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July 22, 2017 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 22 July 2017

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General Debate

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Tom Barker

President Trump’s signal achievement in his first six months has been reversing his predecessor’s legislation. Such as this example – H.J.R. 40 on February 28, nullifying a rule which prohibited people with disabling mental illness from purchasing handguns.

This is called Making America Great Again
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July 22, 2017 8:03am
- Inandout
  
  He probably realised a great percentage of snowflakes have disabling mental illnesses, so arm them, and when they get ‘enraged’ they may accidentally self harm.
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:29am
  - Muttonbird
    
    That’s pretty sick but sadly typical of the contributors to Kiwiblog.
    
    14 27
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    July 22, 2017 10:37am
    - Kimbo
      
      No, Inandout is on the misanthropic and mean-spirited trolling extremes favoured by a few (howitis’ “Angela Merkel must be assassinated” is another), with none of the satirical or ball-bustingly amusing ability of Stars and Stripes, dime and Sir Cullen’s Sidekick.
      
      Plus Tom Barker was trolling for a response, so “like attracts like”…
      
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      July 22, 2017 10:53am
      - Muttonbird
        
        Misanthropic and mean spirited, yes. I’d say normal for RWNJs who clearly lack a moral compass. Upticks 4 to 1 suggest that his comments are widely supported here.
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:46am
      - Kimbo
        
        Upticks 4 to 1 suggest that his comments are widely supported here.
        
        Sample size too small. Which means that emphatic adverb “widely” is a shill. You imply by “sadly typical of the contributors to Kiwiblog” that you know what goes on around here – but are you well-enough acquainted with Kiwiblog to have encountered “Kimbo’s law”? 😉
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:48am
      - Shawn Herles
        
        “Upticks 4 to 1 suggest that his comments are widely supported here.”
        
        Up or down ticks are dependent on who is on KB at the time. I wouldn’t read much into them.
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:53am
      - Gruffydd
        
        I sometimes recall the redtwits tick wanking scandal when I see the score for some comments.
        
        Who cares.
        You get used to an environment where merely stating the truth gets down ticked into oblivion.
        
        It would be amusing to be able to see the culprits at times.
        
        Just to sort out the kiddys who go all sooky and habitually down tick someone from butt hurt no matter the comment .
        
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        July 22, 2017 2:30pm
      - realityczech
        
        “merely stating the truth”
        
        You should try it and see.
        
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        July 22, 2017 2:33pm
      - Gruffydd
        
        Ah a TDS suffer.
        yip buddy the truth .
        
        Coal is a zombie industry.
        Gas is a far more efficient fuel to use and it is cheaper .
        
        Renewable’s are quickly catching up.
        
        There is still a place for high grade coking coal. Mining for coal to produce energy is a sunset industry.
        
        Trump is wasting taxpayers money on propping up commercial enterprise.
        
        A,K,A corny capitalism.
        
        If the USA wants to compete with China it should look forward not back .
        Instead the USA elects a bunch of Luddites keen on propping up the profits of dying industry’s.
        
        China dominates the renewable sector . The fasted growing industry on the planet.
        It builds more solar, wind and electric transport than any one else. In some case more than everyone else .
        Tomorrows energy revolution belongs to China if the Republicans don’t get with this century soon.
        
        We are entering the low carbon future if RWNJ’s on this blog like it or not .
        
        Yes this will get down ticked.
        
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        July 22, 2017 2:59pm
    - I've been to Mecca and you have not!
      
      I contribute to Kiwiblog and I admit I’m sick.
      
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      July 22, 2017 11:15am
      - Rachael Membery
        
        An intervention needed? Perhaps something like AA?
        Kiwiblog addict, need help? Ph#……….?
        
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        July 22, 2017 8:23pm
    - realityczech
      
      Lies. Japan is the most technically advanced country in the world. They are turning to coal.
      
      ***Japan is building 45 new HELE coal fired power stations***
      
      http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2017-01-31/japan-coal-power-plants/8224302
      
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      July 22, 2017 3:06pm
    - Inandout
      
      Muttonbird: Having returned bleeding and sore from hundreds of self inflicted rattan lashes, attempting as such to atone my very tongue in cheek comments about snowflakes shooting themselves; shit get a life. Trump is stirring the crap out of the previously comfy and cosseted Washington establishment and I believe he is beginning to have an effect. I admittedly do have a rather perverse sense of humour, but probably have more humanity in my little finger than the average snowflake has in their whole body.
      
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      July 22, 2017 6:28pm
- DifferentPerspective
  
  What a perfect display of Trump Derangement Syndrome Tom Barker.
  
  Sane folks would point to (among many other things):
  – exiting the TPP and saving US jobs
  – exiting the lunatic climate alarmist Paris accord and saving US jobs
  – getting Gorka onto SCOTUS
  – seemingly exiting the US from what was shaping up to be another disastrous middle east conflict in Syria (because occupying muslim hell holes has always worked out so well for the US over the past 30 years)
  
  If you were interested in facts, rather than parroting what the fake news media is telling you, you could always use things like Google and Wikipedia to obtain the copious information available to combat your TDS – here is a good starter point for you.
  
  Of course, I suspect that the toughest challenge for you will be whether your ‘feelings’ will let you have enough of an open-mind to read the Wiki entry categorising Trump’s achievements so far.
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:50am
  - JeffW
    
    Interested that you consider withdrawing from TPP a success. How can it be a good idea for government to decide what one can buy with one’s money? Why can’t US consumers decided to buy NZ cheese, if that is what they want. I hope you are consistent and don’t own a car, as they are all imported. As for TVs, phones; no, government should stop them in coming in. Doesn’t matter about free choice, price or quality. Let’s stop trade. Worked in the Great Depression, let’s try it again.
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:50am
    - realityczech
      
      JeffW the TTP was not about free -trade. It was about restricting free trade.
      
      Massively complex binding regulations imposed and a closed shop to non members are not signs of freedom.
      
      How is the weather up there in Pyongyang today ?
      
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      July 22, 2017 10:04am
      - Inandout
        
        It was in fact a deal so complex that it could easily have been formulated by EU boffins.
        
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        July 22, 2017 10:22am
  - Gabby
    
    He needed to give loonies handguns for all that wunnerful stuff to happen.
    
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    July 22, 2017 12:52pm
  - virtualmark
    
    Yep, and sane folks would also point to Trump:
    – repealing ObamaCare,
    – replacing it with “TrumpCare”, which is something terrific where everyone is covered, there are no cuts to Medicaid, and pre-existing conditions are covered,
    – declaring China a currency manipulator,
    – cutting taxes for the middle class,
    – dismantling the Iran deal, and
    – balancing the budget.
    
    That’s winning.
    
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    July 22, 2017 2:12pm
    - Gabby
      
      Sane folks will have to wait until those thing happen, otherwise that’s whining.
      
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      July 22, 2017 8:52pm
  - Fletch
    
    – getting Gorka onto SCOTUS
    
    It is Gorsuch, but yes, I agree.
    
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    July 22, 2017 3:39pm
- realityczech
  
  ~~Commie~~ Tommy, are you against marginalised groups defending themselves ?
  
  Trump is not. He stands up for little people.
  
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  July 22, 2017 10:01am
  - virtualmark
    
    Yep, like the investors in his failed businesses. And the voters who’re going to get stiffed by “TrumpCare”.
    
    Trump is a narcissist who stands for Trump. And only for Trump.
    
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    July 22, 2017 3:06pm
- Simon
  
  Jeb gone Tom. Give it up.
  
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  July 22, 2017 10:24am
- adamsmith1922
  
  My apologies to the mentally ill, but are you yourself rational in your remarks? Stupid? Or sarcastic? I give the benefit of the doubt and have assumed you are being sarcastic!
  
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  July 22, 2017 3:01pm
PhilBest

I missed the thread yesterday about “Vote Green / Labour” or you are responsible for 15 dead kids this winter.

How about the Green racket that in several countries, is forcing up the price of energy so that poor elderly and unwell are dying in insufficiently heated homes?
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July 22, 2017 8:04am
- Gruffydd
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  The World Health Organization and other sources attribute about 1 million deaths/year to coal air pollution.
  
  https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/24/tucson-utility-inks-deal-solar-power-costs-less-3-cents-per-kilowatt-hour/
  Solar and wind are becoming competitive due to economics of scale and developing technology
  
  In less than a decade the low price of renewable energy will begin to lower electricity pricing . Grid costs will rise as more choose to generate their own power and store it for later use.
  
  But the Luddites still want their smelly black rocks and sticky goo.
  
  Wake up…………..!
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:55am
  - realityczech
    
    Way more are dying in freezing winters due to unaffordable energy/heating caused by punitive taxes placed on coal use to subsidise very expensive and unviable alternative energy scams.
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:00am
    - wiseowl
      
      New Zealand is part of this UN and WHO driven policy to dictate rules and regulations that are unnecessary.
      The whole home heating area in NZ has been a scam. Council staff around the country pushing the removal of perfectly good woodfires in the name of pm 10 and hundreds of deaths.
      At least Sky Australia showed figures during the week where many more people are dying from cold .
      This BS needs to be stopped but our politicians are totally indoctrinated and can’t think for them selves.
      
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      July 22, 2017 11:00am
  - PhilBest
    
    That’s coal air pollution in third world countries. This ceased to be an issue decades ago in developed countries, where they moved from using coal on site and in the home, to burning it efficiently “at scale” to generate electricity.
    
    It was marketed in the 1950’s as “coal by wire” and the improvement in air quality was a major selling feature, politically even more than commercially.
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:02am
    - Gruffydd
      
      Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
      Phil
      I give links not waffle hyperbole out my arse .
      Coal is dead in the water.
      Fraking cheap “clean” gas has already killed it.
      Those who suffer TDS, as one commentator above displays. think trump will save coal jobs .
      Economics says other wise.
      
      Counting down to more unsupported bullshite about china and India building coal capacity.
      
      http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/if-india-meets-renewables-target-no-additional-coal-power-needed-till-2027/story-qWSr1RZZWJScvIIum84tMM.html
      https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/06/16/how-china-not-obama-waged-the-war-on-coal-and-won/#52f0f4e27a5f
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:16am
      - realityczech
        
        “cheap “clean” gas”
        
        Coal is so cheap and plentiful that they are closing mines in NZ as there is no money in it. This will preserve our precious coal taonga for future generations.
        
        “Coal price plummets third consecutive week”
        
        http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11766906
        
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        July 22, 2017 9:21am
      - PhilBest
        
        My comment was not made “in support of coal as a contemporary energy source”, it was pointing out the reason that it actually kills people in third world countries still. It killed hundreds in London in a single year as recently as the 1950’s.
        
        I agree that economically, coal has already been superseded. But “killing people with particulate pollution of the air” is a dishonest and unnecessary argument against it.
        
        Note that gas and fracking has been a success in the USA “in spite of”, not “because of” the “clean energy” eco-Taleban. If it wasn’t for States with the regulatory freedom (eg Texas), the USA as a whole would still be leaving all this relatively clean energy in the ground, just like the eco-loony Euros and Poms. The Obama EPA was constantly trying to work out how to sabotage the fracking revolution in States where lefty-libbewwal watermelons were not in charge.
        
        The shift to renewables will gradually make more and more economic sense, but meanwhile energy prices are skyrocketing in some parts of the world because of politically forced, premature adoption.
        
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        July 22, 2017 9:30am
      - Ross12
        
        In Japan 50 solar panel companies have gone bust this year with another 50 predicted to go the same way before the end of the year. Meanwhile Japan is building 45 new HELE coal fired power stations.
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:59am
      - realityczech
        
        To be fair, the Chinese are trying to make a buck from marketing solar panels to smug Western fools.
        
        However they use sweat shops powered by their coal plants to build them. 🙂
        
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        July 22, 2017 12:03pm
  - realityczech
    
    The cold weather death toll this winter is expected to top 40,000, the highest number for 15 years.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/11382808/Winter-death-toll-to-exceed-40000.html
    
    The scandal of Britain’s fuel poverty deaths
    Thousands of people die each winter in the UK as a result of being unable to heat their homes. Are we doing enough to help them?
    https://www.theguardian.com/big-energy-debate/2014/sep/11/fuel-poverty-scandal-winter-deaths
    
    Elderly person dies every SEVEN minutes due to fuel poverty ‘scandal’
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/533907/Elderly-person-dies-every-SEVEN-minutes-fuel-poverty-scandal
    
    [This is one country alone]
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:11am
    - G152
      
      Every seven minutes the old one dies ???
      Must be getting pretty proficient at dying about now.
      When you think you’ve heard the silly comment of the week some-one proves you wrong
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:17am
    - KevOB
      
      The UK are importing wood chips from the USA to burn to create electricity for heating.
      Daft.
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:17am
      - PhilBest
        
        And they’ve got gas they could frack! But the eco-Taleban and their Tory squishy “centre right” enablers say “leave it in the ground, build wind turbines”.
        
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        July 22, 2017 9:36am
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        Not just the UK…..
        
        Europe is destroying the forests of south-east USA,
        
        http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39053678
        
        http://www.businessinsider.com/europe-imports-wood-biomass-from-us-for-power-2015-12/?r=AU&IR=T
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:04am
    - cmm
      
      Let’s harm a bunch of old people, because what’s really, really important is that the polar bears are happy.
      
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      July 22, 2017 4:54pm
      - Rachael Membery
        
        Shouldn’t be a choice, I haven’t go a heater on tonight.
        
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        July 22, 2017 8:58pm
  - realityczech
    
    Maybe those people freezing to death should just commit benefit fraud to heat their homes like the “green” party do.
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:16am
  - realityczech
    
    Solar and wind are becoming competitive due to economics of ~~scale and developing technology~~ tax payer subsidies…
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:26am
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      Someone forgot to tell that to these Canadian workers
      http://nationalpost.com/opinion/kelly-mcparland-another-wheel-flies-off-ontarios-green-energy-bus-and-lands-on-340-workers/wcm/aef88b67-5772-4e67-ad6f-8a436447211b
      
      Or these Japanese Solar PV companies
      https://www.pv-tech.org/news/up-to-100-japanese-solar-pv-firms-could-go-bust-this-year-report-finds
      
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      July 22, 2017 10:56am
  - UrbanNeocolonialist
    
    China is making 60GW of pv modules this year. If that rate continues then over 25 year pv life that is 1500GW installed, enough to supply electricity to about 0.5billion 1st worlders. The production rate will continue to increase as batteries get cheaper.
    
    The change to renewable energy is happening as we speak, because it is now cheap enough (particularly when installed on homes) to out-compete most other forms of generation and distribution. Sadly this will not reduce the wailing and lamentations of the Thermageddonists, though it will gradually reduce their political power.
    
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    July 22, 2017 10:17am
    - Ross12
      
      That’s the key point UN — so called renewables have their place in small scale applications like the home but they will never work on a large scale like the idiots in South Australia are trying to do.
      
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      July 22, 2017 12:22pm
    - Gruffydd
      
      Urban here is a primer on a concept you often have trouble with.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth
      
      Sea level is rising at an exponential rate solar and wind is also growing exponentially.
      You habitually fit a straight trend line to a curve.
      
      https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf
      https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/sea-level-rise-is-accelerating/
      
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      July 22, 2017 3:39pm
    - cmm
      
      The real trick part of making PV is that it needs a lot of electricity to make the silicon boules that get carved up to make silicon solar cells.
      
      If takes at least 5 years worth of the energy output of a PV to make the thing.
      
      So to make 60GW of PV per year needs about 300GW of generation.
      
      That means if you want to produce PVs you first have to make a whole lot of other generation. That has to come from hydro, coal or nuke.
      
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      July 22, 2017 5:01pm
      - Gruffydd
        
        You will love this.
        https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ6sKBUtMbcwz03vKsOwqBG1RcvDAX7DWQvwbaeN6HuJnsJC242
        Guess?
        By the way panels don’t go up in a poof of smoke at 25 years.
        The cost is mostly in the installation.
        The energy we use to produce petrol would power the world fleets .
        https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/gasoline-costs-6kwh.html
        
        Economics.
        The price of solar and wind is approaching even that of dirty coal. Battery storage is on a similar trajectory.
        
        A major intersection point a decade or two ahead is when it is as cheap to have panels and storage as it is to buy power from the grid.
        Modern battery technology is also on a growth curve .
        It is already cheaper for me to set up solar than run the cable 350m up my drive.
        
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        July 22, 2017 5:46pm
      - realityczech
        
        Solar panels come at a huge environmental cost in both their creation and disposal. They typically lose their effectiveness before they have paid for themselves. The story is much worse for batteries.
        
        No one wants it to work more than me. Saying that it is working, before it is working, will not drive the required investment in R&R. The fossil fuel companies have done the most in particular BP. The very people attacked by the ~~communists~~ climate changers.
        
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        July 22, 2017 5:57pm
      - Gruffydd
        
        Reality check .
        
        SunPower Corporation (“SunPower”) warrants that for 25 years beginning on the Warranty Start Date1 (the “Warranty Period”),
        its photovoltaic modules specified above (“PV Module(s)”), shall be free from defects in materials and workmanship under
        normal application, installation, use and service conditions, and the power output of the PV Modules will be at least 95% of the
        Minimum Peak Power rating for the first 5 years, and declining by no more than 0.4% per year for the following 20 years, so the
        power output at the end of the final year of the 25 year warranty period will be at least 87% of the Minimum Peak Power rating.
        
        After that the continue to decline slowly.
        Most of the cost is in the installation.
        
        Why would you rip out a array that is making free energy after its pay back time* for decades?
        
        *Pay back in NZ is about ten years now.
        
        End of life?
        They are 99%.
        Glass.
        Aluminum.
        Silicon.
        Easy to recycle once sufficient become available many years in the future .
        
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        July 22, 2017 6:18pm
      - realityczech
        
        Gruffydd all we need to do is get the energy storage sorted. Creating energy from the sun, wind, tides, is the easy part.
        
        Yes solar panels are getting better. But there are limitations imposed by physics which I shall not traverse here.
        
        I suggest you champion alternatives, rather than waste energy attacking the most efficient energy source man has ever found; natural organic fuels like oil and coal.
        
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        July 22, 2017 6:27pm
      - Gruffydd
        
        Ah the fuckwittery of climate change denial .
        
        Meantime the rest of the world has woken up.
        
        Another position when the usual suspects reject reality and make their ideology at opposition to the coming world .
        
        Wakey wakey .
        
        If you want your ideology to last into the future you need to embrace reality and engage rather than pretend it does not exist .
        
        Strikingly only three country’s are not signatory to the Paris accord .
        Syria , Nicaragua and the USA.
        I am sure the sixth largest economy in the world would sign separately if it could…..
        You are massively outnumbered by~~alarmists~~ realists
        Including in the national party …..
        
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        July 22, 2017 6:52pm
      - realityczech
        
        Yes the “rest of the world has woken up” now Trump has pulled the money out of the scam.
        
        Hey what do you think of his solar wall ?
        
        Or do you “deny” climate change and alternative energy ?
        
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        July 22, 2017 7:05pm
      - realityczech
        
        Japan, USA and Germany have all ditched the green-dream and gone back to coal. They are the biggest economies in the world.
        
        You communists lost again.
        
        ***Japan is building 45 new HELE coal fired power stations***
        
        http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2017-01-31/japan-coal-power-plants/8224302
        Thumb up 9 Thumb down 1REPLY REPORTJULY 22, 2017 3:06PM
        
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        July 22, 2017 7:16pm
- lilman
  
  How about the miners in Pike River who paid the price of life to save some giant snails which were killed by green demands in a freezer.
  A vote for the greens didnt save their lives.
  
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  July 22, 2017 11:36am
Paulus

I saw Herald on line that somebody who is nobody called Brownarse has a big column on Barclay.
Closed site.
Herald getting more desperate – pathetic – nothing on Turei’s theft or Angry’s (unpaid) Interns.
What about ACC for them – they are earning technically by way of food, transport and lodgings.
Wonder why not !
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July 22, 2017 8:19am
lifesgood

WO ramping up anti National rhetoric by sticking the knife into John Key this morning. This is getting ridiculous.
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July 22, 2017 8:22am
- Keeping Stock
  
  Key and WO have two things in common; 1) they both used to be at the top of the pile, and 2) now they aren’t.
  
  At least Key got out while he was on top.
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:25am
  - Paulus Gnome
    
    John Key got a Bentley, a title as well as an Australian honorary title, Slater got an Isuzu and a paid trip to Israel who he has shrilled for ever since.
    
    Thank goodness for the begging kitty or the site would be long gone
    
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    July 22, 2017 8:30am
    - Inandout
      
      I can’t criticise Slater for supporting Israel, as the alternative is commonly the domain of Marxist sympathisers. On his other views, he seems to spray opinions around like a mad woman’s shit.
      
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      July 22, 2017 8:35am
      - PhilBest
        
        Excellent point. Anyone defending western civ against the medieval hordes and their western Quisling allies, doesn’t need any inducement to stick up for Israel.
        
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        July 22, 2017 9:04am
      - EAD_TWO
        
        With friends like Israel, who need enemies!
        
        http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/07/07/jewish-australian-mp-bring-israels-african-immigrants-to-australia/
        
        https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/28/netanyahu-told-new-zealand-backing-un-vote-would-be-declaration-of-war
        
        http://irishsavant.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/in-case-you-were-wondering-about-zog.html?m=0
        
        http://www.newobserveronline.com/2015/11/israel-officially-aids-3rd-world.html?m=0
        
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        July 22, 2017 9:39am
      - Liberty
        
        Cam is correct with his views on Israel.
        But he has lost plot with getting into bed with NZF.
        A party that has such a bullshit infested manifesto.
        aimed at single issue dreamers.
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:16pm
    - peterwn
      
      In fairness to Cam AFAIK he has always supported Israel and Fiji (he was born there). It is this support for Israel which is driving much of his political commentary – a major part of his political agenda is slowing down or halting Islamic immigration – refugees or otherwise. There are other aspects – he remains bitter at his father being losing the chair of the National Party and this flows through to a dislike of Bill English. He therefore sees Winston Peters as a potential moderating influence on National to both slash immigration and to de-power Bill English (eg Winston demanding to be PM or at least insisting on Bill’s head rolling). He seems confident that Winston will not have anything to do with the Greens so it is safe politically to go into bat for Winston without fear of a left wing/ Winston government.
      
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      July 22, 2017 8:53am
      - Kimbo
        
        No, Slater is pissed at Key because Slater’s own advice:
        
        3. Never hug a corpse – it smells and you end up smelling like the corpse too
        
        https://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2011/10/whaleoils-rules-of-politics/
        
        …was taken by Key and used against him when Whale Oil was cut loose after the revelations of ‘Dirty Politics’.
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:03am
      - peterwn
        
        @Kimbo – Jim Bolger wound up hugging a corpse in the form of Winston in 1996 to 1999 and look where that ended. And now Whaleoil is advocating that Bill English should embrace Winston ie hug the same corpse when Winston becomes one in 2018 or so.
        
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        July 22, 2017 5:24pm
      - Kimbo
        
        @ peterwn
        
        Yes, as did Helen Clark in 2005, and three years later, including the Owen Glenn saga…
        
        But this time it’s different…somehow. 😉
        
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        July 22, 2017 5:27pm
    - KevOB
      
      He’s a bit like a street beggar with his nagging for payment for his biased cranky opinions,
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:18am
    - 4077th
      
      The chimp single handedly reduced the place to a sycophantic echo chamber. Cam should never have let him near the place.
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:25am
      - peterwn
        
        Do not blame it on Pete Belt – Pete is merely implementing the culture and stance that Cam wants.
        
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        July 22, 2017 9:36am
      - 4077th
        
        @peterwn
        I have zero sympathy for the chimp.
        
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        July 22, 2017 9:59am
    - Paulus
      
      Who paid for Key’s Bentley.
      Did he defraud Winz to buy it !
      
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      July 22, 2017 11:20am
      - peterwn
        
        He would have paid for it himself – he could easily afford one.
        This sort of smear is as bad as Winston’s smear that Social Welfare Department purchased 50 Mercedes Benz cars.
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:02pm
      - realityczech
        
        Key has a Bentley ? So cool, that guy has style and is down to earth with it. No wonder he is loved by the nation.
        
        Unlike Angry Andy who probably drives a Transit van loaded with billboards of himself 🙂
        
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        July 22, 2017 5:30pm
      - niggly
        
        Probably more like Andy’s van is loaded with those rugs of himself 🙂
        
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        July 22, 2017 7:42pm
- PhilBest
  
  Hmmm, its actually Matthew Hooton quoted as saying:
  
  Instead of spending political capital or defining the narrative in far-sighted ways,
  
  “…Mr Key just couldn’t be bothered. Instead he wasted his eight years as prime minister on a personal project of self-aggrandisement that has ceded all ideological territory to the left. It means Mr English and Mr Joyce will almost certainly respond to Labour’s latest spending promises with new claims on the taxpayers’ wallet of their own…”
  
  I am one of those who agrees very much with this, but I thought for years that Hooton was part of the problem, he is talking like this several years too late.
  
  https://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2017/07/matthew-hooton-john-keys-legacy/
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:31am
  - Paulus Gnome
    
    Whale oil deserves his own bitterness
    
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    July 22, 2017 8:34am
    - PhilBest
      
      So you don’t accept any validity in the observations of the long-time mainstream commentator Matthew Hooton? Is he now going to be made a non-person by the Cult of John Key that has turned NZ politics into a choice between explicit Helen (Labour) and Vichy Helen (National)?
      
      I have despised Winston Peters for most of the last couple of decades but National has now betrayed so much principle, that it would be worth taking the bad with the good so as to get Peters rolling back some of the politically correct, dishonest, mendacious, treasonous stuff that John Key National has spinelessly adopted in toto from their neo-Marxist one-time enemies.
      
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      July 22, 2017 8:45am
      - UrbanNeocolonialist
        
        That would be true if Peters were the type of person who ever actually delivers on a promise, but he is just an attention whore, all mouth and no trousers.
        
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        July 22, 2017 10:21am
  - Happychappy
    
    Who listens to Matthew Hooton now days he has to go to the Standard for any one that replies to his back stabbing crap.
    
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    July 22, 2017 8:40am
    - PhilBest
      
      So someone who points out that their team has sold out on what used to be their core principles, and co-opted the program of what is literally the enemies of their own civilisation, is the “back stabber”?
      
      It is western civilisation that is getting back-stabbed by the squishy “centre right” politicians of expedience all over the west, and they are using the knife handed to them by the PC, SJW, cultural-Marxist, fake news complex.
      
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      July 22, 2017 8:53am
      - Happychappy
        
        Philbest: Matthew is Act Member as far as I know.
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:15pm
      - Kimbo
        
        @ Happychappy
        
        I think in Philbest’s frame of political reference, that still makes Hooten “Vichy”. As I’ve posted elsewhere, “ya pays yer money and ya takes yer pick”, but it is heartening to see a genuine bro-mance develop between Philbest and DifferentPerspective. The seeds of the NZ version of the neo-John Birch Society? Go for it guys…
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:20pm
      - PhilBest
        
        Kimbo, I don’t frequent KB enough continuously enough to know the general background of each and every commenter. If someone says something that sounds right, I will agree with it.
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:35pm
      - Kimbo
        
        Indeed, Philbest, and despite the fact you take your politics seriously, you don’t strike me as the sort of guy who can’t take a good natured joke at your own expense. In that regards, I suggest you continue to cultivate another bromance with Shawn Herles. He’s a bit high maintenance and needy at times when it comes to seeking attention, but I sense the two of you will hit it off fine. My match making service is free, btw ?
        
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        July 22, 2017 3:01pm
  - Inandout
    
    ‘I’ve always been a glass-half-full as opposed to a glass-half-empty, and the day that changes is the day I should leave’.
    John Key
    
    He endured politics for so long because of his doggedness.
    
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    July 22, 2017 8:57am
    - KevOB
      
      John Key did well for NZ. We were fortunate to have such a decisive thinker when the earthquake hit.
      Anyone who has been near parliamentarians know how hard their lives really an be. They are the highest paid social workers in the country. JK has earned his retirement. That’s true of all MP’s.
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:25am
      - PhilBest
        
        “…We were fortunate to have such a decisive thinker when the earthquake hit…”
        
        Yeah, that’s why finally at that point, if not prior, the battle was taken in earnest to the Council Planners who are forcing everyone to live in grossly overpriced “housing” at high density right on fault lines and other high-risk locations…. yeah, right.
        
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        July 22, 2017 9:41am
      - Lance
        
        Agree KevOB
        I also note that the venal left were increasing shitting on his family.
        The MSM were reaching fever pitch, shrieking hysterically and scummy failed singers wanting to rape his daughter etc.
        Only so much filth one should have to endure when you headed up a country internationally praised for coming through the GFC in great condition.
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:31am
  - DifferentPerspective
    
    Careful PhilBest, you are teetering on the brink of looking rational by pointing out that it was Hooten’s views being voiced on WOBH.
    
    Let me help you understand how you should think:
    1) The Left proved in Dirty Politics that WO is a bad person
    2) Therefore all good people have to belief the Left and say “WO is a bad person”
    3) Otherwise anyone who won’t say “WO is a bad person” …. is also a bad person and should be attacked also
    4) Because the Left says so
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:00am
    - PhilBest
      
      Beautiful summing up of the Left’s modus operandi and the squishy “centre right” sellout to them.
      
      A National MP recently said to me that Don Brash is “just an old racist”.
      
      This is how far things have gone down the tubes. Even the “centre right” can now be relied on to join in the general dog-whistle response to PC, SJW smear hit jobs on anyone who looks like a threat to the edifice of lefty lies.
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:09am
    - Gabby
      
      Fatcambo pretty much proved he’s scum. Didn’t need no media help.
      
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      July 22, 2017 1:16pm
      - Happychappy
        
        That’s a bit rich coming from a excuse for a human being like you Gobby.
        
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        July 22, 2017 4:55pm
      - Gabby
        
        That’s pretty crappy, old chappy. Whisky in your Horlicks and a nice nap for you.
        
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        July 22, 2017 10:28pm
  - DifferentPerspective
    
    Kidding aside – I agree totally PhilBest.
    
    Key had immense potential, yet frittered it all away. His government did great things in their first 18 months – but they failed to deliver anything of moment after that.
    
    The farcical flag-change vanity project was clearly still-born form the the get-go and would have improved life in NZ not one iota.
    
    Key will forever be a hero to me for slaying the old dragon Helen, but the ship needed to be steered away from the rocks of socialism and he failed, we’re still drifting slowly towards disaster on the port side.
    
    It seems to me that the prevailing view of commenters here is that they’re so utterly terrified of the rapid train-wreck of a Labour/Greens government that they’re blind to the certainty of the slow-motion train-wreck National is heading towards with their Labour-Lite approach.
    
    Personally, I’m in favour of anything that provides a chance of avoiding any train-wreck and the only way to do that is to shock National into a course-change.
    
    How do you get the government to register discontent other than at the ballot box.
    
    National MPs are in the bubble now, they’re not listening to what the electorate is saying. Minister’s aren’t replying to correspondence now (letters are forwarded to their departments for direct response or handed down as ‘administrivia’ to their Associate Ministers). Just like the Clark government did 2005-8!
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:09am
    - PhilBest
      
      “Key will forever be a hero to me for slaying the old dragon Helen”
      
      It looked like that at the time, but he turned out to be Petain, not Churchill. Anyone who still thinks Helen’s team (and by that I mean the whole PC, neo-Marxist agenda) “lost” in 2008, is like a Frenchman living in Vichy in 1941 who thinks they too “won”, because it is their own guys in their own uniforms doing the enforcement of Nazi demands, rather than actual German occupation troops.
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:13am
      - Lance
        
        WTF?
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:33am
      - PhilBest
        
        Lance: has CYFS changed their behaviour? Has DOC? Have the Council Planners? Has NIWA and the CAGW fraud complex? Has the Iwi mafia? Has the fake news media? What changed in 2008, to represent substantial rather than illusory change “away from Helen Clark” and her program?
        
        Might as well have been Helen’s 4th, 5th and 6th terms. National supporters are kidding themselves that “we won the political war”. You’ve been in power on the same terms that Vichy “ran itself” after 1940. You meekly do everything that the PC, SJW left and the media talking heads dictate and you call that “victory”? Bah. And you respond to dog-whistle tactics of “smear and isolate” against decent people like Don Brash as if you are anxious to prove your own SJW PC credentials in the eyes of Saint Hulun herself? Bah again. The Vichy label is perfect.
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:44pm
    - Captain Mainwaring
      
      Two ticks blue.
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:19am
      - B.L.Zeebub
        
        I`m gonna do a Martin/Martyn, 4 ticks blue.
        
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        July 22, 2017 12:28pm
    - Gruffydd
      
      Vote further left NZF to shock national left ?
      Gibbering stubidty.
      Whinny deserves the halfwits who support him.
      
      Key was a steady hand on the tiller during a tumultuous time in the global financial markets.
      NZ inc walked away from the GFC with a strongly growing economy unlike many country’s.
      I don’t particularly like his political position but do give credit to his management of what was a very difficult time.
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:29am
      - PhilBest
        
        It will take time for this to become clear, but the “John Key economic miracle” was actually nothing more than restoring a bubble economy on top of a salvaged previous bubble which principled leadership would have allowed to deflate, and the economy to re-set at sensible historical means, particularly in the price of urban land.
        
        The price of dodging the “2008 crash” bullet, will be an economic bloodbath when all the bubble-pumping dirty tricks have played out in their effectiveness. If it hasn’t happened by 2025, then I will admit then that I am wrong. I expect the chickens to come home to roost before that, but economic cycle lengths count for a lot, regardless of ludicrous underlying fundamentals like median multiples twice as bad as Ireland’s in 2007.
        
        It is impossible for the bubble to be a new norm, because it will become costlier and costlier to “provide for” the growing class of Kiwis doing it hard in rental accommodation. When Thatcher came along in the UK in the 1970’s fully 1/3 of the population were in “social housing” and besides this being a burden on “other people’s money”, the economic incentives surrounding qualifying or not, for social housing, were severe in their effects on inter-generational dependency.
        
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        July 22, 2017 9:51am
      - UrbanNeocolonialist
        
        Agree Phil. NZ’s ‘rockstar’ performance over last 6-8 years has primarily been driven by an immigration policy driven Auckland housing bubble (though dairy boom was a nice little earner too). Pumped 3-400billion in borrowed money and chinese capital inflows into the economy, resulting in massive party-times spend up by those made rich by capital gains.
        
        The National cabinet were quite aware and deliberate in all this, but it made it easy for them to maintain control of the treasury benches. So they weren’t motivated to fix the land supply/over regulation issues of Auckland.
        
        The capital gains party is now at an end, and the hangover is going to be a doozy.
        
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        July 22, 2017 10:32am
      - Shawn Herles
        
        “Vote further left NZF to shock national left ?”
        
        Depends on how you define Left and Right. Originally these terms had nothing to do with economics, and Right was the opposite of Liberalism.
        
        Reclaiming those original meanings, in several respects NZF is to the right of National.
        
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        July 22, 2017 10:54am
      - DifferentPerspective
        
        Griff – I know you are doing it deliberately – but you are missing the point. The logic is not vote for leftist NZF because it will help moderate National to the Left.
        
        The logic is – what’s the worst thing you can do to National (without definitely putting them in opposition) to make them say “Whoa! Why did that happen, and how can we change to prevent it happening again?”
        
        National have forgotten how humiliating it was to be forced to eat crow at the hands of Winnie in 1996, a do-over will hopefully make them re-think the drift Leftwards.
        
        If not, then there will be enough pissed off and disenfranchised to vote for the vacuous Jacinda in 2020 – just to get rid of National.
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:07am
      - Gruffydd
        
        Whinny stands for nothing…. never has and never will.
        
        “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.” – Groucho Marx
        
        He has proven unable to from a stable government.
        
        If your vote for the drunken dwarf and he goes into coalition with National the resulting cluster f*** will hand the treasury to Green/ labor next time around if not sooner .
        
        If he goes with labour /greens we are f***ed already.
        
        Lose ….. Lose.
        
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        July 22, 2017 3:14pm
    - realityczech
      
      Key did rather a lot actually. Not all of which I agree with, but he did a decent job.
      
      He came in during an economic down turn after Labour had spent all the money on election bribes. Then there was that whole earthquake thing.
      
      Few teams could have done what National did during that time.
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:33am
- B.L.Zeebub
  
  As much as I like John Key, I have to agree with Hooton, Keys legacy will be one of missed opportunities and as a quitter.
  But fair enough, his missus threatened to walk.
  Let’s hope Bill grows a pair and hardens up.
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:46am
  - srylands
    
    “But fair enough, his missus threatened to walk.”
    
    Do you have any evidence for this?
    
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    July 22, 2017 8:57am
    - B.L.Zeebub
      
      Heh,heh, maybe it is just one of the scurrilous rumours I`ve heard, do the math, believe what you want.
      He hinted as much when being interviewed.
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:38am
      - realityczech
        
        B.L.Zeebub you are off message with that one. This is Keys spin site. They will squirm like salted slugs.
        
        I suspect the real reason was something that went down in New York.
        
        http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/87228666/keys-decision–how-it-played-out
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:56pm
  - PhilBest
    
    The trouble is, Bill does not have the “charisma capital” to draw down on in the way that, say, David Lange did when he managed to sell Rogernomics to a skeptical electorate. The 2002 election wipeout, particularly with women voters, was telling. I had high hopes of Key in 2008, I expected most of what Don Brash had stood for in 2005 (and nearly won the election) to constitute National’s program going forward. Instead, what we got was Helen’s 4th, 5th and 6th terms. And that included some stuff, particularly the scale of sellout to the Iwi Mafia, that even Helen had too much integrity to be able to stomach it.
    
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    July 22, 2017 8:59am
    - Paulus
      
      Look at Lange’s legacy.
      He was all mouth with no substance.
      
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      July 22, 2017 11:24am
    - Harriet
      
      “…..The trouble is, Bill does not have the “charisma capital” to draw down on in the way that, say, David Lange did when he managed to sell Rogernomics to a skeptical electorate. ….”
      
      He doesn’t need it as the electorate is more financially educated and has more skin in the game than they were/did in Lange’s day. And the public all know Bill, “a good safe pair of hands under any conditions”.
      Keating was doing the same things as Lange at the time and he was the best at selling them, and he says “all you need is a narrative to carry the public and the better the narrative the further you will carry them.”
      
      Bill is old and experienced enough to do what is needed, and besides, National voters want him to do it, as they all now agree that Key became lazy.
      
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      July 22, 2017 1:31pm
      - PhilBest
        
        “…the electorate is more financially educated…”
        
        That’s why they regard one of the most outrageous bubbles in the history of human manias and delusions, as an acceptable “new norm”???
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:47pm
  - KevOB
    
    Sometimes steady as it goes is better than constant changes of course. NZ has been on its social welfare path for over 50 years. It’s embedded in our tax system. Look at the failed USA as an example of what “free enterprise” has resulted in. It has not yielded a society where people are free. The lesser-abled by wealth, intellect or health can be consigned to the human rubbish heap. We have avoided that.
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:36am
    - PhilBest
      
      But the way housing has gone in the last 15 years? Good luck keeping up the socialist utopia in the face of that. At least in the USA there are dozens of cities where a small townhouse can be bought for $80,000, and a “mobile home” for $40,000. The problem in NZ is that the Council Urban Planning racket means that the patch of dirt that the townhouse or mobile home has to go in, costs $300,000.
      
      Take this into account before you decide where you would rather live as a low-income person. It is not as if there is no welfare at all in the USA, either. That is a myth.
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:56am
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        I just checked Trademe properties in Gisborne…
        25 three-bedroomed properties for sale under $250,000 (one cottage for removal $1.00).
        
        There is no shortage of work here for those willing to work….
        I’m sure there are plenty of places around NZ where you can secure a decent, basic house for under $300,000.
        Low income life doesn’t have to be in the big cities.
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:32am
      - PhilBest
        
        You can get those $80,000 townhouses and $40,000 mobile homes (including the dirt they are sitting on) in some of the fastest-growing urban economies in the entire first world, some of which have a population of millions. The home that is $250,000 in Gisborne may well be even cheaper.
        
        It is part of the absurd delusion Kiwis are labouring under, that Gisborne is an acceptable alternative to Houston or Dallas. In fact you can get super cheap housing in rural towns 45 minutes drive from Manhattan. Everywhere in NZ is far too expensive, even Levin and Huntly. This is because of spillover pressure from the main cities Planning racket.
        
        http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Plainfield_NJ/sby-1?pgsz=50
        
        Why are Kiwis too stupid to use Google to reality-check house prices? Even property 45 minutes drive away from Paris, is half the price of equivalents relative to Dorkland.
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:54pm
  - Shawn Herles
    
    JK was a likable guy, and he was dealt a crappy hand with both the GFC and the Chch earthquake. I give him credit for keeping things stable economically speaking, and for defeating Goff and Cunliffe.
    
    But, while I agree with National moving towards the “center” on economics, too much was sacrificed to the point where it is now reasonable to say that there is bugger all difference between National and Labour. To give two examples, the tepid RMA reforms which are barely reforms at all, and the ongoing OSH madness. And now we have the Nats apologizing to homosexuals for the way the Law used to be, when most of society was not on board the gay rights bandwagon and it was just the way things were.
    
    I had hoped that the more conservative English would make a difference, but that is clearly not going to be the case.
    
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    July 22, 2017 11:04am
    - PhilBest
      
      Never heard of you before in spite of your many comments, but that is one of the best comments today. Where ya been?
      
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      July 22, 2017 1:56pm
    - Harriet
      
      I agree with all that Shaun, but I think English will make a difference;
      
      I’ve banged on about WFF replacing pay rises, and the government now being seen by employers and employees as providers of children. And I’ve also raised the issue of low productivity rates of some employees while their productive co workers are largely paid the same rate. I’ve also said that young workers in 2017 are now ‘rostered into the free market for a 4 hour shift in the most safest of retail work places’.Most National supporters here don’t like what I say as they ‘support the minimum wage system as is’.
      
      Well the governer of the aussie reserve bank came out and gave a big speech about the urgent need for workers to have pay increases and be given better laws so that they can ask and receive regular pay increases as the private sector largely hasn’t delivered for 10yrs.
      
      And why — because most of the ‘housing risk’ has now been shifted to ‘households themselves’ – and who are now also no longer full time workers but part time, casual, ‘only just self employed’, contracted, and taxpayer subsidised.
      English will need to change things if aussie starts to look attractive once again.
      
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      July 22, 2017 2:02pm
- Piniwi
  
  It is funny to see the confusion between “principles” and “bias” being applied in a pendulum like manner.
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:14pm
peterwn

Winston Peters as PM? I wondered how it could be made to work. Since baubles are far cheaper than spend-up policies, it could be worth considering. However it would depend on the arrangements put in place. In 1996, the majority party agreed to him being ‘Treasurer’ on the basis that the Associate Finance Minister had to be kept in the loop on everything. He could only be a ‘figurehead’ PM with Cabinet similarly being a ‘figurehead’ organisation with the majority party holding kitchen cabinet meetings.
However such an arrangement is going to make NZ an international laughing stock. Moreover the arrangements are likely to break up before the 2020 election.
Seems to me that while it could seem attractive, it will merely lead to big problems later.
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July 22, 2017 8:24am
- DifferentPerspective
  
  Anything can be made to work – if it allows third rate National Ministers to keep their jobs.
  
  These are all just details – Winnie doesn’t want the power, he just wants the title – just to complete his set.
  
  Bill (like when Peters was Treasurer) would do all the heavy lifting and process work – no inanity is impossible under an MMP system. All you need is the leverage and the ego (and Winnie is going to have both).
  
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  July 22, 2017 9:13am
- lifesgood
  
  Steven Joyce would be way better than Winnie. He has the gravitas.
  
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  July 22, 2017 9:49am
  - sooty
    
    Scroll down quick. Hughs a head!
    
    13 1
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    July 22, 2017 9:52am
  - Gabby
    
    The granite signs and flash furniture’s on Jawsie.
    
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    July 22, 2017 10:31pm
Hugh Pavletich

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
HOUSING & LAND USE LAW WILL FINISH OFF THIS GOVERNMENT 23 SEPTEMBER …

To illustrate just how clueless Capt Mainwaring is on the RMA (New Zealand fatally flawed land-use law) legislation amendment management issue, do read what Pattrick Smellie had to say back in March …

RMA reform – a lesson in how not to do it: Pattrick Smellie | Stuff.co.nz

http://i.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/90212062/pattrick-smellie-rma-reform-a-lesson-in-how-not-to-do-it

… and what Business New Zeralnd (Chamber of Commerce) had to say as well …

https://www.businessnz.org.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/124009/170324-RMA-purpose.pdf

The Resource Management Act has been changed a lot over the years but is still not fit for purpose.

The RMA should be a short, understandable Act that enables responsible development.

After more than 25 years of reforms the RMA remains long, complicated and anti-development.

The latest attempt at reform, the Resource Law Amendment Bill currently before Parliament doesn’t change this enough. … read more via hyperlink above …
.
.
New Zealand First’s Ron Mark made it clear in the Parliament that in any coalition talks following the election, one of the few bottom lines would be that this RMA Amendment Act must be repealed.

Bernard Hickey of NEWSROOM wrote around the same time …

https://pro.newsroom.co.nz/articles/1629-newsroom-pro-s-8-things-at-8-trolling-millennials-is-easy-defamation-retrials-loom

7. Just in case you missed it…

One curious coda to the RMA debate that concluded last week was that the Opposition parties plus ACT and United Future all voted again during the third reading debate for amendments that would have abolished Rural Urban Growth Boundaries and allowed the financing of infrastructure bonds paid for with targeted rates.

The amendments were defeated by National and the Maori Party.

The irony of a Government that has railed against restrictions on land development by councils voting against removing those restrictions should be noted. And also that the proposal for infrastructure bonds was backed by the right-leaning New Zealand Initiative and voted for by the Greens and Labour. Strange times indeed.
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The Radio New Zealand Kim Hill interview with PM Bill English a couple of Mondays ago, on the Auckland housing fiasco, gave me the distinct impression he is happy just to throw this election … as the best way of getting rid of the political weapon of mass destruction … (Building & Construction Minister) Nick Smith !

Study poor Prime Minister English in a state of despair …

VIDEO: Bill English on affordable housing in Auckland | Radio New Zealand News

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/334786/video-bill-english-on-affordable-housing-in-auckland

One doesn’t have to be too clever to figure out where all this is heading (general election day) 23 September .
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July 22, 2017 8:40am
- Hugh Pavletich
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  Above posted at … http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2017/07/general_debate_21_july_2017.html/comment-page-1#comment-1972920 (with extensive further posts up-thread) … and … https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/07/links-22-23-july-2017/#comment-2921170
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:46am
- B.L.Zeebub
  
  FFS
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:48am
- Captain Mainwaring
  
  Sorry Hugh but you only get two votes, as do the rest of us.
  You are going to have a bad night on 23 Sept.
  
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  July 22, 2017 9:04am
  - Hugh Pavletich
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    Capt Mainwaring … thank you for your perspective.
    
    I had a few thoughts mid last year as well …
    
    Housing campaigner predicts spiralling house prices will be Key’s ‘Waterloo’ | Stuff.co.nz
    
    http://i.stuff.co.nz/business/83627043/Housing-campaigner-predicts-spiralling-house-prices-will-be-Keys-Waterloo
    
    … with some texture within the GONE GONE GOING section of http://www.PerformanceUrbanPlanning.org .
    
    3 35
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    July 22, 2017 9:15am
  - PhilBest
    
    If Winston Peters can add reversal of National’s sellout on the Council Planning racket, to his platform of reversal of National’s sellout to the Iwi mafia and reversal of National’s sellout to multi-culti PC nonsense, I will be cheering him on for the first time in my life. I despise his Muldoonist, fortress-NZ economic nationalism and his anti-immigration stance per se but the choices in NZ politics are now more a question of “who will do or perpetuate the least evil”.
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:20am
  - sooty
    
    Scroll down quick. Hughs a head!
    
    10 2
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    July 22, 2017 9:51am
    - Hugh Pavletich
      
      COUNCILS CONSENTING PERFORMANCE INFORMATION REQUIRED … REGULARLY ! …
      
      Brilliant article from August last year by Michael Daly of Fairfax, clearly illustrating the regional consenting performances to mid last year … using the industry standard ‘consents rate per 1000 population per annum’ …
      
      Despite huge housing shortfall, Auckland consents per capita only middling … Michael Daly … Fairfax / Stuff NZ … h/t BH
      
      http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/83682402/Despite-huge-housing-shortfall-Auckland-consents-per-capita-only-middling
      
      It sure would be great to have an update … based on territorial authorities too … each month (using this industry standard … expressed on an annual basis).
      
      I have some selected ones on yesterday’s KB General Debate thread (again) for May … showing how the smaller ta’s such as Selwyn, Tauranga and Waimak leave the rest (particularly the big bureaucratically bloated ones) in the dust.
      
      Access original post … 30 June 2017 …
      
      http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2017/06/general_debate_30_june_2017.html/comment-page-1#comment-1960805
      
      It is a complete mystery to me how Nick Smith gets away with the truly lousy Auckland performance.
      
      Cut the crap Nick … just abolish the urban limits and bond finance infrastructure …
      
      beehive.govt.nz – Nick Smith – Labour support on city limits (abolition) welcomed
      
      https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/labour-support-city-limits-welcomed
      
      Note what I had to say within the front part of this (with the brilliant Donald Ellis ‘consents rate per 1000 population per annum’ graph as well)…
      
      Restoring Affordable Housing: An Advocates Perspective
      
      http://www.performanceurbanplanning.org/definition-of-affordable-housing.html
      
      … and too … Fig 10 Page 26 of this years Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey
      
      http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf
      
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      July 22, 2017 11:07am
duggledog

Whangarei will be hosting a ‘fight club’ with representatives of – 18… 18? gangs, such as the Mongrel Mob, Black Power and Head Hunters all duking it out to try to resolve tensions in Northland.

Said one would-be combatant ‘hopefully stop the shootings eh’. What the f?

I have one word and it’s ‘Daisy Cutter’.

Meanwhile in other news (which hardly made the bulletins), a Rotorua felon is being hunted after the POS thumped a policeman at night in the head with an object and put him in hospital where he is comatose. If only the poor bugger had a sidearm we could have had one deceased rock ape and one fully fit contributor instead.

Still happy voting National? Nine years to fix this bullshit. Complete failure. Mustn’t grumble though!
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July 22, 2017 8:41am
- B.L.Zeebub
  
  Where are all the police snipers when you need `em?
  
  9 1
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  July 22, 2017 8:49am
  - Paulus
    
    Getting permission from Wellington to get the guns out of the car – but who has got the keys to the firearms box ?
    Not my turn – you must have the key it is your turn
    
    10 0
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    July 22, 2017 11:28am
  - rightoverlabour
    
    Raiding the RSA as they are selling beer to non members…
    
    7 0
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    July 22, 2017 1:30pm
- Disaster Area
  
  I have one word and it’s ‘Daisy Cutter’.
  
  Er, hang on a sec…
  
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  July 22, 2017 10:39am
- Gabby
  
  If only the poor bugger had a sidearm we could have had a cop in a coma and an armed crim on the loose.
  
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  July 22, 2017 1:31pm
duggledog

Different Perspective @ 9.09 am

Brilliant post.

What makes me laugh is the abject refusal of some, to see that the NZF protest vote which is coming National’s way is all about the message, not the messenger.

There is simply no other repository for the right wing vote. Only certain people dig deeper to find out Winston’s Muldoonist policies, let alone even try to understand what they might mean.

What they hear, is:
F*** the media party (Tick)
Slow down on the Chinese n Injuns (tick)
Fix some infrastructure (tick)
Stop the Maori gravy train. (tick)
Prisoners to break rocks (tick)
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July 22, 2017 9:27am
- dad4justice
  
  Well said the poor wimpish Nats should just stick to downticking. NZF are going to get two ticks from me as they are so damn right about that cursed 1080 and are going to ban the horrid shit.
  “Clearly it isn’t working, clearly it is causing serious harm to our native species, our people, our ecosystem, our environment, and our international reputation, and clearly something has to be done.”
  
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  July 22, 2017 9:48am
  - lifesgood
    
    Why aren’t you voting Green, then.
    
    9 0
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    July 22, 2017 9:51am
    - dad4justice
      
      I wouldn’t vote gween if my life depended on it. That freak show is an utter disgrace to New Zealand.
      
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      July 22, 2017 9:53am
      - Captain Mainwaring
        
        “I wouldn’t vote gween if my life depended on it. That freak show is an utter disgrace to New Zealand.”
        
        But you’re going to vote NZF which will give the evil gweens a better chance of getting in as part of the three-headed hydra.
        And based on a single issue (1080). What about all the other issues, like the economy for instance?
        Do the rest of us a favour – two ticks blue.
        
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        July 22, 2017 10:02am
      - dad4justice
        
        Been a National supporter all my life but this mob supplying taxpayer dollars the CORRUPT CLINTON foundation is beyond a sick joke. Signed yet Captain?
        http://www.taxpayers.org.nz/clinton_petition?utm_campaign=newsltr_cattax2&utm_medium=email&utm_source=taxpayers
        
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        July 22, 2017 10:06am
      - Happychappy
        
        I thought you were the freak show dad4justice.
        
        11 10
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        July 22, 2017 10:38am
      - dad4justice
        
        Nice Happychappy your taxpayer dollars are enjoyed by Hillary and Bill.
        
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        July 22, 2017 10:52am
  - realityczech
    
    National are way way further right than you realise.
    
    Key said openly that NZ is a socialist country. He was careful to never reveal his real agenda as he knew that would be the end of him. He carefully managed the message and his image while bringing in some very severe right wing changes.
    
    Key is the product of a ruthless international banking elite with some very disturbing views and philosophies. Their form of “left” is about central control by an elite. He is not the sort of left some imagine him to be. That speaks more about his sophisticated PR/Spin machine than it does about reality.
    
    I was happy to vote for him based on having a strong opposition to keep National in check. However that is the part that has failed.
    
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    July 22, 2017 10:12am
    - Peter
      
      And your evidence of this is…..what, precisely?
      
      Because most Key “changes” were Labour-ish.
      
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      July 22, 2017 10:45am
      - Kimbo
        
        Um, Key is Jewish, so as per EAD he is in on the international conspiracy? /sarc
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:10am
      - realityczech
        
        Peter, yes there is common ground with Labour. Both support a global elite controlling everything. There are some differences in how they intend doing it.
        
        Labour use force and National more sophisticated means.
        
        I say this as someone who will probably vote for the buggers again [National]
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:38am
    - DifferentPerspective
      
      If only the evidence supported you reality – I’m struggling to see much policy from National over the past few years that is within cooeeee of centre-right (let alone far right).
      
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      July 22, 2017 11:13am
      - Kimbo
        
        Scheduled tax cut
        
        Charter Schools
        
        Strengthening of alliances with traditional allies through ‘Five Eyes’.
        
        Not exhaustive, but that is off the top of my head. Not enough to placate or please you, I’m sure. Fair enough. Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer pick. Nonetheless, by any measure those are centre-right, I would suggest. And “(let alone far right)”. Sorry you are looking in the wrong place. National have never been that. Their formation in 1936 included the remnants of the old Liberal Party – you know, old age pensions, State Insurance, industrial arbitration.
        
        Be aggrieved with National because you don’t like their policy by all means, but try and pitch that they have “forsaken” their true ideological setting? Nope. Misrepresents who they are.
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:27am
      - Peter
        
        Tax cut – minor, bracket creep
        Charter schools – ’cause the public system is perfect, huh
        Five Eyes – FFS. We have a globalised terror risk and an environment where everything is everywhere, all the time (the internet). Should we pretend that isn’t the case and maintain a 1950’s cold war approach?
        
        This is all centrist pragmatism.
        
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        July 22, 2017 11:54am
      - Kimbo
        
        This is all ~~centrist~~ centre-right pragmatism
        
        There! Fixed that for ya. Your rationalisations and dissembling to the contrary, and also contrary DifferentPerspective’s assertion, there are examples where National is indeed “within cooeeee of centre-right”.
        
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        July 22, 2017 12:21pm
      - Kimbo
        
        Oh, yes, and more:
        
        Re-instituting knighthoods = Centre right.
        
        Negotiating and signing free-trade agreements = Centre right.
        
        90 day Act = Centre right.
        
        Partial state asset sales.
        
        No way that last one is “pragmatic centrist”. Is centre-right at the very least. And contrary to Matthew Hooten’s assertions, Key did trade some political capital to achieve it…
        
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        July 22, 2017 12:32pm
      - DifferentPerspective
        
        Kimbo…. after 9 years the “jam-tomorrow” “scheduled tax cut” is hardly any achievement to gloat about. For the “no new taxes” party that came in and promptly upped GST – a tax cut, one day, somewhere in the future, possibly, perhaps, if you re-elect us election bribe announcement is pretty pathetic as a bankable achievement.
        
        Charter schools – not really a National initiative and I doubt it would have happened if not for needing to buy Seymour’s vote. And talk about bare minimum – after 9 years we have a handful only when it is so staggeringly clear that the current schooling system is mediocre at best. Again – not really an achievement to skite about – akin to finishing a par 4 with a triple bogey and then popping in the club house to gloat about.
        
        Surely we aspire to our elected government to do more than just the absolute bare minimum to earn our support at the ballot box?
        
        Just slightly more than nothing at all isn’t good enough to retain my two ticks – my local National MP has done enough to get one tick – but the party vote said bye bye to Labour Lite a long time ago.
        
        And just to clarify – all the things you are talking about are first term achievements – I said “in recent years”.
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:52pm
      - DifferentPerspective
        
        oops the Editor function brain-farted and wouldn’t let me correct my error.
        
        I meant “over the past few years” not “in recent years”
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:56pm
      - PhilBest
        
        Charter schools – timid toe-dipping. Major education reforms should have been in place by 2011, and the percentage of Kiwi kids in private schools should have been converging on the ratio in Aussie by now. Howard did this properly. He left Aussie with legacies like this that Labor over there doesn’t dare tinker with, contra to Hulun’s legacies for NZ that National doesn’t dare tinker with.
        
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        July 22, 2017 2:01pm
      - Peter
        
        Partial state asset sales.
        
        No way that last one is “pragmatic centrist”. Is centre-right at the very least.
        
        It’s the height of pragmatism. A right-wing party would have sold off 100%.
        
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        July 22, 2017 3:30pm
      - Kimbo
        
        So to sum up DifferentPerspective. PhilBest and Peter, Key’s National Coalition Government was not even centre-right in any respect, and even when specific examples are given…they weren’t because it wasn’t enough.
        
        10/10 for your devotion to ideology and sticking to your talking point, boys (not that that is a crime, btw), but objectivity? Needs some work, not that I sense you see it as a pressing need. Fair enough on that one too. Ya pays yer money…
        
        Oh, yes:
        
        And just to clarify – all the things you are talking about are first term achievements – I said “in recent years”
        
        Er, no. Most definitely a second term achievement, hence Key sought a mandate for it at the 2011 election. Same with Charter Schools I think you will find. Oh, yes, and how could I forget the standard centre-right achievements:
        
        Returning the public accounts to surplus (and a year early at that), and
        
        Reducing government spending as a proportion of GDP
        
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        July 22, 2017 4:13pm
      - Kimbo
        
        Clarification – Key’s partial asset sales were in the second term, hence it was in the National manifesto in 2011.
        
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        July 22, 2017 4:38pm
  - Gruffydd
    
    Clearly you have no idea.
    Possums selectively browse trees to death..
    When we lose trees such as metrosideros and vitex to possum browsing we also lose the tui, wood pigeon, parrots and other birds that rely on them for food in the spring breeding season..
    Without these birds eating fruit and spreading seeds many other species can no longer regenerate.
    If we don’t keep possum numbers low we will lose the NZ bush.
    On top of this possums spread bovine tb .
    
    1080 is cost efficient, reasonably safe and very effective.
    Trapping is just not viable in many places. Trapping also doesn’t reduce the numbers enough without considerable cost and effort.
    
    If you are really worried about 1080 and possums get a goodnature trap and use it or if you are townie donate a few to an organization that is helping to control the pest .
    I just brought two more to fully protect my block including a stoat trap……
    https://www.goodnature.co.nz/
    
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    July 22, 2017 11:44am
    - realityczech
      
      The possums killing trees myth was started by greenies flying fuel guzzling helicopters over thousands of square miles of forest taking photos of dead trees.
      
      Out of millions of trees you are bound to find a few dead ones. A point lost on the imbeciles who support the radical green political movement.
      
      They did the same thing years ago with a famous edited photo of damage from Deer. The trouble is someone released the whole photo which showed a fence. It was a patch of bush in a Cow paddock.
      
      Our forests evolved with large grazing birds until the Maori wiped them all out.
      
      8 12
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      July 22, 2017 11:57am
      - Gruffydd
        
        I have spent years cruising the north land coast .
        I don’t need a helicopter to see the dead trees and damage. The difference in bird life and the health of the bush between the few islands with no possums and places with them is profound.
        https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/16898/dead-trees-pirongia-forest-park
        
        Project Crimson is a conservation initiative to promote the protection of the pohutukawa and the rata which are under threat due to browsing by the introduced common brushtail possum. The vision of the project is to “enable pohutukawa and rata to flourish again in their natural habitat as icons in the hearts and minds of all New Zealanders.”
        
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Crimson
        
        Selective browsing
        Possums will browse one tree until it dies then go onto the next .
        It is not “one tree in millions” they selectively kill off species .
        Pōhutukawa (M. excelsa), northern rātā (M. robusta), and southern rātā (M. umbellata) along with the rata vines are an important part of many birds diet specifically honey eaters who need the spring flush of flowers to breed .
        Puriri (Vitex lucens) Is one of the few trees in the bush that has flowers and berries on it year around.
        Without these key species and the bird life they support the bush ecology is in trouble.
        
        Our forest did evolve with large grazing birds .
        That were flightless and did not eat trees from the top down
        Divaricateing species that developed the form to protect from moa crazing often revert to a more normal form once over a couple of meters high.
        http://newzealandecology.org/nzje/2780.pdf
        
        The divaricateing habit is probably only one of
        several strategies evolved by plants response to
        moa browsing. However, because moas fed in
        a way from mammals there is little to support
        the idea that introduced browsing mammals have
        merely replaced moas as an ecological factor in
        New Zealand.
        
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        July 22, 2017 12:47pm
      - realityczech
        
        More forest has been destroyed clearing plots for cannabis growing.
        
        Just sayin 🙂
        
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        July 22, 2017 12:58pm
      - Gabby
        
        You reckon moa’s and possums’ diets would be the same reallyczit?
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:39pm
      - Viking2
        
        realityczech
        
        The possums killing trees myth was started by greenies flying fuel guzzling helicopters over thousands of square miles of forest taking photos of dead trees.
        
        Wrong.
        Possums eat the tree tops, new growth flowers and seeds.
        They don’t care if the tree is 1 meter high or 50 meters high.
        the can travel up to 10 km a night to feed which they did down on the West coast returning home after the feed. So from forest to grass and back which is how the TB gets spread.
        
        there are plenty of big dead “spars” in forests which are testament to the eating veracity of those furry critters.
        
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        July 22, 2017 7:26pm
  - lilman
    
    Yawn !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    
    4 2
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    July 22, 2017 11:44am
  - Keeping Stock
    
    You’re lucky you have a Winston First candidate to vote for Dad. Last November, Peters was shouting from the rooftops that WF was going to take Whanganui from National after Chester Borrows retires. Far from winning the seat, Peters hasn’t even been able to find a candidate yet, which reinforces my belief that he is all mouth and pin-striped trousers.
    
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    July 22, 2017 2:19pm
    - dad4justice
      
      Indeed KS, maybe he is all piss and wind, however the 18 downticks I received after my first comment backing him do indicate National must be rather concerned about Winny the Pooh. Oh well I must email him and ask him if his party is going to supply the corrupt Clinton foundation with kiwi taxpayers dollars?
      
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      July 22, 2017 2:25pm
      - Keeping Stock
        
        No Dad; Winston’s far more likely to want to siphon money off to the Spencer Trust. Email Owen Glenn, and he’ll give you the bank account number 😎
        
        4 1
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        July 22, 2017 5:32pm
- Shawn Herles
  
  “F*** the media party (Tick)
  Slow down on the Chinese n Injuns (tick)
  Fix some infrastructure (tick)
  Stop the Maori gravy train. (tick)
  Prisoners to break rocks (tick)”
  
  Sounds good to me. 🙂
  
  As to his “Muldoonist” policies, National are already well on their way.
  
  ‘Government ups infrastructure spend to $11bn’
  
  http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/329597/government-ups-infrastructure-spend-to-$11bn
  
  As I don’t subscribe to ACT style economics, I don’t have a problem with that.
  
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  July 22, 2017 11:19am
waikatosinger

Jeez – that synthetic cannabis sounds like lethal stuff. Time to legalise the real stuff I reckon. Pot just makes people slow silly and hungry. I’d take that over violent, unpredictable and prone to sudden death any day.
12 2
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July 22, 2017 10:29am
- Gabby
  
  But high crime rates boost GDP.
  
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  July 22, 2017 1:40pm
- Viking2
  
  Yep someone needs to be in jail a longtime fror manslaughter at least if not murder. 7 dead in the last few weeks.
  
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  July 22, 2017 7:28pm
Chuck Bird

I seen Jacinda on the Nation. She and her party were advocating borrowing money to buy shares. If any in Labour think that is a good idea why do they not mortgage their homes to buy shares.

I think Jacinda is a very nice caring woman. She just does not know much about the markets.
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July 22, 2017 10:59am
- UrbanNeocolonialist
  
  I think Jacinda is a very nice caring woman. She just does not know much ~~about the markets~~.
  
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  July 22, 2017 11:46am
- Notsofast
  
  At least one very high performing local fund is 75% in cash. They must be wrong, go Jacinda.
  
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  July 22, 2017 4:56pm
- RF
  
  Why was she fronting for Labour. Grant should have been there or at least Angry.
  
  She was very airy fairy and did not go into great detail about policy.
  
  I guess she was preparing for her next photo shoot advertising toothpaste.
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:33pm
Stars And Stripes

Rock climbers, drones may be banned on Mauao
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/bay-of-plenty-times/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503343&objectid=11893445
“Drones and rock climbing would be banned on Mauao under new management plan for the iconic Bay spot.
The council said the current site had safety risks, was close to a tapu site and had a rare native fern, psilotum nudum, in the area that could be damaged.
Dean Flavell, chair of Nga Poutiriao o Mauao, said the plan was designed to “ensure we preserve and celebrate the natural, historic, cultural, and spiritual significance our maunga Mauao”.

Firstly if you were like me and had no idea what the hell Mauao was it is Mt Maunganui before the word police and other associated bed wetters decided it had to go.
Secondly it looks like the screws are slowly being turned on permissible activities due to the now pervasive reasons of tapu sites and cultural significance.
Sure a taniwha discovery won’t be far away.
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July 22, 2017 11:16am
- Captain Mainwaring
  
  What a load of PC crap perpetrated by the stone-agers.
  
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  July 22, 2017 11:31am
  - wiseowl
    
    Supported by National.
    
    5 1
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    July 22, 2017 1:09pm
  - PhilBest
    
    Ironic, how can you have opinions like that, and support National, who have made an art-form out of outdoing Aunty Hulun on bowing and scraping to this ticket-clipping, PC Danegeld shakedown racket.
    
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    July 22, 2017 2:04pm
  - Viking2
    
    Yep, the council handed the bloody rock back to the locals and ever since there has been a stream of this stuff. Us poor ratepayers are handing out folding stuff like there is no end to the supply.
    The walking track did what tracks do and collapsed recently. Well wow, we need to spend 2 MILLION to fix it.
    We are planting it like no tomorrow so that when we have another dry spell there is more to burn.
    We wonder why councils need so much money.
    
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    July 22, 2017 7:32pm
- Steve (North Shore)
  
  How much does this ‘permission’ to fly a drone cost?
  Who gets the koha, and what is the ‘koha’ used for?
  IWI. I want it
  
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  July 22, 2017 12:31pm
  - Viking2
    
    People have been flying off the top for as long as I can remember. I can see the day coming where some Iwi will be there with the koha box to ping you before you are allowed up.
    
    That will be the same people who don’t have a paid job, collect a benefit and stash the Koha in a slush fund.
    
    They walk among us.
    
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    July 22, 2017 7:36pm
- RF
  
  FFS. Next there will be goblins performing fertility dances on the mount. Maura is nothing but a bull shit name.
  
  This is the classic renaming of Mt. Egmont.
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:37pm
Paulus

Taniwha is already there – it is celebrated often by the owners for all sorts of reasons – and paid for by the Ratepayers via the compliant Council.
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July 22, 2017 11:31am
Pongo

This Turei fraud thing is annoying me and I want to know, if the father is Ann Hartley,s son did either of them support their child/grandchild while mum was “struggling” and forced into fraudulent behaviour. Once Turei started working and was off the benefit did Dad start paying child support now it went to Turei and not offsetting the cost to the taxpayer. Now everyone knows who Dad is do social welfare start chasing him for unpaid child support.
Why is no one in the media asking these obvious questions. I think the public are 90% pissed off.
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July 22, 2017 11:37am
- Happychappy
  
  If Paula Bennett had been the one that came out and outered herself for the fraud that the Green Party co Leader has admitted to everyone media included would have been calling for her blood and resignation from Parliament. So why now do we have the Left trying there hardest to make her a hero instead of a fraudster Like the crime portrays.
  
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  July 22, 2017 11:59am
  - Kimbo
    
    So why now do we have the Left trying there hardest to make her a hero instead of a fraudster Like the crime portrays.
    
    Not that I support Turei in any way, but it is a matter of in congruence/hypocrisy, not so much illegality that kills a political career. For example, our friend David Garrett, as he has acknowledged himself, had to go as a matter of political rather than legal necessity, because, when “law and order” is your “brand”, you have to be squeaky clean.
    
    For a Green hippy breaking the law ain’t a major. Indeed, it is considered a badge of honour and necessary entry on your CV in some cases. But not for a Natioanl politician like Paula Bennett. Now, if Turei had cut down a pohutakawa and turned it into pulp for shiny paper for porno magazines, or was a slum landlord? Yep, that would do it. And why, say, David Benson-Pope (a Labour politician administering humiliating corporal punishment in their prior career), or Taito Phillip Field exploiting migrants had to go. In those cases Helen Clark gave ’em both enough rope to hang themselves, rather than avoid a messy situation of removing a sitting electorate MP who wanted to hang on. Same strategy was tried by National with Todd Barclay.
    
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    July 22, 2017 12:08pm
    - calendar girl
      
      “Not that I support Turei in any way, but …..”
      
      “For a Green hippy breaking the law ain’t a major.”
      
      Call me a little old-fashioned, Kimbo, but I can’t bring myself to trivialise self-admitted and repeated breaches of the law by someone who now fully expects to be recognised as a lawmaker of our country. Euphemism such as “incongruence” and “hypocrisy” don’t even begin to convince me quite so conveniently that Ms Turei’s deliberate and prolonged fraud may be disregarded or partially swept under the carpet. Being a woman, a mother, a lawyer, a ‘greenie’, a Maori or a hypocrite are not recognised defences at law.
      
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      July 22, 2017 1:04pm
      - Kimbo
        
        Sure, and fair enough – but in political terms you are on the wrong side of the divide, and Turei was never courting your vote, much less your blessing or approval. Instead, she was pitching to her base:
        
        I wonder how much damage Metiria Turei has done to the Green Party by admitting she defrauded what is now WINZ.
        
        Probably not much given she was preaching to the converted.
        
        …You couldn’t argue the disclosure was politically ruinous. Not in the sense of losing the Green Party a lot of votes. Most Green Party voters see the poor and struggling as victims of circumstances and are happy to see more taxpayer money going on benefits and welfare support.
        
        They will be heartened that someone is speaking for beneficiaries although beneficiary bashing has definitely gone underground, except in this column of course.
        
        Some beneficiaries might wonder how they would have fared with Turei’s advantages.
        
        “I had the training incentive allowance as a grant to help me pay my fees and childcare. I had great support from my family and my baby’s dad, and his family too,” she said in her speech.
        
        She was also clever, artistic, motivated and had a great case worker.
        
        Very few beneficiaries have those sort of advantages and most don’t cheat the system.
        
        Some Green supporters will have been disgruntled that Turei’s admissions drowned out anything else about the Green Party AGM, especially the momentum building up around some key environmental issues, but that won’t stop them voting for the Greens.
        
        https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/94919578/tureis-middleclass-hand-wringing-will-hurt-labour
        
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        July 22, 2017 1:11pm
      - calendar girl
        
        “Turei was never courting your vote” either, Kimbo, back when she was defrauding the public purse. At that time actions and possible consequences were probably not well co-related in her mind. But from my perspective, her personal objectives / motives – then and now – cannot simply be disassociated from the period of her ongoing historical offences.
        
        The facts as related so far are:
        
        1. In her ‘youth’ she committed ongoing fraud against the state, and contrary to the law. Others were complicit with her in part of that law-breaking.
        
        2. She herself is now a long-term lawmaker, and seeks a continuation of that role as a result of enough voters ticking her Party’s part of the September ballot paper.
        
        Sadly for her, she cannot obliterate mistakes from her past, any more than most of us can. How many customary supporters will vote Greens regardless of Ms Turei’s past actions is anybody’s guess. But in considering their voting options, an unknown number will stop and ask themselves whether Ms Turei (with her self-confessed background of fraud) is now entitled to be making – or opposing – any public law-making.
        
        She has acted in that role for 15 long years. She now acknowledges her fraudulent past. Yet she seeks to continue her participation (even senior leadership) in the formulation and enactment of this country’s law. That’s incongruous (as you say) indeed.
        
        Any suggestion that Ms Turei made her recent confession as part of a wider electoral tactic seems improbable to me (despite my respect for some of journalist van Beynen’s observations). Much more likely, in my view, that her fraudulent actions of the past were about to be exposed publicly, pre-General Election, by a political opponent.
        
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        July 22, 2017 2:48pm
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      I disagree…
      Turei has contravened one of the basics of Green philosophy… and that is the sustainable use of our resources.
      
      One of the first things I learnt as a student is that ecology and economics share the same Greek root prefix – oikos.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikos
      
      If we rip-off our natural resources then ecosystems and populations of organisms suffer.
      When folks rip-off society’s capital/ the nation’s economy/our social welfare system, then other arms of our society miss out.
      
      Surely this is basic to any Green adherent.
      
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      July 22, 2017 1:54pm
      - Kimbo
        
        If we rip-off our natural resources then ecosystems and populations of organisms suffer.
        When folks rip-off society’s capital/ the nation’s economy/our social welfare system, then other arms of our society miss out.
        
        Surely this is basic to any Green adherent.
        
        I would suggest, even if you decline oikos:
        
        oikos
        oike
        oikon
        oikou
        oikō
        oikoi
        oikoi
        oikous
        oikōn
        oikois
        
        …you are still drawing a long bow trying to put those words into the mouth of, let alone connect those dots in the mind of a standard Green voter. A National or moderate Labour supporter…more so.
        
        Which makes that emphatic adverb, “surely” a bit of a shill 😉
        
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        July 22, 2017 4:23pm
      - Shawn Herles
        
        “One of the first things I learnt as a student is that ecology and economics share the same Greek root prefix – oikos.”
        
        Exactly, the family home. And this is something all of our political parties have largely forgotten, though some more than others. You would think the Greens understood this, but their basis for political analysis is the socially divisive identity and class politics of Cultural Marxism, and that is why the blind spot. The liberal Right has also tended to forget the idea, though for a different reason, rabid individualism. Both are different versions of “muh rights”. Both are socially, economically and ecologically destructive. And both are the bastard children of modernity.
        
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        July 22, 2017 4:41pm
      - Kimbo
        
        The liberal Right has also tended to forget the idea, though for a different reason, rabid individualism. Both are different versions of “muh rights”. Both are socially, economically and ecologically destructive. And both are the bastard children of modernity
        
        Um, as I posted elsewhere, the National Coalition Government have returned the books to surplus a year early, and have reduced government spending as a proportion of GDP. So in context, your claim has almost as little credibility as Turei’s “15 children will die this year”.
        
        Plus, um, I thought you weren’t concerned with economics in the first instance when it came to the left-right polarity thing, and instead it was all a matter of culture.
        
        Sorry to nit-pick….
        
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        July 22, 2017 4:57pm
      - Shawn Herles
        
        Kimbo,
        
        “the National Coalition Government have returned the books to surplus a year early, and have reduced government spending as a proportion of GDP”
        
        Which is good, but in other areas they have not followed the guiding principle I was talking about. Mass immigration and the Housing crisis for example. Hence my point, “some more than others ” to which I should have added in some areas more than others.
        
        “I thought you weren’t concerned with economics”
        
        Not as a first or sole issue, as it tends to be with much of the KB population. We have to get our philosophical foundations right as everything else, including economics, flows from that. That does not mean I am unconcerned, just that in the hierarchy of issues it’s not the top wrung of the ladder.
        
        And please note that I did not sat National was all bad in every area. Their approach to welfare reform for example is close to spot on, and I give them credit for not listening to Ayn Rand worshipers and making radical cuts. I also give them credit for maintaining WFF, which was one of the last Labour governments policies I agreed with.
        
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        July 22, 2017 6:01pm
      - Shawn Herles
        
        If I could get every National MP and every Kiwi claiming to be on the Right to read these two books I would be a happy man.
        
        https://www.amazon.com/How-be-conservative-Roger-Scruton/dp/1472924002
        
        https://www.amazon.com/Green-Philosophy-Think-Seriously-Planet/dp/184887202X/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
        
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        July 22, 2017 6:13pm
      - realityczech
        
        Shaun your links lead to a valid point. The countries on the left have much worse environmental outcomes.
        
        They are also [officially] godless heathens, which I am sure you delight in 😉
        
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        July 22, 2017 6:20pm
      - Kimbo
        
        “I thought you weren’t concerned with economics”
        
        Not as a first or sole issue, as it tends to be with much of the KB population.
        
        But Maggy’s post to which you replied “Exactly…” most certainly was.
        
        OK, so you were using her discussion of economics (and I’m assuming your knowledge of Greek is such that you knew it is literally “house law/rule”) as a pretext. Um, and, yes, I think I’m now well aware of your priorities. I think “tribal” would cover them – and I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense, or at least not in the first instance. Instead, we belong to shared communities that only stay together based on shared values, and those ideas, agendas, things and people that challenge the core values are a threat…
        
        You say “mass immigration”. Um, what number in a NZ context constitutes “mass”? And if there is a cultural dividing line of “good” and “not good for us” culture, where is the dividing lines. Muslims, Indians and Chinese bad? Americans, Brits, (Northern?) Europeans, and Jews good?
        
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        July 22, 2017 6:26pm
      - Shawn Herles
        
        Kimbo,
        
        “I think “tribal” would cover them”
        
        Yes. I wouldn’t dispute that description.
        
        “You say “mass immigration”. Um, what number in a NZ context constitutes “mass”?”
        
        We are currently around 65 to 75,000. That number would fit the bill.
        
        ‘New Zealand’s net migration hits record high
        Those arriving outstrip those leaving by 73,000 in past year, with Chinese as biggest group of migrants, followed by UK and Australia’
        
        https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/22/new-zealand-immigration-hits-record-high
        
        I am not opposed to immigration obviously, being one myself, it’s the numbers and, politically incorrect though it may be, the issue of cultural values and heritage.
        
        ” Instead, we belong to shared communities that only stay together based on shared values, and those things and people who challenge the core values are a threat…”
        
        Spot on! And what is it that defines our shared core values? Western tradition, meaning culture, history and faith.
        
        “Muslims, Indians and Chinese bad? Americans, Brits, (Northern?) Europeans, and Jews good?”
        
        Yes.
        
        Have to go now so likely no more replies till later.
        
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        July 22, 2017 6:41pm
      - Gruffydd
        
        Western tradition, meaning culture, history and faith.
        
        Ke-mo sah-bee
        You don’t share NZ’s culture history and faith.
        You come from a very different culture history and faith.
        I believe your roots are in the USA?
        Most of ours are not…
        The grumpy white males of KB?
        It would be reasonable to suggest that the most here are second or third generation Kiwi’s from European immigrant stock followed by first generation immigrants from commonwealth country’s.
        A few will have ties to the settlers or Polynesia.
        
        Long live the Queen ……….
        
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        July 22, 2017 7:40pm
      - Kimbo
        
        @ Gruffydd
        
        Yep. Some 80 years ago “Jews” were out (and I’m not talking Nazis, I’m talking mainstream British and Americans), and now they are “in” when it comes to the “culture” we share. In many cases cultural boundaries are arbitrary and fluid, and what is deemed “in” and “out” is in many cases, and to quote Shawn from last night’s discussion with you, a matter of “mere opinion” and “completely subjective”.
        
        Don’t believe me? Muslims are monotheists whose sharia in many points overlaps with the Torah. And before the formation of the ~~modern state of Israel~~ (no, wrong, that has always been a nationalist conflict in the first instance, not a religious one) the Iranian revolution
        
        “Islam” hadn’t been viewed as an ideological foe of Western European Civilisation for some 200 years! Indeed, we used to colonise Muslim nations. Indeed, both Britain and France (in 1853-55) and Germany and Austria-Hungary (in 1914-18) allied themselves to the last Caliphate in a war against other Christian European nations!
        
        The problem with “tribalism” if you take it as your primary setting is that, of its very nature, it distinguishes from others, and sows the seeds of almost inevitable conflict. Criticise Angela Merkel all you want, but her nation was destroyed in the last hundred years by two World Wars and then the partition of the Cold War! And much of that was in the lifetime of many Germans. I think they have a determination to avoid the mistakes of the past. Are they over-compensating and going to another extreme? Time will tell, but nothing in life is inevitable…
        
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        July 22, 2017 7:55pm
      - Shawn Herles
        
        Griff,
        
        “Griff,
        
        “You don’t share NZ’s culture history and faith.”
        
        Well, yes, I do. For a start, NZ is a Western nation, and it’s Western culture I am talking about. My NA ancestry makes no difference to that. I have French, Irish and English ancestry as well, but culturally I am fully and totally a Westerner.
        
        As to NZ culture specifically, I am fully assimilated. As I have said, I’m fine about immigration at reasonable numbers and IF people assimilate. I have, far more than you may realize. Hell, I’m more patriotic towards NZ than some of the commentators here, who slag NZ off and/or feel the need to attack the All Blacks at every opportunity.
        
        As for it’s faith tradition, that’s Christianity Griff. 🙂
        
        And I’m Anglican to boot. In that respect, I’m more traditional Kiwi than you are, given that the vast majority of colonial settlers were Christians, and C of E virtually founded Christchurch. 🙂
        
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        July 22, 2017 8:13pm
      - Shawn Herles
        
        Kimbo,
        
        “The problem with “tribalism” if you take it as your primary setting is that, of its very nature, it distinguishes from others, and sows the seeds of almost inevitable conflict.”
        
        Being Christian means your tribal about being Christian. Being Calvinist means your hyper-tribal. 🙂
        
        ” I think they have a determination to avoid the mistakes of the past. Are they over-compensating and going to another extreme? Time will tell,”
        
        It already has, obviously so. So yes, they are over compensating, to a suicidal degree. The evidence for that is overwhelming.
        
        Arguing that, at least in Germany, the pendulum was too far to one extreme in the past, is not an argument for going to the other extreme.
        
        Importing Terrorism and rape jihad is not a rational or moral response to Nazism.
        
        Germany’s Migrant Rape Crisis: January 2017
        
        https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9934/germany-rape-january
        
        Your “time will tell” claim is an indication, as I have said before, of your three monkeys approach to Islamic immigration. It’s irrational denial in the face of a mountain of evidence.
        
        Bye for now.
        
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        July 22, 2017 8:19pm
      - Kimbo
        
        the vast majority of colonial settlers were Christians, and C of E virtually founded Christchurch.
        
        Only because we Free Church of Scotland Calvinists drove your anti-Christ of an office of bishops north of the Waitaki River! Like we started a Civil War that ended in the execution of Charles I when he was stupid enough to try and impose the same office on our Kirk! And need I remind you church government differences were rather important in the split in the Scottish Kirk in the 1830s and the destitution and Scottish Diaapora that followed, so I’m not talking something abstract
        
        Oops, and there’s another difference within this supposed “Western European culture” monolith. Have a look at the American constitution – safeguards against tyranny, which they defined as the British Crown? Other than Irish Catholics (and boy oh, boy, have they ever struggled to be considered a viable part of “Western Civilisation), no. So fuck off with your “we are one” bullshit. No one from this nation buys that, or ever brought that load of nonsense, including in colonies/frontier cultures similar to America like this one! I’m grateful American boys died in the Coral Sea and on Guadalcanal in part to defend NZ, but they were there because of…American self-interest.
        
        And is it democracy that is the defining connection? If America was one of us, they would have come to the British Empire rather than taking some two and a half years to get dragged in by the aggression we were fighting…in two World Wars.
        
        Nope, you are not assimilated. Not with ideas like that!
        
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        July 22, 2017 8:23pm
      - Gruffydd
        
        I have Muslim friends .
        
        The contrast of the hyperventilating on KB to my real world struck home one day.
        
        Sitting reading aloud the twelve days of Christmas golden book to a mates two pre school daughters as I waited for him to turn up from the mosque to go fishing .
        
        Islam is an Abrahamic faith.
        You share the roots of your god.
        
        I can have a position against immigration without being concerned with the ethnicity of the immigrants.
        
        A few years back it was the Chinese hordes on here.
        
        The Irish, dallys, Japs and Germans, Polynesians and maori, ,jews ,Catholics have been othered by our culture at one time or another.
        
        I believe the concerns over cultural dilution are valid.
        The share size of our immigrant population growth more than the source ..
        
        We sell the right to enter this country to cheaply.
        The cost of the needed infrastructure for the growth in Auckland should be a major concern.
        
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        July 22, 2017 8:32pm
      - Kimbo
        
        ” I think they have a determination to avoid the mistakes of the past. Are they over-compensating and going to another extreme? Time will tell,”
        
        It already has, obviously so.
        
        Meh. Rolling a subjective turd of an idea in emphatic adverb glitter doesn’t make it a fact. As is often the case with you Shawn, you dig down deep enough, and it just comes down to rhetoric. No wonder you are a fan of and readily adopt the persuasive methods of “old time religion, give me that old time religion…” 😉
        
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        July 22, 2017 8:32pm
      - Kimbo
        
        Your “time will tell” claim is an indication, as I have said before, of your three monkeys approach to Islamic immigration. It’s irrational denial in the face of a mountain of evidence.
        
        No, my “time will tell” was a reference to wait and see what Merkel and/or Germany does next in regards to refugee migrant policy. As usual, your ideology causes you to misread and project on to others.
        
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        July 22, 2017 8:37pm
- marcw
  
  More hypocrisy from the MSM – if this was one of JK’s family, we would be seeing breathless reporting on how Max or Stephie were eating, drinking, clubbing, spending, holidaying ad nauseum, yet precious petal Piupiu is given the anonymous card. Not even a Facebook stalking for her, let alone a “Spy” column outing. Says it all about the trash media we get these days. Only the enemy is worth harassing.
  
  And in case you are about to accuse me of double standards, no, I don’t think MT’s daughter should be given the paparazzi crap treatment, but the media seem to think differently when it’s one of them. They are so obvious.
  
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  July 22, 2017 12:24pm
  - Gabby
    
    Haven’t seen anything about Pads for ages. Who knows what he’s up to.
    
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    July 22, 2017 1:46pm
- Steve (North Shore)
  
  The plot thickens and they all start ducking for cover.
  Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Come on media hacks.
  
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  July 22, 2017 12:34pm
- Viking2
  
  http://lindsaymitchell.blogspot.co.nz/
  
  Lindsay has dissected it all and calls Materia for what she is.
  
  and here is Martyn matins take. apparently you Nats are not nice.
  https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/07/22/national-party-voters-an-electorate-or-a-cult-understanding-the-viciousness-spat-at-metiria/
  
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  July 22, 2017 7:39pm
- RF
  
  A very fair question that no one is prepared to answer.
  
  I suspect the father’s mother is donkey deep in this and was providing financial support.
  
  Do they think we are stupid.
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:54pm
  - Gabby
    
    That’s a stupid question rf rf.
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:13pm
Peter

When will the Greens stop being genderist?

They have a male leader, a female leader but no trans-leader.

Their traditionalist generdism makes them no better than the rest. I demand we see three co-leaders.
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July 22, 2017 11:43am
- sooty
  
  Yeah but which transgender!
  
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  July 22, 2017 12:16pm
  - PhilBest
    
    I seem to recall a list someone posted somewhere, of 37 (so far) “genders” that we are expected to recognise as part of obeisance to SJW diktats.
    
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    July 22, 2017 2:07pm
    - RalphT
      
      I hope you’re not suggesting that the Greens should have 37 MPs?
      
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      July 22, 2017 2:49pm
      - Peter
        
        They may need to name 37 co-leaders
        
        Unless they want to be thought of as genderist, ultra-conservative traditionalists.
        
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        July 22, 2017 4:04pm
- Shawn Herles
  
  “They have a male leader, a female leader but no trans-leader.”
  
  Give it time. They will.
  
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  July 22, 2017 12:25pm
Manolo

The animal is hard to kill, isn’t he?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/us/politics/mattis-islamic-state-leader-alive.html
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July 22, 2017 11:47am
Stars And Stripes

Corrections launches new haka to get more Māori workers
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/335510/corrections-launches-new-haka-to-get-more-maori-workers
“The Department of Corrections has launched a new haka in a push to get more Māori working in prisons
The haka is non-iwi affiliated and neutral, and is meant as a challenge for Maori to step up and accept the role of being a change agent working as a Corrections Officer”.

Okay I can see the value in trying to get more Māori working in prisons(sorry Corrections) but personally I think the haka thing has just about reached saturation point now.
Also I would like to know how much taxpayer koha was spent on cultural advisors to come up with the new haka.
One gets the feeling it would not be cheap.
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July 22, 2017 11:56am
realityczech

The man hating bulldyke, who put a Muslim Somali on the streets with a gun, has stepped down to try and save political face for the PC Police.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/95006263/police-chief-resigns-in-wake-of-shooting-death-of-an-unarmed-australian-woman

Janee Harteau Becomes Minneapolis’ First Female, Openly Gay Police Chief

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/03/janee-harteau-minneapolis-lesbian-female-police-chief-_n_2232174.html
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July 22, 2017 12:13pm
- Steve (North Shore)
  
  Harteau did not shoot Damond. What is she trying to cover up, and what is the Mayor Hodges trying to cover up? This reeks of PC bullshit – muslim sympathisers.
  
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  July 22, 2017 12:41pm
  - MCos
    
    What a shock!
    Someone takes responsibility. Not the sort of thing that happens in NZ.
    
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    July 22, 2017 5:17pm
  - Gabby
    
    Maybe the 2 outstanding complaints against the standard bearer from Somalia.
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:09pm
thedavincimode

WEATHER APOCALYPSE

Could anyone who has clicked on the horrid’s “DEATH SPIRAL” weather headline let me know if it’s safe for me to come out from under the bed.
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July 22, 2017 12:58pm
- realityczech
  
  We were warned this would happen. It is caused by Trump.
  
  Stay safe bro.
  
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  July 22, 2017 1:02pm
- Gabby
  
  Not drownded yet damingygoat. Oh well.
  
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  July 22, 2017 1:50pm
Jack5

Storms and floods sweep the lower South Island, but the WHOLE front page of the Southland Times today is a plug for multiculturism.

For those that have forgotten the background, some Southlanders have expressed concern about the Department of Immigration and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) directing refugees and immigrants to live in Southland. Those locals who are concerned say they worry that there won’t be sufficient jobs.

The publicity plug follows visits by Wellington bureaucrats to Southland and must be in step with the views of social justice warriors in the upper editorial ranks of Fairfax NZ,which owns the Southland Times.

The coverage includes a promotional piece for the Southland Multicultural Council, one of a number set up in the regions by the now politically acitivist Human Rights Commission’s Race Relations commandos, including a well known Marxist.

Through their Southland campaign, one of five for the regions, the Immigration Department and MBIE are playing a politically activist role in promoting multiculturism and overseas labour.

MBIE is providing $100,000 over two years to pay a worker with the diversity scheme, based at Venture Southland, which is funded by local ratepayers.

If the two departments’ relevant Ministers don’t object, we can take it they are going along with the scheme.

And the floods and storms? You can read about them on page 4, after an interesting small item on page 3 about a post-funeral party in Bluff that ended with fighting and someone’s head going through a window. The Asians wouldn’t know what to make of that.
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July 22, 2017 1:11pm
- nasska
  
  …..”Those locals who are concerned say they worry that there won’t be sufficient jobs”…..
  
  I feel we can offer them comfort on that front. After all the workshy, headbanging, Allahaddled no hopers settle in there won’t be one less job on offer than now.
  
  They’re not here for work……just to breed & suck at the Welfare tit.
  
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  July 22, 2017 5:37pm
- Shawn Herles
  
  ” Those locals who are concerned say they worry that there won’t be sufficient jobs.”
  
  I can think of a few other reasons.
  
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  July 22, 2017 5:47pm
  - nasska
    
    And every one of those reasons is a valid one!
    
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    July 22, 2017 5:56pm
Manolo

Isn’t he lovely?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-nye-climate-deniers-die_us_5971556ce4b09e5f6cce59c7
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July 22, 2017 1:21pm
- realityczech
  
  I am still waiting for the peer reviewed published studies that link belief in climate change to the climate changing.
  
  If it is indeed true, then it is the only natural process that requires “belief” to exist, in the same way as God does.
  
  Therefore it has more in common with religion than with science, as the basis is belief not evidence.
  
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  July 22, 2017 1:35pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  We are all going to die..
  
  Belief in Catastrophic Man-made global warming is not a get-out-of-death card.
  
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  July 22, 2017 1:58pm
rightoverlabour

In the good old days, crooks like these would be tarred and feathered and run out of town. If there is one organisation I detest in New Zealand, it’s these thieving scum.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/94833811/wilson-parking-and-the-millions-spent-on-parking-misery
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July 22, 2017 1:39pm
- Tauhei Notts
  
  I understand the ultimate holding company for Wilson Parking is based in the British Virgin Islands. It has one new Zealand director who lives in Renown Avenue, Green Lane.
  
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  July 22, 2017 2:05pm
- Steve (North Shore)
  
  Vultures – r – us
  
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  July 22, 2017 4:49pm
rightoverlabour

One has to wonder about the Poms. They sacrificed so much during WWII for freedom, and now they have to endure this kind of crap.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/07/21/uk-police-fine-5-year-old-girl-150-pounds-selling-lemonade/

( admittedly the fine was cancelled).
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July 22, 2017 1:50pm
Peter

Won’t anyone think of the children!

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11893864

Lucy Lawless:

“We know beyond a doubt that we can’t burn a single barrel of oil from a new well if we are to avoid a climate catastrophe”

…she says whilst pictured on a petrol powered boat. Presumably, she got to Norway by aircraft, rather than by dolphin.

But there is good news:

“Both Greenpeace and the trio have been charged under the Anadarko Amendment of the Crown Minerals Act, which makes it illegal to interfere with offshore petroleum or mineral operations. They face jail time and large fines.”
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July 22, 2017 1:56pm
- realityczech
  
  Greenpeace Loses Credibility In The Wake Of Huge Scandals
  
  Now it is revealed their executive is commuting 600 kilometers by plane.”
  
  “They have a whole fleet of ships, pretending the $32 million Rainbow Warrior III is powered by the wind when it has two large diesel engines for propulsion. I like to joke that when we first sailed against US hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska we did not have a nuclear weapon on board,” Moore added.
  
  “Each round-trip commute Mr Husting makes would generate 142kg of carbon dioxide emissions,” reports the Telegraph. “That implies that over the past two years his commuting may have been responsible for 7.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions — the equivalent of consuming 17 barrels of oil.”
  
  http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/27/greenpeace-loses-credibility-in-the-wake-of-huge-scandals/
  
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  July 22, 2017 2:02pm
Maggy Wassilieff

They face jail time and large fines.”
Rubbish…

They’ll get diversion
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/94162920/greenpeaces-russel-norman-offered-diversion-after-ship-protest-in-sea
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July 22, 2017 2:01pm
- realityczech
  
  What the communist prick should have got:
  
  Piracy
  (1)
  Every one who does any act amounting to piracy by the law of nations, whether that act is done within or outside New Zealand,—
  (a)
  shall upon conviction thereof be sentenced to imprisonment for life if, in committing piracy, he or she murders, attempts to murder, or does any act likely to endanger the life of any person:
  (b)
  is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years in any other case.
  (2)
  Any act that by the law of nations would amount to piracy if it had been done on the high seas on board or in relation to a ship shall be piracy for the purposes of this section if it is done on board or in relation to an aircraft, whether the aircraft is on or above the sea or is on or above the land.
  
  http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1961/0043/latest/whole.html#DLM328572
  
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  July 22, 2017 2:18pm
  - simpleton1
    
    A “keel hauling” would have been much cheaper, done dusted right then.
    
    Only problem it has to be done by a ship under sail, or there is a risk of a lot of berley.
    
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    July 22, 2017 2:51pm
    - Steve (North Shore)
      
      Whoosshhh, there they go on the google machine keelhauling
      
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      July 22, 2017 5:00pm
sooty

Stuff website, politics section. Slave Labour interns are been spread around the provinces. Two Americian interns have been sent to Taranaki to convert the locals. They have been boarding with the local candidate Cory Haddock. It looks like each candidate around the country is given some to get them out of Auckland. Theese two even did a interview in local paper.
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July 22, 2017 3:46pm
- MCos
  
  Shock Horror
  
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  July 22, 2017 5:25pm
- Keeping Stock
  
  Makes a chance from American-based Mormons coming to the door to try and convert you, I suppose.
  
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  July 22, 2017 5:34pm
- simpleton1
  
  https://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/94906126/young-campaigners-from-us-and-uk-come-to-aid-of-labour-candidate
  
  The Labour ‘slaves’ posting etc. on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
  
  “Anything is better than National,” …….
  …..door-knocking and cold-calling people of Taranaki, are also teaching Haddock the world of social media.
  
  “Oh he has no idea what we’re doing,” Greenhough said with a chuckle.
  
  Makes one wonder about all election bribes, around and not a peep about their funding.
  
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  July 22, 2017 6:53pm
- Gabby
  
  The Warehouse must be letting them off weekends.
  
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  July 22, 2017 9:01pm
rightoverlabour

On the thief in Parliament representing the green communists. Someone writes to Shaw for an opinion and some wtf (as it’s only in StoneAge gobbly gook) representing the thief responds. Not Shaw. I suppose he can’t voice an opinion as he has a penis, but no balls.

https://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2017/07/whaleoil-reader-writes-green-party-co-leader-james-shaw/#more-323615
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July 22, 2017 5:40pm
realityczech

Why are wasting money on an election ?
The campaign BS has kicked off. Lets see how they are doing.

Nationals effort
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qo4z6jljh0

Labours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKmmqNlTrPs

Bill will finally get elected as PM. He certainly put the effort in.
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July 22, 2017 5:45pm
- niggly
  
  Crikey that was quick, the Spinoff have already satirised Labour’s election ads by adding new captions 🙂
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FIZ_-fAr7M
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:22pm
realityczech

Shawn Herles the mass immigration you speak of has come from the UK . Rather too many from the USA as well.

I prefer the hard working commie heathens from China myself. 😉
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July 22, 2017 6:06pm
Shawn Herles

“the mass immigration you speak of has come from the UK .”

Only partly.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/71329261/NZ-migration-boom-nears-60-000-a-year-as-Indians-and-returning-Kiwis-flood-in

13,800 from India and 10,400 migrants from China. That’s over 24,000 Asian vs 13,500 from the UK.
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July 22, 2017 6:18pm
- realityczech
  
  Most of the immigrants have come from the UK. Recently we have upped our game and got some Asians.
  
  They are pragmatic and work hard. They fit in.
  
  Unlike Americans from the bible belt 😉
  
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  July 22, 2017 7:12pm
  - Kimbo
    
    KABOOM!! 😉
    
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    July 22, 2017 7:16pm
    - realityczech
      
      Kimbo, hey the Yanks we get over here are the first to agree with me and are wonderful people. I also like Trump, Guns and Country Music. Nor do I look down on farmers and rural people, or those who lack the dubious benefits of extended education. Even god botherers are okay.
      
      I’m a different kind of libtard 😉
      
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      July 22, 2017 7:33pm
  - Shawn Herles
    
    “Most of the immigrants have come from the UK.”
    
    As the link I posted shows, that has not been the case recently.
    
    “They are pragmatic and work hard. They fit in.”
    
    I think your definition if “fitting in” is different to mine.
    
    “Unlike Americans from the bible belt”
    
    Oh I “fit in” very well, and certainly much better than someone who makes comment like this:
    
    http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2017/04/go_boris.html#comment-1902427
    
    By the way Kea, why the name change?
    
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    July 22, 2017 7:37pm
    - Kimbo
      
      You are out of date! It was a spectacular, albeit predictable departure, and I almost nailed the time and date on the sweepstake when we were all going to dine on barbecued bird.
      
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      July 22, 2017 8:04pm
      - Gruffydd
        
        I undershot the sweep.
        I did predict his demise the night before as he obviously having a ~~psychotic episode~~ turn and losing the plot.
        
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        July 22, 2017 9:31pm
  - Liberty
    
    Or the 10 pound Pom. Union agitators that ran havoc in the 1970s .
    from the english strike Belt.
    
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    July 22, 2017 8:26pm
VicParking

I see our DPB cheat has really got the horse before the cart. Her PA calls herself a “Kaiāwhina Tāhūhū ” which translates to Ministry Assistant. Maybe she has eyes on Minister if Social Devalue..ment
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July 22, 2017 6:59pm
Odakyu-sen

I wonder how long the term “Kaiāwhina Tāhūhū” has been in the Maori lexicon? I suspect it is a newly synthesized term.
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July 22, 2017 7:50pm
- sooty
  
  Since they invented the word 10 min ago.
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:07pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  I couldn’t find Kaiāwhina in my copy of Williams :
  A dictionary of the Maori Language
  
  but I found Kaiā:
  defined as:
  1. v.t. steal
  2. n. thief
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:12pm
Inandout

Why is youtube trying to downgrade the viewing numbers on this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGMm-XUf2Go&feature=youtu.be
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July 22, 2017 7:53pm
Viking2

The Soviet Union Won WW II
by Jacob G. Hornberger
July 18, 2017

On May 9, 2017, Russians held a military parade in Red Square to commemorate the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Given all the anti-Russia hoopla in the United States, no Western leaders attended the victory parade.

The Russians have good reason to commemorate the end of World War II. That’s because it was the Soviet Union, not the United States and Britain, that ended up as the real winner of the war.

Recall, first of all, that it is was Great Britain that declared war on Germany, not the other way around. The reason? Britain had issued a guaranty to Poland to come to its defense in the event Germany attacked Poland. Germany attacked Poland, which then triggered Britain’s declaration of war on Germany.

More good reading; https://www.fff.org/2017/07/18/soviet-union-won-ww-ii/

So you can understand why Russia was pissed at Ukraine joining Nato and allowing the Krauts to plant missiles on her border.
Germany has always been the aggressor when it comes to Russia.
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July 22, 2017 7:57pm
- Tauhei Notts
  
  Thank you for bringing that link to our attention. It is links like that, that make this a great blog. Truman was truly outsmarted by Joseph Stalin.
  
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  July 22, 2017 10:43pm
Piniwi

Seems somebody must paying out a bundle for Hobson’s Choice to run so many ads as spoilers in the next election. One Nation? One people? There dreaming and over the last 25 years or so there have been far too many wasted opportunities to achieve that. Their mixture of real words and gibberish will be as confusing as Coffey’s newly badged runabout in yet another electorate.
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July 22, 2017 8:05pm
nasska

A Maori kid asks his dad, “Dad, can we get Sky?”

“Taihoa boy,” says his old man. “We’re still trying to get the seabed, foreshore, water rights & control of the airwaves before we have a go for that!”
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July 22, 2017 8:35pm
- Nostradamus
  
  Nasska:
  
  Did you see this story?
  
  The Tauranga man who scooped $10.3m in the Powerball jackpot collapsed and was rushed to hospital after seeing all the zeros in his bank account.
  
  But:
  
  Now Tauranga’s newest millionaire, who is in his 70s, is planning to use a “fighting fund” to reopen Treaty negotiations for his family’s Treaty claim.
  
  “That is what I am going to do. I am fortunate in my win. It has enabled me to care for my whanau and those in the marae. I love my family and I love my Maori people and I am going to use this money to fight for justice for my family, for my people. The wrongs, what we lost, have not been properly addressed. For the rest of my life, I will fight for this justice.”
  
  Yes – “reopen Treaty negotiations” – long-suffering taxpayers will be asked to bend over one more time…
  
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  July 22, 2017 8:41pm
  - nasska
    
    For a man in his 70s he not doing too badly out of European settlement.
    
    Less than two hundred years ago he would have been dead by 30, starved because his teeth had worn out from chewing fernroot.
    
    Until benevolent, pakeha pastoralists introduced sheep into NZ the Maori were eating each other for the protein!
    
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    July 22, 2017 8:51pm
    - MCos
      
      Reminds me of that bloke who said the blacks in the old days should have been grateful for the chance to live as slaves in America.
      
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      July 22, 2017 10:22pm
  - niggly
    
    Just read the story, at least the fella seems he has his heart in the right place (readdressing a historical wrong by the looks and especially his values he is trying to impart on the younger ones when it comes to money).
    
    There are some funny bits in the story:
    
    “He also said he wouldn’t mind giving some money to “that guy, what’s his name, Gareth from the Opportunities Party. If I was going to put money with any of them, with the election coming up, I would put it with him because he is an economist. I would like to meet him actually.” 🙀 😿
    
    “I used to be a treehugger but the Green Party haven’t done anything and if they are lining up with the Labour Party, well they are going nowhere.” 😂
    
    “I like Paula Bennett, I think she could be Prime Minister, she fronts up and she takes questions on the chin and that is what you want in a leader. ” 😛
    
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    July 22, 2017 9:43pm
Nostradamus

The article:

[NBR editor Duncan Bridgeman] did confirm former Prime Minister Sir John Key was once again on the list, after first appearing on it in 2008 with what was then a clean $50m of assets. In 2016 he was worth an estimated $60m.

That’s all it took to get the rates dodger back on the case:

DID ‘SIR’ JOHN KEY PERSONALLY PROFIT FROM BEING NZ PRIME MINISTER?

Looks like it – IMO – to the tune of an extra $10 million from 2008 – 2016?

So how much of ‘Sir’ John Key’s extra $10 million increase in wealth from the time he became Prime Minister of NZ, to when he left, (2008 – 2016) was because of his arguably hugely increased potential, in my considered opinion, to benefit from ‘insider trading’?

That’s right – the only way a person can start with $50 million and increase it by $10 million in 8 years is insider trading. Nothing to do with compound interest. Thank goodness the global-trotting corruption expert had time to look into this! And she puts quotes around ‘Sir’ – what a nice touch!
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July 22, 2017 9:08pm
- nasska
  
  The miserable, smelly old bitch!
  
  I hope her broomstick gets borer. 🙂
  
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  July 22, 2017 9:21pm
publicwatchdog

How sweet Nostradamus!

Here is my complete post for discerning Kiwibloggers:

DID ‘SIR’ JOHN KEY PERSONALLY PROFIT FROM BEING NZ PRIME MINISTER?

Looks like it – IMO – to the tune of an extra $10 million from 2008 – 2016?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11893239

So how much of ‘Sir’ John Key’s extra $10 million increase in wealth from the time he became Prime Minister of NZ, to when he left, (2008 – 2016) was because of his arguably hugely increased potential, in my considered opinion, to benefit from ‘insider trading’?

Seen this?

“Is John Key shonky?”

A video clip (10 mins) of my complaints to Police, the SFO and finally a private prosecution of John Key in 2008, over his undisclosed financial interests in TranzRail.

(None of the above got ONE sentence in the NZ Herald.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFTYZVQo-A8&sns=em

Penny Bright

‘Anti-privatisation / anti-corruption campaigner.

2017 Independent candidate for Tamaki.
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July 22, 2017 9:47pm
- Nostradamus
  
  Remember this Penny?
  
  For over a year, Penny Bright has been embracing her “Shon Key” persona. Bright says dressing up Shon Key helps spread her message, “Why I dress up as Shon Key is because it’s an effective form of street theatre, political satire, whistle blowing all wrapped up into one.”
  
  What a pity that the police didn’t think much of your street theatre/political satire/whistle blowing effort:
  
  Police confirm that a 61-year-old woman was arrested for wilful trespass following an incident at the Pasifika Festival and that she was taken to the Auckland City Police station and released with a pre-charge warning.
  
  Can you tell us more about this “incident”? Did someone threaten you with soap and a water hose?
  
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  July 22, 2017 9:51pm
  - niggly
    
    Nostradamus – from the same article:
    
    Bright says she’s been arrested more than 40 times in her lifetime and says the latest arrest won’t stop her from protesting further.
    
    I wonder what that has cost the Court system each time? Looks like not only are Auckland ratepayers subsidising the costs of her rates protest, but it seems taxpayers are also subsidising the costs of her self-indulgent protesting lifestyle! 😕
    
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    July 22, 2017 10:56pm
- rangitoto
  
  He should sack his fund managers for such poor performance given the booming share market.
  
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  July 22, 2017 9:55pm
  - Gabby
    
    I’m sure the poor performance is for tax purposes. There’ll be a charitable trust somewhere that’s doing nicely.
    
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    July 22, 2017 10:44pm
- simpleton1
  
  “OPEN the BOOKs”
  Seems very adapt at opening BANK BOOKS.
  
  Penny completely ignored the G.A. rules that it must approve all funds before they are released (over $100) by usurping the last $200+ in the bank account, without G.A. approval, …..
  …… how could she take money outside of G.A. process while simultaneously being tasked as auditor? (Transparency! Accountability!)
  https://occupysavvy.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/penny-bright-fails-to-co-opt-occupy-auckland-again/
  
  A major conflict of interest of an “anti-corruption campaigner” that deserves a sentence much more than what the Herald would inflict.
  
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  July 22, 2017 10:33pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Penny,
  have you ever deposited any money in a bank?
  
  If John Key has only had a return of $10M on his $50M over an 8 year period, he must have had his money in the lowest-paying interest rate available… less than 2.5%.
  
  Basically, he’s been giving his dough away.
  Good old Honest John!
  
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  July 22, 2017 10:33pm
- rightoverlabour
  
  Since I can’t tell just you to “Fuck off”, could you politely just go away, preferably for ever. Vaffanculo, strega…
  
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  July 23, 2017 12:42am
Manolo

How long will the whole thing last?
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/343262-trump-slams-illegal-leak-alleging-sessions-discussed-campaign-with

President Trump on Saturday morning blasted a Washington Post article based on U.S. intelligence reports claiming Attorney General Jeff Sessions discussed Trump campaign issues with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort-idUSKBN1A70F8
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July 23, 2017 7:01am

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