General Debate 6 September 2010

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Murray

Whoo hoo.
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September 6, 2010 8:07am
Grant Michael McKenna

Wow, the wind in Dunedin last night was amazingly powerful- and now snow is predicted to 300m!
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September 6, 2010 8:09am
krazykiwi

Teachers point finger at criminal students

Under-fire teachers are turning the focus back on students after the Sunday Star-Times last week revealed dozens of teachers are still working in the classroom despite having serious criminal convictions.

The Star-Times revealed last week that 57 teachers have criminal convictions, with most remaining in the classroom, including one male teacher convicted of indecently assaulting a teenage girl, and others for violent assaults and fraud of more than $10,000.

The information came to light after an Official Information Act request to the Teachers Council, the profession’s watchdog body that can ban teachers from schools or impose restrictions. Education Minister Anne Tolley said she is looking into improvements.

Teachers, however, claim there are many more students than teachers who are criminals. Some teachers spoke to the Star-Times on the understanding they would not be named for fear of repercussions from parents and students.

A couple of problems here:

Firstly, there are approximately 30 times the number of students than there are teachers in NZ so any measure (eg eye colour, favorite jam flavor) will numerically favour students.

Secondly, and most importantly, what kind of pathetic comparative mentality makes it reasonable to justify one type of unacceptable situation by claiming the same things exists elsewhere? If teachers want to be revered in society then they need to tell their leaders and unions to stop behaving like complete idiots.

[reposted from last night’s GD]
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September 6, 2010 8:21am
Swiftman the infidel

‘Whoo hoo’

Idiot

[DPF: 10 demerits]
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September 6, 2010 8:29am
Murray

“‘Whoo hoo’

Idiot”

Fuckwit contribution from a fuckwit.

[DPF: Only a warning as you were provoked, but next time demerits]
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September 6, 2010 8:32am
Pete George

Murray, you may have missed this thread on Saturday:

Some changes to the demerits system

Especially:
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2010/09/some_changes_to_the_demerits_system.html#comment-736256
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2010/09/some_changes_to_the_demerits_system.html#comment-736284
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September 6, 2010 8:38am
Swiftman the infidel

Anyone read the arrogant and pompous article by that stupid Samoan immigrant Tapu Misa?

Apparently only she and her friends, not my wife and I, can be trusted to teach our 8 year old son right from wrong.
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September 6, 2010 8:40am
Inventory2

Well done to the Black Ferns. They’ve triumphed over England, and a female referee who didn’t seem to like them very much …

http://keepingstock.blogspot.com/2010/09/world-champions.html
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September 6, 2010 8:40am
Don the Kiwi

Actually Swiftman,

In your case I agree with her.

(probably exclude your wife from that comment)

[DPF: Warning – demerits next time]
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September 6, 2010 9:19am
mikeysmokes

Well done the Black Ferns. And how about those Warriors woo hoo
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September 6, 2010 10:17am
Repton

what kind of pathetic comparative mentality makes it reasonable to justify one type of unacceptable situation by claiming the same things exists elsewhere?

I don’t know, but it turns up here a lot. Every time there’s a post criticising National, a bunch of people try to defend the government by saying that Labour did it too..
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September 6, 2010 10:29am
PaulL

What is the economic impact of a natural disaster? In the case of the earthquake, it seems to me that much of the rebuilding money will come from foreign insurers, or from provisions from the government (i.e. from savings, not from current revenue). As such, we’re about to have around $2 billion dumped into our economy that wasn’t previously there. Will this result in increased GDP, or is our economy running so close to capacity that it will just result in inflation and increased interest rates?
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September 6, 2010 10:44am
RRM

^^^PaulL – I know some of the big construction companies here in Wellington are just about to run out of work to do for the next 12-18 months. I don’t know how much big construction there is to do in Chch now, as most of the EQ damage seems to be to little old shitters not big buildings.

But people might be able to get reconstruction done a bit cheaper than if the quake had happened in say 2007.
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September 6, 2010 10:51am
krazykiwi

Fast food 😀
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September 6, 2010 11:37am
Jimbob

With the earth quake and a very wet spring for agriculture, this is going to put extra pressure on our finances. Looks like we will be back into recession next year. The US is also heading back into recession. Many commentators are saying the credit crunch is behind us, it is fair to say we are still in it, just that Government stimulus is masking the real situation. There is some very hard yards needed to be done before this is over.
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September 6, 2010 12:01pm
MikeNZ

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/09/03/park51-and-the-charge-of-%E2%80%9Cislamophobia%E2%80%9D/

The imam’s wife, Daisy Khan, is equally certain that the United States is an Islamophobic country. Indeed, she feels prompted to add, somewhat redundantly, that “It is not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia—it’s hate of Muslims.” TIME magazine has recently distinguished itself with a truly abject and defamatory article confirming Ms. Khan’s hypothesis, opining that “it is plain that many of Park51’s opponents are motivated by deep-seated Islamophobia.”

I just Love the Islamophobia card being played, there is much more at stake here, but here’s the meat.

The unadulterated nonsense and shameless calumnies such people traffic in should be exposed for what they are: a furtive and determined campaign to introduce Islamic canons and “universals”, including shari’a law, into the very matrix of Western societies, with a view to eventually subverting them. (Islamic proponents know very well what they are doing; their Western apologists are, for the most, merely ignorant and self-deluded in providing a laissez-passer.) European countries, such as France, Holland, Sweden and especially Britain, are already stricken by galloping Islamicism—or, more accurately, are largely incapable of responding to the advancing menace. In fact, they are abetting it, both at home and abroad. One of the more piquant instances of compliance involves the $1 million the Dutch government has apparently earmarked as a donation to the Park51 project.

Yeah the Dhimmitude of the Dutch Government to help build a Victory Monument for Islamism on a US wargrave site.

The larger issue, then, has to do with the concept of “tolerance, “which is understood as embracing all forms of political ideologies without demanding reciprocity from the beneficiaries of such largesse—a dangerous inanity that author Howard Rotberg in a recent book has labelled “Tolerism”—is both preposterous and suicidal. The stretching of the First Amendment to serve as an umbrella for a religious faith that advocates the reduction and even in some cases the extinction of all its competitors, as well as the submission of all non-Muslims to an imperial Caliphate, and that furnishes its adherents with the doctrinal weapons to carry out the program, is a perversion of thought. We have been spoiled, it seems, by too many years of unlimited credit, not only fiscally but in the realm of untenable ideas

I don’t think we’ve been spoiled as much have forgotton that freedom is so precious we must fight for it every day and for every inch.
We have become complacent just like an obese person gets fatter by not doing exercise and watching what they eat and doing something about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib9rofXQl6w&feature=player_embedded
Watch it everyday if need be.
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September 6, 2010 12:04pm
MikeNZ

Jimbob
I think you are correct if we even left it.
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September 6, 2010 12:04pm
barry

THERE IS A GOD AFTER-ALL………….

Apparently Jim Anterton said on friday that it “would take an earthquake, a large seismic shift, for him to lose the Chch mayoralty election”

So – Anderton caused the earthquake.!!!!!
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September 6, 2010 12:05pm
Jack5

Canterbury followers of Kiwiblog should take a few minutes to read the piece in the link below. It’s an attack on the region’s perceived inherited-money aristrocracy – the squattocracy – by Deborah Hill-Cone, in the NZ Herald. The trigger for her attack is the Reserve Bank guarantee of South Canterbury Finance’s borrowings. This guarantee will cost NZ near earthquake-damage-level amounts.

Hill-Cone writes:

I would like to think this financial disaster will bring down the whole snobby Canterbury clique. Unfortunately with nearly $1.8 billion poured into it, I think it just got stronger.

In fact, if elements of such squattocracy survive, they would be in financiers like George Gould, and George Kerr. Kids from Christ’s College these days speak with the same accent as other Christchurch kids, and the squatocrats no-longer run things. There hasn’t been a Christchurch mayor from these folk for decades.

Hill-Cone’s columns suggest she is a classic neo-liberal ACT supporter. This may explain her perceived target in this latest column. She doesn’t finger Canterbury property developer David Henderson, reputedly a huge borrower from South Canterbury Finance, and big backer of ACT in Christchurch.

However, Hill-Cone thinks the whole guarantee scheme was a secret strategem by the Canterbury “squattocracy” to save their investments in SCF.

When every other country was rushing into guarantees, that’s pushing it. If Marac and South Canterbury Finance had gone under with other finance companies in a run during the international panic there would have been chaos in NZ.

I doubt that many if any of the remaining descendants of the Canterbury squattocracy that Hill-Cone studies from Auckland invested in SCF. If Kerr put in tens of millions as SCF faltered, he wasn’t an ordinary depositor. If there were dealings between him and the Reserve Bank it would have been because the Government saw him as a partial offsetter of the then potential big payout.

Certainly Allan Hubbard, a poor kid from Dunedin is not of the Canterbury squattocracy. The banker he brought in as chief executive doesn’t seem to fit the description either.

Hill-Cone’s is the latest of several attacks in the Herald on Canterbury, if you include SCF and Hubbard in the region. After Hickey’s cruel (IMHO) attack on Hubbard, including bringing in Mrs Hubbard, Herald political writer John Armstrong accused 83-year-old Hubbard of whining. I would say fighting rather than whining.

The Herald like most of the MSM was doing well from advertising from the soon-to-be-disastrous finance companies when warnings would really have counted. Now the Herald writers are sanctimonious about these organisations that have proved so flaky. Is the MSM frightened unguaranteed finance-company investors will now sue them over the advertisements? Could these folk sue?

As for Hill-Cone, will we read her similarly ripping into Hotchin and the other Auckland property and finance company gurus?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10670775
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September 6, 2010 12:12pm
Kris K

Recent New Zealand Earthquakes

This is a list of the latest thirty New Zealand earthquakes.

Interestingly 29 are all centred on Christchurch (one was off White Island), and all are well after the big one at 4:35 am Saturday 4th September. All range between 3.2 and 5.0 magnitude.

The one 30 earthquakes ago was – NZST: Sun, Sep 5 2010 8:13 am – over 24 hours after the big one.
Quite incredible when you think about it.
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September 6, 2010 12:13pm
Pete George

“I don’t think we’ve been spoiled as much have forgotton that freedom is so precious we must fight for it every day and for every inch.”

By denying other’s freedom?

Jimbob, the EQ payouts will inject money currently mostly invested overseas into the local economy, similar for insurance company payouts, so it could provide a stimulus here. Any businesses that are adequately covered by insurance should be fine. Might be different for the uninsured, but that may open up opportunities for astute businesses.

Kris, there have been about 30 aftershocks a day since the big one – but they do seem to be getting smaller and more spaced out, yesterday they were still coming in clusters but they now seem to be one -offs.
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September 6, 2010 12:14pm
MikeNZ

Jack5
Yes could they sue and what for?
Will we see a Herald mea culpa for all their positive press before the failures?
Lets wait till next week and see if Hill Cone has what it takes to tear into those she may have met as dinner party guests on the circuit.
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September 6, 2010 12:18pm
hj

by Kevin Hague

One of the events I really wanted to take part in last year was a festival called “A Day at the Beach”.
…………………………
Lets hope the foreshore and Seabed stays in Crown ownership (= the people), so that all the boys and girls are special.
.
BTW what does the green party submission on the 2010 Foreshore and seabed Repeal Act say?
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2010/09/05/young-people-inspire-others-to-believe-change-is-possible/#comment-149672
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September 6, 2010 12:35pm
RightNow

Survey results from Hutt Valley businesses re: 90 day trial period: http://www.hutt-chamber.org.nz/90-day-dismissal-survey

Of 241 respondents, 25% said they have employed someone under the 90 day trial period. 47% say they wouldn’t have employed these people without the 90 day trial period.
Respondents employed a total of 217 staff under the trail period, 47 of whom were dismissed within the 90 days. 152 were permanently employed. Not quite sure what happened to the other 18 but I’m guessing fixed term contracts.
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September 6, 2010 12:42pm
gravedodger

Bloody after shocks play merry hell with the digestion, 12 35, 4.5 quite a jolt but didn’t hear it just felt it, getting a bit tiresome.
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September 6, 2010 12:57pm
Adolf Fiinkensein

I’m surprised anyone would take the vapid ramblings of a neurotic, over the hill, divorcee who seems to be an authority on eeeeevrything, seriously.

The Herald is no longer a serious newspaper. Simply the tabloid du jour for people with little money and less brains.
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September 6, 2010 1:14pm
MT_Tinman

# gravedodger (459) Says:
September 6th, 2010 at 12:57 pm

Bloody after shocks play merry hell with the digestion, 12 35, 4.5 quite a jolt but didn’t hear it just felt it, getting a bit tiresome.

You’re not kidding.
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September 6, 2010 1:34pm
RightNow

View on the Christchurch quake from a London journo: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100052404/mammon-more-than-god-caused-the-christchurch-earthquake-miracle/

The first comment (kiwigirlinlondon) is good: low casualty rate had much to do with the time of the quake.
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September 6, 2010 1:40pm
hj

At the time keith made that speech Meteria said “we are winning the media battle”, (therefore can get away with a cover up… shed doubt).
Your defense, Keith’s defense, Meteria’s and associated cronies is totally immoral Toad.
.
Posted on the Green Party Forum:
.
“This morning I opened the herald to see what the bullshit the media were spinning about the raids and saw a comment allegedly from a flatmate of one of the activists arrested yesterday in Auckland.

I thought it would be obvious not to comment to the media but apparently not.

I guess I just want to remind people not to talk amongst themselves and speculate and especially do not talk to the media. They are not your friends and they will use you to get the inside scoop.

This was obvious in another article I got forwarded this morning from Bomber’s blog. He was sniffing around last night at Unite and had cornered some less experienced activists and was asking them what was going on…

As someone quite rightly put it last night….’if not one talks, everyone walks’.

It is not gossip it is fucken serious and some of our comrades are facing a long time behind bars, it would be good if people could remember that.

Now is an important time to remember AND PRACTISE those good old rules about security culture and solidarity!

The media are easy to ignore however the filth is a different story and it is likely that they will want to ‘talk’ to some people. If you are concerned about this and don’t know what your rights are etc… please seek the advise of an experienced activist who you TRUST. Maybe we need to have a workshop around this sometime in the next few days so that everyone is confident.

Love and solidarity!

Please respect the very serious position that the arrests have put some of our very dear friends in. “
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2007/12/evidence-of-green-partyanarchist.html
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September 6, 2010 2:54pm
MikeNZ

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/11/video-pamela-geller-in-texas.html

I wish you were as tasty to look at as her Red.
But you have something in common, you both don’t give up with the leftards and in her case the Islamoidiots.
min 17-23 classic. 23+ Sharia in USA.
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September 6, 2010 3:46pm
Nookin

I know that there has been extensive comment on the 90 day trial period and recent examples offered up by the CTU have been thrashed into an amorphous state but it does seem to me that given that the government is receiving submissions on proposed changes, it would be helpful to highlight 2 of the problem areas that I see arising out of the Smith v Stokes Valley Pharmacy decision.

Briefly, Heather Smith was employed at the pharmacy before her employer sold it to the new company. Takeover day was 1 October. She was advised to before the takeover day she would have a job with the new employer. She was sent a draft employment agreement before takeover. She worked on October 1. On October 2 the employment agreement was amended and she signed it.

The Employment Court recorded that for the purposes of the trial period provisions, an employee was an employee not previously employed by the employer seeking to impose a trial period. Because Heather Smith had worked on 1st October, she was not “new” to the employer when she signed the agreement on 2 October. It was primarily on this basis that the Employment Court ruled that the employer could not rely on the trial period provision.

This may be seen to be splitting hairs to the nth degree but , unless the case is appealed or the government addresses such a narrow interpretation (assuming of course it is inclined to do so) an employer engaging an employee on a trial period basis should have the employment agreement signed before any work commences and any offer of employment should be subject to the signing of a satisfactory employment agreement.

The second major issue relates to notification of the reasons for dismissal. The Employment Court noted that an employer intending to dismiss an employee during the trial period is not obliged to inform the employee in advance nor give the employee the opportunity to comment.

Nor is the employer obliged to give written reasons following the event.

However, the employer is obliged to give reasons at the time of giving notice of termination. I do not have any particular problem with that and, in fact, I think such an obligation should exist. It just seems to be incongruous to have an implied obligation to give reasons at a time that occurs between 2 time periods (when making the decision to dismiss and following the event) where any such obligations are expressly excluded. No wonder the employer fell into a trap.

Given that the government intends to address procedural issues in order to ensure that rigid procedures are not slavishly applied, clarification of these 2 issues might be appropriate. In practice, I suspect that there would be few employers who welcome an employee on day one with an already signed employment agreement.
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September 6, 2010 4:57pm
Jimbob

Pete who’s money is it? The tax payer will fit the bill as the money has to come from some where. This is a drag on the economy as the money is not spent on the productive sector. Christchurch has to be repared, it is a cost that goes on future tax payers. The result is that GDP will fall. GDP can only increase with an increase in population or an increase in productivity or both. If the government spends more money, there is less for the private sector to spend. GDP= C+I+G + net Exports. Comsuption is dropping, investment is dropping, net exports are dropping and that leaves Government spending. The Government can not carry the country forever, this is getting worse by the day. Could some one please turn the light on in Dr. Bollard and Bill English’s head. Hello is any one there.
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September 6, 2010 5:17pm
Viking2

Do we have one of these here?

British MP’s wife a secret prostitute
Sydney Morning Herald
Last updated 14:48 06/09/2010

A UK politician has been left red-faced after the secret life of his wife was exposed.

Tory MP Mike Weatherley, 53, was at a loss to explain how he did not know his wife, Carla Weatherley, was a prostitute.

The Sunday Mirror claims that as Mr Weatherley was campaigning to join parliament earlier this year, his wife was working at a south London brothel .

.http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/4101034/British-MPs-wife-a-secret-prostitute
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September 6, 2010 7:48pm
Hurf Durf

Good news everyone! Nicky Hager’s put himself on a Mossad hit list. I for one will surely don sackcloth when they find his body in the street after having jumped from his office window.

[DPF: That exceeds the bounds of good taste. Demerits next time]
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September 6, 2010 8:08pm
reid

Tory MP Mike Weatherley, 53, was at a loss to explain how he did not know his wife, Carla Weatherley, was a prostitute.

I wonder what went through his mind when he asked her? I know what would be going through mine.
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September 6, 2010 8:09pm
reid

One of the [Israeli sigint] base’s main purposes was to listen to transmissions from ships in the Mediterranean, and it played a key role in tapping underwater communication cables, mostly in the Mediterranean, connecting Israel with Europe.

Nicky seems quite interested in signals intelligence, doesn’t he. Can’t quite work out why, myself.

I mean, he has a snowball’s chance of penetrating the network either through signal intercept or humint so he’s left with telling us that what we can already see by visiting it, exists.

How fascinating.
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September 6, 2010 8:17pm
MikeNZ

Hurf
Only those who are a existalist threat go on the hit list or have made themselves such by planning and carrying out attacks.
hager isn’t, he’s just being a leftist journo.
Looking forward to his revealing the Chinese equivalents.
In the world of sigint the base was probably known about, with that number and different types of antenna.
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September 6, 2010 8:58pm
reid

“hager isn’t, he’s just being a leftist journo.”

I think IMO Mike, he’s trying to be a small-scale John Pilger, in his own way.

The fact he’s so pathetic as in uninformative in his attempts, seems so far to have escaped him.
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September 6, 2010 9:15pm
Luc Hansen

Nice to see that John Pilger is recognised as big-scale, reid.
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September 6, 2010 10:10pm
reid

I pay him a lot of attention, Luc. One would be a fool to gloss over him.
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September 6, 2010 10:37pm
MikeNZ

Reid
The fact he’s so pathetic as in uninformative in his attempts, seems so far to have escaped him.

That may be so but he has deliberately illumed a sensitive site and whilst there may be rsome risk for the occupants to that, I’m sure he will lose no sleep over it.
I look forward to a local boy doing the same for other countries who “abuse” their citizens like Iran China Yemen Saudi Arabia etc etc.
Ohh silly me none of them are in the Western European orbit of nations, funny that.
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September 7, 2010 9:26am

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