The Press has awarded stars to the Christchurch City Councillors. Their ratings are:
Gold
Silver
Bronze
No star
What do locals think of these ratings? Almost everyone I know says Raf Manji is a star.
This will pose a dilemma for the Greens. Scientists have developed a genetically engineered rice crop that has significantly reduced methane (the most powerful greenhouse gas) emissions over normal rice.
So if the Greens truly believe their rhetoric that greenhouse gas emissions are the biggest threat to Earth today, surely this means they will drop their opposition to genetically engineered crops and welcome this GE rice?
Nature Magazine reports:
Atmospheric methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, and is responsible for about 20% of the global warming effect since pre-industrial times1, 2. Rice paddies are the largest anthropogenic methane source and produce 7–17% of atmospheric methane2, 3. Warm waterlogged soil and exuded nutrients from rice roots provide ideal conditions for methanogenesis in paddies with annual methane emissions of 25–100-million tonnes3, 4. This scenario will be exacerbated by an expansion in rice cultivation needed to meet the escalating demand for food in the coming decades4.
Here we show that the addition of a single transcription factor gene, barleySUSIBA2 (refs 7, 8), conferred a shift of carbon flux to SUSIBA2 rice, favouring the allocation of photosynthates to aboveground biomass over allocation to roots. The altered allocation resulted in an increased biomass and starch content in the seeds and stems, and suppressed methanogenesis, possibly through a reduction in root exudates. Three-year field trials in China demonstrated that the cultivation of SUSIBA2 rice was associated with a significant reduction in methane emissions and a decrease in rhizospheric methanogen levels. SUSIBA2 rice offers a sustainable means of providing increased starch content for food production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions from rice cultivation.
This is a great breakthrough. It should be welcomed. Or will green activists attack the fields it is planted it, and destroy it as unnatural?
Stuff reports:
Three generations of women in a Gisborne family turned on a 12-year-old relative who claimed she had been sexually assaulted by her uncle, in a case that a judge said “made a mockery of notions of whanau”.
The case involved a mother and daughter forcing the girl to retract claims that her uncle had indecently assaulted her, after a jury had found him guilty.
The women, aged 48 and 29, and both closely related to the offender, have been jailed for three years for attempting to pervert the course of justice. They cannot be named, to protect the girl.
Three years is a decent sentence. It is in fact longer than the sentence of the original offender, whose conviction they were trying to overturn.
In mid-2013, while the offender was in custody pending sentencing, the two women made repeated visits to the girl’s home, where they would take her aside from her parents and tell her “what her responsibilities were”, the judge said.
They marched the girl to Gisborne District Court where, in front of a registrar, she signed a sworn retraction of her allegations.
Judge Adeane said the language used in the retraction was certainly not the girl’s and, when she was spoken to privately by an independent lawyer, she reaffirmed her allegations against her uncle.
Throughout this time, the women were regularly phoning the offender in prison. The judge said these calls, which were intercepted, displayed the “energy and urgency” the women were putting in to persuade the girl to retract her allegations.
The women told the man they would assault the girl after the affidavit had been signed, and would get her to sign it “even if we have to kill the little beggar”.
Charming.
Another relative, concerned at the pair’s actions, contacted police.
Well done that person.
The uncle was sentenced to two years and three months’ jail in July 2013, after a jury found him guilty of indecently assaulting the girl when she was aged 10-11. He was sentenced to a further year in jail for his part in attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Good.
Stuff reports:
The Government has considered giving schools discretionary power to decide their opening hours, and putting one principal in charge of several schools.
The proposals were contained in a document leaked to Radio New Zealand, which also detailed the idea that schools could own and operate early childhood centres.
The document followed on from last year’s Taskforce on Regulation as Affecting School Performance, and said education legislation was not clear about what the education system was trying to achieve.
Radio New Zealand reported the document suggested four specific changes:
* Giving schools greater flexibility to provide early childhood education;
* Giving schools greater flexibility to set their minimum opening hours;
* Letting principals be in charge of more than one school; and
* Extending the National Student Number to support student participation in digital environments.
Schools must be open for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, which cannot be changed without permission from Education Minister Hekia Parata.The document proposes removing the requirement for ministerial consent, RNZ reported.
The Herald reports:
Winston Peters has said NZ First will grow its membership by tens of thousands of people by the next election or he will resign.
But as with all Winston promises, it never lasts long.
After his opening address he told media that he wanted a war chest “way beyond” $1 million to fight the next election, and said he would resign if membership didn’t grow to support that.
NZ First spent $268,530 on last year’s election campaign.
Asked if he would he resign if membership did not grow by tens of thousands of people, he said he would, before later backing away from that and saying he misheard the question.
If Winston did get 10,000 members, then Labour would have fewer members than both the Greens and NZ First.
The Herald reports:
Trade Minister Tim Groser says he is disappointed a landmark free-trade pact stumbled after talks broke down in Hawaii.
Negotiations among 12 Pacific nations failed to reach a conclusion.
“Good progress was made this week, but a number of challenging issues remain, including intellectual property and market access for dairy products”, Mr Groser said.
“We will continue to work toward a successful conclusion. This is about getting the best possible deal for New Zealand, not a deal at any cost.”
This is good. It shows the NZ negotiating team is not willing to sign up to an agreement without substantial diary access and an acceptable intellectual property chapter. I’m really pleased that we have not given in.
Stuff reports:
Pacific Rim trade ministers have failed to clinch a deal to free up trade between a dozen nations after a dispute flared between Japan and North America over autos, New Zealand dug in over dairy trade and no agreement was reached on monopoly periods for next-generation drugs. …
The president of the Canadian Dairy Farmers, Wally Smith, blamed New Zealand for the delay in the agreement saying it was not accepting what was on the table.
“New Zealand is being very obstinate … I am really surprised that this late in the end game, a country like New Zealand would not put a little water in its wine,” he said.
Canada has a general election later this year, so I suspect the Canadian Government may not feel able to sign up to any meaningful reform of their soviet style dairy system. And if there is a change of Government, then even less likely. I’d be happy for Canada to drop out, if they are the barrier to a dairy agreement.
The Washington Post looks at Hillary Clinton favourability poll numbers.
Some decline was inevitable as she went from Secretary of State to candidate, but the degree of change is pretty huge. Here’s het net favourability by year”
Her current breakdown is interesting also:
The Herald reports:
Three Waikato Hospital nurses have been suspended for defying a controversial new policy forcing non-vaccinated workers to either get flu jabs or wear face masks.
Waikato District Health Board has defended its stance, saying any staff member who refused to comply could face the sack.
Last month, the board became the first in the country to make it compulsory for unvaccinated staff to wear masks, to protect employees and patients from the flu.
I think this is fair enough. Patients in hospital are vulnerable to sickness, and catching the flu from a nurse could literally kill you.
Nurses still have the choice – get vaccinated, or wear a mask.
“When considering that our employee numbers are in excess of 6,500, the reality is that almost all staff are getting on with doing their duties and they recognise that the intent of the policy is to provide a safer clinical environment for our patients and fellow employees,” the spokesman said.
But the Nurses Organisation sees the measure as a “punitive action” against staff, some of whom have turned to the union for support.
The DHB is putting the rights of patients not to catch the flu in hospital ahead of the rights of staff to give them the flu.
Stuff reports:
More weight-loss surgery is needed to help the growing population of obese teenagers, a Christchurch surgeon says.
Dr Richard Flint said gastric band surgery, which radically reduces the size of the stomach, was the best available option for weight loss but remained largely unavailable.
District health boards (DHBs) lacked space, paediatricians, dieticians and funding but misguided prejudice also played a role, he said.
Obesity was a significant and growing problem among New Zealand’s youth with 21 per cent of 15-24 year olds obese, according to the latest available Ministry of Health national health survey.
“I think, if there was a programme up and running, you could probably operate for as many hours as the day would give you to be honest,” Flint said.
I think gastric band surgery is a very sensible option for some adults, when other measures have failed.
But I think for teenagers, it is inadvisable. It should be the last resort, not the first resort.
The Herald reports:
Not so Dirty Politics after all.
That’s the message from police over a blogger accessing Labour Party computer systems to gather financial and membership details.
The country’s most senior detective Rodney Drew today told the Labour Party that “there is no evidence of criminal offending”.
“While the matter may raise privacy and ethical issues, these are not the domain of criminal law.”
It’s almost a year since details of the 2011 intrusion were described by journalist Nicky Hager in the controversial pre-election book Dirty Politics.
Hager wrote how Whaleoil blogger Cameron Slater conspired with a staff member in the Prime Minister’s office, Jason Ede, to access Labour Party information through a hole in its website.
This makes it sound like Hager revealed what Cameron did.
In fact Cameron revealed it some years earlier. And it wasn’t hacking or a hole. Labour basically left their database open on the world wide web. No password needed. No special knowledge. It was a technical fuck up by them. Cameron even did a You Tube video detailing how the information was found.
They knew this. That is why at the time they never ever mentioned any possibility of them regarding it as a criminal matter. It was only after the Dirty Politics book came out that three years later they suddenly decided it was.
The scandal was that Labour were so incompetent that they had their membership and donation details available on the WWW for anyone to view. Labour exposed all their members and donors to the public.
The only political hacking of the last few years has been of Cameron, by “Rawshark”.
There’s been numerous articles this week pushing the idea that Helen Clark is a front runner for UN Secretary-General.
It is highly highly likely that the next Secretary-General will come from Eastern Europe, due to the unwritten policy on regional rotation.
While not absolutely reliable, prediction markets have a good accuracy record with political events. And what do two bookmakers say are the current odds for Clark?
So talking about Clark as a front runner is rather silly.
I think the front runner is Dalia Grybauskaitė. She is the current President of Lithuania and prior to that a European Commissioner.
She speaks English, Lithuanian, Russian, French and Polish. She won election as President as an Independent, and was a popular reforming European Commissioner.
Her biggest challenge would be getting past a Russian veto.
David Seymour has announced:
ACT Leader David Seymour intends to introduce a Bill to let people watch the 2015 Rugby World Cup in bars and function rooms.
“For such an important one-off event as a Rugby World Cup on the other side of the world, outside our time zone, I think sports enthusiasts should be able to celebrate the occasion in the same way they would if these matches were within normal New Zealand hours,” said Mr Seymour.
“I know many Kiwis overseas who watched the last World Cup from the UK, in pubs that were able to open and screen live matches. In England they changed their licensing laws to accommodate viewing the English matches during the 2014 FIFA World Cup held in Brazil.
“Current licensing arrangements are too inflexible to allow for this special occasion. Bars seeking special licenses are having to jump through all sorts of ridiculous nanny-state hoops. Police have indicated to licensees that they will oppose applications unless the licensees agree to conditions like ticket-only sales, fancy dress, live music, quizzes, guest speakers or themed food.
Totally support this. requiring every bar in NZ to get a special liquor license just so they can screen Rugby World Cup games after their normal closing time is silly.
“On the first sitting day after recess (11th August) I intend to seek leave to table a short Bill allowing bars and function rooms to open for the broadcast of any Rugby World Cup matches.
“I will seek advice from the police on how best this should be monitored.“I have asked the Clerk’s office to assist in drafting a short Bill which will accomplish this.
“If my motion to table a Bill is accepted by the House, I will ask the Prime Minister to advance this as a government Bill, so that the Bill doesn’t languish ineffectively at the bottom of the order paper until the World Cup is over.
Hopefully no MP will oppose such a sensible bill.
The Herald reports:
All frontline police response staff will now routinely carry tasers.
Police Commissioner Mike Bush announced the new initiative from Police Headquarters in Wellington this morning, saying the change was about enhancing the safety of New Zealand communities and police staff.
The initiative meant tasers could be carried by appropriately trained staff at all times while they were on duty.
Those staff were level one trained police staff, the majority of who were frontline police staff, Mr Bush said.
There are approximately 5500 police staff trained as level one responders, Mr Bush said.
Currently, these staff could access tasers from a lockbox in frontline police vehicles if required.
Mr Bush said the decision to role out tasers to all frontline police staff was made following detailed research, which showed the taser was successful in de-escalating violent situations.
“The reality is that police officers often enter into high risk situations.
If you don’t want our Police to be routinely armed, then you should support this.
If an offender has a knife, then it is very dangerous for a police officer to try and take them on with a baton or even something like capsicum spray. So without tasers, you need a gun.
Steven Wallace was shot as he was on a rampage with a baseball bat. If Police had tasers back then, he might be alive.
The Police published the results of three years of taser use in 2013.
NY Mag has a copy of The University of New Hampshire’s bias-free language guide. Some examples:
Preferred: people of advanced age, old people*
Problematic/Outdated: older people, elders, seniors, senior citizen
*Old people has been reclaimed by some older activists who believe the standard wording of old people lacks the stigma of the term “advanced age”. Old people also halts the euphemizing of age. Euphemizing automatically positions age as a negative.
Preferred: person living at or below the poverty line, people experiencing poverty
Problematic/Outdated: poor person, poverty-stricken person
Preferred: person of material wealth
Problematic: rich
Being rich gets conflated with a sort of omnipotence; hence, immunity from customs and the law. People without material wealth could be wealthy or rich of spirit, kindness, etc.
Preferred: people of size
Problematic/Outdated: obese*, overweight people
Preferred: person who is blind/visually impaired
Problematic: blind person, “dumb”
Preferred: U.S. citizen or Resident of the U.S.
Problematic: American
Preferred: White people, European-American individuals
Problematic: Caucasian people
Preferred: Folks, People, You All, Y’all
Problematic/Outdated: Guys (when referring to people overall)
Preferred: Other Sex
Problematic/Outdated: Opposite Sex
Preferred: Children who are gender non-conforming, Children who are gender variant
Problematic/Outdated: Girlie or Tomboy
So the sentence:
“Guys, I had lunch with Sheldon Adelson, an American senior citizen who hates anybody who is not Caucasian, and he insisted we go Dutch, even though he is really rich and I am poverty-stricken.”
would have to be:
“People, I had lunch with Sheldon Adelson, a US citizen of advanced age who hates anybody who is not a European-American, and he insisted we go Dutch, even though he is a person of material wealth and I am a person experiencing poverty
I wonder how many staff ours went into the salaries of the language police who produced this.
Stuff reports:
The country’s largest city could end up with more local politicians, if a bid by Auckland Council for a law change is successful.
Auckland is the only local authority in New Zealand which can’t increase its number of councillors, despite population growth.
The legislation which set up the Super City five years ago capped the number of elected representatives at 20 plus the mayor.
But Auckland’s burgeoning population means areas such as the central city Waitemata ward are already outgrowing their representative limits, which aim to have all wards having about the same number of residents.
Then you can change the word boundaries without changing the total number of Councillors.
A Council of 21 is already large and unwieldy for decision making matters. Making it bigger will just make it even worse.
The Herald reports:
A girl who claims to be able to read while blindfolded has given a demonstration in Rotorua – part of an effort to spread awareness of the benefits of having your ‘third eye’ awakened.
The third eye, also known as the inner eye, is described as an invisible eye which believers claim provides perception beyond ordinary sight and is a gateway to higher consciousness.
It is believed through the awakening of the third eye, a person can see while blindfolded, sense ‘diseased organs’ in a body and read minds, among other superhuman powers.
The demonstration was hosted by the Rotorua Life Bliss Foundation group at Waiariki Institute of Technology yesterday, and was attended by about 30 people.
Ma Nithya Maheshwarananda, 12, from Dallas, USA, was was blindfolded .
Members of the audience gave her various reading material, including a business card, a flyer and a Rotorua Daily Post article – all of which she read aloud word-for-word.
At least two people, including a Rotorua Daily Post photographer, tested the blindfold and said they could not see through it in any direction.
Here’s an idea. Let’s see if she can do it in a controlled environment. Where one can check for video cameras, ear pieces, no one else in the room bar neutral scientists.
If under those conditions, she can do it, then she’s going to the most famous person on the planet.
She said she had attended the three-week programme.
“I can read while blindfolded but if I am put on the spot or feel too much pressure, I can’t do it, I need to practise more to be able to block out those insecurities and baggage.”
ie can only do it when you have arranged the circumstances.
There’s an article at the NZ Herald on the killing of Blessie Gotingco by Tony Robertson. It asks and answers 10 questions on the case and concludes that the system didn’t fail.
Many killings are preventable. A wrong parole decision, a lack of supervision by Corrections etc. But in this vase the sad reality might be that Robertson was always going to do something like this.
Some of the 10 points the article makes are:
The only good news is that it is likely he now will get preventive detention.
Stuff reports:
The Christchurch City Council has spent $1.2 million upgrading its “outdated” website.
The revamp included new software, new content and staff training and took three and a half months. The site was last overhauled in 2009 and that version ran on systems that would not be supported past this month.
The $1.2m spend came out of the council’s IT capital budget for this financial year.
The director of a Christchurch web development company said the total cost was a surprise.
“That takes my breath away. You vaguely hear of those sorts of number getting thrown around. I’m struggling to get my head around where that cost would come from.”
The director, who asked to remain anonymous as his company did web development work for the council, said parts of the design, such as the user elements for rates and dog registration, were quite technical, making precise cost estimates difficult.
“[But] we’d have happily done the job for half that and probably, I believe, still arrived at the same result.”
$1.2 million is a huge figure. If they had designed a website where you could interact online with the Council in every area, that sort of price might be justified, but it is primarily just a static website.
As an example I went to their services section to see what could I do online. Under burials, there is no online form to book one in. You download a pdf, print it out, then have to scan it back in and e-mail it to them.
Other services which you can’t do online are:
Incredible that they spend $1.2 million and can’t even convert some pdf forms into online forms.
Phil Quin has taken a look at Grant Robertson’s Future of Work discussion paper and found multiple paragraphs that were copied and pasted from other sources, without attribution.
The section in question is titled “Emerging Challenges and Opportunities”. In total, the section comprises just over 1,200 words. Among them, a straightforward Google search uncovered three occasions where the drafters of the report directly lifted whole sentences and paragraphs from articles in the Economist and Business Insider. None of them were attributed, but presented in the body of the text as if it were the drafter’s original work. Straightforward plagiarism, in other words.
Grant will no doubt blame his staff.
UPDATE: Quin has found even the introduction was plagiarised!
UPDATE2: Labour is blaming Clare Curran for the plagiarism.
Stuff reports:
The Prime Minister has criticised those slating the tone of the national anthem, saying the process to change it would be the same as the flag referendum they have opposed.
On Wednesday, Labour leader Andrew Little described the national anthem God Defend New Zealand as a “dirge” and said many Kiwis preferred the Australian anthem.
If there was to be a change, I agree it should be a referendum.
I’m not a huge fan of the current anthem. But I don’t much like Advance Australia Fair either. I think the best anthems are stirring such as La Marseillaise. Even without knowing the words, I love it.
With the NZ National Anthem, I actually prefer the Maori version. Yes I don’t know all the words, but it seems to be to work much better musically. It has a rhythm to it, the English version doesn’t.
Richard Rudman is the editor of the NZ Employment Law Guide, and hence an expert in the area of employment law.
The Health and Safety Reform Bill returned to Parliament from the Select Committee last Friday, more than 15 months after the Bill was introduced to the House.
However Workplace Relations Minister Michael Woodhouse says he still has some more changes he wants to make.
He was forced into having the Transport and Industrial Relations Select Committee revise the Bill after widespread concern within both the Cabinet and National caucus that the Bill would make life difficult for small business and farmers.
There was some speculation that that concern went as far as a threatened rebellion by some backbench MPs.
If so, the rebellion was put down cheaply. None of the changes made by the Select Committee is that significant in the overall scheme of new workplace health and safety legislation.
Yet:
But the changes appear to have cost National the support of Labour, New Zealand First and the Greens for the reforms.
They were looking for any reason to oppose the changes. The reality is this law change will deliver 99% of what the Royal Commission recommended. Yet the opposition parties would have you think that somehow it is a backward step. They’re playing politics, so their union mates can wave some crosses about.
The only significant change is:
Small businesses (those with fewer than 20 workers and not in a prescribed high-risk sector or industry) need not agree to a request from workers to establish a health and safety committee or arrange the election of a health and safety representative.
That’s it. That is what they are crying is the end of the world. That a small clerical office of say three staff doesn’t have to agree to an elected health and safety rep.
If the industry is at all high-risk, or there are more than 20 employees, there will be a statutory right to an elected health and safety rep. And you know what, a small employer can still decide to have one – just that it is not mandatory. But regardless of this, they still have the same requirements to have a safe workplace, and face prosecution if they don’t.
So as this employment law expert has said, the change made by the select committee is very minor. The outrage by the unions and their parliamentary wings is entirely contrived.
In any case, all businesses — large or small — are required to “engage” with their workers on health and safety matters that might affect them.
Engagement includes sharing relevant information; giving workers a reasonable opportunity to express their views and raise health or safety issues, and to contribute to decision-making; taking the workers’ views into account, and advising workers of the outcomes.
In addition, all businesses must have practices that provide reasonable opportunities for their workers to participate effectively in improving health and safety on an ongoing basis.
Given these duties, exemption from the requirement for a committee or representative seems little relief for small businesses.
I suspect the union anger is that they see elected health and safety reps as a back door to workplaces, so they can try and unionise them.
The requirement to consult all workers on health and safety matters is far more important than whether there is an elected rep in a small clerical office of four people.