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April 4, 2018 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 4 April 2018

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General Debate

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Right of way is Way of Right

Well, we can’t say we didn’t see this coming now, can we!

Throughout the entire election campaign, when we christened the new shiny leader of the Labour Party ‘Taxcinda’, we all knew what was coming now, didn’t we! Now here it is, in all it’s grasping glory, the tax and spend government we all knew that this Labour party would be.

As the surplus handed to us by the fiscally responsible and infrastructure focussed National Government is evaporated by free tertiary education, foreign aid, and promises costed at 11.5 billion dollars more than the government had to spend, this new transport policy simply confirms what most us already knew.

This mob doesn’t have a clue!

While they continue to try and generate ‘the feels’ by incessant virtue signalling, the hand is off the tiller, and the only possible solution left to the government is to generate more income in the only way they know how, by raiding our pay packets again. The 75 cent increase in the minimum wage, the $30 dollar a week windfall has already been spoken for, it’s going straight in to your fuel tank, and if you live in Auckland, well, you’re already going backwards now, with your weekly fuel bill set to increase by 12 to 15% if you have a petrol vehicle, or close to 20% for you diesel owners. (By the way, Diesel owners, don’t forget your Road User Charges as well, go on, pay twice for the same road why don’t you!!)

What really sticks in the craw is that this is a government that we didn’t vote for, has no real majority, save a confidence and supply agreement with the Greens, and appears to serve at the behest of a 7% smarmy angry little man!

Those at the higher end of the income spectrum will be able to absorb the new tax, those in the middle will be able to manage I suspect, but the battlers at the bottom, those who have to find the money to fill the car to get to work, the ones who cannot afford to live close to the places where they work in Auckland because of the price of housing, the ones who spend two to three hours in traffic every day, Labours core vote, they are the ones who this tax will hit the hardest.

Under National, we had a government who understood fiscal responsibility, and who chose to prioritise spending to try to benefit the majority. They understood that the best way to get people out of poverty was to encourage people to work, to contribute. They wanted to set standards, and to make this country develop in a steady and sustainable manner. We had a government who understood that you cannot do all things at once, and that a steady, growth focussed approach was the best way to make an economically strong and developed country. We had a budget surplus, we were placed to ride an economic wave in to a great future. We had come through the global financial crisis in fantastic shape. We were ready to thrive.

That stops now.

20 to 22% petrol tax, increasing the cost of everything in Auckland, at the same time as businesses must manage the increased cost of minimum wages. Stand by for inflation to rise, for economic activity to fall, and for all the gains we’ve made in the last 9 years to vanish in a puff of ideology!

Thanks for nothing Winston! The only silver lining on this particular cloud is that being associated with this abomination of a government will send you so far below the 5% threshold that you will never return to Parliament again!
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April 4, 2018 8:00am
- starboard
  
  Well said that man.
  
  55 2
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  April 4, 2018 8:08am
- oldgolfer
  
  Hear hear.
  And I just heard Taxinda on RNZ vowing that an increase in excise duty is NOT a tax.
  Jesus, give me strength.
  She was getting rattled with Espiner, and opined that she should really be talking about the great announcements the government had made, not Clare Curran and excise duty.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:09am
  - RF
    
    Excuse my French but the bimbo is just a f***ing idiot…
    
    The lies pour from her mouth.
    
    Jeez I am bloody wild.
    
    62 2
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    April 4, 2018 8:18am
    - hullkiwi
      
      It’s not just her mouth. I heard JAG(uar) on Red Radio. She can’t help herself – lies, half truths, mis-statements and dogma.
      
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      April 4, 2018 8:25am
      - Classic Liberal
        
        She then did a phone interview with Hosking and the weird thing was: Hosking was milder with her than Espiner had been and even said he didn’t think the Curran issue had much to it. So Hosking bought ‘Curran only wanted Richard Griffin to know that he could put in a written statement if he couldn’t get to the hearing. She just wanted the record set straight ASAP’.
        
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        April 4, 2018 11:34am
    - KiWombat
      
      She needs to check her dictionary to find out what excise means.
      Oh – but then they will have to redefine the dictionary I suppose !
      
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      April 4, 2018 9:04am
      - labrator
        
        The Dictionary Committee was formed three minutes after your suggestion.
        
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        April 4, 2018 9:15am
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
        
        – Lewis Carroll 1872
        
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        April 4, 2018 11:05am
    - calendar girl
      
      It’s time to take 60 seconds to remind ourselves about how Ms Ardern told the nation on TV that she had never told a lie in politics and would not need to do so as PM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPJ1MO-kT0g
      
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      April 4, 2018 9:08am
      - labrator
        
        “A true mark of leadership is whether you front those mistakes…” – from that video… Not really living up to that one!
        
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        April 4, 2018 9:16am
      - KevOB
        
        Opining a truly held belief is not a lie just deliberate misinformation without understanding.
        
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        April 4, 2018 12:03pm
  - Simon
    
    Although it appears as if the high fuel tax shits over the poor the most in reality the poor will now be able to cycle to food banks instead.
    
    Labo have also announced that food banks will be opening along major public transport routes. The new fuel tax is win win.
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:27am
    - cmm
      
      Quite.
      
      Adding another $1 per litre to petrol will make the rich pricks grumble, but they won’t really feel it.
      
      It is the people at the bottom who are really going to get bitten by this.
      
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      April 4, 2018 8:39am
      - waikatogirl
        
        Not true. Cindy stated this morning to Duncan Garner those at the bottom will receive $75 increase in their cost of living to compensate them for the increase in fuel tax.
        
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        April 4, 2018 9:15am
      - labrator
        
        It is the people at the bottom who are really going to get bitten by this
        
        By inflation, something Robertson and Ardern don’t really seem to understand. Rich people’s debt will be eaten away (mortgages) and the cost of everything will rise for those at the bottom.
        
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        April 4, 2018 9:18am
      - Classic Liberal
        
        ” $75 increase in their cost of living” – but only families.
        
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        April 4, 2018 11:36am
      - KevOB
        
        Wasn’t an increase promised anyway? Is this the backhand reclaiming it?
        
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        April 4, 2018 12:07pm
      - Shaun the Sheep
        
        WG, that will put many families into negative effect taxation if they aren’t there already.
        
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        April 4, 2018 5:40pm
    - hullkiwi
      
      It won’t just shit over the poor, it will shot over the whole economy. The cost of fuel is in nearly everything we do or spend money. Such a hike is inflationary, what with minimum wage increases, this mob are doing all within their powers to make the economy tank. Not bad, given they have been in office 5 1/2 months.
      
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      April 4, 2018 9:22am
      - Classic Liberal
        
        “Such a hike is inflationary”. Yes, I’m already having to plan higher charges for customers I have to drive to :(.
        
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        April 4, 2018 11:37am
      - Paulus
        
        Watch when GST goes up to 17.5% – not a new tax just a technical adjustment.
        Wait for Robertson’s Budget – you ain’t heard nothing yet !
        
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        April 4, 2018 1:42pm
    - Gravyman2
      
      Let’s be plain here. The increase in fuel tax is a tax on the poor of South and West Auckland. Labour wants to keep people poor so they can “represent” them forever. Labour has always created poverty,not fixed it.
      
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      April 4, 2018 10:02am
  - KevOB
    
    When is a tax not a tax? When it’s an excise tax–Taxcinda.
    
    Is taxation popular?
    Do Labour governments promise to care more for the poorer?
    Do petrol taxes hit the poorer more?
    
    Has pre-babybrain already overtaken the Princess in Charge?
    
    ☑️☑️
    
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    April 4, 2018 10:56am
- KiWombat
  
  We have already had a more than 30% hike in the price of diesel since the election – it’s more like 35% at the moment. I was buying diesel for 94.7cpl in October – look at where it is now !
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:18am
  - Piniwi
    
    Perhaps Kiwombat it might be wise to keep an eye on how the oil prices are steadily creeping up as well as how often the NZ$ fluctuates. This is one factor that is outside their control but can make a bad situation even worse. Suspect more pain for diesel users when RUC rise in the first budget from sweet cheeks.
    
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    April 4, 2018 4:09pm
- Southern Raider
  
  This tax/levy is just the start. There will be many more to come
  
  What seriously grates me (apart from paying even more tax) is that all this money will be collected on day one but they have no projects ready to go. In effect this money will end up in a consolidated fund or siphoned off by party friendly consultants
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:20am
- jcuk
  
  Over at the standard you will find that many folk believe that $30 is actually $3 -$7 so everybody is likely to face a deficeit. Personally I am waiting for the first fortnightly payment to see what I get.
  Talk about a dog’s breakfast!
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:08am
- DifferentPerspective
  
  Exactly right .. Right.
  
  But it’s all part of the plan for a party that doesn’t expect to be in government much. This is their opportunity to really screw the economy and to create as much poverty as possible to deliver upon the Alinsky plan to create a socialist state:
  1) Healthcare — Control healthcare and you control the people
  2) Poverty — Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
  3) Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.
  4) Gun Control — Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a police state.
  5) Welfare — Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income).
  6) Education — Take control of what people read and listen to — take control of what children learn in school.
  7) Religion — Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools.
  8) Class Warfare — Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor
  
  Bolded ones are where Labour are making huge strides with this sort of BS.
  
  Progressivism is communism, which all begs the question why are National trying to make themselves as progressive as possible?
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:13am
  - Odakyu-sen
    
    If National wants to get back into power, could it not be the “Anti-Alinsky-plan party” and work to roll back socialism?
    
    On the other hand, National did nothing to roll back identity-politicing agencies such as Women’s Affairs or the racial Maori seats, so by their actions, they seem to me to be a fairly progressive party that is just to the right of Labour.
    
    Since around 83% of the country wants to vote Labour or National, I think the people desire a progressive government (for the time being, until the recession kicks in).
    
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    April 4, 2018 9:37am
    - DifferentPerspective
      
      Well that’s one way of looking at it O-sen.
      
      The other way is that we’ve replicated the US system with two left wing parties. As the DNC has lurched ever-leftwards, the GOP has slithered after them over the centre-line into full blown cuckservatism. Which all created the massive political vacuum that is now so ably and hilariously filled by the Don.
      
      For decades (since Reagan anyway), the hapless voters were presented with the option of voting for:
      – a pig on the left
      or
      – another pig also on the left
      
      The second Trump appeared selling pride in the country and a wish not to burn all the country’s citizens on the pyre of PC virtue-signalling – he was in like Flynn.
      
      His rising approval rating shows that the voters like a leader who is there for them.
      
      So I wouldn’t necessarily interpret apathy and lack of choice as favouring anti-capitalism progressivism, I think it’s more like apathy and lack of choice.
      
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      April 4, 2018 3:54pm
- gump
  
  Perhaps if National hadn’t enacted policies that enabled and encouraged a flood of new immigrants to settle in Auckland then we wouldn’t need so much money to upgrade the Auckland roading infrastructure that clearly can’t cope with the tens of thousands of extra vehicles?
  
  We are in this pickle because National delivered almost no meaningful GDP growth per capita during their nine years in Government. They simply opened the doors to immigration and pretended that the consumption of our new migrants was real growth. And as long as house prices kept rising nobody seemed to care.
  
  Now that they’re out of power we are starting to see how much has been concealed from us. We will reap what we sowed…
  
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  April 4, 2018 1:09pm
- Piniwi
  
  True but right of way there is little doubt that the old drunk has his arse covered in the secret 38 page secret agreement with a safe seat assurance for picking Labour. It makes 5% a moot point and with a safe seat he will get others to hold his hand yet again.
  The majority will never be able to understand the COL claim that their policy plans are to give the people a bigger “share” of the prosperity gained. They also fail to comprehend that fiscal responsibility is the true key to an even fairer share as income grows steadily along with a better sustainable quality of life for all. Instead they have blown the prosperity away well and truly while finding it a struggle to even cover the cost of their promises.
  Kudos for leading GD with such a great comment to remind us that there have been good times that are sadly fading from vision so rapidly.
  
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  April 4, 2018 4:00pm
marquess

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
Kiwiblog’s challenge of the day. Explain the difference between “virtue signalling” and signalling our virtues, which is what the right want us to be doing, particularly in regard to Russia.

Show your working.
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April 4, 2018 8:01am
- Right of way is Way of Right
  
  Virtue Signalling – doing a rain dance in front of a man dying of thirst.
  
  Signalling our virtue – digging a well.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:05am
  - holysheet
    
    Virtue Signalling – saying you will fix poverdy in front of a man dying of hunger.
    
    Signalling our virtue – giving him a fishing net to help feed himself and his family
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:08am
    - marquess
      
      Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
      You really don’t understand what either “explain” or “show your working” means, do you?
      
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      April 4, 2018 8:16am
      - RW Capitalist
        
        Both replies were extremely eloquent at showing their working.
        Your illogical refusal to accept their answer, show YOUR lack of understanding.
        
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        April 4, 2018 8:49am
      - 4077th
        
        Contrary to your belief/s, you are NOT the teacher and we are NOT your students so be thankful for any response that does not contain distain and expletives.
        
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        April 4, 2018 10:00am
    - kowtow
      
      Bollox, just reported holysheet by accident . Please disregard. Sorry for inconvenience.
      
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      April 4, 2018 12:40pm
  - rangitoto
    
    “Virtue Signalling – doing a rain dance in front of a man dying of thirst.”
    
    You must have a conversation before doing the rain dance.
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:15am
    - Right of way is Way of Right
      
      Also, there must be absolutely no cultural misappropriation during the dance itself…
      
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      April 4, 2018 8:23am
    - RF
      
      Don’t forget the committee. Most essential.
      
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      April 4, 2018 8:23am
    - Shaun the Sheep
      
      You’re being silly rangitoto.
      We don’t do rain dances for men dying of thirst.
      They’ve had it good for too long and should move over so a woman can be thirsty and the woman must give clear and informed consent for the rain dance to be performed.
      
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      April 4, 2018 5:47pm
- Than
  
  Easy.
  
  Both are symbolic. But “virtue signalling” achieves absolutely nothing, except make the signaller feel good about themselves. They have no effect outside of the signallers head.
  
  Whereas kicking out a couple of Russians improves our relationships with our traditional allies. This will have concrete benefits in terms of making trade deals more likely, getting their support if we ever need it, etcetera. Yes its a symbolic act, but one with tangible benefits.
  
  See the difference?
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:26am
  - marquess
    
    Sure, but that first definition encompasses most of what the nats are doing in opposition. Are you sure that’s the best definition?
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:40am
    - Than
      
      Not true. They’re doing the standard job of any opposition – making the public aware of what the government is doing.
      
      This has the tangible benefit of (hopefully) changing voters minds so we can be rid of this farcical mess of a government next election.
      
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      April 4, 2018 8:44am
      - KiWombat
        
        “They’re doing the standard job of any opposition – making the public aware of what the government is doing.”
        
        You left out 2 letters than, n and t following “is”
        
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        April 4, 2018 9:08am
- Chris R
  
  “Virtue signalling” is masturbatory. “Signalling your virtues” is philanthropic. I think that even the smallest leftie brain will grasp the distinction provided the leftie actually wishes to know.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:31am
  - RalphT
    
    And assuming that the leftie actually has a brain.
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:40am
- hullkiwi
  
  Saying Auckland’s transport is a basket without offering up any evidence to support your statement. Then say you are focused on fixing the issues by offering up a slum ghetto as a solution to a perceived housing problem, or expensive transport systems that will do nothing, but saddle Kiwis with expensive non-answers to a non-exsistent problem.
  From someone who knows more about tram systems that JAG, Toothy or Goofy, if LRT is the answer, you’ve asked the wrong question.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:36am
  - RW Capitalist
    
    This Govt., in particular, are the disease masquerading as the cure.
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:54am
  - Classic Liberal
    
    She should not have used the term ‘basket case’ anyway, very un-PC. It referred to people so disabled that they had to be carried around in baskets by hospital staff. A horrible expression.
    
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    April 4, 2018 11:42am
    - hullkiwi
      
      Come on, you are expecting her to have a level of knowledge that would get her an invite to be in Kimbo’s pub quiz team. I think not!
      
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      April 4, 2018 3:56pm
- MrTips
  
  Marquess. Naff off squirrel peddler. Instead, you show us how many children Labour have bought out of poverty. Show your works, not just your working group.
  And also show us how many unions bovvers you have issued standover duties for today.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:44am
  - marquess
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    Stick to the point tipsy. If you can.
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:53am
    - MrTips
      
      Oh marquess. I did. But like concord, it went right over your head. Is Haworths std issue earpiece getting rundown from all those orders he’s barked at you?
      
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      April 4, 2018 9:00am
- Salacious Crumb
  
  Marquess’s challenge for the day. Can you define what a “secret hearing” is and which citizens are entitled to such a privilege?
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:51am
stephieboy

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
The President’s and NRA’s troll army in action,

“The Public Attacks on the Parkland Teens Are Getting Nastier”

The longer the Parkland students continue their protests around gun control, the more they are being targeted by worsening insults, lies, and unhinged accusations. Two of the school’s highest-profile activists, David Hogg and Emma González, have become the focus of a particularly troll-like strain of pro-gun anger and this week were likened to Nazis, Communists, and anti-American traitors.

The attacks now come not just from the alt-right and anonymous Twitter louts. Since the weekend’s massive marches for gun control, more and more prominent figures in media and politics are aiming previously unfathomable public attacks at the youngsters.
The derision came early, in the form of the conspiracy theories from the usual sources. Radicals on Twitter were accusing the students of being actors even as news reports of the Feb. 14 shooting were still coming in, and conspiracy-theory king Alex Jones quickly spread these falsehoods further—despite eventual pushback from internet platforms.

Fast-forward a month, and we began to see fabricated attacks like this viral GIF altered to show Emma González appearing to tear up the U.S. Constitution, which caught on during the March for Our Lives. At its peak, it was shared by actor Adam Baldwin, who in the caption of the now-deleted tweet compared her to a member of the Hitler Youth. (In the real video, published by Teen Vogue, González tore up a gun-range target.)

Hogg, meanwhile, has been repeatedly smeared in memes likening him to Adolf Hitler.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/the-insults-pro-gun-people-use-against-parkland-students-david-hogg-and-emma-gonzalez.html
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April 4, 2018 8:04am
- flipper
  
  Slate ????
  
  Just garbage like stupidboy. Go away SB; back to your to your nest beneath Fraser House….and undo the fuel tax lies.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:09am
  - Simon
    
    Slate & Vox have managed to monetize the stupid like Soyboy.
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:17am
  - stephieboy
    
    flipper , why not focus on making your altright idiocy and stupidity more politically relevant and palatable for the voter ?
    
    You both too , Simaon and holysheet !
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:37am
    - Captain Mainwaring
      
      “Sqwark, sqwark, alt-right, screech, small but supple breasts, alt-right, sqwark.”
      
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      April 4, 2018 9:56am
    - holysheet
      
      No one does stupid better than you stoooopidboy
      
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      April 4, 2018 4:52pm
holysheet

Sign you will never see in a WINZ office.

Bored? Broke?
Do you find yourself with over 35 spare hours to fill every week?
Would you like to earn hundreds of dollars every month?
Then get a job like the rest of us, you lazy bastards.
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April 4, 2018 8:05am
Andrei

In 12 hours the OPCW will be meeting at the request of the Russian Federation to examine the evidence in the Skripal case

I wonder what formulation of weasel words they will arrive at to save Thereasa May from total humiliation?
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April 4, 2018 8:06am
- Lance
  
  An ‘enemy of Russia’ was poisoned with a sophisticated ‘state level’ nerve weapon on British soil.
  
  So who do you think did it?
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:10am
  - Andrei
    
    I’m fairly sure I know who didn’t do it
    
    And that would be the people accused in the British Parliament before the evidence was even gathered !
    
    Lance
    
    An ‘enemy of Russia’ was poisoned with a sophisticated ‘state level’ nerve weapon on British soil.
    
    See the weasel words ‘state level’ when of course at least ten states are known to have synthesised these substances including Great Britain at Porton Down as now has been admitted
    
    Given the formulars were openly published 25 years ago it seems ant competant graduate student of organic chemistry could produce these
    
    As for “sophisticated” in your statement, another weasel word – if whatever was used against the Skripals was so deadly how come they aint dead?
    
    If they were attacked with what it is claimed they were attacked with they should have died on their front door step – not gone pubbing and restauranting for four hours before becoming sick
    
    The whole thing don’t stack up
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:35am
    - Lance
      
      So how’s life in the Russian troll farm?
      
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      April 4, 2018 9:36am
      - Andrei
        
        So when you cannot counter a rational argument in an open debate you bring out a tired old talking point to divert thus proving your lack of originality, intelligence and analytical ability
        
        Sigh!!!
        
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        April 4, 2018 9:39am
      - Kimbo
        
        @ Andrei
        
        Kinda like how you said, “That is why some people call New Zealand a nation of sheep” here a few days ago? 😉
        
        https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2018/04/the_press_on_nz_and_russia.html
        
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        April 4, 2018 9:50am
    - chiz
      
      Given the formulars were openly published 25 years ago it seems ant competant graduate student of organic chemistry could produce these
      
      Any competent chemistry grad student could tell you Andrei that just because structural formula are available it doesn’t follow that you can figure out how to make them. Chemistry isn’t that simple.
      
      As for “sophisticated” in your statement, another weasel word – if whatever was used against the Skripals was so deadly how come they aint dead?
      
      Non-sequitur. Lance’s description of them as sophisticated is clearly a reference to the fact that manufacture of these chemicals is beyond your average meth-lab’s ability and that state involvement is indicated.
      
      As to why the Skripal’s aren’t dead that’s clearly because they didn’t get the dose that was planned.
      
      As to the OPCW meeting one assumes that this is only looking at the physical evidence. Its already a matter of public record that determination of Russian involvement was partly based on evidence from 5 eyes. Its not clear to me that the intercepted communications will be part of the OPCW meeting.
      
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      April 4, 2018 11:36am
      - Andrei
        
        Gee Chiz remember this?
        
        And the Chemical Weapons expert who called Tony Blair out on these distortions committed suicide shortly there after.
        
        Very strange business
        
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        April 4, 2018 12:31pm
      - chiz
        
        So, no real response then Andrei? And I’m not sure what Iraq has to do this. Saddam Hussein deliberately misled people into thinking he had WMD’s as a matter of policy.
        
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        April 4, 2018 12:37pm
  - dcrane
    
    The weasel word “probably” was part of that statement, as in “probably a state-level actor”, but has been deleted by sloppy people and everyone who wants this to look a lot more certain that it actually is.
    
    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
    
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    April 4, 2018 10:48pm
- EAD_TWO
  
  Indeed Andrei,
  
  As predicted & now confirmed by Porton Down labs, the so-called “Russian” nerve agent attack was a false flag as they can’t confirm it was from Russia. What kind of game are these people playing trying to frame a nuclear power & cause a major diplomatic incident.
  
  Jeremy Corbyn (despite me disagreeing with him on just about everything else) right from the start was the only Politician to say “wait until we see the evidence first before we point fingers”.
  
  His punishment for this heinous crime of showing a level head and waiting for the facts instead of jumping on the bandwagon of hysteria is to have the British MSM launch an all out character attack on him for the world’s worst crime of “anti-semitism” (i.e. liking Facebook pages, knowing people who belonged to “bad” groups etc.).
  
  The public are being played like fiddles but most are too dumb/brainwashed to realise it.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:17am
  - Lance
    
    Who do you think did it??????????
    
    10 6
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    April 4, 2018 8:21am
    - DifferentPerspective
      
      Easy – it was the nerve agent wot didit officer.
      
      If we institute a ban all assault nerve agents then there won’t be any attacks on ex-spies anymore in Britain.
      
      Also lets boycott the NNA – the National Nerve agent Association because crisis actors say so!
      
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      April 4, 2018 9:21am
      - dave_c_
        
        In the same way we will ALL need to live with a 70km/hr speed limit across 98 percent of NZ roads.
        Reduce the speed will reduce the death toll – Yer right. What imbeciles
        
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        April 4, 2018 12:03pm
  - VicParking
    
    The whole story might help. The statement also said that the nerve agent was so complex it would have to be made by government funded organisation. Russia is the only country with facilities with the capacity to do this. He said it was not his job to say were it was made, that was the governments who had additional evidence from the secret service.
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:35am
    - Andrei
      
      Russia is the only country with facilities with the capacity to do this.
      
      Really?
      
      What do the make a Porton Down, VicParking?
      
      Vitamins for premature babies?
      
      Even weirder the Soviet facilty where these were made and tested thirty years ago was in Uzbekistan not Russia
      
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      April 4, 2018 9:08am
      - VicParking
        
        Thirty years ago Uzbekistan was part of Russia
        Russia is the only country that has Miliary grade novichok nerve agents.
        Not saying other countries dont make nerve agents, North Korea, China, USA however they dont make novichok type ones
        
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        April 4, 2018 10:02am
      - Andrei
        
        No VicParking Uzbekistan was a constituent Republic of the Soviet Union
        
        The actual plant where these were supposedly synthesised and tested has been in American hands for 19 years and the scientists who did the work moved to the west in the early 1990s – 25 years ago and published their work
        
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        April 4, 2018 11:02am
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      The component parts are non- toxic organophosphates that aren’t difficult to synthesise.
      
      Some folks are producing evidence that Iran has manufactured a Novichok.. and that this is known by the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons)
      https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/first-recorded-successful-novichok-synthesis-was-in-2017-by-iran-in-cooperation-with-the-opcw/
      
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      April 4, 2018 10:30am
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        (woops, sorry SPC…. didn’t see you were on to this link)
        
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        April 4, 2018 11:08am
      - KevOB
        
        Thanks Maggy. It doesn’t seem beyond a chemistry grad student although a bit risky.
        
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        April 4, 2018 12:13pm
  - stephieboy
    
    EAD TWO , like Parklands, Sandyhook etc were false flags.
    
    Oh sure!
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:41am
    - Nev.
      
      pee pee poo poo
      yob!
      
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      April 4, 2018 9:16am
    - DifferentPerspective
      
      As that famous socialist from the 20th century so eloquently put it
      
      The bigger the lie, the less likely anyone is to imagine you have the impudence to try it on
      
      Coming from the party that used state security organs to spy on an opposition candidate using their own oppo research as the basis for a warrant – anything is possible.
      
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      April 4, 2018 9:24am
    - dave_c_
      
      Wow ! Finally Stephie boy twigs – YES, they were false flags.
      
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      April 4, 2018 12:06pm
- SPC
  
  Back in 2016 Iran informed the international body that it had found a way to make this substance using commerically available materials.
  
  https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/first-recorded-successful-novichok-synthesis-was-in-2017-by-iran-in-cooperation-with-the-opcw/
  
  http://www.spectroscopynow.com/details/ezine/1591ca249b2/Iranian-chemists-identify-Russian-chemical-warfare-agents.html?tzcheck=1,1,1,1,1&&tzcheck=&
  
  Clinton advising diplomats not to mention novichoks in chemical weapons talks in 2009
  (leaked cables from Wikileaks)
  
  http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/03/clinton-state-department-discouraged-novichok-discussion.html
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:48am
redeye

Joke of the day;
“Transport Minister Phil Twyford said he believed Aucklanders would understand the need for those increases.”
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April 4, 2018 8:08am
- Lance
  
  Just like the people travelling (a loose term, crawling would be better) around Onehunga are happy there is no East / West link.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:13am
  - MCos
    
    I was in Onehunga yesterday, as I am several times a week. It’s like any other Auckland suburb to get around.
    It’s congested at the Neilson St off ramp, but there are other exits.
    
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    April 4, 2018 9:41am
    - dime
      
      wasnt this east/ west link something to do with watercare as well?
      
      all the services required for the slum stoner wants to build at unitec, canceled with the link..
      
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      April 4, 2018 10:14am
- holysheet
  
  It’s all about the money. Imagine the extra tax to be collected from all these vehicles in the gridlock that is Auckland traffic. Nothing is going to change in Auckland anytime soon. It will be years of paying this tax for no benefit to the motorist.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:13am
  - Lance
    
    If National are smart, all they need to do it erect billboards blaming CoL for the gridlock they are in.
    National had a plan, CoL killed it
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:16am
    - Dave Mann
      
      Yes a billboard campaign would be great. A lot of good sense is written clearly on this blog about increased taxes, the stupid discussions about new speed restrictions, the Russians, JAG etc etc etc….. but where is the National Party? Where are their statements and what are they actually doing ?
      
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      April 4, 2018 9:13am
      - Captain Mainwaring
        
        What are they actually doing?
        They’re standing by while Labour continues to make arses of themselves.
        Never interrupt your enemy whey they’re busy fucking things up all by themselves.
        
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        April 4, 2018 10:00am
  - stephieboy
    
    holysheet ,
    
    alternative ideas ?
    
    More of this ?
    
    http://auto.ifeng.com/fun/tidbitpic/detail_2011_11/01/10313306_0.shtml
    
    DUH !
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:42am
    - hullkiwi
      
      What was offered up by JAG(UAR) & toothy was more footpaths for you to walk on while the rest of us pay more tax. How to fix things, not!
      
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      April 4, 2018 8:47am
- Northland Wahine
  
  Yep! I’m tired of paying for the apparent privilege of living in Auckland. I for one do not understand the need for these increases. And lowering the speed limit to 70 and 30ks? Great way to increase revenue in speeding fines.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:14am
  - Rachael Membery
    
    And our deteriorating mental health!!!
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:23am
  - Lance
    
    Hell yea
    West Auckland has more people than Chch, has 1/2 a hospital (1/2 a small hospital BTW) and the 2 most congested clusterfucks of roads in NZ.
    It’s paradise
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:25am
    - 4077th
      
      1.25 hours to get from Western Heights to Rosebank road via Te Atatu Rd and the motorway (6K’s). What says Twatford about that? Does he think the $10 per tank will help with that? It is his electorate so surely is a priority for him? Tui Billboard …
      
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      April 4, 2018 10:25am
      - Lance
        
        The tram down Dominion Rd will somehow mysteriously fix it, according to Twitford and the CoL
        
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        April 4, 2018 10:32am
    - Surely Knott
      
      West Auckland is being screwed by Auckland Council. No economic investment or contracts coming to westie businesses at all. Waitakere City Council building being sold off. So AT and ATEED can move into blue chip waterfront digs, because they don’t like the west or taking trains. And then after selling off the existing asset they want to build new office space in Albany. So no council business or jobs returned to the area. No toursim business as the Waitakere Ranges are shut. And no alcohol or hospitality businesses as the trusts have a liquor monopoly. There is however a rising business in social services.
      
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      April 4, 2018 10:45am
      - Lance
        
        Len Brown was greeted with open hostility when he made the mistake of turning up in Henderson, needed minders IIRC.
        Seems Full Goof hasn’t even turned up, just shat on the west and kept away.
        
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        April 4, 2018 11:12am
  - KiWombat
    
    NW – I think you have hit the nail on the head !
    
    Last week there was a story about the additional millions in revenue the gubmint received from the Waterview tunnel, but that is drying up as drivers become a bit wiser.
    
    So how do we get that revenue stream back? And how can we bump it up a bit?
    
    Enter JAG and Twitford with their comprehensive plan. Lower the speed limit even further to catch out more unsuspecting motorists – but lower speeds means less petrol tax revenue – so lets bump that up 20% to compensate. Win, win !
    
    Twitford and the yank skank both need to get their marching orders !
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:28am
    - VicParking
      
      Wrong in one point Wombat. You still need to get from A to B. Modern cars are less efficient at lower speeds, more use of your brakes. This adds up to higher fuel use and higher tax revenue.
      
      19 1
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      April 4, 2018 8:39am
      - waikatosinger
        
        Also if everyone drives slower, they will take longer to get to where they are going (duh!) which will increase congestion. If all journeys took 20% longer this would immediately result in an increase of 20% in the amount of traffic on the road at any instant. Furthermore this increase in congestion will further slow journey times causing yet more congestion. Instant logjam.
        
        This is one reason why traffic problems go from bad to nightmare quickly. There is a very nasty feedback effect involved between congestion and journey times. Congestion causes people to take longer to get to where they are going, which causes more congestion, which causes people to take even longer to get to where they are going, and so on. Once you hit the tipping point the whole system can lock up quite quickly.
        
        On the bright side however you get a virtuous feedback loop when you start to make improvements. Better roads cut journey times which diminishes congestion which further cuts journey times which further diminishes congestion, and so on. Even small improvements to the roads will have a much bigger effect on the problem than you might expect.
        
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        April 4, 2018 1:20pm
    - stephieboy
      
      KiWombat , practical ideas and solutions other than more of your usual claptrap?
      
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      April 4, 2018 8:46am
      - Nev.
        
        craptrap!
        
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        April 4, 2018 9:18am
    - 4077th
      
      What a fucking dilemma for JAG! Surely more excise tax hikes will encourage more EV’s or at the very least Hybrid EV ‘s… ergo a reduction in revenue but a massive wide on for her and the gweens? What a conundrum…Watch as they ease the pain by providing subsidies for EV’s..NOT, lol fools..
      
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      April 4, 2018 10:32am
  - waikatogirl
    
    The lowering of the road speeds has got to be a red herring to take our eye off the Curran debacle and NZF attempting to thumb screw Mark Mitchell.
    
    Lowering the speed to 70 on the open road is never going to fly with Kiwis. This is nanny state at it’s most blatant, a repeat of Liebour wanting to install compulsory water restricting shower heads!
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:32am
    - Happychappy
      
      wg: This has the hallmark of Winston Peters like the pension overpayments drain the air so people look at what’s going to hurt them resulting in the Curran and Mitchell sagas being moved on. Let’s just hope that people’s disgust in fuel taxes and speed limits do not drag momentum away from the lies of Curran and the NZ First MP’s.
      
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      April 4, 2018 9:32am
      - Right of way is Way of Right
        
        That plan has one flaw, we currently have the largest opposition in NZ history, and they seem to be more than able to manage more than one thing at a time. Melissa has Curran on the ropes, Collins has Twitfords number, Bennett is the stone in Winston’s shoe, and Bridges is all over Taxcinda! Mitchell has Marks number, Shane Jones is running out of places to duck and weave into, as Paul Goldsmith is working him in to a corner. Amy Adams is locked on to Grant Robertson, which is the most attention that man has ever had from a woman. Hell, even Sarah Dowie is using fisheries to drive a wedge between the Greens and NZ First.
        
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        April 4, 2018 10:27am
    - Classic Liberal
      
      There would be much more overtaking if open roads went to 70Km. Far more crashes.
      
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      April 4, 2018 11:48am
  - MrLovebucket
    
    Speed cameras are tax by stealth. Maybe we will see many more of these pop up.
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:42am
  - hullkiwi
    
    You & me both. Mind you on some of our roads in North Rodney if you do more than 70km/hr you’ll be into a tree, a ditch or rolled your vehicle.
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:42am
  - KevOB
    
    Neat. How to fix traffic problems. The longer the journey takes the longer the time on the road. For 100 equivalents truckloads at 100kph requires approx 150 at 70kph. Congestive?
    
    A road that is not cleared a rapidly can carry fewer cars or have more nose to tail. Traffic safety?
    
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    April 4, 2018 12:20pm
Inandout

More California Mayors are pulling out of Sanctuary City laws. LA city apparently has become a hell hole of homelessness.
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April 4, 2018 8:11am
- Southern Raider
  
  San Fran is a dirty, dangerous shit hole as well
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:22am
  - dime
    
    and its as gay as aids
    
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    April 4, 2018 10:15am
flyernzl

Here is a curly question for you – is renting out residential accommodation a business?

Maybe, maybe not. It seems to depend on what you are renting out and for how long. If you are renting out accommodation for one night, or for a week or two, there seems to be no argument – motels and hotels pay commercial rates, add GST to their charges and in every respect operate as does any other business in the country.

Yet if you or I rent out a house or a flat for months or years, the picture changes. By law we cannot add GST to our rent, so presumably such renting is neither a good nor a service (of course this means we also cannot claim back the GST on our inputs either). We pay council rates at a residential rather than a commercial activity level and Watercare will not accept our customers as their customers. Yet when if and when we end up with a cash surplus from our renting activities Inland Revenue then demand that we pay tax on that income on the basis that it is a business rather than a hobby.

So where does that leave us? On the political outer for a start. Jacinda Ardern has been reported as saying that she had spoken with New Zealand business and they are comfortable with her changes to the economy, but as far as I can tell she has not spoken to any residential landlords, individual Property Investor Associations, or the Property Federation. In her eyes, and by extension the other members of her coalition Government, it would seem that we are not ‘business’. We seem to exist in some twilight ‘other world’ where the normal rules of commerce do not apply.

Of course, things run the other way as well. Many individuals who are landlords do not consider that they are ‘in business’. “Oh, its just a property that we inherited, that we used to live in, or acquired by mistake. We only rent it out to cover costs and we really like the tenants. They’ve been there for many years, never cause problems, so we don’t want to put the rent up and annoy them”. They are, in effect, operating a charity rather than a business. The crunch comes, as it inevitably does, when they eventually need to sell either through age or financial misfortune and then the newspaper headlines shriek “Pensioner tenants callously thrown out with just three months notice after many years in what they treated as their own home. The provision for 90 day notice termination is grossly unfair and should be banned!” No-one ever considers that these people have been getting a raving bargain for many years at someone else’s expense.

So we are left with those landlords who accept the reality that they are in business, the accommodation business. Either as a part-time business, an adjunct to their mainstream employment, or (for a tiny minority) as their main and full-time business activity. These are the landlords who generally maintain their properties, seek to remain on good commercial terms with their tenants, keep up to date with the ever-changing legislative changes around the industry, charge rents that are realistic and in-line with the current market and their own cost overheads, and actively participate in the industry. They do all this, not because they are greedy and grasping or because they are altruistic and generous, they do all this because it is good sound business practice.

Yet, despite all this, we have various political commentators who seem to think that landlords should above all be caring and compassionate. Sure, they argue, you have to pay rates insurance maintenance and all the other overheads of property ownership. Sure you have to pay your mortgage obligations to the bank on the day, each and every month, in order to avoid a penalty. But when the bills for all of that arrive and your tenants rent payments don’t, we think you should be understanding and not too demanding. After all, simply by being a landlord you are obviously wealthy and therefore owe a Christian duty to look after your less-fortunate fellow man or woman. Quite why they think that the supplier of accommodation should be forgiving but make no similar demands on the suppliers of food, clothing, transport, finance, or any of the other necessities of life remains a mystery to me and probably to you as well.

Why the business of residential rentals should occupy this unique position in our business and social landscape is an unanswered question. Perhaps it is because there is a wide-spread belief that having a place to live is, uniquely, some sort of innate human right. Perhaps it is because landlords, as a class, are seen as an easy target, being considered small in number and politically powerless. Perhaps it is because landlords are generally seen as somehow making fantastically large and often untaxed profits. Most likely it a mixture of all of the above and more mixed in with a sizeable dollop of envy and a touch of spite.

It is a truism that the best managers are never recognized. Things go well. What should be there in the right place in the right quantity and at the right time is there, and this is what people come to expect and take for granted. It is not until that manager departs and then there are shortages, bottle-necks and chaos that people come to realise that Joe was indeed an excellent manager and a vital part of the team. I suspect that we landlords are like Joe. Our contribution is at best taken for granted and at worst is derided, ignored, or vilified and we have many activists plotting ways to punish us. However, if the current political efforts to force us out of the business succeed this will inevitably leave a vacuum that all the social housing and kiwibuild efforts will struggle to fill inefficiently and at a much higher cost to both society and the taxpayer.
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April 4, 2018 8:12am
- Monique Watson
  
  Being a landlord or landlady is an amazing source of material. The schmucks you deal with year to year (I have a crap ton of stories here) and as you say, this is offset by the odd good honest tenant who treat it even better than they would their own home. Because they want to raise their children decently and the opportunity to own their own home hasn’t yet come their way.
  In rural Taranaki , I have a next door neighbour who mows the lawns for me. Offsets the knocking great rates bill I get quarter to quarter.
  If you don’t have a career, investment property is a great way to bring an extra stream of income into the household instead of sitting on your entitled ass expecting the government to pay your way.
  I agree we’re vilified by both local and central governments. We have less rights than a union member and the rug gets pulled from under us regularly.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:25am
- KiWombat
  
  Good piece Mr Pilot !
  
  In addition to your comments, landlords tend not to be constantly on the gubmint teat. They have structured their finances wisely and invested in something that will secure their future – and prevent their reliance on gubmint handouts in their twilight years.
  
  I’m not talking about those with mass property portfolios, but those with one or two investment properties.
  
  Their tenants are often in part subsidised with an accommodation supplement, but without that the gubmint would have had to construct more homes anyway – which is the more cost efficient? Paying an accommodation supplement, or building a house ?
  
  And at the end of the day you have an individual – or couple – landlord who can continue to live comfortably because they have been wise with money. I think it’s a no brainer !
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:41am
- peterwn
  
  If you rent out a property or take in a lodger for payment – you are running a business. The issue is how ‘business-like’ you want to handle it. Running a ‘night shelter’, soup kitchen or social rental housing is still a business but with a nil profit aim. The other end of the spectrum could be being a rack renting slumlord. A commercial landlord (eg listed property companies such as Precinct or Property for Industry) exists to maximise returns for shareholders. To do this for the long term requires moderation on the landlord’s part – keeping properties optimally maintained, being considerate of tenants’ needs, being generally reasonable and maintaining good tenant relations. They aim to be ‘landlord of choice’.
  Therefore a small time private landlord should strive for similar values even though he or she could maximise return in the short term by being a real b******.
  If you are physically close to your tenant then you want someone you can get on well with. A well off widow I knew had a flat in her house available for rent. She rented it out to police officers as it met her conscious and unconscious criteria of community mindedness, need for dependable tenants and her own safety.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:45am
- KevOB
  
  The problem of being a landlord is cashflow. It hasn’t changed over the years. There are relationships to market rents, interest costs and a return from enterprise which leave landlords finely balanced.
  
  The rent less rates, insurances and bank outgoings typically leaves little for the owner. Maintenance frequently has to be funded out of other sources of income. Tenants may feel that more work should be done on a property but they don’t finance that or can’t afford the increased rent required to do so.
  
  Often the only return to a landlord is on a sale when a capital gain is realised compensating for having held an asset in an inflationary market for years.
  
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  April 4, 2018 12:31pm
flipper

But all New Zealand pays through the cost goods and services. It is another Peters-Ardern Regime lie.
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April 4, 2018 8:13am
RW Capitalist

Wonder how the housing “crisis” is going.
Wonder how the costings for Kiwi build will be impacted?
Since:
Concrete trucks run on Diesel
Delivery trucks run on Diesel
Builders etc have to get their tools and themselves to site
Unintended consequences?
Must be a Labour govt.
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April 4, 2018 8:19am
EAD_TWO

Yesterday I reported on the news of the UN-Israel stitch-up (whereby Italy and Germany didn’t even know they are going to be enriched even more) to export Black Africans to the West doesn’t wake people up, nothing will.

Jews, alone among “White” nations, have been granted the privilege of racial & territorial integrity via sole exemption from 3rd world immigration.

Jewish pro-migrant agitation in the West is the worst of hypocrisies.
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April 4, 2018 8:23am
Tauhei Notts

Yesterday we had two General Debates. I think that should continue each day with the proviso that Stephieboy is fully entitled to comment on only one of those threads. That way rational debate can continue and Stephieboy will be able to post crap to his vast delight, and I will not get repetitive strain injury from continually downticking his posts.
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April 4, 2018 8:31am
- Lance
  
  And Hugh
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:32am
- VicParking
  
  I have a better idea. Stephie, morning by the way, should stick to tending his goats and only comment on the back of toilet paper after he has used it. ??
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:45am
wreck1080

Jacinda Ardern is now a lying snake.

Lying, because she introduced a new tax when they said they wouldn’t.

A snake, because she is saying an excise is not a tax.

Election promises mean nothing if you can argue semantics like this.
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April 4, 2018 8:32am
- KiWombat
  
  Here’s the difference between a tax and an excise – oh, but wait a minute !
  
  excise
  
  n [ék sīz] (plural excises)
  1. tax on goods for home market: taxation of or a tax imposed on goods for a domestic market only
  
  Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P)
  
  – sigh – looks like she will have to rewrite the dictionary now !
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:45am
- hullkiwi
  
  She is selling it as not a new tax, because we’ve always had an excise tax on fuel. Add weasel to her list of titles.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:52am
  - RW Capitalist
    
    Learned it from Winston or just birds of a feather?
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:57am
  - Paulus
    
    Like GST can be increased any time as it is not a new tax.
    
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    April 4, 2018 1:52pm
Swifty

I saw somewhere not too long ago that the cost to us for taking in a refugee is $1M over ten years i.e. $100K a year.

I thought this possibly about right when factoring in accomodation, housing fit-out, healthcare, benefits, refugee services, mental health care etc.

Can anyone confirm this figure please?

(Of course, this amounts to liabilities of $4B over ten years for each year we take in 4,000 refugees as per Green Party policy, and not including others brought in through family reunification)
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April 4, 2018 8:35am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  $100,000 /year for the first 3 years sounds about right, if we bring the 2016 figure ($81,000/yr/refugee) up to date.
  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11688925
  
  (When the in-laws arrived in NZ as refugees and had been through the Pahiatua orientation
  https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/wairarapa/72592677/150-years-of-news–pahiatua-camp-a-homage-to-united-nations-principles
  .. they were expected to find work and make their own way in NZ, same as anyone else in the country.
  
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  April 4, 2018 3:14pm
RW Capitalist

Seems I will have to recalculate, when I can take on an extra employee.
With the near 20% increase in fuel costs.
How’s that unemployment figure coming JA?
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April 4, 2018 8:41am
RW Capitalist

Don’t drink and drive.
But you won’t be able to afford a Taxi
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April 4, 2018 8:42am
Rodney Randall

https://www.google.com/amp/m.jpost.com/Israel-News/Analysis-The-ramifications-of-Netanyahus-u-turn-547820/amp
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April 4, 2018 8:42am
- EAD_TWO
  
  Diversity for thee but not for me
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:58am
burt

I’m pretty sure during the leaders debate Bill English explicitly asked Jacinda about both new taxes and increasing existing taxes and she said NO.

Perhaps somebody with a little time on their hands could find if my memory serves me correctly.
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April 4, 2018 8:46am
- hullkiwi
  
  …and she told us, ” she couldn’t see any reason to ever lie in politics.”
  
  I suppose when male bovine excrement comes out of her mouth with fairy dust sprinkled over it, it is not a bunch of lies!
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:07am
  - RW Capitalist
    
    A thought (not mine)
    “You can’t polish a turd to make it shine, but you can roll it in glitter and make it twinkle”
    
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    April 4, 2018 9:50am
    - KiWombat
      
      Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
      
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      April 4, 2018 1:28pm
      - RW Capitalist
        
        I would go further
        There is NO such thing as “Hate speech”
        Just speech “YOU” hate.
        
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        April 4, 2018 5:47pm
- SPC
  
  Same reply Key gave in 2008, before the GST increase when in office.
  
  Then later the bright line test …
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:31am
  - burt
    
    And the left called him a liar and called for him to stand down – but it’s different when Labour do it.
    
    Oh, and Jacinda never lies.
    
    19 1
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    April 4, 2018 10:11am
    - RW Capitalist
      
      My definition of a lie.
      Is an untruth you say, when at the time you KNEW it was not true.
      eg”If you like your Dr you can keep your Dr.”
      “I knew nothing of GE modified corn”
      “We will introduce no new taxes”
      
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      April 4, 2018 5:50pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  My memory of Jacinda during the Leader’s debate was that she was always vague on detail.
  
  I’m sure the only tax thing that got a definite No from Jacinda was CGT in her first term.
  
  The key point I took was that she was going to set up a Tax Working Group…..and then all would be revealed
  http://www.labour.org.nz/tax
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:52am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    Retraction, retraction, (well, partial retraction)
    
    Just been over to Pete George’s blog and he’s posted a link to Robbo stating No new taxes in first term.
    http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/election/2017/09/labour-no-new-taxes-in-first-term.html
    
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    April 4, 2018 10:11am
VicParking

It seems that the Government first sentence has to include the line that they are only taxing us because of the wrong doings of the previous government.
They are hoping that by now the voters have forgotten the mess National inherit, the earthquakes and the Global Financial crisis.
I’m sure this comment will still be shoved in our face at the next election.
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April 4, 2018 8:51am
Inandout

What a sad lot in this photo. Fat boy picking the callouses off his right hand, Cindy twisting her mouth, Twitford gouging his nails and Genter looking dead bored. If one only knew what was going through their tiny minds.

https://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2018/04/labour-intends-to-sock-motorists-with-increased-taxes-to-pay-for-road-maggots-and-more-public-transport/
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April 4, 2018 8:56am
- waikatogirl
  
  Looks like Shame Jones has been hoovering all those free meal entitlements since gaining his seat back. Parliament will need to find a larger seat for him soon. ?
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:38am
  - sooty
    
    He could go see fat boy crim. He knows where to get big boy chairs.
    
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    April 4, 2018 12:47pm
SPC

Virtue signalling, synonym for expressing outrage at left wing government on right wing blog or expressing outrage at right wing government on left wing blog.
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April 4, 2018 9:01am
Fletch

Apparently there’s an “active shooter” at the Youtube headquarters.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12025645
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April 4, 2018 9:07am
- Inandout
  
  Once shot dead, he becomes ‘inactive’.
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:09am
  - MCos
    
    ‘She’ as it happens.
    
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    April 4, 2018 9:53am
- Rich Prick
  
  the shooter was a “white adult female” wearing a dark top and head scarf
  
  I think that might be code for something.
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:52am
  - MCos
    
    Not your typical mass shooter over there.
    
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    April 4, 2018 9:55am
Inandout

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43632905

Saudis and Israelis are getting on a bit better. Thanks Trump.
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April 4, 2018 9:07am
KiWombat

Towards the end of yesterday’s GD there was a post by DG regarding a secret court hearing yesterday that involved a particular “consort.”

Apparently the rumours are strong in Wellington.

Does anybody have more information at hand ?
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April 4, 2018 9:16am
- DifferentPerspective
  
  Wouldn’t all criminals like to have secret hearings?
  
  Isn’t this a bit disgusting if the “consort” is getting special treatment?
  
  A few years back I could envisage this being considered a press worthy abuse of power!
  
  I’m sure John Banks would’ve loved his disgusting Salem trial to have been in secret until the dud judge could be overturned and his name was cleared!
  
  As I said yesterday the two biggest issues assailing our democracy are:
  – dishonest activist judges
  and
  – the lying MSM
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:31am
  - waikatogirl
    
    No sunlight for the Left. They like to keep their skeletons in a dark and secure closet!
    
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    April 4, 2018 9:40am
    - chuk
      
      Perhaps Liabore keep a special dark and secure closet for consorts requiring special treatment. At least they will each have someone to talk to in there.
      
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      April 4, 2018 5:01pm
  - KiWombat
    
    Maybe I should get onto Golriz’s office. She seems to have had experience defending the indefensible. Perhaps she was also busy yesterday ?
    
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    April 4, 2018 1:40pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  I’ve discovered I have a number of white powders in my cupboards.
  Are there any specific ones that I should discard forthwith?
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:55am
  - Paulus Gnome
    
    Any of those not marked, Surf, Rinso etc.
    
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    April 4, 2018 1:35pm
- Poppa
  
  No but I think there is substance to the rumour
  
  I think it may involve a powder of some sort. Perhaps it was a new fish burly?
  
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  April 4, 2018 1:17pm
- Salacious Crumb
  
  The media are aware of this. The hearing was apparently last Wednesday. The question of whether name suppression orders apply is being investigated.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:47pm
  - KiWombat
    
    Thanx SC
    
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    April 4, 2018 9:06pm
Sponge

Can anyone tell me when the next opinion poll is going to be?
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April 4, 2018 9:20am
Prince

I thought I read ‘NO TAX INCREASE’ on Labour’s wall last September, but today there it is, in fresh new paint, ‘but an excise isn’t a tax’.
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April 4, 2018 9:30am
Hugh Pavletich

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
Auckland a buyer’s market as stock of homes for sale rises to its highest level for the month of March since 2012 | interest.co.nz

https://www.interest.co.nz/property/93007/auckland-buyers-market-stock-homes-sale-rises-its-highest-level-month-march-2012

Auckland became even more of a buyer’s market in March, with the number of homes available for sale in the region at a six year high. … read more via hyperlink above …
.
.
NZ Labour Government takes aim at property speculators – MacroBusiness Australia

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/04/nz-takes-aim-property-speculators/

… with extensive Pavletich comments on thread … starting …

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/04/nz-takes-aim-property-speculators/#comment-3080503
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April 4, 2018 9:34am
- Hugh Pavletich
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  Posted at … https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2018/04/general_debate_3_apr_2018.html/comment-page-1#comment-2177546 … and … https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2018/04/general_debate_3_apr_2018.html/comment-page-1#comment-2177616
  
  NZ Labour Government takes aim at property speculators – MacroBusiness Australia
  
  https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/04/nz-takes-aim-property-speculators/
  
  By Leith van Onselen
  
  Last week, New Zealand’s parliament passed legislation to extend the “bright line test” out to five years, thus ensuring that if a speculator sells a rental property within five years they will pay income tax on the capital gain. From Interest.co.nz: …
  
  … concluding …
  
  … In both nations, it’s the centre-left parties taking the lead on housing reform.
  
  unconventionaleconomist@hotmail.com
  
  … with extensive Pavletich comments on thread … starting …
  
  https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/04/nz-takes-aim-property-speculators/#comment-3080503
  
  … ENOUGH TINKERING … SOUND STRUCTURAL REFORMS REQUIRED … URGENTLY … read more via hyperlinks above …
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:37am
  - Hugh Pavletich
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    … From Australia … MacroBusiness Australia articles behind paywalls … https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/ …
    
    For sale listings rise in March – MacroBusiness
    
    https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/04/sale-listings-rise-march/
    
    Aussie household debt climbs to all-time high – MacroBusiness
    
    https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/04/aussie-household-debt-climbs-to-all-time-high/
    
    Australia’s credit impulse fades away – MacroBusiness
    
    https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/04/australias-credit-impulse-fades-away/
    
    2 34
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    April 4, 2018 10:26am
    - Hugh Pavletich
      
      … A One Term Government … If That ? …
      
      Bernard Hickey: A rail Government vs a motorway Opposition | Stuff.co.nz
      
      https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/102813205/bernard-hickey-a-rail-government-vs-a-motorway-opposition
      
      OPINION: Watching a popular Government making a politically dangerous and large policy decision is never a comfortable experience. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern led out a bevy of transport ministers onto the stage of the Beehive Theatrette on Tuesday to make what on the face of it was a bland strategy announcement about building fewer big new motorways and spending more on rumble strips, median barriers, bike paths, buses and trams. … read more via hyperlink above …
      
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      April 4, 2018 1:16pm
- Classic Liberal
  
  Thanks Hugh, so actually there is no housing shortage. Please inform the CoL.
  
  10 2
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  April 4, 2018 12:00pm
  - Hugh Pavletich
    
    Classic Liberal … to repeat (yawn) …
    
    1. Standard detached housing should not cost any more than 3.0 times annual household incomes of specific metros ( refer Annual Demographia Surveys ; recent Glaeser & Gyourko paper ; recent Reserve Bank of Australia paper ).
    
    2. New fringe starter house and land packages should cost around 2.5 times … at development ratios of 20% serviced lot and the balance construction ( Definition of an affordable housing market http://www.PerformanceUrbanPlanning ).
    
    3. Apartment / townhouses should be around 2.0 times ( to illustrate refer Houston Association of Realtors Monthly Report ).
    
    4. Fringe manufactured house and land packages should be around 1.5 times ( refer Leaky Homes And An Architect’s Musing’s | Scoop News March 2010 published Interest Co NZ as ‘Houston: We have a housing affordability problem’ … extract below General Email) .
    
    Following 13+ years of intense public discussion of these issues in New Zealand, there is no excuse not to have a sound grasp of these ‘structural basics’.
    
    After all … housing development and construction is a very formulaic business today.
    
    With the gross annual median household income in Auckland now about $94,000 (refer Demographia Survey schedules) … the detached median house prices should not exceed $282,000 … fringe starter house & land packages $235,000 … apartments / townhouses $188,000 and fringe manufactured house & land packages about $141,000
    
    Have Auckland Mayor Phil Goff and New Zealand Housing Minister Phil Twyford told you this ?
    ,
    .
    Housing – New Zealand Labour Party
    
    http://www.labour.org.nz/housing
    
    … extract …
    
    Remove barriers that are stopping Auckland growing up and out
    
    Labour will remove the Auckland urban growth boundary and free up density controls. This will give Auckland more options to grow, as well as stopping landbankers profiteering and holding up development. New developments, both in Auckland and the rest of New Zealand, will be funded through innovative infrastructure bonds.
    
    1 25
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    April 4, 2018 1:46pm
    - Nostradamus
      
      *Plop*
      
      That’s the sound of Hugh taking a dump!
      
      … with extensive Pavletich comments on thread …
      
      *Plop* *Plop* *Plop*
      
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      April 4, 2018 3:26pm
      - Classic Liberal
        
        His ‘yawn’ was hilarious – nobody here asked him to repeat everything. I was trying to get him to go and ‘inform’ the CoL instead…
        
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        April 4, 2018 4:15pm
MrTips

Looks like someone found Willie Jackson’s old comb: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/102803195/a-mori-ceremonial-comb-has-been-discovered-in-huntly-roadworks
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April 4, 2018 9:39am
DifferentPerspective

Foreign collusion to influence the US election result

I’m sure our esteemed host is busily typing away on this so I thought I’d try to gazump him on this important story about how foreign actors interfered in the US election results.

Unfortunately, the proof is emerging now that it was Clinton, aided and abetted by Estonians and the Director of the CIA who colluded against the Trump campaign. This famously “sqwawk” alt-right Spectator covers this story.

Somehow this failed to get covered on the ~~Clinton News Network~~ CNN, they must have been coaching crisis actors that day. Understandable.
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April 4, 2018 9:48am
Keeping Stock

Get ready for fireworks when the Economic Development select committee convenes tomorrow morning. The Chair and CEO of RNZ are attending, along with their QC.

Might be another sleepless night tonight for Clare Curran, and for Jacinda Ardern now that she has thrown her lot in with her Broadcasting and Secret Meetings Minister…

Popcorn anyone?

http://politik.co.nz/en/content/politics/1309/RNZ-lawyers-up-ready-for-Select-Committee-showdown-RNZ-Clare-Curran-Richard-Griffin-Carol-Hirschfeld-Paul-Thompson-Jonathan-Young-Jacinda-Ardern.htm
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April 4, 2018 9:55am
- waikatogirl
  
  Will the Minister of deception be back in the country from the GC in time to be answer questions from Economic Development select committee?
  
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  April 4, 2018 11:56am
  - DifferentPerspective
    
    As one of my fellow KB commenters so hilariously opined recently.
    
    She’s in witless protection.
    
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    April 4, 2018 3:58pm
Manolo

Lightweight PM Ardern appears lighter and lighter by the day.
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April 4, 2018 9:55am
big bruv

By naming Sophie Pascoe as the flag bearer of the Commonwealth games team we once again demonstrate that NZ has become a nation of virtue signalling cucks.
The only thing that surprised me about this appointment is that they did not go full cuck and name Gavin Hubbard as the flag bearer. Having said that, I do wonder if the games officials are waiting for Gavin to win a medal in the female weightlifting competition (as he surely will) thus allowing Gavin the freak to really embarrass us all over again by being the flag bearer as the closing ceremony.

We could have named a true sporting great in Hamish Bond, or Dame Valerie Adams but no, we have to name a one legged swimmer just to prove how virtuous we are. I have said it before on many occasions, sometimes it is really fucking embarrassing being a New Zealander.
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April 4, 2018 10:01am
- DifferentPerspective
  
  Ms Pascoe has done well, no question.
  
  However, in real terms rising to the top in a very small pool (no pun intended) like disabled competition is a lesser triumph than those of Bond or Dame Valerie who are competing against a much fiercer pool of talent.
  
  In fact, it smacks of white privilege not to give the honour to Dame Valerie. DV has dominated a sport that has been out of reach for any but Eastern Europeans for generations. She has triumphed over cheats, she had the desolating experience at the Olympics when she was denied the honour of being presented the gold and hearing the NZ anthem because of a person she must have known was a cheat and she did all of that with great grace.
  
  I think the organising committee should be ashamed of themselves for such overt tokenism and hypocrisy. I know I am ashamed of them.
  
  I think DV is an absolute hero of NZ sport and we have not feted her the way we should have.
  
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  April 4, 2018 10:09am
  - itstricky
    
    not to give the honour to Dame Valerie
    
    , who has has been flag bearer before,
    
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    April 4, 2018 10:31am
- Longknives
  
  I have a bet with a mate that Hubbard is going to be one of the Flag Bearers…
  I honestly think the Virtue Signalling in the NZ Team is that strong! (Remember this is the Team that does Hakas even when they lose)
  
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  April 4, 2018 10:11am
- MCos
  
  I’d have to say that’s one of the most mean spirited comments I’ve read in many a day.
  
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  April 4, 2018 12:22pm
  - itstricky
    
    Can’t stop a good virtue signal about virtue signalling when it gets signalling.
    
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    April 4, 2018 1:23pm
  - DifferentPerspective
    
    Confirming what I’ve always thought about your comments MCos – that you never read them after you’ve posted them.
    
    If you had, then you wouldn’t be able to make that comment!
    
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    April 4, 2018 3:59pm
- Right of way is Way of Right
  
  Sorry Bruv, but having spent some time in the company of Sophie, and let me say, one leg notwithstanding, she has earned this accolade in every measure, and I doubt you will find a single athlete in the team who will disagree with me.
  
  She is an absolute legend, and deserves this honour.
  
  Far from being a virtue signalling exercise, I know it to be a valid honour, and awarded to exactly the right person!
  
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  April 4, 2018 2:03pm
  - big bruv
    
    Right of way.
    If you took my comments as an attack on Ms Pascoe then you took it the wrong way, that was not my intention.
    My comments simply highlight the desperate nature of our virtue signalling (and is symptomatic of our pathetic desperation to be noticed on the world stage) in that we decided there was more chance of getting a mention on overseas news channels because we have selected a young lady who only has one leg.
    You also call Ms Pascoe a ‘legend’, I will concede she is indeed “world famous in NZ” but nobody, (and I really do mean nobody) outside of NZ has heard of her. She is a special Olympian, and whilst she has dominated her sport at the special Olympics you can hardly call what she does world class. Indeed it seems to be harder to come home without a medal from the Special Olympics than it does to win one.
    It’s virtue signalling, nothing more and nothing less.
    
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    April 4, 2018 3:34pm
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      Paralympics are for athletes with physical disabilities.
      
      Special Olympics are for athletes with intellectual disabilities.
      
      Sophie Pascoe has represented NZ at Paralympic Games.. not Special Olympics.
      
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      April 4, 2018 3:42pm
    - lifesgood
      
      I am always amazed at the huge number of medals both para and special olympians receive. I am convinced they get medals for trying and turning up. It does them no favours.
      
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      April 4, 2018 6:47pm
Lee C

Virtue Signalling: claiming the moral high ground is yours, then when presented with an opportunity to back up your grand-sounding pronouncements, setting up a committee to really define ‘Virtue Signalling’, while working furiously to suggest that what you said doesn’t apply anymore because you can’t recall the exact words you used.
The fact that we have people here asking for a definition of ‘Virtue-Signalling’ provides proof of the above. Therefore, ‘Virtue Signalling’ = a+ x) lying (bs) through your teeth for short-term political gain.
“Signalling your Virtues”, and attempt to redefine the initial equation so that it can be perverted to prove a different outcome. Therefore, “Signalling your Virtues’ = b+y) embellishing the initial lie (bs) to avoid detection of a) above.
In short:
a+x = bs
b+y =bs
a+b=bs
where’ bs’ is an unknown quantity.
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April 4, 2018 10:41am
- RW Capitalist
  
  So my maths tells me
  a=bs -x
  therefore
  bs-x+b = bs
  b=x
  so
  x+y=a+x
  y=a
  so
  x+y=bs
  result x= labour, y=Greens, a=NZF, b=MSM
  No matter how you look at it, it’s all bs
  
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  April 4, 2018 11:08am
Anne Glen Eden

Following a comment the other day about intelligent discussion, and another about the impending implosion of ‘modern society’, I noted an Express article by Professor Gwythian Prins, African colonial era expert was a history and politics tutor at the University of Cambridge and is now emeritus research professor at the London School of Economics, used a method created by the American anthropologist Professor Joseph Tainter to analyse the collapse of ancient empires like Rome, Minoa and Egypt.

He’s primarily describing the EU but it applies to all: “Organisations thrive up to a certain point of complexity when the benefits of pooling powers outweighed downsides. But there is a point when they become so complex that benefits shrink and they lose the support of citizens. Citizen rejection and the resulting absence of cultural reproduction suggests that it should not outlast a human lifespan.”

That led me to a reconsideration of Zygmunt Bauman, who I discovered by accident a year ago and found I agree with wholeheartedly: “one of the greatest interpreters of our present time, a time which turns into a shapeless mass tending to a constant and relentless change.”

I could summarise by saying that the species has become a series of swarming, soulless, cannabilistic locusts, of fluid membership, such membership being considered our highest good and essential for personal value.

Emma Palese puts it in much more academic terms – and is well worth the attempt to understand it.

https://springerplus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2193-1801-2-191

An excerpt:

“For Bauman, the consequences of [the] move to a liquid modernity can most easily be seen in contemporary approaches to self-identity. In liquid modernity, constructing a durable identity that coheres over time and space becomes increasingly impossible. We have moved from a period where we understood ourselves as “pilgrims” in search of deeper meaning to one where we act as “tourists” in search of multiple but fleeting social experiences… The consumer society, in fact, does not aggregate, at any rate, disaggregate turning groups into isolated monads, with weak and fragmented bonds, where the individual is crystallized between the search for Self and the disarray in the not – Self. The idea of society survives in terms of common trends to follow, where the groups are directed almost anonymously in the pursuit of that “happiness”, whose traces are designed by external actors.”

Consumerism is the only context in which to exist. It’s not a ‘happy place’ to be. To my mind, this is the inherent current tension between liquid modernity and the rise of ‘populism’ (shallowly and pseudo-scientifically defined); between the sociological perspective of ascribed group membership and psychological individuality (e.g. Jordan Peterson); and the lying, manipulative deceit prevalent in politicians vs a public that wants moral reference points to hold them to account. And a whole lot more.
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April 4, 2018 11:11am
Maggy Wassilieff

Trouble in the Green camp?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/102793347/green-members-threatening-to-quit-if-julie-anne-genter-wins-coleadership
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April 4, 2018 11:11am
- milkmaid
  
  Oh dear, it seems JAG is too white for the Greens. How sad.
  
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  April 4, 2018 11:29am
  - Rich Prick
    
    I do enjoy the irony of that particular middle aged white woman being told to make way for some diversity.
    
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    April 4, 2018 12:31pm
    - alex Masterley
      
      Brilliant innit. Couldn’t happen to a better person.
      
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      April 4, 2018 4:09pm
- KiWombat
  
  From link above:-
  
  “It’s understood one branch in a Māori seat has just one member deciding its single delegate vote.”
  
  Now that’s democracy in action, I think not !
  
  Does this mean that the branch only has one member – or that only one of the members is interested in the process !
  
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  April 4, 2018 11:36am
  - waikatogirl
    
    Or one member votes for everyone? If so, I wonder if they were asked for any input to the vote.
    
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    April 4, 2018 12:10pm
kowtow

The media going gaga over the shooting at You Tube in SF , but not so much over this one.

I wonder why?

‘A press statement from the terror group on Tuesday said a ‘covert unit’ of militants ‘managed to target a number of the combatant Christians’. It added the jihadists ‘shot them with a pistol, which resulted in the killing of four of them, and all praise is due to Allah’.’

https://www.christiantoday.com/article/isis-claims-easter-monday-murders-of-pakistani-christians/128035.htm

This follows last Easters’ outrage in Pakistan.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/lahore-bombing-suicide-attack-kills-72-park-easter-sunday-n546231
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April 4, 2018 11:14am
Monique Watson

You’ve got to admire Vlad. If he says he’ll have you killed, he’ll have you fucking killed.
But in this case the poison to target window was botched.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/03/europe/skripal-poisoning-uk-nerve-agent-intl/index.html
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April 4, 2018 11:20am
Rodney Randall

https://twitter.com/UNmigration/status/980357862147936256

#Migration is:

• inevitable
• desirable
• necessary

“The UN message—which seems to echo the position of George Soros and his Open Society Foundations—follows hard on the heels of a Europe-wide survey on immigration, which found that a striking 78 percent of European citizens want tighter control of Europe’s external borders.”

http://project28.eu/migration-terrorism-2018/

“While the UN and other supranational groups seek to facilitate migration, rank and file Europeans are desperately looking for ways to slow it down.
It remains to be seen whether national political leaders will respond to the will of the people or choose to follow the directives coming from Brussels and Geneva.”
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April 4, 2018 11:20am
Monique Watson

Virtue Signalling – Poisoning an ex-KGB agent in Salisbury. For shits and giggles. And to send a message to the West that Russia is intent on Border Creep.

Signalling our virtue – Kicking the sneaky Russkies out so they get the message and fuck off to make mischief in Pablo Escobar Land instead of GodZone.
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April 4, 2018 11:29am
Maggy Wassilieff

Guardian readers ask Questions of Jacinda

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/03/jacinda-ardern-guardian-readers-ask-questions
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April 4, 2018 11:33am
- Anne Glen Eden
  
  Lol.
  
  The answers are two-fold. Firstly and mostly, we haven’t got a clue but we’re trying to think of something.
  
  Secondly, National thwarted our imposition of more laws/rules/regulations of what people eat and we’re going to reinstitute them. I might have more sympathy if I didn’t see the increasing trend to obesity as a result of comfort eating and especially in response to anti-smoking. They’re just shifting the social problems around, not fixing anything.
  
  The reliance on proliferating laws is reflected in Chris Finlayson’s Bill re judges as well. If the population refuses to accept what is ‘good for them’ as defined by their ‘betters’, impose more laws to keep them under control.
  
  In the case of judges, that’s a bit bizarre – having identified them as the most inclined to ‘abuse’ of others in the Criminal Law survey. It seems they can also be ‘intimidated’ easily. Not surprising – bullies are generally lily-livered cowards at heart who need ‘power’ to sustain their superiority.
  
  These politicians have real difficulty coping with notions of free speech and individual choice and responsibility. The powers-that-be constantly try to seek out ways in which they do not have to be held accountable to and by the people whom they know as the ‘ignorant masses’.
  
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  April 4, 2018 12:11pm
- Inandout
  
  ‘Katrina that’s a great question’
  
  ‘What we have to try and get into is the ways we can address that and resolve that as a government’
  .
  ‘The teacher crisis is something we are really worried about’
  
  ‘Robert, that is something that our minister of health even going into the election talked about as something we wanted to focus on’
  
  Jacinda, you talk a lot of meaningless shit.
  
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  April 4, 2018 12:34pm
Manolo

It’s time to stock up on USD. In the short/medium term the exchange rate against the NZD should be favourable for those who buy now.
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April 4, 2018 11:33am
JasonJohns

Bunch of teenagers laughing and farting down at Huntly McDonalds. They think it’s a joke. It’s not a joke.

A fart is no laughing matter.
A fart is a muffled cry of anguish.
A fart is the muffled cry of anguish from an excretoid in agony!
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April 4, 2018 12:11pm
- MCos
  
  I suppose the problem for the youth of Huntly is cultured society wouldn’t be seen dead at McDonalds, or Huntly in general for that matter, so the role models are probably not that flash.
  
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  April 4, 2018 12:36pm
  - Happychappy
    
    There is good and bad in all towns and you might want to check your facts about role models as Huntly has many that go out of their way to help the youth whether Maori or Pakiha.
    
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    April 4, 2018 1:02pm
- Inandout
  
  Ewwww….
  https://www.facebook.com/McDonalds-Huntly-182294845150105/
  
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  April 4, 2018 12:36pm
publicwatchdog

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

(Wednesday 4 April 2018)

A ‘malicious prosecution’ to force the rating sale of my home?

Information, facts and evidence which support my considered opinion that the forced rating sale proceedings against my home, authorised by Auckland Council CEO Stephen Town are a ‘malicious prosecution’.

http://www.kiwisfirst.com/whats-wrong-picture/

What’s Wrong With This Picture?
By Vince Siemer / April 3, 2018

She is an unpaid, full-time public advocate who Transparency International New Zealand recognised as instrumental in advancing transparency into how billions of dollars of ratepayers’ monies are spent in Auckland.

She has an unrelenting, brash and uncomfortably in-your-face style – and she prolifically spouts facts and figures as her first line of attack and defence.

He is a local public servant who earns almost a quarter million dollars a year morethan the New Zealand Prime Minister. $690,000 per year.

He is the distinguished bureaucrat who manages how Auckland ratepayers’ monies are spent; a position which brings many potential suitors to his door.

Perhaps tellingly, the ratepayers pay his exorbitant legal bills which he would doubtfully authorise if it was his own money.

More on this in a bit.

Penny Bright, whistleblower v Stephen Town, Chief Executive of Auckland Council.

The battleground is now Ms Bright’s house which Auckland Council last week published it intended to tender sale by 24 April 2018.

Ms Bright owes Auckland Council over $20,000 in rates on her freehold Kingsland house.

She says she is refusing to pay the deficit until Auckland Council “opens the books” on what Auckland Council is paying independent contractors.

In addition to asserting ratepayers are entitled to know where their money is spent, she believes the existing model is rife with conflicts of interest and backhanders.

With legal costs her outstanding bill stands at $47,000, and Auckland Council is now seeking to force sale of her home to collect the debt.

Mr Town on the other hand has long considered information on what private contractors are paid to be proprietary, alleging any financial disclosure on how ratepayers’ monies are spent would compromise the business relationships Auckland Council enjoy with private contractors.

As to her forced house sale, Town says it is unfair to other Auckland ratepayers if Bright is not forced to pay her back rates – which have skyrocketed to the equivalent of 1 ½ weeks of Mr Town’s salary.

Ms Bright cannot help believe there is some bad blood acting out, having sued Mr Town for defamation in a case which never went to trial.

The catalyst was an Auckland Council-funded October 2014 press release in which Town claimed “Ms Bright has made wild and inaccurate accusations about the Council and its probity”.

An Official Information Act request by Ms Bright revealed Auckland ratepayers paid $207,133.62 to law firm Simpson Grierson to file 3 motions (first 2 unsuccessful) to strike out Bright’s defamation claim pre-trail and 1 motion for security for costs, just to make sure Mr Town did not suffer the injustice of the half day court hearing which the legally-unrepresented Bright sought to have her 3 1/2 page defamation claim. heard.

Being the ever-annoying public watchdog, Bright early on exposed that Town had authorised Council pay more than $100,000 in legal costs ahead of any court appearance.

Relevant to the ratepayers’ legal expenditure Mr Town authorised, lawyers defending a half day hearing in the High Court are entitled to $1,600 in fees under the High Court Fees Regulations 2013.

Ms Bright offered to settle her claim against Mr Town before filing for $10,000 damages and a retraction – an offer which Town flatly rejected.

Why is Mr Town so focused on hiring lawyers at ratepayers’ expense?

And what is the business imperative in selling Ms Bright’s house when Auckland Council can simply file a charging order which ensures the rates will at some stage be collected with interest?

Town’s best answer to the second question is it sends a message to the larger community that non-payment of rates will not be tolerated.

But the truth is this dance has been going on for years with Ms Bright.

It is hard to see any variables changing other than the successes Bright has recently achieved in making local government spending more transparent.

Among these successes is exposing Mr Town has personal authority on behalf of Council to award contracts valued up to $20 million. And that Mr Town has routinely exercised this unchecked power to award contracts to members on the private sector lobby group The Committee for Auckland of which he is personally a member.

In the broader realm, no one in the know would dispute Bright has single-handedly whittled away at Town’s executive powers to grant contracts under the public radar.

In 2015, she succeeded in compelling Auckland Council to divulge contracts exceeding $100,000 in value and this has recently been reduced to $50,000.

After an Auckland Transport executive and private contractor were criminally convicted of collusion to defraud Auckland ratepayers in February 2017, Ms Bright sought and obtained a commitment from the Board of this Auckland Council-controlled organisation to publish private contracts.

Evocatively kiwisfirst was refused an Official Information Act request in 2016 for information on how much Auckland Council was spending on lawyers to silence Ms Bright on the ground Ms Bright might use this information in court proceedings.

Einstein stated “Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.” and Warren Buffet unrelatedly observed “Price is what you pay and value is what you get.”

Yet both could well be fitting axioms for the juxtaposition of CEO Town’s value to New Zealand society relative to Ms Bright in this bitter fight where Bright’s value comes at no cost to society.

Mr Town spends ratepayers’ money somewhat lavishly where it is not his money and where no one before Ms Bright had exhibited any inclination to shine the sanitising light of day on this bureaucratic spending.

Conversely Ms Bright has no money so she spends nothing other than her time and that time is either (1) running up the cost of local government if you believe Stephen Town, or (2) saving New Zealand society in spite of its apathy if you don’t.

Often in history civilisation pivots on a small grievance which lays bare a greater ill and thereby provides the tipping point to monumental change or – unthinkable in our society – revolution.

Few would argue Ms Bright’s civil disobedience is sustainable in its own right.

The question is whether there is merit in her reasons and, if there is merit, whether such merit advances our society as a result of her disobedience.“
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April 4, 2018 1:05pm
- Keeping Stock
  
  You made your bed Penny, and now you have to lie in it. Every action has a consequence.
  
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  April 4, 2018 1:38pm
  - waikatogirl
    
    Penny received copious amounts of good legal advice over the years from the lawyers here on KB kind enough to dish out legal advice. I have no sympathy, she brought it on herself by being stubborn in her own belief system.
    Bats loose in the belfry.
    
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    April 4, 2018 4:51pm
- mandk
  
  Mad dog, barking up completely the wrong tree.
  
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  April 4, 2018 2:02pm
- 4077th
  
  Today you get an uptick from me Penny. Not because I agree with how you are doing it but moreover what you are doing. If it truly is transparency you are fighting for perhaps you could share your views with this current government and in particular Claire Curran, Jacinda Ardern, Carol Hirschfeld and RNZ. It seems they are strangers to transparency also and I would like to see them pursued with the same gusto.
  
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  April 4, 2018 3:36pm
- Nostradamus
  
  You won’t see it this way, Penny, but your situation can’t be characterised as “a ‘malicious prosecution’ to force the rating sale of [your] home“.
  
  Auckland Council is exercising a statutory right – after years of being fobbed off by you – on behalf of other long-suffering Auckland ratepayers who would like you stop bludging off them!
  
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  April 4, 2018 3:44pm
- Surely Knott
  
  I agree with the need for Transparency on Auckland Council Contracts. And we do really need community advocates. But the hypocrisy of withholding all rates for many years undermines the good work you may have done. Pay the rates. And then advocate. Anyways I’m sure it will all come right with Winston Peters at the helm. And I look forward to him implementing his “independent Anti-corruption commission” number 13 of his 15 principals as stated on his website that is stil unfortunately down.
  
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  April 4, 2018 5:27pm
rangitoto

I notice google are showing a picture of a murderous fiend on their search home page. What the hell is the matter with them.
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April 4, 2018 1:11pm
RW Capitalist

The Walrus and the Carpenter
By Lewis Carroll
“The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright —
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done —
“It’s very rude of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil the fun.”

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead —
There were no birds to fly.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
If this were only cleared away,’
They said, it would be grand!’

If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,’ the Walrus said,
That they could get it clear?’
I doubt it,’ said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

O Oysters, come and walk with us!’
The Walrus did beseech.
A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each.’

The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head —
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.

But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat —
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn’t any feet.

Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more —
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.

The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.’

But wait a bit,’ the Oysters cried,
Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!’
No hurry!’ said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.

A loaf of bread,’ the Walrus said,
Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed —
Now if you’re ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.’

But not on us!’ the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!’
The night is fine,’ the Walrus said.
Do you admire the view?

It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!’
The Carpenter said nothing but
Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf —
I’ve had to ask you twice!’

It seems a shame,’ the Walrus said,
To play them such a trick,
After we’ve brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!’
The Carpenter said nothing but
The butter’s spread too thick!’

I weep for you,’ the Walrus said:
I deeply sympathize.’
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

O Oysters,’ said the Carpenter,
You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?’
But answer came there none —
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.”

Labour party manual for extended Govt.
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April 4, 2018 1:17pm
- Longknives
  
  Goo Goo G’joob!
  
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  April 4, 2018 2:33pm
DifferentPerspective

Inconvenient truth – Trump more popular than Obama

Full on wall to wall MSM character assassination of Trump and now he’s more popular than Obama who experienced wet dream fawning of the MSM over his diversityness.

Oh dear, it looks like the American people don’t trust anything the lying, whoring media say anymore.

Combined with the explosion of gun sales in the US following the failed attack on the 2nd Amendment by the crisis actors and it’s been a good few weeks for the Don.
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April 4, 2018 1:21pm
- SPC
  
  The nation had been awaiting an end time fascist since Adam was a cowboy.
  
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  April 4, 2018 1:57pm
  - DifferentPerspective
    
    I put that through my “Libtard translation service” and here is the result…
    
    SPC: “In denial”
    
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    April 4, 2018 4:04pm
Inandout

Cindy was a talking guest on ZB farming show today. The fill in host was almost gushing as much as Cindy. Of course hostess didn’t ask any tough questions of the gushing one, and at one stage I was expecting Cindy to climax with excitement.
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April 4, 2018 1:21pm
- Poppa
  
  I used to like that show but never listen now as it is a Lefty love fest. God knows why
  
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  April 4, 2018 1:28pm
- SPC
  
  Mike did when John discussed soap in the shower.
  
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  April 4, 2018 1:58pm
Poppa

Who said test cricket is boring?

What a fantastic test match ending yesterday. It had just about everything in there somewhere during the game.

Even down to the fact that 3 of the bowlers actually saved the day with their batting. Bizzarre really

Good on Ish Sodhi he hasn’t really had a fair go & I hope this paves the way for him in the future
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April 4, 2018 1:26pm
Nev.

Is anyone other than Kris Fa’afoi not aware that Takata airbags have been under voluntary recall for 3 years?
Despite not having injured or killed anyone in NZ, WE MUST RECALL NOW GRRR NASTY NATZ KNEW!
The amount of experience in this government is puddle deep.
Nev.
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April 4, 2018 2:08pm
- Inandout
  
  Compulsory recall in Oz, Nev.
  
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  April 4, 2018 2:23pm
  - Nev.
    
    Voluntary recall here though. Has been for at least 2 years. Which means if you take it into the dealer they have to replace them. There’s a helpful list on Consumer with links to the NZTA site telling you which vehicles are affected.
    Kris Fa’afoi – Minister of McDonalds openings
    
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    April 4, 2018 2:31pm
- rangitoto
  
  It’s a squirrel.
  
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  April 4, 2018 3:02pm
Brito

Ah comrades, I’m back in beautiful NZ for a week or so enjoying the waning sun and the contentment an old man gets in seeing his grandkids doing so well.

Life under the Iron Dome has its challenges but that’s to be expected. While I was in transit I see the so called dispossessed have been playing silly buggers on the border. The conscripts on one side are scared and nervous and when a mob attacks they defend themselves. I hope you never have to experience this. I’m sure EAD will vomit his bile on me in great depth for that comment.

Anyway, I turn my back for a month or two and I find that you’ve stopped giving the COL their medicine. What were you thinking??? They seem to be making policy up on the hoof. What sort of transport policy is this??? New taxes already!!!

I’ll dip into the mire every so often just to check up on you and see if there’s any action coming from your rhetoric or will it just be more of the same? Hope not.
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April 4, 2018 3:34pm
- Nev.
  
  On day release from Paremoremo again Brito? Nice work mate. Try not to escape this time.
  
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  April 4, 2018 3:41pm
  - Brito
    
    #Nev what sort of comment is that? I think #starboard uses that humour. Be original or comment not.
    
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    April 4, 2018 3:43pm
- EAD_TWO
  
  Hi Mikenmild (or is it Mikewasmild).
  
  What happened to “treadingthemill”?
  
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  April 4, 2018 3:43pm
  - Brito
    
    EAD, you are there. I’m afraid the Mikenmild/treadingthemill thing you’ve got going on is too confusing for me.
    
    Focus boy/child/thing…focus.
    
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    April 4, 2018 3:46pm
Brito

So a bit of gossip for you, just to let you know what the chosen people are thinking and also just to get under EAD’s skin.

The key point of discussion isn’t about taking over the world’s banks or sending black Africans to Europe via Italy or whatever it is you waffle on about…it’s so much more exciting. Nikki Haley.

That woman is going to slide into The Don’s seat when he retires (probably at the end of this term). If you aren’t excited about having this no-nonsense, articulate, forthright woman running the biggest show in town, then you’re a muslim.

We can’t wait and I tell you folks, the shit-holes of the world better mind their p’s and q’s when she has her hand on the tiller.

Bliss!!!!
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April 4, 2018 3:57pm
RF

I see JAG is upsetting her own kind. Interesting that she is not very popular within the Green Party.

A number have gone public threatening to resign if she is successful and I hear a lot more are sitting back with their fingers crossed.

I believe that because of her in your face attitude she will not be co leader, much to Shaws disgust.
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April 4, 2018 3:59pm
- Longknives
  
  The best bit RF is they are threatening to resign because she is ‘Another Pakeha’!
  The irony is brilliant..
  Doesn’t feel very nice does it Ms Genter??
  
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  April 4, 2018 4:07pm
  - waikatogirl
    
    Racism alert! ?
    
    9 0
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    April 4, 2018 5:16pm
- niggly
  
  Go the Greens! No matter who they choose as co-leader they will be toxic to the general public!
  
  Marama Davidson ticks all the PC boxes so will likely get the nod – but imagine her as co-leader, because she is not a Minister (and to maintain her staunch activist credentials) she will be free to criticise both Opposition and the Government if she feels they aren’t virtue signalling enough! Bwhahaha Winston, Jacinda, Robbo and Little – that’s also your problem to deal with!
  
  If man-hating JAG gets the nod, bwahahaha the Greens both with “middle-age white people” running the show (nothing wrong with that of course, except to themselves oh and their supporters oh and plenty of left-wing blog/media writers and critics)!
  
  Spare a thought for poor James – no matter which woman is chosen as co-leader they will walk all over him and put him in his place!
  
  Perhaps the best James could hope for is that the genial Gareth come out and say he is now of a different gender and take the co-leadership – not only is Gareth not a threat but imagine the MSM’s gushing and positive coverage of having the world’s first transgender in a leadership position – it will be a bigger media buzz than Jacindamania! Go Gareth! I’m sure Clint will approve! 😉
  
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  April 4, 2018 4:22pm
- Shaun the Sheep
  
  GangGreen is really strong on democratic principles //
  It’s taken them eight months to get round to having a vagina co-leadership contest and the entire party gets to vote for one of the two candidates because that’s fair, except if they don’t vote according to certain individuals’ wishes there’ll be walk outs and mass resignations.
  Imagine if something important happened that needed a decision in a hurry – like this year.
  Who in hell takes these muppets serious enough to vote for them?
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:47pm
  - Captain Mainwaring
    
    I wish I could give that comment 100 upticks.
    
    The Captain
    
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    April 4, 2018 9:03pm
Maggy Wassilieff

Is a cabbage tree a tree?
Well poor old Shane hasn’t figured that one out yet…
You’d think someone would have wised him up by now….. especially as he seems to “need a billion of them”.

Woops…….that target of planting 1 billion trees is “fanciful”.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/102809582/shane-jones-1-billion-message–do-not-delay

(And for the pedants amongst us… note how Shane refers to cabbage trees…. not tī kōuka )
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2018/03/general_debate_30_march_2018.html#comment-2174879
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April 4, 2018 3:59pm
- Nostradamus
  
  Maggy
  
  And for the pedants amongst us
  
  *Cough*
  
  stephieboy
  
  MW, please in future refer to its Maori and proper name ,
  Tī Kōuka – The Cabbage Tree
  
  March 30, 2018 1:42pm
  
  🙂
  
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  April 4, 2018 4:22pm
  - Shaun the Sheep
    
    Don’t be too harsh on the resident galah, he’s busy emailing Shane to set him straight – purely as a public service, you understand.
    Hope he shares Jones’ response with us.
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:51pm
- Awww C-mon
  
  Are you baiting trolls Maggy ???
  
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  April 4, 2018 4:25pm
  - Nostradamus
    
    Awww C-mon:
    
    It seems that all Maggy has to do these days to bait trolls is to mention her underwear – or dangle it online (virtually speaking) in a tantalising manner!
    
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    April 4, 2018 4:38pm
    - Awww C-mon
      
      I think the baiting is even easier than that Nostra, it’s just that the undergarments drive them to all new levels of distraction
      
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      April 4, 2018 4:44pm
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      I’ve given up underwear, Nostradamus.
      
      I have no intention of being subjected to such public humiliation again.
      
      14 0
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      April 4, 2018 4:54pm
      - Johnboy
        
        If you ever feel the need to don frilly crotch-less knickers and peek a boo bra’s Maggie Johnboys Personal Lingerie service (We come for you!) will always be just a phone call away! 🙂
        
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        April 4, 2018 6:47pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        Txs Johnboy,
        but the peek-a-boo might nullify the action of my upcycled brassieres
        
        https://www.tomsguide.com/us/Emergency-Bra-Masks-womens-underwear,news-8101.html
        and
        https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/111604896986314609/
        
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        April 4, 2018 8:23pm
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    Not at all.
    
    I approve of easy communication and respectful discourse.
    How fucking difficult is that to comprehend?
    
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    April 4, 2018 4:49pm
    - Nostradamus
      
      Maggy:
      
      I recommend not using a long word like “discourse” around Stephieboy. He might misread it as “intercourse”!
      
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      April 4, 2018 5:06pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        My God!!!!!
        
        I can see I need to get a B.Comms. (Waikato) asap.
        
        10 0
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        April 4, 2018 5:09pm
    - Rachael Membery
      
      Was there some reason why it is called a cabbage tree, it neither looks or smells like my idea of cabbage.
      
      4 0
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      April 4, 2018 6:14pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        Yep,..
        The first Europeans here (Cook & his Botanists) thought Cabbage tree was a type of Palm.
        They knew you could eat the growing shoot of palms… boil it up like cabbage…. so did the same with cabbage tree.
        
        Cook – Journal, 29 Oct 1769
        “We… found one Cabbage tree which we cut down for the sake of the Cabbage.”
        
        I’ve never tried to cook the “cabbage”, as you kill the tree or force it to make sprouts (?brussel sprouts) from the stump.
        
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        April 4, 2018 6:45pm
      - Nev.
        
        Maori almost wiped them out precolonisation due to the fact that the centre of the tree leaves can be boiled and eaten like cabbage. The main problem with that was it kills the tree. Since they take about 30-40 years to reach maturity, they are protected still.
        Also I was under the impression they were called Titahi, which is where Titahi Bay got it’s name.
        
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        April 4, 2018 6:46pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        @ Nev
        
        Cabbage tree was variously called ti, tii, ti kouka, ti kapu, ti kauka, ti koraha, ti ngahere(here), whanake, whanako, whanaka…depending on where you were in NZ.
        
        Ti tahi translates as one cabbage tree.
        
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        April 4, 2018 7:00pm
      - mikewasmild
        
        I thought the ‘cabbage tree’ Cook described was another plant – he had a habit of trying to eat almost every plant or animal he encountered in his travels.
        
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        April 4, 2018 7:01pm
      - nasska
        
        I may well be wrong but I thought the Cabbage Tree was a Cordyline & a member of the Lily genus.
        
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        April 4, 2018 7:01pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        @mikewasmild
        
        Yes, Cook’s lot tried every edible thing around.
        We have 2 arborescent monocotyledons in NZ -cabbage tree and Nikau.
        There has been confusion about which one Cook’s lot was referring to in the 1760s…..
        Forster 1769 called cabbage trees in Dusky Sound – dragon trees (thinking they were Dracaena, but remarks that his sailors call them Cabbage palm. (No nikau in Dusky Sound)
        
        Anyway….. Cook probably was calling Nikau Cabbage tree…. but since sometime later (early 1800s).. the name has been applied to Cordyline.
        
        James Beever dives deeper here:
        http://bts.nzpcn.org.nz/bts_pdf/Well_1981_41__50-58.pdf
        
        @nasska
        Re Cordyline – Lily family
        You were probably right 60-80 years ago (Have you been consulting your Laing& Blackwell: Plants of NZ?)
        In my life-time the Cordyline genus has shifted from the Lily family, into the Agave family(1970s), then into the Asphodel family (1990s),
        Now it is an Asparagus!!
        http://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora_search.aspx?scfSubmit=1&scfLatin_Common_Name=Cordyline
        
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        April 4, 2018 7:30pm
      - nasska
        
        …..”Now it is an Asparagus”…..
        
        I was given the “lily” family info by a bloke who ran a garden centre. Things change it seems.
        
        Why the hell can’t you botanists get your shit in one sock? 🙂
        
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        April 4, 2018 7:36pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        Now, now nasska.
        You wouldn’t want us to be stuck in the paradigms of 19th Century thought, would you?
        
        Anyway, if Arthur can become Martha, why can’t a Lily become an Asparagus?
        
        It ill behooves us to be ignorant of the details of Cabbage tree, as we may be clogging up our lawn-mowers with the leaves of another half billion or so in the next few weeks.
        
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        April 4, 2018 7:49pm
      - Shaun the Sheep
        
        The leaves they drop make excellent fire starters for the winter. I used to pick them up, tie them in a knot and chuck them in a basket with the kindling.
        Otherwise they play havoc with the lawnmower.
        
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        April 4, 2018 8:58pm
- Rachael Membery
  
  Quite Maggy lol 😉
  
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  April 4, 2018 4:38pm
- Johnboy
  
  HEALTH WARNING!
  Eating too many cabbage tree products will make you as intelligent as Shane Jones! 🙂
  
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  April 4, 2018 4:39pm
Johnboy

SPOT THE AIRBAG (Hint….It’s brown)
https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/news/102811364/how-new-zealands-unprecedented-airbag-recall-came-about
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April 4, 2018 4:35pm
Prince

Shane Jones waxes lyrical again, as he excites himself with the $1B he has to distribute to his mates ..
“”I’m getting advice on whether a cabbage tree is a tree, given I need a billion of them.”

Could be, but our Regional Development minister is definitely a cabbage.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/102809582/shane-jones-1-billion-message–do-not-delay
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April 4, 2018 4:52pm
Manolo

Nasim Aghdam, an Iranian vegan activist, is the name of the latest mass shooter in the United States.
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April 4, 2018 4:57pm
- Johnboy
  
  Dangerous bastards those who suffer from meat withdrawal syndrome. 🙂
  
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  April 4, 2018 5:02pm
- Nev.
  
  Sounds like your average white shooter
  /sarc
  
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  April 4, 2018 6:51pm
Anne Glen Eden

Well, there’s one thing about the You Tube shooting. At least this was an ‘equal opportunity’ woman doing the shooting. And apparently, white. Can’t leave it all to brown men. Shot her boyfriend as well – or perhaps that’s what started it all.

The horrible reality which Bauman (as above) describes is basically a world of mentally and emotionally disturbed people, en masse but presenting individually as well. In which case, we can expect an exponential growth in such incidents, starting with the extreme but growing fringes.

But that isn’t the worst part. The worst part is realising that the decisions being made are being made by people in the same condition, albeit at varying stages in the process.

Kim Jong Un is one such. Putin is now looking the same. Erdogan has been deteriorating rapidly. And a host of others who probably get away with being considered ‘eccentric’ or whatever, especially in the West. More controlling; more violent.
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April 4, 2018 5:01pm
- Johnboy
  
  I agree. I’ve been concerned for some time about Winston’s mental health and that of his supporters. 🙂
  
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  April 4, 2018 5:04pm
  - Nostradamus
    
    Johnboy:
    
    … Winston’s mental health and that of his supporters …
    
    They seem pretty ship-shape…
    
    Chuck Bird
    
    Winston has the balls to make the offer [to be the first to re-enter the Pike River mine]. Does Bill English have the balls to call his bluff? If is not bluff. I would happily join him.
    
    December 13, 2016 3:08pm
    
    The rest of us will vote wisely at the next general election!
    
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    April 4, 2018 5:38pm
    - Johnboy
      
      If Winnies got any balls left (Unlikely at his age) I’d enjoy watching the little turd getting them blown off when he lit a candle to finally find his way down’t Pike Pit! 🙂
      
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      April 4, 2018 5:51pm
- holysheet
  
  So a woman just shot up Youtube Headquarters, fired 20 shots and only injured 4 people…. ….looks like mass shootings are another thing to add to the list of things that men are better at than women.
  
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  April 4, 2018 5:16pm
  - DifferentPerspective
    
    An Iranian woman ….
    
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    April 4, 2018 5:34pm
- stephieboy
  
  Ann Glen Eden, what is missing is Donald Trump .
  
  Why the omission?
  
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  April 4, 2018 5:44pm
  - Awww C-mon
    
    Stephie-quiet! We have you been all day?
    
    We have been enjoying the peace and quiet, can go to the same place tomorrow?
    
    8 0
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    April 4, 2018 6:03pm
Inandout

Bugger, no more Koru points from Virgin.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12026073
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April 4, 2018 5:19pm
Rodney Randall

https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=si7s4_1522814052

Suspected Youtube Shooter, A January 2017 vid of her, Nasim Aghdam

http://hollywoodlife.com/2018/04/04/youtube-shooting-suspect-identified-nasim-najafi-aghdam-shooter/

Liveleak comments are always a good laugh
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April 4, 2018 5:39pm
- stephieboy
  
  Rodney Randall is this the Leaks that has decidedly Neo-Nazi and alt right sympathies ?
  
  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Cooperating_with_neo-Nazis
  
  And this kind of rubbish ,
  
  https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=LqD7_1522451720
  
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  April 4, 2018 5:51pm
  - Rodney Randall
    
    Not at all Steph!
    
    Liveleak is the continuation of Ogrish! Long may uncensored media live!
    
    You know you love it Steph!
    
    Have you teed up a time with Natasya Yusoff at the Yoga Pantry for the Stormy Blue Ray Session?
    
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    April 4, 2018 5:56pm
  - Rodney Randall
    
    https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=404_1321074803
    
    One of the most famous vids Steph:
    
    Here is what happened:
    Dagestan Beheading dates back to 1999. Chechen Mujahideen lead by Salautdin Temirbulatov entered Dagestan with up to 500 fully armed
    soldiers. There were only 13 lightly armed Russian conscripts in the village of Dagestan when the attack took place. Heavily outnumbered by
    Chechen terrorists, 7 of the Russian conscripts run away from the village. The remaining 6 soldiers stood up to the oppressors but quickly
    ran out of ammo and surrendered after being promised POW status.
    
    What happened next is on the video. Chechen Mujahideen took the captives on the field and mercilessly executed each of them by
    beheading.
    
    Love the oppressors Steph, love them with all of your heart. Hug them Stephanie. Kiss them on the forehead. Christ died for you Steph.
    
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    April 4, 2018 6:02pm
- UrbanNeocolonialist
  
  Interesting video, mad as a snake, but had some legitimate cause to feel persecuted.
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:50pm
rangitoto

Stale old Yankee White Woman not wanted:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/102793347/Green-members-threatening-to-quit-if-Julie-Anne-Genter-wins-co-leadership?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
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April 4, 2018 5:46pm
- Classic Liberal
  
  Live by identity politics, fall by identity politics…
  
  7 0
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  April 4, 2018 5:53pm
Rodney Randall

https://twitter.com/_donaldson/status/981377812576784385

What in the fresh hell is this?

Oh, it’s Nasim Aghdam.
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April 4, 2018 5:52pm
Johnboy

I can’t believe Jacinda hasn’t created a squad to protect STARS like this in the first hundred days! 🙂
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=12025615
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April 4, 2018 6:06pm
Classic Liberal

Did anyone else hear John Campbell just now – phoned former EQC Minister Gerry Brownlee out of the blue and was told ‘this is a completely unacceptable way for you to behave’ and ‘the way you’ve just talked over the top of me is the way you do in interviews, as well as make various assertions which I find are completely unreasonably and that’s why I won’t be involved in any interview with you. So thank you for your call, but I’m not answering your questions this afternoon.’ He then hung up.

Note: if I got any of that wrong, please correct it.

My question is: how can RNZ keep allowing Campbell to run this show when a National MP can’t get a fair interview?

Why are taxpayers funding Campbell if he’s not a good listener and unbiased interviewer?
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April 4, 2018 6:09pm
- Johnboy
  
  You’ve just won the lovely pair of vase’s and the beautiful silver goblet for being the only person in the world who notice’s Campbell anymore CL! 🙂
  
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  April 4, 2018 6:15pm
  - Classic Liberal
    
    LOL, indeed, I just needed something to give me a bit of angry drive at the dirt I was cleaning up at the time :).
    
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    April 5, 2018 9:14am
- mikewasmild
  
  Poor old Gerry. Shouldn’t be allowed to talk over these ex-teacher types – they really don’t like it.
  
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  April 4, 2018 6:40pm
Johnboy

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12026084
Never bring just your Tomsahawk to a gunfight. 🙂
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April 4, 2018 6:11pm
- nasska
  
  It’s unclear whether he recently converted to Islam or meth.
  
  Both cause delusions & extreme violence.
  
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  April 4, 2018 6:30pm
  - Johnboy
    
    A seance to see if he’s found the 72 virgins could settle the question nasska. 🙂
    
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    April 4, 2018 6:56pm
RF

A Govt in trouble needs a diversion…..

I know… how about an air bag recall that’s been on the books for ages.

It might just work….. but then again there will be another Govt clusterfuk to make more headlines.
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April 4, 2018 6:31pm
Jack5

The Reserve Bank’s board today again comes under the magnifying glass of Michael Reddell in his Croaking Cassandra blog.

Reddell says:

“The Board has not done, and is not doing, a good job. It is set up by Parliament to serve our interests – public, Parliament, and Minister – but constantly seems to see itself mostly as a servant, and defender, of Bank management. Those are two quite different roles.”

Reddell blog:

https://croakingcassandra.com/

Reserve Bank board:

https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/about-us/board-of-directors
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April 4, 2018 6:54pm
- mikewasmild
  
  I find Reddell to be very refreshing on the nonsense spoken by governments and officials for the past thirty years about immigration.
  
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  April 4, 2018 7:09pm
  - Jack5
    
    Milky, are you referring to the 31 March Reddell post on Croaking Cassandra,about work visa numbers? It included this:
    
    … labourers make up 18 per cent of those getting Essential Skills visas, I think people might reasonably conclude we’ve been sold a pup. To be sure, only a small number of those people will end up getting permanent residence, but a large stock of imported labourers – even if the people themselves are rotating – is still more likely to be depressing New Zealand wages in those particular sectors, than adding to trend productivity for New Zealanders.
    
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    April 4, 2018 10:37pm
- Shaun the Sheep
  
  We can’t expect a Board to do a good job when only 3 of seven members are wimmin.
  Those old white men should move over.
  
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  April 4, 2018 7:30pm
Nev.

We need a lot of medals at the CG to distract the sheeple from the COL clusterfucks. I bet they’re all breathing a collective sigh of relief as the churnalists go on the medal hunt.
Too bad Shane Jones fucked up the opening ceremony already with the news he was advised against giving money to a West Coast rubbish burning scheme with his reply:

“He said the MfE’s concerns would have made no difference to his decision.

“I don’t recall the advice but I’m prepared to stand by the fact that John did tell me but the fact I can’t recall it bothers me not one jot. The prospect of it embarrassing me is inversely related to the truth. It takes a hell of a lot more to embarrass me.

“It would not have made any difference to me anyway.

“If the thing dies as a consequence of a feasibility study that’s why private sector and public sector should do feasibility studies,” Jones said.

We only pay his salary why should he give a shit?
Nev.
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April 4, 2018 7:56pm
nasska

A 12 year old boy goes into the confession box & says, “Forgive me father for I have sinned”.

The priest replies angrily, “You better not be cheating on me, you little bastard!”
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April 4, 2018 7:57pm
- stephieboy
  
  nasska, it appears you have a desert of an imagination with that lame of a lamest witticism.
  
  Self-taught?
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:07pm
rightoverlabour

Has anybody heard that stupid gay advert on the radio? The PC Nazis have decided how we should use the word “Gay”. Fuck them. I’ll use the word any which way I like. I think the COL is gay in the way it lurches from one cluster fuck to another. As a heterosexual male I don’t find sodomy gay at all. It’s just not my scene.
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April 4, 2018 8:18pm
- Nev.
  
  It’s a pretty gay ad.
  I recently got banned from facebook for calling hair metal singers faggots in a private joke group. Apparently faggot is hate speech now. Despite the fact the singers looked like a bundle of skinny sticks ripe for burning.
  Nev,
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:28pm
- EAD_TWO
  
  The PC Nazis have decided how we should use the word “Gay”. Fuck them
  
  @rightoverlabour – why do you use the word “Nazi” to describe anything bad when the lunacy we are watching descend on western civilisation is Communism writ large?
  
  It’s Communists promoting this deviancy and policing your speech. It was the Frankfurt School of Weimar Germany that first began to push homosexuality in order to undermine Western Civilisation.
  
  The Nazis reacted and burned all the Transgenderism and homosexualism books that were being pushed into German schools:
  
  https://www.teenvogue.com/story/lgbtq-institute-in-germany-was-burned-down-by-nazis
  
  On May 6, 1933, Nazi demonstrators raided the libraries of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, a German name that roughly translates to the Institute of Sexology. The Institute was a privately operated research space for studies of human sexuality. More than 20,000 books were taken from shelves and burned days later in the streets by Nazi youth groups.
  
  It was a devastating blow to the life’s work of Magnus Hirschfeld, the institute’s founder. Hirschfeld, who was Jewish and gay, was a pioneer for rights and liberation in Berlin’s thriving LGBTQ community. He founded the institute in 1919, after beginning his career as an activist in 1896 with his pamphlet Sappho and Socrates, about a gay man who took his own life after he felt he was being coerced into a straight marriage.
  
  Hirschfeld’s early publications laid the groundwork for his profile to rise until he became one of the most prominent LGBTQ activists in the world.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:37pm
  - mikewasmild
    
    What a weirdo. I mean you, EAD, not Hirschfeld.
    Don’t you wish you could hold one of them book burning parties of your own? Just need to find some similarly meat-headed friends and an undefended library.
    
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    April 4, 2018 8:43pm
    - EAD_TWO
      
      When you look at the state of what “modern” society has “progressed” to, it is clear to any level headed observer that the Nazis were right. This is why the likes of you must obfuscate the truth as to what the Nazis were, why they existed, and what they stood for.
      
      Despite how farsighted the Nazis were, even they surely couldn’t have forseen the levels of degeneracy we’d reach:
      
      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5439701/Transsexual-dragon-lady-born-man.html
      
      Transsexual ‘dragon lady’ who was born a man reveals how an HIV diagnosis inspired her to morph into a reptile, complete with a forked tongue and HORNS – because she ‘didn’t want to die a human’
      
      And this sort of sh*t is promoted as “empowering”, “liberating” and normal.
      
      What next – men competing as women in sports events, men dancing down streets in pink underwear in “celebration” or homosexuals getting “married”???
      
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      April 4, 2018 8:51pm
      - mikewasmild
        
        Oh yes, much better to idolise the genocidal Nazis, and believe stories in the Daily Mail.
        Now, what’s your latest forecast date for the total worldwide economic collapse?
        
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        April 4, 2018 9:02pm
      - EAD_TWO
        
        Yeah so “genocidal” that they allowed every Communist to leave Germany if they so wished + their support for the Havarra Agreement that allowed Jews to move to a homeland in Israel.
        
        So genocidal that there were millions of survivors, no evidence of gassings and no evidence of a “final solution”. So genocidal that faced with the choice between being “liberated” by the advancing Red Army or marching westwards, just about every single camp inmate (including your hero Wiesenthal) chose the later.
        
        Genocidal is what I would describe the Rhine Meadows as but then again history is written by the victors so you probably have never heard of that.
        
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        April 4, 2018 9:18pm
      - mikewasmild
        
        Sigh.
        PRATT.
        You need to find a comfortable Reddit thread if you want to ‘debate’ your Holocaust denying bullshit.
        
        6 3
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        April 4, 2018 9:36pm
      - Brito
        
        EAD, EAD, tsk tsk. Mate. Go to the old Treblinka site and stand on the pile of ash that’s now a grass knob. Used to be the imaginary 800,000 people that never existed.
        
        The missing millions who were there in 1938 and who were no longer there in 1945. Not just Jews but everybody! You are a pea brain.
        
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        April 4, 2018 10:01pm
      - EAD_TWO
        
        800,000 people that never existed turned to ash?
        
        Let’s do some basic maths now shall we?
        50 Crematoria (being very generous here assuming it had as many Crematoria as Auschwitz)
        x
        3 bodies per day (being generous here assuming Crematoria can operate around the clock❗) being cremated
        x
        1095 days (again being generous with 3 full years)
        
        = 164,250
        
        I know believing is more important than reason and logic but what other fantasies have you got for us today Brito?
        
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        April 4, 2018 10:12pm
      - noskire
        
        EAD_TWO, following is a link to a book by Christopher Browning. It’s called Ordinary Men, and I suggest you take the time to read it.
        https://archive.org/stream/BROWNINGOrdinaryMen.ReservePoliceBattalion101AndTheFinalSolutionInPoland1992/BROWNING-Ordinary+Men.+Reserve+Police+Battalion+101+and+the+Final+Solution+in+Poland+%281992%29_djvu.txt
        
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        April 4, 2018 11:18pm
      - EAD_TWO
        
        here is a book called “You Gentiles” by Maurice Samuel in 1928. I suggest you read it:
        
        https://www.amazon.com/You-Gentiles-Maurice-Samuel/dp/B006568Q6I
        
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        April 5, 2018 12:01am
rightoverlabour

Just seen this in the comments on stuff

Way to go and may there be hundreds more…

https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/102829290/shane-jones-cant-recall-official-misgivings-about-west-coast-project-he-funded

“Every day I read something that makes me want to bang my head against a door when it comes to this Government. I normally vote Labour but them and their support partners are seriously testing my limits of support, but much more of this ineptitude and for the first time in my life I will be voting for the blue team in 2020. “
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April 4, 2018 8:32pm
- mikewasmild
  
  Must have been channelling his previous bestie, John Key – the one who gave him the sweet gig touring the Pacific, with the “I can’t recall” defence.
  
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  April 4, 2018 8:39pm
  - starboard
    
    Hows ya mum MM? Haven’t seen the old tart for a while.
    
    10 1
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    April 4, 2018 8:44pm
    - mikewasmild
      
      I’m going to make the assumption that she is alive and well and staying with you in the fantasy land where you are not a bitter and twisted alcoholic shambling from your Council bed-sit to the Papanui RSA and back again once you’ve blown the week’s pension on the pokies.
      
      4 8
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      April 4, 2018 8:50pm
      - starboard
        
        Errr.. Say again.. Are you pissed/high?
        
        6 2
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        April 4, 2018 9:05pm
      - mikewasmild
        
        Sorry, I forgot about your limited reading age.
        
        Short sentences for starboard:
        You are a fantasist.
        
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        April 4, 2018 9:09pm
      - Awww C-mon
        
        I was concerned that someone was using mike was mild as a troll account.
        Glad to see it’s just the same old mike with a bad attitude, I think I am going to like MWM ??
        
        5 4
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        April 4, 2018 9:45pm
      - mikewasmild
        
        It’s just easier to change a user name after a ban than resetting the password.
        
        2 5
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        April 4, 2018 9:48pm
      - UrbanNeocolonialist
        
        Be honest, it was your embarrassment at everyone contonuously seeing how you have wasted your life accumulating over 20000 posts.
        
        6 0
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        April 4, 2018 10:03pm
      - Brito
        
        #starboard. Are you shagging the infirm and the blind again? Good to see you’re still punishing those that have a socialist affliction.
        
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        April 4, 2018 10:04pm
- Captain Mainwaring
  
  “for the first time in my life I will be voting for the blue team in 2020.“
  
  Why wait until 2020? It will happen before then.
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:13pm
Nev.

Trump not a probe target for criminal Russia investigation.
The rest of us knew there was nothing there, why the fuck did it take well over a year for MSM to admit it?
Burn in hell you liberal media fuckstains.
Nev.
5 2
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April 4, 2018 8:50pm
- mikewasmild
  
  Not a ‘target’, just a ‘subject’ of the investigation. Pretty much total exoneration right there, innit?
  Has Trump been able to find new lawyers to explain the difference? That is, lawyers from the rapidly shrinking pool of available shysters who enjoying losing, being lied to by their clients and not getting paid?
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:06pm
  - Nev.
    
    I am guessing you are not a fan then? Too bad. Get on the Trump train or get murdered by diversity NotMike
    
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    April 4, 2018 9:09pm
    - mikewasmild
      
      Murdered by an abstract concept sounds a little far-fetched to me.
      
      1 6
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      April 4, 2018 9:38pm
      - Kimbo
        
        I see your pedant and double it:
        
        Communism.
        Fascism.
        Militarism.
        
        All abstract concepts in the first instance. Murdered hundreds of millions between them in the 20th Century.
        
        Welcome back, mikey.
        
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        April 4, 2018 9:59pm
      - mikewasmild
        
        Ideologies don’t kill people. People kill people.
        
        But if you want to classify ‘diversity’ as an abstract, but lethal concept, go ahead and make that case. Should be more straightforward than your tortuous theology.
        
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        April 5, 2018 6:33am
noskire

Heather du Plessis-Allan: How Labour just lost the 2020 election.
I think that’s wishful thinking – Labour and the CoL won’t last until 2020.
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April 4, 2018 9:27pm
- Humble Capitalist
  
  Heather you’re not suggesting she that does not lie has told another whopper are you?
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:47pm
  - Humble Capitalist
    
    But don’t underestimate the Unions hunger for power and Winston’s hatred for National. Every chance it will go to 2020 I’m afraid
    
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    April 4, 2018 9:50pm
- Awww C-mon
  
  It won’t hurt all of us HDPA,
  
  The arseholes in electric cars still pay squat.
  
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  April 4, 2018 9:48pm
  - niggly
    
    It’s ok, the COL will think of a tax for them too before too long!
    
    Maybe something indirect (so people don’t get discouraged and stop buying electric cars), maybe like increase the price of electricity & reap the increased gst etc (“hey the gummit advises it needs to increase electricity capacity to cater for more charging stations, so gotta pay for it somehow plebs” …. oh and that’s EVERYONE, including the poor who can only dream about affording to have an electric car in about 20 years time)!
    
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    April 4, 2018 10:03pm
noskire

Who saw Question Time today?
Melissa Lee had another interesting question for Curran – Did she request or receive any documents from Hirschfeld during the meeting at Astoria?
Tomorrow will be a doozy, although sadly Curran is being whisked away to Witless Protection on the Gold Coast.
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April 4, 2018 9:58pm
- mikewasmild
  
  Given Curran’s form, no one would be surprised if tomorrow she comes up with some story about Hirschfeld handing her the menu, which she kept, and which now seems to have plans for restructuring RNZ scribbled in crayon on the back.
  
  6 2
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  April 4, 2018 10:05pm
  - Humble Capitalist
    
    27 degrees and partly cloudy on the Gold Coast tomorrow. That’s all Curran will need to think about tomorrow
    
    4 0
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    April 4, 2018 10:08pm
Hugh Pavletich

United Nations calls on NZ to adopt human rights-based national housing strategy | Stuff.co.nz

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/102830739/united-nations-calls-on-nz-to-adopt-human-rightsbased-national-housing-strategy

The United Nations is supporting calls for New Zealand to adopt a human rights-based national housing strategy, and has asked the Government to report back to it on the matter within 18 months.

The support was issued by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in response to a submission from the Human Rights Commission (HRC).

A human rights-based housing strategy requires housing to be affordable, habitable, accessible and secure in tenure.

The HRC’s chief commissioner David Rutherford said New Zealanders, “particularly our most vulnerable”, were experiencing the flow-on effects of governments “over many decades neglecting to treat housing as a human right”. … read more via hyperlink above …
.
.
… Get past the waffle … what affordable housing is must be clearly defined and incorporated within public policies … read on …
.
.
DEFINITION OF AN AFFORDABLE HOUSING MARKET … http://www.PerformanceUrbanPlanning.org

For metropolitan areas to rate as ‘affordable’ and ensure that housing bubbles are not triggered, housing prices should not exceed three times gross annual household earnings. To allow this to occur, new starter housing of an acceptable quality to the purchasers, with associated commercial and industrial development, must be allowed to be provided on the urban fringes at 2.5 times the gross annual median household income of that urban market (refer Demographia Survey Schedules for guidance).

The critically important Development Ratios for this new fringe starter housing, should be 17 – 23% serviced lot / section cost – to balance the actual housing construction.

Ideally through a normal building cycle, the Median Multiple should move from a Floor Multiple of 2.3, through a Swing Multiple of 2.5 to a Ceiling Multiple of 2.7 – to ensure maximum stability and optimal medium and long term performance of the residential construction sector.
.
.
The Effect of Zoning on Housing Prices … RBA Discussion Paper

https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/2018/pdf/rdp2018-03.pdf
The Economic Implications of Housing Supply … Glaeser & Gyourko

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.32.1.3
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April 4, 2018 9:58pm
- Humble Capitalist
  
  No need to butt in U.N. We already have our ‘homes for all’ promise and strategy locked in
  
  3 1
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  April 4, 2018 10:11pm
  - Hugh Pavletich
    
    Spelling out clearly what ‘affordable’ means for specific property types in Auckland …
    
    1. Standard detached housing should not cost any more than 3.0 times annual household incomes of specific metros ( refer Annual Demographia Surveys ; recent Glaeser & Gyourko paper ; recent Reserve Bank of Australia paper ).
    
    2. New fringe starter house and land packages should cost around 2.5 times … at development ratios of 20% serviced lot and the balance construction ( Definition of an affordable housing market http://www.PerformanceUrbanPlanning ).
    
    3. Apartment / townhouses should be around 2.0 times ( to illustrate refer Houston Association of Realtors Monthly Report ).
    
    4. Fringe manufactured house and land packages should be around 1.5 times ( refer Leaky Homes And An Architect’s Musing’s | Scoop News March 2010 published Interest Co NZ as ‘Houston: We have a housing affordability problem’ … extract below General Email) .
    
    Following 13+ years of intense public discussion of these issues in New Zealand, there is no excuse not to have a sound grasp of these ‘structural basics’.
    
    After all … housing development and construction is a very formulaic business today.
    
    With the gross annual median household income in Auckland now about $94,000 (refer Demographia Survey schedules) … the detached median house prices should not exceed $282,000 … fringe starter house & land packages $235,000 … apartments / townhouses $188,000 and fringe manufactured house & land packages about $141,000
    
    Have Auckland Mayor Phil Goff and New Zealand Housing Minister Phil Twyford told you this ?
    
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    April 4, 2018 11:16pm
    - Hugh Pavletich
      
      Check out extensive postings on MacroBusiness Australia threads …
      
      Top spot todays Links page …
      
      https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/04/links-5-april-2018/#comment-3081528
      
      Large volume on last Fridays MacroAfternoon thread …
      
      https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/03/macro-afternoon-393/#comment-3079568
      
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      April 5, 2018 3:27am
Manolo

Trade wars and the markets:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/04/us-stock-futures-dow-data-trade-tech-and-politics-in-focus.html
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April 5, 2018 7:11am

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