General Debate 27 July 2017

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redeye

I’m planning to sell most of my produce for undeclared cash this year as I’m struggling to afford my international holiday.

My defense? The goose and gander one.
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July 27, 2017 9:34am
- peterwn
  
  Your defence will not help agains an outfit that holds all the trumps and the ace of spades – unless you are a large corporate with lots of cash and QC’s available.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:27am
- cmm
  
  Are these white geese? If so, thee gander better be paying child support.
  
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  July 27, 2017 11:00am
waikatogirl

Good morning! Sun shining in the Waikato ?
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July 27, 2017 9:35am
- MCos
  
  I hope the sun shines on the Chiefs this weekend!
  
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  July 27, 2017 9:38am
  - Colville
    
    Has a team ever won a semi after flying to and from Africa in a week?
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:10am
MCos

Can someone from the Cult45 please explain why Trump doesn’t just sack Jeff Sessions instead of continually humiliating the man.
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July 27, 2017 9:36am
- kowtow
  
  Yep , Trump’s a chump on this one.
  
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  July 27, 2017 9:42am
- MCos
  
  Last I read he was looking at replacing him with Lyin’ Ted Cruz . . . .
  
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  July 27, 2017 9:49am
- Inandout
  
  Sessions reminds me somewhat of Gomer Pyle when he speaks:
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs2_deBk_Js
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXvgxOyRE4A
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:02am
- Scott
  
  Trump wants him to resign I think rather than having to fire him. Sessions is very strong on immigration and other core policies of the Trump regime and would be a real loss to Donald Trump in my opinion.
  
  However he should never have redused himself from the Russia investigation. It’s a sad state of affairs when you have a Republican president and a Republican Congress and yet all these Republicans are holding all these committees investigating themselves and this supposed collusion with Russia? All it gives is the Democrats and the mainstream media ammunition to fire at Trump.
  
  The trouble with Republicans is that they are playing pattycake while the Democrats are playing hardball. Jeff Sessions recusal laid the groundwork for the special prosecutor who even now is hiring Hillary Clinton supporting lawyers to investigate Donald Trump’s finances in search of a crime.
  
  The special prosecutor is only supposed to be appointed when there is evidence of a crime which there is not at this point. So sessions should never have recused himself. If he had not recused himself then a special prosecutor would never have been appointed and this circus act of looking for Russian collusion would soon be coming to an end.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:50am
  - MCos
    
    “Trump wants him to resign I think rather than having to fire him.”
    There’s a word for people who act like Trump has in this wretched affair. Coward.
    Sessions recused himself because otherwise he would have been involved in an investigation into Trump’s campaign which he had been heavily involved in.
    Quite clearly the guy Trump really wants sacked is the Special Presecutor. I wonder why?
    
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    July 27, 2017 1:02pm
- LisaGinNZ
  
  Perhaps potus wants to give Sessions a chance to start investigating the BIG crimes by swamp dwellers in Washington DC.
  
  The American people expect the law breakers to atone.
  
  AG Sessions needs to get busy … or get out.
  
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  July 27, 2017 3:44pm
- KevOB
  
  Don’t expect truth from the US press. The least whiff of imagination is reported as fact.
  
  Trump doesn’t speak beltway. If he says he is “disappointed” beltway denizens interpret that as” the guillotine in the basement is being readied.” All he meant was he would have preferred things to be different as it would have easier.
  
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  July 27, 2017 6:22pm
Sublime

HB Today: Hawke’s Bay dairy owners were divided when asked whether lowering the excise tax on cigarettes would reduce aggravated robberies.

New Zealand First party leader Winston Peters announced at his Hawke’s Bay meeting that he wanted cigarettes to go back to being reasonably priced after the government consistently hiked the prices up.

(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503462&objectid=11894553)

Without the Metiria story this would’ve attracted more media attention. Winston could’ve included a throwaway about store owners and pistols. That might’ve got him a few more headlines! 😀
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July 27, 2017 9:38am
holysheet

small steps people

White fellas fight back, and not before time. At least it’s a start.

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/07/25/college-professor-tucker-carlson-bret-weinstein-day-without-white-people-files-lawsuit

A professor who has repeatedly appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to discuss being “mobbed” into leaving campus because he is white reportedly filed a multi-million-dollar suit against the school.
Bret Weinstein, who told Carlson earlier this year he has faced calls to resign as well as general harassment from the left, filed a $3.8 million tort lawsuit against Evergreen State College, the Washington Times reported.
Watchdog site Campus Reform published the purported legal documents.

Weinstein’s suit claims the college “failed to set and enforce necessary boundaries in the workplace on campus,” and chose not to enforce parts of the Code of Conduct.
“Evergreen College sent the unmistakable message that the school will tolerate and even endorse egregious violations purportedly to advance racial social goals… fostering a racially hostile environment,” the suit said.
Weinstein reportedly also accused his critics of “berating” him for appearing with Tucker Carlson multiple times.
Watch Weinstein’s earlier interview with Carlson above.
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July 27, 2017 9:39am
- BananaLlama
  
  Didn’t 4chan find another Marxist professor who was smashing free speech advocates over the head with a D-lock during one of the protests? Pinochet had the right idea when he had Marxist professors thrown out of a helicopter.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:05am
  - Gabby
    
    Bit harsh bangamama, prolly just as well you don’t have access to a chopper.
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:23am
  - BananaLlama
    
    True that I might end up a passenger as well.
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:35am
- LisaGinNZ
  
  I hope the professor wins and sues the communist college called “Evergreen” right out of existence… bit like how Bernie’s wife did dodgy financial deals … and got a lefty college to shut.
  
  #ShutDownTheLeftyColleges
  #SueThemOutOfExistence
  
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  July 27, 2017 3:46pm
marquess

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
Once again, we see extremely poor spending priorities because of ideological reasons.

Two ticks blue balls.
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July 27, 2017 9:40am
- dime
  
  geez, i clicked it thinking i was going to see an articlle about labour wanting to pay the power bills of the lazy
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:00am
- double d
  
  Criticising a policy due to ideology is just silly. In this case – it is not the ideology per se – it’s the fact the government doesn’t have the “right” ideology.
  Critique why the ideology is wrong – then others can at least debate the merits of the ideologies …..
  
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  July 27, 2017 12:31pm
kowtow

If the police really want the public’s confidence ,then they need to stop this type of shit going on.

“Area commander Superintendent Bruce Bird was the subject of an employment investigation after the incident but has been allowed to keep his job. He is also subject to an Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) investigation.”

Very bad look.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11894813
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July 27, 2017 9:41am
- Gabby
  
  Insufficient evidence.
  Still, not Central Otago for a change.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:26am
john1234

Martyn Martin Bradbury is going full retard over at TDB – top entertainment!

“None of these male broadcasters have had to deal with the horror and cruelty of WINZ”

The horror! The cruelty! Oh my!

“Blaming the poor for the situation they are trapped in is the most sanctimonious of deceptions by white male rich crackers who have little idea of hardship.”

Nice.

https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/07/26/barry-soper-guyon-espiner-duncan-garner-patrick-gower-maul-metiria-for-being-a-mother-who-stole-for-her-child/
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July 27, 2017 9:49am
- RalphT
  
  Would you expect anything else from the Bomber? Par for the course.
  
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  July 27, 2017 9:57am
- kowtow
  
  “The Listener dropped in on quite possibly New Zealand’s most opinionated man at his home, where Marx, Che and Mao proudly grace the walls …”
  
  He is a retard.
  
  http://www.noted.co.nz/archive/listener-nz-2005/bomber-bradbury/
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:07am
  - Salacious Crumb
    
    So he worships murderers and despots? Says a lot.
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:19am
    - Gabby
      
      Shh, you’ll upset EADolf and reallyczitty.
      
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      July 27, 2017 10:27am
  - hmmokrightitis
    
    Anyone who is over the age of 16 who has any of those morons – and murderers – on their walls deserves the helicopter treatment as well. 😛
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:20am
  - Flash
    
    Where was he living in 1993?
    
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    July 27, 2017 4:24pm
- lifesgood
  
  Wow! Just wow! He’s a moron that guy. I am fed up to the back teeth with his sort blagging NZ, the most beautiful, bounteous country in the world. It’s about time the truth was told about how lucky we all are to live here. Losers will always be losers but why on earth they suck up so much air and space in this country beats me. There are some very simple solutions to poverty. First: get an education, second: form a stable, committed relationship in secure accommodation before having a child, third: go to work, fourth: don’t take drugs or drink to excess, fifth: if you are female don’t hook up with low lives – repeatedly, sixth: if you don’t follow these rules don’t bleat to me about your so called ‘poverty’. I want my taxes to go to people who have had misfortune not to idiots.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:19am
  - GoVege
    
    And most importantly. ..choose your parents well.
    
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    July 27, 2017 11:00pm
- Swifty
  
  Crackers?
  
  Lol!
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:27am
Southern Raider

Was watching AM Show yesterday and Tim Wilson (I think he is from The Spinoff) during the discussion on funding for regional airports said basically

“Funding airports is a waste as they are due to cease being used going forward as people stop flying due to impact on climate change. Trains are the responsible future”

So a business person is going to spend two days travelling for a meeting in Wellington if they live in Auckland or a week to get to Invercargill?
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July 27, 2017 9:49am
- marquess
  
  travelling for a meeting in Wellington if they live in Auckland
  
  regional airports
  
  A swing and a miss.
  
  The list is actually the international powerhouses of Timaru, Masterton, and Kerikeri. While there’s certainly an argument to fund lifeline airports like the one on the Chathams, it should be passengers and airlines that are funding airports on the North and South islands.
  
  If Masterton has scheduled flights it should be because there’s the demand, not because it’s being artificially propped up.
  
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  July 27, 2017 9:58am
  - Scott
    
    Hey don’t be mean about Masterton!! 🙂
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:46am
    - marquess
      
      Not being mean at all. NZ has some lovely small towns, Alexandra is one of my favourite places in summer. But if the demand isn’t there to make an airport viable, there really aren’t two ways around it.
      
      Either we’d have to subsidise the airlines or the airports to keep flights there. For the really far-flung places like the Chathams, it probably makes sense. But when Taupo and Whakatane are an hours drive from Rotorua airport, and Masterton has a commuter train line, how useful is using taxpayer money to retain flights there?
      
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      July 27, 2017 10:55am
      - Jack5
        
        What Crown finance goes into airports apart from the national air-traffic system?
        
        I thought local bodies provided most of the finance for airports.
        
        Airports aren’t just for tourists. We have freight and agricultural flying, emergency services, and leisure activities such as flying, gliding, and parachuting.
        
        We also need some as emergency destinations. For example, I think that on occasion, Queenstown flights have been diverted to Invercargill, with passengers then taken by bus to the lake resort.
        
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        July 27, 2017 11:48am
      - marquess
        
        What Crown finance goes into airports apart from the national air-traffic system?
        
        The article referenced was about seeking extra cash to support 12 extremely small regional airports.
        
        Airports aren’t just for tourists. We have freight and agricultural flying, emergency services, and leisure activities such as flying, gliding, and parachuting.
        
        Yes, and all those activities get rolled into demand. They should generate enough landing fees and usage tariffs to cover the airport’s costs.
        
        We also need some as emergency destinations. For example, I think that on occasion, Queenstown flights have been diverted to Invercargill, with passengers then taken by bus to the lake resort.
        
        Absolutely, but note that neither Queenstown nor Invercargill are among the airports mentioned that are seeking additional support. Auckland and Christchurch can handle each other’s flights, and beyond that, realistically, none of the mainland airports listed are essential for safety or diversions.
        
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        July 27, 2017 12:22pm
      - gravedodger
        
        Rotorua one of the more unreliable operations both from weather and numbers.
        
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        July 27, 2017 2:41pm
  - Keeping Stock
    
    Whanganui Airport is one of those on the list.
    
    Air New Zealand gave Whanganui the middle finger last year, saying the route wasn’t profitable. That was bullshit; they simply wanted to put more Q300’s on the main trunk routes where they were facing competition.
    
    Thanks to the efforts of then-mayor Annette Main and Whanganui MP Chester Borrows Air Chathams came to our rescue, and now provide a brilliant service between Whanganui and Auckland. They are fantastic to deal with and to fly with. It’s not often that you get flown by the owner and CEO of the company!
    
    And since then, the commercial arm of the Whanganui District Council, Whanganui Holdings has purchased the New Zealand International Commercial Pilot Academy, which has relocated to Whanganui from Taonui Aerodrome at Feilding. New premises are under construction at the airport, and the first intake of students, around half of whom are from overseas, is already underway. The NZICPA is going to become a real boost to the local economy.
    
    Whanganui has got off its arse to ensure that commuter air services continue, and that a business uses the airport facility. I don’t want to have to travel an hour each way to and from Palmerston North to fly to Auckland (150km round trip), and I want to support Air Chathams because they are supporting Whanganui. I encourage KB readers to find out more about what Fly Local is trying to achieve.
    
    https://www.flylocal.nz/
    
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    July 27, 2017 1:37pm
    - Sublime
      
      KS: Air New Zealand gave Whanganui the middle finger last year, saying the route wasn’t profitable.
      
      I’m not convinced that was a decision Air NZ took lightly. They’d have seen the backlash coming a mile off. Whether it was the right decision or not? Well, only the bean counters can say for sure … I’ve a box of beer several poobahs at HQ didn’t want to pull out of Wangas.
      
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      July 27, 2017 8:33pm
- kowtow
  
  “Climate change” being used for all sorts of bullshit these days.
  
  “Mr Cull finished the meeting by saying councils and the community would face ”very serious conversations about some very serious investment”.
  
  It would not be enough to upgrade infrastructure to meet the threat posed by today’s climate, as climate change would make serious weather events more common.
  
  ”[Infrastructure is] going to have work for the next 30 years in conditions that are possibly going to get a hell of a lot worse than they have been.”
  
  https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/flooded-residents-lash-out
  
  Rivers have always flooded , that’s how “flood” plains have been created over the hundreds of thousands of years.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:12am
  - Gabby
    
    He wants to build a big stadium for cats.
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:38am
  - waikatogirl
    
    Mr Dave “kill cats” Cull. Will he vote TOP? ?
    
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    July 27, 2017 11:09am
- Gabby
  
  They’ll pick up the phone and save their shareholders shitloads.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:36am
- peterwn
  
  In the old days a businessman could book a sleeper on the overnight trains for a day’s business in Wellington. Agreed a business trip to Invercargill required four ‘dead’ days – a day in Wellington and a day on the Lyttelton wharf – Invercargill train each way plus the day in Invercargill. My late father-in-law when going to Otago Uni would spend the Wellington day at the Basin watching the cricket.
  MP’s in the days of yore managed it – the House sat Tuesday pm through to midday Friday and the sitting season was shorter. Ministers could not – they and their families pretty well had to move to Wellington, that is why there were decent Ministerial houses for the Ministers and their families.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:39am
- realityczech
  
  Nonsense. Even Greenpeace’s international program director commutes to work in a Jet, as well as running a fleet of dirty bunker fuel powered boats.
  
  http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/27/greenpeace-loses-credibility-in-the-wake-of-huge-scandals/
  
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  July 27, 2017 12:32pm
BeaB

Can it really be the case that not only did Metiria Turei have flatmates paying rent but she may also have had a partner living with her and her daughter was living with her mother-in-law, Ann Hartley? All of this while she was claiming the DPB!!
She must have been very comfortably off while she sneered at the poor saps who went to work every day to help pay for her lifestyle, law degree and playing at political ‘activism’.
She and the father should both be called to account.
It speaks volumes that both Andrew Little and James Shaw are condoning all of this disgraceful farrago.
So much for any kind of moral leadership from either of them.
Or political nous. They both should have dumped her by now.
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July 27, 2017 9:49am
- noskire
  
  If she was studying, shouldn’t she have been on a student allowance, rather than the DPB? Could be more than just the accommodation allowance she owes us,
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:16am
  - KevOB
    
    This was pre-student allowance. MT got a Training Assistance Allowance which paid all fees and course costs in its time. That gave free education to beneficiaries.
    
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    July 27, 2017 6:28pm
- Gabby
  
  Impossible. Ms Hartley would have apprised the media of that if it were so.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:40am
- waikatogirl
  
  Turei certainly had more than her fair share of the pie while committing fraud. ???
  
  Too large a share of pie Material means less for everyone else!
  
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  July 27, 2017 11:14am
  - VicParking
    
    Seems to me she ate most of the pie
    
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    July 27, 2017 1:09pm
- LisaGinNZ
  
  Greens can’t “dump” her now… she’s on their election posters?
  
  She should stay in Greens… she’s good example of how idiotic their party has truly become…
  
  Sorry if the word “idiotic” offends…
  
  Ok not sorry
  
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  July 27, 2017 3:50pm
oldpark

So it came to pass.The joined at the hip Lie-bour/Green parties have quickly become a party or “school for scoundrels”. Not so long ago Lie-bour were caught illegally importing students,without working visas. It become known as Slavegate. Another of their potential MPs promoted herself as an elected MP,now proven to be a manifest lie.
To cap it all,a few days ago,a self confessed Welfare thief called ME-TU came out of the woodwork and admitted the theft of taxpayer money. The thief ,now known as crooked Materialistic Turei, has given the fingers to the hard working taxpayers,who she stole the money from. Her message seems to be .”I am on $250,ooo per year,the working class can kiss my ass”,”and i have no regrets,get stuffed whingers.”
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July 27, 2017 9:57am
dime

good to see trannies are being kicked out of the US military. what a sick joke it was to say they are up to military service in the first place
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July 27, 2017 10:01am
- Kimbo
  
  Hmm, the practical part of me agrees, especially as it is a publicity stunt.
  
  Nonetheless, when Trump cites the “distraction” argument, it is the same one that was used to justify segregation in the US armed forces before 1947, and the ban on those who were “openly” gay before 2011.
  
  So virtue signalling by both Trump’s opponents and Trump himself? That’s a genuine question to stimulate discussion, btw. Put it this way, America belongs just as much to transsexuals as any other American citizen, so why should they not have the right to defend it it they are able to meet the physical and mental requirements?
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:05am
  - Inandout
    
    Gay men and women generally have bits and pieces according to their gender; no problem there.
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:12am
    - Kimbo
      
      How does that affect a soldier’s, sailor’s or aviator’s ability to fire a weapon?
      
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      July 27, 2017 10:15am
    - Paulus
      
      But the top film “Dunkirk” been condemned by the US media as it does not reflect Women or Blacks.
      But actually factual – yea !
      
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      July 27, 2017 10:37am
      - peterwn
        
        The women were quite busy doing jobs they normally would not do – working in factories producing stuff for the war, helping the codebreakers at Bletchley Park (including operating Colossus) and military support (WAFF’s, WREN’s etc). There would have been more discrimination after the war – women who got married had to leave their jobs, employment limited to subordinate roles (eg ledger machinists or possibly cashiers in banks etc).
        
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        July 27, 2017 10:47am
  - Kimbo
    
    …oh, yes and woman in combat before 1991.
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:14am
    - dime
      
      chicks shouldnt be on the front lines.
      
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      July 27, 2017 10:19am
      - Tauhei Notts
        
        Chicks shouldn’t be on the front lines…………UNLESS
        They are a few days away from the “curse” at which time they are ruthless and merciless combatants.
        
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        July 27, 2017 10:35am
      - RalphT
        
        Ideally no one should be on a front line…
        
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        July 27, 2017 10:56am
      - rangitoto
        
        Dunno. The YPJ chicks have been doing a good job helping to mow down Daesh.
        
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        July 27, 2017 12:26pm
      - UrbanNeocolonialist
        
        Disagree. IDF and other professional armies use women in the front line, they have eyes and brains and guns just like everyone else. Even children can be effective combatants.
        
        But there are some roles they are less suited for – dealing with 3rd world theo-fascistic misogynists in peace keeping roles, activities requiring greater strength and endurance that men have.
        
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        July 27, 2017 1:28pm
      - Postitrote
        
        Chicks don’t have to be on the front lines – there are other military roles around that don’t require you to be rambo.
        
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        July 27, 2017 2:56pm
      - MH
        
        not too sure if the IDF puts women in the front lines, on normal patrols and at checkpts but when the IDF goes a hunting women are not to be seen. One study found that men soldiers put themselves at risk protecting them – sort of socio-biological instincts come out. 3 known fighter pilots does not make a force.
        
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        July 27, 2017 3:48pm
  - VicParking
    
    The point is they join the military and then expect the government to pay for their transgender process.
    Nip and slice, all the counciloring and timeoff fighting as they come to grips with their new appendages.
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:33am
    - Kimbo
      
      OK, so if that is the “point”, then why justify it with the “they are a distraction to other troops” argument? Just cut the subsidy, and tell potential transsexual recruits “on your own dime (not Kiwiblog’s dime! 😉 ) and if you meet the physical, mental and emotional criteria…”
      
      I’ve got to say, I do have doubts about the “emotional” criteria for transsexuals, but if individuals can pass metrics that are reasonable…
      
      Speaking of which, while I gave up Sky and the ~~History~~ Adolf Hitler Channel a number of years ago, I see that the Sandhurst military historian Dr. Lynette Nusbacher (formerly Aryeh Nusbacher) has had a sex change. Hmm. puts new meaning into his (now her) commentary about Alexander the Great’s winning tactic at Gaugamela of taking his cavalry out to the right flank, and then suddenly veering hard left to make a surgical incision targeting the Persian head, King Darius! 😉
      
      https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynette_Nusbacher
      
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      July 27, 2017 10:44am
      - Fletch
        
        The thing is, is that the physical fitness tests have to be lowered to accommodate women. Women are not as physically strong as men – it is a fact. So relying on a woman to do the job of a man puts fellow soldiers at risk in the field of combat.
        
        The Marines have different sets of physical standards for men and women. Men, for example, must be able to do three pull-ups in order to graduate from boot camp and must continue to be able to do them in their annual test for physical strength and combat readiness. When the Marines experimented with holding women to that same standard, more than half of female Marines failed.24
        
        The story behind the sex difference in pull-up ability is purely physical: Men have an advantage because testosterone makes for more lean muscle mass, whereas women have more body fat. For pull-ups, muscle in the back, biceps, triceps, and pectorals—where men tend to carry much of their strength—is essential.
        
        As one Washington Post reporter put it, “Putting physiology, social policy, behavioral theory and military doctrine aside, it appears that for reasons known only to the Maker (in whatever form you may visualize Him or Her), men and women are different.”25
        
        The pull-up is not a random requirement. Upper-body strength is absolutely crucial in combat. Anyone lacking in it puts fellow fighters at risk. The summary of the Marines’ sex-integration study touched on this point, noting two “basic combat tasks”—evacuating casualties and negotiating obstacles—for which upper body strength is essential.
        
        Their report found that “when negotiating the wall obstacle, male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top. During casualty evacuation assessments, there were notable differences in execution times between all-male and gender-integrated groups, except in the case where teams conducted a casualty evacuation as a one-Marine fireman’s carry of another (in which case it was most often a male Marine who “evacuated” the casualty).” Unsurprisingly, the study found that “all-male squads, teams and crews and gender-integrated squads, teams, and crews had a noticeable difference in their performance” of these tasks.26
        
        Add some enemy fire to the mix, and suddenly the inability to do a pull-up has life-and-death consequences.
        
        Nevertheless, female Marines have long been permitted to do a flex-arm hang instead of a pull-up in order to pass the Physical Fitness Test (PFT). They have also been allowed three extra minutes to complete the three-mile run.27
        
        In holding women to lower physical standards, the Marines are only following the other branches of the military. When West Point went coed, nearly two-thirds of female plebes failed the standard physical test, versus five percent of men. And so they created lower standards for women. The same happened at the Air Force Academy.28
        
        But in July of 2016, in the wake of the policy changes to put women in combat and make boot camp coed, the standards were revised down even further. Only this time, instead of simply allowing a lower bar for women, the standard was lowered for everyone. So integrating women into every aspect of the military without any regard for the very real differences between the sexes is not just lowering the standards for women. It’s also dragging down the standards for men.
        
        Sex Scandal: The Drive To Abolish Male and Female, Ashley McGuire
        
        And being that transgender “men” are actually women and you can see that this does not help the military at all.
        
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        July 27, 2017 12:09pm
    - Pharmachick
      
      Total annual transgender health care bill in the US military between $USD 2 and $USD 8.4 million. Erectile dysfunction drugs annual cost to US military $USD84 million. [shrug]
      
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      July 27, 2017 10:52am
      - BananaLlama
        
        Per capita [shrug]
        
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        July 27, 2017 11:02am
      - Pharmachick
        
        If you want to argue per capita, then I assume you are against any drugs that cost more than average for a small group of people. Examples include the new Hepatitis C drug which is absolutely curative but costs ~90,000 for a course and the anti-cancer mAbs that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for a course. Because per capita that represents an over-spend in the health care system.
        
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        July 27, 2017 11:11am
      - BananaLlama
        
        No no no i want to know how much per capita you are the one spouting facts and figures so how much per head.
        
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        July 27, 2017 11:17am
      - Pharmachick
        
        Also, for context a friend of mine had a research grant on prostate cancer from the DOD (i.e. US military) worth $USD 4 million. My shrug is that numbers like 2M and 8M are NOTHING to the US military.
        
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        July 27, 2017 11:20am
      - Pharmachick
        
        Oh right, sorry BananaLlama… latest estimates from RAND corporation are between 1500 and 2500 active military members are transgender in 2016 (they don’t count reservists as their health care is limited).
        
        Total active military service members (not reservists) 1.1 Million and the number of ED cases diagnosed was 108,000 from 2004 – 2013 (so ~10,800/year if averaged). So 8.4M/1500 (most conservative) = $5600 per person per year, whereas 84M/108,00 = $777 per year.
        
        http://www.militarytimes.com/pay-benefits/military-benefits/health-care/2015/02/13/dod-spends-84m-a-year-on-viagra-similar-meds/
        
        http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/26/politics/transgender-military-spending/index.html
        
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        July 27, 2017 11:30am
      - Pharmachick
        
        Oh oops – maths 84M/108,000 – $777 per person. So 7X more per year for TOTAL transgender health care than just erections. Doesn’t seem so far fetched too me.
        
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        July 27, 2017 11:37am
  - holysheet
    
    You lost me at “mental requirements”
    By their very nature, Whateverthefuckyouare…… people have got mental as well as physical problems.
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:42am
- marquess
  
  Trump, of course, has a large history of military service himself, right?
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:08am
  - dime
    
    “Trump, of course, has a large history of military service himself, right?”
    
    imagine if we applied that sort of precident to the labour party? none of those fucks would ever be able to talk about business or the private sector.
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:18am
    - Gabby
      
      Do you even lift bro?
      
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      July 27, 2017 10:45am
    - Gabby
      
      dim’s forgettin he fucking already does that.
      dim’s dementia’s gettin worse.
      
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      July 27, 2017 10:46am
    - rangitoto
      
      We would let them comment on fish and chip shops.
      
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      July 27, 2017 12:27pm
  - Bullion
    
    I saw this the other day, Queen Elizabeth 2 has spent more time in the armed forces than Trump and his entire extended family combined.
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:25am
    - holysheet
      
      And your point is what?
      Go back and read what dime said, you moron.
      
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      July 27, 2017 10:43am
    - Fletch
      
      I saw this the other day, Queen Elizabeth 2 has spent more time in the armed forces than Trump and his entire extended family combined
      
      Fighting?
      
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      July 27, 2017 12:14pm
      - Pharmachick
        
        Her Majesty was a mechanic in the war.
        
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        July 27, 2017 2:13pm
  - Ed Snack
    
    I think about as much as Obama to be fair, and I suspect that Trump is somehow just a little more popular with the troops. Must be racism of course…
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:03pm
- Inandout
  
  This move will make Trump popular in the military who are conservative by nature. The only plus I can see by having sex-confused soldiers in the Middle East, is that the Muslims will run a mile rather than be ‘contaminated’ by their blood. Obama I am sure wanted to fatally weaken the US military, and what better way than by introducing boy- girls.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:10am
  - kowtow
    
    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4072348/fleeing-jihadis-disguise-of-eyeshadow-and-lipstick-foiled-as-he-forgets-beard/
    
    “AN Islamic State militant has been caught fleeing the frontline in the most outlandish female disguise to date – including a full face of make-up”
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:16am
- Huevon
  
  The US military was even picking up the tab for “gender transition related” medical expenses. What a joke the Obama administration was, except the only people laughing were America’s enemies.
  
  If you are so mentally screwed up that you want to change sex, you shouldn’t be anywhere near a battlefield.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:14am
- MCos
  
  “A Rand Corp. study estimated that there are between 2,500 and 7,000 transgender service members on active duty and an additional 1,500 to 4,000 in the reserves.”
  As someone says in this article whether someone is fit to do the job is more important than their gender.
  https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-07-26/the-latest-pentagon-not-aware-of-trump-transgender-decision
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:25am
  - Fletch
    
    Tucker Carlson interviewed a guy trying (and failing) to justify transgenders in the military and citing those Rand statistics –
    
    “This is a political sop to an interest group that the Obama administration was afraid of; nobody called them on it because everybody was too embarrassed and didn’t want to be called a bigot or something – they all just sat there and went “what?” – but nobody said anything. Nobody supports this”
    
    The guy then goes on about the Rand Corporation showing that this will have “minimal impact” on the military.
    
    Tucker: then you just answered my question: it has “minimal impact?” So that’s the standard? No, no. Shouldn’t every decision make it a more effective fighting force for the sake of the country it protects? This does not do that. it wasn’t made with that question in mind. It was made for other reasons.
    
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkQYKFJHxko
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:22pm
- BananaLlama
  
  The U.S military shouldn’t be burdened with the additional medical costs when there is an abundance of fit and able recruits to chose from there are standards both mental and physical that applicants must meet. Trans genders can still serve they are not entitled to get a sex change and/or hormone therapy on the tax payers dime anymore.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:53am
  - MCos
    
    I read elsewhere that far more is spent on treatment of erectile dysfunction problems. The point being you can’t look at these things in isolation. If you object to money being spent on this, what about that, that & that?
    
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    July 27, 2017 11:54am
    - Gabby
      
      Erectile dysfunction? But they’ve got big guns.
      Honestly, what’s the fucking point.
      
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      July 27, 2017 8:52pm
  - BananaLlama
    
    Sure, easy answer, because the Military discriminates otherwise you would have fat fuck airman and wheel chair attack squadrons.
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:05pm
    - waripori
      
      It is all just budget nonsense. There is an omnibus spending bill before the house which includes funding for the Military and Trumps wall. A GOP rep addded an amendment which called for cessation of funding for gender reassignments by the Military but enough Republicans voted with the Dems to defeat the whole thing. The GoP asked the Whitehouse for help and , probably a bit worried about his Wall, Trump tweeted a proclamation about getting Transgender soldiers out of the Military altogether.
      Apparently did not let Mattis know he was going to do it. Not sure if this is something Trump can do be executive order or not.
      
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      July 27, 2017 12:29pm
- Nermal
  
  I have no problem with other people’s sexual preferences. But that stops the moment that they demand special treatment. Do it in your own time at your own cost. End of story.
  
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  July 27, 2017 1:05pm
Maggy Wassilieff

Urgent investigation of Wellington City Council
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/95124878
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July 27, 2017 10:07am
- Inandout
  
  Another council is under investigation up the line a bit.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:16am
- oldpark
  
  Best news i have heard since the too sweet to be wholesome Justin Lester, the perennial spender of ratepayers money,and the other stand in goody two shoes,masquerading as the deputy mayor Eagle ,when all the time electioneering for a safe Liebour Seat in Wellington. Both are good at spinning the bullshit,and committing Wellington Ratepayers to large sums of spending,without by your leave, an urgent investigation,is long overdue.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:28am
  - Gabby
    
    It’ll be down to yet another sneaky jumped up overpaid bloated town clerk who calls himself a see ee oh oldfart.
    
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    July 27, 2017 11:04am
wiseowl

How many New Zealand MP’s are dual citizens?
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July 27, 2017 10:12am
- Inandout
  
  For a moment I read ‘duel’.
  
  http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/03/05/man-knowledge-an-affair-of-honor-the-duel/
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:18am
  - BeaB
    
    Why does it matter?
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:39am
    - wiseowl
      
      It would be interesting to know.
      The debate in Australia over MP’s with dual citizenship , has been very interesting.
      I think New Zealanders should know and maybe it is time to have a look at our requirements for standing for public office.
      
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      July 27, 2017 12:38pm
      - sooty
        
        I would say there is some green ones.
        
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        July 27, 2017 12:51pm
      - VicParking
        
        Look we evan let anyone just visiting NZ to vote, trying to get that NZ residents can stand for office …….
        
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        July 27, 2017 1:14pm
      - MCos
        
        Wrong
        To register to vote in NZ you must either be a citizen or permanent resident who has lived here continuously for a twelve month period at some point.
        Peter Thiel can’t register to vote.
        
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        July 27, 2017 2:59pm
Maggy Wassilieff

Winston Peters on the Me Tu scambo

“I leave moral and ethical judgements to the most powerful group in this country, who are the epitome of morals and ethics – the New Zealand media.”
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/335909/greens-potential-partners-keep-distance-from-turei-controversy
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July 27, 2017 10:13am
- Kimbo
  
  Yes. And
  
  New Zealand First leader Winston Peters also wouldn’t be drawn on whether he’d work in a Cabinet with Mrs Turei.
  
  Someone better tell Chuck Bird before he initiates his citizen’s arrest of the “fraudster Turei”, as it would seem Peters may just need her and the Greens to secure…the biggest bauble of all! 😉
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:20am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    Go back and look what Winston said in my quote….
    
    The man is a GENIUS.
    
    Why don’t you and Chuck take it outside?
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:25am
    - Kimbo
      
      It may mean me having to follow him down the Pike River Mine. No thanks… 😉
      
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      July 27, 2017 10:55am
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        Don’t go there!
        
        Remember that female geologist warned her husband not to take a job at Pike Mine.
        She knew it was a ticking time bomb.
        
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        July 27, 2017 11:35am
      - GoVege
        
        I do wish some of these experts would make an anonymous call to the papers about their worries.
        Might save a few lives.
        
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        July 27, 2017 12:11pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        @GoVege
        
        IIRC.. she gave her expert opinion about the design of the mine… and was ignored.
        
        http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5282258/Multiple-warnings-about-Pike-River-mines-safety-risks
        
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        July 27, 2017 12:23pm
    - GoVege
      
      Maggie : thanks for the article. Makes you wonder how the company/management avoided manslaughter convictions.
      Obviously the information needed to be known by the wider community.
      What the 4th/5th estate are for.
      
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      July 27, 2017 11:15pm
  - MCos
    
    “New Zealand First leader Winston Peters also wouldn’t be drawn on . . . . ”
    Refer to the appendix for a comprehensive list
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:02pm
  - Chuck Bird
    
    I have more respect for Turei than you in many ways. She is a leave got the courage to not hide behind a alias.
    
    The action I am taking is because Turei should not be in Parliament and nothing to do with NZF.
    
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    July 27, 2017 2:28pm
    - nasska
      
      …..” She is a leave got the courage to not hide behind a alias”…..
      
      Sometime when you’ve got a few minutes spare please tell us how you can become a MP using a pseudonym.
      
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      July 27, 2017 5:10pm
- AgentBallSack
  
  I leave moral and ethical judgements to the most powerful group in this country, who are the epitome of morals and ethics – the New Zealand media
  
  This surely has to be a pisstake
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:25am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    Yes, of course it is….
    
    Silly old media, thinking that Winnie was going to divulge some dirt on Me Tu.
    
    The cunning old fox is watching the chooks running about…. he’ll bide his time.
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:34am
  - Tauhei Notts
    
    Of course it is a pisstake, but it might be one of the most clever pisstakes in recent New Zealand history.
    I think it ranks alongside David Lange’s quip after meeting with Margaret Thatcher when he said;
    “it was like being at a Nuremburg rally”
    
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    July 27, 2017 10:43am
    - rangitoto
      
      Hey. Maggie was my local MP when I lived in the UK for a couple of year. Best PM of all time. French poodle Lange not so much.
      
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      July 27, 2017 12:35pm
      - Paulus
        
        I believe that Michael Cullen came from her constituency too.
        
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        July 27, 2017 1:37pm
Bullion

Why is National so in love with roads when it doesn’t make sense?
https://thespinoff.co.nz/auckland/27-07-2017/finally-revealed-report-shows-rail-destroys-roading-for-auckland-freight/
“The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) uses a “Multi Criteria Analysis” (MCA) to assess funding projects.

Building a Third and Fourth Main together (P8 in the table), with a price tag of $200 million, came out first along all criteria lines. Building the Third Main on its own (P9), at a cost of $65 million, was second. Both were well ahead of any other options.

Shifting more freight by road (P3 in the table), which would require upgrading the Southern Motorway, came out worst.”
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July 27, 2017 10:20am
- Gabby
  
  Slimy Britches not quick enough to squish that.
  
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  July 27, 2017 10:52am
- Gruffydd
  
  NZ transport is heavily biased towards rail.
  
  Rail works well in bulk freight.
  Our network is Narrow gauge you can not ship containers on most lines.
  
  The extra handling involved with rail increases the risk of damage and harder to assign culpability.
  
  Rail Is fixed.
  It has little no flexibility to cope with changes in demographics or evolving technology.
  Electric road freight is at most a decade away.
  NZ having abundant renewable energy is poised to benefit from the switch to low carbon transport.
  
  Roads have benefits other than the direct finical implications. In the event of a major natural disaster rail is nearly always more compromised.
  We also need alternate ways to bypass obstruction or lesson the likely hood of one happening .
  Three or four times lately I have been delayed by an accident in the dome valley.
  This necessitates a detour down highway sixteen adding over an hour to the journey and many miles.
  Shit happens.
  It costs many millions of dollars every time the big rigs using Highway 1 are forced into the same detour.
  
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  July 27, 2017 11:06am
  - Jack5
    
    If the rail line to Whangarei were extended a short distance to Marsden Point, it could allow a container port to rail containers to an “inland port” in West Auckland. That might allow Aucklanders to get back their beautiful harbour.
    
    The rail gauge wouldn’t be a problem, but millions would have to be spent widening tunnels en route.
    
    Containers move up and down the South Island by rail.
    
    Double handling doesn’t seem to be a problem for the inland ports being set up by port companies such as “Port of Tauranga”.
    
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    July 27, 2017 11:41am
    - Gruffydd
      
      The rail gauge wouldn’t be a problem, but mbillions .
      
      You would need to keep the network open this means you must duplicate the parts being upgraded.
      This would necessitate huge civil engineering works to cut, tunnel and realign the rails.
      Once the planed Wellsford up grade has been completed only the south side of the brynderwyns needs to be upgraded for highway1 AK to Whangarei..
      
      I was going to add that consulted fright made up of small shipments like courier company’s stock and trade can be successfully moved at a good rate Providing both depots are at a rail terminus.
      
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      July 27, 2017 12:00pm
  - Ed Snack
    
    Not sure that there are any remaining railway lines in NZ that cannot accommodate containers, though I could be wrong. I believe that this was the case some time ago but since then all tunnels and bridges have been widened and/or given additional height clearance to enable containers to pass.
    
    Even the currently unused Napier to Gisborne line (and back as it’s a dead end) was container capable I believe, something done not that long before the washout closed the line. It involved lowering the railbed through 3-4 tunnels to provide sufficient clearance.
    
    Where I work we use rail from the one site where we have a rail-siding and for direct to port transfers it is cheaper than road, but it is only for non-urgent loads as there’s only 1-2 pickups a day.
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:13pm
    - Gruffydd
      
      Yip I stand corrected Ed .http://www.kiwirailfreight.co.nz/container-types.aspx
      They give coverage for 40′ boxes as nation wide.
      
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      July 27, 2017 12:32pm
  - rangitoto
    
    My goodness. Gruffyd talking major sense.
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:40pm
  - Bullion
    
    The business case in this instance doesn’t stack up for roads – FAR more expensive (more than 10 times more expensive) and creates other issues such as putting freight on roads getting in the way of other road users when this could be put onto a much cheaper option of a specific rail line, which also would improve rail as a public transport option.
    
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    July 27, 2017 2:03pm
VicParking

Legalise real pot so that false pot stops killing people. Five years ago those same people were saying how evil marijuana was.
The logic is the same as: Ban 303’s but .22’s are ok cause they only maim and hardly ever kill.
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July 27, 2017 10:40am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  I just don’t get what is going on here..
  
  If a crazed gunman/terrorist had picked off 8 victims and wounded numerous others in Auckland over the last month, wouldn’t there be an all-out hunt by cops and military to locate the killer?
  
  But here we have one or more poisoners let loose on the dopey ones, and it all seems like business as usual.
  Someone/or some group is responsible for contaminating dried plant material with a lethal poison….. they are the killers.
  
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  July 27, 2017 12:01pm
  - waikatogirl
    
    I was discussing the same thing with hubby this morning. Apparently they are spraying herbs from the supermarket with known deadly poisons and selling it for pure profit and without any consideration for human life. Sounds like murder to me. Hubby reckoned they couldn’t prove intent so it would be manslaughter, but surely after the first couple of deaths were reported the ‘drug’ manufacturers would have stopped selling their death poison. Definitely sounds like mass murder!
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:34pm
Keeping Stock

I am extremely disappointed with Green co-leader James Shaw. I had the opportunity to meet him last year, and came away with the impression that he was someone who could neutralise the looney fringe of the Green Party.

Clearly, he has failed in that. This is what he had to say yesterday about Metiria Turei and the benefit fraud against the taxpayer she has publicly admitted:

Turei’s co-leader James Shaw said he was proud of Turei for coming forwards.

“We actually treat poor people in this country terribly, and the law is an ass, in this case,” Shaw said.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/95110555/metiria-turei-campaigned-for-political-parties-but-didnt-work-while-committing-benefit-fraud

The law, Mr Shaw, may be “an ass”, but it is still the law. And Ms Turei’s deceit was not just a one-day lapse, but rather was a deliberate and sustained attempt to rort the taxpayer, via WINZ. Yet Shaw seems to be completely comfortable to sit alongside a woman who has admitted defrauding the taxpayer.

Contrast that however with his attitude towards Todd Barclay; this from the NZ Herald of 21 June, barely a month ago:

Shaw said Barclay should have quit immediately. “I couldn’t see how he could possibly stay on as a Member of Parliament given what we know and what has come out.”

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11880280

So let’s get this straight. James Shaw can’t “how he could possibly stay on as a Member of Parliament given what we know and what has come out”, despite the fact that Barclay has already been investigated by the Police once, with a decision taken not to prosecute. Barclay, of course, is under investigation again, but has yet to be prosecuted or convicted, and is entitled to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

Now Ms Turei is in exactly the same situation; she is entitled to the presumption of innocence. However she herself publicly admitted ripping off the taxpayer over a prolonged period, and her subsequent statements show no remorse whatsoever. But James Shaw is proud of Turei, whilst he wants Barclay ousted from Parliament.

I’m sorry Mr Shaw. This is a huge fail on your part, and the double standards and hypocrisy you apply are frankly nauseating. I thought you were above that, but clearly you’re as thoroughly invested in the socialist side of your party as your other MP’s.
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July 27, 2017 10:40am
- RalphT
  
  Hypocrisy from a Green? I’m shocked; surely it can’t be true!
  
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  July 27, 2017 11:00am
  - Keeping Stock
    
    I genuinely thought Shaw was better than that.
    
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    July 27, 2017 11:14am
    - Happychappy
      
      KS : I reckon Turei and the other female MP’s looked at the support they got from the media over the walk out of Parliament over I think it was the abuse comment from John Key and thought this strategy would grab them all the headlines. But this time they weren’t prepare to just say it once they wanted to make a issue of the fact and create a swell of descent against National and got greedy and got hit by a tidal wave of descent aimed at them selves.
      
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      July 27, 2017 12:13pm
- BeaB
  
  And Barclay’s offence was a minor misdemeanor. He handled it badly but he was inexperienced and obviously lacked a good mentor. With some guidance he could have grown into a good MP and his electorate re-selected him.
  Metiria Turei has been an MP for something like 15 years!
  What are her excuses apart from parading as a modern-day Joan of Arc, crusading for the poor and downtrodden subsisting on the meagre generosity of their taxpaying neighbours?
  
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  July 27, 2017 11:13am
  - Keeping Stock
    
    Barclay handled the situation of a staff member acting against him incredibly badly. He made a one-off decision that will haunt him for many years.
    
    Turei on the other hand has admitted a deliberate and sustained fraud against the taxpayer. She is now being investigated by WINZ, and if it is good enough for Shaw to demand that Barclay stand down, then likewise we can demand the same standard be applied to the Green Party co-leader.
    
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    July 27, 2017 11:22am
    - GoVege
      
      You dudes just don’t get it..
      Metiria was just doing what has been normal behaviour for young mums without regular employment or a dependable man for decades now.
      I have gotten to know many of them. They go on the DPB and stay on it because the males seldom stick around. Saves the hassle and embarrassment of continually reapplying. Don’t place all the blame on the mums.
      Hold the useless excuses for fathers to account.
      The mum’s job is to look after the kids. .the dad’s is to work to support them .
      
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      July 27, 2017 12:03pm
      - GoVege
        
        Like Cunliffe tried to say before he was howled down, males need to man up and be proper fathers.
        Many men face a lonely old age ..if they make it to old age…by abandoning their wives and kids.
        Mr Govege has been an exemplary dad.
        Now he is reaping the rewards by his grateful kids wining and dining and taking him on holidays.
        Then there are selfish jerks who abandoned their families that I know.
        When they arrive in town for a visit, nobody wants to know.
        One Maori neighbour of mine even took out a protection order against her father when he was due to be released from jail.
        Serves the brute right.
        
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        July 27, 2017 1:54pm
    - Gabby
      
      Toddger stacking local selection meetings with his tribe probably wasn’t brilliant either, so that’s a couple of dopey decisions.
      Maybe he had bad advice.
      
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      July 27, 2017 7:00pm
  - GoVege
    
    She was only on the benny for a few years!!
    Some women have been on it for decades.
    One was telling me once of a woman she knew who got married and was still on it!
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:09pm
- Captain Mainwaring
  
  Shaw is siding with Turei for the sole purpose of stopping the green party from splitting down the middle before the election. The last week of September is scheduled for a bloodbath.
  
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  July 27, 2017 11:24am
- VicParking
  
  Vote GREENS, woops sorry GREEDS
  
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  July 27, 2017 1:19pm
Manolo

It is someone else’s fault, not mine, claims crooked Hillary:
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/343755-clinton-book-to-double-down-on-russia-comey-message

Hillary Clinton’s upcoming book will double down on Russia’s interference and James Comey’s involvement in her stunning election defeat, according to sources familiar with the memoir.
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July 27, 2017 10:45am
peterwn

Winnie is up to his old tricks again. Seems merchant banks would dearly love to be involved in a privatisation of Transpower and produce unsolicited papers and reports on this in the hope of inducing the Government to privatise or partially privatise it. So like the alleged Huka Falls lodge sale, he seems to be telling the oldies that Transpower privatisation is pretty well a ‘done thing’. He must be running out of things to say to the oldies since his pronouncement is pretty well lost in the current political noise.
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July 27, 2017 10:56am
Jack5

The Wellington bureaucrats of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is hell bent in overcoming some Southlanders’ reservations about the availability of jobs for immigrants and refugees that it and the Department of Immigration want to push into the region.

Today, Fairfax Media’s Southland Times reports MBIE will back the Invercargill “i-SITE ” to try to persuade visitors to the region to migrate to it. The “Crown entity,” Tourism New Zealand runs 80 “i-SITE” information centres around the country. So now three central government organisations are in the drive to “re-educate” Southlanders.

The propaganda campaign was at its most ludicrous last Saturday, when the whole front page of the Southland Times was devoted to the benefits of multiculturism. This while reports of the storms and floods battering southern New Zealand were relegated to page four.

The media campaign continues. Yesterday, Wednesday, a Southland Times multiculturism plug included this:

The new Southland Multicultural Council president, Meggy Bartlett-McBride, says she is working hard to raise awareness of diversity in Southland.

At least she’s not praising “multiculturism”.

Multicultural councils have been set up in the regions under the drive of the Human Resources Commission’s race-complaints division. A well known NZ Marxist has been associated with the campaign.

By coincidence, the ideology of multiculturism derives from neo-Marxist academics in Europe.
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July 27, 2017 10:59am
- howitis
  
  Keep up the good fight Jack.
  
  I sometimes holiday with rellies in Southland. The ones I have spoken to are not too keen on this. Mayor Tim is not on board with the (National Govt-lead) push.
  They already have a lot of Filipino people who have come to work. They are from a predominantly catholic country. I’m not saying catholic is good but the people I met are good and they are not mooslem. I was at a diner there last year and was talking to a Filipino guy who was there with his family. He loved it. His nine year old boy loved the sporting opportunities there and it was clear he was excelling.
  The Filipino integration is a natural and mutually beneficial situation.
  Dumping scum that don’t belong is not.
  
  This is the sort of crap they have to put up with:-
  http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/92151885/immigration-advocates-urge-southern-welcome-for-invercargill-refugees
  
  ….University of Otago foundation chair of Peace and Conflict Studies Professor Kevin Clements said refugees, like all immigrants, had a positive contribution to make.
  “Although they enjoy a different immigration status to regular immigrants, refugees are no different in that they help create a cosmopolitan and pluralistic society by bringing their food, culture and work patterns with them to New Zealand. These are things we can learn from for the good,” he said……
  
  AirNZ could only dream up such an orchestrated litany of lies.
  
  Apart from the stupid title from a scabby University full of Marxist scum he spouts rubbish.
  Let the refugees go to Dunedin. It is already a shithole.
  
  Immigrants require massive financial outlay (taxpayers money) that sometime does not pay off. In this political correctness environment it is hidden from view that of the Somali rubbish we brought in during 1990s, 80% were not working after 5 years. They often do not integrate, have low IQs and don’t understand community, greater good, or work ethic. The low IQ of africans does not help this progress either. Pop down to Stoddard Rd for a look sometime.
  
  The Southland hospital has already been defunded because it was forcibly merged with the many-times failed Otago DHB.
  Don’t ruin Invercargill which is the service area of a very strong economic powerhouse.
  Let Dunedin have them and the Otago university marxists can entertain them all they like.
  
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  July 27, 2017 12:26pm
  - Swifty
    
    I’ve had a bit to do with the Somali community around Stoddard Rd over the last 10 years. I’ve seen some of them at quite close quarters, and have had two run ins and witnessed a third.
    
    I believe a good proportion of the men are quite dangerous – the young routinely carry knives and get about in packs often late at night and are quick to anger. A large proportion of the men seem to have no employment whatsoever, and they litter and foul the shopfronts and streets – the cause of one run in.
    
    And the way the blokes look at my teenage daughter as we jog or walk past leaves you cold…..
    
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    July 27, 2017 2:44pm
UpandComer

Trippy Traps can no longer get public funding for their hormone treatment and psychiatrists in the US military. This is awful, just awful. They were so close to converging the last unconverged institution in the United States, and then that mean white man took it all away. Just awful.
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July 27, 2017 11:03am
Jack5

Crazed loner shoots three people in Northland.

Has anyone heard from Griff?
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July 27, 2017 11:07am
- Gruffydd
  
  If you could read at a level past underlining letters with your finger and mouthing the syllables, Jack5 ,you would have already noted I have commented this morning.
  I suggest.
  http://www.readingsoft.com/course/new-zealand.html
  To get up to speed.
  You never know it may even expand your horizon beyond the tits and celebrity gossip in the Daily Fail.
  
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  July 27, 2017 11:24am
  - Jack5
    
    Griff: wow, great, you’re still here!
    
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    July 27, 2017 11:31am
    - starboard
      
      Griffs sitting in his yurt somewhere in the far north stoned, tin-hat securely fastened watching Al Gore re-runs.
      
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      July 27, 2017 1:42pm
      - Gruffydd
        
        Sawatdi khrap Story.
        I know some of the Thai restaurant community in Auckland .
        I fondly remember many merry hours drinking whisky and sampling what the chiefs ate after hours.
        
        Wonderful people .
        A culture where refusing their generosity is considered an insult.
        You can see why a lovely Thai maiden and the cheap cost of living is an attraction for a sad lonely old man.
        
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        July 27, 2017 2:22pm
      - starboard
        
        That’s a bit harsh Griff, I wouldn’t call you sad and lonely..bewildered maybe, but not sad and lonely.
        
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        July 27, 2017 2:29pm
howitis

Yesterday I watched some TV3 brekky.
Duncan Garner went on several times about how his wife quit her reasonably well paid job as an Executive Assistant to become a teacher’s Aide.
This has resulted in her earning one third the money (1/3) she could earn as an EA but she likes the teacher’s aide role. It is fun.

She could do this because Garner is earning big money on his TV gig.

Can this be raised next time women start bleating about the pay gap and how women earn less than men?
If you voluntarily step down from the hard yakka for a much lower paid ‘fun’ job don’t bleat about gender pay gap….ever!!

An extension of this is when there is a cry for more women on Boards. My view is that there are some truly excellent women on company Boards in NZ and they are there on merit.
This precludes anyone – male or female – from being on boards simply because they were an MP and ‘connected’. There is too much muck to uncover if we go there.
The women who are there on merit and ability today and in recent times would have their achievement notably diluted because there is a quota to fill. This a soft cock trend in Scandinavian countries. Let it not happen here.
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July 27, 2017 11:22am
Manolo

A bob on each side. Who would trust him?
http://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/labour-unelectable-would-be-disastrous-for-nz-dunne/ar-AAoSvAA?li=BBqdg4K&ocid=mailsignout

In a fiery condemnation of Andrew Little’s Labour, Mr Dunne has branded the party “unelectable” and said any Government they’re a part of, even with United Future on side, would be “disastrous”.
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July 27, 2017 11:36am
cha

Where actual war fighters troll the draft dodging chickenhawk who called dating his personal Vietnam.

As an @RoyalNavy_LGBT champion and senior warfighter I am so glad we are not going this way https://t.co/S8ZI4NjpfQ— Alex Burton (@RAdmAlexBurton) July 26, 2017

So proud of our Transgender personnel. They bring #Diversity to our @RoyalNavy and I will always support their desire to serve their country https://t.co/PSLAEy6laR— Second Sea Lord (@VAdmJWoodcock) July 26, 2017
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July 27, 2017 11:44am
- Andrei
  
  https://youtu.be/-Ne1pvNPuGE
  
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  July 27, 2017 11:55am
  - cha
    
    Yup, Iran doesn’t do shit like this.
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:08pm
    - Ed Snack
      
      Of course not, they just kill them by stoning or other humane methods. And report that they haven’t done anything like that at all and idiots believe them.
      
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      July 27, 2017 12:18pm
      - Morrissey
        
        You know nothing. Why are you commentating?
        
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        July 27, 2017 12:25pm
- BananaLlama
  
  lol Woodcock AHAHAHA
  
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  July 27, 2017 11:55am
Morrissey

“Baaaaaa-a-a-a-aaa.”

More humbug from National: its “candidate” in Ohariu is providing a lead for his flock by vowing to vote for Peter Dunne….
https://bretthudson.national.org.nz/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_0mDkN-TB4
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July 27, 2017 11:46am
- Jack5
  
  How are the poles going for Possum Dunne. Will he still be up them?
  
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  July 27, 2017 11:50am
Morrissey

A couple of Latin versions of Toby Keith
bark out their hatred of democracy.

You’ve probably heard that Spanish pop record “Despacito” over the last few weeks, by a couple of Puerto Ricans called Daddy Yankee and Luis Fonsi. It’s the most popular piece of Latin nonsense since the gorgeous “Ketchup” song of fifteen years ago—indeed it’s now the most played song ever, in any language.

Among those who have heard it are supporters of the democratic government in Venezuela. One of them had the inspired idea of doing away with the inane original lyrics and turning it into an anthem of hope and support for democratic values…

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/remix-of-despacito-from-venezuela-s-president-nicolas-maduro-1008281667983

Great idea, right? Improving a piece of dreck, recycling a piece of meretricious rubbish like “Despacito” is part of a timeless and honored tradition.

Sadly, however, the perpetrators of the original were not happy. Both Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee have unleashed blimpish and confused outbursts against the democratic Venezuelan government: “Your dictatorial regime is a joke,” claimed Fonsi—or was it Daddy Yankee?—and the other one (Fonsi? Daddy Yankee?) claimed that “the Venezuelan people are crying out for their freedom.”

So what motivated these two Puerto Rican pop-putzes to indulge in the most absurd display of bewilderment since Jared Leto and Kevin Spacey declaimed at an awards ceremony? Well, just have a look at Daddy Yankee’s murky past: he’s a self-declared “Christian”, and a Republican, and voted for John McCain in 2008. You can be sure he’s a Rump supporter as well. He hates democracy…..

http://hollowverse.com/daddy-yankee/

Luis Fonsi doesn’t seem to have any ideas about anything. I’m pretty sure all the energy of this anti-democracy rant came from Daddy Yankee, and that Fonsi just followed his lead.

There are many thoughtful and well informed Puerto Rican commentators, such as Juan González, Ululy Martinez and Oscar Lopez Rivera. However, as is so often the case, the Puerto Ricans getting nearly all the publicity at the moment are—thanks to the political choices of the media—two unfeasibly ignorant, lazy, and stupid ones.
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July 27, 2017 11:48am
- Shawn Herles
  
  “and voted for John McCain in 2008”
  
  Followed by: “He hates democracy…..”
  
  Hmmmmm…… 🙂
  
  “he’s a self-declared “Christian”, and a Republican”
  
  OH MY GOD! Quick, alert the mainstream media and the SPLC!!!!
  
  “supporters of the democratic government in Venezuela”
  
  Oh dear…… Seriously?
  
  ‘Chavez established a frightening, repressive form of fake democracy. All signs indicate that his successors will pick up where he left off.’
  
  https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/venezuelas-upcoming-election-wont-be-any-fairer-than-the-last-one/274881/
  
  ” and voted for John McCain in 2008. You can be sure he’s a Rump supporter as well.”
  
  No, you can’t. Especially if he’s a McCain fan. McCain hates Trump because he does not want to start a nuclear war with Russia, and he and Trump come from two radically different wings of the party which are engaged in an internal civil war.
  
  Google Paleoconservatism vs Neoconservatism.
  
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  July 27, 2017 12:03pm
  - Morrissey
    
    Google Paleoconservatism vs Neoconservatism.
    
    You mean, google “bewildered” vs. “fascist”.
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:28pm
    - Shawn Herles
      
      Oh dear…. your not related to Yoza are you?
      
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      July 27, 2017 4:11pm
- mandk
  
  You posted this on The Standard yesterday, Morrissey, and no one over there bought it either.
  
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  July 27, 2017 12:17pm
  - Morrissey
    
    I posted it here yesterday too, with a Spanish title. I’ve reposted it over there as well, with a nifty new English heading, and…well, let’s see if it gets a bite at The Standard as it’s obviously done on this excellent forum. (Ten bites here as of 12:29 p.m.)
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:27pm
publicwatchdog

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
WHISTLE-BLOWER ALERT!

How genuine is Transparency International in fighting corruption?

Seen THIS?

https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/transparency-international-strips-us-affiliate-of-accreditation/

Transparency International Strips United States Affiliate of Accreditation

By Editor Filed in News January 19th, 2017 @ 1:52 pm

The Berlin-based anti-corruption organization Transparency International has stripped its US affiliate — Transparency International USA — of its accreditation.

Transparency International USA appealed the decision, but last week the appeal was denied by Berlin.

It is unclear whether Transparency International USA will continue to operate and if so under what name.

Disaccredited affiliates are no longer permitted to use Transparency International’s name or logo.

Claudia Dumas, Transparency International USA’s President and CEO, did not return calls seeking comment.

Transparency International USA joins the likes of Transparency Croatia in having its credentials stripped.

The Washington, D.C. based Transparency International USA identifies itself as “a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening integrity and combating corruption in the United States and internationally.”

But increasingly it has been seen in the United States as a corporate front group, funded by multinational corporations — the same multinationals that corrupt the U.S. political system.

Its million dollar a year budget was sustained by contributions from Bechtel Corporation, Deloitte, Google, Pfizer ($50,000 or more), Citigroup, ExxonMobil, Fluor, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Marsh & McLennan, PepsiCo, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Raytheon, Realogy, Tyco ($25,000–$49,999), and Freeport-McMoRan and Johnson & Johnson (up to $24,999).

It yearly gives its annual corporate leadership award to one of its big corporate funders. Last year the award went to Bechtel.

Its board of directors is dominated by corporate lawyers, many of whom defend companies from charges of foreign bribery.

The board includes Alan Larson of Covington & Burling, Lanny Breuer, a partner at Covington & Burling, Peter Clark, a partner at Cadwalader, Brackett Denniston, senior counsel at Goodwin, Lucinda Low, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson, Mark Mendelsohn, a partner at Paul Weiss, Steven Tyrrell a partner at Weil Gotshal, and Michael Bailey general counsel of Bechtel.

In a 2015 interview with Corporate Crime Reporter, Sarah Chayes, author of Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, was critical of Transparency International USA’s failure to tackle corruption in the United States — what she identified as a system of “legalized bribery.”

Chayes says that there are four or five parties in the United States — Wall Street, the health industry, the energy industry and the military industrial complex — that have wrested the laws to serve themselves.

“What is most dangerous is the way that those groups of people have managed to shape the legal environment in ways that suit them, including campaign finance, which allows essentially for legalized bribery in this country,” Chayes said.

“Transparency International chapters are supposed to focus on the countries in which they are resident,” Chayes said.

“Transparency International Columbia works on corruption in Columbia.

But Transparency International USA is constantly focused on corruption in Third World countries.

It’s ridiculous.

You would have thought that Transparency International USA would have been at the forefront of ensuring that the criminal bankers that gave us the financial collapse in 2008 would be criminally prosecuted.

And maybe Transparency USA should have investigated the relationship between the Treasury Department and the banking sector.

But I didn’t see any of that.”

According to Transparency International’s accreditation policy — “full accredited national chapters pass through a review process every three years, aimed at ensuring continuous compliance with our standards and strengthening the work of the chapters.”

“In instances where a chapter’s performance continually falls short of the standards, the chapter may voluntarily withdraw or face disaccreditation or suspension from the movement.”

Last year, Transparency International stripped its Croatian affiliate because “TI Croatia showed little engagement with other national advocacy organizations, TI Croatia had not raised sufficient financial resources, and the quality and impact-level of TI Croatia activities was not satisfactory.”

Transparency has yet to issue a statement as to why Transparency International USA was stripped of its credentials.

The parent organization itself has come under criticism for accepting millions of dollars from companies that have engaged in bribery.

Siemens, which donated $3 million to Transparency International in 2014, pled guilty in 2008 to bribery charges and paid more than $1.6 billion in penalties.

Siemens was implicated in corruption in Greece, Norway, Iraq, Vietnam, Italy, Israel, Argentina, Venezuela, China and Russia.

Transparency International’s policy forbids accepting money from corrupt companies.

_________________________

Penny Bright

‘Anti-privatisation / anti-corruption campaigner.’

2017 Independent candidate for Tamaki.

(Exposing the $1.6 BILLION Tamaki ‘Regeneration’ – GENTRIFICATION $CAM.)
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July 27, 2017 11:54am
- Captain Mainwaring
  
  Penny, have you instigated a corruption investigation against Auckland Council for allowing a rates-dodger to live off the goodwill of other ratepayers?
  There is something very corrupt about this.
  
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  July 27, 2017 12:06pm
- Steve (North Shore)
  
  See?
  I Spray and Walk Away
  Rubbish stays
  I walk away
  
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  July 27, 2017 12:20pm
- Keeping Stock
  
  Care to give us your opinion of a senior Member of Parliament admitting to fraud against the taxpayer Penny?
  
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  July 27, 2017 12:26pm
  - Biscuit
    
    Penny? Bad mouth a fellow ‘activist’? Pigs wouldn’t just fly, they’d moon-land!
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:28pm
  - stigie
    
    Don’t be silly KS, you know it’s different when the left do it, so Penny’s not interested !~
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:49pm
pdm

An admission of guilt.

I have just been out doing a few chores around Hastings and see the unlikeable airhead standing for the Tukituki Electorate for Labour has changed her signs – they now say:

FOR LOCAL MP.

By her own actions Anna Lorck admits her guilt!!!
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July 27, 2017 12:06pm
Ed Snack

pdm, it reads (I believe) “For A Local MP”. Like Lawrence Yule isn’t a local…
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July 27, 2017 12:21pm
- wiseowl
  
  It’s a dig at him living in Napier.
  
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  July 27, 2017 3:46pm
Fletch

Rolling Stone hits a new low with their latest cover and story “Justin Trudeau: Why Can’t He Be Our President?”. It’s so bad even liberals are calling them out on it.

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/890214575970418688
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July 27, 2017 12:30pm
- Kimbo
  
  Yeah, but be fair – Americans were also saying that about Justin’s dad when they had Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter as Presidents! 😉
  
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  July 27, 2017 12:32pm
  - Fletch
    
    As Ben Stein points out, Nixon was actually a very good president.
    
    http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/04/opinion/stein-nixon-60s/index.html
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:38pm
    - cha
      
      Nixon was actually a very good president.
      
      I guess. if you think deliberately spiking peace talks, extending a war and causing thousands of needless casualties, for political advantage isn’t a reprehensible thing to do.
      
      http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668
      
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      July 27, 2017 12:50pm
    - Kimbo
      
      Nixon was actually a very good president.
      
      Not how many non-Silent Majority Americans saw it, but yes. On balance, and despite Nixon’s ineptitude (rather than alleged corruption) in Watergate, no argument from me! I’m the Kiwiblog representative of Nixon’s, and also Rob Muldoon’s legacy-revision committee! 😉
      
      Both were moderate social conservatives who, by history, were fated to become the face of the supposed totalitarian “system” at a time of social change.
      
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      July 27, 2017 12:51pm
  - Southern Raider
    
    Carter was a cluster fuck
    
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    July 27, 2017 12:46pm
    - Kimbo
      
      Sorry, this is a place of General Debate, so for that to work you have to post something that someone, anyone would disagree with! 😉
      
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      July 27, 2017 1:00pm
    - Morrissey
      
      Correct, Southern Raider: Carter WAS a cluster fuck. He was a typical U.S. president, crushing democracy, supporting tyrants and speaking with a forked tongue. In the years since, however, he has become a genuine man of conscience, and he speaks out for the oppressed.
      
      http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Palestine-Peace-Not-Apartheid/Jimmy-Carter/9780743285032
      
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      July 27, 2017 1:07pm
      - Shawn Herles
        
        “he has become a genuine man of anti-Semitic conscience, and he speaks out for the Arab war against Jews.”
        
        There, fixed it for you. 🙂
        
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        July 27, 2017 4:07pm
      - Morrissey
        
        Shawn, as I said to poor old “Ed Snack” at 12:25 today, you know nothing. Which raises the question: why are you commentating?
        
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        July 27, 2017 8:15pm
pdm

Thanks Ed – I did a few things between seeing the signs and coming home.
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July 27, 2017 12:33pm
Southern Raider

Anyone else noticed Jacinda has billboards up in Auckland Central (with a Mt Albert tick box) next to separate billboards for the actual Auckland Central Labour candidate?

Labour voters aren’t the smartest.

What’s going to happen when they rock up to the polling booth and can’t find Jacinda?
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July 27, 2017 12:38pm
- holysheet
  
  Now that is one big assumption you are making. With the liabours in bed with the gweens and their fraudulant co-leader, I venture some will not bother to go and vote at all.
  
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  July 27, 2017 12:47pm
realityczech

After events in Japan the public appetite for nuclear power has diminished, ushering in a new age of coal. Modern coal plants are clean burning and cost effective, regardless of what the climate change luddites may think.

The only country going against this trend towards coal is the USA as Trump proposes a solar wall.

China has more than enough coal plants due to the economic down turn. They are now keen to limit coal use by the West to provide an economic handbrake on potential competition in the world market place. They also produce solar panels in coal powered sweat shops to sell to the silly Westerners. Clever Chinese and their long term planning.

Japanese government planning to build 45 new coal fired power stations to diversify supply

http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2017-01-31/japan-coal-power-plants/8224302

France and Germany Turn to Coal
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/france-germany-turn-coal/
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July 27, 2017 12:41pm
- Gruffydd
  
  After China-induced price spike, coal set to resume long-term decline
  
  LONDON/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Coal prices’ march to eight-month highs, driven by China’s huge appetite for power consumption, looks like an interlude in a longer-term decline and is seen losing traction later this year.
  ……
  “China is likely to continue the consolidation of its coal mining industry, yet will probably try to avoid production being slashed in the way that happened in the past,” analysts at Commerzbank wrote.
  
  “We regard the latest price rise as merely an intermezzo and expect coal prices to fall again in the second half of the year.”
  
  Analysts expect average futures prices to fall to $60-$70/ton in the third and fourth quarters of this year and $50-$65/ton in the first quarter of next year.
  
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  July 27, 2017 12:55pm
  - realityczech
    
    A decline in demand while hundreds of new coal plants are built around the world. Sorry but that seems incredible. Did you see my links ?
    
    The Chinese have an excess of coal powered plants and plenty of coal to ensure their future. They probably don’t need anymore. They are not climate change believers I can assure you.
    
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    July 27, 2017 1:02pm
    - Gruffydd
      
      You can assure me however you want .
      
      It is worthless in the face of reality.
      
      Why Japan France and Germany are building coal ?
      Cheap fix as they retire their nuclear capacity after Fukushima’s little meltdown.
      All are rolling out renewable energy at an exponential rate.
      The story you are missing is the rapid fall in the cost of renewable energy and the event of cheap gas due to fracking.
      Technology is making coal redundant.
      If you had any knowledge at the difference processes involved in burning coal in a thermal plant and burning gas you would have more understanding of the economics involved.
      
      As for your assertion china is not onboard with efforts to limit climate change.
      You are sadly mistaken.
      Three country’s have not signed up to Paris.
      The USA
      Nicaragua as they believe the agreement does not go far enough.
      and Syria due to being at war.
      
      China has taken a lead in renewable energy.
      They build more solar hardware than the rest of the world.
      They are almost building more solar capacity than the rest of the world combined.
      They are leading the switch to electric transport.
      
      Exponential growth in the order of 50% per renewables means the small renewable base the world is starting from will rapidly over take hydro carbon as an energy source.
      It is already or soon will be cheaper .
      
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      July 27, 2017 1:33pm
      - Shawn Herles
        
        The Paris Accords are a scam and a rort. Billions of US taxpayers money sent to foreign countries, thousands of jobs lost, and the US alone had to reduce emissions while China and India were under no obligation to do so any time soon.
        
        And for what? The slim possibility that, if every country fulfilled their obligations (yeah right) we might get about a 1% difference over a hundred years.
        
        Climate scientists and environmentalists considered it a scam that would not make any significant difference. That is at least what they were saying right up until Trump ditched it, and then suddenly it was the end of the world.
        
        “James Hansen, the undisputed hero of the climate-change movement, called the Paris deal “a fraud really, a fake. … It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises.”
        
        A joint letter signed by nearly a dozen top climate scientists said the agreement suffered “deadly flaws lying just beneath its veneer of success.” These scientists complained that the agreement could actually be counterproductive, since it gave the impression that global warming was being dealt with when in fact it wasn’t.
        
        A study in the peer-reviewed journal Global Policy said that even if every country lived up to its CO2 emission reduction promises through 2030, the Paris deal would “likely reduce global temperature rise about 0.17°C in 2100.”
        
        “Current climate policy promises will do little to stabilize the climate and their impact will be undetectable for many decades,” the study concluded.
        
        Kevin Anderson, a climate-change professor at the University of Manchester told the London Independent that the Paris deal was “worse than inept” and that it “risks locking in failure.”
        
        Friends of the Earth International labeled it “a sham of a deal” that will “fail to deliver.””
        
        http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/the-paris-climate-deal-was-a-fraud-and-a-sham-until-trump-decided-to-ditch-it/
        
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        July 27, 2017 4:01pm
      - realityczech
        
        As Beijing Joins Climate Fight, Chinese Companies Build Coal Plants
        
        China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.
        
        These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal,
        
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html
        
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        July 27, 2017 6:16pm
Morrissey

Frances Fragos Townsend has virtually zero credibility.

So the question has to be asked: What numbskull at CNN came up with the idea of putting her up against Glenn Greenwald?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJgnJ_W_5zU
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July 27, 2017 1:01pm
- rangitoto
  
  They probably thought Greenwald was the best they could come up with. Beggars can’t be choosers.
  
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  July 27, 2017 1:17pm
- Shawn Herles
  
  “What numbskull at CNN”
  
  There are people at CNN who aren’t numbskulls?
  
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  July 27, 2017 3:44pm
Manolo

Which way is it?
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/26/steve-bannon-pushing-for-44-percent-marginal-tax-rate-on-the-very-rich/

White House adviser Steve Bannon is pushing for tax reform to include a new 44% top marginal tax rate, hitting people who earn more than $5 million a year, with the revenue paying for tax cuts for the rest, according to three people who’ve spoken to him recently.

The top rate is now 39.6% and most Republicans have been planning to lower it significantly as part of tax reform. The plan Trump put out previously would have only three brackets, with the top one brought down to 35%.
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July 27, 2017 1:25pm
Hugh Pavletich

Greater Christchurch
The Emerging Opportunity City
Thanks To …
Adjoining Councils Selwyn & Waimakariri

Christchurch rents continue downward slide … Liz McDonald … The Press

https://i.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/95124008/christchurch-rents-continue-downward-slide

Rents are continuing to tumble in Christchurch and are now back where they were five years ago.

The city’s average weekly rent for June tenancies was $360, according to government bond figures. This is down 16 per cent from the city’s high of $431 in early 2015, and at the same level as during as the second half of 2012.

Rents have been dropping steadily as rebuilds, repairs and new builds have replenished the city’s housing supply after the earthquakes. … read more via hyperlink above …

… Why did the recovery cost twice as much as it shoul;d have ? …

Mayor Lianne Dalziel wants warts and all earthquake recovery symposium | Stuff.co.nz

https://i.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/the-rebuild/95071334/mayor-lianne-dalziel-wants-warts-and-all-earthquake-recovery-symposium

… What has been achieved / learned since the 4,500 strong Peoples Protest 1 February 2012 Mayor Dalziel ? …

Christchurch: The Way Forward | Scoop News

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1206/S00251/christchurch-the-way-forward.htm

… and earlier … mid 2011 …

OPINION: Hugh Pavletich accuses Christchurch City Council of blindness, blunders and chain dragging; calls for effective leadership, ‘open land’ policy and bendy zoning. Your view? | interest.co.nz

http://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/53947/opinion-hugh-pavletich-accuses-christchurch-city-council-blindness-blunders-and-chain-

… The majority of the problems were obvious to those with grounded urban development experience from the outset … 4 September 2010 …

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2017/06/general_debate_30_june_2017.html/comment-page-1#comment-1960805
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July 27, 2017 1:35pm
- Hugh Pavletich
  
  CHRISTCHURCH COMMERCIAL & RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY UPDATES … THE PRESS ARTICLES BY CHRIS HUTCHING …
  
  Christchurch ‘nearly saturated’ with shops: researchers … Chris Hutching … The Press
  
  https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/94811012/christchurch-nearly-saturated-with-shops–jll
  
  The amount of empty office space in central Christchurch is slowly reducing, but JLL researchers warn of a glut of shops.
  
  A major retail project opening in late 2017 is The Crossing, which is a redevelopment and extension of a former Colombo St retail area.
  
  With retail vacancy currently at 16.1 per cent, the city is near saturation point, JLL national research manager Tom Barclay said. … read more via hyperlink above …
  
  Christchurch leads cooling house market trend … Chris Hutching … The Press
  
  https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/94418443/christchurch-leads-cooling-house-market-trend
  
  More houses have resold at a loss in Christchurch than other centres in the aftermath of the region’s building boom.
  
  Stagnant prices means it is slightly easier for first-time buyers in Christchurch, while rents are reducing.
  
  Data released from property analytics company CoreLogic said 7.9 per cent of sellers in Canterbury sold for less than they bought in the first three months of the year. That was a slight increase from 6.9 per cent in the previous quarter. Dunedin had the second highest proportion of resale losses (2.7 per cent), while in Auckland and Wellington it was 1.3 per cent. … read more via hyperlink above …
  
  … Note the May ‘residential consents per 1000 population per annum’ (Standard industry measure completely unknown to Building & Construction Minister Nick Smith) for the smaller and therefore functional local government units of Selwyn (29.05); Tauranga (15.80); Waimakariri (11.05) … and in contrast the larger and therefore bureaucratically buggered units of local government Christchurch (7.20); Auckland (astonishingly below the national figure 6.57) and ‘Woeful Wellington’ (3.86) … read further via link …
  
  http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2017/06/general_debate_30_june_2017.html/comment-page-1#comment-1960805
  
  … Not surprisingly … a November 2016 Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) Regional Economic Report found the compound employment growth nationally over 10 years was 1.4% per annum …with Christchurch Council Area a quarter that, Waimakariri four times and Selwyn a stratospheric seven times !
  
  … The big message … to prosper … people and businesses flee from bloated bureaucracies !
  
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  July 27, 2017 4:51pm
  - Hugh Pavletich
    
    http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2017/06/general_debate_30_june_2017.html/comment-page-1#comment-1960805
    
    NEW ZEALAND: BASIC ‘NUTS & BOLTS’
    HOUSING PERFORMANCE INFORMATION REQUIRED
    
    The selected residential consent numbers May for the following territorial areas were …
    
    Building Consents Issued
    
    http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/industry_sectors/Construction/BuildingConsentsIssued_HOTPMay17.aspx
    
    New Zealand … 2794
    Auckland … 885
    Tauranga … 145
    Wellington … 67
    Christchurch … 225
    Waimakariri … 56
    Selwyn … 138
    
    The finance focused website Interest Co NZ rather surprisingly still just repeats these raw numbers …
    
    New dwelling consents are increasing but still lag well behind growing demand in Auckland where housing shortage continues to worsen | interest.co.nz
    
    https://www.interest.co.nz/property/88558/new-dwelling-consents-are-increasing-still-lag-well-behind-growing-demand-auckland
    
    The raw numbers on their own however don’t tell us much … unless they relate to the specific areas and population bases being discussed.
    
    Internationally, the accepted standard industry measure are the ‘consent / start / completion rates per 1000 population per annum.’
    
    So to get a real sense of the residential consenting activity each month, the raw Statistics NZ monthly numbers should be multiplied by 12 (annualized) and divided by the number of thousands of people within the areas being discussed.
    
    http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/population/estimates_and_projections/SubnationalPopulationEstimates_HOTPAtJun16.aspx
    
    For example (using Statistics NZ June 2016 population figures above) , let’s take Christchurch City with its population of 375,000 and its 225 consents for the month of May. Simply multiple the 225 by 12 to annualize it, which gives us 2700. Divide 2700 by 375 (the number of 1000 people living in Christchurch) which gives us a consent rate of 7.2 per 1000 population per annum. Hardly remarkable.
    
    Therefore …
    
    Pop (1000s) May consents / annualized Rate 1000 pop
    
    New Zealand 4700 2794 33528 7.13
    Auckland 1614 885 10620 6.57
    Tauranga 110 145 1740 15.80
    Wellington 208 67 804 3.86
    Christchurch 375 225 2700 7.20
    Waimakariri 58 56 672 11.58
    Selwyn 57 138 1656 29.05
    
    So … appropriately … based on the respective populations, the ‘star performers’ are Selwyn (as usual … by a country mile), Tauranga and Waimakariri.
    
    Not surprisingly, Wellington at about 3.86 per 1000 population per annum is the worst within the above table.
    
    What is the Wellington Council learning from the Selwyn Council ?
    
    What the wider public also need to know is the comparative detailed costs breakout of fringe new housing in middle North America, and the detailed pricing on the fringes of New Zealands metros … as Andrew Atkins explained early 2013 … with THE REAL DEAL …
    
    http://andrewatkin.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/the-real-deal-housing-in-new-zealand.html
    
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    July 28, 2017 10:42am
    - Hugh Pavletich
      
      Falling house prices around NZ bring home ownership a step closer for first homes buyers, but they’d still struggle to get on the property ladder in Auckland or Queenstown | interest.co.nz
      
      http://www.interest.co.nz/property/89013/falling-house-prices-around-nz-bring-home-ownership-step-closer-first-homes-buyers
      
      By Greg Ninness
      
      House prices are now falling in most parts of the country making home ownership more affordable for first home buyers in most places, according to interest.co.nz’s June Home Loan Affordability reports.
      
      The reports show that the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand’s lower quartile selling prices have fallen back from their recent peaks in 10 of the 12 regions where affordability is measured, – Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Hawke’s Bay, Taranaki, Wellington, Nelson/Marlborough, Canterbury, Otago and Southland, with prices continuing to rise in only two regions – Manawatu/Whanganui and Bay of Plenty.
      
      In Auckland, the lower quartile selling price was $650,000 In June, a decline of 4.4% from the peak of $680,000 set in March. … read more via hyperlink above …
      
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      July 28, 2017 11:01am
cha

It’s all fun, games and cosplay, until someone gets locked up.

A Phoenix man has been sentenced to more than 68 years in federal prison for his role as a gunman in a standoff that stopped federal agents from rounding up cattle near Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch in 2014.

http://www.opb.org/news/article/arizona-man-sentenced-bundy-standoff-nevada/
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July 27, 2017 1:40pm
B.L.Zeebub

Quick, hire Verity while she stills knows everything,

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/election/2017/07/verity-johnson-the-only-reason-i-want-to-vote-is-because-metiria-turei-lied-to-winz.html

#verifiablefuckwit.
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July 27, 2017 2:04pm
- Steve (North Shore)
  
  Teens get their brain taken out at 13, and get it put back in at 23. Verity has one more year to go.
  #airbrain
  
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  July 27, 2017 5:42pm
howitis

This is the sort of scum TV3 employs
Crim huggers of the world unite.

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/election/2017/07/verity-johnson-the-only-reason-i-want-to-vote-is-because-metiria-turei-lied-to-winz.html

Verity Johnson.
Extracts:-
….So Metiria Turei didn’t tell WINZ that she had flatmates. As a taxpayer, I don’t feel at all ripped off by this. In fact it’s the first time ever I’ve felt inspired to vote.
I shouldn’t hate voting. I’m 22, well-educated…..
But when Turei came forward and said, 1) she misled WINZ, 2) that she was scared about admitting it but felt she had a duty to do so, and 3) that the system was broken and she was the proof, it was the first time I’d properly respected a politician.
It smacks of integrity……

Verity Johnson is a Newshub columnist and feature writer.

This the type of trash that TV3 and the Ferald employs.
22 year old numpties.

Has Johnson asked where the 18 million dollars of NZ on Air taxpayer funding for Tv3 last year alone comes from?
A lot from white middle class males that she probably hates.
The marxists at our secondary and tertiary institutions are making headway. Don’t ever doubt it.
They then send vacant airheads out into the media to spread this crap.

It fits with TV3 and Mediaworks as mediaworks put the company in receivership rather than pay its $22 million tax bill.
From 2013
https://milfordasset.com/mediaworks-delivers-lessons-on-leverage/
…..But why has the company been placed in receivership when the latest restructuring is reasonably similar to the mid-2009 recapitalisation which did not involve receivership?
The obvious conclusion is that it was done to avoid paying $22 million to the IRD.

Birds of a feather…..
Crim hugging airhead right at home in dodgy outfit that receives more than $18 million year subsidy for a 100% overseas owned outfit.
https://www.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/4568880
Ultimate holding company
Tokyo Opportunities B.V.
Country of registration
Netherlands
Registered office address
Barbara Strozzilaan 201, 1083 Hn, Amsterdam, Netherlands
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July 27, 2017 2:09pm
- kowtow
  
  She’s another self loathing lefty racist who thinks she’s saying all the right things….
  
  “I’ve never been impressed with their honesty, integrity, or the policies that are firmly designed to appeal to the middle-class, white, 55-year-old, house-owning male voter. ”
  
  Here’s one policy I’d love, taxpayers to defund the bimbos in the media and make them work for their keep like they used to have to ,before the gummint decided it was a good idea to keep these losers afloat.
  
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  July 27, 2017 2:45pm
- RF
  
  Air head alert. Danger Will Robinson….
  
  Crim hugger.
  
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  July 27, 2017 3:23pm
- waikatogirl
  
  That other silly young chick on at 7pm on TV3 is just as bad. Apparently “there is enough shame built in to the benefit system”.
  So there bloody should be. Nobody should be comfortable on the benefit (unless they have a permanent disability, and I don’t mean low IQ).
  
  I refuse to watch
  
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  July 27, 2017 4:07pm
- Longknives
  
  “It smacks of integrity……”
  
  Really?
  So an MP admits to fraud of potentially tens of thousands of dollars and this ‘smacks of integrity’??
  Is this really how The Left think?
  
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  July 27, 2017 4:16pm
  - howitis
    
    Yes
    
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    July 27, 2017 5:35pm
  - Steve (North Shore)
    
    Yes – when they can think
    
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    July 27, 2017 5:44pm
Brigitte

Over at the Standard they are going on about Paula who *might* have an issue with the benefit (and how bad that makes the Nats etc etc you know the story). Meanwhile, Meteria who *has* committed benefit fraud is not only given a pass but is, apparently, a heroine.

It’s a wonder that they can think over there given the obviously loud noise of the cognitive dissonance.
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July 27, 2017 2:18pm
- sam green
  
  Well – the answer I guess is to put them both under the scrutiny of the Work and Income investigations team – let Paula be exonerated once and for all. Chuck Bird will make the complaint – he’s good like that.
  
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  July 27, 2017 3:27pm
  - Keeping Stock
    
    Why is that Sam? Do you have a particular allegation against Paula Bennett, or are you just relying on malicious internet scuttlebutt?
    
    Metiria Turei has been quite candid about her welfare fraud and is rightly under investigation. How about we send the WINZ investigators around to your place, just on the off chance you might have committed fraud?
    
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    July 27, 2017 3:44pm
    - sam green
      
      Paula, once Minister for Social Development, would totally support that wouldn’t she? After all, there has been at least one case of a woman hounded to death by them – under her watch. So let her be scrutinised by the department. She would have done it on less grounds.
      
      http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/87527119/Woman-found-dead-had-not-committed-benefit-fraud
      
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      July 27, 2017 3:56pm
      - All_on_Red
        
        What grounds for investigation? Suggesting people get investigated when there is no specific allegation of wrong doing is a moronic argument.
        Oh wait- its Sam…
        
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        July 27, 2017 4:00pm
      - waikatogirl
        
        Nah, the left don’t like the fact that a Westie DPB recipient has made something of herself, and worse, joined the wrong party. She should know her place in life.
        Good on ya Paula!!
        
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        July 27, 2017 4:09pm
      - sam green
        
        Goose/gander and all that.
        
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        July 27, 2017 5:20pm
      - Gabby
        
        What grounds for investigation?
        I believe an anonymous phone call alleging bludgery is the custom.
        
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        July 27, 2017 6:51pm
      - sam green
        
        Pretty much Gabby.
        
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        July 27, 2017 8:14pm
    - Chuck Bird
      
      Another point is that Paula admitted smoking cannabis when she was young. However, she is now opposed to it being legalized. In any case a complaint about an MP smoking cannabis would rightfully be considered trivial.
      
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      July 27, 2017 4:17pm
      - sam green
        
        It’s not really a point Chuck.
        
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        July 27, 2017 5:39pm
  - Chuck Bird
    
    Down tick for you Sam. You make a complaint and produce some evidence not rumour.
    
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    July 27, 2017 3:49pm
    - Kimbo
      
      So…why then did you write that John Banks should have submitted to a paternity test…when the burden of proof was on those making the allegation to produce evidence? More likely you just wrote that to muddy the waters because he is YOUR love child!! 😉
      
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      July 27, 2017 3:52pm
      - sam green
        
        Really! John Banks is Chuck Bird’s lovechild? Wow. Chuck Bird – Man of Mystery.
        
        9 4
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        July 27, 2017 3:57pm
      - Kimbo
        
        He hasn’t denied it!! 😉
        
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        July 27, 2017 4:01pm
      - Chuck Bird
        
        Ask the Judge stupid.
        
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        July 27, 2017 4:12pm
      - Kimbo
        
        To order you to submit to a paternity test? Why don’t you just volunteer, Chuck?! it looks very much like you are a fraudster like Turei – trying to avoid paying your fair share of historical child maintenance!! 😉
        
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        July 27, 2017 4:14pm
    - Happychappy
      
      Chuck : So it was alright for you to cut and paste the same story yesterday about Paula Bennett, so can you please explain why you posted the same rumour and it is ok for you. Stuff posted this on truck stop drivers innuendo not fact.
      
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      July 27, 2017 4:22pm
      - Chuck Bird
        
        Happy, my point was to show there is a difference between a prima facia case and an allegation. The allegation may be true or false. None of us know. However, if anyone believes they have strong evidence like I have in the complaint I have now made to the IPCA they should do as I have.
        
        I may have word my comment badly but this is my view now.
        
        I also say the same about English paying back for his claim for Parliamentary Services and Peter’s $158k.
        
        If anyone believe either committed a crime the should lay a complaint like I have.
        
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        July 27, 2017 5:34pm
      - sam green
        
        Aaaaaand – people have been investigated to death for less was my point Chuck.
        
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        July 27, 2017 6:16pm
      - Happychappy
        
        Chuck :You obviously took no notice of what Paula’s lawyers made to the people making these statements before the Stuff column was published.
        
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        July 27, 2017 7:09pm
Chuck Bird

I was watching Parliament. I stated a bit late so I did not hear if there were any question from or about the fraudster.

However, I heard Pita Paraone ask Te Ururoa Flavell a few questions in English. All Flavell’s replies were in Maori. There was no translation into English. I would say there would be less than 5% fluent in Maori. Flavell would know this.

That is one of the reasons I am voting NZF. That will see the end of the Maori Party.
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July 27, 2017 3:08pm
- Brigitte
  
  I don’t bother with the live feed but rather wait until the transcript comes available on Hansard (normally starting from about now). It also means I can skip over the answers to the patsy questions.
  
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  July 27, 2017 3:15pm
  - Chuck Bird
    
    Thanks Brigitte. I assume that has the translation. My point is still the same. There is no need to answer in a language few people understand. I consider myself pro Maori but the actions of the Maori Party create racial disharmony.
    
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    July 27, 2017 3:23pm
Fletch

In case you missed it – everything that the media looked for and failed to find in the Russia investigation, they are failing to report in the case of Democrat Debbie Wasserman-Shultz’s I.T guy who just tried to skip the country to Pakistan but was caught by FBI agents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXsgo1rbTE
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July 27, 2017 3:25pm
- Lucia Maria
  
  Isn’t Fox News part of the media??
  
  3 1
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  July 27, 2017 6:00pm
  - Fletch
    
    I meant the Russia-obsessed left-wing media, of course. 😉
    
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    July 27, 2017 7:15pm
wiseowl

The PCE wants NZ to put carbon targets in to law.
Absolutely crazy.
Carbon emissions are not a problem and she wants to commit us to something that is impossible to achieve.
Government needs to get some second opinions.
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July 27, 2017 3:34pm
- Gruffydd
  
  http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/335870/government-signals-higher-carbon-price-cap
  
  New Zealanders are being told they will have to pay more money to compensate for environmental damage.
  
  The warning is from Minister for Climate Change Issues Paula Bennett in the second stage of a review of the emissions trading scheme.
  
  An interesting opinion on New Zealand’s path.
  .https://phys.org/news/2017-07-approach-emissions-post-paris-climate.html
  
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  July 27, 2017 4:14pm
- KevOB
  
  She a certifiable green hangover from a primordial forest.
  What does Parliament need her for? Don’t they have Departmental advisors to the Ministers?
  
  Gluckman is another with quasi State Advisor status on science yet he’s a pediatrician!
  These I suspect are John Key’s personal remnants. They should both go.
  
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  July 27, 2017 6:56pm
RRM

Opportunities party taking aim directly at greens –
Excellent!

http://www.top.org.nz/top_vs_the_greens
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July 27, 2017 3:37pm
- Chuck Bird
  
  NZF has a sensible position on the environment which is not to pay 1.4 billion/yr which will do nothing for the environment.
  
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  July 27, 2017 3:53pm
MH

why doesn’t some MP interrupt him or make a point of order and ask for an immediate translation ? The Flave could be saying something rude. All MP’s should have a right to know what is being said at the time.The speaker must be a listener too. Have they not heard of the cone of silence ? The whole thing could be weighed down in interpretation point of orders etc….just like the Treaty.
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July 27, 2017 3:54pm
- Brigitte
  
  There is a live translation for the MPs. It was covered in yesterdays Q&A.
  
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  July 27, 2017 4:11pm
  - MH
    
    cheers,then does the gen public have under the Bill of Rights have a right to have a translation on the YA’s ? I;m talking valve radios.
    
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    July 27, 2017 4:21pm
  - Steve (North Shore)
    
    If there is live translation for the MPs then why not subtitles for the TV viewers?
    What is Flavell trying to hide??
    As I said the other day – may well be speaking Athabascan
    
    2 2
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    July 27, 2017 5:50pm
- Happychappy
  
  MH: You obviously don’t watch question time as MP’s only have to put their earphones on to have the question or answer translated.
  
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  July 27, 2017 6:55pm
Longknives

Rainy Day- I interrupted my renovations to see Dunkirk at the movies.
Amazing Film- Really worth seeing if you like History/War Movies.
*Sadly the critics were correct and there are no ‘Diverse’ characters- This film would have been so much better if a shrieking Tranny was running up Dunkirk Beach, Heels in hand yelling ‘Yoohoo Boys- Wait for me’…
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July 27, 2017 4:09pm
- Brigitte
  
  I’ll always go for realism over the “need” for diversity. By the way, did you spot the Michael Caine cameo?
  
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  July 27, 2017 4:21pm
  - Kimbo
    
    Michael Caine? Did he reprise the “British officer” accent from Zulu? 😉
    
    Is a universal rule of acting that Cockneys can imitate Oxbridge, but those attempting to take a step down from at least middle class – Mick Jagger, Jamie Oliver – only manage very poor Mockney.
    
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    July 27, 2017 4:24pm
    - Longknives
      
      I wont hear a bad word about Sir Mick Kimbo! (Especially on his Birthday)
      After you have finished your drink- I will meet you outside the Tavern.
      *Queensberry Rules will apply…
      
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      July 27, 2017 5:17pm
      - Kimbo
        
        No no, was meant as a compliment – was Michael Caine’s own description of how he got that break-out role in Zulu:
        
        Stanley was now one of the biggest British film stars and he told me that he was starring in and producing a film called Zulu about the 1879 battle of Rorke’s Drift between the British Army and the Zulu nation, and they were looking for an actor to play a Cockney corporal.
        
        “Go and see Cy Endfield in the bar of the Prince of Wales Theatre tomorrow at 10 and give it a try,” he said, and wished me luck.
        
        I’ve always thought life swings on small, sometimes insignificant incidents and decisions. When I got to the theatre, Cy Endfield, a round, slow-speaking American director, said he was sorry, but he’d already given the part to my friend James Booth, because he thought he looked more Cockney than I did.
        
        I was used to rejection by now, so I just shrugged. “That’s OK,” I lied and turned and began to walk back towards the door.
        
        The bar at the Prince of Wales Theatre is very long – and that’s why I became a movie star, because just as I reached the end, Cy called out: “Can you do a posh British accent?”
        Michael Caine Behind the Scenes ZULU 1964
        Officer: Michael Caine behind the scenes
        
        I stopped just before the door and turned round. “I was in rep for years,” I said. “I played posh parts many times. There’s no accent I can’t do. That’s easy,” I said, fingers crossed behind my back.
        
        “You know,” said Cy, peering at me down the length of the bar, “you don’t look anything like a Cockney. You look like one of those faggy officers. Come back.”
        
        I glanced in the mirror behind the bar. He was right. I was six foot two, slim, with blond curly hair and blue eyes. Jimmy Booth looked like everyone’s idea of a tough Cockney, which he was. I was a very tough Cockney, too, but I didn’t look like it.
        
        “Can you do a screen test with Stanley on Friday?” Cy asked. “You’d be playing a snobbish lieutenant, Gonville Bromhead, who thinks he’s superior to everyone, especially Stanley. Could you handle that?”
        
        Perhaps it was also something to do with Cy being an American. He had no inherent British class prejudice that might have made him think a working-class actor couldn’t play an officer on the big screen.
        
        I thought back to national service. I thought back to Korea. I was quite confident I could handle that.
        
        http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/michael-caine-zulu-awful-audition-3821844
        
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        July 27, 2017 6:21pm
      - Longknives
        
        Was referring to your shocking indictment of Mick Jagger’s Acting Chops Kimbo!
        
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        July 27, 2017 6:36pm
      - Kimbo
        
        @ Longknives
        
        Then in that case, my man will speak to your man to make the arrangements. Worst mockney accent since…Dick van Dyke! 😉 Faux working class Michael Philip Jagger, one time London School of Economics student, from Dartford in the deepest East End of…Kent?! And both his middle class parents were…teachers?!
        
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_Jagger
        
        I mean, where does this crap that the Stones were hard arse come from? Hell, at least the Beatles were genuinely working class!! 😉
        
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        July 27, 2017 6:40pm
      - Kimbo
        
        …and I’m not talking about Jagger’s formal attempts at acting. More the, “me, n’ Keef, n’ Charlie n’ the rest of the lads” rubbish he tried to pass off on his fans, especially back in the 1960s and 1970s.
        
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        July 27, 2017 6:48pm
  - MH
    
    not a lotta people know that…..
    
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    July 27, 2017 4:25pm
- Shawn Herles
  
  “This film would have been so much better if a shrieking Tranny was running up Dunkirk Beach”
  
  That would not have satisfied them. The tranny would have to have been accompanied by a Muslim and a fat lesbian feminist with her hair dyed blue, and of course the tranny would have to have been black.
  
  Now that would have shown the evil White Male Heteronormative Patriachy! ?
  
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  July 27, 2017 4:22pm
  - MH
    
    Who “played” the Duke of Windsor ?
    
    4 0
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    July 27, 2017 4:32pm
- Longknives
  
  Yes Brigitte- I thought the acting was superb. The performances of Sir Mark Rylance and Sir Kenneth Branagh in particular..
  
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  July 27, 2017 5:21pm
Happychappy

I went and had a look at the standard and surprise surprise mickymouse was complaining about National rorting the MMP system again with the Peter Dunn and David Seymour Deals. What a bunch of lowlife losers they are and forget about the deal they have had with the Greens and NZ First in two By Elections.
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July 27, 2017 4:15pm
Maggy Wassilieff

What sort of cretins continue to allow these types of developments on floodplains or eroding coasts ?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/335943/councils-urged-to-avoid-building-on-flood-plains
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July 27, 2017 4:17pm
- sooty
  
  Or the top of a hill, or the botom of a hill, or half way up a hill. Oh dear thats going to put house prices up with the shortage.
  
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  July 27, 2017 4:51pm
Chuck Bird

Who is right Peters or Flavell?

Winston Peters upsets Te Ururoa Flavell over Māori jibe

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2017/07/winston-peters-upsets-te-ururoa-flavell-over-m-ori-jibe.html
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July 27, 2017 4:26pm
- Steve (North Shore)
  
  Notice that Flavell takes to Twitter in Te English!! because he now wants everyone to know what he says. Hypocrite Moari.
  Edit, speeling
  
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  July 27, 2017 6:02pm
Jack5

Martin van Beynen’s Black Hands podcasts are extremely well done. Good one, Martin.

It’s a long listen, though, and surely there will be a book to come.
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July 27, 2017 4:49pm
wiseowl

Peters is right Chuck.
Flavell is being a smartarse .
There should be more respect shown in Parliament because few listening know what is being said and its’ use because it is an ‘official’ language shows how stupid moves like this are just to appease a minority.
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July 27, 2017 4:50pm
- Kimbo
  
  Yeah, it was a good country until the bloody Maoris arrived and spoiled it for the rest of us.
  
  Oh, yes, must remember to add…/sarc 😉
  
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  July 27, 2017 4:52pm
  - nasska
    
    Well at least we know it wasn’t a good country until the pakeha arrived. The primitives had exterminated everything containing protein & were down to cannibalising each other. They had forgotten how to grow kumara, chewed fernroot until their teeth were worn out at about thirty years of age & dressed in untanned rotten seal skins & poorly woven flax.
    
    When not busy dying of starvation they waged inter-tribal war by throwing stones & bits of manuka at each other. They were so backward they hadn’t even invented bows & arrows. No books & nothing to write on except for scrawls carved into their faces.
    
    So far had the Maori regressed that they’d forgotten how to sail or navigate canoes so they were stuck in the place.
    
    They would have been extinct within a few decades had the benevolent Europeans not happened upon NZ.
    
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    July 27, 2017 6:01pm
    - Swifty
      
      30 years ago I was talking with various anthropoligist, biologist and scientist mates who advanced, with great evidence concerning available biomass, the notion that immediately pre-european Maori were experiencing the initial stages of population collapse due to having eaten the place out.
      
      Not sure what we can infer from this – but certainly notions of Maori living in perfect harmony and balance with nature are incorrect.
      
      10 1
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      July 27, 2017 6:17pm
      - nasska
        
        The coastal parts of the Wairarapa were at various times populated by Maori. They frequently had their arses kicked by more warlike tribes & usually retreated back to the protection of stronger Hawkes Bay whanau.
        
        Their middens have been excavated & studied usually by Victoria University archaeologists. They have proved that the natives had been reduced to eating fantails.
        
        The crap about noble savages attuned with nature that we are fed by social engineers & romantics is only rivalled by the Brothers Grimm.
        
        11 2
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        July 27, 2017 6:42pm
      - Odakyu-sen
        
        The Maori had a problem getting a supply of carbohydrate. The kumara is not a hardy plant, like the potato.
        If Maori had the potato, their population levels might have been a lot higher.
        
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        July 27, 2017 8:25pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        They have proved that the natives had been reduced to eating fantails.
        
        Yes, the Washpool area is a god-awful environment when a southerly blows in….
        but I think the poor souls did stretch to getting a tui or 2 and some kereru and huia.
        
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        July 27, 2017 8:35pm
      - nasska
        
        There’s evidence of pre European settlements all the way along that coastline Maggy. The bit I was referencing when I mentioned fantails was Te Awaiti with the stone walls.
        
        Kumara cultivation was possible down to about Banks Peninsula in frost free coastal areas. There seems no logical reason for the local Maori not to grow them but from memory studies have shown that cultivation ceased well before European settlement.
        
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        July 27, 2017 8:52pm
    - realityczech
      
      nasska seems to be the only one properly educated in Maori history.
      
      He is entirely correct in saying Maori culture was going backwards. They are not unique in this fact either as other cultures have done the same.
      
      6 1
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      July 27, 2017 7:25pm
    - Odakyu-sen
      
      Case in point: Easter Island.
      
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      July 27, 2017 8:24pm
      - realityczech
        
        Tasmanian Aborigines
        
        3 1
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        July 27, 2017 8:37pm
    - Gabby
      
      I guess those retarded pakeha settled here because it was such a hellhole nutsack.
      
      2 8
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      July 27, 2017 8:42pm
      - realityczech
        
        It was great here. It was the Maori who sucked.
        
        3 1
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        July 27, 2017 8:57pm
- Chuck Bird
  
  I wonder if the speaker understand Maori?
  
  3 1
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  July 27, 2017 5:43pm
- Happychappy
  
  wiseowl : You obviously don’t turn your hearing aid on when Peters answers questions as there is only one smartarse and that is Peters,past his used by date and voicing false statements to attract people like you.
  
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  July 27, 2017 6:32pm
  - Chuck Bird
    
    Kaka
    
    2 3
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    July 27, 2017 7:19pm
    - Happychappy
      
      Chuck : I guess that remark is aimed at me you seem to ask other not to call people names and like the hypocrite you are have no problem doing it your self.
      
      3 2
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      July 27, 2017 7:51pm
      - Gabby
        
        Crappies shouldn’t throw hypocritties around chappy.
        
        1 1
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        July 27, 2017 8:44pm
publicwatchdog

Ah – the real reason why Gareth Morgan is standing?

Seen this?

Tweet by Gareth Morgan:

“Let’s be clear, for progressive voters, the major issue this election isn’t #ChangeTheGovt it is #AnyoneButWinston #nzpol
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July 27, 2017 5:25pm
- Chuck Bird
  
  Hey Penny, Do you support the lying fraudster Turei?
  
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  July 27, 2017 5:36pm
  - stigie
    
    Of course she does Chuck, she supports all activists especially the criminal types.
    
    11 1
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    July 27, 2017 5:44pm
  - Happychappy
    
    Winston First does.
    
    2 2
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    July 27, 2017 7:53pm
- Steve (North Shore)
  
  See?
  I Spray and Walk Away
  Rubbish stays
  I walk away
  
  10 0
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  July 27, 2017 6:06pm
- AgentBallSack
  
  #AnyOneButPenny
  #SaveWater
  
  6 1
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  July 27, 2017 8:51pm
realityczech

“Remember that female geologist warned her husband not to take a job at Pike Mine.
She knew it was a ticking time bomb.”

Maggy, numerous experts warned them. Right from the time of the first proposals. Pike management hired experts in their field and ignored their advice in favour of corporate spin, marketing and PR.
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July 27, 2017 5:26pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Yeah, I know…
  but I remember this item, coz the hubby was clever enough to listen to his wife!
  
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  July 27, 2017 8:37pm
  - realityczech
    
    Have you read the book by Rebecca Macfie ?
    
    It is an example of the damage corporate culture causes. It is rife in our government service, where problems are dealt with by targeting the messenger and not the problem. Its all PR and spin.
    
    I think National use the book as their operating manual.
    
    4 2
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    July 27, 2017 8:42pm
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      No I didn’t read her book, in entirety.
      
      I can read Geological maps;
      I understand the basics of gases in mines;
      the dear old daddy worked in West Coast mines late 1930s…
      I was a public servant…
      I can sniff spin at a 100 paces…
      
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      July 27, 2017 9:10pm
MH

why did Maori sign a Treaty ? Could it have been due to the Musket Wars, a death toll per head far exceeding The slaughter in WWI ? Still sensitive today the topic pre 1840 can’t be taught in schools due to inter tribal rivalry and distortion and collusion by oral “reports” and exaggeration that Finlayson accepts without question. Lands held by murdering others as at the time of signing were to be recognised as being in possession of these brutal warriors. But post Treaty it is The white man did us wrong. What does one expect from an occupying Power? Stone age man meets the British Empire. Palms out. Six lashes with a greasy bootlace.
10 2
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July 27, 2017 5:32pm
- Chuck Bird
  
  The fact is there were wrongs on both sides. We should move on,
  
  3 4
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  July 27, 2017 6:05pm
  - Rachael Membery
    
    ‘We’ would be happy to.
    
    2 0
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    July 27, 2017 10:31pm
dad4justice

I know a story of a guy “who works as the main ranger of the Waipoua Forest and claims there are ancient (before the maoris were here) buildings of european decent (deep in the forest that have been fully blocked of) but unfortunately he has been threatened by iwi that he will lose his job and everything if he speaks out.” Why is that? Oh that’s right the treaty gravy train is at $70 billion and looks to exceed $700 billion if National has their way.
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July 27, 2017 6:55pm
- realityczech
  
  I am not convinced it would undermine treaty claims.
  
  6 2
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  July 27, 2017 7:07pm
- AgentBallSack
  
  Forgotten Silver?
  
  3 0
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  July 27, 2017 8:49pm
Viking2

http://www.usasupreme.com/somali-muslims-take-small-tennessee-town-forcing-absolute-terror-terrified-christians/
5 1
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July 27, 2017 6:57pm
- sam green
  
  Are you serious? Oh – you are.
  
  Try this. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/usa-supreme/
  
  Stop presenting fake news as real.
  
  2 3
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  July 27, 2017 7:48pm
Viking2

A DOMINANT DEMOGRAPHIC
Forget everything else you read on interest.co.nz. This is the only global-scale fact you need to know about the future: in the twenty years from 2009, the Chinese middle class will grow by 850 mln people (even if its population growth slows or even reverses). That means their middle class will shift from being 12% of its population to 72%. By middle class, that means household income equivalent to between NZ$20,000 and $200,000 per year, a widely used definition. The world will never be the same, you can plan on it. H/t Bob Carr.

http://www.interest.co.nz/news/89011/review-things-you-need-know-you-go-home-thursday-farmgate-milk-price-cpi-decile-big-new

So what do we make that can be sold to all these middle agers?
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July 27, 2017 6:59pm
- Gabby
  
  We’re good at making land much more expensive.
  
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  July 27, 2017 8:48pm
RF

Is Spark ok ?

My xtra emails have gone off line. Everything else is ok.
1 0
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July 27, 2017 7:04pm
- Fletch
  
  I only use the webmail interface through the browser but it seems to be working for me, although I still have trouble sending any attachment in Chrome. It just gets to about 60% and stops. Has been like that for months. I always have to use Opera or something to send an email with an attachment.
  
  [edit] you have migrated to Spark’s new local servers, right?
  
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  July 27, 2017 7:08pm
  - RF
    
    Unfortunately yes. I will phone tomorrow. Laptop, iPad, iPhone tell me my password is wrong.
    
    Since the new change over my iPhone in box deletes all emails every day.
    
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    July 27, 2017 8:43pm
Maggy Wassilieff

Celia Wade-Brown’s legacy:

How can a $1.7m stuff-up cost $7m to repair? Why will we have a Rolls-Royce solution for only a handful of cyclists? It’s ridiculous.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/95158475/island-bay-cycleway-solutions-to-cost-ratepayers-up-to-77m-and-remove-57-car-parks
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July 27, 2017 7:07pm
- realityczech
  
  Make the users pay. A licence fee of around $2,500 a year for all NZ cyclists should be okay for starters.
  
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  July 27, 2017 7:12pm
Chuck Bird

How much do you weigh and how tall are you?
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July 27, 2017 7:17pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  ? Talking to me?
  
  Weight:
  below average:
  http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/9900762/NZ-ladies-not-necessarily-lardos
  
  Height:
  above average:
  http://www.wecare4eyes.com/averageemployeeheights.htm
  
  How big is your bank balance?
  
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  July 27, 2017 7:37pm
  - realityczech
    
    Good one Maggy 😉
    
    7 0
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    July 27, 2017 7:47pm
  - sam green
    
    Tiny like his dick.
    
    4 3
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    July 27, 2017 7:51pm
  - Chuck Bird
    
    I was not Maggy. I was talking to realityczech who is probably to fat to cycle. The only good thing Key did was build the cycle ways. We will soon have the river trail hooked up to Ngaruawahia.
    
    2 5
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    July 27, 2017 8:41pm
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      Oh well never mind…
      I’ll go looking for another sugar daddy/mummy….
      
      — actually if realityczech is flabby and obese with a dicky heart and pots of loot, (s)he might be a nice catch.
      
      5 0
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      July 27, 2017 8:51pm
EAD_TWO

Swedish Government On Verge Of Collapse After Admitting ‘Accidental Leak’ Of Entire Nation’s Info

“This is a disaster,” Swedish PM Lofven said. “This has exposed Sweden and Swedish citizens to risks.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-26/swedish-government-crisis-after-admitting-disastrous-accidental-leak-entire-nations-

Funny how the Governments self flagellates and worries about how a leak of data exposes the Swedish people to “unnecessary risk” yet the never-ending immigration of all of the worlds flotsam including assorted head choppers is apparently a “wonderful and enriching” thing which doesn’t cause any risk to the Swedes.

————————————————————————————————————————-

A great read on how and why Sweden became multicultural:

https://redice.tv/news/how-and-why-sweden-became-multicultural

A short video clip of Barbara Lerner Spectre who lives in Sweden explaining why Sweden needs to become mulitcultural:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ
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July 27, 2017 7:18pm
Southern Raider

Police 10 7 on now has a great example of who Mu Tu supports

Maori woman pulled over with unregistered car on suspended licence who swears at the cops and keep going on about how she needed to get home because she had kids alone

Fucken feral
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July 27, 2017 7:38pm
- Longknives
  
  Just wait until the Greens are in charge of Welfare- Ferals like that will be multiplying at an absolutely unmanageable rate. (And getting paid shitloads to do so)
  NZ is doomed if we get a Lab/Green Government..
  
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  July 27, 2017 8:01pm
  - Southern Raider
    
    What’s the point of getting a benefit if your unemployed but still can’t seem to find time to be at home to look after your kids
    
    I can guarantee the kids would be under 14
    
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    July 27, 2017 8:11pm
nasska

So I was recently reading that condoms are effective only 97% of the time and I thought that’s not good enough.

So I tried getting my girlfriend to use the pill, this is apparently 98% effective.

So then I tried the female condom, and found that to be 99% effective.

But after all this I still strove for a method that is 100% effective.

So yesterday I converted to Islam & dyed my hair ginger.
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July 27, 2017 9:11pm
- Manolo
  
  Did stephieboy approve?
  
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  July 28, 2017 6:46am
Manolo

Fresh leaks:
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/26/scaramucci-trump-skybridge-profits-241006
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July 28, 2017 6:44am

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