General Debate 16 December 2009

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Le Grande Fromage

Did anyone catch the CTU economist on the radio this morning wanking on about how the Government should be increasing spending.

Where did this guy get his degree? My guess is Neverland University
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December 16, 2009 10:01am
MyNameIsJack

A very interesting take on global warming, taxes and an (possibly) utilitarian way to handle it.

Imagine a planet in which global warming was averted without the periodic need for thousands of people to fly around the world to promise to stop burning fossil fuels. Imagine no international conferences wrangling over the details of climate policy. Imagine entrusting the tough questions to a referee: Mother Earth

(…)

To end this political stalemate, Dr. McKitrick proposes calling each side’s bluff. He suggests imposing financial penalties on carbon emissions that would be set according to the temperature in the earth’s atmosphere. The penalties could start off small enough to be politically palatable to skeptical voters.

If the skeptics are right and the earth isn’t warming, then the penalties for burning carbon would stay small or maybe even disappear. But if the climate modelers and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are correct about the atmosphere heating up, then the penalties would quickly, and automatically, rise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/science/15tier.html?_r=1
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December 16, 2009 10:02am
Murray

Doesn’t work when goverments have departments that have already demonstrated a propensity for using questionable methods and would rather destroy raw data than hand it over.
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December 16, 2009 10:04am
getstaffed

Le Grande Fromage – every time you or I spend money (whether ours or borrowed) on consumption (and often in capital items) the government improves their tax revenues. Cartels like unions and, sadly, governments, seem to care more about their income certainty, and less about the productivity of the people or economies that generate the value in the first place.
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December 16, 2009 10:10am
barry

extract from todays ERO report on why some primary schools are pretty bad:

“Some teachers and school leaders did not want to examine their data, or chose to ignore achievement information that did not show positive results. In some schools that were working with a cluster of other schools, a professional development facilitator had collected, or assisted with, data analysis of. However, some teachers and leaders ignored this information and did not share it with the board or their school community. Teachers spent time justifying why the particular assessment tool that was used did not suit their children, or tried to explain what had invalidated the results. Schools did not use data indicating poor achievement to reflect on what they were doing. Instead they used it to request additional funding for adult helpers to support their teaching”

and there is plenty of other stuff to show why we need the standards programme and hopefully it will lead to teacher ratings and finally removal of the crap teachers – which will mean a pay rise for the good ones (or they wont get them back into the schoolroom)
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December 16, 2009 10:11am
TripeWryter

It seems that teachers — or some of them — continue to fail our children by lowering goals so that kids will not ‘fail’, and that they and their principals continue to try to hide these failures from their boards of trustees and the parents.

It seems not much has changed in the 20 years since mine first started school. Impenetrable, lying school reports that accentuated the POSITIVE POSITIVE! and played down the ‘negative (no, we must not be negative). (It was nearly 10 years before we found out how much one of mine had got left behind in maths — I still have her reports: year after year of assurances that she was doing well.) When I was at school 20-100 was simple, clear, and stark — it meant I was not doing well in science. No vague, ‘achieved’, ‘not achieved’ etc etc etc.

Children need goals set for them, and they should receive all the practicable help and encouragement to reach them. Yes, they might stumble and fall and fail — but that is not a bad thing. Falling, failing is part of life. The important thing is to get back up and keep trying again.

It seems to me the worst thing to do is to keep shovelling them through the system until they come out at the other end functionally illiterate.
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December 16, 2009 10:13am
Chicken Little

US Department of Energy sends litigation hold notice on ALL documents concerning Global Warming

The snowball is rolling.

Who’s going to get squished?
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December 16, 2009 10:23am
Say Goodbye to Hollywood

Al Bore, the gift that keeps giving. Merry Christmas dipshit.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10615783
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December 16, 2009 10:29am
Murray

Now that is interesting chicken.
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December 16, 2009 10:31am
John Ansell

The saddest thing is that the socialists want people to be functionally illiterate. It’s in their interests.

The more functionally illiterate school leavers are, the more likely they are to vote Labour.

The best way to ensure they’re functionally illiterate is to expose them to teachers who can’t teach.

And the best way to expose them to teachers who can’t teach is for Labour’s teacher unions to threaten chaos unless teachers who can’t teach can teach for as long as they like.
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December 16, 2009 10:34am
burt

Lets all sing this to Al Gore;

What you say;

Oh what you say, oh that you only meant well
Well of course you did,

Ummm what you say – that it was all for the best
Well of course it was…..

[ add more verses about how we caught him cheating….]
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December 16, 2009 10:45am
Pete George

Falling, failing is part of life.

The problem is to a significant number failing is a way of life, from before they go to school, so if school keeps giving them a fail mark it just reinforces it. I think it must be very difficult to get the right balance – encouraging success as much as possible but also learning failure is still a part of the process.

Back “in the old days” everything was strictly pass or fail. That didn’t work for the non-achievers. Then they went to the other extreme of everyone being winners and achievers no matter what they did, and that didn’t work. I don’t see how simply testing standards is going to work either. It may a a tool for achieving better results but a lot more is needed.
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December 16, 2009 10:46am
malcolm

The saddest thing is that the socialists want people to be functionally illiterate. It’s in their interests.

The more functionally illiterate school leavers are, the more likely they are to vote Labour.

I thought they needed to be literate so they could get to university where the proper indoctrination begins?
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December 16, 2009 10:48am
burt

malcolm

University is the last chance to convince people that welfare is better than working.
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December 16, 2009 10:50am
Murray

You would be suprised how people at university are actually conservatives malcom. The liberals are just the noisey ones who are following a political path. the rest are there to get an actual qualification.
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December 16, 2009 10:51am
malcolm

University is the last chance to convince people that welfare is better than working.

By letting them study commerce, engineering, medicine, dentistry, science, law, architecture etc etc?
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December 16, 2009 10:54am
MikeNZ

Some old news put in more detail with names.
http://www.cfact.org/a/1652/Monckton-names-names-on-Climategate

Will we get a proper analysis done of whom wrote or facilitated what parts of what?
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December 16, 2009 10:57am
dime

There weren’t many lefties doing business degrees when i studied!

The middle aged fat pigs studying social work may have been lefties though. disgusting creatures.
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December 16, 2009 11:01am
Kris K

Are We Likely To Receive A Carbon Invoice For Geothermal And Volcanic Activity?

It had to happen:
I was just listening to Radio NZ, Nine to Noon and the Australian correspondant was on talking about Kevin Rudd being an AGW skeptic, and also how some of the Aussie green movement were pushing for the recent, and presumably future, bush fires in Victoria and NSW to be included in Australian CO2 emissions. Now we all know that bush fires (generally) aren’t manmade, but this seems to matter not to the fruitloop greenies.

So if this gained traction in Aussie then what is to prevent some green idiot in New Zealand from suggesting that we too should include our greenhouse gases from volcanic and other geothermal activity in our overall emissions? I mean seriously, think about it. Every time Ruapehu erupts, or geothermally active areas like Rotorua all incur an emissions tax.
And don’t tell them about marshlands and wetlands.

When is this gravy train going to end?

Someone quoted this yesterday – seems appropriate:
Mencken: “The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.”
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December 16, 2009 11:04am
big bruv

More evidence that Neville is no better than Klark.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3166271/Harawira-not-to-face-charges-over-lack-of-helmet

“After careful consideration of all issues, including public interest, the matter will not proceed any further.”

How is enforcing the law not in the public interest?, all that is missing from this press release is the now infamous statement “while there is a prima facie case..blah blah blah…”

And before the National party cheer leaders start hitting the negative button think how you might have reacted had Clark still been PM and in coalition with the Maori party.
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December 16, 2009 11:05am
malcolm

Agreed Murray. I was trying to be sarcastic when I replied to John. Except it didn’t really work. Damn interweb thing.

I’m not sure socialists have a vested interest in illiteracy as John suggested. After-all there wouldn’t be much wealth to redistribute if we were all illiterate farmers who couldn’t even read the Better Farming Manual. And a ‘true’ socialist wouldn’t need to worry about elections.
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December 16, 2009 11:06am
Pete George

John Ansell at 10:34 am

The saddest thing is that the socialists want people to be functionally illiterate. It’s in their interests.
The more functionally illiterate school leavers are, the more likely they are to vote Labour.

This sort of comment is what is sad.
Sad for the politicians who try to make changes that will make a difference, and get blamed for failing parents.
Very sad for many teachers who try their best to do some good for our kids, and get blamed for failing parents.

It makes you wonder how functionally literate anyone who makes these sorts of unsupported claims is.
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December 16, 2009 11:07am
dime

Why the fuck is Key going to Copenhagen? Why John why??

Mugabe is gonna be there FFS! how did that cocksucker get an invite?
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December 16, 2009 11:11am
TripeWryter

Pete George:

I was an under-achiever at school. Everything I wrote about in my first post was based on my own experience. My parents were not wealthy or upper-class. All they had was a simple determination that all of their children should do their best at school, and that they should be able to read and write when we left so that we could make our way in the world.

I failed a lot, and for years. But I got back on my feet the best I could, and neither my teachers nor my parents made excuses for me. I never turned out a genius, but I’ve done OK.

The worst teachers I found in my children’s schools were those who made excuses — oh, you’re not expected to achieve much because you come from a solo parent benefit home, or your parents are on benefits and don’t work, or because you’re Maori and you’re not expected to do well because this is a Pakeha education system, or because you’re from a different culture (such as Samoan, Tongan, other Pacific Island, yet many of those parents I knew resented those assumptions), or because, or because …

Children have an innate expectation of standards, and usually will try to rise to them. The worst thing to do to them, I feel, is to allow them to believe that nothing is expected of them.
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December 16, 2009 11:12am
Murray

We sent Clark to New York so Hoaxenhagen is good enough for Key.

We just need to get him to stay there.
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December 16, 2009 11:14am
PeterG

Ha! Sad post at Red-Alert complaining that the MoT Christmas E-card does not include Trains, Buses or Walking

http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2009/12/16/xmas-message-from-the-mot-dont-take-trains-buses-or-walk-anywhere/

Well 2 out of 3 ain’t bad they say. The trunk of the depicted Xmas tree is a train. Oops.
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December 16, 2009 11:22am
RRM

You didn’t send anyone anywhere Murray.

Clark went to NY because, as you’ll remember:

YOU WON
I LOST
EAT THAT
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December 16, 2009 11:24am
Murray

What election were you watching you knob.
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December 16, 2009 11:28am
RRM

The one where You won, I lost, and you kept saying “Eat That” 🙂
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December 16, 2009 11:30am
Murray

Oh my god its not an act, you really are a complete fucking idiot aren’t you.
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December 16, 2009 11:37am
Kris K

Pete George 10:46 am,

Back “in the old days” everything was strictly pass or fail. That didn’t work for the non-achievers. Then they went to the other extreme of everyone being winners and achievers no matter what they did, and that didn’t work. I don’t see how simply testing standards is going to work either. It may a a tool for achieving better results but a lot more is needed.

I think back in “in the old days” when everything was strictly pass or fail, that kids had something to strive for, and were aware of the standard required. Marks were also definitive, eg 85% for Maths. Kids that weren’t making the grade were encouraged to try harder and were often mentored so that they did indeed achieve a pass result.

I remember during my first year at Uni mentoring a girl up the road who had failed School Cert Maths. I think she only got 18% on her first attempt. I spent about six months of Saturday mornings with her going over the maths syllabus. On her second attempt she got 66%, which for her was like someone else getting 95%. She really didn’t get maths at all, but with help and encouragement she achieved a respectable pass. This is what kids need – not a dumbed down, no standard type education which they are currently receiving.

Making schools and teachers adhere to a measurable standard can only be a good thing for children going through the education system. This is at least one thing National have got right. I just hope they have the fortitude to continue on and finish the job.
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December 16, 2009 11:37am
stayathomemum

“Back “in the old days” everything was strictly pass or fail. That didn’t work for the non-achievers.”

Well it worked for me – in the 5th form when I got 48% in midyear science exams I thought @#$%^&, so I stopped giggling with my mates at the back of the class, stopped doodling horses on my pencil case and started paying attention! I studied hard for my exam and reversed those numbers around to get 84%. Failing teaches you to buck up and try harder.
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December 16, 2009 11:58am
malcolm

Part of the problem with failing students is that high schools now have students who wouldn’t have still been at school one or two generations ago. They would have left and got a job/apprenticeship. By the time you got to the 6th or 7th form, the only kids left would be academic ones. The way my old man described it, School C was the watershed. A lot of people failed that and so went out and got a job.

Some kids are just not interested in academic study and just itch to get out, earn money, get their hands dirty and learn on the job. Nothing wrong with that and it’s shame that option is no longer readily available. In a lot of cases those people then go onto become self-educated later in life as they weren’t completely turned off education by being forced into academic learning for 2,3 or 4 years beyond their interest or ability (at that time).
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December 16, 2009 12:09pm
Pete George

Ha, the old pre school cert fail trick, that happened to me too, I think it was a common to give the little twerps a “reality” check in the 5th form.

That result is good for you stayathomemum, but you are obviously not in the bottom 20%.

Standards testing is ok to an extent, as long as it doesn’t become too big a bureaucratic layer like seems to have happened in health. But it is peripheral to addressing the biggest problems.
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December 16, 2009 12:10pm
dime

I would be screwed if I was in high school now.

I kicked ass in school C – did no work all year, but its all about the exams so all good.

Failed 6th form – mainly assignment based. kicked ass in the exams (a certain Graham Henry let me proceed to 7th form cause he knew id do ok. god bless him)

7th form was all good cause it was exams.

Nowadays id be stuck in the 5th form or whatever its called forever!
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December 16, 2009 12:17pm
MyNameIsJack

One MORE reason as if one was needed, about how religion rots the brain and revents rational thought.

AN antiquated rule in North Carolina’s constitution that disqualifies people “who shall deny the being of Almighty God” from holding political office has been dredged up against Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell by Christian fundies.

They are threatening to take the city to court for swearing in the 59-year-old atheist this week, even though the state’s requirement that officeholders should believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the US Constitution.

(…)

One opponent, H K Edgerton, is threatening to file a lawsuit in state court against the city to challenge Bothwell’s appointment. He said:

My father was a Baptist minister. I’m a Christian man. I have problems with people who don’t believe in God.

If anyone has a problem, it is most certainly Edgerton, buut its not with people who don’t believe in god, it with idiots like him who believe fairytales and want everyone else to believe the same fairytales. What we have here is an ID TEN T situation.
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December 16, 2009 12:18pm
Kris K

Nick Griffin MEP on Global Warming – NO to the New World Order

YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-DEz2fXPrM

This speech was so good I took the time to transcribe it with Dragon Naturally Speaking. Someone else posted the Youtube link the other day. It really is worth keeping on file – I’ve made an mp3 file of it as well.

Following is the transcript:

Everyone agrees that climate change is the biggest challenge facing humanity.That’s the constant claim of the political elite and it’s a lie. Everyone does not agree. Thousands of scientists dispute the very existence of man-made global warming citing natural cyclical changes that saw vineyards in Roman northern New England and a Swedish army march over the frozen Baltic in 1658 to Copenhagen.

As an army of global warming zealots marches to Copenhagen the truth is that their Orwellian consensus is based not on scientific agreement but on bullying, censorship, and fraudulent statistics. In the words of leading climatologist Prof. Linzen, future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections contemplated a rollback of the industrial age.

In fact, there’ll be no bemused amazement for the reason for this hysteria is clear. It is designed to provide the excuse for a political project of the globalists to replace national democracy with new world order global governance. It has nothing to do with science and everything to do with the globalists’ common purpose to tax and control us while making billions for corporations in the green industrial complex.

The anti-Western intellectual cranks of the left suffered a collective breakdown when Communism collapsed. Climate change is their new theology; a secular religious hysteria, complete with pope Al Gore, carbon credit indulgences, and the persecution of heretics. But the heretics will have a voice in Copenhagen and the truth will out climate change is being used to impose an anti-human utopia as deadly as anything conceived by Stalin on Mao.

I really liked this bit:
“The anti-Western intellectual cranks of the left suffered a collective breakdown when Communism collapsed. Climate change is their new theology; a secular religious hysteria, complete with pope Al Gore, carbon credit indulgences, and the persecution of heretics.”

Nice touch I thought.
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December 16, 2009 12:20pm
davidp

Murray>Doesn’t work when goverments have departments that have already demonstrated a propensity for using questionable methods and would rather destroy raw data than hand it over.

These CRU guys alter real data so that it matches the predictions their computer models have generated, they peer review their friends work without regard to ethics or the scientific method, and they use bullying tactics to prevent criticism or the presentation of research that they don’t agree with. They’re more like members of a cult than real scientists, and I can’t be the only person to have noticed the similarities between the climate cult and Scientology.

To see the similarities between these two groups, try this experiment. Edit Wikipedia to comment factually on Scientology’s vile weirdness. Then edit the Climategate entry factually to discuss the issues surrounding CRU’s lack of scientific ethics. See how long your edit lasts in either case. Experience the shit-storm of bullying criticism you experience in both cases. Then try and explain why one cult is generally reviled as a group of evil brainwashed moonbats who jump on people’s couches. While John Key and Nick Smith have committed NZ to $110bn of government spending to support the other cult.
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December 16, 2009 12:24pm
lastmanstanding

Chris Monckton has exposed the liars for what they are. He has destroyed them and their arguements. Wake up JK and Nick Smith lest you be condemned as dumbarses. Oh I forgot Of course you have to obey your lords and masters at the UN including Helen who now call the shots on the NZ economy. Plus the World Bank IMF et al who are the owners of our capital infrastructure like the HK based China government sympathiser who own the Wellington power network.

My My Cullen All upset about the sale of AIA to the Canadians but allowed the sale of a real strategic asset to a Commie.

But of course you had an offer you couldnt refuse
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December 16, 2009 12:30pm
Pete George

That reminds me of a Larson cartoon about God mixing the ingredients for Earth and laughing about throwing in a few Jerks to make things interesting.

It makes me think of God throwing in a few communists, heading off to create other things for a while, coming back to check the results and saying “oh crap”, then throwing in a few climate scientists to see what that might do.

I wonder when he threw the Right Wingnuts in.
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December 16, 2009 12:31pm
stayathomemum

“Ha, the old pre school cert fail trick, that happened to me too, I think it was a common to give the little twerps a “reality” check in the 5th form. That result is good for you stayathomemum, but you are obviously not in the bottom 20%.”

Perhaps the bottom 20% needed their reality check a little earlier on, like primary school. We all know once you get behind, it becomes doubly hard to catch up. National Standards will help identify these students, not simply at a suburban level, but a national one.
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December 16, 2009 12:37pm
Murray

Frankly pete leftwig fucktards like you add nothing to flavor.
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December 16, 2009 12:39pm
Viking2

There are cracks appearing in the Nats. The polls are going backwards and here comes the new mantra.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10615740
John Key is promising senior business leaders that 2010 will be a “game-changer”.

But with his pledge comes a warning. Don’t expect my Government to implement policies that will simply result in a Labour Government at the next election.”

Now what does this mean?
Chewing gum tax cuts, same old same old social welfare(oh we’re gonna give food cards to the poor)
Are they going to accept their share of the leaky homes debacle, (estimated by Bob the Builder at 60%) or are they going to return a 10% share and take 12.5% back in GST. Now even the most criticized Mayor in Auckland figured that one out.
Maurice threw his toys out of the cot but unfortunately forgot to fall out with them.

Are we going to see the smacking bill amended as it should be like 87% of those that voted want to happen.
And what of the ETS thing that apparently is too difficult for all you lot to understand?

Long way for the PM to go to win back his friends. He will need to root out of caucas a lot of dead wood.
Someone might to list the stunning achievements of people like Williamson, Heatley, Coleman, even little woman westie.

Be a dam short list I suspect.
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December 16, 2009 12:44pm
Jack5

Kris K at 12.20 quoted at length Nick Griffin on global warming.

Griffin is chairman of the British National Party whose antecedents go back to the British fascists who had to be locked up as actual or potential enemy collaborators in World War 2. I think Griffin has also been a defender of far-right historian Irving.

If Griffin is right about global warming, it no more means he is right about anything else than Adolf Hitler’s anti-smoking laws meant he was right about anything else.

Don’t stuff up Kiwiblog by making Griffin an authority on anything.
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December 16, 2009 12:44pm
Neil

As a child going to school at the end of the 1940’s I still remember those “great” days of pass/fail. It was really stressed by my parents at the embarrassment it would cause our family if I failed at school in the small rural district.My mother would anxiously ask for my marks from tests in things like poetry,nature study,mental maths etc add them up and see if I was moving up a class. What a load of nonsense.
I never failed but I can remember one consequence.
For a brief time we had a 14 year old at our school who was still in Std 3(Today Year 5). He was the scorn of the school and we all laughed at him when he showed his lack of ability.Social consequences could be greater – never clearer than the winner loser situation.
Maybe we should go back to the matriculation system of the 1930’s where you had to pass an exam to get into High School. That would really lift the standards of our schools. No more riff raff of the lower socioeconomic classes would get to High School.
Perhaps we should examine the very negative aspects of school in those days. We were turning out 15 year olds with a dreadful attitude and absolutely no academic success.Perhaps today we are perpetuating that same problem at the opposite end.
I still believe that all our education problems start pre-birth and early in the formative first five years.
Parents have to capture in their children a love for life,learning and a feeling of achievement. It’s too late when they get to school. Parents need to interact with their children, talk to them,read to them, do things with them and realize all of life is a learning experience.
People who think that teachers can do everything just don’t realize that 6 hours at school can’t turn around 24 hours of lifeless existence in a dysfunctional family.
Mrs Tolley’s experiment in ten years time will be looked back on with scorn. There seems to be a feeling that all children can reach the heights of academia. What rot !! Not too much is said about the “No child left behind” programme of President G.W.Bush in the USA. Great in theory but you are dealing with humans not automatons.
Teachers are being painted as socialists,idiots,work dodgers etc by a group of the population who probably had bad experiences in their school lives. The politics of envy !!
I’d like to know what educational experience our intrepid Mrs Tolley had. Probably a bad one !
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December 16, 2009 12:45pm
Chthoniid

Neil, I think it is simply that there is a significant tail of under-performers at school, and at the very least, you need to have information on who they are, where they are concentrated if you are going to do anything about it.

Nobody has advocated a return to en masse exams, especially not at primary level. We know there is an education problem, we know it is expensive and difficult to try to correct literacy problems at higher levels. I don’t think there is anything sinister in trying to get better information on student’s progress because that at least, gives you options to correct problems at an earlier stage.
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December 16, 2009 12:51pm
peanut

It should be a prerequisite for teachers to undergo psychological testing before they can start their training. I know someone who had a pretty f…ed up childhood, and is now a primary school teacher.

No exams to pass, just tests and assignments.

Man, she is a nasty piece of work and actually bullies the kids she doesnt like. I pity the kids and their parents
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December 16, 2009 12:53pm
serge

Someone asked me once what does a left wing(er) taste like, well, I said, they taste like chicken…
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December 16, 2009 12:55pm
peanut

Serge says………Someone asked me once what does a left wing(er) taste like, well, I said, they taste like chicken…

I would have thought they tasted more like salt cod
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December 16, 2009 12:58pm
peanut

No, perhaps more like vinegar
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December 16, 2009 1:02pm
Pete George

Viking2 at 12:44 pm – John Key is promising senior business leaders that 2010 will be a “game-changer”.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10615740

“Behind the scenes, the Prime Minister stresses that 2010 will be a very important year for his Government. He plans to stake out an economic plan that people “can understand and buy into”.”

I think this is promising, it shows the obvious, that Key knows that he and National have to prove themselves next year. In 12 months we will know if he can measure up.
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December 16, 2009 1:05pm
RightNow

Well that ties in with what I heard, which was National were basically spending their first year in a ‘discovery’ phase to see what was what, and that the big changes would be in the second year. Personally I’ve been wondering why Labour were screaming so much when National had done bugger all.
I guess next year’s going to be a good one for watching Labour get their panties in a bunch (not literally unless you’re really sick and twisted).
Also next year I think is a good time to be watching Trev the Muss really getting stuck into more Sport and Recreation and particularly boning up his PC skills.
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December 16, 2009 1:19pm
joe90

Nick Griffin is an anti-semitic racist and the resident xtian extremist quoting him shows that philu had a point in yesterdays GD.
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December 16, 2009 1:22pm
wreck1080

Jeez there are a lot of stupid people in this country.

Some fool on the radio praising labour for reducing government debt. He just ignores the fact that there was an economic boom underway, and tax receipts were huge enough to both reduce debt and increase government spending.

If the government had increased spending along the lines of inflation, they could have paid off all of our debt and maybe even had some net savings.

But, no, stupid person just sees that debt was reduced. Does not see that debt could have been eliminated during the boom.
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December 16, 2009 1:38pm
Chthoniid

Apparently the same person didn’t notice a lot of other macro-economic imbalances rapidly growing in the same period (household debt, current account deficit, housing bubble) nor the warning signs (high interest rates, high exchange rates) being generated in the same period.

But you’re also correct- most debt reduction occurred in the 90s with Birch. Cullen took his grip off debt reduction to plow more of the freed-up reserves into fiscal expansion.
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December 16, 2009 1:41pm
Jack5

Can’t get to sleep – next best cure to sex will be the report of the Task Force on Capital Markets (executive summary link below).

Means well, but pretty dirigiste. Gummint do this. Gummint teach this. Gummint work with X.

Depressing. Reinforces suspicion NZ economy just too small.

The link:

http://www.med.govt.nz/upload/71047/MDV6221_CMD%20executive%20summary_06.pdf
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December 16, 2009 2:09pm
getstaffed

This is quite funny. The UN, who believes it can manage our global climate struggles to organise a journalist registration queue at Carbonhopen. The journos were freezing their butts off in unseasonably cold weather. Some choice extracts:

With U.N. security letting in only those cleared last week, hundreds of accredited delegates, journalists and NGO representatives were left to stand for hours in near-freezing temperatures before being let through. “It was crazy,” AP’s Seth Borenstein said. “You couldn’t leave the line. You couldn’t go to the bathroom, you couldn’t eat. “

:

At 5 p.m., U.N. officials told everyone still in line that accreditation would close at 6 p.m. and so they should leave until Tuesday morning. Police started pulling people out of the crowd, which shouted back “Shame on the U.N.!” The U.N. then apologized for the inconvenience — a gesture met with more booing and chanting.

And these clowns want trillions of our dollars to save the planet!
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December 16, 2009 2:35pm
bearhunter

With regards to the Griffen quote, I found this bit enlightening: “vineyards in Roman northern New England”.
The Romans got to eastern seaboard of the US before anyone else? Wow. How fitting that it should be quoted on the same blog that contains comments on education standards.
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December 16, 2009 3:08pm
Puzzled in Ekatahuna

Regarding the Tino Rangatiratanga flag – does anyone know what the black, white and red shapes actually represent or the flag means?
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December 16, 2009 3:14pm
Pete George

The symbology of the flag is as follows:

BLACK represents Te Korekore (the realm of potential being). It thus symbolises the long darkness from which the earth emerged, as well as signifying Rangi – the heavens, a male, formless, floating, passive force.
RED represents Te Whei Ao (coming into being). It symbolises Papatuanuku, the earth-mother, the sustainer of all living things, and thus both the land and active forces.
WHITE represents Te Ao Marama (the realm of being and light). It symbolises the physical world, purity, harmony, enlightenment and balance.
The spiral-like KORU, symbolic of a curling fern frond, represents the unfolding of new life, hope for the future and the process of renewal.

As a whole, the design represents the balance of the forces of nature, masculine and feminine, active and passive, potential and physical, air and earth. It can also be interpreted as symbolising the white cloud rolling across the face of the land, as in the Maori name for New Zealand, Aotearoa (“Land of the long white cloud”)

http://flagspot.net/flags/nz_mao.html
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December 16, 2009 3:21pm
david

A priceless exchange in Question Time today when David Parker queried Brownlee over Parker’s invitation for Gerry to join him tranping in the Southern Alps over Christmas. Had the whole House, Speaker and me in stitches.

If I knew how to link to transcripts I would, but I’m sure the technorati will find it.
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December 16, 2009 3:34pm
Puzzled in Ekatahuna

Thank you
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December 16, 2009 3:35pm
Manolo

“Why the fuck is Key going to Copenhagen? Why John why?”

The disciple (Key) will go to Copenhagen to receive instructions from his master (Clark) on what to do next, how to stiffle NZ development, how to pass more and more useless legislation, how to delay taxation and welfare reforms.

The neo-socialist Key is rapidly learning from the socialist master.
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December 16, 2009 3:44pm
kowtow

Here’s an item about the global cooling scare of the ’70’s.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/printable/7817/
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December 16, 2009 4:44pm
Kris K

Jack5 12:44 pm,

Kris K at 12.20 quoted at length Nick Griffin on global warming.

Griffin is chairman of the British National Party whose antecedents go back to the British fascists who had to be locked up as actual or potential enemy collaborators in World War 2. I think Griffin has also been a defender of far-right historian Irving.
If Griffin is right about global warming, it no more means he is right about anything else than Adolf Hitler’s anti-smoking laws meant he was right about anything else.
Don’t stuff up Kiwiblog by making Griffin an authority on anything.

joe90 1:22 pm,

Nick Griffin is an anti-semitic racist and the resident xtian extremist quoting him shows that philu had a point in yesterdays GD.

One doesn’t have to agree with the man’s politics to acknowledge that his views on AGW and the aims of some to establish Global Governance are spot on.
There are many commentators here that I don’t necessarily agree with on many issues, but when I do agree with them on something then I will say so. Heck, I may even quote them.
While I may disagree with Helen Clark on her politics, if she had made the above comment that Nick Griffin did then I would applaude her also.
Geez you two, credit where credit’s due.

And Joe90, just for the record I am NOT an anti Semite – one might even go as far as calling me a Zionist and certainly a supporter of Israel; God’s chosen people.
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December 16, 2009 4:58pm
Pete George

Getting married is good for you, according a New Zealand-led international study of nearly 35,000 people across 15 countries.

Tying the knot was positive for the mental health of both men and women, reducing the risks of the likelihood of most mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse, the study found.

The world-first study, led by clinical psychologist Kate Scott from the University of Otago, Wellington, was published in the UK journal Psychological Medicine.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/wellbeing/3161839/Marriage-is-good-for-you

One thing that it doesn’t make clear is how the study looked at de facto relationships or whether they were simply classed as not married.
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December 16, 2009 5:00pm
Kris K

kowtow 4:44 pm,

Here’s an item about the global cooling scare of the ’70’s.

But because the gravy train is now running at breakneck speed, even if it was shown that we were in fact entering a cooling phase, or perhaps moving toward an ice age, the high priests of Climate Change would still blame CO2 and greenhouse gases so that ETSs and Carbon Taxation remained in place to facilitate their One World aims. They are committed to this, and Climate Change is their vehicle to bring it about.

As per my quote of Nick Griffin above in my 12:20 pm comment:

The anti-Western intellectual cranks of the left suffered a collective breakdown when Communism collapsed. Climate change is their new theology; a secular religious hysteria, complete with pope Al Gore, carbon credit indulgences, and the persecution of heretics. But the heretics will have a voice in Copenhagen and the truth will out climate change is being used to impose an anti-human utopia as deadly as anything conceived by Stalin on Mao.

Climate Change is the new ‘Communism’; the vehicle for Global Governance, the New World Order, and, in my opinion, the ushering in of the one the Bible identifies as the Antichrist.
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December 16, 2009 5:18pm
Ryan Sproull

the ushering in of the one the Bible identifies as the Antichrist.

If the Bible identifies him, could you tell us more about who he or she is?
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December 16, 2009 5:58pm
Ryan Sproull

And Joe90, just for the record I am NOT an anti Semite – one might even go as far as calling me a Zionist and certainly a supporter of Israel; God’s chosen people.

Isn’t favouring one race over another kind of the definition of racism?
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December 16, 2009 5:59pm
Viking2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_New_Zealand

A good read on the history of our flags.
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December 16, 2009 6:49pm
billyborker

Yeah, but god’s always been a racist pig. look at how he treated the Egyptians back in Moses’ day and the Palestinians now. Not that he’s done the Jews a lot of favours, either. If that’s what god chooses to do to his “Chosen people” I hope he never chooses me.

How odd of god
to choose the Jews
and not to spot
the purer fuehrer
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December 16, 2009 6:55pm
getstaffed

One thing that it doesn’t make clear is how the study looked at de facto relationships or whether they were simply classed as not married.

Pete – I was interested in an answer to that question… so I emailed Kate: Here’s her response –

“Hello [getstaffed],

We just used the usual definition of married, so de facto got counted as unmarried, or as “previously married” if they had once been married and had divorced prior to the current de facto relationship. I expect our findings extend to long-term de facto relationships, but I don’t know for sure.”
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December 16, 2009 8:00pm
Pete George

Thanks, that answers the specific question. But it raises more questions. If long term de factos had similar results to married that strengthens the married/committed relationship statistics and weakens the single/separated/temporary stats. Interesting but I’m not surprised.
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December 16, 2009 8:18pm
getstaffed

TrypeWryter – I’ve just read your 11:12 comment. A big ups to you! I also believe that expectations play a huge role in how kids perform. If anyone wants to see a true story movie on this theme, check out Stand and Deliver (1988) from your alt-movie source. I used this quite a few times when leading our church youth group. Kids can and do rise to expectations, and to expect little of them is to hold them back.
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December 16, 2009 8:44pm
reid

“Yeah, but god’s always been a racist pig. If that’s what god chooses to do to his “Chosen people” I hope he never chooses me.”

He already has, billy, by granting you life in our world today. Your comments indicate a man full of hate toward the on-balance, greatest force for good the world has ever seen. That is a truth self-evident, to an objective observer, when you weigh it up.

Sure, you can take isolated historical or contemporary counter-instances or even religious trends the stellar version being the inquisition, but on-balance, over history, religion is, overall a good, peaceful, kind, benevolent and beneficial influence.

You’re a good man, I have discerned, so I’m puzzled. Why do you hate it so?

P.S. Worshipping and professing G-d doesn’t take away human rights, freedoms, individual thought, expression, art, science, music, education, et al. Sometimes people who profess to practice claim in its name to do those things. That doesn’t make it so and it doesn’t mean that G-d approves.

The fact He doesn’t step in is simply a dynamic of the way He operates in the world.
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December 16, 2009 9:36pm
Falafulu Fisi

MyNameIsJack quoted…
To end this political stalemate, Dr. McKitrick proposes calling each side’s bluff. He suggests imposing financial penalties on carbon emissions that would be set according to the temperature in the earth’s atmosphere.

Absolutely. This is something that I have been arguing for over the last 2 years. Any trading related to carbon emission or anything to do with global warming, then it has to be tied to the temperature in the earth’s atmosphere. In this way, proponents of global warming will lose big time. There are already trading instruments and derivatives related to climate/weather available today, but they’re not tied to the AGW causes or anything like that. If supposed causes of AGW such as CO2 emission is tied to the the earth’s atmospheric temperature, then skeptics like me will make a killing in trading derivatives against those pro-AGW who believe that temperature should be up-trending, but then again, I doubt that pro-AGW will put their money in where their mouth is.

A colleague of mine had just returned from New York from a conference for “Finance Tech Companies” and he had a chat with a physicist from Wall St, top Hedge-Fund company Renaissance Technology and he told him that they’re watching closely the talks on AGW & carbon emission trading and all that, because they themselves think they will make a killing in any instruments or derivatives that tie to global temperature, because of its stochastic nature. The long term trend is irrelevant in derivative markets. Our startup software application had a wide range of derivative models and we will be looking at developing proprietary models for evaluation of weather or climate related derivative instruments.
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December 16, 2009 9:44pm
geognome (formerly getstaffed)

Chthoniid said:

Luc, the tenor of my remark is that effective conservation depends on respecting local communities in conservation work, as they typically bear the brunt of the costs and risks of such campaigns.

It isn’t about letting people take precedence. It’s about who gets to bear the costs of conservation policies. A lot of conservation policy is pushed onto poor brown or black communities, who are then seen as “the problem” by green NGOs. That is an unfortunate and somewhat unpalatable aspect of many green NGOs.

So true. Witness this just in:

Qinlao village has been given the unenviable task of making it through the winter, when temperatures can descend to -40C, without burning any coal. Instead, the villagers have been told they should burn the corn stalks left over from their harvest to keep warm.

Xinhua, the propaganda arm of the government, has declared Qinlao as the “first coal-free zone” in China’s northernmost province and a model of how the country can survive without coal. “Within three years, the whole of north China will be burning plant stalks like us,” boasts Mr Zhao.
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December 16, 2009 10:53pm
hj

“Much data remains under lock and key. It is tied up in confidentiality agreements with the governments that provided it. The Met Office and the UK government say they are now seeking permission to publish it. What they have not yet publicly revealed is that under a confidentiality agreement between the Met Office and the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council, a portion of the UK’s own temperature measurements is only made available to “bona fide academic researchers working on agreed NERC-endorsed scientific programmes”. Why? So that the data can be sold privately. “We have to offset our costs for the benefit of the taxpayer, so we balance that against freedom of access,” says David Britton, a spokesman for the Met Office.”

Government agencies are not alone in seeking to defend their hard-earned data against prying eyes. The hacked CRU emails reveal years of correspondence between a handful of climate scientists on how to respond to a growing number of FOI requests (see “Declare or defend?”). Many came from Canadian mathematician Steve McIntyre.

[Declare or defend?

A telling email episode in April 2007 shows how interactions between scientists and their critics spun out of control because the scientists mistook their critics for wreckers with no rights to data, while the critics took an aversion to scrutiny as a sign of fraud.

In the exchanges, Michael Mann of Penn State University in University Park, Phil Jones, the director of the UK’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, discuss freedom of information requests from Douglas Keenan, a financial statistician turned independent scientist, for the location of Chinese temperature readings used in a paper co-authored by Jones 17 years before. Mann advised: “This crowd of charlatans… look for one little thing they can say is wrong, and thus generalize that the science is entirely compromised… Best thing is to ignore them completely.” Trenberth disagreed: “I don’t think you can ignore it. The response should try to somehow label these guys [as] lazy and incompetent.”

Keenan won his FOI request and said it showed the data was flawed, because some of the stations had been moved by the Chinese scientists who ran them. He said Jones’s reluctance to share the data was evidence of fraud. Tom Wigley, director of the CRU when the original paper was published, emailed Jones saying it would have been easier to admit the data’s shortcomings. “Why, why, why did you not simply say this right at the start?”]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427393.600-battle-for-climate-data-approaches-tipping-point.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg20427393.600
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December 17, 2009 8:52am
hj

However the “they are with holding data” meme will still have a bit of life in it. 😉
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December 17, 2009 9:25am

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