Open mike 02/08/2010

26 comments on “Open mike 02/08/2010 ”

• Comments are now closed

1. Bored 1

   2 August 2010 at 6:47 am

   With all the bitching and beatings up on this site over the last week with the Carter affair and some other obscene acts from the NACT misanthropes it was easy to miss headlines elsewhere.

   I spotted one which I have long suspected but which made the hairs on my neck stand up. Imagine a world with a complete collapse of the ocean ecosystem. Imagine a world bereft of fish, seabirds and everything that relies upon the ocean to survive. No whales, no snapper. Whilst we bitch and moan about tax, politics, Goff etc whilst driving the car to the supermarket something slow and inexhorable is taking place that is of the greatest consequence. The phytoplankton is dying, and if it goes we follow as surely as day follows night..

   Check this link http://www.energybulletin.net/node/53633
   • eye saw 1.1

     2 August 2010 at 7:35 am

     Bored,you may find the hopi indian prophecy interesting.
     The seventh sign being”you will hear of the sea turning black and many creatures dying”.
     • loota 1.1.1

       2 August 2010 at 8:29 am

       great, that’s really made my day.
       • Bored 1.1.1.1

         2 August 2010 at 8:47 am

         Apologies,

         Regards Cassandra
       • Bored 1.1.1.2

         2 August 2010 at 9:26 am

         Apologies for being a Cassandra (or Hopi Shaman)….actually I only broadcast this as I think that we have hope so long as enough people say so and we react in time. As ZB notes below, the real concepts we need to address are profit addiction and material necessity versus wants (the key to being sustainable). Otherwise to answer Zimmer we all get sacrified.

         Have a top day.
     • zimmer 1.1.2

       2 August 2010 at 8:29 am

       Eat cows and sheep instead. Thats why the Chinese want to buy our land maybe?
       If this is so then we will have to accept the population n earth will fall. Who will be sacrificed, that will be the question.
     • Draco T Bastard 1.1.3

       2 August 2010 at 12:40 pm

       hopi indian prophecy

       Although their interpretation of the seventh sign is wrong. Oil spills will certainly be a part of it but “the seas turning black” is what happens as the seas die. A “black sea” is a dead sea.
   • ZB 1.2

     2 August 2010 at 8:51 am

     Economies run for profit rubbish the environment, force debts on to citizens, build white elephants and basically harm the economy! How is that so hard to understand? Its so obvious, that if you force your kids to read all the time they don’t socialize and become hermits in later life! Inputs in, results out, if we persist in the politics of profit we will continue to speed towards a climate stall along with continual economic and social stalls. Efficient markets don’t seize up. Our addiction to the politics of profit hasn’t just weaken the western powers, its destroying our planet, turning our kids into sugar, fat and salt bags. Its is simply astonish that Goff cannot connect good economies with compassionate economies. That putting people in jail does cost more fiscally than welfare to bring children out of poverty!

     The rich do not need to be bailed out. Its a contradiction of epic proportions since the rich by their very wealth can bail themselves out. We do not and should not reward the wealth for ineptness, progressive tax systems are essential to keep economies running. Progressive taxation should decrease when general equality increases, for obvious reasons, and so it follows that progressive taxes should INCREASE when in inequality increase! But Key has failed, he seems to believe that helping out the rich first is good economics, second is fair, third is balanced.

     Who lets him say that? Its so obvious one lie after another. Good economies work best when economic actors are able to lower the risk associated trading, and inequality is a risk. If you have more market power then you will take profit, so if you have more social, or more legal power, you will also take profit. So when Key shifts power to employers he is basically increasing risks for the employees, yet he then goes out and says that exact opposite!

     And you wonder why our oceans are full of plastic, that our planet it warming, that our society is close to collapse with the spectre of oil price skyrocketing, and pollution abatement costs in oil dollars feeding back! Just when are you going to realize who much energy it takes to deal with your crap, your human and consume waste. All these costs go up when energy prices go up. The way we live is unsustainable. The way the Labour party cannot seem to get its act together and expose Key obvious lines is just astonishing. If you vote Labour consider giving you party vote to the Greens, you know nothing hurts a politician more than irrelevence. Labour will change, and stop mimicing the language of profit.
     • Bored 1.2.1

       2 August 2010 at 6:16 pm

       ZB, do you really think that the Labour Party and to a lesser degree the Greens can overcome the crisis of relevance that gradually erodes the current economic and political paradigm? Or change the language of engagement?

       I dont, what I reckon will happen is that the authority and relevance of our institutions will gradually erode as their ability to respond breaks down. Legitimacy will go to those who act to renew or replace them with institutions that talk another language.
2. The Chairman 2

   2 August 2010 at 7:05 am

   Bring back Laila
   http://tinyurl.com/22vyj5e
   • Tigger 2.1

     2 August 2010 at 9:25 am

     She is talented yes but does Labour need Alliance debris at this stage? No.
     • just saying 2.1.1

       2 August 2010 at 10:50 am

       Alliance debris? Pot meet kettle. I present to you the Labour debris otherwise known as the front -bench, which would, if elected, govern from even further to the right of the last Labour Government.

       You’re right, Labour doesn’t need talent, it needs someone who would fit right in (puns intended).
3. citizensforcarter 3

   2 August 2010 at 10:12 am

   Lol

   Laila is just debris from the 80’s and has no place in modern politics. Laila was a cheerleader for John Key’s Work Forum thing earlier last year.

   Labour needs a young candidate in Te Atatu to complete it’s rejuvenation not some dried up alliance hack
   • The Chairman 3.1

     2 August 2010 at 10:47 am

     Nonsense

     Laila would be one of the best politicians this country has seen in decades and would be a major positive for the Labour Party.

     Labour would be extremely foolish not to utilise this opportunity.
     • Tigger 3.1.1

       2 August 2010 at 1:47 pm

       “Laila would be one of the best politicians this country has seen in decades”. I’d argue she was one of the best politicians we had in decades. And yes, she would be great again. But she isn’t what Labour needs at the moment… Labour desperately needs someone who feels like the future and not the past.
       • The Chairman 3.1.1.1

         3 August 2010 at 7:09 am

         Grassroots

         Well-known, effective, and an experienced MP that isn’t burdened with Labour’s past baggage.

         Laila is exactly what the party needs if they genuinely want to get back to their grassroots.

         Moreover, she’d make an excellent roll model for up and coming MPs. New and inexperienced MPs require grooming.

         Voters will feel far more secure voting for an experienced MP that is effective at getting things done.
   • logie97 3.2

     2 August 2010 at 6:46 pm

     Debris from the 80’s?
     Laila Harre was born in 1966.
     That makes her 44 now and a teenager in the 80’s.
     Now, John Key was born when? (1961)
4. Tony 4

   2 August 2010 at 10:45 am

   Vernon Small’s piece in Today’s Stuff on Michael Laws makes interesting reading…and more so when followed up with a read of Laws piece in yesterday’s Sunday Star Times. The first rational piece from Whanganui’s leading loon in years.

   The next election will be interesting…
5. Doug 5

   2 August 2010 at 10:46 am

   Labour cautious about Carter’s fate.

   Rebel MP Chris Carter could escape expulsion from the Labour Party and may only be suspended as party bosses tread warily over how to discipline him for public attacks on leader Phil Goff.

   This would be a major back down.
   http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/politics/3979874/Labour-cautious-about-Carter
   • SHG 5.1

     2 August 2010 at 12:15 pm

     This is the leadership challenge you have when you’re not having a leadership challenge. The Party President just starts overriding the Party Leader, and the Party Leader just takes it.
6. NickS 6

   2 August 2010 at 2:57 pm

   With all this negative news on how the wage gap between NZ an Australia has increased under Key, I think his spin doctors need a bit help with convincing kiwi’s not to move across the ditch, like this littl’ gem:

   Creationists hijack lessons and teach schoolkids man and dinosaurs walked together

   PRIMARY school students are being taught that man and dinosaurs walked the Earth together and that there is fossil evidence to prove it.
   Fundamentalist Christians are hijacking Religious Instruction (RI) classes in Queensland despite education experts saying Creationism and attempts to convert children to Christianity have no place in state schools.
   Students have been told Noah collected dinosaur eggs to bring on the Ark, and Adam and Eve were not eaten by dinosaurs because they were under a protective spell.
   Critics are calling for the RI program to be scrapped after claims emerged Christian lay people are feeding children misinformation.
   About 80 per cent of children at state primary schools attend one half-hour instruction a week, open to any interested lay person to conduct.
   Many of the instructors are from Pentecostal churches…

   …A parent of a Year 5 student on the Sunshine Coast said his daughter was ostracised to the library after arguing with her scripture teacher about DNA.
   “The scripture teacher told the class that all people were descended from Adam and Eve,” he said.
   “My daughter rightly pointed out, as I had been teaching her about DNA and science, that ‘wouldn’t they all be inbred’?
   “But the teacher replied that DNA wasn’t invented then.”
   After the parent complained, the girl spent the rest of the year’s classes in the library.

   via Pharyngula

   Not that critical thinking is exactly strong here, what with the Celtic NZ, Menzies 1421 crap, etc, and the stunning geniuses in National and ACT who fail science forever.
   • Tigger 6.1

     2 August 2010 at 5:44 pm

     “DNA wasn’t invented then”. Are we sure this isn’t satire? No, it has the stink of fundamentalism all over it. Truly terrifying.
7. john 7

   2 August 2010 at 4:07 pm

   John Key’s Neo-liberal privatization bunch have taken their ideology from America, The free market ,Public wealth sold off Government takes no responsibility except to its corporate mentors.America a shining example of success with this selfish agenda? No America is a social and economic disaster zone with the policies that this Government continues to implement its ordinary people voiceless and powerless to help themselves TINA (There is no alternative?)
   Refer link for the voice of a respected American not a shill of the corrupt privatized elites
   http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20389
8. logie97 8

   2 August 2010 at 6:11 pm

   Tolley has apparently announced another initiative for schools today.
   Experts to work with schools to lift pupil achievement.

   RTLB’s by another name (yet to be determined.)

   On National Radio this evening she said that these expert and dynamic practitioners will be recruited from within the schooling system. (So they will leave the classrooms where they are proving to be so wonderful. Their classes, by implication, will have a less able practitioner teaching them, while the expert pops off to spread him/herself thinly around other schools).

   And … “National standards will help us identify which children are struggling and this next stage in the process will help schools to get these students back on track,” she said.

   There is an implication in that statement … that the failing children were, at some time, on track. No Mrs Tolley, your 20 pcnt tail has always existed, you’re just not honest (or researched) enough to know it.

   Now here is a novel idea. Reduce class sizes across the whole primary school to a maximum of 14 children (Ratios children at Whanganui Collegiate enjoy) and see what happens to measures of achievement.
9. comedy 9

   2 August 2010 at 7:17 pm

   If being a narcissistic troughing nutjob is a prerequisite for taking 8 weeks sick leave why aren’t all the pollies at home in bed ?

   “Once that period was up an application would need to be made to Speaker Lockwood Smith or Mr Carter’s pay could be docked by $10 a day. ”

   Oh noes $10 a day, fuck he’ll be ruined – this country needs an enema !

Links to post

1. The Standard: posted on 1 August 2010 at 6:11 pm

• Comments are now closed

• Log in
• Donate
• Contribute post

• Articles RSS