in NZ…
        In Europe, Foresters are used to dealing in time spans of 100 years or so for Harvest cycles.
        
        Well managed stands of our hardwood trees could be harvested on 100-150 year cycles.
        
        If only NZ hadn’t pulled the plug on some of the research that was being undertaken in the 1970s-1980s on trialling NZ hardwoods.
        e.g.
        https://www.nzffa.org.nz/farm-forestry-model/resource-centre/tree-grower-articles/february-2012/salvaging-beech-thinning-trials-a-national-heritage/
        
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        January 29, 2025 7:50pm
  - Jack5
    
    NZ is vast and mostly unpopulated….
    
    Vast? New Zealand is the 76th biggest country by land area (268,838 sq km).
    
    For comparison, the UK (242,900sq m) is the 80th biggest country by land area.
    
    NZ ranks 167th in population density, however (Wikipedia link below).
    
    Slightly less densely populated than Papua New Guinea, slightly more densely populated than Niger, Algeria, Norway, Argentina, and a lot less densely populated than Russia, Canada, Australia, Mongolia and Greenland. USA is 146th most densely populated.
    
    https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
    
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    January 29, 2025 11:34am
    - RoboRob
      
      I meant vast in relation to the population, i.e. density. Should have been more concise 🙂
      
      As you say we are 167th least densly populated. There are vast areas that practically nobody goes to or sees.
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:48am
      - MCōs
        
        I suppose that depends on your understanding of vast.
        I’ve heard the MCG described as vast and sparsely populated
        
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        January 29, 2025 3:45pm
- CJames
  
  Look at the Snowy River mine under Waiuta. No doubt there is opposition to that in the leafy suburb circles, yet none of them know where it is, let alone have been there
  
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  January 29, 2025 10:20am
  - Ian Boag
    
    Waiuta is a ghost town where the mine closed in 1951 and I would guess noone has lived there since. The place is far from pristine …. remaining cleanup work is on the taxpayer.
    
    https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/west-coast/contaminated-west-coast-mine-site-closed
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:46am
    - wairarapapaul
      
      I remember going to a huge party in Waiuta around 1980 or 81. Big circle of 2 storey houses in the middle of nowhere. Great times.
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:11am
    - David Garrett
      
      Ian B; The article says the town was “suddenly closed in 1951″….most of those old gold mining towns just faded away. Do you know why that one was “suddenly closed”??
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:16am
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        The place was already in decline through the war years, (men went off to war).
        In july 1951 the Blackwater shaft collapsed and the mine flooded. It wasn’t economical to reopen the shaft and the mine was permanently closed.
        The Town was abandoned.
        
        (p 196: High hopes & big dreams)
        https://www.whitcoulls.co.nz/high-hopes-and-big-dreams-165-nz-small-towns-in-their-twilight-6847839
        
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        January 29, 2025 2:28pm
    - RoboRob
      
      Your example of why not to mine is ancient and out of date. Yes in the 1950s mining companies could go bust and leave a mess. This is almost entirely impossible now based on the new requirements to have funds in trust for clean up. You need to update yourself on this stuff before blocking new mining otherwise you are the same as the rabid suburban greenies.
      
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      January 29, 2025 11:30am
      - Handyman
        
        Windmill farms are not required to deposit any remediation money even though the average life expectancy of the millions of tonne of concrete, copper and fiberglass is 15 years.
        
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        January 29, 2025 12:25pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        @Handy
        
        A good point. Dunno about “millions of tons” … anyway worn out windmills are pretty inert – whereas tailings are ground up rock containing arsenic, sulphides and other nasties that leach out over a century or two.
        
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        January 29, 2025 7:25pm
Gravelroad

Dogs
One of the workers here has a bitch with six puppies. These are bred as working sheep dogs.
There is a flu-like illness called parvovirus which infects especially puppies and can (and usually does) cause their early deaths.
But there is a vaccine available to prevent it.
Very good.
However, it is costly – Retail price over $100 per pup – has to be administered by a vet.
Worker is getting them “parvoed” despite the cost as the virus is currently doing the rounds.
And be aware, this virus affects all dogs not just those on a farm.
This vaccine is available and it works, but, unlike many made for humans, it comes at a market rate cost.
Would it make any difference if people had to pay to have their children vaccinated against measles and whooping cough – with easy access laid on?

Disclaimer: some of these pups might be sold – so the cost of the vaccine may be recouped in the price.@Rich Farmers.
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January 29, 2025 9:44am
- Blog-aholic
  
  Sadly Parvo virus is a puppy killer and that’s why no puppies should socialise with any dogs outside their environment until vaccinated.
  
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  January 29, 2025 9:50am
  - Don Beckett
    
    We had a beautiful yellow labrador – lighter colour than golden. Because of her lightness, she was subject to eczma problems, so she could not recieve the parvo vax & the ecsza one together as one cancelled out the other – according to our vet.
    She was fine until when she was about 8, we moved neighborhoods, and there were some Maori families a few hundred yards away who never vaccinated – or even registered – their dogs.
    Bonnie would go & socialise with them, and when she was 10 caught parvo from them. She lasted 2 days – we had to put her down.
    A sad day for the family.
    
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    January 29, 2025 7:46pm
- wsk12345
  
  Parvo kills a high proportion of dogs that catch it, but the vax is not fool proof (I know of a case where a fully vaccinated dog died from it even with $5k vet care). It’s a horrible death, internal bleeding etc.
  
  On a risk benefit calculation IMO as a “anti vaxxer” you’d be mad not to get the vaccine. Unlike many of the human vaccines forced in our kids these days (hep b vaccine in case your baby gets a sexually transmitted disease anyone?)
  
  However many vets recommend it is given every 2 years. Others will tell you it lasts at least 5-6 years. My vet says that natural exposure during life will keep the immunity topped up. Not much money in that approach for Pharma and vet clinics though.
  
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  January 29, 2025 10:09am
  - Bridgenag
    
    The daughter of one of the Blokes at Bowls bought several $1500 cats….. The breeder was adamant that they not be vaccinated [indoor living] as “it sets them back”
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:48am
    - kowtow
      
      $1500 for a cat !
      
      What was it , a tiger ?
      
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      January 29, 2025 1:03pm
      - imalwaysright
        
        Post of the day…!
        
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        January 29, 2025 2:56pm
    - AitchW
      
      Cat breeders are, in my experience, a strange, strange group of people. Lots of opinions they mistake for facts…
      
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      January 29, 2025 6:06pm
  - newview
    
    wsk It’s the pups that are most vulnerable. That’s why you get them vaccinated.
    
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    January 29, 2025 11:01am
    - wsk12345
      
      Indeed. Pups don’t have much of an immune system yet so are definitely at most risk.
      
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      January 29, 2025 12:32pm
Yvette

The ACT Party leader believes government assets should provide a return or be sold.

Could this encourage entities to concentrate on those services giving a return, and endless reference to the religious worldview, te Ao o Maori, doesn’t –
so could it die a financial death?

Hmmm … so sorry, Bro
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January 29, 2025 9:44am
- PurplePen
  
  Useful to revisit the idea of selling stuff again. Nothing wrong with the discussion. Just don’t spend millions on consultants while you’re at it.
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:32pm
- rouppe
  
  How would that apply to the Armed Services?
  
  I don’t think providing a return is the be all and end all.
  
  We used to have a pretty good health service. Now it’s slow, and sometimes not that good.
  
  Just because it’s got problems doesn’t means it has to be hocked off.
  
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  January 29, 2025 10:48pm
Morgan H

Act has made the conversations around privatisation mainstream. Act has promised it. Luxon’s National is waiting to see how popular it is before properly commenting. I don’t see privatised healthcare being popular with Kiwis. The Left is pushing a narrative that our government is purposely sabotaging our public health system, so we are forced into privatisation. If that narrative were true, that means the last few Labour governments were part this sabotage plan too.
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January 29, 2025 9:47am
- Cassandra
  
  I use private healthcare via Southern Cross a lot. It’s excellent. Private is the norm all over the world. The key is in the funding. NHS systems are universally inefficient. But people confuse private with American. There’s a big difference.
  
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  January 29, 2025 10:43am
  - Philview
    
    I pay a fairly high premium for a family policy but on a number of occasions we have received treatment, it has been in days rather than the many months it would take in the public system. If the whole country goes private it does concern me that the efficiency will be lost and the mismanagement will be privatised with consumers picking up the cost.
    
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    January 29, 2025 11:11am
  - David Garrett
    
    Cass: I also have had excellent service from Southern Cross – but now sadly unaffordable for me, at least at present. Instead of joining a long waiting list for a colonoscopy in the public system, I just booked one when they were due. (Bad family history, especially for males)
    
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    January 29, 2025 11:20am
    - MCōs
      
      I don’t have to book colonoscopies
      Years ago I did some annual tests and blood was detected in a stool sample so the GP organised a colonoscopy that came back negative.
      Now I seem to be in the system & an appointment is forthcoming every few years.
      I received a letter just last week.
      My mate was diagnosed with kidney cancer recently after finding blood in his urine. He also found blood in his poo & a test detected colon cancer too.
      So he had a op to sort it all out and things were on the up and up.
      Except they aren’t . . . .
      
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      January 29, 2025 8:57pm
  - rouppe
    
    It’s great if you can afford it.
    
    I have surgical only. Tests are covered only if they lead to surgery. Premium is currently $2500 a year. Including diagnostic tests would take it to about $4000. It’s steeply rising every year.
    
    Maybe because you use it a lot 😉
    
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    January 29, 2025 10:30pm
- I remember when
  
  “That is what they’ve done for the last 40 years and that is exactly the playbook we are seeing now: underfund public services, run them into the ground, cut them and hock them off – that is what this government wants to do,” said Hipkins.”
  
  He doesn’t explain why anyone would want to buy a business after this has happened.
  Or, why many of those taken over by private enterprise operate with smaller staff numbers.
  Or, are quicker to react to market pressures.
  
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  January 29, 2025 10:58am
- Skippytony
  
  Reliance on public healthcare is rational when the service level is, broadly, up to expectation.
  And, like all forms of insurance, no one likes paying the premiums along the way, but the day you need it….
  However, for the foreseeable future, its hard to see the service levels in health doing anything other than continue their not so gradual decay.
  For example, go to your local doctors surgery and try and “sign up”. Our local GP has had the books closed for over two years. The average wait to see my GP (If for some strange reason I want to see “my” actual doctor) is 2-3 weeks.
  Had a friend need a hip replacement recently. Wait time in public is now measured in multiples of years, not months.
  Anyone who has had the misfortune to need the services of the NHS in the UK knows what a degrading, depressing and painful experience it is. It is hilariously bad by NZ standards, bordering on third world.
  Sadly demographics suggest that NZ is rapidly heading for a similar situation.
  I’ve got no idea what the solution is for the country, but the solution is clear on a personal level. You have to be prepared to pony up and go private like my friend did for their hips or bite the bullet and buy private health insurance.
  To be fair, I have had extraordinary great service in the public system when I have had need of it, but relying on that going forward is looking increasingly like the action of an optimist.
  No one wants to pay for health insurance & I get that some / many people can’t afford it.
  Healthcare is not a right. Good and timely healthcare is clearly not guaranteed.
  Rational people need to do the actuarial assessment of health insurance.
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:08am
  - Ghost
    
    I get into my gp within an hour of phoning up. Our hospital now labour are out are back to short lists, taking orthopedic patients from other areas to help reduce the lists for other areas. They pushed a lot of hip and knees through private to clear the back log here.
    
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    January 29, 2025 11:52am
    - rouppe
      
      When I was waiting for a scan I offered to go to another region at my expense to get it done sooner.
      
      I was told that was not possible.
      
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      January 29, 2025 10:32pm
      - Ghost
        
        Our orthopaedic surgeons cleared their list when labour got the boot, working what they could publicly and the rest during their private practise time, so we are getting the overflow from other areas here. I know of a woman down near Dunedin who came up for a cataract op a few months ago. I think our areas work in pretty well together down here. There is a St. John’s shuttle that takes people to christchurch that need to go there for medical treatment. G the giant actually posted a few weeks ago they offered to do his hip in Dunedin or timaru,
        
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        January 29, 2025 10:51pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  National said they would go to the next election, no they are not looking at popularity
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:17am
- Paulus
  
  Perhaps making Medical Insurance Premiums tax deductible, like say in the UK would help the Public Sector.
  God, I can hear the screaming now !
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:51pm
- NK
  
  The same system that we use for Kiwisaver could be used for private health care – save up a nest egg for when you need it. Allow tax write-offs for those who have private health insurance. It’s not difficult conceptually. It’s only difficult for Luxon and Willis because they’re square-peg, square-hole people.
  
  And they lack courage.
  
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  January 29, 2025 3:49pm
Yvette

WATCH: Pipe bursts and quickly floods street with murky brown water
Dramatic footage shows a man rushing up to a car and alerting the motorist inside about the flooding road on Kargi Street in the Yahsi Neighbourhood of Bodrum, southern Turkey, on January 24.

Stuff still does this? – “news” because they actually have (even highly technically degraded) video of it.
WTF Kargi Street in Turkey? – Wellington has enough
In an age of AI when readers can create their own video – with less than half the sentence above.

scheer schadenfreude
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January 29, 2025 10:18am
- Biscuit
  
  Yvette, the News these days is all visual…
  
  Think of the boffins at One as they prepare the 6 O’Clock bulletin:
  
  20,000 dead in an earthquake, you say? Any pictures ? No? Okay, 10 seconds just after the first ad break. Get the graphics people to prepare a map we can carry over the story.
  
  Man rescued in flash floods in Turkey? And there’s pictures? Yay! Lead story…
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:20pm
  - Paulus
    
    TVNZ must leave enough time for Maiki Sherman to dribble on !
    
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    January 29, 2025 1:52pm
- greybeard
  
  Much of Stuff’s video content is of obscure and trivial everyday events around the world. I dare say that many of their “readers” would not know where most of these places are.
  
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  January 29, 2025 5:30pm
NeverMindTheBollocks

Good news, Scott. The National Coalition Government will restore the Featherston to Masterton open highway speed limit to 100kmph, by 1 July.

It was always nutty. You could do 100 over the Rumutaka hill (if you dared), but could be pinged doing 81 on the flat, straight stretch coming out of Featherston towards Greytown.
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January 29, 2025 10:26am
- Biscuit
  
  But but, NMTB, Featherston to Masterton is in dire need of some bicycle lanes. And don’t start me on how many bike rack contraptions they’ll need every kilometre or so!
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:22pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    I’ll leave the daily bike count work to Scott
    
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    January 29, 2025 4:20pm
Yvette

Seymour’s privatisation talk pushes his agenda back into spotlight
And after te Pati Maori revealing the ATLAS corporatisation motive behind his Treaty Principles Bill, several of them must have needed a change of underoos this morning
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January 29, 2025 10:42am
lifesgood

Re: Golriz and Pak n Save. I well remember an Anglican vicar from the posh parish of Fendalton being caught and convicted of shop lifting a packet of tobacco (I think it was). The police didn’t say then that it was not worth prosecuting for something so small so what’s happened? Is shop lifting so rife the cops can’t keep up? It is disgraceful that thieves can now shop lift with impunity and, of course, we are all paying for the losses via higher prices.
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January 29, 2025 10:43am
- Jack5
  
  Cases like well-known vicar Bob pinching tobacco for his pipe are sad.
  
  People suffering dementia are shop-lifting risks.
  
  What do you do about sufferers in early stages if they are mobile and still living in their homes? Friends and family often find it hard to accept what’s happening to these folk.
  
  Shops and supermarkets can’t just let them take stuff.
  
  I remember a former law official, dotty in his early 90s, being charged for shoplifting a bar of chocolate. People were furious about the humiliation of his going before the court in a southern regional town.
  
  How should such incidents be handled?
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:10am
- David Garrett
  
  lifesgood: When I was a doorman at a bottle store when I was a student 30 years ago we detained shoplifters and called the cops. They usually arrived within 30 minutes, sometimes a bit longer.
  
  Note we detained the lifters – shop owners could do that back then. We kept them in the smoko room until the cops arrived. The polite ones got a cup of coffee while they waited. Those who decided to act like assholes were treated somewhat differently.
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:24am
- hookerphil
  
  Those with memories may recall our #15 Fullback and one of our great big kicking fullbacks from 1956 – 64, a childhood hero of many – who was charged for a packet of elastoplast he had put in his pocket.
  
  Have found the report – “Don Clarke’s larger-than-life proportions worked against after rugby. No taller poppy was so ruthlessly humbled as was Clarke when charged with a trivial shoplifting offence involving a 70c packet of sticking plasters from a North Shore supermarket in 1970.
  
  The magistrate was man enough to play down the affair, no guilt was left with Clarke – but Clarke, who was led sobbing from the court after the charge was dismissed – was so chastened that he looked elsewhere for life with his wife, Patsy.
  
  There were old and close friendly foes in South Africa, and Clarke settled comfortably in business far from the triumphs, and traumas, of his great rugby career.”
  
  The difference with Golriz is that she undoubtably is/was simply a thief.
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:25pm
- rouppe
  
  The biggest problem is that they didn’t wait until she had left without paying.
  
  They stopped her before she went to the self checkout.
  
  They left her with plausable deniability.
  
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  January 29, 2025 10:24pm
greybeard

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360563089/givealittle-director-sentenced-drink-driving-twice-one-night
OK, I am tempted to say the obvious…..
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January 29, 2025 10:51am
- cmm
  
  Twice in one night?
  
  Ummm, why was there a second time. She should have been jailed overnight and had her car impounded and license suspended.
  
  It seems to me that NZ could be a better place if more use was made of short duration jail time (eg. holding people overnight etc).
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:14pm
  - greybeard
    
    I was going to say that maybe she could create a Givealittle page to pay for her fines !
    
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    January 29, 2025 2:14pm
    - imalwaysright
      
      She’d be better off with a Drinkalittle Page.
      
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      January 29, 2025 3:00pm
- Tauhei Notts
  
  My nephew got caught on Saturday night. 800 compared to that woman’s 1280. If the loss of his licence is only 28 days he will cope. But any more than that and he might have the odd spot of bother running his company with its eight employees.
  Silly boy, but it was his youngest brother’s wedding and his new sister in law had already arranged taxis.
  
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  January 29, 2025 4:43pm
bennerg

In NBR (behind a paywall) former Trade Minister Tim Groser talks about what he sees for NZ trade under the Trump economy. “This is a potentially dangerous situation, and we need to develop strategies”, also warning of a more ruthless, prepared administration.

https://www.nbr.co.nz/business/what-tim-groser-sees-for-nz-trade-under-trump-economy

My suggestions for Luxon (who makes the real decisions as opposed to current Trade Minister Todd McClay) are:

1. Read the room

By this I mean, get rid of the globalist rhetoric coming from the likes of the UN, WEF, WHO and other such bodies.

2. Follow USA suit – leave WHO, categorially state disassociation from WEF and it’s policies, and sack any staff or minister maintaining links with it. Drop funding for UNWRA while you’re there.

3. MAHA – Make “Aotearoa” Healthy Again. We’ve been too long under the mental control of pharmaceutical oreinted “health” advocates … “have I got a pill for you”, and institute regular “Warrants of Fitness” for people, giving them the option to have full diagnoses to capture underlying health issues well before they discover “it’s too late”. And provide healthy lifestyle advice IN ADVANCE of sickness and ill health.

4. Get real about Defence. The Services offer a real benefit to society where they can offer career paths that also provide life skills, routines and structures that make for better people. Also we need to be able to contribute to a safe world, and that comes from being prepared, and having strength.

I like the Swiss Model. Especially since they like us are a small and somewhat independent nation. All Swiss men are obligated to serve in the military or perform alternative civilian service. The age for receiving initial orders for military conscription eligibility screening is generally 18. About two-thirds of young Swiss men are found suitable for military service, with the rest deemed unfit or directed towards alternative service.

We also need to reinstate our Air Force as a viable entity, perhaps in collaboration with Australia to share costs of training and maintenance. Same with Navy and Army. With modern warfare this also includes unmanned aircraft from small to large drones. A lot of technology is involved, but for that there will be opportunties for our brightest.

5. Finally get rid of WOKEness. We all know what that means. For me it is ending an infection that is creating wekaness in our society, at a very fundamental level.

Bring back merit based everything! Especially at schools. Mediocrity is killing us. And our best are leaving the country because of it. I see this in our family members who have left for Europe and Australia, so it is very real.

So that’s just a start for Mr Luxon / McClay. It’s time for YOU to be more ruthless, and prepared.
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January 29, 2025 11:23am
- RoboRob
  
  Certainly NZ following Trumps steps and exiting the Paris accord etc would definately earn us some brownie points with the US.
  
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  January 29, 2025 11:50am
- kiwimike
  
  100%
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:11pm
- Paulus
  
  Still not sure wher this place Aoteroa is, I thought we lived in New Zealand, although the media now ignore it as hard as posible.
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:56pm
  - bennerg
    
    Where is Aotearoa? Well it’s between the ears of some enthusiatic types who seem to want to name everything Maori in this land.
    
    Well I’m for anything that we agree on. But at this stage there is no agreement, and people in positions of some (media) power engaging in their fantasies.
    
    Trying to make it official by stealth is disingenuous and divisive.
    
    A leader (if we actually had one in this country) would either say
    (a) no our name is New Zealand, or
    (b) let’s have a conversation, then a referendum.
    
    End of story ….
    But then again, we don’t have that sort of leadership in New Zealand.
    
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    January 29, 2025 4:12pm
DimChappie

On Monday Jan 27, Justice Committee chair James Meager had to clear the room (3:24 on the video below) after a Maori radical in the gallery burst into song congratulating former Productivity Commissioner Ganesh Nana for his vicious submission against the Treaty Principles Bill (submission starts at 3:13) Nana called the bill repulsive and repugnant and demanded the government issue an apology to Maori for even considering it. He asked if there were any “adults in the room” who would agree with his stern anti-bill stance. National’s Rima Nakhle (3:20) thanked Nana for “highlighting how young I look,” and asked him what he got his Phd in. “Economics,” Nana replied. Nakhle said: “So while you worked, in 2021 we had one of our worst recessions in history.” Nana did not get to reply.

https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/scl/justice/news-archive/watch-public-meetings-of-the-justice-committee/
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January 29, 2025 11:44am
- fightingtemeraire
  
  Economists were invented to make astrologers look good!!!
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:26pm
  - muzled
    
    Amusing when the clearly very distraught Ganesh was asked what he had a phd in, and then when he answered economics, the lady said
    
    – while you worked in 2021 we went into one of our worst recessions in history, but thank you.
    
    haha, gold!
    
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    January 29, 2025 12:53pm
- PurplePen
  
  “Nana called the bill repulsive and repugnant”.
  
  Did Nana say at all why? What was his rationale.
  
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  January 29, 2025 12:40pm
  - DimChappie
    
    His submission starts at 3:13 in the video linked above. It is better you watch it yourself. I deeply regret he was once paid by the taxpayer.
    
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    January 29, 2025 1:18pm
  - Paulus
    
    I was closely related to BERL which Nana works and know its founders would turn in their graves at his position in the name now.
    BERL = Business and Economic Research Limited (Wellington born and well supported there for many years in the 1960s and 1970 with many sound people.)
    
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    January 29, 2025 2:00pm
- mandk
  
  Nana (“capitalism is a scam”) still looking for relevance.
  
  Has a got a new job yet, or is he moaning about how beastly the government was for shutting down the Productivity Commission?
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:01pm
Tom Hunter

Good grief, after DPF’s post the other day – Trump 1 Colombia 0 – I thought it was all over.

Turns out not to be the case. Some deportation flights have happened but the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, is still niggling away about future flights, so the threats of tarrifs on their exports to the USA could still happen. As a result there are protests against Petro now happening in the country.

But the real kicker is a post he did on X which is fully in the tradition of communist rants. The translation is beyond belief for the leader of nation, it’s like something out of One Hundred Years of Solitude!!

You can read it yourself at the link, but this description captures it pretty well:

….yelling about going to black neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., and watching blacks fighting Mexicans, liking ’60s flower child icons Walt Whitman, Paul Simon and Noam Chomsky, his devotion to executed killers Sacco and Vanzetti, icons of communists, “murdered by fascists,” whimperings about Trump being racist against him, despite his white as snow skin with bright blue eyes, calls to drink whisky with Trump despite his gastritis, claims that Trump is trying to enact a coup to him comparable to what happened to Chilean Marxist dictator Salvador Allende, meaning, Trump is Pinochet, who got blamed for the reaction, then rants about resisting torture, resisting Trump, then gibberish about yellow butterflies and some colonel he identifies with, then putrid poetry of ’60s leftists about peoples of the winds, the mountains, the sea, blah blah, blah….

For those who doubt the connection with Marquez’s famous book, here’s the last part of it.

Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.
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January 29, 2025 12:07pm
MCōs

Yesterday I went into a Whitcoulls, which these days are not specialized bookstores as they once were.
I was browsing some bestsellers near the entrance when a guy about my age (ancient adjacent) came over, grabbed my arm and started ranting about how fucking useless the cunts were!
He wanted a book about ‘wool’. It dawned on me he needed help writing his own will.
I thought I must have known him, but no! He just wanted to vent and numerous expletives later he buggered off before I said a word.
I’ve not seen anything quite like that from an otherwise run of the mill old codger in NZ before.
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January 29, 2025 12:57pm
- David Garrett
  
  MCos: Do it yourself wills are a very BAD idea – especially when templates are lifted off an American website. Our law is very different, and the courts are very strict when it comes to probating wills.
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:11pm
  - cmm
    
    It surely matters how complex a will is.
    
    If it is just a straight forward: split the proceeds 50/50 between the two kids type will then surely just a simple signed and witnessed declaration using an NZ template is enough.
    
    I didn’t want my share of my mother’s will and was hoping they could just split 50/50 between my siblings. That caused a bit of a mess with the SA legal system (eg. what would happen if my heirs challenged it later). In the end I had to get accept my share then donate it to my siblings. It was hardly worth it in the end after my parents had white-anted what had been a multi-million $ legacy a generation or two before.
    
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    January 29, 2025 1:23pm
    - David Garrett
      
      cmm: I was in a similar position with regard to my mother’s very modest estate: I didn’t want a dollar of the old witch’s money, and said so in writing.
      
      A wise family lawyer instead divided my share between my two children, to vest at age 21. I didn’t realise then that that was the perfect solution to the possibility of a later challenge from my kids.
      
      As an aside, I told the old bitch before she died that I guaranteed two things would happen on her death: 1) there would be endless squabbling between my three sisters who were all appointed as executors, despite them not getting on and 2) there would be challenge from me.
      
      (The estate took seven years to settle as a result of my sisters’ said squabbling, and halved in size due to legal fees. As promised, there was no challenge from me).
      
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      January 29, 2025 3:34pm
      - Tauhei Notts
        
        Sadly, “those wise family lawyers” are becoming a rare breed.
        If you’ve got one, treat him/her with the utmost respect.
        
        5 0
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        January 29, 2025 4:46pm
      - AitchW
        
        David check your editing. Should your penultimate paragraph not read “2) there would be NO challenge” ?
        
        5 0
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        January 29, 2025 6:14pm
- Swifty
  
  Green voter, used to be Values.
  
  First the Coalition victory and more recently Trump’s trouncing of the Dems has clearly put him over the edge.
  
  He’s not coping.
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:13pm
  - MCōs
    
    Thinking back I’m reminded of the parents who screamed and yelled on the sidelines when I offered to ref a primary school rugby game.
    One would have thought it was an All Black trial and every undetected infraction of the laws by the opponents was going to consign their little prodigy to oblivion.
    
    5 5
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    January 29, 2025 4:14pm
- fightingtemeraire
  
  Whitcomb and Tombs who were well known book publishers, importers and publishers were v well respected in the international Book trade. Coull Somerville and Wilkie were stationers and well respected.
  
  Whitcoulls are not in either of the spheres.
  
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  January 29, 2025 2:56pm
  - Jack5
    
    Whitcombe & Tombs was founded in Christchurch in 1882 and grew to a large publisher. It had shops through New Zealand, a few in Australia, and an office in London.
    
    The printing plant in Christchurch was on a five-acre site near the central city. For decades, Whitcombe & Tombs printed school text books for Australian states and Melanesian colonies as well as for New Zealand. Its textbook files were a history of education in the two countries.
    
    It published — and printed — several hundred other titles, from novels and history books to coffee-table volumes, and even a sports book or two. Plus annual personal, farm, and business diaries for the pre-internet age.
    
    The main bookshop, in Christchurch, and stretching between two streets, in size was comparable to big book shops of the day in America.
    
    In 1971, Whitcombe & Tombs merged with the Dunedin-based printer, Coulls Somerville Wilkie Ltd. and was renamed, Whitcoulls.
    
    The stock-exchange listed firm fell to Brierley Investments, attracted by its retail and industrial property around the country and especially by the big printing site in Christchurch.
    
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    January 29, 2025 8:22pm
Ghost

Interesting interview with James Meager who explains what happened with Hobson pledge. They didn’t reply to the invitation to speak in time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVFHVsJ6GaQ
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January 29, 2025 12:58pm
- DimChappie
  
  They did reply within the deadline given, but spots had all been allocated by the time they replied. Meager apologised for the mixup.
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:21pm
  - Prince
    
    So they were asked to reply by a givebn time, they did that, but talking spots had already been given before the deadline ?
    Sounds like the usual bureaucratic jack-up to me. I was hoping the Govt would be better than that.
    There is something very wrong with this country, and it comes from the top.
    
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    January 29, 2025 2:07pm
Swifty

Nanaia Mahuta and Nicky Hager are currently yarning over a coffee at the WCC cafe on 113 The Terrace.

Heaven knows what they have in common – delivering more power and control into the hands of an unelected elite no doubt.
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January 29, 2025 1:07pm
- lifesgood
  
  He’ll be getting some info on all the terrible things white people do to Maori so that he can right one of his block buster/// books. He won’t be getting fashion advice, methinks.
  
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  January 29, 2025 1:50pm
  - lifesgood
    
    Oooops! “write” not right.
    
    5 0
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    January 29, 2025 4:00pm
- Swifty
  
  Still going as at 2:03pm and Hager has taken his jacket off – things must be heating up! 🤣
  
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  January 29, 2025 2:05pm
  - wairarapapaul
    
    Maybe it’s a date?
    
    3 0
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    January 29, 2025 4:06pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    It’s not that warm a day!
    
    2 0
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    January 29, 2025 4:26pm
  - kevn
    
    Swifty… Getting warmed up for the bike ride home, him not her.
    
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    January 29, 2025 5:17pm
Chuck Bird

This is a 5 minute video. Trump is good news for the West.

Entire Room Of Muslim Leaders Go SILENT As Trump Reveals The TRUTH About Terrorism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMSS_vy_oR8
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January 29, 2025 2:02pm
Prince

You may recall before Christmas a TVNZ item about unemployment, based around a supposed ‘truck driver’ (her history suggested an administrator for a truck firm), unable to find any positions open in Hawkes Bay.
Suzzy Fairbairn had been trying for months but unable to find a position.
A screenshot shown said there were no positions available.

In fact, on close inspection, the search was for ‘truckbrivers’. The response suggested to check the spelling, but that was ignored by Fairbairn and TVNZ.

Anyway, TVNZ went ahead and used this as evidence that job-seekers were struggling to find positions. Actually, there were 68 truck driver positions in Hawkes Bay at that time.
Anyway, I lodged a complaint with TVNZ, as the TV News item was never corrected, as I would expect from a credible news organisation.

Their response arrived last week. Basically they said…
* Yes, the item was false, due to human error in poor pre-broadcast checks.
* Yes the entire item was based on the incorrect screenshot.
* However, Because Ms Fairbairn said she had been searching for months, the item was essentially correct.

So we are expected to accept Ms Fairbairn’s word, despite over 60 positions being available.
It seems obvious to me that Ms Fairbairn is not a credible job-seeker.

This is why an increasing number of people are losing confidence in the media. They lie, then they refuse to accept responsibility.
If they made an apology and correction the next day, their reporters may be inclined to show some professionalism in their work.
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January 29, 2025 2:25pm
- Blog-aholic
  
  I remember that too…. So the article the article is essentially correct as it is essentially incorrect.
  They cannot be both in trusted journalism there is either something that is correct (true) or incorrect (false)…..what they printed was false no two ways about it.
  
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  January 29, 2025 3:40pm
- Conservatarian
  
  Comical. And I appreciate your royal self and your quest for transparency and accountability.
  
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  January 29, 2025 4:35pm
- graham
  
  ” It seems obvious to me that Ms Fairbairn is not a credible job-seeker.”
  
  I’d also add to that, it seems obvious that TVNZ can no longer be considered a credible news organisation. What was once considered the flagship news bulletin of this country is now a program that – clearly – cannot be trusted.
  
  I’m serious. How are we meant to trust a news organisation that will not own up and admit they got the basic facts of a story wrong? In the interests of transparency, they did put a note on the story on their website, but they did not admit this on the TV bulletin.
  
  Pretty poor for a news bulletin that was once fronted by honest people such as Dougal Stevenson and Philip Sherry. I think those gentlemen would have been mortified at such a basic mistake and issued a correction and an apology on their own behalf.
  
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  January 29, 2025 4:46pm
Maggie's ex partner

I have been sent an advance copy of Jacinda’s book for review – thought you might be interested in the foreword…….

It was a dizzy ascent; from managing a nationwide chain of seafood restaurants, to Prime Minister of Aotearoa! Nothing prepares you for that.

The moment I received the thumbs up text from Winston, I knew my life would change forever.

But I also knew that those values which had helped me navigate my way to the top, kindness, empathy and determination, would be the values which helped me fulfill my destiny – to lead my people out of the wilderness of 9 years of neglect, and into the promised land of fairness and equality.

It was quickly apparent that not all of my erstwhile cabinet colleagues shared my vision of Nirvana Zealand, so I set about building team of like-minded souls who could share my journey into the future: Chippy, Woodsy, Woody, Robbo and Nasho, Tova and Jess. Their names would become the stuff of legends.

Together we would embark on a never ending journey of aspiration which would highlight our little country’s position as a global beacon of aspiration.

And then came COVID. As a famous Irish poet once said, “the best laid plans of mice and pens are often going to algae”.

There were times during the dark days of COVID when I thought of ending it all, the weight of a nation on my slender shoulders was too much a cross to bear, but I knew that it was my destiny to be that tower of strength to which Kiwis could cling, until that faint glimmer of light at the end of the long dark tunnel shone brighter and brighter, then at last we would emerge into the glorious daylight of being COVID free.

When I look back on all I achieved, ending child poverty, giving savers the best levels of returns in decades, helping motels achieve sustainably full occupancy, and the free trade agreement with Ibiza (for which my darling Clark must take some credit), I think of all it will be my handling of the COVID response which will be my legacy. The team of 5 million, a nation united as one determined to conquer, and we did. Yes we did!

It has been a journey of expectation and endeavour, of persistence and perspiration, and most of all of enduring and all embracing kindness.

This then is my story, the story of the farm girl from the Waikato who, just for a wee while, became the most celebrated female leader under the age of 40 in the Southern Hemisphere. I hope you enjoy it!
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January 29, 2025 2:29pm
- Blog-aholic
  
  Funny thing is though she wasn’t the PM of that Aoteo place she was always introduced internationally as Prime Minister of New Zealand…
  
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  January 29, 2025 3:41pm
- Blog-aholic
  
  If that is the forward it must also be a satire.
  
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  January 29, 2025 3:42pm
- gorse
  
  Is this for real? Unbelievable, literally.
  
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  January 29, 2025 4:13pm
  - Grunter
    
    Can’t be real……?? But then again……
    
    4 1
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    January 29, 2025 5:39pm
- kevn
  
  Maggies ex…. She missed the bit about banishing plastic bags at the supermarket, on the strength of a school girls letter. Whales live but are being punished by ocean based wind turbines.
  Awesome //
  
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  January 29, 2025 5:15pm
- Steve Otto N Shore
  
  No no no, we want to hear it from Maggie Pie herself!!
  
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  January 29, 2025 6:55pm
- Keith White
  
  And now it’s been filmed in glorious widescreen Chunderama…
  
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  January 29, 2025 7:36pm
Scooter

More leftie rich celebrities losing it in the States. Selena Gomez this time crying crocodile tears over Trumps deportations. She quickly removed her post after a lot of backlash so maybe she’s not so much for the immigrants as much as for her own publicity.

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/selena-gomez-video-ice-deportation-backlash-1236287519/
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January 29, 2025 2:41pm
- kowtow
  
  Today nz business web site interest.co describes the raids as “brutal.”
  
  This site also recently called Mr T the “grifter in chief”
  
  I wonder did they ever run a story about the brutal crime committed by illegal immigrants in the US .
  
  TDS is a real thing.
  
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  January 29, 2025 3:21pm
  - mandk
    
    interest.co.nz leans a fair way to the left.
    
    Not surprising though, it was started by Bernard Hickey who is a real Jacinda Ardern fanboy.
    
    I went to an event soon after the formation of the 2017 Labour/NZ First coalition. Hickey was the MC and he was giddy with excitement about the new government.
    
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    January 29, 2025 3:58pm
    - Jack5
      
      The Interest-dot-co management is describe at the link below.
      
      I think it’s owned and run by David Chaston through his company JDJL.
      
      Don’t see Bernard Hickey’s name in the list.
      
      https://www.interest.co.nz/about-us
      
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      January 29, 2025 8:03pm
Scooter

So many good Selena Gomez parodies, ice ice baby.

https://x.com/ben_kew/status/1884075173474607527?t=8kJzqlSdnJ8FV2h_hEXK3w&s=19
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January 29, 2025 3:15pm
Swifty

How utterly vile – that you aren’t a Maori, a true Maori, unless you agree with our version of Maoriness, unless you publicly buy in to our prescription of what a Maori is and is not.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/boot-camps-te-pati-maori-mp-says-karen-chhour-does-not-understand-essence-of-being-maori-in-heated-exchange/P72G5D3I6RCP3AWYNNTKHPU6KI/

Well, that tells you all you need to know about the Maori Party doesn’t it?

All Maori must think the same, according to the Maori Party, or they’re not real Maori.

Agree with us or we’ll deny your very Maoriness. Your very existence as Maori.

These Maori Party people don’t want Maori people free. They don’t want them emancipated nor independent. They don’t want Maori to be free thinking. They don’t want Maori people free of the shackles of dogma, superstition nor ideology.

No. The Maori Party want Maori people to all walk a very narrow line, in lockstep with the views and prescriptions of their betters – the Maori Party.

They want Maori people subservient. Forever.
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January 29, 2025 3:18pm
- Blog-aholic
  
  Kapa-Kingi sees only race when she looks upon people. Sadly she also see only one race being the superior one. People like her can be found across history, they are not special but they are simply blatant hate-filled racists.
  
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  January 29, 2025 3:46pm
  - AitchW
    
    Yet another example of TMP’s ongoing campaign of hate and vilification of any wahine Maori MP who doesn’t fall into line behind Ngarewa-Packer and the guy with the cowboy hat whose name I can never remember.
    
    5 0
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    January 29, 2025 6:19pm
    - rouppe
      
      I always find it amusing they go on about decolonisation while literature dropping with ask that colonisation brought.
      
      Including those stupid hats
      
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      January 29, 2025 9:59pm
      - rouppe
        
        Urgh that was awful… I meant
        
        “I always find it amusing they go on about decolonisation while literally dripping with all that colonisation brought.”
        
        1 0
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        January 30, 2025 7:53am
- Jules99
  
  I think she insulted pacific islanders too. Better be careful there as they need them to make up the numbers these days.
  
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  January 29, 2025 5:46pm
bennerg

Regarding DeepSeek, began a play with it to check out subtle biases, not just the obvious one’s about Tianamen Square and Tank Man.

I started with some questions about RFK and his vaccine policy, and compared it to Grok. Definitely a bias found in the way the facts are given.

I then asked “how much money does NZ contribute to the climate change fund?”

Grok only told me about NZ1.3B in 2022-25, while DeepSeek also told me about the NZ$300Billion pledged in 2019 – 2022, something I had seen mentioned elsewhere.

By my calculations that’s about NZ$60,000 for every man woman and child in New Zealand – or approx a quarter of a million dollars per household.

Tell me this is wrong please?

If it is correct, then it is time we promptly exited this agreement like the USA.
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January 29, 2025 4:49pm
- greybeard
  
  DeepSeek is for shallow people.
  
  “AI” used to have a valid meaning in NZ: “Artificial Insemination”. A valuable process, which helps to generate wealth for the country.
  Now it is taken to mean “Antisocial Imagination”: a whole lot of computer-generated rubbish for people who can’t think for themselves.
  
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  January 29, 2025 5:36pm
  - kevn
    
    grey… Meanwhile Warren Buffet has making another fortune now the DeepSeek red herring has passed by.
    
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    January 29, 2025 5:55pm
    - Jack5
      
      Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway seems to have little if any direct investments in AI. It has money in the technology indirectly through: its big stake in Apple; its billion and a half dollar holding Amazon; and in Snowflake, an American company in data cloud structure.
      
      In China investments, Berkshire did well with early shares in the Chinese electric car maker BYD, a “find” of Buffett’s former partner, the late Charlie Munger. Berkshire has since sold down most of this holding.
      
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      January 29, 2025 7:48pm
  - Steve Otto N Shore
    
    Moo!
    
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    January 29, 2025 6:57pm
  - bennerg
    
    What is called “AI” now is the technology of neural networks, and a very powerful tool. Here in NZ companies have made use of it for very profitable ends, analysing data, often in real time to make decisions optimising systems and making massive savings. (I cannot say more due to client confidentiality)
    
    But these systems take huge amounts of time to set up, and “train”. What we are seeing now is like the advent of the personal computer, one in every home.
    
    I can see that advances, whether it is Deepseek or another, will eventually optimise it to make our lives advance.
    
    Naysayers are just like the IBM President who said back in the ’40s that the world only had enough demand for 3 computers” ……
    
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    January 29, 2025 9:45pm
- Jake Dee
  
  What do you mean about Tiananmen square and tank man?
  have you asked it specific questions on those subjects? What replies did you get?
  
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  January 29, 2025 6:25pm
- Ghost
  
  $300 billion pledged is likely for the cop29 pledge for a fund, it’s not nz.
  
  The one you are thinking about is likely this
  
  https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/climate-change-nz-could-face-24-billion-bill-to-hit-2030-international-paris-agreement-targets-in-carbon-credits-officials-warn/HPCLSJELQZABFJ3FZ6JLUZK7IM/
  
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  January 29, 2025 7:18pm

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