Virginia Fallon reports in Stuff about a typical case that Oranga Tamariki staff deal with.

It’s such a sad story, and one I suspect is all too common.

News.com.au reports:

Iran said one of its most prominent nuclear scientists was assassinated Friday in an attack outside Tehran, blaming arch foe Israel and warning of “severe revenge”.

The assassination threatens to escalate tensions between Iran and the US and its close ally Israel, with some warning of the risk of a major conflict in the Middle East.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, 59, was “seriously wounded” when assailants targeted his car before being engaged in a gunfight with his bodyguards, the defence ministry said.

It added that Fakhrizadeh, who headed the ministry’s research and innovation organisation, was later “martyred” after medics failed to revive him.

I’m not sure Israel is responsible.

Sure ii Fakhrizadeh had been killed by poisoning, a hit and run or similar I’d think Israel.

But how would Israel get half a dozen agents into Iran fully armed, carry out the attack, and escape without trace?

I mean Mossad is good at what they do, but are they that good?

Worth reading the judgment by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. All three judges were appointed by Republicans, and the author was appointed by Trump. Some extracts:

• Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.
• The Campaign’s claims have no merit. The number of ballots it specifically challenges is far smaller than the roughly 81,000-vote margin of victory. And it never claims fraud or that any votes were cast by illegal voters
• Here, the Campaign’s request fails as both inequitable and futile.
• “Upon information and belief” is a lawyerly way of saying that the Campaign does not know that something is a fact but just suspects it or has heard it.
• The Campaign would have us set aside 1.5 million ballots without even alleging fraud.
• There is no allegation of fraud (let alone proof) to justify harming those millions of voters as well as other candidates.
• Democracy depends on counting all lawful votes promptly and finally, not setting them aside without weighty proof.
• Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.

I hope they appeal the decision to SCOTUS just to see Trump’s fury when they vote the appeal down 9-0. In fact they will probably just decline to hear it.

I think the latest count is 35 losses and two minor wins in court. Incredible.

UPDATE: May now be 36-1 as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has over-ruled a lower court on suspending certification. It was 7-0 and dismissed with prejudice.

The Herald reports:

Another referendum on cannabis is being proposed – this time to decriminalise, but not legalise, the drug.

A public notice in today’s Herald gives notice that a citizen-initiated referendum has been proposed asking: “Should New Zealand decriminalise the possession of cannabis for personal use?”

The proposal, lodged by Wellington Central Young Greens activist Mathew Bouma, is open for comments on the proposed wording until February 1.

House of Representatives Clerk David Wilson and Bouma must then agree on a final wording, and the issue will go to a referendum if Bouma can collect valid signatures from at least one-tenth of the country’s 3.55 million electors – 355,000 people – within 12 months.

The initiative comes just six weeks after a narrow majority of 50.7 per cent of New Zealanders voted against legalising cannabis.

Actually it was 51.2%

But regardless another would be a giant waste of money. If you wanted a referendum on decriminalisation, then that is what you should have asked for last time.

Bouma, 20, said he believed many people voted against legalising the drug because it would have created a commercial market for big businesses, but that did not mean voters wanted cannabis users to be fined or jailed.

Only a member of Young Greens could think legalisation failed because people were anti big business!

The HB Regional Council is debating whether or not to have a Maori Ward. To help them with the decision making, the chair of the local Iwi sent them this e-mail:

Last week Mere and I watched DJango where Django was a freed ” field nigger” as they put it and his wife Bromhilda was a still a “ house nigger”who he tries to free.   I won’t spoil the end … but here is a prayer for the powerful and almighty who think we are sub-humans.

WE PRAY FOR THOSE WHO THINK WE ARE ALL BORN EQUAL UNDER GOD’S EYES BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS UNDER MAN’S EYES

WE PRAY FOR THOSE REGIONAL COUNCILLORS WHO THINK MAORI, TANGATA WHENUA ARE SUB-HUMAN AND DON’T DESERVE A VOTE EQUALLY AT THE TABLE AS THEY ARE ,  WE PRAY FOR THEM

WE PRAY FOR THOSE COUNCILLORS OF FARMING BACKGROUNDS ON STOLEN LANDS WHO DO NOT THINK MAORI COUNT IN DETERMINING THE FUTURE OF THIS REGION AND SHOULD STICK TO SHEARING AND FENCING

WE PRAY FOR THOSE COUNCILLORS FROM AN ORCHARDIST BACKGROUND WHO THINK THE MAORI COMMITTEES OF COUNCIL ARE THE” HOUSE NIGGERS” AND THE SEASONAL WORKERS FROM THE ISLANDS ARE THEIR “FIELD NIGGERS”, WE PRAY FOR THEM

WE PRAY FOR THOSE COUNCILLORS WHOS ANCESTORS WERE INSTRUMENTAL IN THE TREATY OF WAITANGI SIGNING AND HAVE A LEGACY OF BREACHING THE TREATY UP TO THIS DAY STILL WHO THINK THAT MAORI DON’T DESERVE A VOTE AT THE COUNCIL TABLE,  WE PRAY FOR THEM

WE PRAY FOR THOSE COUNCILLORS WHO SUNK BACK INTO THE COMFORTABLE CUSHION OF COLONISATION AND DID NOT VOTE FOR MAORI AT ALL

WE PRAY FOR THOSE MAORI COUNCILLORS WHO ARE STILL SUBJECT TO THE  RULE BRITTANIA CONSTITUENTS AND VOTED ACCORDINGLY

WE DON’T NEED TO PRAY FOR THOSE COUNCILLORS  THAT SUPPORTED MAORI BEING EQUAL UNDER THE TREATY AND AS FELLOW HUMANS

WE PRAY THAT THE POWERFUL AND THE MIGHTY ARE IRRELEVANT TO THE ASPIRATIONS OF MAORI IN THE FUTURE POLITICALLY ECONOMICALLY SOCIALLY AND CUTURALLY.

WE PRAY THAT THEY DISAPPEAR INTO THEIR OWN CLOUD OF POWER AND MIGHT.   BY DJANGO!!!!!  AMEN

So voting against race based seats is akin to slavery it seems!

The Royal Society granted $300,000 recently to Dr Lindsay Robertson for the topic:

Can a leopard change its spots? Exploring Big Tobacco as a proponent of smokefree goals.

Dr Robertson tweeted:

You don’t have to be Einstein to work out that the findings will of course be that the industry should have no say at all on how they are regulated.

But what makes this case interesting is what happened in 2018. Dr Robertson tweeted:

Visited the IQOS store in Seoul today. It was conveyed as a high-end fashion item. Tobacco unmentioned. No age restrictions. I told sales-person I was a non-smoker. She was still happy to sell to me, despite the two signs claiming IQOS is only for smokers. pic.twitter.com/AUPlksvbNW— Lindsay Robertson (@dr_lindsaybells) November 25, 2018

And then a Vice-President of PMI responded:

Now one might be inclined to believe the public health academic over the evil tobacco company except PMI referred to CCTV footage which they claims disproves the claims of Dr Robertson.

PMI can’t release it without her agreement. I would have thought she would be happy to have proof of her claims released. But instead her Twitter account went private, and has been so ever since.

Baring in mind this history, you do have to wonder the appropriateness of awarding $300,000 to someone who has been accused of lying about the very industry her research grant is about.

The easiest way to resolve it would be for permission to be granted for the CCTV footage to be released to see who was telling the truth.

Vice reports:

Several Penguin Random House Canada employees confronted management about the company’s decision to publish a new book by controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson at an emotional town hall Monday, and dozens more have filed anonymous complaints, according to four workers who spoke to VICE World News. 

Snowflake staff complaining that a book publisher is publishing a book because they don’t like the author.

Seriously they should all travel back in time to the 1930s and apply for jobs as book burners.

The Herald reports:

In a highly unusual move, the Speaker has released correspondence between himself, the Clerk’s office and Māori Party MPs over the row that blew up in Parliament.

Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard and the Māori Party are accusing each other of grandstanding after the Māori Party’s two MPs walked out of the first session of the new Parliament yesterday.

Co-leader Rawiri Waititi raised a point of order in te reo Māori when seeking to participate in a debate but was overruled by Mallard.

He was given a brief opportunity to convince the Speaker to hear him out, telling the House “Kei te mōtini te pāti Māori kia riro i a mātou, 15 miniti ki ngā kaiarahi o te pāti Māori i roto i tēnei wāhanga whakautu kōrero”, roughly translated as “to pass a motion so that the Māori Party leaders can have 15 minutes to speak in the Address in Reply”.

But the Speaker cut him off, which prompted Waititi and co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer to leave the chamber, in a dramatic start to the Māori Party’s return to the halls of power.

Under the rules, party leaders with more than six MPs get 30 minutes to speak and smaller parties would only get the chance if time allowed before the House rises at 5pm.

However, because Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer are new MPs, if they spoke in the Address in Reply debate that would constitute their maiden speech and these were not scheduled until at least next week.

Waititi tried to secure a speaking slot based on a standing order that such decisions do not discriminate against a minority party.

The problem the Maori Party MPs had is that they tried to move a motion while another MP was speaking. You can’t do that. They can complain all they want about it, but their best bet would be to have a staffer experienced in parliamentary procedure who can assist them.

Waititi replied: “The only Party being banned from the Address in Reply debate is Te Paati Māori … all other 4 Party’s are Pākeha led and dominated. These Party’s get 30 minutes speaking time, Māori get nothing”.

Actually all four other parties have a Maori leader or co-leader or deputy leader.

Stuff reports:

A soldier who led a white nationalist group has been charged with espionage, and is the first person to face such an accusation of threatening New Zealand’s security by giving information to another country or foreign organisation.

The Defence Force on Wednesday said the soldier, who has name suppression, would face a court martial on 17 charges including multiple counts of espionage, attempted espionage, accessing a computer system for dishonest purposes, and possessing an objectionable publication.

Much of the detail of the allegations remains unknown, including the information the soldier obtained and which country or foreign organisation he shared the information with.

A friend close to the soldier’s family said they were shocked at the charges. The soldier, who was 27 years old when he was arrested at Linton Military Camp in December, now faces the possibility of 14 years in prison.

Going to be a fascinating court martial. If I had to guess he was sharing information with a foreign organisation, not a country.

The soldier continued to be involved in Far-Right groups after the March 15 attack, Stuff understands, and had been planning to fly out to Russia with his partner a week after his arrest.

Or maybe it was Russia?

The Auditor-General writes to the MOT about Auckland light rail:

It seems unusual to us for such a fundamental reconsideration of project scope/parameters to occur alongside the selection of a party to deliver light rail, or at the same time as exclusive negotiations with a delivery partner might occur (once one was selected). In our view, where something occurs that causes the overall project parameters and the procurement approach to be reconsidered, or for the key policy settings to be revisited, the more appropriate step would be to terminate any existing process in an open and transparent way and revisit the policy and planning for the project.

Basically you decide what you want first, then you tender for it.

We were told at one point that it was open to the Government or Cabinet to choose not to follow the Rules in certain situations. Although it is correct that the Rules do not have the force of law, we note that they are mandatory for many public organisations. Where there is potential for international investors, we need to be mindful of the international obligations we have under free trade agreements. The Rules are designed to guide public agencies to procure responsibly and achieve public value, and maintain the integrity of government procurement and New Zealand’s reputation as a country that “plays by the rules”. This is something which Rules, and the principles in the Rules, are designed to promote.

Basically the process used by Twyford broke the procurement rules.

Stuff reports:

Wellington High School went into lockdown for about an hour on Thursday morning after police said they received a “credible threat” on social media.

A student has revealed how he tipped the school off about an alleged would-be-shooter targeting the Wellington High LGBTQI+ community.

The student’s parent confirmed his son had raised serious concerns about another teenager – not from the school – planning a school shooting.

The shooting was allegedly planned for 2021 but this was moved forward after messages sent by the alleged shooter were passed on to school staff, the student said.

God this is beyond terrible. The poor kids knowing that someone was planning this, even if it never eventuated.

Stuff has seen Instagram messages between the alleged would-be shooter and another person.

Those messages said he planned to share the incident on Facebook: “I can’t wait I’m soo excited.”

His public Instagram page, which has since been taken down, included white supremacist imagery.

Among the posts were a picture of the Christchurch mosque shooter – posted on Thursday morning – as well as a rifle and bullets being held in someone’s hand, posted the night before.

Another student at the school told Stuff the alleged would-be shooter had been posting on social media about having a gun and bullets and being a “Nazi”.

Thankfully many neo-nazis and white supremacists are thick as shit, otherwise they wouldn’t post on social media about how they have a gun and are a Nazi.

We don’t know if the would-be-shooter did in fact have access to guns, and how he became so radicalised. Thank goodness the Police were informed in time.

There was also a planned school shooting in Tasman in early 2019, whose trial outcome has just been publicised. Also very disturbing. We don’t know in the Nelson case what the motivation was. Was it just a disturbed loner, or was there an ideological motive. It is unfortunate the court has suppressed these details so we don’t know.

The Herald reports:

Parliament will next week debate if a climate emergency in New Zealand should be declared, leader of the House Chris Hipkins has told MPs.

Speaking in the House after the Speech from the Throne, Hipkins said that the motion will be debated next Tuesday.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will personally introduce the motion next week, according to a spokesman.

Rather than implement policies that will actually reduce emissions, they are instead distracting people by saying “Oh we care so much about this we will call it an emergency”.

They promised the Government vehicle fleet would be emissions free within eight years. After three years they are yet to reach 1%!!!

Yet they have the temerity to next week sit in Parliament and declare this is an emergency when they haven’t even been capable in three years of getting 1% of the government fleet electric.

This graph shows the death rates per million in the 30 OECD countries. We should feel great that we have the lowest death rate. Most OECD countries have death rates 80 times greater than us.

Australia’s rate is four times the rate in NZ, but it varies by state. If we ranked NZ and the states in order they would be”

1. NT 0
2. Queensland 1.2
3. South Australia 2.3
4. Western Australia 3.4
5. NZ 5.1
6. NSW 6.5
7. ACT 7.0
8. Tasmania 24.2
9. Victoria 123.1

UPDATE: Vic and WA corrected

Research NZ polled 1,000 NZers on possible electoral changes. The results are:

• Move from three to four year term – 61% yes, 25% no = +36% net support
• Introduce compulsory voting – 40% yes, 46% no = -6% net opposition
• Lower voting age to 16 – 20% yes, 72% no = -52% net opposition

I’m in the majority or plurality for all of those.

Stuff reports:

The push for water meters to be installed in every home in Wellington to prevent future shortages has been labelled a “no brainer” by one of the region’s mayors, while another has described it as “false hope”.

A Wellington Water report recommended the region spend $144 million on infrastructure which would allow it to record and report on residents’ daily-water usage, in a bid to encourage residents to save water and prevent drought-like shortages

Without introducing water meters, water usage was expected to exceed drought-level supply by 2026 based on current consumption, the amount of water lost to leaks and projected population growth, the Ernst Young and Beca report warned.

This doesn’t affect me directly as I live on a property with no mains supply, so we live off two 30,000 litre tanks. When you face having to pay money to top up your water, you definitely conserve it far more. We are constantly doing things to conserve water. I’m one of the few who loves it when it rains as our tanks get filled up.

We even now have an Internet connected sensor in our water tank that through an app tells us how full the tanks are, and can alert us to any leaks.

If people know how much water they are using, and pay for what they use, they use less.

Kāpiti Coast District Council introduced water metering and charging in 2014 and saw a 26 per cent drop in overall water use over the following year with two-thirds of homes in the district ending up paying less for water under the metering system.

Kāpiti Mayor K Gurunathan said: “It’s inevitable that other councils come on board. It’s an absolute no brainer.”

South Wairarapa Mayor Alex Beijen said it was “inevitable” that the wider Wellington region would eventually follow his district’s lead on water meters as without such a measure Wellington could end up in the same boat as Auckland, which has been in the throes of drought since 2019.

It really is a no brainer

Stuff reports:

t’s a serene, sunny Sunday summer’s morning in the suburbs. Only birdsong and the odd lawnmower punctuate the serenity. Then a flame-red truck rolls around the corner and disgorges a uniformed squad of union activists, who leaflet-drop your neighbours, chant, sing, and organise a picket line at your front fence.

This, says, Matt McCarten, is utu. After three years of “plotting in the dark” since his exit from the Labour Party’s high command, this is his solution for worker exploitation.

The targets for his Sunday “church for sinners” will be the recalcitrant employers whom he cannot get to the negotiating table to hear complaints against them of bullying, sexual harassment and migrant exploitation.

If an employer has bullied or harassed or exploited them complaints should be laid with the ERA or MBIE who can prosecute.

But instead McCarten is demanding they must deal with him rather than the legal authorities, and if not he’ll harass them at home.

He’ll publish stories on Martyn Bradbury’s Daily Blog, use a social media team to disseminate it further, publish their names, photographs, home address and phone numbers. “I am going to be quite hardline on this,” he says, “and I know there will be some pushback.”

This is doxxing. When Cactus Kate joked about doing it to someone, the left and media went on about it as if it was the crime of the century. You now have two left activists declaring in a newspaper they are going to dox people, and not a peep.

That leaves most reliant on advocates such as McCarten, many of whom work on a percentage of the settlement. McCarten says One Union will take a case through to mediation for $500, payment deferred if the client can’t afford it, and ask for a voluntary donation of 10% of any settlement towards the union fighting fund – and he’ll cover his own wage through demanding his costs from the employer.

So this is in fact a money making venture. Agree to negotiate with us, rather than use the legal process, or we will dox you and harrass you at home – and we get 10% of the cut.

The Thomson report on Invercargill City Council is here. It deals with Sir Tim’s difficulties more bluntly than I expected:

This void is seen by participants as most clearly manifesting itself in the Mayor’s reported increasing inability to carry out many aspects of his role.

The reported deterioration was stated by many as being evident in the previous triennium but as getting progressively worse. The Mayor appears, according to most of those interviewed, to be struggling to follow Council agendas and papers without assistance, although a couple of participants see that as a situational issue rather than cognitive difficulties (“he works off paper whereas the rest of us work off computer and the pages don’t always line up”, although I am advised by management that this has not been the case since early in the adoption of digital board papers). Many interviewees reported a range of obvious concerns including short term memory deficits, confusion, and the need to be closely managed by both Council staff and senior Councillors in order to chair a Council meeting. They report increasing incidents of embarrassment during meetings
which a, generally, compassionate Council has done their best to hide from the general public. This approach is now failing (as is evident from the increasing media statements regarding aspects of his performance) and many Councillors report a general community concern about “what is happening to Sir Tim”.

I’m all for compassion but not at the expense of common sense. If a Mayor is unable (as opposed to unwilling) to perform his role, then he must resign of the Minister must step in.

This meant that the Mayor would essentially be chairing a full Council whose agenda was primarily only the approval of minutes, thus ensuring that the Mayor was chairing difficult or complex meeting agendas less
frequently. The Mayor saw this as a deliberate diminution of his power, which it accurately was, but, in my opinion, that was a side outcome of the change rather than the primary motivation for the change. Many of those I spoke with saw it as a compassionate way to protect his reputation and mana by reducing the opportunity for his difficulties to be apparent to the public.

Basically what the Council has done is delegate everything except approval of minutes to committees of Council, as the Mayor can’t chair a meeting which has to decide on a difficult issue. Chairing of the Council is a bare minimum part of the job for a Mayor, and if he can’t do that, then I’m sorry but time to retire.

Worth reading the entire report to see how bad it is.

Worksafe has a downloadable database of all workplace deaths since 2011. There have been 771, which is of course far too high. Going through the database I was interested in the classifications as some workplace deaths are clearly avoidable (falls) while others much harder to minimise (assaults causing death).

Here’s the number of workplace deaths by type:

• Trucks/Utes 126
• Christchurch Earthquake 63
• Quad Bikes 56
• Hit by falling objects 53
• Falls 50
• Trapped between moving and stationery object 41
• Tractors 37
• Slips, trips, tumbles 30
• Drowning 29
• Hit my moving object 27
• Aviation Transport 26
• Cars 22
• Mobile plant rollover 22
• White Island explosion 21
• Machinery 17
• Electric Shocks 13
• Assaults 11
• Motorbikes 10
• Hit or bitten by animals 9

If you exclude White Island and the Christchurch quake, the numbers by year are:

• 2011: 73
• 2012: 69
• 2013: 72
• 2014: 65
• 2015: 59
• 2016: 73
• 2017: 79
• 2018: 63
• 2019: 87

Far too many for a country our size.

One News reports:

Kelvin Davis says when schools accept low achievement rates from its Māori students, without aspiring to better them, it shows there is “systemic racism” in the education system.

The Associate Education Minister (Māori Education), speaking today about anti-racism school programme Te Hurihanganui, said “Māori deserve nothing worse” than achieving “at the highest levels in the world whatever they do”. 

But, Davis said among some teachers, there was an “acceptance” low Māori achievement was simply the way things were. 

Davis said accepting the status quo wasn’t good enough. 

I agree the status quo isn’t good enough. So let’s look at how Labour has done in improving Maori achievement rates in their fight against systemic racism.

So under the racist National Government the percentage of Maori leaving school with no qualifications dropped from 37% to 18%. The kind caring Labour Government saw it increase to 22%.

And how have the rates changed for NCEA Level 2, generally regarded as the minimum someone should leave with?

Again under the racist National Government the percentage of Maori leaving school with NCEA Level 2 increased from 46% to 69%. The kind caring Labour Government saw it drop back to 65%.

So Kelvin Davis is right in saying he rejects the status quo. Labour has actually worsened the status quo for Maori school leavers!